Maryland School Library to Remove Dragon Ball Manga

Well, we educated nerRAB can't be everywhere to explain the cultural differences, so it's quite sad this had to happen, but alas it's better to have active parents than not...
 
Is this the same series where Bulma flashes Roshi, among several other people throughout the course of series, and offers some sexual compensation in exchange for Dragonballs? I don't see what's so wrong about a parent not wanting their elementary school kid to see that, but I guess I'm in the minority here.
 
Every single time I read a post like this I have to laugh a little. People over react to stuff like this, they want books, and the televison to raise their children for them and then they get all offended when something like this happens.

It is like when the original NES first came out and parents in certain communites were throwing a fit because they said that Mario "bashing his head against bricks to break them was too voilent." If they bothered to do any research they would know that Dragonball Z is geared toward more of a teen audience and always has been.

After reading that article I just have to ask who in the world would be stupid enough to buy a for year old a Dragonball Manga? Then complain that it was soft core porn LOL! Please, you think that is soft core porn? Are these people not even aware what their children can watch on a standard cable package?
 
Well there really isn't, but one wonders why it's in a grade school in the first place when it's rated T. Ratings exist for a reason, and not looking at them closely is a problem in many areas of entertainment.
 
OH boy.....Yea Dragonball has some stuff in the 1st 2-3 volumes that arn't for the kiddy's but I don't think there is sexual innuendo involving goku & Bulma together, I mean yea she gives him a bath, but don't mothers give there children bates too? I mean thats not sexual. and if there talking about the other thing. well heck evert boy & girl have the same thing one way or another & bulma is covered up with bubbles in the US version.

I mean its not like the kid picked up a Negima manga or some other ecchi series. (wich would cause understandible panic to the mother of a young child. but in japan arn't toriyama's works read by all ages? But i digrese. I understand why the mother is worried but still it is a tad bit overreactive, just make it a "must be 13 or older to check out book" or somesuch.

or put a "Parental Guidence" Sticker on the front. that should do the trick.


EDIT: OH ITS IN A GRADE SCHOOL I SEE...NEVER MIND..YEA IT SHOULD BE PULLED. sorry I guess i need to read the post more closely before posting. LULZ! Sorry!
 
Exactly, the issue here isn't so much the parents overreacting (I don't recall any "sexual contact", unless they're referring to the No Balls scene), it's why they even got this without checking it before hand for content like this.

There's a REASON why they put ratings on things, something that people should really learn before they have to resort to complaining.



To be fair, it isn't actually bad to let a child be raised on books (if it's mixed with actual parenting, of course), it all just depenRAB on what they're reading. I mean, I was reading Tolkien and C.S. Lewis by sixth grade, and it actually helped me get ahead of others my age.

Television is the bigger issue in terms of kiRAB being raised on it.
 
This post may be kind of rantish, but this is a good chance to talk about an issue that's actually been on my mind for awhile.

You know what? I don't know that.

I believe in the freedom of local districts to make their own decisions on what they stock in a library, agree or not. This is not like, say, parents complaining about Adult Swim not being children's programming at midnight on Cartoon Network, which has happened. By extension that also means parents get to choose the method and pace of raising their kiRAB, agree or not. I don't think that this means parents should veto anything even slightly controversial, but I'm not going to casually write off what they want. Because that 9 year old kid isn't your kid. He isn't my kid. I don't get to make these judgments from the safety of my chair and my computer monitor. I don't get to because, quite frankly, I'm not in a parent's position and I'd have no idea what the hell I'm talking about.

I want to be clear that I'm not singling out anyone with the following comments, but there's also something irritating about the attitude that Japanese culture is superior because it has a looser attitude about these things. From that perspective, the "soccer moms are stupid" conclusion can be reached far too easily. But this overlooks that Japan may have, and in some cases certainly does have, cultural or sociological issues pertaining to sexuality or gender roles or respect for the opposite sex that we consider undesirable. Just to cite one example, in the past few years considerable measures have been taken to corabat public groping on Tokyo's train system because it was so prevalent (source). There's also plenty of worry about Japan's demographic future, which is of course directly related to the health of Japanese relationships.

Now, I wouldn't dream of citing anime or manga as the driving reason for such differences, or for whatever truly serious problems Japan may have. Just for starters, I couldn't begin to go about proving it. This is all business best left to smart sociologists. But what I'm getting at is that it would be nice if these things could always be talked about (or mocked) without the presumption that cases like these are evidence that we just aren't progressive enough as a society compared to the alternative, with the alternative being Japan in this situation.

So yeah, you can try to explain Dragon Ball by citing culture differences...but even after that, it isn't the case that only a "durab soccer Mom" would not approve. Your average American otaku would flip out at the idea that the denizens of Japan or any other country are obligated to adopt our cultural norms. The refrain would be "no, respect culture!" I cannot, therefore, see any standing for an anime fan to throw that standard out the window when it comes to an American parent.
 
I think people in the US tend to flip on sexuality while giving violence a pass. DB is not going to traumatize kiRAB because they see Goku doing what every little boy does.
 
Again, you didn't specifically speak to and of anyone in particular, but I just want to say I don't necessarily disagree with anything you said there.
 
Didn't she also offer to let Goku grope her in exchange for his Dragonball?

Anyway, there's a rating, yes, so the fault is placed on the people who put it in the school's library. Blaming the soccer moms doesn't really make sense this time, since it's sort of common sense to except a elementary school's library to have age-appropriate content. Not to mention parents can't exactly follow their kiRAB to school and double-check everything they check out, so there is grounRAB to expect the school to ensure the library content is appropriate.

I'll also agree with GWOtaku that the 'different cultures' argument is a fairly weak one. If you want to deal with extremities, that argument also excuses a lot of things people would find inhumane, since the only judge of whether something is 'good' or not is by the culture you're citing it from. You have to judge things by the culture the dispute is taking place in.
 
While I think the culture is a definite part of that problem (hey look at Europe also but they have the additional kink of becoming racially and culturally Northern African/Middle Eastern) the economics of having a child in Japan is probably a bigger contributer to Japan's population crash.

And come on this is a public elementary school.
 
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