Anime and Censorship: A Never-ending War

Article at a glance:

• The recent My Dress-Up Darling censorship stirred up some debate, but the issue goes way beyond just one episode.
• Censorship in anime has always been a hot topic, and history shows it’s not going away anytime soon.
• This isn’t about fan service—it’s about the bigger picture and what constant censorship could mean for the industry.

I am pretty sure most of you reading this have seen the controversy over the My Dress Up Darling episode. Specifically, in Season 2 of My Dress Up Darling, Episode 10 is censoring a scene. While in the manga, she was clearly bare-chested, here in the anime, they are covering her up a bit. And that’s fine, it is such a minor change that it doesn’t even matter, but this article is not about My Dress Up Darling, it is about anime and censorship.

I honestly don’t care about the Marin fan service. If you have read my articles, you know that I often criticize shows for having too much fan service. I don’t care about it as long as the product remains good. But with the recent wave of censorship hitting pretty much everything, you can’t blame people for feeling a little paranoid here. Censorship is a slippery slope as is.

So today, I wanted to talk about anime and censorship, the never-ending war. Because believe me, this isn’t the first time people are blowing a fuse over censorship. So let’s get started.

This isn’t About My Dress Up Darling, This is About the Anime Industry as a Whole

So let me clarify my stance before we go into more details. I honestly don’t care about the censorship in MDUD Season 2 Episode 10. It is a very small thing, who cares? If I wanted to see topless Marin pics, I could just go to Pixiv and find something. No, this is not about MDUD; this is about the Anime Industry as a whole. This isn’t the first time that an anime’s censorship has been controversial. This has happened before, and it will happen again, I am sure.

I don’t mean to fear-monger, but today it is just a small scene; tomorrow it could be dialogues, and then we could have whole arcs watered down because of censorship. Lest we forget, the whole Collective Shout fiasco happened very recently. Mind you, Master Card and Visa continue supporting Roblox even after all this. So, currently, it is not a big deal. There are plenty of other ways to see Marin’s breasts if you wish, but the thing is, this censorship trend is concerning, and it needs to be addressed.

Don’t Shoot the Messenger

What has the internet come to? I have seen so many people get absolutely lambasted online simply for reporting on censorship. So many tweets have an absolutely vile comment section just for reporting censorship without commenting on it. I guess it only fits that people advocating for censorship would be against honest reporting. And to be fair, it is Twitter and Reddit I am talking about, so I shouldn’t expect any better.

But shooting the messenger doesn’t help anything. There will be no room for honest and unbiased discourse if people keep attacking those who are just reporting a fact. And honestly, I hope we can all agree that censorship is bad. I don’t want the anime industry to have a “Collective Shout moment.” I just wish people could be more civil about this whole ordeal. You can and should criticize censorship without being obsessed with some fan-service scene being cut.

This Isn’t the First Time

Again, anime has had censorship problems in the past, and I don’t think that will stop any time soon, especially given the way things are going in places like the UK. We have been here before, and we will be here again. Heck, censorship in general has been an issue for hundreds of years. Even back in the era of classical poetry, people would often complain about not being allowed to write or paint certain things.

But, just for the sake of it, let’s go over some of the major anime censorship controversies:

• Sailor Moon: Relationship Erasure – I think this one is pretty famous. So many of the romantic relationships in the show were recontextualized as familial in the English Dub. An English Dub getting things wrong? Where have I heard that before? But yeah, they took a lot of Yuri romance out of the show in the English Dub. Probably the first major censorship-related controversy in anime.
• 4Kids Yu-Gi-Oh and One Piece: This one is pretty infamous lol. 4Kids butchered these shows with their dumb attempts at sanitizing One Piece and Yu-Gi-Oh. Even minor things like finger funs were blurred and blood was replaced with water or something, completely messing with the lore of One Piece. Most people hate this one for a good reason.
• Countless Regional Bans: Again, this is nothing new. Anime seen as “problematic” are banned in multiple countries, like China, Malaysia, India, etc. And recently, the UK has gone too far and made it really difficult to even just exist on the internet. Japan had been going there for a while, but a bunch of anti-censorship people have been elected recently, so that’s nice.
• And Many More… Yeah, even kid-friendly stuff like Pokémon has been hit with waves of censorship at times. They literally changed the skin tone of Jinx at some point.

That is all for now

Please realize that this war against censorship is not about seeing nudity on screen or anything. We have recently had terrible experiences with censorship, and I don’t want anime to end up like that. I hope people can see what I am trying to say here. This is not about My Dress-Up Darling. I wanted to make this article for a long time; I just used MDUD as an excuse to do so.

I request everyone reading to just take a step back and think about it. Please don’t harass people reporting on this stuff. Harassing others never helps your cause. With that said, I will take my leave here. I have to go play Dying Light with my friends. See ya!

Check out my thoughts on One Punch Man Season 3 here!