I was wondering - since Japan censors genitilia and by extension bishoujo games, why are they so popular over there? I mean, I’m not saying you can’t appreciate a game or movie for its story and acting, but the main event, so to speak, is the sex CGs. If the action is all blurry or outright covered with a black bar, then what’s the attraction?
Because the mosaics actually usually improve it, if you’ve seen the uncensored forms of eroge CGs (from the occasional Volume7-esque leak).
Besides, these are visual novels; the text and your imagination serve to fill in any gaps.
Nobody says you have to mosaic gore in eroguro games, but GSS, Extravaganza, MinDead Blood etc. all mosaic it, and this is for a deliberate reason. It wouldn’t look as horrific without the mosaics, just as HCGs don’t look as ‘eroi’ without the mosaics.
Also, did you just say that the ‘main event’ of eroge is the HCGs? I seriously beg to differ =P
Finally, if you really must play legal, uncensored Japanese eroge, try Liar-soft’s ‘Sekien no Inganock’ ‘Shikkoku no Sharnoth’ and their upcoming ‘Hikari no Valusia’. These games are, as far as I’ve been able to tell, 100% uncensored. Heck, some of the HCGs are probably even work-safe =p
Another possible reason is that Japanese have already got used to mosaic when it comes to pornography. Mosaic does not only apply to eroge, it also applies to X-rated movies as well. You might want to compare Japanese AV titles to Vivid Video of Digital Playground releases.
Long story short: what equatorean said.
Just like their “appeal” to pay 9800 yen retail for eroge since the days of PC-98.
Yeah, I find that suggestive covering can be more sexy than baring all.
While everyone else here is in denial. :roll: I am going to straight out say that it really depends on how heavily mosaic-ed the HCGs are. Light to medium mosaics are tolerable. Once you go further into heavy mosaic, you need some excellent voice acting/cg/situation to detract you from the rage. :evil:
Actually a large number of artists draw the original illustration with the intention of having mosaics: that is to say their art is “completed” with the mosaics.
Your attitude is just like the typical American. Porn is porn and art is art, with no middle ground. Porn with a story is just a waste of words that are no more than filler for the action, while a good story can only be tainted if it includes porn–it’d be a much better story without it. I feel that this dichotomy is rather silly. I say the two facets tend to complement each other rather than detract from each other–the sex is the lure that draws you and the story is the hook that keeps you held. Generally, when I’m looking for eroge, I want both–otherwise I’d just surf the net for hentai pics or go play a console RPG. The main event for me isn’t the HCGs; I wouldn’t buy those. To me, that’s like saying the main event of a game is the voices, or the music, or the choices. They’re all important as aspects of a greater whole that’s more than simply a sum of the parts.
That said, the sexual interest isn’t just about seeing a bunch of photorealistic vaginas. It’s about experiencing a fantasy. You don’t need a great deal of visual detail to accomplish that, and in fact allowing room for imagination is a key element of art in general.
Slow down there, partner. I never said anything of the sort - though by the way I typed my original post I may have implied it. I bought YMK and Kana because of their fantastic stories, despite them being more or less hentai games; as others who are unfamilliar with visual novels would brand them. That said, I still feel that no matter how talented your voice actors are or how descriptive a script is - a sexually oriented scene is only hindered by over-censorship (that is to say a completely opaque mosaic that utterly blocks the action). And if the CGs weren’t the backbone of the games, then you’d just be reading regular books digitally, right?
There are plenty of comic books that don’t include SUPER SHINY PINK BITS… pictures can be used for storytelling even without showing you every explicit detail of a character’s sex life. 
The censor bar blocking things isn’t a problem in my opinion, I really don’t care about what’s under there. I have more of a problem if the method of censorship is distracting and disproportionately draws my attention to the part of the image that’s different, stopping me from properly enjoying the rest of the CG.
Most of the time mosaic isn’t a big deal to me. However, I believe I know of at least two instances in one game where it is quite ridiculous. Apparently in ?? ??? (Gimai - Hitomi, i.e. the original Japanese version of Hitomi - My Stepsister), the picture of Hitomi on all fours in front of your bookcase has her panties mosaiced. Rather idiotic considering she doesn’t really have anything showing in the picture. The other instance is the picture of Yuki on the ground after you collide with her in gym class. This one is a little more understandable, but still stupid in my opinion. You may be asking yourself why I think this without having the Japanese version of the game. Well, if you have the game and can look at the preview pictures in the “CG Recollections” section (or at the in-game flowchart), you’ll notice that they didn’t bother with uncensoring them.
Hmmm, hold on a second… in the Hitomi CG section of the official Mercure website, it doesn’t show Yuki’s image as being mosaiced. Then again, this isn’t the first time odd things have been discovered about the game.
NNS do this at times.
It’s fairly common to censor images drastically in preview pictures, but not in the scenes themselves. I’ve seen this in several other titles as well.
That was a bit too strongly worded on my part. In any case, mosaics in sex CGs aren’t that important to you if 1) they don’t detract from your enjoyment of the pictures themselves or 2) the nude sex CGs themselves aren’t a particularly important part of the game to you. After all, an image can be quite erotic even if the genitals aren’t explicitly bared. Sometimes the build up is just as erotic if not more erotic than the finale (definitely that way for me with Kana).
It’s neat how censoring something, can make the result even more risque. 
The Original… click on da blue bar below
…yum yummy yum. :o
For me, mosiacs are a pain because they break immersion. I would imagine that for Japanese gamers, who are used to seeing mosiacs on everything, this is much less of an issue, but in my case, it really takes me out of the story. For example, in Narg’s two pictures above, I don’t find the mosiaced pic tantalizing, it just seems like a blurry mess. If I came across that in a game, I wouldn’t be aroused or titillated, I would be squinting and trying to figure out what the hell is going on. Obviously not all mosiacs are that extreme, but for me, any mosiac is a serious strain on my suspension of disbelief.
Something just occured to me while I was reveiwing Narg’s pictures: when making a bishoujo game the original artists have to draw their CG fully uncensored so they can later recieve a mosaic for Japanese release. But the original data is what is used instead of the censored version when the games are westernized. So doesn’t that mean the original artists/companies have to save the uncensored images (which is illegal to posess in Japan)?
They aren’t illegal to possess at all, the restrictions are on SALES.
Japan doesn’t punish thoughtcrime =P
A guy in Japan get arrested for distributing a demosaiced version of Rapelay via P2P. That has nothing to do with sales.
Link: http://zepy.momotato.com/2009/07/08/man … -arrested/
Ironically, it seems like the legal charges are based around the demosaicing issue more than the illegal filesharing issue.
Criminal Code of Japan (official English translation by the Japanese government): [color=red]Article 175 - A person who distributes, sells or displays in public an obscene document, drawing or other objects shall be punished by imprisonment with work for not more than 2 years, a fine of not more than 2,500,000 yen or a petty fine. The same shall apply to a person who possesses the same for the purpose of sale.[/color]
You can own uncensored material if you produced it yourself or somehow get access to it and not go around showing off that you have it (i.e. privacy of your own home). The Japanese culturally considers genitalia and pubic hair to be obscene. The Japanese court system is still wrestling with the issue, as the laws have been somewhat amended for “artistic merit” and whatnot… but it’s still a massive shade of gray and I doubt the eroge industry really wants to challenge it, considering they’ve got enough on their plate to battle for.
In that light, the arrest actually makes legal sense, just not actual sense. The purpose of obscenity laws is to 1) protect a person’s right to not be forcefully exposed to offensive material (or material that public consensus says is repulsive). But with filesharing, you can’t experience the obscene content unless you consciously make the decision to download it. I suppose you could say obscenity law’s purpose is 2) simply to stop the proliferation of unwholesome material, but philosophically that argument has much less merit and tends to limit freedom unnecessarily. 1) tends to prevent societal disruption. 2) is the government deciding for you what content you should and shouldn’t have access to, just because. China, anyone?