No Game, No Life is one of the most popular Japanese creations of recent years. Originally created as a light novel series, the work garnered so much attention that it spawned a manga and an anime (available right now on Netfix ). Although sex is not the focus of the work, its erotic content began a domino effect that has culminated in the ban on all hentai in Australia, something that for some has been an excessive decision. Let’s talk about it.
No Game, No Life
A couple of months ago, the Australian Classification Board (ACB) received some volumes of the No Game manga , No Life, with the purpose of making a classification for sale to the public, similar to what happens with some video games or different types on average. On July 23, it was concluded that 3 volumes of the manga were going to have a “rejected classification”, that is, that they were not going to be given a classification that would allow their sale within the country and that would prevent those particular volumes from being imported.
The rejected classification is called CR and is given to works described as material that presents content that has high impact and that goes beyond the standards generally accepted by the community ”.
For the ACB, the volumes of the manga No Game, No Life 1 and 2 were publications that “describe or present in any way that may cause offense to a reasonable adult, a person who is or appears to be a minor under 18 years of age (thus if the person appears in sexual activity or not ”.
No Game, No Life introduces two expert gaming stepbrothers , Sora and Shiro, who are invited to travel to a world of games where they begin to dominate everyone. The play presents them in a close, suggestive, but not sexual relationship. Considered part of the seinen genre, it is aimed at men and usually has illustrations that present women in different sensual contexts, including the young Shiro , something that is usually relatively common in the world of manga and anime.
In the two forbidden volumes, there were adult illustrations in which Shiro and Stephanie Dola appeared naked (in the available Netflix adaptation there are still those moments but in a less explicit way)
Volume 9 was also banned but due to other factors, also considered “not very decent.”
It all seemed to have ended there, however, recently, the Japanese adult products seller J-List released a statement stating that the Australian Border Force and customs have begun to block all Japanese adult products from entering the country, regardless of its content.
According to the seller, this includes material such as hentai , Japanese adult videos, sexually suggestive action figures that feature anime characters, vaginas designed for masturbation, and any other product that has the “+18” symbol on their packaging, so that have asked their clients not to order packages to the country.
According to their statement, DHL Japan told them that the country would begin to ban any adult products from entering , and they suggested that they stop shipping the packages.
The ABF site states that entry of any type of “ illegal pornography ” is prohibited , which includes sexual violence, among other acts , so hentai and any Japanese adult product would be absolutely prohibited.
This also comes after several policies conducted a review of the classification laws after noticing that there were comics and videos in which sexual images of a minor are presented, including incest, sexual abuse, rape, among others.
The controversy of the sexualization of minors in Japanese art is not new, but it remains part of the canon of some genres. In fact, there is a great variety of works that present relationships between stepbrothers or minor people (sometimes without sex, others in an erotic way), always bordering on the edge of what is “allowed”.
