Never forget, most of these kids are 15-16. They can't even drive a car in most countries. Yet them being sexualised is different from other shows for reasons that are definitely not people wanting to ignore that a show they like is problematic.
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As an anime fan, its unsettling/disturbing how many people defend lolicon
- Thread starter DragonSJG
- Start date
I used to love anime when it was rare for US cable tv. SciFi would have Akira and stuff on randomly, then Cartoon Network and G4. But now that I can watch a lot of it I just can't get interested, partly because there's so many with creepy kids in it.
For nostalgia I tried to find out what movie that I couldn't remember the name (Iria) of that SciFi had on it and I found a treasure trove of nostalgic movies. Now to see if Netflix has some of these.
https://www.listchallenges.com/anime-shown-on-syfy
I didn't catch a lot of these with how cable tv was with no DVR type programing to catch them easily, especially since it seemed random when they would air anime from what I remember.
For nostalgia I tried to find out what movie that I couldn't remember the name (Iria) of that SciFi had on it and I found a treasure trove of nostalgic movies. Now to see if Netflix has some of these.
https://www.listchallenges.com/anime-shown-on-syfy
I didn't catch a lot of these with how cable tv was with no DVR type programing to catch them easily, especially since it seemed random when they would air anime from what I remember.
I don't see how "easy" explanations are useful or productive. They're certainly not the way to approach any sort of meaningful cultural study. Calling a spade a spade gives us no insight into the mechanics of what's going wrong. Instead it lets us wash our hands of the problem and sit pretty in our self-righteousness. This just isn't how sociology works.
The show sexualizes her in brief instances, its most pronounced moment being one of the rare instances in which it actually does something with its visualization as opposed to the constant leering at Asuka.
Amazon Prime Video has Iria and a lot of other classic anime from that era.
Oh nice, I have that. Thanks.
It's amazing how wide spread anime is these days. It's great.
The difference is the same reason why I wouldn't call someone a pedophile for liking Jotaro Kujo in Part 3. He's 17, but there's nothing about his design or character indicative of that. In the case of MHA, it's still sketchy as the characters can still be read as teenagers and that carries actual weight to the story, but considering the series's art style, it's not necessarily an underage body being sexualized. I assume it's the same reason why adults playing teens can be sexualized: the characters, while underage, are not physically depicted as underage.
BUT that doesn't mean that as long as the character look like they could be adults, that there's no problem (see Born Sexy Yesterday aka the inverse 1000 year old dragon)
Unrelated to anime, but a possible explanation for why some people are into lolicon material (physical attraction aside).
Born Sexy Yesterday
Born Sexy Yesterday
There's more to consider than just the design itself. The context, presentation, and messaging (intentional or otherwise) behind it are all important. Like people stated earlier in the thread, viewers are generally fine with teenagers in CW shows being sexualized, but they're not comfortable with Archie dating his teacher in Riverdale. While the character has the body of an adult, the fact that he is underage the changes the nature of the relationship. When John Connor gets intimate with Cameron in the Sarah Connor Chronicles it's two characters exploring their sexuality. When Archie or Ben get intimate with Ms. Grundy in Riverdale, it's a predatory relationship.
On shonen series: they are generally pretty good at not having lolicon content (Seven Deadly Sins/Fairy Tail aside), but they often fail miserably at presentation and messaging, which is awful considering that they are targeted at young teens and serve as gateway animes in the west. While the discussion of whether or not children should be exposed to sexual content is a midfield, I think it's important to show children that sexuality is normal and universal and complicated and human and not something to be ashamed of, and I think that exposure, if done well, can be a great tool in that process.
But so often, shonens present sexuality as misogynistic and predatory, justifying and encouraging the harassment of women while downplaying their discomfort and fetishizing their experience and trauma. I opened chapter 2 of a new manga called Fake Rebellion out of curiosity this week, and the second page had a teenage girl accidentally flashing her underwear at the protagonist(?) male, who responds by saying "who would care about that." It's not just the fact that the panel is voyeuristic and predatory specifically for the reader; it's also that the male character never has to engage with or acknowledge what he saw. In shonen, the protagonist is usually either a predator or functionally asexual, but almost never someone who has to grapple with sexuality in a way that's either healthy or positive: Either they're predators who get a slap on the wrists, or they're lucky bastards who stand idle while the series pretends sexual assault and harassment are normal occurrences that are best ignored and glossed over.
Even Hero Academia is guilty of this at times. The only shonen I can think of that maybe gets this right is Chainsaw Man. Despite having a main character whose goal is often to (naively) get intimate with the other female characters, the manga always brings him back down and forces him and the reader to confront and grapple with the fact that sexuality and intimacy are about more than just physical attraction/contact, while rarely if ever, objectifying the female characters, even if the main character does at times.
At this point this post probably sounds off topic, but I think something important to keep in mind is that a lot of people who are into lolicon material, probably didn't pick up those anime because they already had an interest.
This is just my own opinion, but more often than not, (least for people outside Japan) they were trained by anime to consider the content okay. People have already posted about how they were fine with the content while they were younger, but were put off by it as they grew up; but what about the people who didn't drop the medium? The people who kept reading or watching those series that taught that it's okay to objectify characters and and art of minors, that the sexual assault to fine, that the characters' age doesn't matter too much, that they shouldn't find their attraction to said content unusual or deserving of criticism etc. It's a slippery slope of gateway anime like shonens that pull in people who never had an attraction to begin with, and once they do, they don't want to admit that their fetish isn't healthy and shouldn't be spread.
tldr: there's more to consider than just the age or appearance of the character. Shonens and other series seemingly innocent series have their own issues with sexuality and sexual objectification that can set people down a path towards becoming and justifying/defending lolicons and/or pedophiles.
Who is saying that MHA isn't problematic? I am a big fan of MHA and I will be the first to say that it has a series of issues when it comes to some of its female character designs.
OP
OP
Instant eyebrow raiser to me. And immediate side eye to anyone that uses it.
It's a tough case tbh. A lot of us Zoomers were literally children (still are) growing up with these anime so it didn't really rub me the wrong way unless it was some wild shit like Prison School/Queen's Blade/etc that you know damn well you can't be watching around family.
I'm sex positive and personally don't have a problem with sexualization of characters or fanservice as long as everybody's like 17-18+ but even I've been falling out of love with anime. Like it's really immersion breaking and draining whenever Mineta's given screentime. And then the ridiculous fanservice of the 1-A girls is just mind numbing. Even after being normalized to it, shit's just jarring. At least in Fire Force everyone's adults except Iris. But MHA characters fresh out of middle-school come on son. I'm so glad Demon Slayer hasn't had anything horrid yet.
Even original work that's pretty tame gets fanserviced up in it's anime adaption (i.e; 5toubun no Hanayome)
Sadly the anime industry, just like every other industry, gaming or what have you. Suffers from greed. Instead of having something calm that'll be remembered in time we get some super duper sexualized trope filled nonsense filling the scene every season just for a quick buck/return on investment. Shounen definitely not safe from this shit OP. Stick to Slice of Life or Seinen's y'all.
I'm sex positive and personally don't have a problem with sexualization of characters or fanservice as long as everybody's like 17-18+ but even I've been falling out of love with anime. Like it's really immersion breaking and draining whenever Mineta's given screentime. And then the ridiculous fanservice of the 1-A girls is just mind numbing. Even after being normalized to it, shit's just jarring. At least in Fire Force everyone's adults except Iris. But MHA characters fresh out of middle-school come on son. I'm so glad Demon Slayer hasn't had anything horrid yet.
Even original work that's pretty tame gets fanserviced up in it's anime adaption (i.e; 5toubun no Hanayome)
Sadly the anime industry, just like every other industry, gaming or what have you. Suffers from greed. Instead of having something calm that'll be remembered in time we get some super duper sexualized trope filled nonsense filling the scene every season just for a quick buck/return on investment. Shounen definitely not safe from this shit OP. Stick to Slice of Life or Seinen's y'all.
OP
OP
For the last time, I'm not saying shonen doesn' have fanservice issues. I was saying it doesn't have lolicon stuff
Aye, my apologies. It was wrong of me to do that. You're right though Shonen avoids that loli shit like the plague for the most part.
Disturbing, as I only correlate the word with Nabokov's Lolita, as it's written many times.
