SaigonAlice wrote:

^Y'all really are oblivious. Kill la Kill is not fucking feminist. What kind of feminist anime SEXUALISES TEEN GIRLS????? That's disgusting and actually pedophillic. Japan struggles with this a lot what with lolicon and high school girl fetishes but I'm surprised to see westerners never ever pointing it out either.

A lot of us westerners have noticed the flood of teenage age female cast in manga. We simply stopped buying a lot of manga. Most comic book shops reduced their manga stock ten years ago. I started buying a lot of independent and Marvel comics. Look how many Marvel and D.C. characters had their own movies came before the Ghost in the Shell movie came out. American men like their women to look like women. Motoko in Ghost in the Shell has a lot of appeal because of her mature looks. Manga has lost a lot of fans over the last decade because of the overly youthful female characters in manga. However, using youthful characters can be a useful device to remove the sexual energy from the story.

Haibane Remnai would not be effective in developing the characters if the characters were mature women living in a dormitory. It would be a distraction from the story. Utena has so many fine points using symbols, images, and complex plots that it would be a huge distraction if the female characters were mature. We see this theme in Niea Under Seven which is mostly an exploration of race and class.

There is also the fact a lot of anime is marketed towards younger audiences as well as to adults. We must keep that in mind. For older fans like myself, I collect the older manga and a few of newer anime that adheres to the traditional standards.

Decrescent Daytripper wrote:

yusaku wrote:

A lot of us westerners have noticed the flood of teenage age female cast in manga. We simply stopped buying a lot of manga.

Considering the real manga boom in the States seemed to center around a female readership and female leads from Sailor Moon to Gunsmith Cats, I'm not sure there's a correlation there at all.

What I have witness is all the comic stores in my area have drastically reduced their manga stocks in 2005 and never built it back. I remember because I was trying to sell my manga collection that year. I never was too comfortable with shopping at the big retailers for anime and I make my assertions on the decline on manga sales by what I seen in comic book shops. There are only a precious few ladies that shop in the comic shops.

yusaku wrote:

Look how many Marvel and D.C. characters had their own movies came before the Ghost in the Shell movie came out.

Considering that adapting Asian anything into "western" productions is pretty rare, the Ghost in the Shell movie has been available in the United States, commercially, for over twenty years. And, it was adapted to a movie within only years of the comic being published. Ghost in the Shell inarguably beat most of Marvel's characters to the big screen, but then, heck, so did St Trinian's and Dennis the Menace.

I was referring to the live action Ghost in the Shell movie. I meant to say that we have had a lot more live action D.C. and Marvel movies come to the big screen in comparison to the anime themed titles.

yusaku wrote:

American men like their women to look like women.

Whereas Japanese prefer... children? Robots?

It is not my intention to attack Japanese men, but I am in defense of Western men. The post previous to mine was suggesting that western men in general are in support of pedo material because we like anime. I was making a clear declaration that was not the case.

Wherever you're going with that, if you're suggesting that there isn't a longstanding tradition of pedo or ephebe aspects to anglophone entertainment and culture, you'd be dead wrong.

Never said that extremists did not exist on our population. I was saying pedo behavior is exception not the rule.

yusaku wrote:

Motoko in Ghost in the Shell has a lot of appeal because of her mature looks. Manga has lost a lot of fans over the last decade because of the overly youthful female characters in manga. However, using youthful characters can be a useful device to remove the sexual energy from the story.

That's pretty ridiculous and assumes that we're all reading manga/comics for wank material and nothing else. For my money, the GitS manga was successful in the States, upon release, because a) it was much closer to traditional forms of anglophone comics than a lot of manga, and b) it's really, really good.

I never said Motoko's beauty was Ghost in the Shell's only attraction. I am saying her beauty does help sell the anime/manga.

yusaku wrote:

Haibane Remnai would not be effective in developing the characters if the characters were mature women living in a dormitory. It would be a distraction from the story. Utena https://youtu.be/SMeaEjb-dr4 so many fine points using symbols, images, and complex plots that it would be a huge distraction if the female characters were mature. We see this theme in Niea Under Seven which is mostly an exploration of race and class.

I think, here, we have to make a distinction between characters who have sexualities, that is to say, human beings, and characters who are repeatedly or continuously objectified in a sexual fashion. There is a difference, and that difference matters on several fronts.

...clarify.

yusaku wrote:

There is also the fact a lot of anime is marketed towards younger audiences as well as to adults. We must keep that in mind. For older fans like myself, I collect the older manga and a few of newer anime that adheres to the traditional standards.

I meant I collect what is common to the mainstream population. I can easily sell and trade my collection because I choose the best of the "common fair" I like to share my collection.

I'm not sure these "traditional standards" at least judging by the rest of your post, have ever existed. Would you mind laying out exactly what you mean by that phrase, though?