Censorship is anime's online pass
As many gamers know, there has recently become an issue with games featuring online passes that require a gamer to buy a game brand new if they want to access all of the features that used to be accessible to everyone. If these people who rent or buy used want to access this content, they have to pay a fee.
Now in recent years, or at least recent in my six or seven years of anime watching, anime has never featured anything special withheld from normal viewers, minus maybe a few physical extras and goodies that were included with the expensive DVD/Blu-ray releases. Now however it has become quite apparent that anime now has an online pass of its own in the form of censorship.
It wasn't until Rosario + Vampire Capu2 originally started airing in Japan that I noticed this problem. As some may know, the series is known for having countless panty shots and even some bare breasts at times. Unfortunately during the television airing of the show, all of this fan service was hidden behind cartoon bats and occasionally bears.
This caused a bit of a stir in viewers who were used to seeing completely uncensored anime minus maybe some small steam to obscure nudity from being shown on basic anime channels. Now, since Capu2 the censorship in anime has become something terribly obstructive to viewers. It has become quite prevalent that nearly any fan service related series is filled with impossible rays of light, heavy steam and black hole level shadows.
To make things worse the various legal streaming sites such as Crunchyroll, FUNimation, etc. always are presented with the censored versions of these shows, meaning most viewers in the West are given zero opportunity to see these shows in their glory.
In fact, one of the biggest fan service series airing at the moment, To Love Ru Darkness is presented with heavy levels of censorship, both to Western and Japanese viewers. While a certain anime channel in Japan usually shows uncensored versions of anime, unfortunately Darkness still retains its rays of light and heavy censorship despite the fact that the manga is one step above porn at times.
Meaning of course that any one who does enjoy fan service is going to have to purchase the Blu-Ray/DVD version of the show once it is made available, which in some cases can take upwards of two years. Now of course this isn't an issue for everyone and those who don't like fan service wouldn't care either way, but this has quickly become a disturbing trend to try and push people to purchase already expensive anime simply because they want a show that isn't half animation, half white lines and dark shadows. What more can companies withhold from viewers now that they've already taken the service?
As such it seems that they are simply using it as a sales tactic in my opinion. Since as Simon mentioned and I mentioned as well, most anime channels censored shows except for ATX which usually presented a completely uncensored or at least less censored version than other channels.
However with the latest To Love Ru Darkness release, the series has been completely censored no matter what channel it is viewed on, including the premium channel that is ATX. Plus this heavy censorship started occurring well after that idiot was elected I believe, so it is simply a way to squeeze sales out of viewers.
As such, this is becoming a worsening trend for anime series as they know that, let's be honest, one of the biggest draws of a series like To Love Ru is the fan service and since they have locked all that way behind white bars and shadows, it isn't a law as much as pushing for Blu-ray sales.