I'm tired of the anime/manga community's normalization for pedophilia...

[Mesoian]

I love how culture apologists think that everyone in Japan is okay with what equates to statutory rape just because there are bylaws that TECHNICALLY would make marrying someone who is 16 legal.

The same sort of bylaws exist in America, that doesn't mean it's gonna fly when someone older is caught grooming a minor.

 

[Deleted member 37928]

"Stop imposing your culture on others". Um... no. It's rather a case of trying to burst a horrible bubble where a country normalizes pedophilia in various forms of media.

It's honestly one of the reasons why I'm moving more and more away from japanese media. Even my favourite gaming series, Metal Gear, has left a really bad taste in my mouth and I'm not sure If I ever want to revisit it again.

 

[Timelord19]

I really don't know why that people needs to defend that shit, I love the world from Made in Abyss, but that doesn't mean I don't dunk on the author for all the gross shit. Some people can't like something and admitting it has questionable things.

 

[lint2015]

This is pretty much exactly what I expected from that sort of crowd.

It's the worst. Another thing just as bad would be fetishization of female characters.

Click to shrink...

Oh boy, I gave Shokugeki no Souma a go since it was on Netflix. I knew nothing about it except that it was about cooking, which was right up my alley.

First episode, some villanous real estate lady with massive jiggly boobs whose metaphorical reaction to the food is to seemingly orgasm and have all her clothes ripped off. Second episode and what appears to be the ongoing antagonist, again with big jiggling boobs, again, the target of orgasmic reactions to the food. And the end credits are just naked girls and women.

Anime was a mistake.

 

[Mesoian]

This is pretty much exactly what I expected from that sort of crowd.


Oh boy, I gave Shokugeki no Souma a go since it was on Netflix. I knew nothing about it except that it was about cooking, which was right up my alley.

First episode, some villanous real estate lady with massive jiggly boobs whose metaphorical reaction to the food is to seemingly orgasm and have all her clothes ripped off. Second episode and what appears to be the ongoing antagonist, again with big jiggling boobs, again, the target of orgasmic reactions to the food. And the end credits are just naked girls and women.

Anime was a mistake.

Click to shrink...

Yeah that's a constant for that series. It never stops. What's worse, it's so popular that other shows have started doing it too.

Bring back Yakitate Japan, where you make a bread that's so good, you turn into a loaf of bread for FOUR EPISODES.

 

[L Thammy]

One thing that strikes me as particularly glaring is how it's bled into the very language of the international anime fandom. "Loli" and "shota" get thrown around as if they mean "girl" and "boy", but they don't. The terms "loli" and "shota" derive from fictional works from the 1950s, the former in particular being a work about a pedophile. That's less than a century ago. Japan has been around far longer than that, there have naturally been countless kids in Japan, and so there's been plenty of need for words to refer to them without adding a sexualization component to it. "On'na no ko", "shoujo", "otoko no ko", "shounen".

I feel like that's the result of an anime culture that often pushes fucked up pornographic content right up against mainstream content with no compartmentalization of any sort. Like, take a moment to consider how often "tentacle rape" is a thought that people immediately jump to when thinking of Japanese culture or anime, then think about how "loli" is a word people immediately jump to when thinking of girls in anime style. It turns the very existence of Japan or of kids into something perverse.

It's especially weird because international anime fans have figured out the less disturbing words for children used when anime and manga target that audience, but "shounen" and "shoujo" end up being used more as genre terms. They're often used as if they describe the work instead of the people in the real world who they're making it for.

Language always seems like the most miserable front to me in that it inevitably falls in a bad direction and there's no way to turn back. Like, "alt-right" was created to dilute Neo-Nazis' brand, and now even people who know that they aren't distinct often fall into using the word. So I don't think blame any individual that this is broken. But you even see it in this thread, I think. Look at how "lolicon" and "shotacon" are thrown around in this discussion.

I doubt people are thinking this far, but what's most likely happening is that they're shifting to what they perceive as anime terminology or anime fandom language because this is a discussion about anime. But if you look up the words in dictionaries, you'll often see "pedophile" brought up as a synonym. Pedophile is a much more accusatory word; the weight of someone being called a "pedophile" by themselves or others can be extremely different from how "lolicon" is often brought up flippantly.

 

[Westbahnhof]

Bring back Yakitate Japan, where you make a bread that's so good, you turn into a loaf of bread for FOUR EPISODES.

Click to shrink...

In the manga, people get turned into butterflies n shit permanently.
Heck, it ends by Kawachi turning into Street Fighters Dhalsim, levitating all the land in the world a bit to slow down the danger of flooding due to global warming, and then it just ends, with Kawachi remaining as Dhalsim

 

[Mesoian]

In the manga, people get turned into butterflies n shit permanently.
Heck, it ends by Kawachi turning into Street Fighters Dhalsim, levitating all the land in the world a bit to slow down the danger of flooding due to global warming, and then it just ends, with Kawachi remaining as Dhalsim

Click to shrink...

Yakitate Japan so fucking good.

 

[Ferrs]

"Stop imposing your culture on others". Um... no. It's rather a case of trying to burst a horrible bubble where a country normalizes pedophilia in various forms of media.

It's honestly one of the reasons why I'm moving more and more away from japanese media. Even my favourite gaming series, Metal Gear, has left a really bad taste in my mouth and I'm not sure If I ever want to revisit it again.

Click to shrink...

It's not a country, it's otaku "culture", which translates to mangas, animes and games.

Japan is way more than games and animes. The idea that this anime culture is representative of Japan one way or another is flawed.

 

[dude]

lol do the Japanese people know some western losers think they're basically all about pedophilia? Can't imagine they'd like that idea.

 

[Yukari]

Well Yakitate Japan sequel is on a Line manga. no fan translate yet.

Talk about it. I'm surprised that The artist go draws Tsukino hentai doujin. (IIRC, He was a hentai doujin)

 

[Deleted member 37928]

It's not a country, it's otaku "culture", which translates to mangas, animes and games.

Japan is way more than games and animes. The idea that this anime culture is representative of Japan one way or another is flawed.

Click to shrink...

That's why I wrote media, referring to anime, games etc. But yes, I have very little knowledge about japanese culture as a whole, so it's wrong to assume that otaku culture exists because the general public, as well as the government, is apathetic towards it. For all I know all these companies who do this stuff get away with it because of loop holes and what not.

 

[rrost]

Have you guys seen Mushoku Tensei? The most popular isekai at the moment and one of the top rated shows on Myanimelist last year. The main character before reincarnation was masturbating to his niece's bathing videos instead of going to his parent's funeral.
His brother(niece's father) caught him in the act and beat the shit out of him. Then he reincarnates as a baby and fantasize about sucking his mother's breast and pubic hair of his loli instructor.

Yes this shit is one of the most popular and revered show of last year. If this does not prove the community is trash than i don't know what is.

 

[Khanimus]

lol do the Japanese people know some western losers think they're basically all about pedophilia? Can't imagine they'd like that idea.

Click to shrink...

feels relevant


have to imagine a ton of people in Japan have an issue that this shit is treated as normalized in media

 

[J2C]

Ran into something like this with a more furry crowd. A woman I liked alright on twitter 'liking' porn of a character clearly young. And worse the comments section was nothing but complements. Seriously f'd the 'culture' mindlessly endorsing it

 

[Dimple]

Obligatory :

 

[Deleted member 64609]

I live in Japan and have for over a decade, but the only time I hear about the gross anime and manga people want to claim is beloved and normal is on here.

Even shit like Jojo airs between midnight and 3 am

 

[HeySeuss]

So this is something I hear a lot from some right wing circles is that the left somehow now considers pedophiles as a sexual orientation and it should be considered normal.

Now I've never heard this anywhere and they point to some professor in California that teaches it on some campus (don't know who or where and I never fact checked it because of how ridiculous it sounds). There isn't some sort of movement to normalize pedophilia that I'm unaware of is there?

 

[daveo42]

I mean, I was running into people defending pedophilia because they thought the world was shit so why fight it.

Click to shrink...

I can see people defending the show on its merits, but it's also a show that's hard to recommend because of just how disgusting a few of the scenes are. What's worse is it could just as easily be removed from the source material without changing anything about the series. I'm just glad the anime even toned it down, though the recent movie gave me pause when they left in like 10 seconds that soured things.

 

[floridaguy954]

If they are victims of their disorder and suffer from it, which I could believe, then they should seek help to address their problem and avoid acting on it, not normalize toxic anime and make excuses for each other. Thise comments are disgusting and utterly flawed in their logic.

Click to shrink...

Agreed.

People have to realize that one still has to take responsibility for their mental health.

 

[Meltifestobro]

I wanted to point out a few things that may or may not have been mentioned but to also provide hopefully ideas absent of moral judgment.

First, this might have been mentioned previously, but people point out how Japan is gross due to the relatively and definitely lower age of consent. This does not mean that pedophilia isn't looked down upon. The age of consent is primarily power given to the PARENTS. As in, at that age, parents can start marrying their children off or looking for arranged marriage prospects for them or even allow them to have sex depending on if the minor is in a 'loving, sincere relationship'. I am not unfamiliar with the practice of arranged marriage (as I'm Indian) since my parents were brought together via arranged marriage, though only in the last year of my mother's college life.

In other words, it's not the same, though statutory rape laws are a bit more variant due to this age of consent as it varies from from around ages 13-14 to 16-18 depending on the context.

Furthermore, the term 'lolicon' is slang. If you want to co-opt slang for describing a crime, go ahead, but the specific LEGAL and Pathological/Psychological term for pedophilia is 'Shouniseiaisha' in Romaji or '小児性愛者'. Please do not disrespect the language by saying that 'lolicon' is an official or the term for pedophilia, it simultaneously the actual seriousness of the crime by making it all about a niche subculture and also serves to slander otherwise mostly normal people.

Finally, another point, and I may come back to this thread to add others: people point out that the '9000 year old vampire' style of excuse wears thin. While it is can be considered a means of circumventing the legality of what would otherwise be a crime, the age of consent, as we've seen, is somewhat arbitrary dependent on the places its enforced.

Furthermore, and this is the focus of what I wanted to remind people, age is not simply the means of determining the legality of the action. As we know in our own lives, age is also a measure of our own life experience and our capability to make decisions. In that vein, unless the character who is a 9000 year old whatever is relatively young for their species, that unit of time is also an absolute measure of their capability to exercise their personal, ethical, spiritual, and sexual agency.

If you would like an example of this phenomenon, Rory Mercury, from GATE, is a 961 year old priestess who does everything she can to engage the main character sexually despite having a short, petite and potentially legally questionable body type.

The point that I wanted to emphasize from this last point was that age is not completely irrelevant to these characters but it can be depending on their relative age by species.


These points I've brought up are not meant to defend lolicons or pedophiles, only provide more level-headed and hopefully amoral context or nuance to the discussion while also hopefully reminding users to treat such a topic with the gravity it deserves.

 

[Mezentine]

So this is something I hear a lot from some right wing circles is that the left somehow now considers pedophiles as a sexual orientation and it should be considered normal.

Now I've never heard this anywhere and they point to some professor in California that teaches it on some campus (don't know who or where and I never fact checked it because of how ridiculous it sounds). There isn't some sort of movement to normalize pedophilia that I'm unaware of is there?

Click to shrink...

Ironically you could argue there is among right wingers: admittedly I haven't dived in too deep, but my honest impression is that the loli/shota/pedo stuff is way more prevalent in right wing anime communities than left wing.

 

[Deleted member 80231]

When I recently started watching Golden Kamuy, I had to double check on the Internet that there wasn't any sort of pedo shit, since the main characters are a twenty something year old war veteran and a 12 or 13 year old Ainu girl. Thankfully, it seems like that's not the case, because I'd have dropped the series inmediately after that.

It's kind of sad that, at the first non-romantic affection between both, my mind inmediately raised a red flag. But it feels like in the past few years the otaku subculture has been slowly creeping their way into more mainstream anime and manga, to a point when you'd often see this sort of stuff. Which makes sense, since those industries tend to have bad working conditions and lower pay, so the chance that those crunching their way up in the industry are also "passion-driven" otakus is quite high.

In the last few years, in any case, most of the manga and anime I've watched and read is stuff I've been recommended by my closest friends, as well as some of the shows that have gotten more praise. Recently I really enjoyed Spice and Wolf. Golden Kamuy, which I'm watching right now with a friend, has been great so far.

I just don't expect anime to fill all my media consumption needs, like when I was 17 or 18 years old, because if I did I'd probably have to start watching questionable content.

 

[Cerulean_skylark]

I wanted to point out a few things that may or may not have been mentioned but to also provide hopefully ideas absent of moral judgment.

First, this might have been mentioned previously, but people point out how Japan is gross due to the relatively and definitely lower age of consent. This does not mean that pedophilia isn't looked down upon. The age of consent is primarily power given to the PARENTS. As in, at that age, parents can start marrying their children off or looking for arranged marriage prospects for them or even allow them to have sex depending on if the minor is in a 'loving, sincere relationship'. I am not unfamiliar with the practice of arranged marriage (as I'm Indian) since my parents were brought together via arranged marriage, though only in the last year of my mother's college life.

In other words, it's not the same, though statutory rape laws are a bit more variant due to this age of consent as it varies from from around ages 13-14 to 16-18 depending on the context.

Furthermore, the term 'lolicon' is slang. If you want to co-opt slang for describing a crime, go ahead, but the specific LEGAL and Pathological/Psychological term for pedophilia is 'Shouniseiaisha' in Romaji or '小児性愛者'. Please do not disrespect the language by saying that 'lolicon' is an official or the term for pedophilia, it simultaneously the actual seriousness of the crime by making it all about a niche subculture and also serves to slander otherwise mostly normal people.

Finally, another point, and I may come back to this thread to add others: people point out that the '9000 year old vampire' style of excuse wears thin. While it is can be considered a means of circumventing the legality of what would otherwise be a crime, the age of consent, as we've seen, is somewhat arbitrary dependent on the places its enforced.

Furthermore, and this is the focus of what I wanted to remind people, age is not simply the means of determining the legality of the action. As we know in our own lives, age is also a measure of our own life experience and our capability to make decisions. In that vein, unless the character who is a 9000 year old whatever is relatively young for their species, that unit of time is also an absolute measure of their capability to exercise their personal, ethical, spiritual, and sexual agency.

If you would like an example of this phenomenon, Rory Mercury, from GATE, is a 961 year old priestess who does everything she can to engage the main character sexually despite having a short, petite and potentially legally questionable body type.

The point that I wanted to emphasize from this last point was that age is not completely irrelevant to these characters but it can be depending on their relative age by species.


These points I've brought up are not meant to defend lolicons or pedophiles, only provide more level-headed and hopefully amoral context or nuance to the discussion while also hopefully reminding users to treat such a topic with the gravity it deserves.

Click to shrink...

We have the same kind of child marriage through parental consent system in some US states and it almost always is a hotbed of child exploitation.

The reality is that the younger you marry and the bigger the age gap the worse off your marriage will be in terms of abuse and divorce.

The problem being this whole discussion doesn't lend itself to an "amoral" stance. This is a fundamental question or morality.

We are not talking about real people who are, in reality, 900 years old and exercising sexual agency. At best it is a hypothetical thought experiment of "what situation would it be okay to sexualize a child" which is gross.

 

[Cerulean_skylark]

All I know is that I'm personally tired of coming across anime with scenes sexualizing young kids (it's usually young girls but sometimes they sexualize young boys too), insinuations or depictions of pedophilia, incest, and other gross and creepy shit that wouldn't fly anywhere else. It feels like it's everywhere in anime and it's starting to turn me off of it in general, even though I know there are exceptions in anime that has none of that shit in it. Still, I'm seriously tired of it and something needs to be done about it.

As for the normalization of pedophilia, there are multiple issues that need to be addressed. Under no circumstances should society promote and tolerate the notion that adults attracted to children should be allowed to sustain pedophilic proclivities, including in media. Children are extremely vulnerable to abuse and unable to consent to sexual relations, and seeing how pedophilia is simply not compatible with an ethical framework that values the physical, mental, and emotional well-being of children, even fictional works promoting it are highly problematic and harmful to children.

Now some would ask, "given society's general stance on pedophilia, where does that leave pedophiles who aren't active child predators?" and my response to that would be, "hopefully in mental institutions that can simultaneously ensure that pedophiles won't harm children and can get any possible treatment available to them (I don't know if chemical castration is even all that effective but if it is, it should be available to them if isn't deemed unethical or unconstitutional). They shouldn't be charged for crimes they didn't commit, but given how primal sexual attraction is on a physiological level, those who are attracted to children should be considered dangerous to children and should not be roaming about without accountability.

At the end of the day, fiction or not, pedophilic content has no place in entertainment and the fact that it has run rampant in anime for so long is completely unacceptable to me.

Click to shrink...

Institutionalization for mental disorders which might predispose someone to a crime they HAVEN'T committed is a super awful thing to do. What we need is to destigmatize healthy discussion of sexuality and allow people to feel comfortable getting help through support and therapy. Institutions were once a place to lock away the inconveniently ill where they were subject to all kinds of medical horrors and it should be part of the equation. A person isn't a criminal until they've committed a crime and we should approach it as such.
This is not a defense of loli anime or pedophilia either. Just a kind of horrified reaction to institutionalization.

 

[Meltifestobro]

We have the same kind of child marriage through parental consent system in some US states and it almost always is a hotbed of child exploitation.

The reality is that the younger you marry and the bigger the age gap the worse off your marriage will be in terms of abuse and divorce.

The problem being this whole discussion doesn't lend itself to an "amoral" stance. This is a fundamental question or morality.

We are not talking about real people who are, in reality, 900 years old and exercising sexual agency. At best it is a hypothetical thought experiment of "what situation would it be okay to sexualize a child" which is gross.

Click to shrink...

I agree with you about the issues about younger marriages and age gaps. My point about being amoral was that I wanted to provide the absolute context without touching too much on the morals of it. As in, providing the facts or the contexts without touching on how I felt on them morally.

And yes, we are not talking about real people. However, at the same time, people are working to exercise real legality and actively point out the discomfort of the situation using their real morality with regards to fictional characters. Hypothetical or not, the "fundamental question of morality" you pointed out is a real thing that needs to address sexual agency as well and acknowledge some of the differences between terms/subjects like "lolicon" and "小児性愛者".

And my point with Rory Mercury was not intended to raise a question of "in what hypothetical situation was it acceptable to engage a child sexually". It was to say "sexual agency is something to keep in mind with characters like these", and not to promote harming children.

Again, with my words, I am not trying to take a side with this but defend the points I raised as being somewhat relevant and necessary to keep in mind when discussing a serious situation. I am not trying to dismiss any argument, only point out that the arguments that are being raised aren't fully explored.

 

[CerealKi11a]

The discourse around anime is exhausting. In what other media are valid criticisms responded to with fucking age of consent laws, as if that makes the subject matter any more palatable? Furthermore, what other media are defended by laws in general? Feels like people contorting themselves to justify their entertainment. As we all know, just because something is legal (or illegal), doesn't make it OK.

 

[pizoxuat]

So this is something I hear a lot from some right wing circles is that the left somehow now considers pedophiles as a sexual orientation and it should be considered normal.

Now I've never heard this anywhere and they point to some professor in California that teaches it on some campus (don't know who or where and I never fact checked it because of how ridiculous it sounds). There isn't some sort of movement to normalize pedophilia that I'm unaware of is there?

Click to shrink...

There are some hamfisted attempts by randos to try to have pedophilia lumped in under the LGBTQIA+ flag. Most of the time if you pull on that thread long enough you find out that the person pushing it is a rightwinger doing it to try to make the gays look bad, and eagerly running back to right-wing sources, pointing to their troll posts and saying "Look! This proves that they are pedos!"

 

[HeySeuss]

There are some hamfisted attempts by randos to try to have pedophilia lumped in under the LGBTQIA+ flag. Most of the time if you pull on that thread long enough you find out that the person pushing it is a rightwinger doing it to try to make the gays look bad, and eagerly running back to right-wing sources, pointing to their troll posts and saying "Look! This proves that they are pedos!"

Click to shrink...

Never thought of it that way but that makes perfect sense

 

[L Thammy]

Furthermore, the term 'lolicon' is slang. If you want to co-opt slang for describing a crime, go ahead, but the specific LEGAL and Pathological/Psychological term for pedophilia is 'Shouniseiaisha' in Romaji or '小児性愛者'. Please do not disrespect the language by saying that 'lolicon' is an official or the term for pedophilia, it simultaneously the actual seriousness of the crime by making it all about a niche subculture and also serves to slander otherwise mostly normal people.

Finally, another point, and I may come back to this thread to add others: people point out that the '9000 year old vampire' style of excuse wears thin. While it is can be considered a means of circumventing the legality of what would otherwise be a crime, the age of consent, as we've seen, is somewhat arbitrary dependent on the places its enforced.

Furthermore, and this is the focus of what I wanted to remind people, age is not simply the means of determining the legality of the action. As we know in our own lives, age is also a measure of our own life experience and our capability to make decisions. In that vein, unless the character who is a 9000 year old whatever is relatively young for their species, that unit of time is also an absolute measure of their capability to exercise their personal, ethical, spiritual, and sexual agency.

If you would like an example of this phenomenon, Rory Mercury, from GATE, is a 961 year old priestess who does everything she can to engage the main character sexually despite having a short, petite and potentially legally questionable body type.

The point that I wanted to emphasize from this last point was that age is not completely irrelevant to these characters but it can be depending on their relative age by species.


These points I've brought up are not meant to defend lolicons or pedophiles, only provide more level-headed and hopefully amoral context or nuance to the discussion while also hopefully reminding users to treat such a topic with the gravity it deserves.

Click to shrink...

I'm not sure who this is replying to or what this is trying to achieve.

 

[Gentlemen]

There's only one, Koikimo. Higehiro is pretty much the opposite.

Click to shrink...

Even The Author warns Peoples that the series isn't about that and beg stop play "I'll pick up high school girls too!" joke

Click to shrink...

In the first episode a teenage girl offers a grown man sex in exchange for a place to stay.

He takes her home.

She strips and propositions him and then he says "no."

Then she apologizes.

How is this not normalization of a completely inappropriate relationship with an enormous age gap.

Yeah yeah the script says the girl ran away from horrible circumstances and now the older man is more of a father figure etc. etc.

The "drama" would be more compelling if the camerawork weren't tracing every contour of her underaged body while saying this though. A show that wants things both ways still wants the bad thing to satisfy the prurient interests of its audience.

 

[Windmill_dude]

Have you guys seen Mushoku Tensei? The most popular isekai at the moment and one of the top rated shows on Myanimelist last year. The main character before reincarnation was masturbating to his niece's bathing videos instead of going to his parent's funeral.
His brother(niece's father) caught him in the act and beat the shit out of him. Then he reincarnates as a baby and fantasize about sucking his mother's breast and pubic hair of his loli instructor.

Yes this shit is one of the most popular and revered show of last year. If this does not prove the community is trash than i don't know what is.

Click to shrink...

Damn. Mothers Basement did a review and I didn't know it got that bad. He had a decent impression even though he said the perv shit was a bit much but looks like a skip.

 

[Meltifestobro]

I'm not sure who this is replying to or what this is trying to achieve.

Click to shrink...

Please reread the last sentence of my post to understand what I was trying to say. I was trying to say that, to anyone was willing to read what I wrote, to keep in mind those points when discussing the topics of the thread. And it's not specifically replying to anyone, I was trying to provide information that would hopefully add to the discussion for all the users who were willing to engage all angles of the topic in good faith and appropriate seriousness.

 

[Torpedo Vegas]

It's one of if not the main reasons I avoid it. It sucks when you start watching one and it seems ok and then 3 or 4 episodes in the 12 - 15 year old with jiggly tits and child baring hips shows up and you have to nope right the fuck out of it.

 

[Daysean]

I am so glad i just don't watch random seasonal anime anymore for this reason and the trash light novel adaptations with self inserts and revenge fantasies in an attempt to be "different"
Also so glad that stuff like Kodomo no Jikan and Prisma Illya isn't just AS RAMPANT as it similar stuff was in the 00s

 

[Manu]

Damn. Mothers Basement did a review and I didn't know it got that bad. He had a decent impression even though he said the perv shit was a bit much but looks like a skip.

Click to shrink...

I'm not gonna defend the worst aspects of Mushoku Tensei because some of the stuff was super bad, but the MC is always framed as a terrible person and all of the stuff that post talks abot was framed as bad stuff. He was a piece of shit, and he knows he was one. The problem is that now you have a 30 year old doing pervy shit in the body of a little kid and sometimes the series shows it as "funny" pervy even when he does it to other kids.

I understand people who can't separate that stuff from the rest of the work but it has some truly amazing worldbuilding and art, and unlike a lot of the pervy manga and anime it actually deals with sex and sexuality in its worldbuilding. It thankfully doesn't stop at the cheap fanservice.

 

[spam musubi]

I'm not gonna defend the worst aspects of Mushoku Tensei because some of the stuff was super bad, but the MC is always framed as a terrible person and all of the stuff that post talks abot was framed as bad stuff. He was a piece of shit, and he knows he was one. The problem is that now you have a 30 year old doing pervy shit in the body of a little kid and sometimes the series shows it as "funny" pervy even when he does it to other kids.

I understand people who can't separate that stuff from the rest of the work but it has some truly amazing worldbuilding and art, and unlike a lot of the pervy manga and anime it actually deals with sex and sexuality in its worldbuilding. It thankfully doesn't stop at the cheap fanservice.

Click to shrink...

"it's some pervy shit but trust me it's ok it's funny and in service of the world building" is exactly the kind of stuff the anime community says that people in this thread have a problem with.

 

[L Thammy]

Please reread the last sentence of my post to understand what I was trying to say. I was trying to say that, to anyone was willing to read what I wrote, to keep in mind those points when discussing the topics of the thread. And it's not specifically replying to anyone, I was trying to provide information that would hopefully add to the discussion for all the users who were willing to engage all angles of the topic in good faith.

Click to shrink...

That doesn't really make me any less confused, honestly. Like, if you come in and argue that people asserting the word "lolicon" is the official term for pedophilia in Japan is disrespectful to the language, that suggests that people asserting the word "lolicon" as the official word for pedophilia is somehow a notably presence.

You went onto a whole bit about the "9000 year old vampire" thing, but unless Ctrl+F is failing me, no one said the word "vampire" until you brought it up. From that disclaimer that you put at the end, you're obviously concerned that people might think you're defending pedophilia, but please take a moment to consider that it might make people feel like what you're saying is strange when you suddenly pop into a conversation to argue against absolutely no one about how to understand the age of fantasy beings in the context of consent.

Similarly, just to make things easier for yourself in the future, try combing through your post and trying to imagine if another human being - as in, someone who is not you - can tell the difference between how you talk about real life flesh and blood people and how you talk about cartoon characters. Then take a moment to consider how that affects the way that your statements might be perceived.

 

[Manu]

"it's some pervy shit but trust me it's ok it's funny and in service of the world building" is exactly the kind of stuff the anime community says that people in this thread have a problem with.

Click to shrink...

I said the exact opposite of your interpretation but go off I guess.

I said there's a lot of terrible shit in it that I wouldn't blame anything for thinking it's a dealbreaker AND a lot of good stuff that is in service of the story.

 

[Ferrs]

I agree with you about the issues about younger marriages and age gaps. My point about being amoral was that I wanted to provide the absolute context without touching too much on the morals of it. As in, providing the facts or the contexts without touching on how I felt on them morally.

And yes, we are not talking about real people. However, at the same time, people are working to exercise real legality and actively point out the discomfort of the situation using their real morality with regards to fictional characters. Hypothetical or not, the "fundamental question of morality" you pointed out is a real thing that needs to address sexual agency as well and acknowledge some of the differences between terms/subjects like "lolicon" and "小児性愛者".

And my point with Rory Mercury was not intended to raise a question of "in what hypothetical situation was it acceptable to engage a child sexually". It was to say "sexual agency is something to keep in mind with characters like these", and not to promote harming children.

Again, with my words, I am not trying to take a side with this but defend the points I raised as being somewhat relevant and necessary to keep in mind when discussing a serious situation. I am not trying to dismiss any argument, only point out that the arguments that are being raised aren't fully explored.

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The idea that you can discuss this (or basically anything) amorally is flawed, you can't. No matter if we talk about fictitional beings, worlds, cultures... Everything is created by persons with morals to be consumed by persons with moral, and all works are influenced by some degree with our morality, including a fictitional character supposedly not having human morals. If you remove morality you aren't more contextual or are providing more facts, you are actually removing that context.

 

[Grain Silo]

I started watching Evangelion, which is ostensibly at the highest tier of renown of the anime/manga world and it's pretty startling how much and often it sexualizes its 14 year-old protagonists. I may not have found it disturbing had I seen it at 15 or similar age, but this show deals with some very adult themes and for it to be this way is a bit of a shame and cheapens its otherwise robust story lines and characterizations. This seems to permeate anime/manga pretty much everywhere, where the same people who consume content like Eva end up creating it and a massive feedback loop has been established as a result.

 

[Biggersmaller]

American weebs clutching pearls over the supposed unfair reputation of Japanese culture is akin to country fans in Iceland whining about how the Deep South is wrongly painted as racist. Is every minute and page of Japanese culture sexualizing children? No. Is the Japanese creeper reputation well earned? Hell yes.

The sexualization of minors doesn't begin and end with anime. How unabashedly popular Joshi Kosei, Little Idols, and chaku-ero is unheard of. That's in addition to how broadly girls are inappropriately depicted in advertising, games, and print. There is also a broad cultural expectation of overt sexual naïveté that creeps into harmful gender expectations of the real women living in Japan. I'm not even going to get into the homophobia and racism.

So is it wrong to enjoy Japanese pop-culture? Of course not! But if you're someone who endlessly whines about how "problematic" every aspect of American media is, I would just check yourself before getting self-righteous.

 

[PAFenix]

Have you guys seen Mushoku Tensei? The most popular isekai at the moment and one of the top rated shows on Myanimelist last year. The main character before reincarnation was masturbating to his niece's bathing videos instead of going to his parent's funeral.
His brother(niece's father) caught him in the act and beat the shit out of him. Then he reincarnates as a baby and fantasize about sucking his mother's breast and pubic hair of his loli instructor.

Yes this shit is one of the most popular and revered show of last year. If this does not prove the community is trash than i don't know what is.

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Seeing the reviews, I started it and whoo boy.........This fuggin show. I don't know why I've seen people claim on several occasions that it's "genius" in "subverting the isekai genre" because....it doesn't? It's as much a power fantasy as those that came before it.

I'd go out and say it would be a fine show, but then you're reminded that despite the main character's body age, he still maintains his memories of being a 40 year old (in the dub, they keep his older voice for inner monologues to himself). This also wouldn't be bad by itself.....until you see him actively grooming three underage girls. Upon rescuing a young red head (who happens to be a distant cousin), his thought process is "I bet this will score me some affection points that I can cash in when we're older!"

It's the most blatant example of grooming I've ever seen. I guess "fans" handwave it away as fine since "he's the same age as them now."

Spoiler: Plot spoilers but who even cares

Spoiled myself by looking up plot points from the light novel it's based on. He ends up with all three as his wives when they all get old enough.

It's a pure wish fulfillment story, but sure. It's "genius."

 

[Good4Squat]

I mean they are often victims of child abuse themselves, that obviously doesn't excuse any abuse they then go on to commit on others.
I am also not comfortable with your whole idea that people that are able to manage their illness without hurting anyone should be institutionalized. What would that accomplish? Why shouldn't we be able to live normally with those people?

 

[John Doe]

One thing that strikes me as particularly glaring is how it's bled into the very language of the international anime fandom. "Loli" and "shota" get thrown around as if they mean "girl" and "boy", but they don't. The terms "loli" and "shota" derive from fictional works from the 1950s, the former in particular being a work about a pedophile. That's less than a century ago. Japan has been around far longer than that, there have naturally been countless kids in Japan, and so there's been plenty of need for words to refer to them without adding a sexualization component to it. "On'na no ko", "shoujo", "otoko no ko", "shounen".

I feel like that's the result of an anime culture that often pushes fucked up pornographic content right up against mainstream content with no compartmentalization of any sort. Like, take a moment to consider how often "tentacle rape" is a thought that people immediately jump to when thinking of Japanese culture or anime, then think about how "loli" is a word people immediately jump to when thinking of girls in anime style. It turns the very existence of Japan or of kids into something perverse.

It's especially weird because international anime fans have figured out the less disturbing words for children used when anime and manga target that audience, but "shounen" and "shoujo" end up being used more as genre terms. They're often used as if they describe the work instead of the people in the real world who they're making it for.

Language always seems like the most miserable front to me in that it inevitably falls in a bad direction and there's no way to turn back. Like, "alt-right" was created to dilute Neo-Nazis' brand, and now even people who know that they aren't distinct often fall into using the word. So I don't think blame any individual that this is broken. But you even see it in this thread, I think. Look at how "lolicon" and "shotacon" are thrown around in this discussion.

I doubt people are thinking this far, but what's most likely happening is that they're shifting to what they perceive as anime terminology or anime fandom language because this is a discussion about anime. But if you look up the words in dictionaries, you'll often see "pedophile" brought up as a synonym. Pedophile is a much more accusatory word; the weight of someone being called a "pedophile" by themselves or others can be extremely different from how "lolicon" is often brought up flippantly.

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Not to distract from this post but IMO the word Neo-Nazi already dilutes what those vile humans are. So there's a been a steady "humanisation" of Nazi views and behaviour through language. Nazi - Neo Nazi and now alt-right/Trumpers/MAGA.

I feel at times we don't realise how the. language used to discuss topics influence how we think about them. Framing matters.

 

[FakePlasticTree]

I could only read about halfway through your screenshots.

I hate when people pull the "it's part of their culture" when the only experience with said culture is just one form of media (in this case, anime).

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These people don't actually see Japanese people as people they see them as Japanese in the stereotypical sense defined by things like anime. They usually never any actual insight into contemporary Japanese culture outside of this.

 

[crimsonECHIDNA]

Seeing the reviews, I started it and whoo boy.........This fuggin show. I don't know why I've seen people claim on several occasions that it's "genius" in "subverting the isekai genre" because....it doesn't? It's as much a power fantasy as those that came before it.

I'd go out and say it would be a fine show, but then you're reminded that despite the main character's body age, he still maintains his memories of being a 40 year old (in the dub, they keep his older voice for inner monologues to himself). This also wouldn't be bad by itself.....until you see him actively grooming three underage girls. Upon rescuing a young red head (who happens to be a distant cousin), his thought process is "I bet this will score me some affection points that I can cash in when we're older!"

It's the most blatant example of grooming I've ever seen. I guess "fans" handwave it away as fine since "he's the same age as them now."

Spoiler: Plot spoilers but who even cares

Spoiled myself by looking up plot points from the light novel it's based on. He ends up with all three as his wives when they all get old enough.

It's a pure wish fulfillment story, but sure. It's "genius."

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It's the very definition of having it's cake and eating it too because people want to call it "groundbreaking" because "oh he was traumatized by all of his circumstances in his original life" while he still continues to be an absolute creep to the women in his life in the present. And it gets played for comedy.

 

[Captain Tuttle]

We had such people like these in the OP in the old threads on Gaf....

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We have people with what I would consider questionable avatars right here on Era...

 

[HardRojo]

Kill la Kill happened and was received with open arms. How people made it past the stupid second episode? I have no idea, but the fact that it became so popular when it was airing was very baffling. Underage highschool girls who look like kids in very tight "battle" clothing for who knows what reason.

 

[Deleted member 22630]

Tbh I've become cynical enough to think a lot of the time the intent is to depict a child. Like, I dunno, there are a bunch of manga where you have like an office worker or something who gets romantically involved with a coworker who's drawn as a child and given childish tendencies (so really in all respects a child beside the stated age). That just serves to pander to pedos in my eyes.

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I don't disagree, if it looks like a Duck, quacks like a Duck, it's most likely a Duck. Of course using Little People who deserve representation as a way to get past the censors is beyond sickening and I hope to God that doesn't catch on. I definitely get the side-eye and concern that the intent is pedo-pandering and in some cases it is which again is really gross.