241 comments
The fact that people are arguing over this at all is crazy lmao
Ye gods, I can smell the armour polish AND the cheeto dust in this thread.
The translation holding up is hilarious, it really does and you can hear the emotional damage that causes out there; I do wonder if it struck a genuine nerve.
The amount of “protect the children” out there is also priceless - this is one of the best outrage manufactories I’ve seen in years; I look forward to that outrage fuelling more surveillance laws.
When it works. it works.
based
Being sexually attracted to stylized animated depictions of thing, or fantasy versions of thing, is not the same as being attracted to real-life thing. The best non-pedo/loli example of this is furries. It is a verifiable fact that there are people who are sexually attracted to anthropomorphized cartoon depictions of animals, or who engage in sexual fantasy play in which they pretend to be animals, yet have no sexual interest in real animals. There are definitely also people who are into both. Not all furries are actual zoophiles, not all lolicons are actual pedophiles. Disliking the content is not a good reason to ignore this distinction.
I see your argument that a lolicon ≠ a pedophile, but it still seems hella unethical to goon to an anime character that looks like a kid
Brave of you to say so. I usually also bring up dark romance novels as well. I mean the trauma informed stuff.
There’s interesting conversation to be had around this topic but no one ever actually wants to have that discussion.
“Guys, stooooop, it’s super unfair for you to call me a dogfucker! I didn’t even fuck a dog, I just jerk off all the time to explicitly stated drawings of dogs! Stooooooop!”
a zoophile and a furry are NOT the same thing
Agreed. But he didn’t say “anthro dog”, he said “dog”. There’s plenty of drawn zoophile porn out there.
HAH.
Did I say that they were? Or are you just so defensive that you’re reading your insecurities into what I said?
Drawings of dogs, or drawings of fantastical, speaking, intelligent non-human creatures? They are completely different. The comparison to lolicon/pedos is a poor one.
If you think furry porn is weird or gross, fine, but don’t pretend it is in any way some kind of animal abuse fantasy.
I like how in your desire to hear yourself speak on behalf of the furry community, you limit the furry community to its porn.
I’m not attempting to talk about the “furry community” though, I’m talking about the distinction between being into bestiality and being into furry porn. The non-pornographic aspects of the furry fandom are not relevant to the discussion whatsoever.
Damn. Glad I never said anything about furries.
My partner sometimes asks me, What’s that anime you don’t like to tell people you like?
Mushoku Tensei Jobless Reincarnation
I like the art and merciless world they live in and a lot of the characters but that show I probably fast forward scenes more than any other. Shield Hero is probably second with the lusting for the little chocobo(giant bird thing) princess that can change to little girl.
An unnamed 34-year-old NEET (Not in Education, Employment, or Training) is kicked out after his brother beats him up for peeping and video taping his niece in the bathroom.
The first sentence of the plot description on Wikipedia is that the protagonist is a pedo.
Made in Abyss
I really wanted to like this one. The setting and story setup were really good. A fine example of “it really doesn’t need this”
The MiA author is definitely a sex pervert (the volume extras leave no question of this), but children being put through incredibly fucked up dangerous body horror situations because most adults in the setting are useless and/or evil is like half the point of the story. It really does need that.
The fanservice stuff, on the other hand, is either just Japan being Japan, or further playing into the lost innocence theme above. I think one can convincingly argue for it being a little bit of both or entirely just the former, but it almost certainly is not entirely just the latter.
Yeah. Out of curiosity though, how far did you get into it?
(Not that it gets better in this regard or anything)
I got up to leaving the place with the tall woman and the maid boy switched to the manga and iirc found it was more egregious but got as far as the next creepozoid that was keeping some melted girl in a briefcase or something, it just got to the point where it felt like it was trying to be pedo bloodborne and the mysterious fantasy never ending hole in the ground became less enticing. I’ll stick to amigara fault for holes to crawl into.
I made it through some bad stuff, but ejected at some point. The last arc I remember they visited something like a waystation and had to kill someone? Memory is fuzzy. Don’t recall what made me drop it.
Shame, because the art was cool and I liked the world. Artist 100% a creep.
I watched a lot if anime, but I found Mushoku Tensei Jobless Reincarnation disgusting, I couldn’t continue it. I was surprised it was even popular.
I kinda enjoy it too, but Rudeus is just such a pos, and the writer probably is as well. I was so happy that we were getting nice, non-fetishistic Eris-focused episodes for the new season, but as of episode 3 we’re back to square one with this person 🤦♀️.
Edit:
…but that show I probably fast forward scenes more than any other…
Glad I’m not alone in this :D
Honestly, sometimes it’s nice to have a main character that is just a raging pile of s*** that you can hate. To a degree, it’s part of what makes it such a unique story.
There are just terrible f****** people in the world and sometimes those people are worth following the story of. There can only be so many stories about boy scouts before it gets stale.
So I wouldn’t say watching nothing but stories about awful. Terrible people is all that enjoyable. It is a nice palate cleanse every once in awhile, especially when it’s actually done with effort and not just they’re terrible for the sake of being terrible.
But jobless at least does try at being good. I don’t know if it only succeeds but it at least tries.
Well reading the light novel Rudeus is mostly a heavy traumatized person that never got the needed therapy and due to that trauma is seeing everyone as enemies. The first like 12 books basically describe his struggles with his trauma and are pretty accurate to trauma healing in real life too. The other 16 are pretty great just for the magic world.
The anime has way to much fan service though and cut out a lot of necessary details - as always.
Yeah a lot of Rudeus’s character is explained by it being a coming-of-age story but instead of a child growing up it’s a manchild growing up.
I felt that too, episode 3 was poor and scenes were too predictable and that last scene was absolute facepalm
I have mostly swapped to reading Korean manwha instead of Manga because of this. Going back and reading some of the Manga I used to like is a bit of a shock as a full grown adult now. So much is geared to young, horny teens.
haha, I know exactly what you mean about Shield Hero. What is so jolting is how seemingly random and unnecessary it is. Even if those themes aren’t present, there might still be the random lewd viewing angles. Like, nah, I’m good, I don’t need to be all upskirt peeping that literal child, wtf.
I remember hearing that the real protagonists of the world are Rudeus’s children and this is more of a prequel.
redo of healer
at least Mushoku Tensei has redeeming qualities which cannot be said about Redo of Healer
It was oddly stupid. But truly unique for someone to have time travel but not avoid their terrible and easily avoidable fade.
Oh, you like Rebecca from Cyberpunk Edgerunners? Straight to jail, pedophile.
“I jerk it to little girls” and “I jerk it to little animated girls” is not exactly worlds apart…
Yes, it is wrong, it fucks up people and our society. the normalization of pedophilia in anime is horrific and painful to see.
I love anime and have done since I was a teenager, but even then I always said 95% of anime was trash. Now I say 70% of anime is trash, 25% is straight up paedophile fantasy and the other 5% is the greatest entertainment ever made.
Are Japanese men just … problematic, or what’s going on?
I stuck on an anime called Dance with the Vampire Bund (something like that) and it had a scene that was LITERALLY animed child pornography. And it was on fuckin Netflix of all places.
Its incredibly disturbing how many animes ive had to stop watching because of troublesome content.
Are Japanese men just … problematic
The President of the United States raped children, everyone knew it, and he was still elected with the consent of the majority of Americans.
I don’t think it’s specifically Japanese.
Can you give me some recommendations for the 5%? I really enjoyed Cowboy Bebop.
- Cowboy bebop
- trigun (the og series, the new one is shite)
- neon genesis evangelion
- samurai champloo
- ghost in the shell (og movie)
- That time I got reincarnated as a slime
- Clevatess
- Berserk (og series, and the golden age arc movies)
- Helsing (both og series and remade ones i think called ultimate, both are great)
- JoJos bizarre adventure (not finished this one yet but its a hoot)
- one punch man
- mob psycho
- Vampire Hunter D
Theres no order at all to these and all just what I could remember in the time I had to type this out. Every single one of those is an A* anime.
Samurai Champloo was made by the same folks as cowboy bebop, and contemporary. Its very different but it also feels familiar. Fantastic either way.
Theres a whole heal of shitty isekai one that I love that I maybe wouldnt recommend too. Skeleton Night, laid back territory defence, the wrong way to be a healer, etc etc
ITT: a bunch of lemmings out themselves as pedos.
The anime, manga and gacha community are FULL of pedos in denial.
Which isn’t surprising at all, tons of weebs here so that just comes with the territory. I have not once met a weeb that I didn’t feel was at least a bit creepy, and they always have so much social awkwardness and major lack of self awareness.
I really hope Anime stops being popular one day, the world was better before it became a thing.major lack of self awareness
Keep in mind a major lack of self awareness and not giving a fuck what you think are two different things.
I really hope Anime stops being popular one day, the world was better before it became a thing.
You do know that Anime just means Japanese animation, there a lot of good anime that even people who don’t like it can watch like Grave of the fire flies, Paprika, and Perfect Blue.
Even American animation have weird stuff like South Park and Moral Orel have you seen the stuff in them.
Is it not? The definition is the sexualization of a minor or prepubescent girl in anime/manga. Sounds like pedophilia to me.
Well no. Pedophilia is the attraction to real children and lolicon is the attraction to illustrations of prepubertal girl like characters that doesn’t even need to be sexual. There is a big difference between these tooThe translation is also wrong because in Japanese there exist the loanword pedophilia and it was not used in the original so the translation is also wrong.
There is a big difference between these too.
🤣🤡
If you’re into these depictions because they’re depicted as children…
Is it because they depict children or because they depict child like features?
By the first, technically adult characters in a child like body (lucky star) wouldn’t count.
By the second, catgirl cosplay counts as bestiality.
Things get seriously vague once you consider diverse aesthetic cores, like goth loli fashion. also technically is.
Is it pedophilia if you wanna have sex in a ballpit with your adult partner while dressed as clowns while sucking oversized pacifiers? Just asking.
If someone is specifically into child like features and akshually they’re a 9000 year old dragon, yeah they’re a pedo
The amazing digital circus might thank part of its popularity to the nostalgia of the kidcore aesthetic featured troughout the circus.
The adult lead character pomni appears as a clown with little features that we would objectively associate with an adult wonen besides possessing the clear psychological maturity and intelligence of an adult.
The features of pomni could be described as short stature, a bright childlike color scheme, and large eyes relative to the face, a physiological trait often associated with infancy in mammals.
Now for science, is it pedophia to wank off to amazing digital circus porn of pomni and does it make a difference wether its a visual drawing or a text based work of fiction.
My point is not to convince you of annythhing just that your argument itself easily falls apart once one has to define “childlike features” into a legal/moral setting.
I thought I had an aneurysm trying to parse the first paragraph. I am not going to google any of that
It’s a genuine very good youtube series that is rivalling industrial production quality and popularity, i am just using it as a very twisted example. Dont let my description stop you from watching it. Adc characters are not in any way portrayed in a sexual nature, unless you count this.
Well no. Pedophilia in a non medical context is not necessarily about features and mostly about power. Most CSA happens because it is an easy power imbalance, not because the perpetrators are attracted to childrean. For example in many countries with good Internet connections and a low socieoeconomic Standing producers of CSAM are often Mothers that need money for food they themselfs are not pedohiliac - they have a power imbalance and an economic incentive. At the same time the viewers of these live streams are often not pedohiliac too but want an easy victim for their Powerfantasie. With this popular depiction lolicons are not the same because, as they are only attracted to fictional characters, they will never harm childrean.
In a medical context a pedophile is exclusively or primarily attracted to childrean. Most ppl with pedophilia never harm a child btw. Lolicon on the other hand is not a paraphilia so while you are attracted to fictional childlike characters it has not to be exclusive. From a medical standpoint being sexually attracted to a minor alone is not pedophilia as long as you are as much attracted to non minors. Primary or exclusive attraction is a necessary symptom of pedophilia.
Further in Japanese culture being sexual attracted to post puberty women who have a very childlike demeanor is also considered lolicon. As an example the 24 year old pornstar playing a schoolgirl trope in western porn would also be considered lolicon. A pedohile would be someone that rapes children in person or by proxy. If someone does not understand this difference they are part of the problem.
this isn’t some baudrillard level type of simulacra shit, it’s literally people using cartoons as analogs to their real attractions, so yes, they are pedos. much in the same way police are pretending to be heros. they all deserve prison. the former and the latter.
If you are attracted to drawings of children but not real children, I would say that this isn’t pedophilia, since pedophilia is an attraction to actual children and not fictional ones
I’m confused, are you pro- or anti policing? 🤔
lol. anti cop. ha. good catch. forgot my parens!
It has a wider variety of usage in Japanese than “pedophile” does in English, so no, it’s not always the most accurate translation. For example, “lolicon” (ロリコン) is used self-referentially, sometimes as a joke and sometimes not, in Japan while “pedophile” is basically never used like this in English. It’s also not too uncommon to use it of another person as a relatively lighthearted jab in Japanese, when in English calling someone else a pedophile (or even the more casual pedo) is a grave accusation.
So what you’re saying is that culturally Japan doesn’t have as much of a problem with pedophilia as english speaking countries. That’s not really a defense or a refutation that lolicon means pedophile.
But isn’t it used about people who are into sexualized (cartoon) children?
Yes, and it’s also used about actual child predator pedophiles. It’s a word with multiple senses/connotations, and one of those senses corresponds closely with the English word “pedophile” while the others do not. That’s why “pedophile” is not always the correct translation for it – though whether it’s correct in this case I can’t say, as I haven’t watched the anime in question.
If you’re into sexualized (cartoon) children you’re a pedophile, so the translation would be factually correct. That sort of pedophilia just has much less cultural acceptance in English speaking world
That sort of pedophilia just has much less cultural acceptance in English speaking world
Which is why it’s not always the most accurate translation. Part of the job of a translator is to translate cultural nuance, which would be lost here.
It’s a bit like how in English, Epstein wouldn’t call Trump a pedophile, he’d say he “likes them young”. In Japanese he could call him a lolicon and get the same tone.
How would you translate the word to best fit the meaning?
If the term isn’t meant to be so “heavy” in the original usage, and there isn’t an equivalent “light” term here, I wonder if it would’ve been better to just translate it as “I didn’t realize you were a creep” or something else that misses the nuance, but gets the intended feeling and tone across.
I don’t know, I haven’t watched the show so I don’t know what the meaning is here.
he’d say he “likes them young”
They already basically answered that.
Though in this context, maybe the best thing to do is to not translate it. Most of the audience is likely to know the word already.
The lack of stigma against pedophilia does not make it not pedophilia, it just makes it socially acceptable to be a pedophile.
Yes, and part of the job of a translator is to make sure that this fact is clear to the reader of the translation. “Pedophile” is virtually never a socially acceptable moniker in English whereas sometimes in Japanese “lolicon” is. Therefore it cannot be translated directly. This isn’t particularly unusual; Japanese is a very contextual language, so even beyond cultural differences there are lots of words that require a different translation in different contexts.
For this specific scene the translation could well be fine (I imagine it’s probably a gag scene where the other character gets flustered and rejects the accusation), but there are circumstances where a different translation is required.
That just sounds to me that pedophilia is not frowned upon in Japan, not that the translation is inaccurate.
Part of the job of a translator is to translate cultural nuance, which would be lost here. That’s what makes the translation inaccurate in some contexts.
So we need to translate it so the audience undertands there’s a level of implied cultural acceptance of pedos. How’s this?
“I didn’t know you were a redditor”
That sounds like not calling a cannibal a cannibal because of the negative connotation which the word doesn’t have in cannibal culture
So small-minded? Let me remind you that “cannibal” is originally an ethnonym coined by Columbus for the native Caribbean people, whose culture certainly had a lot more nuance than just eating people.
Japan is uncomfortably comfortable with loli shit, and it’s reflected in anime… Which is why anime will never be a family living room activity for me, unless I’ve vetted it to be clean. For example, Death Note is ok, but Dragon Maid is not.
To be an anime fan you have to learn this specific skill where you disassociate during cringe “fan-service” moments and come back to Earth once it’s over.
My favorite personal example of this is Langrisser Mobile. Easily my favorite mobile game ever made with tons of depth to character building and strategy with a genuinely engrossing story full of political intrigue in a fantasy setting. And I can never recommend it to anyone.
This is because certain female characters allow you to perform love confessions to them if you max them out. Almost all female characters (for the first few years) are under 16. You can confess your love to the 10 year old girl and she will promise to keep it a secret till she’s old enough. You can also buy a skin for her where her skin is glistening wet, she shakes her ass at the camera, and wears white, see-through-because-they’re-wet stockings. Why.
It’s wild just how pervasive it is in 2D/3DCG Japanese/Chinese media (Langrisser Mobile is a Chinese gacha spinoff of a Japanese game series). Basically every gacha game ever made has you hunting underage girls for sport. And the players are just totally fine with this. Meanwhile, just off of the top of my head there’s almost literally every single anime ever set in a high school, about half of isekai fantasy, almost every modern shonen battle anime – all giving creepshots or sexual harassment scenes about underage girls. It’s genuinely unavoidable.
Or just don’t watch anything that sexualizes children. Pretty well cuts off half or more of the anime out there but I’m not a pedo or interested in watching pedo shit.
i wonder whether there’s a filtered anime streaming platform for western audiences specifically.
also at that point why would you bother with anime at all? just watch western cartoons / animations, there’s many of them too.
The thing is that anime is usually really good for the themes and story and art, but they occasionally sprinkle turds into it, so you kind of metaphorically eat around them. It’s still worth watching as long as you can compartmentalize and ignore the bad parts.
You just reminded me, years ago, I used to burn custom handmade censored versions of anime and tv shows for my family. I’d sit there after school for hours in a video editor cutting out every sex scene in Game of Thrones, every loli scene in anime. Then I’d burn that to a DVD-RW and recreate the disc art using a sharpie. Finally I watched it with everyone on the DVD player.
In retrospect it was a lot of work just to share my favourite shows with my family, but I don’t regret it.
That is so weird to me that a society with much more Shame basis for stuff does not shame attraction to and relationships with minors.
On the other hand I’ve always wondered when is shame effective as a social motivator to prevent misdeeds, and when does it push people to hide their problems instead of seeking help and solutions?
That is so weird to me that a society with much more Shame basis for stuff does not shame attraction to and relationships with minors.
Because what a culture considers immoral is not the same as whether they use shame to police immorality.
Ah, yes, Japan - famously not a shame policing place. Maybe I should commit seppuku for this dishonor.
You have misunderstood me…
You make an important distinction. I don’t understand why they wouldn’t consider it immoral when in the west it seems intrinsically immoral to most people.
I’ve read Naomi and Memoirs of a Geisha so Ive had some exposure to some of the cultural ideas, but i guess I’m looking for a scholarly article or educational text explaining the differences
I don’t have scholarly references or anything, but the standard for this varies massively across cultures. Just looking at the West, the age at which it was thought appropriate to get married used to be wayyy lower than it is now. In Ancient Greece, a particular form of pederasty was celebrated as an especially pure form of relationship.
Nowadays we have robust evidence that sexual activity between an adult and a child is severely harmful. However, even this we can’t legitimately extend too far cross-culturally, because we don’t (as far as I know) have any certainty that this isn’t conferred due to the child being the victim of a socially-defined crime. The question one could ask is: given that Ancient Greece didn’t categorise their form of paedophilia as a violation, did the children in those relationships therefore not suffer in the same way as modern victims of paedophilia? It’s an uncomfortable question, and even asking it will probably make most people nope out, but it’s very useful to be sharp about what we do and don’t know.
The issue is the power imbalance, not the criminalization.
And you know that for a fact? I mean, obviously it could be. As far as I know there is no evidence for it, and getting that evidence will be incredibly difficult.
not intrinsically, at least not for long. in most of europe it was legal up until the 90s and there were even porno mags that ran specials.
…i do compulsive late night wiki walks, before you ask how i know that. i had a period where i read up on what happened to the “flower power” generation with all their “free love” stuff and that came up. i tend to do breadth-first search so i just read through articles while opening all the links in the background, then go down a level, etc etc. when a term like that comes up on a wiki page it triggers your fight-or-flight response.
It’s a relatively recent thing in the west, too. Not too long ago (well into the previous century) most girls were married off by their 15th or 16th birthday. “Fun” fact: there’s still a lot of child marriage in the US to this day: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_marriage_in_the_United_States
Japan isn’t actually substantially different in this regard – sure, they have their teen idols, but then so does the US (Miley Cyrus, Justin Bieber, what have you) – except they draw a clear line between fictional and real child pornography, both legally and in terms of general attitudes. The legal part isn’t that strange (lolicon material isn’t illegal in most of the US either), but the way general morality permits it in Japan but doesn’t in the US is interesting. My guess is that this is partially explained by the US generally being pretty puritanical when it comes to sexuality, whereas Japan is more liberal about it (in their own way), but that can’t be the only thing because European countries do not have the puritan culture of the US but also don’t share the Japanese tolerance of lolicon.
European countries do not have the puritan culture of the US but also don’t share the Japanese tolerance of lolicon.
many french philosophers around 1930 asked for the legalization of relation to minors. they failed probably mostly because of american influence. america, in turn, has very repressive views about sexuality in general, not just involving minors. think of the purple scare. i think it has to do with the church of england thinking that “sexuality is bad because it represents the serpent” from the tree of life while the bird represents knowledge, so people should study and seek knowledge instead of seeking sexual interactions.
Well if the powers that be shamed attraction to and relationships with minors, they would have to accept that forcing themselves on people who aren’t in a position to refuse consent is shameful, and then they would have to answer some very uncomfortable questions about what some of their heroes did in Korea and China …
it’s telling that these things are treated light-heartedly. more telling than the one-size-fits-all translation into “pedophile”, even.
It’s telling that pedophilia is culturally acceptable. That’s not really a good thing.
“But she’s a 500 year old [dragon/elf/vampire/etc] in human form, it’s fine bro.”
Looks like a child, acts like a child, would be considered a child by their own culture/species: That’s a child bro.
I’d like to say I’ve never had that conversation but I have.
“Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid” was fine (though not everyone’s cup of tea) until they started to sexualize the minors (which was basically at the introduction of the child “dragon”). Then I stopped watching it. And from what I hear, I picked a good spot to stop watching as it only got worse from there in regards to the minor characters.
EDIT: I should probably clarify for those that think I support that kind of content, I do not.
It’s been awhile since I watched Dragon Maid but I don’t recall that happening with her, maybe I blacked it out. Well there was the other child that was obsessed with her, I just don’t remember anything sexual. I do know that the relationship between the older big tiddy dragon and that boy feels innapropriate. I remembered while writing there is another child dragon with what I would describe as “bodankahonkaroos”. Maybe you’re right. I also think I recall the mangaka making porn of their characters to boost popularity.
Anime can have relationships between minors without oversexualization, even if that is what the characters are feeling.
I don’t recall anything sexual happening with any minors, dragon or otherwise. In fact I don’t even recall anything sexual happening… in general, other than the obvious undertones between the two mains. Though I suppose I may have skipped over a fan service episode and not remember.
Yeah, it is.
Well, no, that’s not what it is. It’s young and young-looking characters, not “minor or prepubescent”.
Mind you, plenty lolicon stuff is extremely pedophilic, namely by sexualising prepubescent characters! But lots of it is adult women that just look young and are explicitly not children in any way.
It’s more complicated than “pedophilia”, though the overlap is… Let’s say… Conspicuous.
Edit: The character likely did mean to imply pedophilia there, by the way.
But lots of it is adult women that just look young and are explicitly not children in any way.
Often mocked with the “9000 year old vampire dragon who just happens to look like a young child”
It sometimes gets even weirder, though. I am no expert in anime, but many of the “loli” characters I have encountered, have adult woman hips, but a child’s face, and sometimes also upper body. Something like Tatsumaki in One Punch man for example. So it is sexualizing the child-ish look, while also making it more adult like…? I have not understood what is the point.
especially in the context of an in-universe character saying it, yeah
Per ICD-11, pedophilia can’t be diagnosed if attraction is not acted upon or is distressing the patient. Also it doesn’t count cases where attraction is not primary.
I’m more interested in whether the DSM includes fictional children in the diagnosis, or if the children must be real
Colloquially accurate, though. Weird to use such a restricted definition of a word that has MUCH more common understanding…
I almost got kicked out of college. Because I said people have the freedom to draw this garbage because we protect free speech. And it really upset some people. I simply said you can’t police thought and art. But there is a limit depending on what they are doing with the characters.
just curious, do you think generating Ai CSAM is still protected under free speech? I would argue lolicon is approximately the same thing and shouldn’t be allowed
Every month I learn about a new manga/anime artist who was caught with CP and they got a slap on the wrist.
Hence it wouldn’t be “censorship” as the article seems to use the term. Though that doesn’t really apply at all because to “censor” it would be to not include the scene at all or rewrite it to say something else entirely. Saying “you like lolicon” or even just “you’re a pervert” might be considered euphemistic but it’s not censorship.
I don’t even bother with anime any more unless someone else confirms there is no pedo content. With how much there is I’ve started to wonder if execs in the light novel/manga/anime industry force their writers to include it to normalize it.
What type of anime where you looking at?
Like western animation, anime has many genres, so you have a wide choice in that aspect. Its not hard to just filter out the ones that are not liked.
I used to watch at 1-3 episodes of everything that was airing regardless of genre and put anything that seemed good on the backlog in ranked tiers and watched the best ones as they aired. Obviously many were good but there were so many where the primary flaw was pedo content and many would be excellent without just that. So much trash tier crap though. Like really fucking stupid.
This watch ranking procedure led to how I came to use in another world with my smartphone as the benchmark for utter shit, and a series can receive the “at least better than isekai smartphone” award.
The biggest non-pedo slog I for some reason watched all of was phi brain. I have no idea why I toughed out the whole thing. Basically professor layton but the puzzle obsession is fully deranged. I call any series where the world revolves around something really autistic a phi brain type.
One of my favourite scenes across all anime was in a generic romance about book boy and track girl where they eat in front of a mural of an obvious beaver tails knockoff, boaver tails… I watched the whole thing and that’s all I remember about it. If anyone can ID this one I want to go back and grab a screencap of the mural.
I really hate when a good series becomes pedotarded though. I’m still pissed about that one where a guy becomes an adoptive father but right at the end there was some shit where the girl’s childhood friend slash almost boyfriend maybe hooked up with some other girl so main girl felt betrayed and starts dating her dad leading to one of the most egregious lines in anime, that I cant remember 100% accurately, but it dumbed down to essentially “I want to get mad at my daughter’s gross old man boyfriend… but he’s me”
At the very fucking least don’t make parenting anime pedo.
I’m someone else! I actually keep a running list of shows that don’t include the typical anime turnoffs. No sexualization of minors, and no incest.
Bolded titles are my top recs. Series listed in chronological order of my seeing them:
An attempt to compress a wall of text
Castlevania
Vivy: Fluorite Eyes Song
Belle
A Silent Voice
Baccano
Deca-dence
Trigun
Akudama Drive
ACCA: 13 Territory Inspection Dept.
Fullmetal Alchemist
Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood
Mushishi
5 Centimeters Per Second
Afro Samurai
Your Lie In April
Nichijou
Odd Taxi
Cowboy Bebop
Canaan
Sk8 the Infinity
Supercrooks
Bocchi the Rock
House of Five Leaves
Weathering With You
Haibane Renmei
BNA
Redline
Planetes
Witch Hunter Robin
Noir
Wolf’s Rain
Boogiepop Phantom
Boogiepop And Others
Ghost In The Shell (1995 movie and Standalone Complex)
Niea_7
Serial Experiments Lain
Megalo Box
Bakumatsu Kikansetsu Irohanihoheto
Bubblegum Crisis
Ergo Proxy
Read Or Die (OVA and The TV)
Madlax
Moribito
Xam’d: Lost Memories
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
Kyousougiga
Orb: On the Movements of the Earth
Cyberpunk Edgerunners
Sonny Boy
Kiki’s Delivery Service
Sora no Manimani
Apocalypse Hotel
Death Note
Carole and Tuesday
Kino’s Journey (2003)
Onihei
Fuckin love Mushishi
Maybe check out Michiko and hatchin Durarara Gangsta Darker than black I stopped watching anime because even though a lot were geared toward a younger audience, there was still some like ghost in the shell or other types that made it interesting. I wish there was a website that kept tally of new ones to bother checking out
Serial Experiments Lain
Uhhh…you might wanna rethink that one.
Not running down the anime, it’s one of my favorites. But it has some questionable moments. And though those do have context, some people who are sensitive to the topic of this post may find them uncomfortable to watch.
I don’t recall any sexualization of minors in SEL… Can you point out a scene? I’m generally pretty strict about what goes on that list, and am always happy to prune it
Some of those are from both before and after my “at least try everything” time frame but you clearly know where its at based on the ones I’ve seen. Great picks with genre variety. I still think about the definitive fight scene in moribito.
I’m finally setting up my living room and plan to rewatch natsume yuujinchou and then the seasons I haven’t seen. Hopefully its still clean in regards to the post topic. Also trying to subject some friends to the depressing classics.
oh i can very much relate to that. i used to love 20th century anime because it was based (think of princess mononoke for example). nowadays it all feels like they’re re-iterating the same theme 200 times over: boy and girl meet in highschool, the boy wears a suit and is somewhat ambitious while the girl is clumsy, talks with a high voice and is somewhat into the main character. i get that that’s probably many high-schoolers fantasy, but damn it feels a whole lot like normalizing the american dream. “you just have to work hard, then you can make it”.
Well, they’re not wrong…
True
in THIS political climate? The president of the US is gonna go after them, lol
It is difficult to have this discussion because not many really want to actually think about it but I’ll do it anyway.
I guess the main concern is about how this sort of content could coerce people to attempt their fantasies in real life. However, the subject for a lolicon is a symbol and the subject for a pedophile is an actual individual. To say that lolicons are pedophiles is equivalent to say that gamers who play violent games blowing up buildings or slashing people into a million pieces are terrorists. “Cest une pipe”.
What we know is that there is no direct implication between consuming this content and engaging in criminal activity. People have different minds and respond to things in different ways, lolicon is not a predictor of pedophilia. Also, the Catharsis hypothesis, the one where people say engaging on it would keep someone from committing a related crime doesn’t seem to be true either.
This one is a an oldie, but it is a nice overview about this topic if you want to get some context:
https://www.imageandnarrative.be/index.php/imagenarrative/article/view/127/98
I think the most important point of this paper is that the shoujo depicted in such content no longer corresponds to an actual real depiction of the prepubescent and are no more than fantasy.
I guess the main concern is about how this sort of content could coerce people to attempt their fantasies in real life.
This is the very same argument that has been made about gay persons in times and regions where LGBT+ topics and behavior were criminalized. The same argument was also used in the 21st century about kids playing violent video games.
It’s also the same argument used in the 19th century to raise a moral panic about women reading romance fiction.
Here’s the relevant Wikipedia excerpt:
Cultural anthropologist Patrick W. Galbraith based his research on Japan’s crime statistics, showing that sexual abuse of minors has decreased in Japan since the spread of lolicon media increased in the 1960s and 1970s, argued that cartoon pornographic images do not necessarily influence crime.
A 2012 report by the Sexologisk Klinik for the Danish government claimed that there is no evidence that individuals that view cartoons and drawings depicting fictitious child sexual abuse are more likely to engage in child sexual abuse in the real world.
To keep it brief most research on pedophilia, herbophilia, etc. Indicate that it is split into two categories. One is a sexual growth disorder that can be treated, with one of the most effective treatments actually being providing legal safe access to non-harmful materials. AKA drawings of fictional people.
The other category comes from personality disorders this form can’t be treated in any known way directly. You have to treat the personality disorder itself. And as such providing any source does nothing good or bad to help with the situation.
It’s a big reason why the whole concept of it’s a drawing and it should be considered the same as fundamentally flawed. You have one case where it does show that it helps in one case where it doesn’t matter.
Anything that is generated from real people does cause harm and should be illegal no matter what. Harming one person to help another is not a valid path.
But harming no one to help someone. Even if you feel icky about it is a valid path.
And study after study after study keeps proving over and over again. Just because you show someone something or exposed them to it. It doesn’t make them more likely to engage in something that they know is wrong.
herbophilia
That’s not what I meant when I said I love potatoes.
This is a false equivalency. Pedophile doesn’t mean someone that rapes children. A pedophile is someone that’s sexually attracted to children. Someone that rapes children is called a child rapist. You can be a pedophile that recognizes their urges being bad and thus not act upon them/get psychological help. This is why your analogy fails.
What we know is that there is no direct implication between consuming this content and engaging in criminal activity.
I know, I’m not for banning the content either. Let it stay as the nicotine patch that it is, until evidence comes out showing that it does increase child sexual assault.
I never said that a pedophile was a child rapist and I know there is a difference. My point with the analogy is to point out that the depictions of the “shoujo” in lolicon are not representative of actual children (as pointed out in the paper).
The comparison with violent video games was to show that the representation of something like a “battlefield” in a video game is really not close to actual warfare, that even applies to these historically “accurate” video games.
Also, regarding your last point, the paper that I mention also cites a reduction is CSA during times where lolicon was more prevalent.
In the end, is it not strange to even consider the legal age of consent for purely fictional characters? Such characters are only as old as they are imagined to be, just as sex with them is only imagined. Because there is no actual crime committed, it ultimately ends up an issue of how one interprets images, of a person’s private thoughts, and this is not something that can or should be regulated.
This paper you’ve linked is entirely missing the point, and I’m gonna be real, seems a little pedophilic to me. This is the same kind of sophistry that you get from pedophiles who are trying to massage the issue.
Do you have the relevant section that indicates CSA is reduced? As far as I can tell, this paper isn’t even a study.
“Missing the point” is very hard to falsify because it is too subjective, so I won’t touch that. I think you expected the paper to be empirical, which is not the case, it is an analytical piece.
Referring to your concern, the paper cites research by Takatsuki Yasushi, mentioning that sexual abuse of minors in Japan was statistically much more common during the 1960s and 1970s and has been decreasing since that period, a trend that roughly coincides with the increasing prevalence of fictional lolicon. Two things to notice: One is that this is an old paper so it could be that things changed more recently. Another one is that this doesn’t mean lolicon inhibts CSA, it just means that it isn’t a predictor to it, which is justified by the depictions having nothing to do with real children.
I’ll make it clearer.
is it not strange to even consider the legal age of consent for purely fictional characters?
No, it is not.
You seem reasonable enough, so if I seem terse or frustrated, I am not necessarily directing that toward you.
The purpose of politeness in society is to demonstrate, virtue signal even, a person’s willingness to abide by the social contract. You are virtue signaling safety.
The normalization of lolicon material is not a problem because it “breaks laws,” it makes it more difficult to catch warning signs from bad people early. It provides too much plausable deniability.
This is not dissimilar to the aversion of racists when they start talking about race science, or making “ironic” hitler jokes—these people are not “breaking laws” either. The purpose of treating them as socially deleterious is either to shame them into better behavior, or, failing that, to excommunicate them from society. False positives, whether these people were truly racist in their hearts, is immaterial to me—I do not care. They should have enough social sense to know better.
A disclaimer: Obviously, none of this means that I want pedophiles to fear getting help. Getting help is outside the purview of social excommunication; shame would not be serving a purpose in this case. But this fact really has nothing to do with whether I’m accepting of the endless flirtatiousness anime and other Japanese media seems to have with child sex.
This is such a weird comment, because it seemingly tries to hold the moral high ground while belittling the other person, despite just saying “nuh uh” to papers and points brought up
You want to go to battle over papers?
When you cite papers, you cite passages. Which passage disagrees with me?
the subject for a lolicon is a symbol and the subject for a pedophile is an actual individual
The subject of a pedophile might as well be fictional. Pedophilia is not the same as sexual assault of minors, because pedophiles don’t necessarily act on their urges in real life. I have no idea what the percentage there is, it might be very small, but I still think this is an important distinction in this discussion.
