Fans searching for certain light novels and manga to download to their devices have been treated to an unwelcome surprise courtesy of a famous online juggernaut.
Please note that this article discusses titles with mature content and some images may not be safe for work.
The Controversy Begins
In early May, some volumes of J-Novel Club’s How NOT to Summon a Demon Lord were unavailable on Amazon. The company resubmitted the books, but they were pulled again along with the full series. In June, J-Novel Club complained on Twitter that Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing had been blocking certain titles from their platform like Arifureta volume 6 and Lazy Dungeon Master volume 2, even cancelling and refunding preorders for My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! volume 6, but the digital giant’s Kindle division was giving little explanation for these errors. By the second week of July, Yen Press’ No Game No Life series started disappearing from Amazon. More series were disappearing. As of this writing, titles not available on Kindle all or in part include:
Dark Horse
Eromanga Sensei
Oreimo
J-Novel Club
Arifureta: From Commonplace to World’s Strongest
Clockwork Planet
The Greatest Magicmaster’s Retirement Plan
Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash
How NOT to Summon a Demon Lord
Infinite Stratos
I Shall Survive Using Potions (light novel and manga)
Lazy Dungeon Master
Mixed Bathing in Another Dimension
There Was No Secret Evil-Fighting Organization (srsly?!), So I Made One MYSELF!
Wild Times with a Fake Fake Princess
Yen Press
No Game No Life (light novel)
No Game No Life, Please!
Seven Seas
No Game No Life (manga)
According to J-Novel Club, they received no advance notice and only realized when fans were contacting them.
It was only later after several titles were pulled that they started getting a heads up.
They went on to say they were told they were delisted by Kindle Content Review but could receive no clarification as to why even as more titles were removed. Yen Press later confirmed that Amazon “opted to remove” No Game No Life.
Purchased eBooks are still available to read and redownload. Physical versions of these series are still available to purchase for most (No Game No Life has almost been completely removed except for the first volume of the spin-off No Game No Life, Please!), and some adaptations of the story are still available on Kindle (Kodansha Comics’ Clockwork Planet novel for instance). Other eBook venues like BOOK☆WALKER and Barnes & Noble still have digital copies available to buy, and places like Right Stuf and Walmart still have physical versions.
Amazon-owned ComiXology has mostly deleted the above manga series, but I Shall Survive Using Potions! is still available as of this writing. The Japanese version of Amazon still has most of the series available to purchase.
As you might expect, some fans were outraged. People started petitions, canceled their Prime memberships, and blamed both Amazon and leftist “cancel culture” for targeting manga and light novels.
Why Have They Been Removed?
Now, first thing’s first… the news does stink. Someone who has purchased the first five volumes of The Greatest Magicmaster’s Retirement Plan now has to go elsewhere to buy the upcoming sixth book. It’s irritating and a bit risky. It means needing to jump between apps if you want to check out something that happened in an earlier volume, navigating different menus, and not making pretty virtual shelves or folders that contain an entire series. Plus, it means setting up another account and giving another company your payment information. It’s basic Internet 101: the more accounts you have, the higher the chance you have of getting your account/payment information hacked and stolen. Not saying that places like Barnes & Noble have bad security, but no one should be forced to have to buy from different retailers to complete an ongoing series. And to do all this with practically no notice to users — let alone the publishers — is a bad look for Amazon. Plus, Amazon is the #1 online retailer with many shoppers going there first to look for something, and it’s possible some users will not see a title there and assume it’s unavailable everywhere.
So why are they doing this?
Amazon has more control over Kindle books because publishers are selling using Amazon’s proprietary format, so Amazon can flex their muscles more easily than with other products. Kindle Content Review likely can send notices to the Amazon-at-large departments, and it does seem like the company doesn’t completely have an issue with these series, as many physical versions are still available. So why is a copy sent to your home okay but not a copy sent to your phone or tablet? Perhaps there are a few explanations.
Physical versions can be shrinkwrapped, giving some heads up before that the book is not safe for a general audience. Maybe manga and light novels are somehow more susceptible to having Amazon’s return policy being abused. As far as I know, people are only eligible for a refund if they haven’t read an eBook yet, but maybe there’s a way to circumvent this outside of complaining to customer service?
While physical copies are easier to be shared, people are almost never going to randomly stumble upon or start to read a physical book that someone else owns. But they are going to borrow phones and tablets and could easily access that person’s entire digital library. Yes, it would still be the owner’s fault if they didn’t password protect what they want hidden, but kids are more likely to use a parent’s phone versus going into their bookshelves. Maybe Amazon is preparing to launch purchases on Kindle apps and they want to conform to any standards Apple/Google has. However, all of J-Novel Club’s titles minus one is available on Apple Books, so that seems unlikely.
Issues with the difference between manga and light novels and chapters versus volumes have caused some titles and/or companies to have been flagged so much that Kindle Content Review tends to reject or pull other submissions from them.
Perhaps there are some users angrily flagging these manga and light novels that have led to the delisting. After all, there are bad faith actors creating listings with almost identical covers trying to hide the fact they’re selling notebooks and not actual manga/light novels.
What is Offensive?
However, it likely comes down to the content itself. In a statement, Yen Press said Amazon told them No Game No Life “did not fall within their global content guidelines”. Kindle Direct Publishing’s content guidelines are available here. The basic guidelines are (1) you must own it and have all rights to it (2) no public domain material (3) provide good service (4) not be what Amazon considers inappropriate. The Offensive and Controversial Materials page goes into the last one in more detail.
While it’s easy to see reasons behind these guidelines, there’s a lot of wiggle room and gray area. Technically, for instance, everyone under the age of 18 is legally considered a child. So any book featuring teenagers sleeping together could be something that is “depicting children or characters resembling children in a sexually suggestive manner”. Kindle Content Review likely found parts of the delisted manga and light novel series objectionable. Once one got flagged, it started a chain reaction based on Amazon’s recommended algorithms, author, and publisher. Perhaps soon other genres like erotica will have a similar ripple effect. In an interview with Crunchyroll, J-Novel Club founder Sam Pinansky believes that automation also plays a large role, perhaps even moreso because of the pandemic.
But, as fans would argue, why not go after those titles versus stories about fantasy worlds and such? Quite simply, illustrations. As the saying goes, a picture is worth 1,000 words. Mature animation has been around for a while thanks to the success of series like South Park and Beavis and Butt-Head, but it’s only relatively recently that Western graphic novels truly dove into deeper topics than Superman fighting crime or Archie trying to choose between Betty and Veronica.
But even as English language comics dive into other genres besides comedy and superhero, of course it brings a lot of the common tropes that have been built over the years in other media. And those are different from Japanese tropes like teenagers or adults looking like prepubescent girls. And although there’s a point to be made about (almost all) animanga and light novels being fiction or sexually harassing girls for comedy, let’s not kid ourselves that images (and text) like these
are only an issue for far-left, fun-hatin’, overly sensitive snowflake SJWs like some defenders would claim. While I only have personal experience with two of these series (No Game No Life, shown above with 11-year-old main character Shiro and her 18-year-old stepbrother Sora, and Oreimo), not all of these nearly reach the explicitness of some of the other delisted titles or some of the currently-available ones.
But fanservice is often a part — even a selling point — to many Japanese titles. Again, that’s not to say that other forms of entertainment (both in the East and in the West) like to push the risqué elements. But, for instance, in the US and other countries, people don’t bathe together. Those types of scenes are always going to be viewed with more skepticism and/or criticism than in Japan. And at least a portion of the Kindle Content Review team has decided those types of images are too much. And in perhaps in the case of No Game No Life, it was considered problematic enough for them to practically kick off the series completely. The former two for who knows how long, and the latter because it likely is a seller-submitted item that hasn’t been flagged.
Again, we could argue about why not the hundreds of other manga/light novels that are arguable as or more disturbing, let alone all of the Kindle catalog, but it would be like trying to pinpoint as to why someone going 56 mph in a 55 mph highway is pulled over by police but not someone going 65. But one user at J-Novel Club suggests a simple explanation for why they were flagged: the preview images. Many of them contain color images of female characters showering and bathing that would be seen upon flipping just a few pages into the book, as in the case of The Greatest Magicmaster’s Retirement Plan volume 1:
Of course, that leads to the question of, “Why now?” Volume 1 of the light novel version of Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash was released in January 2017. So Amazon has sold some of these series for a very long time and was happy to take some of the profits from J-Novel Club and the others. But as many would argue, just because you got away with something for a long time doesn’t mean you can get away for it forever.
But is it the fault of the so-called “cancel culture”? Who knows. There’s no way to know that, if Black Lives Matter hadn’t entered the mainstream this year or if the Supreme Court had ruled against legal protections for LGBTQ+ individuals, Amazon would have kept them up. It could be a coincidence, or it could not be. Amazon is a business, and there is no law where you have to stock something.
Let’s not also forget that this is hardly the first platform to restrict content. Steam, Sony, and Nintendo are among the companies that have come under fire by US/English-speaking fandom for censoring or removing content from Japanese media. Amazon/Kindle has delisted titles before, like with the first two volumes of Yarichin Bitch Club. Here’s one author’s frustrations trying to find out why her erotic title was being removed.
The company may be speeding up or becoming stricter with regards to what’s on Kindle, but this is not some sudden phenomena that only has been happening over the past couple of weeks. Japan is also not immune to censorship. A recent example is The Last of Us Part II where a sex scene was removed. Again, what is okay in Japan isn’t necessarily okay in the United States/elsewhere and vise versa.
What’s Next?
Regardless, as a result, many fans are going “cancel culture” on Amazon for removing these titles. Well, to that I say good luck as I chuckle. Amazon is making more money than ever thanks to the pandemic as people (should, and rightfully so) limit outings. Even if the fandom-at-large organizes a boycott, boycotts rarely work. Even more so when I wonder how many advocates have bought these or similar eBooks on Amazon in the first place. Amazon can’t lose money if you weren’t going to buy them anyway. Buying these books elsewhere is a better statement or even boosting Amazon’s listing of the paperback versions. See: Streisand effect.
And while Kindle Content Review probably has little influence on what Amazon at large buys, supporters pointing out that Amazon sells physical versions would be a good argument as to why the eBooks should be reinstated, even if Amazon/the publishers need to set up some kind of flag or warning before purchase in regards to potentially controversial content. But pointing out the physical versions may backfire and get the whole title delisted. Since the publishers themselves are pulling teeth to get a good answer from Amazon, fans should try to put some pressure on the retail giant. Several of these removed titles inspired anime, and these adaptations are available to purchase. Even though they may not be as explicit as their text counterparts, this should be cited as fans try to help publishers get their books back on one of the biggest eBook marketplaces. It may be a long shot though, and fans should be prepared of the possibility of more titles being delisted and needing to find an alternative eBook platform.
For now, I wouldn’t blame J-Novel Club if they went ahead and pulled their library since who knows when the next banhammer will come down. It’s not like they can expect much support if something goes wrong anyway. Maybe this will inspire the company to sell all digital copies on their own site so they won’t have to worry about a third party finding an issue with their series. (Currently, J-Novel Club only sells eBooks to their Premium members.) Or perhaps they’ll strengthen their relationship with BOOK☆WALKER or another platform for added marketing? After all, while losing Amazon is losing a lot of potential revenue, it’s also a chance for another platform to help cater to the manga and light novel fandom by billing itself as a “no judgment” or “no censorship” zone.