Accel World Ep 04 Censorship #accel_world

People talks about anime being censored outside Japan, but even in Japan, anime do get censored, usually in the broadcast version which is used on most fansubs. A lot of times it involves partial nudity (eg. nipples, butt crack, etc). The common method used is to apply some patches of bright white bloom over the area, or some get creative by using an additional image (usually a chibi ver of the character) over the area, acting like a “sticker” on top of it.

Accel World, interestingly enough, is being censored too, with episode 4 being prominent. The most noticeable is the scene of the car accident, where Araya tried to run over Haru and Kuroyukihime. When I watched the broadcast version, I noticed this:

I thought like WTF? There’s a huge white bloom over what supposed to be Araya’s face. Were they trying to keep it a mystery? Well, even Haru said it’s Araya, and it’s portrayed in the manga too. Well, I guess it’s censored. Here’s the uncensored screenshot from the blu-ray:

Question is, why? Is Araya’s face too “violent”? It’s not that different than other countless anime characters out there.

Next scene is when Haru woke up. The broadcast version simply crop out the whole frame to exclude most of the image of the car in the background, resulting in less than sharp/a bit blurry frame as it’s “lower resolution” than intended.
Broadcast version:

Blu-ray version:

And lastly, when Haru cried over Kuroyukihime, the broadcast version simply had a grey bloom over the car. At a glance, this can actually be seen as a smoke coming from the car.

Blu-ray version:

Thanks to the power of the internetz and google, this was done actually in relation to an accident happening 2 weeks before the broadcast. A man driving a minivan in Kyoto had an epileptic episode, and ending up killing and injuring pedestrians. Not sure how it relates to censoring Araya’s face though.

Well, there you go. If you’ve been wondering about those scenes, they are uncensored in the DVD/Blu-ray. Were the censors necessary? I don’t know. It’s understandable to be sensitive about the accident, but to what extend? It’s not like you won’t know it’s a car crash. Curiously, they didn’t censor the blood oozing out from Kuroyukihime. Curious to see how the censorship went with animes like Mirai Nikki, Death Note, etc.