There just doesn’t seem to be enough consumer demand in America to encourage licensors to invest in translating and publishing “guro” manga in English. And Media Blasters canceled publication of its mature audience horror manga titles last March due to poor sales. Likewise, Viz’s Gyo and Uzumaki manga have never been especially successful in America. Despite being available in English for a dozen years, the Hell Baby manga is still unknown to most American manga fans, as are all of Hideshi Hino’s English language horror manga. What prevents more “guro” manga from reaching America is simply a lack of consumer interest. There’s no double standard preventing the American licensing and publication of extremely graphic horror and gore manga. Media Blasters has also published exceptionally graphic splatter manga like Takayuki Yamaguchi’s Apocalypse Zero. And Viz has published official English language versions of Junji Ito’s grotesque Gyo and Uzumaki manga series.
In fact, Hideshi Hino’s grotesque horror manga “Hell Baby” has been available in an official American edition since 1995, meaning that it was released in English well before the modern “manga boom.” Many of Hideshi Hino’s gruesome horror manga are available in English from Cocoro Books. I don’t think that grotesque manga is “unlicensable” for America at all considering that there are already a number of “guro” manga officially available in America. have the movies Cannibal Holocaust & Guinea Pig released uncut, so isn’t that a double standard? I was wondering what would make grotesque manga unlicensible since U.S.