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Mar. 2nd, 2005 10:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nockergeekI just picked up the first volume of the English translation of the Tenjho Tenge manga. I won't be picking up the second. Why not? Because it's been heavily censored.
Now, TenTen is a fanservice-and-combat high school series. Lots of hand-to-hand violence, and gals with bountiful breasts who tend to flash their panties, along with the occasional nipple shot. In fact, TenTen's a bit more intense in both categories. Nothing on the level of, say, Battle Royale or Gantz, but there's still bloody fisticuffs (as they would be), and a few scenes of a couple of the characters in various states of nudity. In fact, one of the character relationships starts when the male lead gets launched into the shower room, where one of the female leads is just drying up. When he comes to, he looks down, and to his horror (he's shy around girls), he sees that he's sitting atop a naked woman.
Or, at least, he was in the Japanese version.
In the English version, when Nagi gets launched into the showers, Aya is wearing a bra. It's a decently rendered bra, but it's a bra that wasn't there in the original version (I have the scanlations as proof). It's also obviously added. Not as obvious as, say, the painted-on swimsuits at any hot springs scene from the Cartoon Network run of Tenchi Muyo, but the lineweights are different from the rest of the art. There's also some inconsistencies. In one panel, she has the bra. In the next, when just the straps would be showing, she isn't.
In another scene, when Bob has his girlfriend Chiaki over, she's straddling him, just wearing a shirt, covered in sweat. This is from behind, and you can just barely see her nipples... or at least you could in the original. In the CMX version, she's wearing a shirt under the shirt that goes down to her thighs, and under that they added some tones to suggest a pair of bikini bottoms. The first frame on the next page is zoomed in from the original, so that you can't see her nipples (those evil, evil nipples!) In fact, there are other frames from the first Nagi/Aya scene that are zoomed in to eliminate those fearsome bits of pigmented flesh.
Most heavily censored, though, is a scene where Chiaki is attacked and raped by a rival in a laundromat. Now, like I said, this book isn't graphically sexual, but in the original it's very clear what's going on. Underwear is torn, there's groping and licking, and some nudity. All of that? Excised from the American version. Shirts are stretched down to cover anything that wasn't eliminated through blacking out frames or zooming them in to the point of making them confusing.
Now, granted, in all of this, the story's relatively untouched, as is the violence and blood. Someone who's never seen any TenTen probably won't notice. To me, though, the changes were obvious and a bit heavy-handed. Yes, I can still get the story out of this, but what I lose is the artist's original vision. What's more, CMX (the company publishing TenTen, which is a branch of DC comics) has a Mature rating, which they use for series that include graphic violence and nudity, but TenTen isn't rated Mature. They rated it Teen, and the only way to get it down to a Teen rating was to censor it. What I want to know is, what are they going to do when it starts getting really violent, when some characters start getting permanently crippled by their very bloody injuries? And are they going to draw underwear on every bit of nudity that they come across?
In short, I cannot recommend the English translation of Tenjho Tenge. In fact, after this and seeing the other lackluster titles they've picked up, I can't recommend anything by CMX. At least Dark Horse, TokyoPop, and Viz know better than to try to repackage a mature-audiences title for teens.
Now, TenTen is a fanservice-and-combat high school series. Lots of hand-to-hand violence, and gals with bountiful breasts who tend to flash their panties, along with the occasional nipple shot. In fact, TenTen's a bit more intense in both categories. Nothing on the level of, say, Battle Royale or Gantz, but there's still bloody fisticuffs (as they would be), and a few scenes of a couple of the characters in various states of nudity. In fact, one of the character relationships starts when the male lead gets launched into the shower room, where one of the female leads is just drying up. When he comes to, he looks down, and to his horror (he's shy around girls), he sees that he's sitting atop a naked woman.
Or, at least, he was in the Japanese version.
In the English version, when Nagi gets launched into the showers, Aya is wearing a bra. It's a decently rendered bra, but it's a bra that wasn't there in the original version (I have the scanlations as proof). It's also obviously added. Not as obvious as, say, the painted-on swimsuits at any hot springs scene from the Cartoon Network run of Tenchi Muyo, but the lineweights are different from the rest of the art. There's also some inconsistencies. In one panel, she has the bra. In the next, when just the straps would be showing, she isn't.
In another scene, when Bob has his girlfriend Chiaki over, she's straddling him, just wearing a shirt, covered in sweat. This is from behind, and you can just barely see her nipples... or at least you could in the original. In the CMX version, she's wearing a shirt under the shirt that goes down to her thighs, and under that they added some tones to suggest a pair of bikini bottoms. The first frame on the next page is zoomed in from the original, so that you can't see her nipples (those evil, evil nipples!) In fact, there are other frames from the first Nagi/Aya scene that are zoomed in to eliminate those fearsome bits of pigmented flesh.
Most heavily censored, though, is a scene where Chiaki is attacked and raped by a rival in a laundromat. Now, like I said, this book isn't graphically sexual, but in the original it's very clear what's going on. Underwear is torn, there's groping and licking, and some nudity. All of that? Excised from the American version. Shirts are stretched down to cover anything that wasn't eliminated through blacking out frames or zooming them in to the point of making them confusing.
Now, granted, in all of this, the story's relatively untouched, as is the violence and blood. Someone who's never seen any TenTen probably won't notice. To me, though, the changes were obvious and a bit heavy-handed. Yes, I can still get the story out of this, but what I lose is the artist's original vision. What's more, CMX (the company publishing TenTen, which is a branch of DC comics) has a Mature rating, which they use for series that include graphic violence and nudity, but TenTen isn't rated Mature. They rated it Teen, and the only way to get it down to a Teen rating was to censor it. What I want to know is, what are they going to do when it starts getting really violent, when some characters start getting permanently crippled by their very bloody injuries? And are they going to draw underwear on every bit of nudity that they come across?
In short, I cannot recommend the English translation of Tenjho Tenge. In fact, after this and seeing the other lackluster titles they've picked up, I can't recommend anything by CMX. At least Dark Horse, TokyoPop, and Viz know better than to try to repackage a mature-audiences title for teens.
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no subject
on 2005-03-03 03:43 pm (UTC)