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I'm a little creeped out over the sexualization of minors in Anime
- Thread starter Lady Bow
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I was talking media more in general tbh sorry should probably have clarified that more. As for a series i think shows teenage issues well that is oriented towards teenagers I think of the norwegian series skam(shame) that is being adapted into several languages as we speak.
Midnight is worse than Mineta for me because she is an adult and a teacher.
Which is depressing because there are still way better picks in that category. Dragon Ball Z was the king of that category for a long time, especially for western viewers - standards have really dropped off a cliff, apparently.
Yeah I'm not down with that shit. I've become much more selective of which anime shows I watch because so many of them just creep me the hell out.
Heck, even One Punch Man creeped me out whenever that little witch girl with the short dress was on screen. I remember someone on GAF telling me she's actually 26 years old... LOL, well she looks like she's about 10.
Lol. Speaking of ProZD, I've watched a couple of his anime recommendations and they have really been on point so far, as far as being good shows with no/minimal fanservice bullshit:
(If any of those shows do have fanservice issues please let me know so I can cross them off my to-watch list.)
Heck, even One Punch Man creeped me out whenever that little witch girl with the short dress was on screen. I remember someone on GAF telling me she's actually 26 years old... LOL, well she looks like she's about 10.
Lol. Speaking of ProZD, I've watched a couple of his anime recommendations and they have really been on point so far, as far as being good shows with no/minimal fanservice bullshit:
(If any of those shows do have fanservice issues please let me know so I can cross them off my to-watch list.)
Funny thing is, Midnight actually has an actual motive for teaching - it's shown in the Illegals spin-off manga that she wanted to become a teacher to help the youth, since she believes many criminals and villains are born of teenagers who couldn't let it all out while they were young. I bet she teaches sex ed.
Also, Illegals shows her in a sharply-dressed secretarial outfit, so she doesn't just wear her hero uniform all the time.
It's "bad" in the sense that I don't wanna watch anime shows that feature it. If I wanna see tits & ass I'll watch an HBO series.
Nope. Those are all solid choices.
I'd personally add Natsume's Book of Friends and Humanity has Declined to a list of recommendations.
Had never seen anything related to Made in Abyss prior to this thread, but after seeing so many people jump to it's defense in here I just had to know. Just spent some time watching summaries on it and while the story seems... alright, that artwork and stuff that happens to some of the child characters is absolutely the fucked up type of child-based fan service this thread is talking about. I genuinely don't see how anyone can defend this one.
Let me be the one to quickly defend the indefensible by saying there is pure hot blowfish sushi poison in the manga, but a skilled chef cut out almost all of it from the anime adaptation. Despair and (non-sexual) cruelty are central themes in the emotionally-powerful story made by adults for adults.
It's not a matter of how integral the less than savory aspects are to the story, it's more an incredibly subjective tolerance of how much you can compartmentalize away in order to experience the rare gem of everything else.
They were cool in the beginning, but I kind of stopped listening to them after they completely misread Inuyashiki.
Whether that's true or not is still technically up for debate. The only real evidence we have for or against is a crime rate drop which may be a case of shifting demographics rather than correlation equaling causation. Anything relating to actual human psychology has been... mixed. The tentative conclusion seems to be "may act as an outlet, but is still unhealthy".
Though keep in mind this is about straight up porn rather than mainstream anime. So if it is actually true, the balancing act of normalization vs outlet has kind of been super skewed which is probably only going to cause more harm in the long run.
It's also interesting to note this seems to be the mainstream view among the industry in Japan. Pretty much the ENTIRE industries of gaming, manga and anime all came out against the Tokyo Metropolitan Ordinance, and that didn't even criminalize this stuff, just had it properly labeled as 18+. Miura (author of Berserk) even drew a short comic of abstractly-drawn pedophiles going after abstractly drawn children (labeled as manga characters) with real children behind them, implying they were preventing them from getting to the real children. I think that page was posted on Era, but I can't find it now.
The opposite is the mainstream view if the reaction to the Tokyo Ordinance is anything to go by. See my response to Messofanego above.
Honestly, I think humor is a big part of it. Japan seems to be really weird about this where "sex is funny!" is a legit all-ages thing over there in the same way slapstick is an all-ages humor thing elsewhere.
Well that's good to hear at least, as everything I was looking into about it was taken from the manga, not the anime. So at least some of this stuff got stripped away during the transition.
Either way, I can absolutely understand that something like this can be used to great effect in a story that's based around concepts like you described; but to hand wave them the way other people in this thread have as not being fanservice or being ok because it's "just kids being kids" is a horrible attempt to normalize what they're reading/watching.
I feel like the kids being kids quote there is referring to me so I'll lay out what I'm on about again in plain terms. Sexuality can be done well for teenage characters like Momo in the op, but most shows just use it for titillation, her attire and screenshots in point. I don't think having a sexy character who is a teenager is inherently intended to appeal to pedophiles. There is validity to sexy content marketed to teens who are going through puberty. Does most anime do that well and in a tasteful way? I don't think so. Like I said in my first post, my problem is with the execution and perceived intent of such characters usually rather than their stated age, which is arbitrary.
Yeah, all of the icky sexual stuff is the main thing that turns me off anime. Pantsu, harems, "she's really a 1,000-year-old dragon." If your anime doesn't avoid things like this as much as possible, no thanks.
I did, and still do love Kobayashi, but.... man, I was not expecting sexual harassment of a male minor to be such a recurring theme as things went on :/ It feels like it came out of left field
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Maid Dragon? It's by a porn artist that does a ton of shota stuff, so it's not exactly unexpected. How it reached the mainstream is beyond me (I guess Kyoani helped?)
It's genuinely good and the shota harassment doesn't come up until like the 12th episode?
Lmao exaxtly what i saw reading that post. People that put wayyyyyy more thought into something than the original creator ever intended( DBZ fans are notorious for this).
There was this documentary on Channel 4 UK called "The Paedophile Next Door" (on Netflix) that showed pedophiles viewing child pornography, real or fictional, would more likely want to commit child rape cause it's not enough so they want to act on their desires. What does work are counselling and treatment programs, support groups for pedophiles, like "Dunkelfeld" in Germany or Circles in UK.
It's kinda nuts how anime doesn't just sexualize the shit out of its female characters, but it also almost always puts a pedophilic spin on it.
Look at this little girl, she's a adorable SHES 23 AND HITS ON OLDER MEN
Look at this junior highschooler... in a bikini ...bouncing her breasts....
Look at this shapely young woman in a bikini. Ok... Kinda creepy bu- SHES THIRTEEN, WATCH HER BEND OVER
Fucking why?
Look at this little girl, she's a adorable SHES 23 AND HITS ON OLDER MEN
Look at this junior highschooler... in a bikini ...bouncing her breasts....
Look at this shapely young woman in a bikini. Ok... Kinda creepy bu- SHES THIRTEEN, WATCH HER BEND OVER
Fucking why?
man i really hated attack on titan for the longest time but kudos to that show for having zero fanservice and near-zero romance period
blows my mind that shippers exist for that series when it's so void of any of that stuff canon-wise
blows my mind that shippers exist for that series when it's so void of any of that stuff canon-wise
I remember reading an interview with the guy who does Etryan Oddyssee art, where irrc he admits he doesn't like drawing anything moe-like, and he only does it for work.
I can't find the interview anymore, so take it with a cup of salt.
Yeah, as a woman it makes me especially frustrated and uncomfortable and the fact that some many anime fans make excuses and encourage that behavior makes me sick to my stomach
I think the problem comes mostly from this weird culture of japanese media like anime, manga and videogames that has an unspoken rule that protagonists have to be teenagers, which leads to the problem that when adding the sex appeal (which the japanese are hardly the only ones who shove down sexualized designs) means the teens will be sexualized, it's been done for so long that basically they just have come to accept it like how westerners just accept "Sex sells" when it comes to adults.
I predict it will keep happening unless the trend starts to shift towards shows with casts of Adults.
I predict it will keep happening unless the trend starts to shift towards shows with casts of Adults.
Hmm I mean how often are we subjected to work we don't like? Often right.
I'm going to like more into this but there really doesn't seem to be any discourse vocal/public discourse.
its hard as hell to not find anime these days without some bullshit fan service.
Probably why I only recomend so few. Like Hunter X Hunter or One Punch Man.....even then, I think one punch has some fan service.....god damn it.....why does every anime need this shit!
Probably why I only recomend so few. Like Hunter X Hunter or One Punch Man.....even then, I think one punch has some fan service.....god damn it.....why does every anime need this shit!
Mob Psycho is full of fanservice.
As in, every scene with Reigen is so good that it may as well be called fanservice.
Yeah I remember that, they're not always right, but they're still a pretty helpful site for those who watch anime casually.
I can't in all honesty look at Yoko Littner and say "yep that's a 14 year old". It's the complete opposite of "little girl is 1000 year old" trope. Often times it feels like labeling these characters as minors is just a formality because of the fixation on junior high settings.
So I see this just straight up turned into an anti-fan service thread... at least it shed the "teen but not really a teen" pretense. Sucks really because the prepubescent visualization is uncalled for bullshit and needs to be called out, but I guess it's impossible to actually bring that up without the anti sexuality mob coming in complaining about any and all fan service.
I did start an episode into MiA. Disappointed from what I've read here. Not sure if I want to go further.
Edit - actually franxx is a perfect example. They don't look like kids, the story so far doesn't really call for them to be kids (though hints at some stuff). Yeah it is weird how anime has been using the same hypersexualized designs for decades but over the last 10ish years has insisted now to call all the characters teens. Not that I care personally.. ultimately it will likely trend back out to something else is my guess.
I did start an episode into MiA. Disappointed from what I've read here. Not sure if I want to go further.
Yeah all of Franxx drivers are kids...... suuuuuurrreee.. Trigger gonna Trigger :p
Edit - actually franxx is a perfect example. They don't look like kids, the story so far doesn't really call for them to be kids (though hints at some stuff). Yeah it is weird how anime has been using the same hypersexualized designs for decades but over the last 10ish years has insisted now to call all the characters teens. Not that I care personally.. ultimately it will likely trend back out to something else is my guess.
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I've seen it. IIRC, they even mention in the documentary a lot about pedophilia and effects regarding fictional depictions is inconclusive due to the lack of documentation with that and paraphilia in general. Other studies like those by Patrick W. Galbraith are firmly in the outlet camp whereas organizations like CASPAR are in the encouragement camp.
At the very least, it's a good thing more studies are being done on it if it can protect children.
Though I haven't read the manga and can't compare just how much is cut in comparison to the anime, there's still plenty downright peodphile garbage in the anime that should be impossible to overlook. I say 'should' because I've argued with many people who saw legit nothing wrong there.
Even if one does put the sexualization of minors aside, which you begrudgingly have to do if you want to continue watching the show for its excellence in many areas, one is probably going to realize that the author additionally takes delight in putting children through some unspeakable torture...
From the rare manga impression I read here and there I won't make it far into a second season, no matter how excellent the direction and co. might be. A pity. Most shows featuring even just low amounts of fanservice are crap to begin with and it therefore rarely affects me, but MiA is mostly rather good but then tainted massively by the above.
I kinda want to make thread with the help of ERA to find anime without to little problematic fan service.
Or someone else
Or someone else
Girls can develop early so you can't always tell age just by how developed they are. But anime does do that weird thing where they make characters creepily young when they don't have to be.
Edit: Also it's weird how they have such young girls be provocatively dressed when a lot of girls that age wouldn't feel comfortable being dressed that way.
I'm watching this show now, and it's really kinda bothering me. The rest of the show is really wholesome, well animated, and seems pretty self-aware, but all of those plotlines seem so strange and kind of hard to watch. It's a real shame, but stuff like this is very present throughout the whole genre, and really hurts my appreciation of dozens of shows
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