Smoking is bad. Don’t do it! But that’s not why the new Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure anime is being censored. It’s because this is underage smoking.
Picture: Niwaka
In the most recent Japanese broadcast of the Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure anime, the face of Jotaro Kujo is covered in blackness to censor the cigarette in his mouth. This is even more baffling when you realise the smoke isn’t censored, drawing even more attention to the cigarette.
Picture: AnimeTobacco
In the past the Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure anime hasn’t censored this. The manga does not either. In Japan, teenagers can easily rent the previous anime and purchase the manga as they are not age restricted.
In these scenes, Jotaro is 17, and the legal smoking age for Japan is 20. Jotaro is breaking the law! And we don’t want a televised program to condone that. This is somewhat reminiscent of how Sanji holds a lollypop in the American One Piece release (though, he still smokes in Japan), but way more clumsy and even more nonsensical.
This has been going on since last year. Other characters, however, who are old enough to smoke, can light up uncensorsed in the anime.
So, in the most recent episode in which Jotaro’s face is covered with blackness, other characters who are legally old enough to smoke puff away on a water pipe.
Picture: 8g_shisha
Like these dudes. This is A-OK! They’re legal.
Picture: omusubimanman
This is so ugly.
Picture: omusubimanman
You can even see the cigarette’s cherry.
Picture: s2_sayakaoo0
Or, you know, the cigarette itself. Really, what’s the point?
Never mind that the episode features a gambling scene, and casinos are illegal in Japan, regardless of age.
Pictures: Niwaka
Contact Quitline for more information on how to get help quitting cigarettes.
Comments
6 responses to “Anime Censorship Reaches New Levels Of Stupid”
It’s not the smoking itself that is being censored, it’s the penetration of the cigarette into the mouth. We all know that penetration cannot be shown in Japanese media – it must be pixelated or blurred out.
Easy, just pretend he is wearing a Kakashi style mouth wrap hah
lol an article about censoring smoking with a quitline tag at the bottom. nice plug 🙂
Anime censorship has been getting progressively worse in their broadcast versions for the last decade, leaving a lot of fans to wait for the Bluray release. The censorship in JoJo is bad, but at least it’s not the ‘white light that covers half the screen’ bad.
I think the best/worst anime censorship I’ve seen was in the early Namek saga episodes of DBZ when the little dude who can freeze time is beating on Gohan and Krillin. They put this really awful static/cloud effect over Gohan and Krillin’s faces while he’s punching the shit out of them. It’s just laughable.
Lollipops and shadows got nothing on that.
Strange considering he looks at least 30 and chiselled enough to have seen multiple wars and heavyweight titles. How would anybody know he’s 17?