Russia’s Ongoing Manga Censorship Issue
Repressive censorship has been a long-standing issue in Russia, with manga recently coming under the spotlight due to the widespread use of black bars to censor content.
With the help of X’s new auto-translate feature for tweets, international communication has become more accessible. The censorship faced by Russian manga fans has caught the attention of the Western world.
For years, Russian manga has been censored with barcode-like bars covering entire pages, as seen in examples like Oshi no Hada ga Areta shared by a Reddit user.
Russia justifies this censorship as a means of protecting youth from “LGBT propaganda,” a common excuse used in various countries to suppress freedom of expression for both creators and consumers.
As early as 2013, Russia implemented anti-“propaganda of homosexuality” laws, severely limiting the free speech of its citizens and targeting human rights organizations as “foreign agents.”
When censorship is justified on one topic, it sets dangerous precedents that can threaten all forms of free expression. LGBT censorship, for example, could lead to restrictions on other content, even seemingly harmless material like Brave x Junction, a game banned in countries like Germany, China, and Saudi Arabia due to their laws on LGBT content.
