Profanity censoring in manga
In the manga, “Hero Organization”, we follow the quest for mecha-based revenge of Leonidas Tyler and some of his fellow pilots. One especial scene, with its related call-back have apparent seen some light censorship in terms of swearing, namely that “fuck” has been rendered into a more verbose insult, surprised? Let’s look into things already.
Julia H. Sanada, a stern veteran of the forces, faces Leonidas in a test-fight and, when our heroes believes that he has destroyed his teacher’s mech, Sanada reveals herself with a massive rocket-launcher, ready to blast Leonidas’ mech apart.
Japanese:その腹にファックしてやる (sono hara ni fakku shite yaru)
Literally: I am going to fuck up your belly
Official: Now watch what this massive bazooka does to that soft underbelly of yours.
(Chapter 12)
And much later, Leonidas faces troopers who may or may not have killed Julia, to which he repeats her quote, albeit modified:
Japanese:その脳天にファックしてやる (sono nouten ni fakku shite yaru)
Literally: I am going to fuck up your dome
Official: Now watch what this massive cannon… does to that thick dome of yours!
(Chapter 16)
In both cases the original sense of “fucking [something] up” has been rendered into a verbose threat, rather than resorting to euphemisms such as “mess up” or even obscure slang such as “frak up”.
It removes the snappy roughness of the line, especially when coming from Leonidas who is otherwise a character denoted for his meeker demeanour than that of his peers.
The verb in question is, for those interested fakku suru, literally using the loan word fakku (ファック) from the English “fuck” in its sense of “destroy/mess up”, by applying the universal verb-suffix, suru (“to do”).