Soon the tentacles may be trimmed from the hentai sex-monster, as a bill that restricts the depictions of sex in manga and anime is expected to pass in the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly.

The bill is tacked onto Tokyo’s Youth Healthy Development Ordinance, and it contends that manga and anime that “unduly glorify or exaggerate” certain sexual acts “could inhibit the healthy development of youth.” Specifically, the bill wants to prohibit depictions of “sexual or pseudosexual acts that would be illegal in real life or sexual or pseudosexual acts between close relatives whose marriage would be illegal.” (Wait … they can do that in hentai, now?! Wait … they can do anything in hentai, now. Oh, yeah.)

But publishers of the hugely popular comic art say the bill will lead to censorship. “Applying the existing punitive laws to actions in a fictional work and discussing whether they are good or bad is absolutely nonsense,” said Takashi Yamaguchi, a lawyer who opposes the legislation.

Ironically apparently the two major political forces behind the bill, Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara and Deputy Gov. Naoki Inose, actually made their early careers as writers, penning
comics in 1955 that were widely proclaimed as having “a lack of morality.”

Somehow, we don't think a ban in Tokyo is going to cause a shortage of graphic anime images online ...