Following Senator Stirling Griff’s attack on anime and manga, calling it “child abuse” and asking for more bans and censorship of the material in Australia, two outlets have so far dropped one of Griff’s targets, Eromanga Sensei, even though no legislation nor any actions from the Australian Classification Board have been taken against anime or manga.
JB Hi-Fi’s store listing for the Blu-ray package of the series now shows a 404 page error.
Madman Entertainment also no longer carries the anime of Eromanga Sensei, with an error page in place of where it used to be listed on the store.
Some people have said that they just ran out of stock, but JB Hi-Fi typically has notices on the product page indicating if they have limited availability or are completely out of stock.
On the product availability page they explain what should be displayed when a product is no longer available…
Temporarily unavailable
“The ‘Temporarily unavailable’ status is used when we are unable to sell a particular item for an unexpected reason. We may also occasionally use this status when a product that is in very high demand is out of stock and our supplier is unable to confirm timings on future stock availability.
No longer available
“When we have ceased selling a product we mark it as ‘No longer available’. This means we will not be restocking this product. We will often suggest a similar or updated alternative option when one is available.”
Instead, if you try to visit the page you’re met with a message saying it simply cannot be found.
Thankfully the series is still available for purchase from the Australian outfit Sanity.
I did reach out to JB Hi-Fi to ask if the removal of the series from their online store was temporary or if they would be getting more stock in, but at the time of writing of this article they haven’t responded. It’s not entirely clear why they removed the series from their shops, but it does come after Senator Stirling Griff targeted various anime as containing “child abuse” material, and among the anime he listed, Eromanga Sensei was his prime target.
Additionally, Senator Stirling Griff has not given up on attacking anime and manga, despite the Australian Classification Board initially denying Griff any sort of separate classification measures for anime and manga, as reported by Escape Zero.
Senator Griff, nevertheless, addressed the legislation committee in a plea on March 3rd, 2020 to further look into redressing how anime and manga are classified.
So far the Classification Board has yet to yield to Griff’s imploring of stricter guidelines for Japanese fictional media, but if shops are already bending the knee before any sort of legislation has taken place or any new rules have been employed, then Griff may not even need the rest of the Senate to make changes in order to disseminate a chilling effect throughout the retail and e-tailer markets in Australia.
(Thanks for the news tip Ebicentre and Diabolical)
