Lens Flare Censor

The use of Lens Flares (or perhaps some other stream of light) to hide something from sight. May give the impression that the censored areas are phosphorescent. The trope is fairly prevalent in anime, largely because other mediums make it hard to realistically do this. However, it's not impossible, and it does show up from time to time.

See also Censor Steam, Censor Shadow.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• They Are My Noble Masters: Miyu's bare chest is covered by the bright glow of a light positioned behind her.
• Saki: in the Hot Springs episode, Mahjong Club president Hisa delivers her lines with her back to the morning sun as it tops the trees. Between the lens flare at an oh-so-convenient angle and the sun over her shoulder, her only discernible features are on her face.
• Girls Bravo: When Kirie steps into an elevator of Fukuyama's design, which doubles as a 'scanning' machine, it was presented in the original network debut as a very, very bright light that obscured anything that might be suggestive.

• Manyu Hikencho uses huge white bars to censor bare breasts in its initial broadcast. However, since it's an action-comedy about huge breasts, this makes many episodes virtually unwatchable until the light- or non-censored versions are released.

• Space Pirate Mito uses lens flare to conceal Mito's deceased husband Kogero's features.
• In the second half of Kill la Kill, Aikuro goes around wearing nothing but a utility belt with a conveniently placed pistol holster in the front. For all the instances in which this is insufficient to cover his privates (which is quite often), bright pink lens flare is called upon to aid in the effort. Like most tropes in the show, it's exaggerated to the point of parody. HIS nipples also have the flare-censor, which wasn't added in later but literally lights up the room around and tends to blind people. No one else in the show gets it, though anyone else who ends up exposed instead has Barbie Doll Anatomy. Except for Mataro (an elementary school student who doesn't get much detail anyway) and Guts (a dog).
• In Occult Academy, Bunmei's naked entrance is obscured by the fact that the sun is right behind him. His shadow, on the other hand, is not. The lens flare is solely for the viewer's benefit, judging from Maya's rage after he lands.
• Parodied in Hyperdimension Neptunia the Animation, where the lights are sentient entities assigned to cover girls' private parts at a nude beach. Unfortunately for Nepgear, her lights get blown away by a gust of wind and she is exposed.

• One early episode of Dragon Ball has Yamcha peeking into Oolong's trailer to see if he can spot the dragonballs, Bulma happens to wake up at that moment completely nude, a glare covers up her nipples as she stands in front of the window. The sight causes Yamcha to faint as he had a fear of girls at this point. The English television release had the glare cover up her entire chest.

• Kaguya-sama: Love Is War:
  • Parodied in the first bonus "fanservice" chapter (since the series prides itself on being fanservice free). Kaguya ends up falling on top Fujiwara in the school showers, but when we get a full body shot of them just about everything is covered up from the beam of light from Hayasaka's flashlight. Ishigami (who is reading a chapter of his favorite manga that also falsely promised fanservice) proceeds to complain "It's the fucking Tyndall Effect!"
  • While the manga used a Kissing Discretion Shot, the anime version of Kashiwagi giving her boyfriend a french kiss has a lens flare blocking out the point where their lips (and tongues) make contact.
• Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead: As part of his symbolic resignation from his job as a real estate salesman and the start of his new career as a comedian, Kencho strips down as he jumps to the safety of another rooftop. His naughty parts get covered by the glare of the sun as Akira laughs it up.
• Parodied in Gabriel DropOut with an in-universe example. All of the angels have their dignity protected by "divine light" whenever their private areas are exposed. This also applies to supposed demon Vignette whose entire body is protected by a "god class" divine aura. On the other hand, the more traditional demon Satania gets a demonic variant.

Films — Live-Action

• A blatantly out-of-place footlight covers... something that would otherwise hang into view... at the end of The Full Monty.
  • In the theatrical version, the stage lights go way up so that nothing is visible. The cast members involved take their curtain call wearing bathrobes.
• This gets used in Another Ending: Genm Vs. Lazer, the movie sequal to Kamen Rider Ex-Aid when Kuroto is celebrating the creation of his new power-up item by a waterfall, wearing nothing but the Game Driver. It also covers up what little necessary something the actor actually is wearing.
• During the Man of Steel scene where Jor-El is embuing Kal-El with the planet Krypton codex, the genetic template of all Kryptonians, the baby actor was in the spaceship cradle, in full glory. When they broadcast the scene on television, the special effects team ramped up the lens flare of the transfer beam, covering the baby's bits.

Live-Action TV

• NCIS uses lens flares to cover the genitals of cadavers, instead of the usual sheet that other forensic shows tend to use. The corpses tend to be anatomically incorrect anyhow, as sometimes they don't superbright the women's chests, and you can see that they (along with about 80% of the male cadavers) have no nipples. It's particularly notable that the size of the lens flare changes depending on the state of the cadaver, even within a single episode. A male cadaver's chest will be lit normally, while a female cadaver's chest will initially be hidden by lens flare, only to be lit normally once it's been open for autopsy.
• CSI has employed conveniently placed standing magnifying glasses that create a lens flare/distorted light effect on bodies.

Video Games

• Bayonetta series:
  • The first Bayonetta: Jeanne gets her outfit destroyed in her fourth and final battle. Before making a suit out of her own hair, she is seen with a purple light covering what would have been a view of her crotch from behind.
  • Bayonetta 3: Turning on the Naive Angels Mode has Bayonetta's entire body glow in light when she strips off her dress in the Prologue and before she weaves her suit from her hair.
• Senran Kagura : Peach Beach Splash has defeated opponents disarmed and fallen rather than killed. The player then has an opportunity to amass bonus points by further saturating the victim. If this humiliation succeeds in scoring ten thousand points within ten seconds, part of the victim's swimsuit will detach from the stress. Only some lens flare prevents a clear view of bare nipples or exposed labia.
• Xenogears: Lens flare censoring is especially prevalent in the anime sequences in the ending, in which the male and female protagonists are both naked and in some sort of other-dimensional space. They are running and jumping, leaving a lot of work for the poor animators.

Web Comics

• Many of the delinquents in Weak Hero smoke, but showing under-aged characters smoking doesn't sit well with Korean censorship laws. This is mostly worked around by having the characters hold their lit cigarettes and nothing more, but on the rare instance that they have a cigarette in their mouth then it'll be obscured by a ball of light.

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