Toonami Co-Creator Addresses Food Wars Censorship Debacle

Toonami has brought one of shonen's biggest anime titles to cable at long last. The late-night block rolled out Food Wars to audiences across the U.S. at the start of July, but it seems some fans have a big question about its debut. After all, certain moments of the anime appear to have been censored, and one of Toonami's executives is opening up about the issue.

Taking to social media, one of the co-creators of Toonami addressed the censorship issue after a fan sent in a question. Jason DeMarco answered the question for all to see, and it was there the producer and Adult Swim creative director said he has nothing to do with any censorship.

"I'll answer this for future posterity: I have nothing to do with any edits made to any of our shows," DeMarco wrote.

"That's entirely in the hands of our Standards and Practices department. I don't know why one scene may be edited and another may not. They tell us what needs to go, sometimes we appeal, sometimes we win the appeal and sometimes we don't. Either way, complaining to me about edits won't help you. Sorry."

The questioned asked to DeMarco compared how Food Wars has been censored in comparison to other risque series like Kill la Kill. Toonami aired the latter Studio Trigger title awhile back, but it kept its censored moments to a minimum. The scenes which got cut were overtly sexual in nature, and that is where Food Wars likely got rolled over. After all, the shonen series has plenty of fan-service scenes which allude to literal foodgasms, and it turns out Toonami wasn't able to get those naughty moments approved by all the powers at be.

So, what do you make of this anime censorship debacle? Let me know in the comments or hit me up on Twitter @MeganPetersCB to talk all things comics and anime!

Food Wars! Shokugeki no Soma was originally created by Yuto Tsukuda with illustrations by Shun Saeki for Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump in 2012. The story follows Soma Yukihira, a young chef who one days wants to get good enough at cooking to take over his family diner from his father. But when he graduates from middle school, his father shuts down his diner and tells Soma to enroll into Totsuki Academy, an elite cooking school where only one percent of students who enroll actually graduate. It was adapted into an anime series by J.C. staff and ran for three seasons with a fourth on the way, and the manga has been licensed by Viz Media for an English language release.