Hidden hack makes nipples appear on a character’s breasts in the teen magazine. 

Weekly Shonen Jump has been a bastion of Japanese manga comics since its first issue appeared in Japan in 1968. Targeting “shonen“, which translates to “young boys” in Japanese, this weekly manga anthology is Japan’s best-selling comic magazine, with popular shonen manga series such as Dragon Ball, Naruto, Bleach, Yu-Gi-Oh! and Dragon Quest being just some of the titles to originate from the magazine’s pages over the years.

While Weekly Jump is targeted towards a young teen male audience, it’s also popular with elementary and middle school-aged female readers as well. However, the magazine is now under fire after it was called out for hiding erotic content inside its pages, in a since-deleted thread on Twitter written in English by a German-Japanese user.

▼ The erotic content was found in issue 48, which went on sale in Japan on 28 October with Dr Stone on the cover.

The Twitter thread slammed Weekly Jump for showing pornographic content on a page that shows the main character from a manga called Yuuna and the Haunted Hot Springs “posing naked in an overtly sexual pose and with a sexualised expression”. While the character’s breasts are clearly shown, the image has been cleverly placed so that the nipples, which are blurred out in white, seem to “appear” when a blue light is shone on it, due to the fact that the page behind it contains a large image of pink tapioca pearls, which look exactly like nipples.

Take a look at the images in the below tweet, which has been uploaded by a different user online.

https://twitter.com/Sobatake397/status/1188483975708205056

The hidden porn received applause from some and derision from others, who claim that the content is inappropriate for the magazine’s young readership. However, the thread posted by the original German-Japanese user, which ended with her saying she was “kinda glad” that the Japanese population is declining, appears to have been so problematic that her Twitter account is no longer available.

Judging by the Japanese comments on the issue, it’s likely she received a tonne of hate mail over her tweet.

“This is just everyday Japan.”
“Japan is low on the ladder when it comes to gender equality among developed nations.”
“I thought everybody loved tapioca!”
“Foreigners can’t distinguish between comics and reality.”
“No problem with freedom of expression here.”
“It’s just tapioca!”

While the erotic content has divided opinions in Japan and around the world, Weekly Jump has long been depicting females in a manner that people in western societies may feel is offensive to women. After all, One Piece’s Nami is known for her gigantic breasts, and even the manga’s creator has told fans he’s happy for them to have sexual fantasies about his characters.

And though shonen manga — the most popular type of manga in Japan — is aimed at a young teen male audience, there are plenty of grown adults who enjoy this genre as well. Looking at the magazine’s demographic report for 2019, 46.8 percent of its readers are aged 18 and under, while 53.2 percent of its readers are aged 19 and above.

That’s a pretty even split between those too young to view erotic material and those legally old enough to view it, which is bound to cause problems when it comes to publishing Japanese manga known for its notoriously big-boobed, sexualised characters. 

Hiding character nipples under a page of paper isn’t a new trick either, as manga fans know exactly how to create X-ray vision with clear files and make 2-D boobs jiggle like they’re in an anime.

Still, it’s a worrying fact that these images are easily available for young readers to view. Here’s hoping something more can be done than just hiding publications like these from convenience store shelves to protect young people from developing images of women as simply sexual beings from an early age.

Source: Jin, Adnavi Shueisha
Featured image: Pakutaso
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