Thursday, April 19, 2012

Rizelmine 20 - Too Hot for TV Tropes



Batch (Nyaa) || Batch (BakaBT)

Rizelmine 20 is out, and I'm going to take this opportunity to soapbox for a moment.

Last weekend, popular/infamous website TVTropes.org got a complaint referred to Google's AdSense (and probably one from some troll, not a concerned citizen) about the content of their "Naughty Tentacles" page, which once documented instances of supernatural tentacles groping and attacking people for erotic, comedic, or horrific purposes. The response of the admins was to wipe that page, all pages specifically referring to pornographic content, remove/lock/limit certain tropes, and perhaps most disturbingly, remove numerous works pages deemed too deviant or sexually offensive. In the anime/manga realm, that includes titles ranging from Kodomo no Jikan to Eiken to Fate/Stay Night (as well as some fairly-respected pieces of literature like Vladmir Nabokov's Lolita), and I wouldn't be surprised if more get the axe in weeks to come.



While I can understand that they need to keep the revenue coming in to keep the site hosted, I still see this move as unfortunate. And as the site will be less useful to me as titles get randomly removed, I will no longer visit it on a regular basis. I believe I was the first BakaBT uploader to link TVTropes in my torrent descriptions, but I have gone through and removed all links or mentions of the site -- I don't want to be stuck with dead links if TVT decides to remove erotic visual novels like Kanon or Lime-Colored War Tales, or if they decide the underage comedic pseudo-incest in Onii-chan no Koto is too inappropriate.

You may ask, "But Rizelmine isn't that bad, do you really think TVTropes will remove it?" If you don't think Rizelmine might be removed for daring to suggest a marriage and a sexual relationship between a 15-year-old boy and a 12-year-old girl, take a look at what's become of a certain other show where Rie Kugimiya plays a loli who winds up in an "arranged partnership" with an older male. And then there're other ReDone-released anime that could get the axe, like Soul Link, To Heart, Lime-Colored War Tales, and Touka Gettan -- they were all based on erogames.

Do I advocate stirring up a fuss and protesting on TVTropes itself? Sure, if you think it'd do any good. But I say hit them where it really hurts: don't visit the site, don't link to it, don't reference it, and encourage others in the anime/manga fandom to do the same.

1 comment:

  1. Here we go: http://tropes.wikia.com/wiki/Lotte_No_Omocha

    ReplyDelete