Proceed with Caution - There Be Dragons Here...

Earlier this week Funimation started streaming unedited episodes of Strike Witches, the notorious Pantsu Anime that I've talked about quite a few times this year on the blog (see my post Strike Witches Coming to America - Oh My!) and in our regular newsletter.

Strike Witches, however else you look at it, is essentially an Anime dedicated to lavishing attention on the naughty bits of 12 year old girls:



Just licensing this series was a pretty gutsy move on their part because unlike even straight up 'H' titles, there is just no way to get around how young the girls are vs. the situations they are portrayed in, so I've mostly wondered what levels of 'editing' Funimation would deem necessary to release this series here in R1. It clearly surprised me that Funi would stream uncut episodes right out of the gate. Monday when I read about it, I remarked around the office that Funi had a lot of balls to even try it, because they were clearly pushing the envelope (so to speak). Well, after 1 day they have backed off. ANN reports:

"The North American anime distributor Funimation has confirmed on Tuesday that it will release the Strike Witches anime series in its uncut form on DVD "

Earlier this week, Funimation had streamed the unedited version of anime episodes 3 and 4 on its website as well. However, Funimation said that "due to the mature content contained within the series Strike Witches and the feedback we received from some of our fans following its streaming launch, we have replaced the originally posted unedited episodes with their edited versions."

Funi is really towing a fine line with this one, and some of that feedback came from me. I would like to see an uncut DVD release of Strike Witches available to Anime fans, and I felt that the uncut streaming episodes would create too much controversy around the title and possibly hurt the prospects for a fully uncut and unedited home video version. Looks like Funi taken a second look as well, and I think they made a wise decision.

Note: Since the Iowa and Virginia cases, these sort of issues have been on my mind, thus, my train of thought here. Plus, I've been reading more and more things like this, so I think the implications of how some Anime material might be interpreted (if unfairly) by outsiders (non Anime fans) is worth discussing.