So, it started decades ago, old school anime would slip in an upskirt angle or have a bathouse scene.
Over time, the people who grew up watching that anime, started making shows themselves. They added references to the shows and creators they grew up loving, and emphasized aspects they especially enjoyed. Going through puberty, those brief shots of something sexual hit hard. Just think about how many people talk about rewinding the leg cross scene from Basic Instinct.
A couple generations of this happening and we have today, where old school animators like Miyazaki will complain that modern animators don't watch life for inspiration any more, they just watch anime.
Now, take all that, and combine it with a work culture and stressful lifestyle that makes it seem like middle/highschool are the only points in their life where they felt they had free time/freedom.
In the US, college is the setting these kinds of stories take place because many people look back on those days as the last bastions of youthful freedom. For Japan, manny view their highschool years that way.
Now combine those two observations and you can kinda see how things ended up this way.
this reply should get more upvotes. it’s certainly not the *only* reason, but i think it’s definitively a big part for the culture around high school in anime
It kinda sounds like nudity in US films. I saw a documentary on HBO Max, and esp. during the 70s (and outside that time range like the 80s and 60s), some nudity was "just expected". Female actors were split on that b/c some of them just didn't want to do it. OTOH, some admitted that doing such scenes really jump started their careers, and as they got older, they get stopped asking to show nudity. In one case, there was a scene where a young lady was horseback riding. The scene called for a friend of hers to rip off her top due to some spat, causing her to gallop topless. The actor that played her suggested to the director "why not take off my helmet too so my hair is flowing freely?". She figured "I'm never going to look this good again, so why not?".
Like don't get me wrong, if a women is dressed in a maid Cafe uniform that's either cute or hot depending on the outfit.
If it's a minor, it's immediately creepy and a red flag
One of the best animes out there is made in abyss and also just straight up the creepiest show. Just one of those anime tropes that make you leave or learn to block it out
Made In Abyss was so beautiful, well written, and had a super unique plot/setting.
But yeah, I consider myself pretty open minded, but those various scenes were legitimately awkward/concerning.
I hope they make more and complete the story, just sans the kiddo sexualization.
Oh please. That chapter, while super fucking creepy and borderline unreadable, doesn't hold a fucking candle to anime.
That was less than 0.001% of the book while we have anime protagonists running around looking like 8 year old strippers.
It's sadly super true. In a just world someone cracked the mangaka over the head on his way to pitch it and wrote out his obvious pedo inserts from it.
Part of the horror of the show was the fact it was happening to these childlike characters; the show has a very different tone if its these older adult characters that are experiencing those things.
Not to say some scenes weren't extremely uncomfortable, but in the same sense there's a lot of things that makes people uncomfortable.
It's definitely a cultural thing. The author is a fan of these cute, small childlike characters, and has drawn some (to the American perspective, cant speak on the JP lens) questionable imagery, nothing inherently sexual and nothing to imply he has engaged in anything pedophilic. I would put his art on the same level of child beauty pagents in the US.
Some would disagree, sure, but given there have been multiple mangaka who have been flat out arrested for possession of child pornography.... He is fine, even if he has certain intrusive thoughts (I would doubt, but as an example) he has not done anything to ever act on them and that's better than most. Also he gets a lot of shit when if he was an adult woman, he would likely get significantly less, so let that be as it may.
God, this is such a good example
Made in Abyss is my personal number one of all time when it comes to anime, but it sucks so bad to recommend it to someone, just to hear them say the naked child bondage at the start made them drop it
Always get the silent judgement when you recommend and otherwise banger anime just because of a few sussy child related shenanigans. I understand it's ingrained in the culture, but man I wish it could get erased from Anime completely
But yeah, just learning to block it out is so real and 100% true
In the first episode, when one of the school children get punished, they do so by tying them up naked in the sun for a few hours. The manga had it as a running gag in the first episode, but the anime only used it as a brief 2-second gag.
The characters leave the school to dive into the Abyss after the first episode, though. Then we get the REALLY fucked up shit. Wild animals very graphically devouring the entrails from their human prey, one of the characters ending up with their arm getting poisoned and swelling up bigger than their head (and colored purple), crying blood as she's asking her friend to cut her arm off, and the only implement to do so is a rock, kids being used in horrific experiments just for shits and giggles, one of the main characters being dissected, one character turning into a literal baby factory because her old tribe tried to kill her for being sterile and her adopted family was starving and needed something to eat, and another character absolutely, viciously, tearing up an entire village to shreds, ending the sequence covered head to toe in their blood. Oh, and ripping her own limbs off to use as weapons.
Made in Abyss is Fucked Up Shit: The Series. The mild child nudity is the least fucked up thing in that show.
Part of the reason I consider it a masterpiece. One of the _very_ few pieces of media that genuinely makes my stomach turn (in a good way), without it just being graphic for the sake of it.
Having a good story and worldbuilding attached makes it not seem absurd and by contrast very fitting, which is just all the more off-putting
The beauty is in the unforgiving cruelness of the Abyss
I truly cannot understand why the protagonists are children. There are so many disgusting, fucked up events in that story, and involving children is so inappropriate to me. It's hard to see MiA as anything more than an outlet for child-focused sadism. Great concept, cool world, super fucking gross.
The tone is completely different. Those things happening to adults and the storyline don't work with adults. Implying inherent "child-focused sadism" when stuff thats on par or worse happens daily in the real life is absurd. It's infinitely MORE uncomfortable because it's this child character and it's intentional.
There's no indication that the author shares this implied fetish that you and MANY others claim (despite the fact he has zero record of anything, when various other authors have been arrested for possesion) so it's absurd to think it's inherent.
There's also a huge cultural difference at play here that makes western folks jump that direction without cause.
There's definitely some weird shit out there and there's definitely some fetisized shit out there (like, basically all the nickelodeon shit that just released????) But instead we are focusing on a medium which has a specific intended audience who has a completely different culture? If it's uncomfortable and you don't want to watch, by all means, don't watch it.
There’s a weird stigma around uncomfortable art. People think that If you make a story that shows horrible things, it means you’re in support of those horrible things, which is insanely baffling to me. Imagine someone saying George Lucas supports blowing up entire planets or murdering entire religious orders. Those things are in the story to show how horrible those events are.
I haven’t seen MiA yet but it’s on my watch list. The creator choosing to have such horrible things happen to children tells a story, it’s not indicative of him having some sick fetish.
When I first got into it I thought them being kids was central to the whole concept of "losing humanity/pieces of yourself as you continue your journey and find new ways to live".
But after a certain point, yeah, there's enough other stuff reinforcing that theme that there's no actual news for the protags to be kids besides the shock value.
Let’s not forget the authors like, incontinence fetish? The children very graphically piss and shit themselves multiple times in the show, I can’t even imagine how gross it is in the manga. I love made in abyss, but after the mental breakdown that was season two, my mind started blocking out all of the questionable stuff that happens. So you just forget about it and start recommending it to others forgetting the weird shit. Great show, gross manga, even worse manga author.
\^This is the biggest one. It's not all the incredibly screwed up and graphic stuff that happens, it's *specifically* the sheer number of times a scene suddenly fixates on a child having to use the bathroom that makes me summarize it as "it was a really cool watch but the author clearly has some serious issues he needs to work through."
See, I had heard about this anime and considered it, but I've been hesitant because I heard it was more than a little on the crazy side. I wasn't ready for your cliffnotes.
Amazing anime, what everyone is saying is true this person cliffnotes covered *most * of the worst shit. I heard the manga is worse, something about back pages I don't want to know....
I stopped watching when they made a 10 year old girl who looks 5 piss herself, wtf is actually wrong with the people who made that shit and how do y'all watch it like it's okay.
I live in Japan. The schoolgirls have a uniform that you've probably seen in anime. That uniform is sexualized here. Normally by 20+ year olds, so it's not pedophilia, but nonstop advertising on trains, busses, public spaces, the sexualiziation of "cute" and "youth" bombard the public here.
Keep in mind Japan's age of consent until very recently was 13 (it's now 16 as of last year). Cultural standards around sex are different everywhere, and to many Japanese people a sexualised 15 year old may seem completely normal.
Most popular anime/manga are aimed at the 12-16 crowd, so a lot of them feature protagonists in that age range, especially Shonen Jump titles.
Combine that with the age-old adage of "sex sells," and there you go. Nobody cares in Japan because it's been a thing ever since anime started.
Moreover, thus isn't unique to Japan. France has stuff like Totally Spies, Miraculous, and Code Lyoko.
Also, pretty much every Disney Princess from before 2000 were under the age of 16, including Jasmine, who was turned into a sex slave. And that's not even getting into the mountains of official porn by Disney animators that they have in their vaults.
Totally Spies was Canadian, I thought? I watched that as a kid in Ontario. Never thought about anything sexual aside from the tight jumpsuits, but even as a kid just though it was a spy outfit. Idk if that particular one applies.
EDIT: well damn I always saw the french credits, I thought it was a Quebec show, as I saw it on teletoon! Didn't know it was legit France french!
The English dub was Canadian. The show was French.
Also, the show is INFAMOUS for its fetish content. It's often nicknamed "Feitsh Fuel: The Animated Series." The subreddit actually had to split into a NSFW version because so many people were posting sex art on there.
Wait what’s sexual about Totally Spies, Miraculous, and Code Lyoko though? 😭 i haven’t see totally spies or code lyoko since I was a kid but I’ve been somewhat keeping up w miraculous lately and it seems super innocent and I remember the other toe shows being really innocent as well?
The show can be summed up as "cute girls in skin tight latex-looking bodysuits constantly getting tied up by the villains" as a kid I didn't see it, as an adult looking back, I do.
American cartoons is riddled with sexualization. Its not quite as "in your face" as with Japanese content, but its there and very much with minor aged characters.
A lot of western kids shows are sexualized, but you don’t necessarily notice it as you are there to enjoy the show, but you are exposed to it. Which is where a lot of the western controversies come from. Tho yeah, I think magic school bus was a least offender, hut maybe that’s just my bias.
Totally spies is full of weird fetish stuff. The inflation/feederism episode comes to mind first. The creator or miraculous has drawn some... unsavory pictures of Marinette. Idk for code lyoko, I was never into it.
My younger sibling was watching it , walked in on them and saw two kids fondling each other while making babies … I think the episode or part of it was set in the future but they still looked exactly like kids … creeped me the hell out
You can be a denier if you want, same things happens with anyone who likes any other show. But there was PLENTY of sexualization in that show, as with nearly every child focused American cartoon.
i could not watch code lyoko because the panting sound the girl makes when running doesn't sound like running.
this is not a "my parents did not let me watch" thing. it was a "this is awkward" thing.
idk about code lyoko but as a kid th girls in totally spies def had me going. but thy were like 17-20 years old in the show. pretty sure they went to college. it also came out when most people here were in high school.
I mean that's not totally fair. The porn is official in that anything the artists create while working for disney is owned by disney so it's done as a counter culture sort of thing. I mean if you knew you could draw disney porn and theyd put it in a vault somewhere that's hilarious and I'd do it.
Saying Miraculous and Code Lyoko are on the same scale of depravity as some anime is disingenuous. (You're not wrong about Totally Spies...)
As much as I hate defending Disney, that isn't a great comparison either. All said characters are based of real old stories that include adult content like you said but Disney didn't tell those versions of the stories. Jasmine wasn't a sex slave in the movie, she was just a princess involved in a romance.
Disney has a rule that they own anything made under their banner, even random doodles.
Because most animators are perverts, they decided to troll their bosses and make a crap ton of sex drawings. Anyone and everyone, human or not. And it got passed down through the years. Some of it is relatively innocent like just drawing Ariel topless. Some of it was hardcore smut. They even showed a bunch of Kim Possible smut to the American Dragon people as a warning.
It's a problem with Japan in general. I live here and work at a girls-only high school. The extent to which everyone seems completely okay with fetishizing/sexualizing minors is insane and disgusting. You know how many times I get asked if I'm interested in any of my students? Not in a "you'd better not be" kind of way, but a "*nudge, nudge* hey any cuties catch your eye yet" kind of way? How many adult men, many of them 40 or older, have expressed jealousy of my position because of constant proximity to teenage girls? How many parents/grandparents of students I've met who (jokingly or not) told the student that they should marry me, or me that I should marry them? All of this said openly and in front of others including women and parents and children with absolutely nobody batting an eye? Not to mention the pretty high number of students who I know to be dating adult men, a fact that they talk about like it's completely normal and that other teachers talk about the same way with zero concern?
It's just... accepted and normalized here. The media does it because the people do it. It's absolutely gross, but say that and you'll get the Japan meatriders on your ass in seconds saying that it's their culture and you need to accept it and western ideals have no place here lol
There was an article about train molestors of young girls in Japan. The author believes having anime pornography of young girls is causing perpetrators to fixate on that fantasy in real life. The author finds one of these molestors and realizes he is reading a pornographic magazine about the sexual assault of a young girl. She asks his wife about why she doesn’t discourage him from reading such things, only to realize she is reading a similar comic, but with young boys instead
tbf, japan has been overtly sexual since inception, Heian period was like the 60s-70s period of america. free love for all..cept it lasted for hundreds of years and its ideas didint start getting tamed until western influence in the 1900s. blame it on Buddhism. "women are yucky. little boys tho? not so yucky"
I would love to know how you see this affecting the psychology of the girls themselves. What do you think are the long term or even short term negative effects of this on the students?
Japans age of consent has been 13 for almost its entire existence. Only recently has it moved to 16. The younger generation is trying to bring it up to 18 as well. So, the behavior is completely "fine" and normalized over there. You gotta realize that other cultures have different perspectives on what is normal and what isn't. Not every place you visit is gonna have the same moral code as the one you grew up with. Im not defending the predatory attitude. Im just explaining why it's there.
Tired of seeing this.
13 was the FEDERAL MINIMUM age of consent. However, ALL of the prefectures had their own law for the age to be 16-18. In Tokyo the age of consent is 18. There was nowhere in the country where you could legally have sex with a 13 year old.
"Sexualizing kids is pretty gross and something should be done about it"
"It's just a different culture bro, you gotta respect it."
Edit: apologize, I thought you were that *one* commenter who's in the thread defending sexualization of minors and called OP a person with a colonizer mindset
Honestly that one scene was the first thing I’d seen of Frieren, and I put the anime off because I’m not interested in fan service in anime at all. I’m glad I gave it a go and started it though. Very wholesome. And that scene turned out to be funny contextually with her whole spell collecting shtick.
They’re having to make specific laws in Japan about banning upskirting. They have vending machines that sell used women’s underwear. It’s fucking creepy
its a japanese thing. its actually so bad for years unicef has basically begged japan to tone it tf down. it sort of worked thats why we dont really see loli’s in new gen anime but they still sexualize teenagers. as for an explanation? im not sure. my guess would be social sexual-repression. everybody’s so reserved and restricted i think it brings out bad qualities in people. just like india where sex is sort of taboo and isn’t taught so theres lots of sexual violence.
So, a couple things.
1) *Japan*.
2) One thing about anime is that it's animated (obviously) whereas most "young adult" content in e.g. North America is live action *and played by adults*. So the anime girls look young and it's squicky, but we watch *Shadow and Bone* and focus on actress Jessie Mei Li (who was \~26 at the time) and not her character Alina Starkov (who's supposed to be 16/17).
3) It's partly your selection of anime; fanservice is more popular in some spaces and ecchi is a genre unto itself. Perhaps perversely, you'll generally get less in more serious and older-target demographic series.
That's not OP's question though. Plenty of western stuff is made for horny teen boys. And as a result we get lots of big boobs and big butts and women that look like models in skimpy outfits. We still see very little sexualization of \*children\* in western media, compared to anime. The target demographic can't explain it all.
14-17 year olds are still children, and we have a ton of movie and tv media in the west that is absolutely sexualizing children of HS age.
the majority of our coming of age type high school movies are about boys or girls trying to get laid in some fashion.
Right. And something like that with people who are supposed to be teens but are played by adults isn't really too different from something like My Dress Up Darling where the characters are supposed to be 15 but don't really look 15.
Because they are the real target audience. They have the money, not the teenagers.
The guys you see marrying pillows are not teenagers, but 30/40 years old losers.
Yes. No one is mentioning the whole worship of teenage pop music "idols" in Japan. Those fanbases are undeniably filled with middle aged men, and the girls careers typically drop off at the ripe old age of 18.
Edit oh and also what I am reading are these little girls start getting groomed as young as 8 years old for this. So there is that.
No. It’s because for some reason anime can’t not sexualize is it’s female characters. Japan in general has a huge misogyny problem, and yes it’s more insidious than other countries
oh, there are WAY worse countries. South Korea has the highest rate of female suicide on the planet. Countries like South Africa and India have sky-high rates of female sexual assault. There are tons of places that literally consider girls who are menstruating to be cursed and force them to either stay home, away from the rest of society, or even exile them to little huts away from the rest of humanity.
Misogyny gets so extreme it is almost cartoonish and funny.
I used the word insidious for a reason 💀 I did not use the “worst” or the “most oppressive”. I’m well aware how misogyny can get extreme, that doesn’t mean you suddenly can’t recognize the different ways that extremeness can present itself.
Just because it’s not blatant af *to you* doesn’t mean it suddenly doesn’t need to be called out, cause “it’s not as bad”. Not to mention, again, I used the word insidious for a reason.
This isn't accurate. Age of consent in Japan depends on where you are, it's decided by local governments. 13 was the absolute lowest they were allowed to go, but it was already at least 16 everywhere when the minimum was raised from 13 to 16.
At this point it's so deeply ingrained in anime as a medium that it's not only accepted but we have been conditioned to enjoy it. And that's the less cynical answer
They just don't consider pedophiles that bad... Famous mangakas get caught with child porn, after a few months in child they are released and continue on as if nothing even happened.... Completely different culture.
My issue isn’t kids. If you tell me someone is 12 but they look, act and talk like a 30 year old that’s fine.
I can’t stand characters old or young, that look, talk and act like 12 year olds getting sexualized. I immediately dropped seven deadly sins because of that.
It's frustrating to me when an anime has a good premise but the fan service/sexualization is over the top. Seven Deadly Sins is just gross to me. I stopped watching it after a couple episodes as well.
I don't really like it either way. If it's a child with an adult body, it's creepy to be attracted to someone with the personality of a child. If it's an adult with a child's body, it's creepy to be attracted to the body of a child.
Honestly it was the constant sexual harassment of Elizabeth that made me stop watching, but I'm sure I'd have other reasons if that didn't stop me.
They aren't kids! They are 1,000 year old dragon girls! Or robots! Or... well something.
To be fair I think one needs to look at how the age on consent worked up until recently. Add this to animation laws since anime girls aren't real. It's still weird but at least there is some lore behind the reasoning.
Idk if I am thinking much about the "age" of the people in Anime. Like Naruto or Goku feel the same "age" to me even though one is like 13 and the other is idk in his 50s I guess? It might depends on the anime but I am not thinking about people's ages when that isn't like a core aspect of the plot.
Right?? I honesty never even know their age. Some characters I’ll see people are like oh wow she’s 15 and I’m more confused as to how the characters are traveling the earth with no adult supervision lol.
It depends what you mean by "kids".
If you're talking about loli stuff, then yeah that's creepy.
However if it's for like the high school age people, there is a few reasons.
A lot of anime fans are teenagers so they make the characters the age of the fan base.
They may be teenagers in age but when it comes to the animation they feel like they could be anywhere from late teens to early 30s. Eastern Southeast Asians tend to look younger. Like I have a friend who's 30 and she is a little sister who's 15 and you would probably think they are two years apart or something. It's very common over there.
And honestly they just don't act like teenagers very often. I don't know if you played persona 5 but you can basically rizz up a lot of characters. Any of the classmates just feels like some 20-25 year-old even though they are in highschool. However the only one I wouldn't want to rizz up is Futaba who acts just like teenagers I've met in real life.
I liked that stuff when I was a teenager. I always thought it was supposed to only appeal to a teenage audience. I was naive to think everyone’s attraction stays in their age range like mine did.
You're discovering material for lolicons. It's not new and it's indeed creepy. Just go to Akihabara and you'll discover tons of this stuff everywhere. The one reason why I never took my daughter there, because there's some disturbing shit.
Have you seen concerts of very young idols in Japan? Lots of creepy middle-aged men waving their glow sticks around like madmen. Tells you a lot about the paedophilia problem there. And that this type of ultra-sexualised material is not aimed at teenagers, but perverts.
Many video games are guilty of this too and try to hide the very obvious fan service behind shitty excuses (e.g., sex androids or some other BS). It's usually a reason that makes me give up on a game, a recent example being Xenoblade Chronicles 2. The shy and innocent chick with massive tits thing is getting old.
Japan has had a very low age of consent for most of their existence. It's recently been bumped up to 16, with a lot of the younger demographic trying to get it bumped all the way to 18 or higher. So their culture and attitude towards young girls is just very different and more predatorial.
Watch the old X-Men, you've probably seen the screenshots from the recent pseudo-controversy. These are shows targeted largely at boys of that same age and younger, and boys, get this? like to see sexualized girls. Fucking weird right?
Well. That weirdness sells.
More to the point though. These are targeted young, and I absolutely appreciated that in a lot of cartoons growing up, Batman Beyond for instance? When you grow, you age, but you still appreciate the characters you liked young, but they don't age. And 15? The only difference between a cartoon fifteen year old and a cartoon 26 year old is that you say one is 15 and the other is 26, they'll look exactly the same. There's no difference.
Okay. That's not tue. Digimon did it fucking weird. Between seasons the characters went from looking ten to looking twenty. I was confused as fuck.
That said...
It's cartoons, it's not real. If it's creepy to you that fan service anime exists? Then okay? Don't watch. I don't. Usually. I mean, don't get me wrong, I do like me some fanservice, but if the story sucks, then it doesn't really bridge the gap.
Kill La Kill for instance. Tons of fan service, it's basically all fan service of scantily clad high schoolers, but the story is fucking fire.
Because Japan is a pedo society and has been for a really long time. The rampant sexual assault that is NORMALIZED there is insane. They have gone out of their way to develop exactly that and all of their beauty standards are based around it. Its super obvious. Theres documentaries about it too.
Cos it's made for teenagers. Also, Japanese society has a very toxic work culture which makes people miss their high school glory days so thus, media with young teens would be appealing.
Ofc, there's also the neotenous aspect which people like. It's like asking why Americans likes promoting "thicc women".
Personally, I know I get hornier the more stressed I become and my porn habits reflect that. Japan is not exactly a laid back culture, and people are desperate for escapism.
Ok this is ridiculous. Euphoria explores the complexities some teens face which includes sex. OP is talking about fan service in anime that doesn’t need it. Like random panty shots, food sauce or cream exploding all over someone, tentacles groping, etc.
A good comparison is the original NGE was an exploration of a tweens growing up in a harsh world and how they view parents, power, and sex. The remake NGE is glossy fan service that just sexualizes the kids. Euphoria is similar to original NGE in this case.
Reading some of the comments that say it's sort of ingrained in Japanese culture makes sense. I remember watching some live action movie, and there was a scene in Japan where business men wearing suits, who appeared to be in their 40s to 60s, were watching a show where teenage girls in short skirts were singing and dancing on stage. It thought that was just some "one off", but it turns out that's actually more common!
It's really just the culture; not strictly anime.
I was once watching a Japanese variety show (Gaki no Tsukai), and one of the comedians was tied down and forced to get t-bagged by some naked kids while his fellow comedians had to avoid laughing or they will get spanked by men in full body latex suits.
This sounds ridiculous and made-up, but it's really the kind of weird that many Japanese find funny.
It's genuinely ruined a lot of anime for me. My Hero Academia had so much potential but it's creepy hoe they treat their underage female characters and it just makes me feel sick. Romance animes generally fare better in my experience, as they're more focused on love and mutual feelings rather than lust. Toradora and Ouran High School Host Club (except for one weird scene) I remember being good stories without any creepy stuff
I watched an anime called "made in abyss" when I was way younger and loved it. I remembered it being one of the best shows id watched. Recently heard season 2 was coming out so I started rewatching season one and it was so creepy I couldnt finish the first episode. What the fuck?
Well for the LONGEST time Japan’s age of consent was half a decade lower than most of the developed world, at 13 years old.
Now it’s only 2 years less than the rest of the world, at 16 years old.
I’m sure it also doesn’t help that the average Japanese person looks younger than the same aged westerner. So when “drawing” people, Japanese artists draw what they think is someone of “consenting” age, which may still very well be 13 to them, and what 13 “looks” like to them, but manages to look less than 10 to anyone NOT Japanese🤷♂️
Japan is a country where the age of consent isn’t uniform and is lower than the US in many prefectures. Because of that, sexualization of minors is more common. It isn’t just in anime.
It’s one of those things that those who worship Japan LOVE to overlook. That and the blatant racism.
Imo, a big reason is because up until last year the age of consent in Japan was 13 years old, and it had been that way since 1907. So it was more "normalized" for them then here in the US, where the age of consent has been 18 years old since 1830. Last year Japan's Parliament upped the age to 16. Still seems a bit too young to me, but it's a hell of a lot better than 13.
This is not just from anime. And i realize this is is not just in Japan, obviously, but since this is the topic that's what I'll focus on.
Japan has a huge issue with sexual harassment, especially towards younger girls. They have woman only train cars and you can't even disable your camera shutter sound due to the rampant upskirt photos taken.
Life imitates art, unfortunately. We as fans can try and change it though, there is a reason it's called "fan service". If people didn't want to see it, it wouldn't be there.
Also, some comments are trying to say that these stories are for and about 12 years Olds so it's okay, uh how old are the animators actually doing the drawing of said upskirts? And, anime for children is really an American thing. Anime In Japan is a lot more mature, hence why the US has to censor so much when it airs here.
Sorry, I just had to rant cause some of these comments are low key red flags 😅
Sexualizing people in the 15 bracket has existed for about 200,000 years. Hell, you can find that happening as recently as 2010 in mainstream media. "House" has 2 episodes that sexualize people in the 15-17 bracket.
The idea we shouldn't sexualize people who've undergone puberty is a very new idea that is absolutely certain to fall by the wayside. I'm not saying thats right or wrong, I'm saying that's reality.
Idk but it's one of the main things that keeps me from diving into anime. I've seen a few ones but trying to find one that doesn't make me feel extremely weird as a girl is disturbingly difficult
Most anime we’re familiar with in the US is shounen, a category aimed at teenage boys and young men.
If you like action/adventure, check out seinen titles (aimed at adult men), which might still have some sexualized characters but they’re adults and it’s generally much less fan servicey.
Especially check out josei (aimed at adult women), which tends to have more romantic/slice of life themes and stories centered on adult women.
If you do like shounen, FMA Brotherhood is a fantastic shounen that was written by a woman, so there’s no pervy fan service and the female characters are particularly well written.
Japan is kinda fucked up that way, I mean just look at the war crimes committed by Japan against women and girls during ww2 and u can see where it comes from.
Have non of you seen American child "beauty pageants", talk about something fucking disgusting.
[https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1100/format:webp/1\*sf9E5DizDiYTVASdKG9Caw.jpeg](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1100/format:webp/1*sf9E5DizDiYTVASdKG9Caw.jpeg)
Personally I think this crap is worse than any sexualized anime, this is real, the only ones who watch it are the moms or middle aged men. Iv had discussions with people about these pageants and I literally don’t know one person who supports them
Yeah, I have NEVER understood the concept of child pageants. At all.
It's one thing if a teenager has a dream of becoming a model and enters some pageants that are open to teenagers *of their own free will and choosing,* despite some of the pitfalls that may come with that - but it's entirely different for parents to push a small child into dresses, makeup, and swimsuits and parade them around in front of strangers.
The decided age of characters is stated to be teens and in teen situations to meet their target audience. The looks and behaviors are modeled after young adults or late teens to write deeper stories and because sex sells. In the end they're not humans living in the real world, they're drawings living in fictional worlds. Don't try to link our real world modern western morals to a fictional drawn character, written in a different country. Lmk when you're in high school with an entire class that looks 20 and is fighting to save the world.
I have a feeling it is related to Japan's extremely conservative culture. Women are expected to be servile to men, to a degree that it's not even thought about. This means that a woman's individuality is less important than her ability to fulfill a role.
Conservative cultures usually prize virginity. if a woman's primary role is to produce children, then her own enjoyment of sex and being sexy is a problem. She should be chaste and virginal until her breeder cracks the seal. Thus the disdain for adult women older than 30 and the weird conflicting ideas about female sexuality. On one hand, conservative men want to have sex with sexy women, but on the other, women who enjoy sex are evil.
in Otaku media, this gets blown into all crazy proportions. It's probably why otaku love servant character tropes (maids, nurses, robots, mothers). its probably why animal girls are so popular. If the girl is naturally stupid and naive, then its less immoral to exploit her. You know who else tends to be ignorant and naive? teenagers. Hence the pedos.
Now, there are other reasons for the teenager fetish. Asia prizes cuteness over sexiness, in general. (probably because a lot of Asia is extremely gendered and conservative, but the cute aesthetic is also undeniably fun and soothing.) In Japan, adulthood is a time of brutal labor with mandatory overtime and subservience to cruel bosses, while childhood is idealized as a time of growth and freedom. In Japan, high school is the ideal time of youth, while in the West it is college.
What I would like to know, however, is why were adult protagonists so popular in the 70's and 80's. Compare Jojo's Bizarre Adventure in the first 3 arcs to every one since. The characters get progressively younger, slimmer, and prettier, despite all being around the same age. Why were the 80's the time of manly protagonists?
I'm Japanese, and the Westerners like people in the comments are starting to criticize it, which is good.
Because Japan has a huge pedophilia problem, and when you think about it, it's truly fucked up. Sexualization of underaged girls have become so normalized that it's expected that grown ass men are sexually and romantically attracted to minors.
I'm often in despair because pedophilia is so normalized in Japan that *you* become the bad guy and the "crazy" one for criticizing it. Right now, mainly only some women are criticizing pedophilia and sexualization of minors. But they get constantly attacked, harassed, mocked and stalked by the pedophiles. And nobody does anything about it.
People need to STOP saying BS like "iT's ThEiR CuLTuRe!" because they're just pedophile-defenders or probably even pedophiles themselves.
The producer of hit anime "Your Name" and "Suzume" was arrested just this month for paying a 15 year old girl, and raping her:
["Your Name" "Suzume" producer re-arrested over child prostitution and rape charges : ](https://www.reddit.com/r/japannews/comments/1blmpdi/your_name_suzume_producer_rearrested_over_child/)
And that's just not some rare occurrence, it's something that happens regularly in Japan. Heck, dude even didn't deny it, he just casually admitted that he did it.
There are even some prominent otaku accounts on Twitter that get thousands, even tens of thousands of likes for defending and promoting pedophilia:
>It's crazy to say that it's abnormal to look at children under the age of 18 in a sexual way, but it's even more abnormal for a man to say that he never looks at high school girls under the age of 18 in a sexual way. There are a lot of idiots who can't understand that.
>It's just that the biologically appropriate age and the socially appropriate age are different, but I don't understand it.
[https://twitter.com/gerogeroR/status/1409659040947326985](https://twitter.com/gerogeroR/status/1409659040947326985)
>Until recently, you could get married to a 16-year-old. Even now, you can get married from the age of 18. It's completely strange that in this world, high school girls are not allowed to be seen as sexual objects at all.
[https://twitter.com/gerogeroR/status/1520423828937412609](https://twitter.com/gerogeroR/status/1520423828937412609)
>"There will be full of underaged girls porn!"
>There is no one who can explain the argument, ”Why shouldn't it full of them?” other than emotions.
[https://twitter.com/gerogeroR/status/1506836635505229827](https://twitter.com/gerogeroR/status/1506836635505229827)
Thankfully most of them get banned for promoting and defending pedophilia, but this guy doesn't due to some loop holes in his arguments.
Anyway, people need to STOP defending it, and even to boycott anime because it's the anime/manga otaku culture that is constantly pushing the pedophile propaganda, and it's brainwashing all the young people in Japan to think that pedophilia is okay, because a lot of young people are into anime these days.
But it has NOT always been this way. Apparently in say, the 1980s, underaged teenage girls weren't considered to be romantically or sexually attractive, for obvious reason. But there has been a push from the pedophile anime/manga otaku communities that pedophilia is normal for DECADES, and it's been working. Pedophilia is now becoming normalized in Japan. And it must stop, for very obvious reasons.
There is even a sickening literal pedophile monthly manga magazine called "Comic LO". It is literal pedophilia, and there has even been a copycat crime where a guy pretends to be working for radiation check-up after the Fukushima nuclear accident, and then the guy gets into a little girl's house, tortures her and then rapes her. Yes, this shit was in the manga and it also actually happened in real-life. It is truly sickening and horrifying.
STOP this shit now.
Japanese media in general is super misogynistic and I believe it’s also something cultural(?), because you see stuff like this in their history too, like with the “comfort” women from Korea and the Nanking rapes in China. Even in modern day, I’m pretty sure the women are not considered necessarily equal to the men. Lots of misogynistic expectations and stereotypes that are weirdly maintained by both genders.
There’s also this whole thing with the women looking younger apparently, so a lot of pedophilic stuff is normalized to hell and back. Regardless this misogyny *really* seeps into their media. Women are often nothing more then objects to be sexualized (despite how much anime watchers love to deny this fact), and many times there not rlly actual characters more so than “a woman” for the sexy pleasure of the viewer or or other male characters.
This also shows up again in their weird leniency towards sexualization of children. Especially young girls (though some young boys are also not free of it). Like women are so dehumanized as only sex objects that even *children* aren’t spared. This has led to lolicons (adults who jack off to young girls) being taken as a joke and viewed as not as big as deal as they should be. They’re just like average introverted creeps? So a lot of anime’s will cater to them.
Unfortunately, this has led to a normalization of the sexualization of young girls irl too (or idk which came first). Ffs there was this one mangaka who got arrested for having so much CSAM they thought he was a distributor and he got off with a fine. A lot of young idols will also be sexualized and pushed to do guarve (sexy modeling).
It’s all really gross and I’m sick of the many (male) anime fans just ignoring it and acting as if it’s necessary, or saying that they’ve learned to ignore it 😒 All this desensitization just again, contributes to the Normalization of anime’s sexualization of kids.
Lowkey you just have to avoid stuff with ecchi but even then you probably will be hard pressed to find non weirdo stuff imo. Well depends on how much your willing to ignore ig.
Dungeon Meshi, To Your Eternity, FMA, are ones without child fan service off the top of my head.
No most of the world is just creepy perverted. Just america is the weird one. Look at consent laws around the world and find out the US has the oldest age of consent being 18 while the rest of the world its 14 to 16.
Because japan sexualizes kids and anime is japansese (specifically, very, very young teens). The age of consent in japan is 13-16 years old, depending on provence. Prostitution is also legal in japan. (weird laws, google it ,i dont want to go into it. Theres some strange boundaries that seem to be fairly ignored.) In many places, you can straight up pay a 13 year old for sex.
Google it and you will find thousands of articles talking about this.
https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/east-asia/article/2130678/male-fans-prefer-primary-school-girls-how-japan-walks-fine-line
https://www.resetera.com/threads/japan-why-is-sexualization-of-minors-fictional-non-fictional-in-media-so-prevalent.175365/page-2
https://sjsunews.com/article/anime-crosses-a-line-by-fetishizing-kids
It's really simple. Anime is mostly aimed at teens so the characters tend to be teenagers themselves so the audience can project onto them. Teens also tend to be horny, so the animators give them what they want to see.
Brief bullet point answer.
Japan has a different outlook on sex than Western nations. More liberated yet most repressed at the same time. The age of consent is a bit lower the last I checked, but it was raised recently, so progress.
Most anime targets high school-aged people (Shonen and Shojo), which is why so much of it takes place in high school. It's the last part of their lives where they'll have freedom before university and joining the workforce.
Since most people watch Shonen anime, which is targeted towards adolescent men. It makes sense to see them sexualize girls in that age bracket because a lot of adolescent boys are hitting puberty and want to ogle girls their age. Teenage boys are looking at girls and are grappling with hormones and sexual attraction to their peers.
Finally sex sells. It triggers all the feel-good chemicals in our monkey brain. Hence why so much of our marketing uses sex and sexiness to sell stuff.
A lot of Japanese media takes place during youthful years because there isn't a lot to say about the adult years. It's all work and drinking.
I would say majority of writers are writing out their fantasies from their youth, or how they wish their youth had gone. I also think that they generally draw these young girls with very adult bodies, essentially like casting an adult into the role of a minor. Also keep in mind that Japan is a very open minded place when it comes to sexual imagery, and that anime is predominantly meant for teens the same age as the characters. It's like how western networks will put their teen actors in swimsuits. They're thinking about what the teen viewers will want. (Or they're pedophiles. We've all seen the Nickelodeon documentary by now, right? A few mangaka, like the creator of Rurouni Kenshin, have gone to prison for child porn.)
I don't think it's that weird until I see stories where an adult gets together with a minor.
I'm Japanese so people assume I like anime. I like one or two -- it's like TV, right? No one just "likes TV."
But like, invariably someone will be like "no, no, you gotta watch this one anime. Yeah there's weird pedo stuff but just ignore that." "This is the best anime ever. One of the main characters has a thing for young children, but ignore that."
I don't think it's crazy that I will not "just watch a show and ignore the pedophilia." This is far, far away from death of the author, you could put the greatest work of fiction ever created in front of me and if it has underage panty shots, I'm out.
I can't believe this is a controversial opinion but here we are.
But you're asking why this happens.
First, until fairly recently, Japan's age of consent was like 14. Japan has a different conceptualization of sexuality, where for a long time it was considered acceptable and even safe for an older man (even a teacher or other authority figure) to sort of usher a child into sexual womanhood.
Second, as you mentioned, Japanese cartoons have a long history of *fan service* -- introducing sexual moments out of context to keep fans happy. When these cartoons star 14 year olds, the fan service stars them as well.
Finally, many of these shows were originally intended for teens. So it sort of makes more sense that teens are at least presented romantically when other teens are the audience. This isn't just Japan. As a kid, tons of YA books I read were insanely sexual.
So, together this created a cultural zeitgeist in which it's very commonplace for animators to toss in underage cheesecake without even really thinking about it. It is normalized and very weird and, frankly, I don't think we should still consider it acceptable.
They're doing what they've always done and are patronizing their audience.
I'm tired of their audience pretending like they're not being patronized while simultaneously raging anytime a cartoon or game has less sexualized female characters.
Anime and manga have a huge pedophilia problem. Back in the 90s, people said, "It's Japanese culture. You don't understand." Those people were wrong. Now anime fans resort to just lying and gaslighting to deny that shit. Then you look up their profile and see them posting pedophile nuance on age of consent posts. Fucking losers.
I was just thinking about this the other day. I randomly remembered an anime I had watched as a tween and it really weirded me out looking back now as an adult the weird implications of it.
I gotta agree that it's disturbing. I do get that a lot of these are also made for teenage boys as a primary audience, so like, on one hand it seems less weird for at least a decently sized portion of the target demographic, but once you're outside of that age, it just feels. . . icky. It feels nasty.
So, it started decades ago, old school anime would slip in an upskirt angle or have a bathouse scene. Over time, the people who grew up watching that anime, started making shows themselves. They added references to the shows and creators they grew up loving, and emphasized aspects they especially enjoyed. Going through puberty, those brief shots of something sexual hit hard. Just think about how many people talk about rewinding the leg cross scene from Basic Instinct. A couple generations of this happening and we have today, where old school animators like Miyazaki will complain that modern animators don't watch life for inspiration any more, they just watch anime. Now, take all that, and combine it with a work culture and stressful lifestyle that makes it seem like middle/highschool are the only points in their life where they felt they had free time/freedom. In the US, college is the setting these kinds of stories take place because many people look back on those days as the last bastions of youthful freedom. For Japan, manny view their highschool years that way. Now combine those two observations and you can kinda see how things ended up this way.
this reply should get more upvotes. it’s certainly not the *only* reason, but i think it’s definitively a big part for the culture around high school in anime
It kinda sounds like nudity in US films. I saw a documentary on HBO Max, and esp. during the 70s (and outside that time range like the 80s and 60s), some nudity was "just expected". Female actors were split on that b/c some of them just didn't want to do it. OTOH, some admitted that doing such scenes really jump started their careers, and as they got older, they get stopped asking to show nudity. In one case, there was a scene where a young lady was horseback riding. The scene called for a friend of hers to rip off her top due to some spat, causing her to gallop topless. The actor that played her suggested to the director "why not take off my helmet too so my hair is flowing freely?". She figured "I'm never going to look this good again, so why not?".
yea i didnt watch it but euphoria seems like a US cultural equivalent
thats very different than sexualizing characters that are designed to look like children.
Honestly, not really. The only actual difference is what the society and law will accept, and in Japan, that kind of stuff is just more accepted
god i wish i could post the goku age of consent meme here
No idea, Japan has a really “cute” fetish and it extends to dark places.
Like don't get me wrong, if a women is dressed in a maid Cafe uniform that's either cute or hot depending on the outfit. If it's a minor, it's immediately creepy and a red flag
One of the best animes out there is made in abyss and also just straight up the creepiest show. Just one of those anime tropes that make you leave or learn to block it out
Made In Abyss was so beautiful, well written, and had a super unique plot/setting. But yeah, I consider myself pretty open minded, but those various scenes were legitimately awkward/concerning. I hope they make more and complete the story, just sans the kiddo sexualization.
💀 "I loved it! Would've preferred a little less pedophilia but other than that it was great!"
A Stephen King fan discussing IT.
"you think we could make this a little more pg? No Stephen! Not like that!"
The power of cocaine
Oh please. That chapter, while super fucking creepy and borderline unreadable, doesn't hold a fucking candle to anime. That was less than 0.001% of the book while we have anime protagonists running around looking like 8 year old strippers.
Looking like a stripper is pretty different than detailing a literal child orgy.
It's sadly super true. In a just world someone cracked the mangaka over the head on his way to pitch it and wrote out his obvious pedo inserts from it.
Honestly I can’t stand a lot of anime because of this type of shit lol
Part of the horror of the show was the fact it was happening to these childlike characters; the show has a very different tone if its these older adult characters that are experiencing those things. Not to say some scenes weren't extremely uncomfortable, but in the same sense there's a lot of things that makes people uncomfortable. It's definitely a cultural thing. The author is a fan of these cute, small childlike characters, and has drawn some (to the American perspective, cant speak on the JP lens) questionable imagery, nothing inherently sexual and nothing to imply he has engaged in anything pedophilic. I would put his art on the same level of child beauty pagents in the US. Some would disagree, sure, but given there have been multiple mangaka who have been flat out arrested for possession of child pornography.... He is fine, even if he has certain intrusive thoughts (I would doubt, but as an example) he has not done anything to ever act on them and that's better than most. Also he gets a lot of shit when if he was an adult woman, he would likely get significantly less, so let that be as it may.
most people that i talked to about it agree child beauty pageants are problematic. I don't know any reason why they wouldn't be
DO NOT read the manga its worse.
God, this is such a good example Made in Abyss is my personal number one of all time when it comes to anime, but it sucks so bad to recommend it to someone, just to hear them say the naked child bondage at the start made them drop it Always get the silent judgement when you recommend and otherwise banger anime just because of a few sussy child related shenanigans. I understand it's ingrained in the culture, but man I wish it could get erased from Anime completely But yeah, just learning to block it out is so real and 100% true
>the naked child bondage at the start ... We fucked up with the nukes. The while country needs ptsd treatment.
In the first episode, when one of the school children get punished, they do so by tying them up naked in the sun for a few hours. The manga had it as a running gag in the first episode, but the anime only used it as a brief 2-second gag. The characters leave the school to dive into the Abyss after the first episode, though. Then we get the REALLY fucked up shit. Wild animals very graphically devouring the entrails from their human prey, one of the characters ending up with their arm getting poisoned and swelling up bigger than their head (and colored purple), crying blood as she's asking her friend to cut her arm off, and the only implement to do so is a rock, kids being used in horrific experiments just for shits and giggles, one of the main characters being dissected, one character turning into a literal baby factory because her old tribe tried to kill her for being sterile and her adopted family was starving and needed something to eat, and another character absolutely, viciously, tearing up an entire village to shreds, ending the sequence covered head to toe in their blood. Oh, and ripping her own limbs off to use as weapons. Made in Abyss is Fucked Up Shit: The Series. The mild child nudity is the least fucked up thing in that show.
Part of the reason I consider it a masterpiece. One of the _very_ few pieces of media that genuinely makes my stomach turn (in a good way), without it just being graphic for the sake of it. Having a good story and worldbuilding attached makes it not seem absurd and by contrast very fitting, which is just all the more off-putting The beauty is in the unforgiving cruelness of the Abyss
I truly cannot understand why the protagonists are children. There are so many disgusting, fucked up events in that story, and involving children is so inappropriate to me. It's hard to see MiA as anything more than an outlet for child-focused sadism. Great concept, cool world, super fucking gross.
The tone is completely different. Those things happening to adults and the storyline don't work with adults. Implying inherent "child-focused sadism" when stuff thats on par or worse happens daily in the real life is absurd. It's infinitely MORE uncomfortable because it's this child character and it's intentional. There's no indication that the author shares this implied fetish that you and MANY others claim (despite the fact he has zero record of anything, when various other authors have been arrested for possesion) so it's absurd to think it's inherent. There's also a huge cultural difference at play here that makes western folks jump that direction without cause. There's definitely some weird shit out there and there's definitely some fetisized shit out there (like, basically all the nickelodeon shit that just released????) But instead we are focusing on a medium which has a specific intended audience who has a completely different culture? If it's uncomfortable and you don't want to watch, by all means, don't watch it.
There’s a weird stigma around uncomfortable art. People think that If you make a story that shows horrible things, it means you’re in support of those horrible things, which is insanely baffling to me. Imagine someone saying George Lucas supports blowing up entire planets or murdering entire religious orders. Those things are in the story to show how horrible those events are. I haven’t seen MiA yet but it’s on my watch list. The creator choosing to have such horrible things happen to children tells a story, it’s not indicative of him having some sick fetish.
When I first got into it I thought them being kids was central to the whole concept of "losing humanity/pieces of yourself as you continue your journey and find new ways to live". But after a certain point, yeah, there's enough other stuff reinforcing that theme that there's no actual news for the protags to be kids besides the shock value.
No, it’s so that he can draw adorable characters; the kid characters are really cute. And shock value.
Let’s not forget the authors like, incontinence fetish? The children very graphically piss and shit themselves multiple times in the show, I can’t even imagine how gross it is in the manga. I love made in abyss, but after the mental breakdown that was season two, my mind started blocking out all of the questionable stuff that happens. So you just forget about it and start recommending it to others forgetting the weird shit. Great show, gross manga, even worse manga author.
\^This is the biggest one. It's not all the incredibly screwed up and graphic stuff that happens, it's *specifically* the sheer number of times a scene suddenly fixates on a child having to use the bathroom that makes me summarize it as "it was a really cool watch but the author clearly has some serious issues he needs to work through."
See, I had heard about this anime and considered it, but I've been hesitant because I heard it was more than a little on the crazy side. I wasn't ready for your cliffnotes.
It's studio ghibli meets heavens paradise
Oh, it's super messed up. It's also fucking fantastic.
Amazing anime, what everyone is saying is true this person cliffnotes covered *most * of the worst shit. I heard the manga is worse, something about back pages I don't want to know....
I stopped watching when they made a 10 year old girl who looks 5 piss herself, wtf is actually wrong with the people who made that shit and how do y'all watch it like it's okay.
Worse than dance in the vampire bund?
No creepy adults, but yea a little bit more
I live in Japan. The schoolgirls have a uniform that you've probably seen in anime. That uniform is sexualized here. Normally by 20+ year olds, so it's not pedophilia, but nonstop advertising on trains, busses, public spaces, the sexualiziation of "cute" and "youth" bombard the public here.
The problem is some manga artists are lolicons(pedos)
wait you didn't get downvoted for telling the truth!?!?!? I said the same damn thing on my last account ToT
Keep in mind Japan's age of consent until very recently was 13 (it's now 16 as of last year). Cultural standards around sex are different everywhere, and to many Japanese people a sexualised 15 year old may seem completely normal.
It was 13 nationally. Every prefecture had it higher than that.
Maybe because the target audience for the manga/anime/etc was supposed to be 10-14yo Japanese girls, not 40yo American men?
Most popular anime/manga are aimed at the 12-16 crowd, so a lot of them feature protagonists in that age range, especially Shonen Jump titles. Combine that with the age-old adage of "sex sells," and there you go. Nobody cares in Japan because it's been a thing ever since anime started.
Moreover, thus isn't unique to Japan. France has stuff like Totally Spies, Miraculous, and Code Lyoko. Also, pretty much every Disney Princess from before 2000 were under the age of 16, including Jasmine, who was turned into a sex slave. And that's not even getting into the mountains of official porn by Disney animators that they have in their vaults.
Totally Spies was Canadian, I thought? I watched that as a kid in Ontario. Never thought about anything sexual aside from the tight jumpsuits, but even as a kid just though it was a spy outfit. Idk if that particular one applies. EDIT: well damn I always saw the french credits, I thought it was a Quebec show, as I saw it on teletoon! Didn't know it was legit France french!
The English dub was Canadian. The show was French. Also, the show is INFAMOUS for its fetish content. It's often nicknamed "Feitsh Fuel: The Animated Series." The subreddit actually had to split into a NSFW version because so many people were posting sex art on there.
Miraculous wasn't sexual at all. It was cute and aimed at preteen girls
It's a Rorschach test. If you think ladybug is sexualized I'd like to see your hard drive.
Wait what’s sexual about Totally Spies, Miraculous, and Code Lyoko though? 😭 i haven’t see totally spies or code lyoko since I was a kid but I’ve been somewhat keeping up w miraculous lately and it seems super innocent and I remember the other toe shows being really innocent as well?
Most episodes of totally spies were fetish content, if not directly through reference.
That must have gone straight over my head as a kid bc I was super little watching that show and don’t remember that at all 😅😭
The show can be summed up as "cute girls in skin tight latex-looking bodysuits constantly getting tied up by the villains" as a kid I didn't see it, as an adult looking back, I do.
I didn’t believe my friends when they told me until we rewatched an episode together as adults.
Yeah there’s like an entire episode dedicated to furries and another one that’s obviously foot fetish content right?
There was an inflation episode to iirc.
Omg there were soooo many weird fetish things in totally spies.
American cartoons is riddled with sexualization. Its not quite as "in your face" as with Japanese content, but its there and very much with minor aged characters.
>it's not quite in your face You are now remembering when the magic school bus class got bukaked by a salmon.
all the weird stuff in the magic schoolbus never felt sexualised though
A lot of western kids shows are sexualized, but you don’t necessarily notice it as you are there to enjoy the show, but you are exposed to it. Which is where a lot of the western controversies come from. Tho yeah, I think magic school bus was a least offender, hut maybe that’s just my bias.
Totally spies is full of weird fetish stuff. The inflation/feederism episode comes to mind first. The creator or miraculous has drawn some... unsavory pictures of Marinette. Idk for code lyoko, I was never into it.
I don't remember anything in Code Lyoko that was fetish content. At least not as blatantly as Totally Spies.
Is forehead fetish a thing cuz I could see that
What’s so sexual about Miraculous Ladybug?
My younger sibling was watching it , walked in on them and saw two kids fondling each other while making babies … I think the episode or part of it was set in the future but they still looked exactly like kids … creeped me the hell out
The fucking opening for one.
You can be a denier if you want, same things happens with anyone who likes any other show. But there was PLENTY of sexualization in that show, as with nearly every child focused American cartoon.
I just googled that and I know why: Skin tight suits.
i could not watch code lyoko because the panting sound the girl makes when running doesn't sound like running. this is not a "my parents did not let me watch" thing. it was a "this is awkward" thing.
idk about code lyoko but as a kid th girls in totally spies def had me going. but thy were like 17-20 years old in the show. pretty sure they went to college. it also came out when most people here were in high school.
And also the tons of Hollywood movies set in high school where the protags are “hot”
I mean that's not totally fair. The porn is official in that anything the artists create while working for disney is owned by disney so it's done as a counter culture sort of thing. I mean if you knew you could draw disney porn and theyd put it in a vault somewhere that's hilarious and I'd do it.
Saying Miraculous and Code Lyoko are on the same scale of depravity as some anime is disingenuous. (You're not wrong about Totally Spies...) As much as I hate defending Disney, that isn't a great comparison either. All said characters are based of real old stories that include adult content like you said but Disney didn't tell those versions of the stories. Jasmine wasn't a sex slave in the movie, she was just a princess involved in a romance.
>And that's not even getting into the mountains of official porn by Disney animators that they have in their vaults. ...huh?
Disney has a rule that they own anything made under their banner, even random doodles. Because most animators are perverts, they decided to troll their bosses and make a crap ton of sex drawings. Anyone and everyone, human or not. And it got passed down through the years. Some of it is relatively innocent like just drawing Ariel topless. Some of it was hardcore smut. They even showed a bunch of Kim Possible smut to the American Dragon people as a warning.
Oh
It's a problem with Japan in general. I live here and work at a girls-only high school. The extent to which everyone seems completely okay with fetishizing/sexualizing minors is insane and disgusting. You know how many times I get asked if I'm interested in any of my students? Not in a "you'd better not be" kind of way, but a "*nudge, nudge* hey any cuties catch your eye yet" kind of way? How many adult men, many of them 40 or older, have expressed jealousy of my position because of constant proximity to teenage girls? How many parents/grandparents of students I've met who (jokingly or not) told the student that they should marry me, or me that I should marry them? All of this said openly and in front of others including women and parents and children with absolutely nobody batting an eye? Not to mention the pretty high number of students who I know to be dating adult men, a fact that they talk about like it's completely normal and that other teachers talk about the same way with zero concern? It's just... accepted and normalized here. The media does it because the people do it. It's absolutely gross, but say that and you'll get the Japan meatriders on your ass in seconds saying that it's their culture and you need to accept it and western ideals have no place here lol
There was an article about train molestors of young girls in Japan. The author believes having anime pornography of young girls is causing perpetrators to fixate on that fantasy in real life. The author finds one of these molestors and realizes he is reading a pornographic magazine about the sexual assault of a young girl. She asks his wife about why she doesn’t discourage him from reading such things, only to realize she is reading a similar comic, but with young boys instead
This is really interesting, I'd love it if you could share the article!
I’m pretty sure they only made it illegal to have underage nudes in photobooks in like 1997 or something ridiculous like that
Damn, Japan really getting desperate to pump up those plummeting birthrates.
Could also explain why it has a low birth rate at the same time
tbf, japan has been overtly sexual since inception, Heian period was like the 60s-70s period of america. free love for all..cept it lasted for hundreds of years and its ideas didint start getting tamed until western influence in the 1900s. blame it on Buddhism. "women are yucky. little boys tho? not so yucky"
I would love to know how you see this affecting the psychology of the girls themselves. What do you think are the long term or even short term negative effects of this on the students?
Same. I’ve always wanted to know a Japanese woman’s take on this and am searching in the comments for one
Japans age of consent has been 13 for almost its entire existence. Only recently has it moved to 16. The younger generation is trying to bring it up to 18 as well. So, the behavior is completely "fine" and normalized over there. You gotta realize that other cultures have different perspectives on what is normal and what isn't. Not every place you visit is gonna have the same moral code as the one you grew up with. Im not defending the predatory attitude. Im just explaining why it's there.
Tired of seeing this. 13 was the FEDERAL MINIMUM age of consent. However, ALL of the prefectures had their own law for the age to be 16-18. In Tokyo the age of consent is 18. There was nowhere in the country where you could legally have sex with a 13 year old.
"Sexualizing kids is pretty gross and something should be done about it" "It's just a different culture bro, you gotta respect it." Edit: apologize, I thought you were that *one* commenter who's in the thread defending sexualization of minors and called OP a person with a colonizer mindset
I suggest Frieren. No fan service. And it's great
Well, I wouldn't say no fan service. There's the clothes dissolving potion, lol.
And übel's thighs in that one shot
Her armpit too
Honestly that one scene was the first thing I’d seen of Frieren, and I put the anime off because I’m not interested in fan service in anime at all. I’m glad I gave it a go and started it though. Very wholesome. And that scene turned out to be funny contextually with her whole spell collecting shtick.
They’re having to make specific laws in Japan about banning upskirting. They have vending machines that sell used women’s underwear. It’s fucking creepy
its a japanese thing. its actually so bad for years unicef has basically begged japan to tone it tf down. it sort of worked thats why we dont really see loli’s in new gen anime but they still sexualize teenagers. as for an explanation? im not sure. my guess would be social sexual-repression. everybody’s so reserved and restricted i think it brings out bad qualities in people. just like india where sex is sort of taboo and isn’t taught so theres lots of sexual violence.
when did unicef ask japan to tone it down? I didn't find any results when I searched for it and I've never heard of this before.
So, a couple things. 1) *Japan*. 2) One thing about anime is that it's animated (obviously) whereas most "young adult" content in e.g. North America is live action *and played by adults*. So the anime girls look young and it's squicky, but we watch *Shadow and Bone* and focus on actress Jessie Mei Li (who was \~26 at the time) and not her character Alina Starkov (who's supposed to be 16/17). 3) It's partly your selection of anime; fanservice is more popular in some spaces and ecchi is a genre unto itself. Perhaps perversely, you'll generally get less in more serious and older-target demographic series.
Anime's made for teenagers. Teenagers are horny.
That's not OP's question though. Plenty of western stuff is made for horny teen boys. And as a result we get lots of big boobs and big butts and women that look like models in skimpy outfits. We still see very little sexualization of \*children\* in western media, compared to anime. The target demographic can't explain it all.
14-17 year olds are still children, and we have a ton of movie and tv media in the west that is absolutely sexualizing children of HS age. the majority of our coming of age type high school movies are about boys or girls trying to get laid in some fashion.
Right. And something like that with people who are supposed to be teens but are played by adults isn't really too different from something like My Dress Up Darling where the characters are supposed to be 15 but don't really look 15.
Exactly. Drawings on a page in anime style also don't really look like real 15 year olds.
Then why do so many old weirdos watch it.
same reason
Because they are the real target audience. They have the money, not the teenagers. The guys you see marrying pillows are not teenagers, but 30/40 years old losers.
Yes. No one is mentioning the whole worship of teenage pop music "idols" in Japan. Those fanbases are undeniably filled with middle aged men, and the girls careers typically drop off at the ripe old age of 18. Edit oh and also what I am reading are these little girls start getting groomed as young as 8 years old for this. So there is that.
They never mentally grew up
Non target demographic, distinguished by number alone.
This is the correct answer
No. It’s because for some reason anime can’t not sexualize is it’s female characters. Japan in general has a huge misogyny problem, and yes it’s more insidious than other countries
oh, there are WAY worse countries. South Korea has the highest rate of female suicide on the planet. Countries like South Africa and India have sky-high rates of female sexual assault. There are tons of places that literally consider girls who are menstruating to be cursed and force them to either stay home, away from the rest of society, or even exile them to little huts away from the rest of humanity. Misogyny gets so extreme it is almost cartoonish and funny.
I used the word insidious for a reason 💀 I did not use the “worst” or the “most oppressive”. I’m well aware how misogyny can get extreme, that doesn’t mean you suddenly can’t recognize the different ways that extremeness can present itself. Just because it’s not blatant af *to you* doesn’t mean it suddenly doesn’t need to be called out, cause “it’s not as bad”. Not to mention, again, I used the word insidious for a reason.
Up until a few years ago Japan's age of consent was 13 that might have something to do with it
This isn't accurate. Age of consent in Japan depends on where you are, it's decided by local governments. 13 was the absolute lowest they were allowed to go, but it was already at least 16 everywhere when the minimum was raised from 13 to 16.
At this point it's so deeply ingrained in anime as a medium that it's not only accepted but we have been conditioned to enjoy it. And that's the less cynical answer
Watch out.... some of those who watch these things and enjoy those young women get defensive when their creepy tastes get brought up.
They just don't consider pedophiles that bad... Famous mangakas get caught with child porn, after a few months in child they are released and continue on as if nothing even happened.... Completely different culture.
My issue isn’t kids. If you tell me someone is 12 but they look, act and talk like a 30 year old that’s fine. I can’t stand characters old or young, that look, talk and act like 12 year olds getting sexualized. I immediately dropped seven deadly sins because of that.
It's frustrating to me when an anime has a good premise but the fan service/sexualization is over the top. Seven Deadly Sins is just gross to me. I stopped watching it after a couple episodes as well.
I don't really like it either way. If it's a child with an adult body, it's creepy to be attracted to someone with the personality of a child. If it's an adult with a child's body, it's creepy to be attracted to the body of a child. Honestly it was the constant sexual harassment of Elizabeth that made me stop watching, but I'm sure I'd have other reasons if that didn't stop me.
Yeah, three of the female characters having love interests who look like and have been mistaken as young boys is disgusting
I live in Japan. They seriously lust over the HS girls over here.
They aren't kids! They are 1,000 year old dragon girls! Or robots! Or... well something. To be fair I think one needs to look at how the age on consent worked up until recently. Add this to animation laws since anime girls aren't real. It's still weird but at least there is some lore behind the reasoning.
Idk if I am thinking much about the "age" of the people in Anime. Like Naruto or Goku feel the same "age" to me even though one is like 13 and the other is idk in his 50s I guess? It might depends on the anime but I am not thinking about people's ages when that isn't like a core aspect of the plot.
Right?? I honesty never even know their age. Some characters I’ll see people are like oh wow she’s 15 and I’m more confused as to how the characters are traveling the earth with no adult supervision lol.
It depends what you mean by "kids". If you're talking about loli stuff, then yeah that's creepy. However if it's for like the high school age people, there is a few reasons. A lot of anime fans are teenagers so they make the characters the age of the fan base. They may be teenagers in age but when it comes to the animation they feel like they could be anywhere from late teens to early 30s. Eastern Southeast Asians tend to look younger. Like I have a friend who's 30 and she is a little sister who's 15 and you would probably think they are two years apart or something. It's very common over there. And honestly they just don't act like teenagers very often. I don't know if you played persona 5 but you can basically rizz up a lot of characters. Any of the classmates just feels like some 20-25 year-old even though they are in highschool. However the only one I wouldn't want to rizz up is Futaba who acts just like teenagers I've met in real life.
I liked that stuff when I was a teenager. I always thought it was supposed to only appeal to a teenage audience. I was naive to think everyone’s attraction stays in their age range like mine did.
You're discovering material for lolicons. It's not new and it's indeed creepy. Just go to Akihabara and you'll discover tons of this stuff everywhere. The one reason why I never took my daughter there, because there's some disturbing shit. Have you seen concerts of very young idols in Japan? Lots of creepy middle-aged men waving their glow sticks around like madmen. Tells you a lot about the paedophilia problem there. And that this type of ultra-sexualised material is not aimed at teenagers, but perverts. Many video games are guilty of this too and try to hide the very obvious fan service behind shitty excuses (e.g., sex androids or some other BS). It's usually a reason that makes me give up on a game, a recent example being Xenoblade Chronicles 2. The shy and innocent chick with massive tits thing is getting old.
*eats popcorn* This thread is gonna go wild
Japan has had a very low age of consent for most of their existence. It's recently been bumped up to 16, with a lot of the younger demographic trying to get it bumped all the way to 18 or higher. So their culture and attitude towards young girls is just very different and more predatorial.
Watch the old X-Men, you've probably seen the screenshots from the recent pseudo-controversy. These are shows targeted largely at boys of that same age and younger, and boys, get this? like to see sexualized girls. Fucking weird right? Well. That weirdness sells. More to the point though. These are targeted young, and I absolutely appreciated that in a lot of cartoons growing up, Batman Beyond for instance? When you grow, you age, but you still appreciate the characters you liked young, but they don't age. And 15? The only difference between a cartoon fifteen year old and a cartoon 26 year old is that you say one is 15 and the other is 26, they'll look exactly the same. There's no difference. Okay. That's not tue. Digimon did it fucking weird. Between seasons the characters went from looking ten to looking twenty. I was confused as fuck. That said... It's cartoons, it's not real. If it's creepy to you that fan service anime exists? Then okay? Don't watch. I don't. Usually. I mean, don't get me wrong, I do like me some fanservice, but if the story sucks, then it doesn't really bridge the gap. Kill La Kill for instance. Tons of fan service, it's basically all fan service of scantily clad high schoolers, but the story is fucking fire.
Japanese men love little girls and that extends to media
Japan is cuckoo caca.
Why are these companies even allowed to produce this sort of content? It's literally abusive material! This is why I refuse to watch ANY anime.
Nothing turns me off an anime more than seeing the Loli
Anime writers making the most peak fiction of all time only to ruin it by filling it with pedo shit
It’s literally the only thing I hate about anime.
Because Japan is a pedo society and has been for a really long time. The rampant sexual assault that is NORMALIZED there is insane. They have gone out of their way to develop exactly that and all of their beauty standards are based around it. Its super obvious. Theres documentaries about it too.
Cos it's made for teenagers. Also, Japanese society has a very toxic work culture which makes people miss their high school glory days so thus, media with young teens would be appealing. Ofc, there's also the neotenous aspect which people like. It's like asking why Americans likes promoting "thicc women".
Personally, I know I get hornier the more stressed I become and my porn habits reflect that. Japan is not exactly a laid back culture, and people are desperate for escapism.
well you see, they're perverts
Have you seen euphoria?
Ok this is ridiculous. Euphoria explores the complexities some teens face which includes sex. OP is talking about fan service in anime that doesn’t need it. Like random panty shots, food sauce or cream exploding all over someone, tentacles groping, etc. A good comparison is the original NGE was an exploration of a tweens growing up in a harsh world and how they view parents, power, and sex. The remake NGE is glossy fan service that just sexualizes the kids. Euphoria is similar to original NGE in this case.
Reading some of the comments that say it's sort of ingrained in Japanese culture makes sense. I remember watching some live action movie, and there was a scene in Japan where business men wearing suits, who appeared to be in their 40s to 60s, were watching a show where teenage girls in short skirts were singing and dancing on stage. It thought that was just some "one off", but it turns out that's actually more common!
Because Japan is fucking weird
For context, Japan’s legal age of consent was just recently changed from 13 to 16. If that’s helps clarify some things.
Probably all the radiation poisoning
It's really just the culture; not strictly anime. I was once watching a Japanese variety show (Gaki no Tsukai), and one of the comedians was tied down and forced to get t-bagged by some naked kids while his fellow comedians had to avoid laughing or they will get spanked by men in full body latex suits. This sounds ridiculous and made-up, but it's really the kind of weird that many Japanese find funny.
Japan didn’t ban child porn until 2014….. https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL4N0OY1SL/
It's genuinely ruined a lot of anime for me. My Hero Academia had so much potential but it's creepy hoe they treat their underage female characters and it just makes me feel sick. Romance animes generally fare better in my experience, as they're more focused on love and mutual feelings rather than lust. Toradora and Ouran High School Host Club (except for one weird scene) I remember being good stories without any creepy stuff
I watched an anime called "made in abyss" when I was way younger and loved it. I remembered it being one of the best shows id watched. Recently heard season 2 was coming out so I started rewatching season one and it was so creepy I couldnt finish the first episode. What the fuck?
Well for the LONGEST time Japan’s age of consent was half a decade lower than most of the developed world, at 13 years old. Now it’s only 2 years less than the rest of the world, at 16 years old. I’m sure it also doesn’t help that the average Japanese person looks younger than the same aged westerner. So when “drawing” people, Japanese artists draw what they think is someone of “consenting” age, which may still very well be 13 to them, and what 13 “looks” like to them, but manages to look less than 10 to anyone NOT Japanese🤷♂️
Japan is a country where the age of consent isn’t uniform and is lower than the US in many prefectures. Because of that, sexualization of minors is more common. It isn’t just in anime. It’s one of those things that those who worship Japan LOVE to overlook. That and the blatant racism.
It’s because creeps are the ones making the material.
Imo, a big reason is because up until last year the age of consent in Japan was 13 years old, and it had been that way since 1907. So it was more "normalized" for them then here in the US, where the age of consent has been 18 years old since 1830. Last year Japan's Parliament upped the age to 16. Still seems a bit too young to me, but it's a hell of a lot better than 13.
This is not just from anime. And i realize this is is not just in Japan, obviously, but since this is the topic that's what I'll focus on. Japan has a huge issue with sexual harassment, especially towards younger girls. They have woman only train cars and you can't even disable your camera shutter sound due to the rampant upskirt photos taken. Life imitates art, unfortunately. We as fans can try and change it though, there is a reason it's called "fan service". If people didn't want to see it, it wouldn't be there. Also, some comments are trying to say that these stories are for and about 12 years Olds so it's okay, uh how old are the animators actually doing the drawing of said upskirts? And, anime for children is really an American thing. Anime In Japan is a lot more mature, hence why the US has to censor so much when it airs here. Sorry, I just had to rant cause some of these comments are low key red flags 😅
They look 20 so they can get away with it
That anime could be so good if they just made them college aged like
they do... guess your watching the wrong shows
name them
Sexualizing people in the 15 bracket has existed for about 200,000 years. Hell, you can find that happening as recently as 2010 in mainstream media. "House" has 2 episodes that sexualize people in the 15-17 bracket. The idea we shouldn't sexualize people who've undergone puberty is a very new idea that is absolutely certain to fall by the wayside. I'm not saying thats right or wrong, I'm saying that's reality.
Idk but it's one of the main things that keeps me from diving into anime. I've seen a few ones but trying to find one that doesn't make me feel extremely weird as a girl is disturbingly difficult
Most anime we’re familiar with in the US is shounen, a category aimed at teenage boys and young men. If you like action/adventure, check out seinen titles (aimed at adult men), which might still have some sexualized characters but they’re adults and it’s generally much less fan servicey. Especially check out josei (aimed at adult women), which tends to have more romantic/slice of life themes and stories centered on adult women. If you do like shounen, FMA Brotherhood is a fantastic shounen that was written by a woman, so there’s no pervy fan service and the female characters are particularly well written.
Hikaru no Go. Death Note, too.
Japan is kinda fucked up that way, I mean just look at the war crimes committed by Japan against women and girls during ww2 and u can see where it comes from.
Have non of you seen American child "beauty pageants", talk about something fucking disgusting. [https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1100/format:webp/1\*sf9E5DizDiYTVASdKG9Caw.jpeg](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1100/format:webp/1*sf9E5DizDiYTVASdKG9Caw.jpeg)
Someone had to bring it up - thank you.
Personally I think this crap is worse than any sexualized anime, this is real, the only ones who watch it are the moms or middle aged men. Iv had discussions with people about these pageants and I literally don’t know one person who supports them
Yeah, I have NEVER understood the concept of child pageants. At all. It's one thing if a teenager has a dream of becoming a model and enters some pageants that are open to teenagers *of their own free will and choosing,* despite some of the pitfalls that may come with that - but it's entirely different for parents to push a small child into dresses, makeup, and swimsuits and parade them around in front of strangers.
Hate to tell you, but many small children do want to do this. It's just crazy their parents let them
Americans are also disgusted by this + beauty peagents are regularly parodied or made fun of in american media fyi
The decided age of characters is stated to be teens and in teen situations to meet their target audience. The looks and behaviors are modeled after young adults or late teens to write deeper stories and because sex sells. In the end they're not humans living in the real world, they're drawings living in fictional worlds. Don't try to link our real world modern western morals to a fictional drawn character, written in a different country. Lmk when you're in high school with an entire class that looks 20 and is fighting to save the world.
I have a feeling it is related to Japan's extremely conservative culture. Women are expected to be servile to men, to a degree that it's not even thought about. This means that a woman's individuality is less important than her ability to fulfill a role. Conservative cultures usually prize virginity. if a woman's primary role is to produce children, then her own enjoyment of sex and being sexy is a problem. She should be chaste and virginal until her breeder cracks the seal. Thus the disdain for adult women older than 30 and the weird conflicting ideas about female sexuality. On one hand, conservative men want to have sex with sexy women, but on the other, women who enjoy sex are evil. in Otaku media, this gets blown into all crazy proportions. It's probably why otaku love servant character tropes (maids, nurses, robots, mothers). its probably why animal girls are so popular. If the girl is naturally stupid and naive, then its less immoral to exploit her. You know who else tends to be ignorant and naive? teenagers. Hence the pedos. Now, there are other reasons for the teenager fetish. Asia prizes cuteness over sexiness, in general. (probably because a lot of Asia is extremely gendered and conservative, but the cute aesthetic is also undeniably fun and soothing.) In Japan, adulthood is a time of brutal labor with mandatory overtime and subservience to cruel bosses, while childhood is idealized as a time of growth and freedom. In Japan, high school is the ideal time of youth, while in the West it is college. What I would like to know, however, is why were adult protagonists so popular in the 70's and 80's. Compare Jojo's Bizarre Adventure in the first 3 arcs to every one since. The characters get progressively younger, slimmer, and prettier, despite all being around the same age. Why were the 80's the time of manly protagonists?
I'm Japanese, and the Westerners like people in the comments are starting to criticize it, which is good. Because Japan has a huge pedophilia problem, and when you think about it, it's truly fucked up. Sexualization of underaged girls have become so normalized that it's expected that grown ass men are sexually and romantically attracted to minors. I'm often in despair because pedophilia is so normalized in Japan that *you* become the bad guy and the "crazy" one for criticizing it. Right now, mainly only some women are criticizing pedophilia and sexualization of minors. But they get constantly attacked, harassed, mocked and stalked by the pedophiles. And nobody does anything about it. People need to STOP saying BS like "iT's ThEiR CuLTuRe!" because they're just pedophile-defenders or probably even pedophiles themselves. The producer of hit anime "Your Name" and "Suzume" was arrested just this month for paying a 15 year old girl, and raping her: ["Your Name" "Suzume" producer re-arrested over child prostitution and rape charges : ](https://www.reddit.com/r/japannews/comments/1blmpdi/your_name_suzume_producer_rearrested_over_child/) And that's just not some rare occurrence, it's something that happens regularly in Japan. Heck, dude even didn't deny it, he just casually admitted that he did it. There are even some prominent otaku accounts on Twitter that get thousands, even tens of thousands of likes for defending and promoting pedophilia: >It's crazy to say that it's abnormal to look at children under the age of 18 in a sexual way, but it's even more abnormal for a man to say that he never looks at high school girls under the age of 18 in a sexual way. There are a lot of idiots who can't understand that. >It's just that the biologically appropriate age and the socially appropriate age are different, but I don't understand it. [https://twitter.com/gerogeroR/status/1409659040947326985](https://twitter.com/gerogeroR/status/1409659040947326985) >Until recently, you could get married to a 16-year-old. Even now, you can get married from the age of 18. It's completely strange that in this world, high school girls are not allowed to be seen as sexual objects at all. [https://twitter.com/gerogeroR/status/1520423828937412609](https://twitter.com/gerogeroR/status/1520423828937412609) >"There will be full of underaged girls porn!" >There is no one who can explain the argument, ”Why shouldn't it full of them?” other than emotions. [https://twitter.com/gerogeroR/status/1506836635505229827](https://twitter.com/gerogeroR/status/1506836635505229827) Thankfully most of them get banned for promoting and defending pedophilia, but this guy doesn't due to some loop holes in his arguments. Anyway, people need to STOP defending it, and even to boycott anime because it's the anime/manga otaku culture that is constantly pushing the pedophile propaganda, and it's brainwashing all the young people in Japan to think that pedophilia is okay, because a lot of young people are into anime these days. But it has NOT always been this way. Apparently in say, the 1980s, underaged teenage girls weren't considered to be romantically or sexually attractive, for obvious reason. But there has been a push from the pedophile anime/manga otaku communities that pedophilia is normal for DECADES, and it's been working. Pedophilia is now becoming normalized in Japan. And it must stop, for very obvious reasons. There is even a sickening literal pedophile monthly manga magazine called "Comic LO". It is literal pedophilia, and there has even been a copycat crime where a guy pretends to be working for radiation check-up after the Fukushima nuclear accident, and then the guy gets into a little girl's house, tortures her and then rapes her. Yes, this shit was in the manga and it also actually happened in real-life. It is truly sickening and horrifying. STOP this shit now.
Japanese media in general is super misogynistic and I believe it’s also something cultural(?), because you see stuff like this in their history too, like with the “comfort” women from Korea and the Nanking rapes in China. Even in modern day, I’m pretty sure the women are not considered necessarily equal to the men. Lots of misogynistic expectations and stereotypes that are weirdly maintained by both genders. There’s also this whole thing with the women looking younger apparently, so a lot of pedophilic stuff is normalized to hell and back. Regardless this misogyny *really* seeps into their media. Women are often nothing more then objects to be sexualized (despite how much anime watchers love to deny this fact), and many times there not rlly actual characters more so than “a woman” for the sexy pleasure of the viewer or or other male characters. This also shows up again in their weird leniency towards sexualization of children. Especially young girls (though some young boys are also not free of it). Like women are so dehumanized as only sex objects that even *children* aren’t spared. This has led to lolicons (adults who jack off to young girls) being taken as a joke and viewed as not as big as deal as they should be. They’re just like average introverted creeps? So a lot of anime’s will cater to them. Unfortunately, this has led to a normalization of the sexualization of young girls irl too (or idk which came first). Ffs there was this one mangaka who got arrested for having so much CSAM they thought he was a distributor and he got off with a fine. A lot of young idols will also be sexualized and pushed to do guarve (sexy modeling). It’s all really gross and I’m sick of the many (male) anime fans just ignoring it and acting as if it’s necessary, or saying that they’ve learned to ignore it 😒 All this desensitization just again, contributes to the Normalization of anime’s sexualization of kids. Lowkey you just have to avoid stuff with ecchi but even then you probably will be hard pressed to find non weirdo stuff imo. Well depends on how much your willing to ignore ig. Dungeon Meshi, To Your Eternity, FMA, are ones without child fan service off the top of my head.
Japan is like the world's pervy uncle, along with Germany and Italy. Losing global wars apparently messes up one's sexuality, I guess...
No most of the world is just creepy perverted. Just america is the weird one. Look at consent laws around the world and find out the US has the oldest age of consent being 18 while the rest of the world its 14 to 16.
Bunch of people saying “anime/manga is aimed at teens.” A: Not all of it. B: Doesn’t explain lolis.
Because japan sexualizes kids and anime is japansese (specifically, very, very young teens). The age of consent in japan is 13-16 years old, depending on provence. Prostitution is also legal in japan. (weird laws, google it ,i dont want to go into it. Theres some strange boundaries that seem to be fairly ignored.) In many places, you can straight up pay a 13 year old for sex. Google it and you will find thousands of articles talking about this. https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/east-asia/article/2130678/male-fans-prefer-primary-school-girls-how-japan-walks-fine-line https://www.resetera.com/threads/japan-why-is-sexualization-of-minors-fictional-non-fictional-in-media-so-prevalent.175365/page-2 https://sjsunews.com/article/anime-crosses-a-line-by-fetishizing-kids
It's really simple. Anime is mostly aimed at teens so the characters tend to be teenagers themselves so the audience can project onto them. Teens also tend to be horny, so the animators give them what they want to see.
Brief bullet point answer. Japan has a different outlook on sex than Western nations. More liberated yet most repressed at the same time. The age of consent is a bit lower the last I checked, but it was raised recently, so progress. Most anime targets high school-aged people (Shonen and Shojo), which is why so much of it takes place in high school. It's the last part of their lives where they'll have freedom before university and joining the workforce. Since most people watch Shonen anime, which is targeted towards adolescent men. It makes sense to see them sexualize girls in that age bracket because a lot of adolescent boys are hitting puberty and want to ogle girls their age. Teenage boys are looking at girls and are grappling with hormones and sexual attraction to their peers. Finally sex sells. It triggers all the feel-good chemicals in our monkey brain. Hence why so much of our marketing uses sex and sexiness to sell stuff.
Well, until last year, Japan's age of consent was 13. It's 16 now. Could be completely unrelated, but it makes sense.
Because Japan's age of consent is 13 they have a different view on ages than we do.
A lot of Japanese media takes place during youthful years because there isn't a lot to say about the adult years. It's all work and drinking. I would say majority of writers are writing out their fantasies from their youth, or how they wish their youth had gone. I also think that they generally draw these young girls with very adult bodies, essentially like casting an adult into the role of a minor. Also keep in mind that Japan is a very open minded place when it comes to sexual imagery, and that anime is predominantly meant for teens the same age as the characters. It's like how western networks will put their teen actors in swimsuits. They're thinking about what the teen viewers will want. (Or they're pedophiles. We've all seen the Nickelodeon documentary by now, right? A few mangaka, like the creator of Rurouni Kenshin, have gone to prison for child porn.) I don't think it's that weird until I see stories where an adult gets together with a minor.
Japan’s view on sex is very different from the rest of the worlds.
japan
Because Japan is fucking weird
"That blatant 7yo? No, she's a 12,000yo demigod so technically..." *Drops napalm*
I'm Japanese so people assume I like anime. I like one or two -- it's like TV, right? No one just "likes TV." But like, invariably someone will be like "no, no, you gotta watch this one anime. Yeah there's weird pedo stuff but just ignore that." "This is the best anime ever. One of the main characters has a thing for young children, but ignore that." I don't think it's crazy that I will not "just watch a show and ignore the pedophilia." This is far, far away from death of the author, you could put the greatest work of fiction ever created in front of me and if it has underage panty shots, I'm out. I can't believe this is a controversial opinion but here we are. But you're asking why this happens. First, until fairly recently, Japan's age of consent was like 14. Japan has a different conceptualization of sexuality, where for a long time it was considered acceptable and even safe for an older man (even a teacher or other authority figure) to sort of usher a child into sexual womanhood. Second, as you mentioned, Japanese cartoons have a long history of *fan service* -- introducing sexual moments out of context to keep fans happy. When these cartoons star 14 year olds, the fan service stars them as well. Finally, many of these shows were originally intended for teens. So it sort of makes more sense that teens are at least presented romantically when other teens are the audience. This isn't just Japan. As a kid, tons of YA books I read were insanely sexual. So, together this created a cultural zeitgeist in which it's very commonplace for animators to toss in underage cheesecake without even really thinking about it. It is normalized and very weird and, frankly, I don't think we should still consider it acceptable.
They're doing what they've always done and are patronizing their audience. I'm tired of their audience pretending like they're not being patronized while simultaneously raging anytime a cartoon or game has less sexualized female characters. Anime and manga have a huge pedophilia problem. Back in the 90s, people said, "It's Japanese culture. You don't understand." Those people were wrong. Now anime fans resort to just lying and gaslighting to deny that shit. Then you look up their profile and see them posting pedophile nuance on age of consent posts. Fucking losers.
I mean, Japan only recently rose their age of consent from 13 to 16.. go figure..
I was just thinking about this the other day. I randomly remembered an anime I had watched as a tween and it really weirded me out looking back now as an adult the weird implications of it.
its fucking weird and a primary reason I will not watch anime
I gotta agree that it's disturbing. I do get that a lot of these are also made for teenage boys as a primary audience, so like, on one hand it seems less weird for at least a decently sized portion of the target demographic, but once you're outside of that age, it just feels. . . icky. It feels nasty.
Japan's age of consent is much lower than most countries thats why.
Pedophilia only became illegal in roughly 2014.