Crunchyroll’s official trailer for Magical Sempai, the upcoming fan-service heavy anime, was censored. This was compared to the official Japanese trailer that was uncensored. Quite naturally most people wondered why would Crunchyroll use a censored trailer for the upcoming anime? Fans reached out to Crunchyroll asking if they would be censoring Magical Sempai similar to how they aired the censored trailer for the show. According to Crunchyroll, they don’t censor their content but the original content creators might.
Concerned fan Richard Pell reached out to Crunchyroll after the censored trailer aired on May 17th, 2019 on their YouTube channel, asking if they would be censoring Magical Sempai when it airs this July on the streaming service. Crunchyroll responded on May 29th, 2019 by saying that they don’t censor their content, but the content creators might.
If you’re unable to read the message, it states…
“[…] Crunchyroll does not censor its content. We play what we are provided. We can only air the versions of shows provided to us by the content creators. Sometimes they provide a censored version and sometimes uncensored. Often, the broadcast version of a show will be censored to boost sales of a later uncensored version for DVD and Blu-ray. […]”
This is true about the original distributors only releasing a censored version for broadcast and then later releasing an uncensored version on DVD and Blu-ray to boost sales. There’s actually an entire category dedicated to the comparisons of the censored broadcast versions of the show and the uncensored DVD/Blu-ray releases over on Otaku Tale.
As for Crunchyroll’s response… Pell noted that they sent a similar response out when he inquired about their airing of Seven Mortal Sins and Hybrid x Heart, where they once again stated that they don’t censor the animes but the content creators might do so in order to make more money later by re-releasing the anime uncensored on DVD and Blu-ray. It’s true that animes like Seven Mortal Sins aired via Simulcast censored, but you can get all the episodes uncensored on Blu-ray from places like Playtech-Asia.
However, this does not mean that Crunchyroll has never censored anything in the past. In fact, they were caught having censored a petting feature from the Danmachi Memoria Freese app that came Westward. Their response? The petting feature was never intended for Americans.
Now to be fair, that was for the game based on Danmachi Memoria rather than the actual anime itself.
Will Crunchyroll adhere to their standard and not censor the upcoming Magical Sempai? Well, it all depends on how much people trust Crunchyroll. They claim that they won’t be censoring it, buy the content creators might. If it’s censored then it means Linden Films butchered it to get otaku and weebs to buy the uncensored DVD and Blu-ray, which is a common tactic exercised by a lot of studios in Japan. If it’s uncensored, then it means Crunchyroll held true to their word. We’ll find out how that all plays out when the show airs on the streaming service this July.
(Thanks for the news tip Richard Pell)
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