In an escalation of the country’s campaign against anime and manga, Australia has banned the import of adult anime media and products, including hentai, into the country.
This new ban was first reported by popular Japan-based online anime retailer J-List, who informed their customers on October 14th that “Australia is killing off any chance of waifus entering the county because we’ve had to stop shipping there.”
“DHL Japan called us last week, informing us that Australian customs have started rejecting packages containing any adult product,” explained the retailer. “They then advised us to stop sending adult products to the country. Following that, current Australian orders with adult items in them were returned to us this week.”
J-List then stated that adult items banned by Australian customs include “onaholes, hentai manga, doujinshi, cast-off figures, JAV DVDs, and any product marked with a +18 symbol on the product’s thumbnail.”
As to why these items were now banned from the country, J-List pointed to the Australian Customs’ ban on “illegal porn,” which includes “child pornography” and “publications, films, computer games and any other goods that describe, depict, express or otherwise deal with matters of sex […] in such a way that they offend against the standards of morality, decency and propriety generally accepted by reasonable adults are not allowed.”
“Make of that what you will, but the best way to avoid getting anyone’s hopes up of receiving something new, shiny, and for adults only is to cease shipping adult products to Australia,” concluded J-List. “We’re incredibly sorry about this. Fortunately, we can still ship anything else that isn’t an adult product to Oz, so maybe they haven’t banned all the fun, yet.”
This widespread embargo on the import of adult anime products follows a specific ban on the sale of the seinen manga series No Game No Life within the country, itself a result of an ongoing campaign of censorship against anime and manga by the Australian government.