Quote from Imitorar

Nipples basically get edited all the time, the F word will be changed, names may be changed to what they are in the American dub of the anime, penises get cut out, the middle finger will be edited out so it looks like a fist, manji may or may not be edited out because they look like swastikas a little, but they might just put an editors note and explain it, crosses will have the arms removed so they don't look like crosses (except in D. Gray-man, because that wouldn't be possible, there are just too many crosses, but that's what you get in a manga about priests.), and that's basically it, for Viz at least.

Wow. Reading all of this I feel very VERY lucky with the almost non-existant censorship of manga in my own country. Particularly the manji and crosses freaked me out. I never would have imagined it could go so far. 😲

You guys have to realize that Japanese and American cultures are very different. In America, parents are generally more concerned about violence than in Asian cultures. So we have the movie ratings, the video game ratings, etc. I don't like censorship either, but as soon as parents find out that their kids are reading stuff in which there are nipples, penises, etc, then they're gonna flip and ban manga from being sold altogether. Plus, most people here don't realize that the swastika was a symbol that represented peace, they only think of the Nazis. So if parents see that, then that'll also be bad.

If they had changed the name for the American dub, then it's only appropriate that they change it for the manga. Personally, I support doing that for series for younger kids, like Pokemon and Sailor Moon, which they did, because what American little kid will follow Japanese names that sound very very random and funny in our ears at that age?

But in my opinion, censoring out the middle finger and the F word and crosses is a bit too much. Americans can tolerate that. After all, manga that winds up here is mostly aimed at teenagers.

I would recommend buying from publishers but reading these two articles made me re-think of that:

http://matt-thorn.com/wordpress/?p=407

and

http://www.sarahpin.com/2009/11/30/matt-thorn-is-harsh/

It just makes you think that maybe the publishers that you thought that you should trust just turned out to be like the rest of them; unreliable. 😲

Shackles bind us to continution

well reanimated838uk, i'm guessing you're in UK,
i suggest you go on and buy some... "there's a certain feeling that you'll only get when reading from papers"...
since i really dunno what publisher that specialized in manga on uk then i really dunno what to suggest..
y'see, the thing is, from my point of view in my country every manga publisher published different mangas.. so there's not much things to compare. and since we are rather close to japan, the publishers have been publishing manga for long now (western comic are harsh here.. i think) they has indeed become rather good at what they do..
and as for the translation and stuff, well i only say that it's a translation (as in somebody translate it) so there's really nothing much to complain, if u choose not to buy just because they mistranslated then just buy the Japanese version one.. in here, from my point of view, publisher's translators have come to the point where they respect the writers (on a certain level), they didn't translate every word that exist there (some word are good left alone) ex: the word kagebunshin is still kept that way (they didn't change it to shadow clone.. or whatever)
and for the price: well the publishers here, even though after the economy crisis, have well maintain the child's pocket money ratio 😀 , it's cheap, though a certain aspect of a tankoban are sacrificed, the dust cover, size i think (though some is still big)..

so to sum it up, respect the publisher.. buy their release (read the scanlation if u don't want to wait too long, then buy it). and as time goes by (and if they're not too stupid to went bankrupt and stuff) they'll become better and better.

ps: publishers here are now steadily publishing more and more manwha.. sup with that?