News

Project-H Brand Manager Talks About Online Store Closure, Relaunch Possibilities

The Brand Manager for Digital Manga's adult imprint Project-H spoke to ANN about the closure of its online store and the precautionary removal of the Kodomo no Jikan manga from Digital Manga's main online store. The store was locked on and Project-H announced last Tuesday that it had been banned from its eCommerce platform Shopify.

According to the Brand Manager, who preferred to remain unnamed, Shopify locked Project-H's site on December 10. Shopify then informed Digital Manga that it would no longer host the Project-H store due to Project-H's alleged violation of the platform's Acceptable Use Policy. The Brand Manager said they were not informed which titles broke which rules.

ANN reached out to Shopify for comment on Friday but Shopify has not responded to the press inquiry.

The Acceptable Use policy does not explicitly ban pornography, though it does have a rule against content that presents children "in a sexual manner." Shopify Payments, the platform's own payment method, does prohibit pornography, but Project-H's Brand Manager told ANN that it was using a third-party payment platform that was within the rules.

Regarding plans to relaunch the store, the Brand Manager said, "We are still in the process of looking and testing to see which platforms other 18+ content vendors have had no trouble with." Last week, the official Twitter account said there will be a new site with "Steam-style content filtering," in which users must disable an adult content filter.

Digital Manga declined to comment on whether it foresees being able to repost the Kodomo no Jikan manga. The company announced last Tuesday that it had removed Kodomo no Jikan ebooks from its eManga website, which is also hosted by Shopify, as a "precaution." The Kodomo no Jikan manga is not graphically explicit or pornographic, but is notably controversial for its sexually suggestive scenes depicting young girls.

Source: Twitter correspondence