Anime World Order Show # 46 – Animated Snuff Film Misogynist Crap

In what will go down in history as the AWO’s darkest hour (it was Gerald’s idea!), this episode is entirely devoted to hentai. Daryl reviews the extensively surreal Kanashimi no Belladonna, Clarissa reviews the manga Pink Sniper by her favorite hentai artist Kengo Yonekura, and Gerald fulfills the dream by providing us with a highly-researched review of Urotsukidoji: Legend of the Overfiend.

Know that this special commemorative Photoshop was…shall we say, OFFERED to us (you know, Comics-One is no more and their entire release of this has been scanned…hmm, ideas are forming…):

Remember, it’s not porn if you don’t draw the dick. Ikegami = ALL CLASS.

Introduction (0:00 – 22:25)
In the emails, we’re told that there IS quite a bit of horror anime after all. It’s just that most all of it is either hentai or isn’t stuff we’d consider scary, such as Serial Experiments Lain or Paranoia Agent. Actually, it’s a total misuse of the term for American fans to call pornographic Japanese cartoons and comics “hentai” since that’s how you’d describe a person, but it’s not like it’s the first time that American anime fandom has taken a Japanese word and misconstrued its meaning, and it won’t be the last. We also learn that even American movie horror fans are mentally decimated by Waita Uziga’s manga. People have been watching Mind Game as a result of Daryl’s review, which leads to a grand dismissive of experimental cinema that is sure to cause the TRUE FILM SCHOLARS to turn their noses up at how primitive we are. So be it. Waking Life is still a crappy movie, and so is Garden State. Carl Horn calls in to reveal to us a brand new insight about the End of Evangelion that dawned on him as a result of our Moon Phase review. Somebody notify Aaron Clark!

Let’s News! (22:25 – 36:27)
Digital Meme is going to be releasing 55 of those really old anime titles from 1928-1936 which were recently discovered on DVD in a four-disc set entitled the “Japanese Anime Classic Collection” on April 30th. The all-region set is going to be $110, and it’ll include English subtitles (plus Japanese, Chinese, and Korean). Still, the influence these have on modern anime is tenuous at best, since these are from the silent era. Daryl is so totally not buying into this post on Conversations on Ghibli, but he recommends everyone read it anyway since he clearly just has an inadequate brain capacity. Perhaps aliens turned him into a Scotsman. More likely, he’s just living up to his Magic: The Gathering card representation as “The Purveyor of Violence.” There’s yet another “there’s gonna be a live-action Ghost in the Shell!” story going around, but not only did they already make The Matrix (it’s totally stretching it, but here’s a page comparing screenshots from both), none of these “live action versions of anime” rumors should be taken to heart unless shooting actually starts. Clarissa is not pleased with Hollywood’s trend of doing bad remakes and screen adaptations of stories that are excessively dumbed down or unnecessarily updated. However, she can’t wait to see how Napoleon Dynamite influences anime. We talk some more about Tokyopop’s impending release of the Twelve Kingdoms novels, which Daryl mentioned during his review of it. Hajime no Ippo actually did really well on TV in Japan, which makes its lack of popularity here in the US all the more tragic. Maybe if they didn’t release a 75 episode series one disc at a time…

Review: Kanashimi no Belladonna (36:27 – 1:01:30)
Daryl talks about the final film released by Mushi Productions, the third of the so-called Animerama trilogy. We could talk about this movie, but suffice it to say that this movie is made by one of the men who directed Odin: Photon Space Sailer Starlight, which is what we best associate The Nish with. Yamato? What’s that? Also, behold these clips from Belladonna NOW before Youtube takes them down and deletes our account for violation of its terms of use, though we say they’re more “mature content” than “pornographic”:


Assuming Youtube has not deleted those videos and removed our account, pat yourself on the back because you have now seen the best parts of this film. Gerald’s recollection was slightly off, as those are in fact RABBITS flying out of that guy’s butt, not fish. Fish are involved in a different shot.

  • Jules Michelet and his book, La Sorciere; “La Sorciere” is actually the film’s sub-title
  • I don’t think any of this stuff happened to the real Joan of Arc
  • Clarissa made a reference to Tommy Johnson, but Daryl’s only knowledge of him would be from O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and he only saw that once.
  • Art Nouveau — apparently that’s the style this moviefilm was supposedly done in
  • 200, by the United States propaganda department – Daryl happens to know that the style shown here was REAL style Belladonna was done in. The name for this style is, shall we say, Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds-influenced. No, not the Shatner song! (The Beatles? Who are they?)

Promo: R5 Central (1:01:30 – 1:02:29)
Courageous mecha pilot/large black man (hint hint, ladies…though just so you know, PER HIS OWN ADMISSION, it’s a climax the moment he starts!) Mike Dent is not a number. He is a free man! Be sure to check out Episode 33 featuring special guest monologue by Daryl Surat! He’s got a special comment for tokusatsu fandom, and it starts around the 17 minute mark. CLI-MAX JUMP! ii JUMP! ii JUMP! Suge-JUMP! ii JUMP! ii JUMP! Suge-JUMP!

Review: Pink Sniper (1:02:29 – 1:25:04)
Man, you know this episode is trouble when the most normal hentai title being discussed is the one that contains cow people having sex. Clarissa throws her Magic: The Gathering card representation for a loop, since despite the fact that Pink Sniper is a porn manga from a female author, it’s not yaoi. Well, if you don’t count the sequel, anyway. Kengo Yonekura is one of Clarissa’s favorite artists, and part of that has to do with the fact that the guys have faces and aren’t just invisible aside from their peen. How are the people who buy this [guys] supposed to mentally swap out the guy for themselves if they can see his face?! Even regular porn knows not to do that! To the disbelief of all, this is commercially available in English thanks to Eros Comix, which is actually still releasing this stuff even after Dark Horse bought out Studio Proteus years ago. This is probably the only ACTUAL porn review of the show, and as such, Daryl asks THE TOUGH QUESTIONS~!

  • Yonekura Kengo’s web site – the site moved recently, so unfortunately her gallery is down at the moment, but you can still access her works listing.
  • You can order Pink Sniper directly from Eros Comix or from bookstores like Amazon; it’s cheaper on Amazon than most other places, but they don’t appear to have it in stock so it could take a while

Promo: Happy House of Hentai (1:25:04 – 1:25:27)
Lord Kaosu and Hello Kitty just hit Show # 50, so congrats are in order! Check them out for hentai reviews of…um, The Sims 2…and uh…Speed Grapher. And Dead or Alive Xtreme 2–wait a second, those aren’t hentai! All that Phantasy Star Universe Lord K’s been playing lately must have thrown him for a loop. Why, he’s even started up a PSU-only podcast. Curse you people and your…work ethic! You know, TECHNICALLY, we’ve released over 50 things too, if you count the stuff that wasn’t actually shows! Yeah, that’s the ticket!

Review: Urotsukidoji: Legend of the Overfiend (1:25:27 – 1:53:39)
Did Wesley Willis compose that music or something? Of all the segments Gerald has ever done, he has probably done the most research and preparation on this one, another winner brought to us by The Nish. Brought about by a request from Teleport City (Keith’s review of Overfiend is up, even though it’s not listed on the front page…WONDER WHY), this could have easily been half the episode on its own, what with Gerald’s Magic: The Gathering card representation and all, so a lot had to go for the sake of time, such as Daryl talking about how much he wishes this anime never existed, and that the existence of Overfiend is why he never really tells anyone that he’s an anime fan to this day, which doesn’t stop his cockblocking friends from chiming in with “you know, DARYL is an ANIME FAN!” which has since been upped to “you know, DARYL is an INTERNET CELEBRITY because he has a PODCAST about ANIME!” Swell, guys. Thanks for the help there. Anyway, what remains is the result of much editing and reorganizing, and that’s our official excuse for why this episode is a week late. Watch this space for what is sure to be a great deal of supplemental links.

Promo: Otaku Generation (1:53:39 – 1:53:53)
Dan “The Fan” is gone, but in his place is…A GIRL?! And…KYLE?! Wow, I wonder what he’s going to review after that extended hiatus brought about by being burned out from watching mediocre anime. Wait, E’s Otherwise? E’S OTHERWISE?! One of the more notoriously crappy shows in recent years? And he was looking FORWARD to it?! Yeah, we get the feeling that Kyle will be itching for another hiatus real soon. And while we all got copies of the first volume of Mechademia to review several weeks ago, Bryce actually beat us to the punch since a fan sent in a copy. Man. We freaking fail at the timeliness.

Closing (1:53:53 – 2:02:10)
Can you believe that this week’s episode is LONGER than the latest episode of Otaku Generation?! Special belated congratulations to Tim Eldred, whose graphic novel Grease Monkey has won the 2007 award for Best Book for Young Adults from the American Library Association. Plus, if you purchase the Viz DVD release of the Densha Otoko movie, it includes a commentary track by TV’s Patrick Macias, Most Dangerous Tomohiro Machiyama, and “Jay Tack.” Does japattack.com even get updated anymore? We’re not quite sure. Next week, we have ANOTHER astonishing idea, and this time it’s Daryl’s fault! For you see, next time around we’re not only going to review just Volume 1 of the title we’re reviewing as opposed to the entire series, but we’re also going to review things that we’ve never ever seen before and have absolutely no idea as to what they’re about! Chris over at ADV sent us a bunch of stuff to review as well as give away, and so Daryl’s got an advance review of Le Chevalier d’Eon (set for release 2/20), Gerald takes a look at Utawarerumono since he saw the preview for it on The Anime Network and thought it looked interesting, and Clarissa tackles Volume 1 of Nerima Daikon Brothers! Don’t bother spoiling the secret, since this episode’s actually already recorded and we just suck when it comes to editing. Namely, that we have to edit at all. All the smart podcasters never seem to need to do that.

72 Replies to “Anime World Order Show # 46 – Animated Snuff Film Misogynist Crap”

  1. Will you ever read any of my e-mails, you read 2 fucking e-mails.

    This is just cause Daryl hates my fucking guts.

    Actually, I don’t. I am slightly annoyed by the fact that 50-75% of the time, you write me to ask my thoughts on The Rescuers and The Rescuers Down Under under an email address that bounces, and on the few occasions where I have read your emails, you’ve written in to express great displeasure over my saying that your name is John Paul Rand, but I don’t hate you even though most of your emails include some statement to the effect of “Daryl is an asshole.”

    But just for you, I am going to stop what I am doing–which is editing Show #47 and getting ready to record Show #48–to investigate exactly WHY I have not read your emails on the show. Shows 47 and 48 will be delayed that much more as a result.

    And…the most recent email you sent me from about 3 weeks ago simply says “when will you review Akira, Galaxy Express 999, and the Ghost in the Shell movie?” I wrote you back–after a little less than a week, and I’m sorry for taking so long–saying “I don’t know, but it’s on the to do list.”

    So I did read your last email and respond to it. I just didn’t read it on the show because well, we’ve talked about that before. Your second most recent email was from November, where you wrote to basically say “what do you think of Hellsing and Lone Wolf and Cub?” I think we have said what we thought of Hellsing just about every time Studio Gonzo gets mentioned, and I said what I thought of LWaC when we interviewed Patrick Macias. I didn’t bother to reply since I know you’d listened to those.

    All of your emails are basically like that. “When are you going to review Ranma 1/2?” We already made our thoughts perfectly clear about what we think of Ranma 1/2. “When are you going to review Ninja Scroll?” I’ve said my piece on Ninja Scroll. “Daryl is a shithead.” Really? I’m also the only one who ever bothers to write you replies. Hey, just like now!

    The problem of course is that the review index doesn’t have entries for most of the occasions where we just quickly give our opinion on something. For me to comprehensively maintain this would require me to re-listen to every episode and make note of every time we mention a show, and between maintaining this website, answering the emails, recording and editing the show, and actually watching stuff to review, I am slightly low on spare time. Especially since Megacon is next week.

    And now Gerald is IM’ing me asking me why the hell I’m still not on Skype so that we can get the show recorded. The answer is because I’m taking the time to answer you. But no, I must clearly “hate your fucking guts.”

  2. Well, but let’s look at this from another point of view. You have to admit that modern culture has this relentless drumbeat of “FUCK EARLIER. FUCK EARLIER. FUCK EARLIER.” Hell, in this podcast you guys rant about how pre-teen girls are being inappropriately sexualized! Is it really that strange or surprising that some fathers react to that in such an extreme way? I mean, would you rather they totally disengage themselves from their daughter’s lives?

    That’s something that I’ve kinda noticed about discussions like this–there’s this wierd double standard, where everything bad that kids do is blamed on the parents, but then as soon as the parents step in it’s “oh they’re being too intrusive and controlling”.

  3. Daryl Surat got on the soap box and proclaimed…

    Actually, I don’t. I am slightly annoyed by the fact that 50-75% of the time, you write me to ask my thoughts on The Rescuers and The Rescuers Down Under under an email address that bounces,

    Heh, hardly remember that sequel, but I’m glad it’s not in my “must see” list!

    and on the few occasions where I have read your emails, you’ve written in to express great displeasure over my saying that your name is John Paul Rand, but I don’t hate you even though most of your emails include some statement to the effect of “Daryl is an asshole.”

    But just for you, I am going to stop what I am doing–which is editing Show #47 and getting ready to record Show #48–to investigate exactly WHY I have not read your emails on the show. Shows 47 and 48 will be delayed that much more as a result.

    Thanks John for spoiling it for the rest of us. 🙁

    And…the most recent email you sent me from about 3 weeks ago simply says “when will you review Akira, Galaxy Express 999, and the Ghost in the Shell movie?” I wrote you back–after a little less than a week, and I’m sorry for taking so long–saying “I don’t know, but it’s on the to do list.”

    You’d think that would be enough. I would tell you to take your time on those anyway (plus I had to get the Korean DVD releases to keep me tide over for quite a while).

    So I did read your last email and respond to it. I just didn’t read it on the show because well, we’ve talked about that before. Your second most recent email was from November, where you wrote to basically say “what do you think of Hellsing and Lone Wolf and Cub?” I think we have said what we thought of Hellsing just about every time Studio Gonzo gets mentioned, and I said what I thought of LWaC when we interviewed Patrick Macias. I didn’t bother to reply since I know you’d listened to those.

    I felt I heard enough of those too.

    All of your emails are basically like that. “When are you going to review Ranma 1/2?” We already made our thoughts perfectly clear about what we think of Ranma 1/2.

    I sure don’t need to be told more about it (having been there a long time before).

    “When are you going to review Ninja Scroll?” I’ve said my piece on Ninja Scroll. “Daryl is a shithead.” Really? I’m also the only one who ever bothers to write you replies. Hey, just like now!

    The problem of course is that the review index doesn’t have entries for most of the occasions where we just quickly give our opinion on something. For me to comprehensively maintain this would require me to re-listen to every episode and make note of every time we mention a show, and between maintaining this website, answering the emails, recording and editing the show, and actually watching stuff to review, I am slightly low on spare time. Especially since Megacon is next week.

    Just let him be John, he knows what he’s doing!

    And now Gerald is IM’ing me asking me why the hell I’m still not on Skype so that we can get the show recorded. The answer is because I’m taking the time to answer you. But no, I must clearly “hate your fucking guts.”

    And why guys like me find it less enjoyable to be given such interferences.

    Oh and Gerald, sorry if I felt too uptight when talking about Overfiend. It’s just that I’m not a big horror fan the very least (having been burned out of that already), but I can understand what you’ve said about how anime needs to be represented in all shapes and forms. it’s just that it’s sad to think how one title could typecast a section of the animation medium as some bad thing they way it had been handled.

    Being reminded of the reactions Overfiend had in the UK, I’m reminded of having a video in my collection that brought up the small anime fan community that existed in the UK during the late 90’s, and what those fans had to put up with given their condition. I wanted to stick it up on YouTube, but they had to go and show the tenticle rape scene from Overfiend uncensored, and I could get suspended again for that (feel too lazy to cut it out, let alone figure out how to mosaic it either)!

  4. halojonefans said: You have to admit that modern culture has this relentless drumbeat of “FUCK EARLIER. FUCK EARLIER. FUCK EARLIER.”

    I’m sorry, I don’t admit that. If anything, I think American culture makes every attempt to strangle young people’s sexual identities, leaving them emotionally stunted well into their thirties and beyond.

    No amount of pledges is going to eliminate the “sin” of pre-marital sex. When young adults fuck is going to be largely determined by their sexual development, which is a biological imperative, not a cultural one. And while social coercion and a shaming ceremony may be a slight improvement from the good, old-fashioned wrought-iron chastity belt, I think feminists have every reason to abhor and rebuke this sort of behavior.

    I don’t see a double-standard. Daryl, Gerald, and Clarissa complain about presexual human beings being sexualized for the masturbatory purposes of otaku; I complain about a practice in which adolescent and post-adolescent young women give up their ability to make decisions regarding their own sexuality to the whims of their fathers. Each practice is grotesque in its own way.

  5. “If anything, I think American culture makes every attempt to strangle young people’s sexual identities, leaving them emotionally stunted well into their thirties and beyond.”

    Well, yes, but that’s the emotional maturity. In terms of physical maturity, it’s a whole different story. You get the sense that the modern culture wants to have everyone be the mind of a child in the body of an adult, and with an adult’s bank account.

    “No amount of pledges is going to eliminate the “sin” of pre-marital sex. When young adults fuck is going to be largely determined by their sexual development, which is a biological imperative, not a cultural one.”

    But, see, this is exactly my point. “Oh it’s just biology and you can’t possibly stop it happening.” Well, yeah, but there’s a difference between that and “hey kids, casual meaningless promiscuity is the way to go!”

    “I complain about a practice in which adolescent and post-adolescent young women give up their ability to make decisions regarding their own sexuality to the whims of their fathers.”

    I don’t see this as “giving up” those decisions. After all, aren’t you claiming that the kids will do what they want anyway? What I see here is an effort by the fathers to provide a role model that doesn’t tell teenage girls that not only is it okay to fuck, but that there is in fact something WRONG WITH YOU if you aren’t fucking.

  6. I don’t see this as “giving up” those decisions. After all, aren’t you claiming that the kids will do what they want anyway? What I see here is an effort by the fathers to provide a role model that doesn’t tell teenage girls that not only is it okay to fuck, but that there is in fact something WRONG WITH YOU if you aren’t fucking.

    Did you somehow miss all this talk of ownership and control going on? The nearly constant references of daughters and their purity “belonging” to their fathers, even being symbolized in lock jewelry that their fathers are being given the key to, and proto-wedding rings for daddy and his little girl?

    Not to mention the very clear mention of fathers then being able to hand pick their daughter’s mate from their small social circle and hand her off, “without her heart entering into it at all” and so not even wanting her to make her own decision about who to explore her adult sexuality with.

    I’m all for parents being involved with their kids, and I can understand parents being uncomfortable with the emergence of their child’s sexuality because it complicates things greatly and brings home the fact that they’re growing up.

    But this is not a healthy exercise in parental involvement. This is the horrid spate of abstinence-only sexual education (and you need to remember that overlaps this, so you have to look at these balls in that context) plus a gala celebration of “good old fashioned” conceptions of a woman as the property and eternally-infantile charge of the men around her, even up to arranged marriages. And I think the things said by the people involved make it perfectly clear that that’s the intention, not a wild extrapolation that I need to make.

    Women are not empowered or protected by being forced to remain children and discouraged from making, understanding and owning their own decisions and bodies (sexuality included). We’re also not empowered by these continued conceptions of sex as only something that can be taken from women, that cheapens and shames us, and that other people should decide for us what sex we like and may be content with (if he doesn’t marry you afterwards, clearly you were miserable and must now be emotionally wrecked, because we all know women just HAVE TO be involved in a long term relationship with anyone they fuck).

    Are there real concerns with sex? Sure. Pregnancy, STDs, and since we don’t live in a well-adjusted paradise, there will be emotional bumps and hangups. But ‘marrying’ girls to their fathers and refusing to even teach kids about sex doesn’t make that go away, and it certainly doesn’t help when sex comes up. It’s paranoia and control that doesn’t do a damn bit of good except make self-righteous religious leaders and scared parents feel better. Meanwhile the teenagers that everyone’s supposedly so worried about, when they inevitably don’t live up to some inhuman standard of virginity, are left unprepared and abandoned to disgustingly high rates of teen pregnancy and STDs, with the addition of a crushing mountain of shame for happening to be a human being.

    And well-intentioned or no, you can fuck that up the ass with an egg beater and no lube.

  7. Clarissa has hit the nail on the head. The real problem with the purity balls is that they’re telling girls to practice abstinence for the wrong reason. These girls are pledging their chastity to their fathers. Their fathers?! It’s completely ridiculous. Their fathers aren’t God; they’re humans, too. They make just as many mistakes as their daughters. Why should they be given control of a girl’s sexuality? After all, it’s not like simply pledging one’s purity to one’s father is going to prevent one from having sex. Ultimately, it’s your choice, not your father’s.

    That’s why the purity ball is so completely misguided and wrong. Girls shouldn’t be vowing to remain pure because their daddy wants them to, and daddy wouldn’t be happy if they didn’t. They should be swearing off premarital sex because they–not their fathers, but THE GIRLS THEMSELVES–want to remain virgins until marriage. What the fathers SHOULD be doing is explaining the reasoning behind abstinence, telling their daughters WHY they want them to wait. After all, if the girls don’t believe they have a logical reason for abstinence, how likely is it that they will actually practice abstinence? Answer: not likely.

    It’s tragic really. I’m a supporter of abstinence; I think it’s the best way to go. So when I see people like this try to “promote” abstinence in such a heavy-handed and illogical way, it really makes me mad. Not only are they wasting time on a method that ultimately doesn’t work, but they’re also sending out an unflattering image of what abstinence supporters are like. Kinda like how Overfiend made “anime” a bad word for a while. The comparison is a probably a bit extreme (since these “purity balls” aren’t nearly as well known as Overfiend was), but it’s the best analogy I can think of right now.

  8. More on purity balls

    Halojonesfan said…
    “FUCK EARLIER. FUCK EARLIER. FUCK EARLIER.” Hell, in this podcast you guys rant about how pre-teen girls are being inappropriately sexualized!

    I just don’t believe having a special event dedicated to a girl’s virginity is doing anything BUT inappropriately sexualizing her.

    By emphasizing the young girl’s “purity” as a qualifier for her attractiveness, a host of dangerous predicates arise.
    * Would one of these purity princesses seek help after being raped? After all she has failed to keep her pact to God and Father.
    * So that is why daddy had to take me to the ball! Mommy isn’t “pure”, so she isn’t allowed.

    there’s this wierd double standard, where everything bad that kids do is blamed on the parents, but then as soon as the parents step in it’s “oh they’re being too intrusive and controlling”.

    Man, you want to talk about a double-standard? If this isn’t some sort of sexist bullshit, why aren’t there 12 year old boys receiving chastity jewelry at these events? Is it that girls need more help than boys of the same age because girls are so moe? The submissive little things will do whatever a male tells them to do (heh), so we have to put this purity notion into their pretty, little heads.

    In the end I think this is about something a lot more pernicious than a misguided attempt to help little girls. These girls (or their sexuality, for which they are treated as mere vessels) is of significant value to the organizers of this event.

    Clarissa said…
    Not to mention the very clear mention of fathers then being able to hand pick their daughter’s mate from their small social circle and hand her off

    Exactly, so the daughter’s virginity becomes a trading chit for the father’s ambitions. As soon as the daughter is “spoiled”, the father loses some of his property.

    Similarly, the churches and so forth that organize these events benefit by being partial owners of these girls sexuality. If boys want to have sex, they need to go to these churches so they can gain access to these girls. This is nothing new.

  9. You know I think the impact of the Daily Mail may have been overstated in the podcast. I don’t recall any shops stopping selling anime because of Overfiend, in fact quite the opposite.

    The decline in stocking anime for a few years came mainly due to labels disappearing(Pioneer, Kiseki, Western Connection), Manga Entertainment really cutting back on their releases and ADV’s terrible VHS release policy that flooded the shelves with tapes that just wouldn’t sell due their outrageous price:episode ratio.

    While Pokemon (and it’s position as part of the phenomally successful SMTV saturday morning show) may have changed the view of anime in the UK, it was DVD that got it back it’s shelf space on the high street.

    Personally I think certain sections of UK fandom complain too much, without sure fire sellers like Overfiend, places like HMV and Virgin Megastore would have never given anime the shelf space they did in the mid-nineties and it would have stayed strictly the provence of tape traders, importers and the back pages of videogame fanzines.

    Also can I just say while the BBFC were as bad as Gerald makes them out to be during this period, they have got better. Once James Ferman, the then nunchuk-hating head of the BBFC left, they got a lot more liberal. Bruce Lee could stop holding a baguette on the cover of Enter The Dragon, and a whole load of “video nasties” got unbanned and released.

    Overfiend would still probably get censored, mind. Sexual violence for entertainment and titilation is still a big no-no for them.

  10. Once James Ferman, the then nunchuk-hating head of the BBFC left, they got a lot more liberal.

    Is he the guy who changed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles?

    E. Bernhard Warg
    Otakon Classic Track
    Anime’s Frank

    I wonder if Overfiend was the first anime translation to have sixteen-year-old eighteen-year-olds attending high school university?

  11. Is he the guy who changed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles?

    I was going to put that in my post, but I’m not sure that he was directly responsible for that change.

    He was responsible for idiocy such as this though:

    “Sight of an anthropomorphic turtle wielding a string of sausages in a manner similar to nunchaku is cut from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: Secret of the Ooze.”

  12. The BBFC also removed the attempted rape scene from THE WINGS OF HONNEAMISE because they felt it was a pointless scene that marred an otherwise fine film. I think the irony is that it’s a depressingly and relatively realistic depiction of rape, in contrast to the tentacles of OVERFIEND.

    –Carl

  13. The BBFC also removed the attempted rape scene from THE WINGS OF HONNEAMISE

    Not strictly true.

    Manga Video voluntarily cut it to lower it’s video certificate from the 15 it had in the cinema (with rape intact) to the PG it had on VHS (without rape).

    BBFC always list their cuts on their site, and no cuts are listed for either release. What won’t be listed are any cuts a studio makes themselves.

  14. I read an interview with a BBFC offical (I believe it was in either Anime UK/FX or Manga Max) in which he discussed the cuts and expressed the opinion that they had improved the film, and seem to have taken the conclusion from his attitude it had been the BBFC’s idea, which, as you say, is not necessarily the case. Mind (as some might say in England), the direction of the scene’s final moments is perhaps a trifle too “Ranma no ecchi,” what with that goofy expression Shiro assumes upon getting lamped, but everything up until that is effective.

    –Carl

  15. It was in the January 1996 edition of Manga Mania.

    And the wonderful censorship monitoring site Melon Farmers have a copy of it: http://tinyurl.com/269j7t

    The quote is:

    Wings of Honneamise was cut in one place. It was a wholly gratuitous sexual assault in the middle of a film which was otherwise a wonderful experience for younger viewers. But, and this is important as other distributors often do the same, it was voluntarily cut by Manga Video to lower the certificate from its cinema classification of 15 to a PG for the video release. When this happens, it is not registered as a cut.

  16. Before Anime World Order, I had never even heard of purity balls, moe, or harem shows. I was a kinder, more innocent man when all I knew about was Overfiend.

    That said, purity balls sound pretty screwed up. And hey — casual intercourse does not have to be meaningless intercourse.

    But seriously — purity balls? Who dreams up this shit? I should have a coherent thought about the subject, but it strikes me as absolutely twisted and absurd that I can hardly grasp it. I’m just going to go back to Overfiend, when things were simple and innocent.

    And hey — the Overfiend review was on the front page, and it’s still on the front page of the main movie page. It just couldn’t hold the top spot when Amitabh Bachchan was waiting in the wings to beat the crap out of a bald dude with a space-age undersea lair.

  17. It isn’t their policy to register it as a cut, but when a cut is made specifically to qualify for a particular BBFC rating and with their moral approval, it would seem to me there is no practical difference. But then, I’m complaining about events of the distant past ^_^

    –Carl

  18. If I were a woman and could choose my own porn name, I would definitely go with “Purity Balls.”

    That has got to be the dumbest/most ironic combination of words since “In Touch Ministries.”

    S’all I’m sayin.’

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