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?

itavin wrote:

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.

First off, it isnt pedophillic it is ephebeophlic since the main characters are ages 15-19 so it cant be pedophillic. Second, I think the word sexualized is a bit wrong hear. one of the major ideas in kill la kill is shamefulness vs shamelessness, where in embarrassment of wearing a skimpy ungraded uniform (a metaphore for how "revealing" your self is a form of power rather then a form of weakness) makes you weak, while the lack of it makes you stronger. So the fanservice and nudity hear are like the nudity in sailor moon, not sexual, but metaphorical.

Also, for those who want feminist anime The tale of princess kaguya and Full moon, because no one saw them and i drives me insane.

That metaphor might be a little more, well, non-sexually-indulgent if it wasn't 99% an excuse for teenage girls in dental floss posing in exaggerated fashion. As well, the story is crafted to exploit this stylistic choice to overtly and overly sexualize teenage girls. It's not like this is reality where cause and effect are beyond the show runners, or a fait accompli situation which they are making the best of. They chose to shape a world this way, rules and metaphors included.

I'm reminded of Kate Beaton's "this bullet bra represents my heritage!" bit.

I think SaigonAlice is overextending her accusations, but you're protesting too much, too.

itavin wrote:

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.

First off, it isnt pedophillic it is ephebeophlic since the main characters are ages 15-19 so it cant be pedophillic. Second, I think the word sexualized is a bit wrong hear. one of the major ideas in kill la kill is shamefulness vs shamelessness, where in embarrassment of wearing a skimpy ungraded uniform (a metaphore for how "revealing" your self is a form of power rather then a form of weakness) makes you weak, while the lack of it makes you stronger. So the fanservice and nudity hear are like the nudity in sailor moon, not sexual, but metaphorical.

Also, for those who want feminist anime The tale of princess kaguya and Full moon, because no one saw them and i drives me insane.

Because sexualising teenagers is that much higher comparatively on the morality scale, isn't it? :-) Don't be obtuse, it's not cute. And I assure you the word pedophillia can be safely applied to sexual assault of 15-17 year olds, no one in a more practical setting would correct me on this.

Well, except for you, of course.

Please everyone (myself included), let's try to not make this too personal, yes?

itavin wrote:

The Rest of imaishi's anime presented an over the top representation of their genre's and concepts and B- that most of Imaishi's work weren't fanservice related and more epic scale's and over the top action.

Before Kill la Kill, he directed some Dead Leaves, Re: Cutey Honey, Gurren Lagann, and Panty and Stocking.

Those are all highly sexualized and most of them are wall to wall with "comedically" objectifying, but still very glam objectifying imagery and scenarios.

I love Re: Cutey Honey, but let's not pretend it's main job isn't to be sexy fun.

Gurren Lagann took the Gainax Bounce to its extreme. And, yes, that's a case of having its cake and eating it too.

If anything, he had a solid track record for putting over-sexualization at the fore in everything he'd directed. Which, can be an entirely valid choice. But, it's got to be owned, and it can and does affect other aspects of a show, including how genuinely empowering or respectful it is, or not, to certain portions of the audience or general population.

I'm not against him, or particularly, any of those series, but Panty & Stocking, Re CH, and Gurren are all fanservice-heavy. Incredibly so.

His followup to Kill la Kill was literally titled, Sex and Violence with Mach Speed.

SaigonAlice wrote:

Because sexualising teenagers is that much higher comparatively on the morality scale, isn't it? :-) Don't be obtuse, it's not cute. And I assure you the word pedophillia can be safely applied to sexual assault of 15-17 year olds, no one in a more practical setting would correct me on this.

There probably is a discussion worth having (and having again) re what kind of sexuality teenagers have, and if and how it should be expressed in entertainment, but both the authors and the audiences need to keep in mind that everything has potential benefits and potential costs. The cost of delving into teenage sexuality, something anime, as much of it is traditionally aimed at children-to-young-adults (it is, yo), does often explore, has to be weighed before production, but also, every time we engage as an audience. It'd be hypocritical of us, on an Utena board, to pretend it away or hand wave it off. And, it would probably be hypocritical of us, to pretend that it isn't sometimes a very useful and affecting component.

Touga and his new father, in another anime, with the exact same animation, could've been a "romantic" scene. I wouldn't have put it past any number of productions.

There is an argument that, in the movie, when Utena and Anthy lie down, and there's the sound of a zipper, that's a sexual cue too far, for a movie about fourteen year olds. Simultaneously, no fourteen year olds were actually involved in the process until the point of audience, and those fourteen year olds probably know that sometimes people lie down and a zipper comes undone, and that means something.

We can't make this into a clear-cutting exercise, but we can't wave it off, either.

My big beef is this whole, sexualization of women's bodies, using women's bodies as statements or metaphors or ways to enhance motifs or meanings that have nothing to do with women's desires, goals, and struggles... is often just as much objectifying women's bodies as it is to just straight up use them to titillate male fans.  You're using our bodies, or representations of them, as tools. 

If it was less common, then it wouldn't be a problem.  But it's damn near everywhere in western comics and anime. Your point may be some grand existential metaphor or allegory for how you personally and usually quite narrowly define female empowerment, but it's women's bodies you are using.  It's women's bodies being seen near CONSTANTLY in sexual contexts, having that be absorbed by male consumers.  That kind of repeated exposure to one type of idealized woman and constantly being gratified from it is at least one place where entitlement stems. 

And in doing this, the insecurity of young female consumers isn't considered (is this what I'm supposed to be? Is this what people want?).  Their comfort with with being portrayed as sexual, always always sexy no-matter what else, isn't considered.  What they might like to see instead isn't considered.  But those male consumers, who really really like the sexy?  Well, this anime may be ABOUT some really deep, pro-women stuff, but here are some half-naked dolls and pillows for them to ejaculate over.  Quite considerate. 

Surely their are other visuals you can use to tell your story, or impart your message.  I know for a fact there are other bodies. 

Also, there is difference between portraying sex, or nudity, and objectification/sexualization.  Someone else could go into better detail what those distinctions are and how to spot the difference, but most of my ability to do so honestly just comes from being a grown ass woman who identifies and experiences life as a woman, who has seen a lot of anime and is pretty familiar with the genre(s) shorthands.

Last edited by OnlyInThisLight (04-05-2017 07:24:38 PM)

YamPuff wrote:

Age does not matter to me much in the context of a cartoon. Cartoon characters don't have ages, they don't exist, they are drawings. I know an artist who used to draw obvious lolicon and state THE CHARACTER IS OVER 18 in each description. It's common for ages to be changed when anime & manga are westernized, with 14yo's becoming magically 18 so it's more palatable to western sensibilities. What matters to me more is the portrayal and context. For example, there's a yaoi manga were the uke is 18, but he drawn in every way to evoke the 'shota' aesthetic, with a body like a little girl and giant sparkly eyes. On the other hand, you have a josei or shoujo manga where the character is 15, looks her age and there might be a sex scene with her boyfriend. I'm sorry but between those two cases I choose the 'underage' one.

Back to Kill la Kill, if you dubbed it and changed their ages to 18 and said the school is a college, no one would ever know, it would look legit, and they could easily pass as 18.

I think there is also the question of at what point does fanservice or male-gaze-y shots make something not feminist? Generally the only point against Kill la Kill is the fanservice. Yet you would find a series with no fanservice that treats women like dolls, or fancy lamps, or of no importance at all. Does one point negate the other? (Again, not really arguing here that Kill la Kill IS a feminist piece, just using it because I think given the nature of the series, is polarizing and  a good point for argument)

You're....friends....with someone....who draws....child pornography....I'm speechless...a self proclaimed feminist is buddy buddy with a child pornographer holy shit.

I'm just going to let you know off the bat that I'm actualy seventeen, a minor, and any media, not just anime, portraying shitty fanservice of teenagers my age is fucking predatory and disgusting and almost exclusively for the entertainment of adult men.

I really wanted to see you adults as cool progressive role models. But I guess just like in the lyrics of Truth, just like what happened to the entire cast of Revolutionary Girl Utena (God, I can just taste that sweet irony) I as a teenager have been hugely disappointed by adults. Like Akio, you claim to be our sanctuary but you are no less of a poison than the rest. Thanks a lot.

Last edited by SaigonAlice (04-12-2017 04:35:28 AM)

I wrote a considered and nuanced response to this exchange, focusing on how youth is portrayed in media, and what constitutes maturity, but then I realized:

SaigonAlice wrote:

I really wanted to see you adults as cool progressive role models. But I guess just like in the lyrics of Truth, just like what happened to the entire cast of Revolutionary Girl Utena (God, I can just taste that sweet irony) I as a teenager have been hugely disappointed by adults. Like Akio, you claim to be our sanctuary but you are no less of a poison than the rest. Thanks a lot.

...that I'm the Akio in this comparison. So...fair, I guess.

You are entitled to your righteous anger, of course, but please understand that you shut down any dialogue this way. Learning and growing is a two way street, and if you care to try and reach any of us so called poisonous adults, you have to try and do better by us than comparing us to Akio. Believe it or not, a lot of us aren't very far from where you are, and at least remember our time as minors pretty clearly. You can demonize us based on age, but that will just incline us to do the same, and ends in arguments we've all no doubt had or seen before, that no one learned anything from.

You're on an Utena forum. We are, most of us, radically progressive, and most of us have stood where you are, burning adults at the stake for things they clearly don't understand. Now we're the adults. We didn't stop feeling the way you do. We didn't drop our pink hats and outrage to start grabbing 14 year olds and shooting black people. You're a year from majority, is that your plan? Or might it be that things are complicated and adults aren't only sanctuary or sinner?

We're all here to talk. We are all here to listen.

I love the varied nature of responses in this thread, lately, though I agree with some and do, I admit, shudder at some others. But, I think both the more reductive we get with this, and the more defensive we get, the less we can actually healthily consider or discuss. And, these are things worth discussing, and worth considering, passionately, but fairly, and with room to expand our horizons if the situations calls for it.

SaigonAlice wrote:

And if we're talking about the home country of lolicon / shotacon / general content sexualising high schoolers then hooooooooo boy its bad. I'm just going to link to this article for this one (and finally, something more empirical).

Again, anglophone comics are not remotely free from pedophilic content or other sexualization of underage characters. Nor, is the rest English-language entertainment in other mediums.

It's easy to play this off as a Japanese problem, or something unique to that wacky foreign land, but I think that's a mistake and essentially hypocritical. We've made two movies in English from a novel that's explicitly and grotesquely about child abuse and child rape, and both times Lolita has been filmed, it's been shifted from nightmarish to explicitly erotic.

A language-culture that provides the world with 4chan on a regular basis, really can't cast too many stones, but then, most language-cultures thriving today can do so without opening their own sins to the light. As malna said, Japan may not be solely at fault here, for a global and historic issue.

CNN, for that matter, has a history of fear-mongering and broadly inaccurate coverage of sex in Asia, that's been commented on, widely, for years. That article linked, takes over two thirds of its allotted space to bother clarifying that a $3.6 billion dollar industry has only a small subsection that presents pedophilic content, which, when we talk about any multimillion (or multi-billion) dollar industry is going to be true.

Japan has its problems. Manga has its problems. But, the reason many readers from English-language countries and communities go straight to loli or whatever, is because that's what we see scanlated or posted repetitively online and it sticks in your head, not because it reflects general content overall. It's the same reason most American or British anime fans don't think of Doraemon or the other genuine big deal anime right off the bat, while pretty much anyone in Japan would.

Dr Bryce's quotes, especially towards the end, are sound, but they're also given no grounding or context. That's dangerously substandard reporting, but it's entirely in line with how CNN has traditionally treated Asian cultures in these kinds of articles.

Bryce's actual work and publications offer a very different perspective than the one being painted by the scare tactics of that article, including where more specifically critical of cultural or business aspects of manga and anime. Her concerns, fall in line with what OITL was saying,

OnlyInThisLight wrote:

My big beef is this whole, sexualization of women's bodies, using women's bodies as statements or metaphors or ways to enhance motifs or meanings that have nothing to do with women's desires, goals, and struggles... is often just as much objectifying women's bodies as it is to just straight up use them to titillate male fans.  You're using our bodies, or representations of them, as tools.

SaigonAlice wrote:

We were talking in the context of anime, since this is an anime thread, so for that specific moment I was talking about Anime and the home country it's produced by. Please don't assume that I have any less harsh opinions of Western child pornography, because I don't. It's equally horrendous.

Also hey, If you read my response to YamPuff I actually do talk about the cultural imperialism of the West, the unfair and one-sided Western lens! I'm well aware of this! But I'd like to double-take on that and say that there is a point in which you SHOULD be able to judge another culture and it's when there is actual, real live harm to people is being done and when there are parallels of that kind of shittiness between that culture and your own...

...Thinking about it, there really shouldn't be a dichotomy to this in the first place. We SHOULD be able to condemn both child pornography in America and Japan equally, the Whaling in Japan and the introduction of Whaling to Japanese by Americans, the classism of Caitlyn Jenner and the deadnaming of her by Transphobic assholes. etc. etc. People often think that if you're against a single issue you're not against the other, and that's bull.

I'm not accusing you of that, but you chose wording and perspectives that lend itself it that kind of imbalanced perspective.

"[T]he home country of lolicon / shotacon / general content sexualising high schoolers," is your phrase, and that's a leading statement, if nothing else. It's absurd to call Japan "the home country of lolicon/shotacon/general content sexualizing high schoolers" when this is, essentially, a global phenomenon. That Japan has a name for "lolicon," (derived from an American novel's title) does not make them "the home country" in any form. English also has names for these things. As does German, Korean, and pretty much any other language you care to name. It's dangerously deceptive to label Japan "the home" of these things.

You have some very good points, that I don't want to be obscured or poisoned by this kind poor reasoning, or by the generally confrontational and somewhat imperious attitude you're adopting in this thread. Many of us, in-thread, don't see eye to eye, but hopefully we can maintain decorum enough to converse functionally, and we can maintain individual integrity in expressing ideas.

No one wants this thread to turn into an attack on another poster. And, no one wants the thread to deadlock because anger or miscommunication. We're not making moral judgments of you, but at this point, two mods have asked you to tone down your reactions to other posters.

Decrescent Daytripper wrote:

"[T]he home country of lolicon / shotacon / general content sexualising high schoolers," is your phrase, and that's a leading statement, if nothing else. It's absurd to call Japan "the home country of lolicon/shotacon/general content sexualizing high schoolers" when this is, essentially, a global phenomenon. That Japan has a name for "lolicon," (derived from an American novel's title) does not make them "the home country" in any form. English also has names for these things. As does German, Korean, and pretty much any other language you care to name. It's dangerously deceptive to label Japan "the home" of these things.

I'm sorry, but I genuinely don't understand what you're talking about. I was talking about specifically Japanese-produced Lolicon (or Shotacon) Anime / Manga as well as the various Harem Ecchi Anime / Manga with High School Settings. Unless you're talking about the global consumption of such media, which is a good point. Uncritical consumers are just as reprehensible as producers in this respect.

Decrescent Daytripper wrote:

You have some very good points, that I don't want to be obscured or poisoned by this kind poor reasoning, or by the generally confrontational and somewhat imperious attitude you're adopting in this thread. Many of us, in-thread, don't see eye to eye, but hopefully we can maintain decorum enough to converse functionally, and we can maintain individual integrity in expressing ideas.

No one wants this thread to turn into an attack on another poster. And, no one wants the thread to deadlock because anger or miscommunication. We're not making moral judgments of you, but at this point, two mods have asked you to tone down your reactions to other posters.

I'm sorry but I'm also not that sorry? I mean I've obviously flown off the handle multiple times in this thread, resorted to personal insults and in general was over-emotional. I apologise for this. But at the same time, an issue like Pedophillia should be something that somebody will have to be confrontational about. People should feel uncomfortable about discussing it.

And maybe other people can keep an impassive distance to an honest to god awful issue like this (and Kudos to them! It's admirable that they can compartmentalise their emotions so neatly like that. I'd kill for that much control.) but please forgive me if can't.

Also, I didn't realise I was still being imperious or otherwise unpleasant after my exchange with YamPuff and If I was then I again I apologise. I'll promise to tone it down and I appreciate the patience you guys are showing me.

YamPuff wrote:

And I don't disagree with anything you said about child pornography being gross and wrong.

The point I was trying to make, is that a cartoon character's age is a weird thing. Take this visual for example. Who do you think is the oldest?

http://i68.tinypic.com/21al9io.jpg

On the left is the mom of a teenage daughter, followed by an 18 year old boy and the last is a mere 16 year old girl.

So I'm not going to clutch my pearls over what the author, or dubber, or translator says the age is, or changes the age to be. For me, it is about content and context. The 18 year old boy above is the star of a manga that, as I mentioned before, is meant to evoke the shota aesthetic even though is he '18' and it is a gross and problematic and, imo, pedophilic manga regardless of the character's 'age'.

Anyways, apologies for continually going off the 'feminist anime' topic!

That's a good point that I apologise for ignoring.

And... I probably ignored it because I thought you were going for the weird age relativism argument some creeps on MMOs were expressing, (flagrantly offtopic stuff ahead) [where Age and Emotional/Sexual Maturity are relative and that international restrictions on what constitutes minor or adult were arbitrary. Which is admittedly, true. But their obvious intentions with such information were to hit on under 18 girls.  And mind you this is the same crowd of people who refuse to believe Gender is a flexible social concept so uh. Dissonance much?
]

But anyway something like that is definitely on the creator. Like, plastering the 2000 year old age label on a prepubescent looking Dragon God Girl (cringe) ? That's being facetious.

Also I really appreciate you coming back to the discussion after my shitty outburst.

Sparky wrote:

YamPuff's argument reminded me of this image.

http://i.imgur.com/5CG9Uhv.jpg

I'd definitely be more concerned about someone who's attracted to the character on the right than someone attracted to the character on the left. Canon ages when it comes to drawn fictional characters are often kinda... questionable.

On the other hand though even in real life there are minors who look mature for their age who still need to be protected from predatory people, and legal adults who look kind of underdeveloped and I think they'd find it pretty insulting to be told that anyone who's attracted to them is a pedophile. So it's kind of a confusing issue. I guess it's really mostly a problem if someone is actually fetishizing underage looking characters, even if they're using canon ages to deflect criticism. Like if they're exhibiting a pattern of being attracted to "loli" and/or "shota" type characters then yeah, they're probably a pedophile. I don't know how we can solve this problem though, aside from just avoiding creepy people like that-- but that isn't really a solution I guess. Banning those types of characters from pornographic works would probably be a good start though.

^ Hehe, saving that image for future use!