As for the cuts in the manga: I was sure that the slapping scene would be cut out, but I thought for sure that the cigarette and the references to stabbing would be cut out as well. It seems odd for them to keep drugs and death threats in the manga. I guess Viz only removes violence when it involves humans hitting each other :x
I wasn't. In fact I wasn't expecting them to censor anything in this volume at all, especially since they hadn't in volume 10. (which I was almost sure would have had a couple censors in it) As far as I'm concerned the scene shouldn't have been cut out, because it wasn't that violent or bad. I mean if they kept Blue getting her arm cut off which was a
lot more violent; surely they could keep a simple slap. In fact, Crystal actually
needed that slap to help her calm down and to help her gather her focus again. The cigarettes being left in doesn't surprise me though, since they were left in the other volumes Yellow's Uncle was in. And the death threats being left in doesn't surprise me either, since they've kept all of them so far as well. The slap really shocks and disappoints me though. Right when I was getting hopeful for their future releases too. I mean, I really thought we wouldn't be getting anymore censors, at least for a good long while. You see, Viz always keeps violence, even in their kids mangas. I've never once heard of them editing something because of violence. Their censors are usually more for nudity, sexuality, religious symbols and drug reference only, so the fact they censored a single slap that wasn't even violent is very worrying for future arcs, like R/S.
Then again maybe kids manga are just the exception though. They shouldn't be, since they never censored this kind of stuff in some of their other kids mangas, but their release of Special just seems to be different for the most part. I mean they also changed the name of the two Rocket Executives in this volume, when Viz ALWAYS keeps manga-only characters names. Changing the guy's name wasn't too surprising since it was so close to Kurt, but they have no excuse over the female Executive, Siam. Ah well, nothing we can do about it now I guess.
I'm probably just taking this so hard because this is so surprising to me, and happened right when I was giving in and becoming hopeful for Viz's future releases. So this happening just knocks me right back down again. The name change of Siam disappointed me, but it wasn't too bad and I did somewhat expect it. But the slap edit just felt uncalled for to me, especially when I've seen slaps like that left in other kids media. (and especially since Viz has left much worse things in the manga so far) Now I'm worried for later arcs all over again...And I'm not really sure how I feel about things with their releases now.
Ah well. On a random sidenote, out of curiosity, did the editor change again for this volume? The editor in volume 10 was Annette Roman. (the reason I'm asking, in case anyone is curious; is because the editor is the person in charge of what is censored and what is not censored in a volume)
