When Dark Horse translated the Ghost in the Shell manga, there were several alterations introduced. Immediately noticeable, without opening the books, is the fact that the English-language version has been made physically larger than it's Japanese predecessor (see left - click to open larger version).
  With this change in size, the Dark Horse edition is the same height and width as other graphic novels published by the company (E.G. Gunsmith Cats, Cannon God Exaxxion).

  Next change is that the pages have been flipped in their entirety in order to read from left-to-right. By flipping a manga in this way, the publishers can have a better chance of gaining sales to "regular" comic readers, who may be put off by reading "backwards". It is interesting to note that some of Tokyopop's releases aimed at young readers are left-to-right format, whereas most of their "teen+" manga remain right-to-left. Although there are adverse effects of flipping the artwork (right-handed characters becoming left-handed, cars on the wrong side of the road etc), these do not usually cause issues (Japanese drive on the left, Americans drive on the right, so a flipped picture of a car on Japanese roads wouldn't look out of place to an American reader).
  About the only time it jars is when your attention is drawn specifically to it - in Cannon God Exaxxion, for example, the controls of a vehicle are described as being like a motorbike, with a twist-throttle on the left. Now, as most people know, a motorbike's throttle is on the right, and that's how it's described in the Japanese version, but flipping the image means that the statement has to be "left" instead of "right" - otherwise the text and image wouldn't match. Could they have left that one image the "correct" way round in order to avoid this? Now there's a question...

  Ok, this is the big change. In one of the colour sections of the story, Major Kusanagi relaxes by tapping into a VR simulation with two "girlfriends", and the following pages are basically a lesbian romp. This is cut short by Batou hacking into her brain while she is, er, "busy", resulting in him feeling very strange indeed (and having a nosebleed ;->).
  Dark horse cut out these pages, altering the reason for Batou's loss of composure to him feeling seasick (well, the VR simulation was on a yacht...), but were still left with the last frame of the preceding page in unedited form (left). As you can see, a butt-freakin' nekkid Motoko Kusanagi is about to join the two girls on the boat, who are obviously very good friends indeed. I've blurred out exactly what they're up to (If you want porn, go to a porn site), but you shouldn't need much imagination to work out that it involves a rubber glove and lubricant...

So, what to do? Well, Dark Horse kept the overall "VR-sim-on-yacht" theme, but doctored the last panel to make it more suitable for younger readers (right). As you can see, the activities taking place in the original frame have now been replaced replaced with nice, wholesome sunbathing (Although lesbian sex is probably less likely to cause skin cancer. Answers on a postcard, please). A swimsuit has been added to protect the Major's modesty, too.
  Note that the lettering on the structure of the yacht has disappeared, though I don't think this has anything to do with the other editing to the image - I can't quite read it myself, but it appears to be English (The name of the ship?), so was probably removed to reduce the impact of the flipping operation.

  I'd just like to point out that this piece is in no way a complaint - Dark Horse did an excellent job, and the editing means that the book could be sold to younger readers (better market penetration/sales) without issue. If you read the English-language version on it's own, you would never even suspect that there had been pages removed, and nothing critical to the story has been altered. As far as I'm concerned, this is sympathetic editing rather than censorship, and the fact that it allows the manga to be read by a wider audience justifies the change.

  Incidentally, I WILL NOT scan-in the removed Ghost in the Shell pages and put them up on the site or email them to people. If you're that desperate to see them, buy a copy of the Japanese version of Ghost in the Shell. Like I said, whether they are there or not has no effect on the story.

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