First a loli ban and now this? It seems the city of Osaka, Japan are looking to regulate yaoi and women’s manga (a.k.a. josei) for their explicit content.

Yaoi, as most of us know, involves boys’ love, usually depicting graphic scenes that can some times be classified as porn. The Osaka Prefectural Government stated that they are considering regulating josei magazines and yaoi material. Why are they doing this? They want to try to clean up the image of anime and want it to be a globally approved and successful.

However, I think this a bad idea. There are just too many yaoi fangirls out there who would go berserk if yaoi was regulated (we would have another world war in our hands). I don’t read yaoi but I personally have nothing against it. Rather than trying to regulate it, I think the Japanese government should think of stricter ways to sell the material (i.e. have only 18+ people with identification buy the stuff or have seperate stores that sell yaoi exclusively that requires an id to get in). Also, anime has become mainstream in one way or another in a lot of countries all over the world. You see comics (RE:Play, Incarnate), cartoons (Teen Titans, Avatar) and artwork with a lot of manga/anime influences these days. I would consider that a type of global success.

What I’m trying to say is that this regulation shizzle with hurt rather than help the anime/manga industry. They should just leave it as it is. Or else, all Hell will break loose.

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