Should Manga Sections Be Near Children’s Books in Stores?
Posted on December 11th, 2007 by calaggie in Commentary, Manga, News[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=6_JiWN9MzFM[/youtube]
There was a story on ANN a couple days ago about a mother who was shocked to the Shoujo Beat manga “Absolute Boyfriend” in the children’s section where her 11-year-old was browsing at a Books-A-Million in Lexington, SC. There was a link to the actual news story from the CBS affliate WLTX so I decided to grab the video report and upload it. Books-A-Million Vice President Jeff Skipper said that the store would relocate the manga section to another area of the store after they looked at the “proximity” of the two departments. (Absolute Boyfriend is rated Older Teen on its page on Viz’s website.)
Damn straight, girl! That is a rocking chest!
While I was reading about the incident, I began to think about where the manga section is located in my local stores. The Borders in Davis has it in between young teen fiction and, I think, romance novels while the children’s section is in a back corner separated by music, DVDs, and calendars. The Barnes & Noble bookstore in Citrus Heights has its manga shelves alongside the comics and graphic novels near the middle of the store with the kids’ section in the back.
Let’s get back to the story: the mother said, “I expected that they [the manga] would be in an adult bookstore or in a mature area of one of these book stores” while there was no details given about what the 11-year-old thought. He might have not minded that much. I don’t share her opinion that the Older Teen rated manga should be put into the adult section since it’s tamer than yaoi but I do agree that manga departments should likely be placed a reasonable distance from children’s sections. Not on the complete other side of the store but in reasonably distinct areas because there are many series, both shonen and shoujo, that feature nudity or intimate situations. What do you readers think? Where are the manga sections located in your local brick-and-mortars?
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“I expected that they [the manga] would be in an adult bookstore or in a mature area of one of these book stores”
That right there shows that the real issue here is ignorance – it seems like she’s a classic example of the “all animes are porn” type and would be complaining regardless of what manga series were on the shelf there. Probably also an ultra-conservative type as well, who thinks that an exposed midriff is tantamount to pornography. >_>
Mature? When there is almost no sex in the whole manga? I just finished reading the manga recently, and I wonder why people are always over reacting over such things. I do not deny that things like this should not be near the children’s section, but perhaps in the teen section.
I mean, parents should stop thinking that young teens from 14-16 are that innocent. In fact, I find that quite a few of them probably have way more experience than me ~_~;;;. Well, if I remember right, the manga section in my local bookstore has a whole section of its own, and is near the magazine and stationary section.
lol, just clicked through to the ANN article and noticed – it’s wasn’t KY, it was South Carolina. Now suddenly the whole story makes sense!
If something like this happened here in California, the media would just laugh, rather than treating it like some kind of shocking news issue.
0rion: Thanks, just fixed it! I had just assumed it was in Kentucky, but now that I look at the WLTX forecast page, I find that Lexington is in the Central Midlands of South Carolina.