You don’t get a pass because your 13 year olds of choice are japanese and drawn characters. It’s creepy as fuck and I am judging you for it.
Shit like this is why I stopped watching anime. The normalized pedophilia and xenophobia is too much.
(Unrelated but another reason I stopped watching was because I couldn’t stand the squeaky falsetto female voices that Japanese culture forces women to have. I always watched a dub whenever possible.)
Drawings ≠ Reality
Stop conflating them, that was the exact argument that people who hated videogames used: “if you do X/watch X/play X, then you turn into X/Y/Z”. That’s monocausalism, and an oversimplification of really complex systems and processes.
If your arguments were true, most of GTA players were mass shooters, because the same exact mechanism happens there.
When you pay a shop to print out a 6-ft vinyl of said anime drawings, and then voluntarily apply it to the side of your clapped out Honda Civic, such that the fuel nozzle goes into the underage anime girls butt, it becomes reality.
So the defining trait that makes it ok is that it’s not “real life”? If you get an artwork commissioned of an amine girl that is based on/inspired by someone you know irl, is that fine?
I guess to take it to an extreme do you think cartoons of CSAM is acceptable since it’s “not real”? I guess it technically doesn’t hurt anyone irl, and gives pedos a way to… yeah.
For the record I do not agree but am interested in the reasoning behind why you consider it OK.
Because only can be considered bad what causes real, verifiable harm. But this not only doesn’t cause harm, but it can even avoid it because it will redirect these impulses to something safer
Where are the kids you are allowed to murder in GTA?
Or is it another game? What is the game where you graphically murder children?
You murder people nevertheless.
That’s the problem, and you’re just making a straw man out of it with something irrelevant to the point.
No, you’re just refusing to see the point. I’m sticking closer to the topic than you are.
I mean it’s “the same” right? If ‘enjoying stories about fucking kids is like killing an NPC in GTA’? Where are all the games about graphically murdering children? If it’s the same, if your analogy holds, there should be plenty of games that let you murder kids in the street, just not fuck them.
And actually, there are games where you’re allowed to kill children.
Anyway, the point is, in GTA you can be a mass murderer of women and men alike, even pregnant women, and you then don’t see that reflected in reality.
I don’t necessarily think they’re pedos. I just think they need to grow the fuck up. It’s everywhere these days. You see the stickers plastered on cars. Half of Reddit (and some of Lemmy) are posts of artwork of scantily clad anime girls. Like 80% of the posts on the TopCharacterTropes sub involve half naked underage anime girls. Like these people have never watched anything other than sexualized anime. At least fantasize about actual women.
And I actually like some anime. Just not this weird sexualized girl anime that brings out the weirdos.
Absolutely agree. There is a lot of hand waving and justification going on in the comments.
I don’t think kids as characters or even adults regressed into children is the problem so much for me, as the sexualization of them. And there is a definite issue with that across anime. “Fan Service” is a very real and often utilized trope. You can have all the cultural things people mentioned in an anime without panty shots and adults wanting intimacy with children.
Unfortunately since the pedo apologists defend the bad parts of this as if it’s just a “culture” difference, it’s hard to see any use of child anime characters for something like an avatar as anything but gross predilection.
I worry about your social circle that you think this is unpopular.
I’m talking about the people I see online.
Thanks for posting this op, its been a great filter. My block list is longer now and that gives me great joy!
Aye, mine’s been filling up too. Ngl, I really wasn’t expecting so many people to be flat out defending tbis shit.
Based opinion
Idgaf if the character you’re drooling over is canonically X, Y or Z; if they have been drawn like a child then the artist drawing them has done so intentionally (two points if you can guess why they draw characters like that)
If your argument was true, then GTA or other violent games should cause mass shootings and lots of killings. They don’t, because they in principle work the same as cultural works. But they don’t. Now you’re gonna go into an ad hoc argument filled up with fallacies, because what you’re saying is just simply false.
Now you’re gonna go into an ad hoc argument filled up with fallacies, because what you’re saying is just simply false.
Good job trying to get ahead of it, but unfortunately no, I’m simply going to ask what you think my argument is.
Adult curves are difficult. Same reason high fashion models all are shaped like boards.
On the contrary, the most common sexualization I found of young/child characters add/use most of the times mature sexual features, including curves: next time cover the face or immagine a face swap, if what remains is compatible with developed sexual attributes the sexyness is plain neuron activation… I only cold shiver when inmature body features or proportions are highlighted or detailed in a sexual context or attitude, those are the disgusting ones… at least for me
Money?
Mine’s a cool robot lady 😅👌
I am ace and often find out very late that certain things i like have a sexual connotation, but i hope that when non asexual people enjoy a romance, they are not thinking about the characters genitals
Holy shit you’re only using this ‘unpopular opinion’ to repeat offensive Norrie opinions.
We can also discuss violence in games and things like horror movies again if you want
Yeah and ler’s do racism and misogyny next! Because everybody knows that a normal media diet full of race and gender based violence has absolutely no effect on the people who consume it, right?
And obviously any racist and/or misogynistic social behaviours from fans cannot be attributed as influenced or normalised by the media they consume, I mean clearly society just is racist and misogynistic anyway so that can’t be it, that’s just normal. Right?
We should totally defend all the racism and misogyny in our media and feel attacked if anyone points out that the media we like makes us look like racist misogynists!
Contextually it is an unpopular opinion though.
Fedi popular opinion is this stuff is all wonderful and you’re a bigot if you don’t agree. Like, I if I mention I block loli and furry content and their pornographic versions, I get multiple replies/DMs telling me what a bigot I am and how I need enjoy furry porn or something.
If I enjoyed Lady and the Tramp, am I a zoophile?
Did you beat off to it?
I’m not a huge anime fan, but I have seen some anime and western animation that takes place in highschool, or highschool age, so I guess I get to have a casual opinion.
And that opinion is that when I see animated characters in highschool I don’t think of actual highschool kids, because highschool kids are gross children. Similar to how Hollywood will have a TV show about teens and cast a bunch of 28 year olds to play them, there’s not really any connection or association in my mind between these characters and real youths I might see on my walk to work or on the bus.
The reason that highschool keeps coming up is because the setting has a lot of constraints and dynamism. True children have no agency in the world, and adults are set in their ways or part of the system, whereas teens are becoming people, and so there’s a question about who they’ll become. There are adults and structures that have some level of authority over them, which can make the stories have conflict, but those adults don’t hold ultimate authority like they would with toddlers or something, so there’s a chance of victory. This is why even shows that aren’t about highschool, like Avatar the Last Airbender, still feature kids in an age where if there was highschool, they’d be in it. Or fantasy adventure + “highschool” like Owl House. They’re stories of self-discovery that most adults don’t experience because they already self-discovered and they’re through that now.
So my answer is that I don’t want to convince you of anything. If, when you see a character that’s meant to be in highschool, you feel like that is a highschool person in real life, that’s fine. And I could see that being creepy. But when I experience an animated character they don’t feel like a real person to me, they’re an abstract sketch of a person, lacking in detail, and one of the details they lack is “actual organic age and the implications of the body characteristics that come with it”. Instead they’re just “confident” or “awkward” or “shy” or “bold, but reckless” or whatever.
There’s nothing about them that feels anything like any real person I’ve met or seen.
I literally run a Mastodon server specifically for non-toxic English-first anime/etc fans and I understand where you’re coming from. I created the community for a lot of the same reasons
That said, you are projecting an extreme puritanical Western philosophy onto a culture that is dramatically different for deeply ingrained cultural reasons.
Teenage stories are prevalent because of the concept “seishun” (springtime of youth). Japanese culture is extremely rigid and conformist, and as a consequence highschool is viewed as the time in life where you have the most freedom to try new things, express yourself, and discover your passions. Watching teens experience their first love, for example, is a cathartic release for people who don’t have the freedom to make drastic changes to their identity anymore. It is a depiction of someone discovering a new identity, and embracing change.
“Kawaii” (cute) culture has deep roots in Shinto spiritualism. For a large part of Japanese history, due to mortality rates among children below the age of 7, children were literally considered not fully human until they reached a certain age. They were “close to the spirits” because they might be reclaimed by the spirit world at any time. This, along with some other tidbits, led to the trope where a spiritual being regresses to look childlike when they lose their spiritual power. It is “closer to the spirit realm”. And because there are many stories about being careful not to malign spirits, this became a reverence for childlike things.
Yes, especially among westerners, the are a lot of people with transgressive tendencies who gravitate towards the medium because it’s an easy mask for their predilections. But you would do well to more about the history of the culture and medium you’re attacking.
Because the way you present your position right now just makes you look like an ignorant westerner who didn’t bother to ask “why” before painting an entire culture with a single brush.
EDIT: Wanted to make sure I call out that there is plenty of anime with seriously problematic content that I refuse to watch, no matter how good the story is, because I won’t give tacit approval to the bad parts. Mushukou Tensei, No Game No Life, and many others fall in this category. But the stuff in Re:Zero, for example, needs to be viewed through the Japanese cultural lens where youthfulness is an ideal, and a mature character with the ability to manipulate their appearance at will naturally picks a young, petite body. The disparity between that characters childlike physical appearance and overtly adult attire and vile behavior is literally the point of the character.
Based cultural context here.
I hear this and sympathize.
…But. Honestly? It’s not just western fans that are the problem. A few anime shows I researched seem to use underage sex appeal (or other problematic depictions, like toxic relationships) to draw attention, to make money.
At some point that’s not a cultural difference or misunderstanding; it’s pandering. The showrunners know what they’re doing. I’d argue that is exploitation of Japanese culture.
And even if they’re rejected by fans like you, these problematic shows seem to be immensely popular.
And american tv shows don’t sexualize teenagers constantly?
every type of media panders to it’s fans… that’s the entire point.
and you are welcome to not watch if if that isn’t what you enjoy.
I have no doubt media you consume can be criticized as problematic from various POV that aren’t your own. And yet, you still consume it.
This is classic ‘it’s cringe when you do it/enjoy it, but based when I do it’
They didn’t defend american TV shows sexualizing teens, why even bring that in to the conversation like they are? Both are wrong. No one said one is ok and the other not…pedo is pedo is pedo.
A couple of things:
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Trashy western sex appeal (or tacticool fetish, drug glorification, or whatever) is a fair point. That’s a problem. Some of those trashy western shows are popular, too.
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But I don’t buy whataboutism. It doesn’t make either thing okay.
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Some popular anime really takes things to an… extreme.
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And even outside the notorious anime, I kept finding problematic tropes when I tried to get into anime, like these women written in a way that got me to squirm in my seat and turn off my TV. When I sample critically acclaimed western TV/animation, this is not such an issue; I don’t mean to make a comparison, but just to convey that anime sampling made me uncharacteristically uncomfortable.
My point is that you, a westerner, being comfortable with Western media but uncomfortable with Japanese media, is not as much indicative of the character of the content as it is indicative of the things that have been normalized for you vs the things that have been normalized for others.
That’s the thing you’re missing: every culture has problematic content, every culture gets desensitized to their own problematic stuff but not others’, and every culture has complex reasons why those things developed there.
I promise you: people around the world squirm at your favorite media just as much as you squirm at theirs, because your cultural history, standards, Overton Window, and exposure to media are significantly different.
You have been describing your subjective experiences as if they provide objective facts about the content. It is hard to step back, recognize your own cultural biases, and remove them before assessing both other cultures’ media and your own culture’s.
Like, imagine an American saying “I’ve sampled a lot of American food and almost never find it disgusting. But when I sample food from other countries I frequently find things I don’t like.” Wouldn’t you be like “yeah? And? Obviously that’s because you grew up with American food”
Ah yes of course, your romantic depictions of children are ok because they’re nuanced and cultural and any adults who call it weird just aren’t cultured enough to appreciate all that n
uaonce.Did you even read what I wrote? Or did you find the first sentence you didn’t like and skipped straight to the reply button?
Because I never said it was okay. I flat out stated that there are shows I refuse to watch due to their problems.
These issues are complex. Most cultures around the world have serious problems when you step back from your own subjective experiences. Getting btfo about one media subculture or another without understanding the “why” is unhelpful and ignorant. And many of the things you interpret one way are intended and interpreted extremely differently by the other culture. Everything I’ve said is about identifying the difference between actual degeneracy and cultural norms, and gracefully putting all of it in the proper cultural context.
If you just wanted to come here and stroke your own sense of moral superiority then piss off.
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Yeah, i get it. Loli fetish is straight up pedo, and should be called that. Obsessing over high school aged children and talking about them as sexual objects, straight to creep. A thousand year old vampire goddess in the body of a hyper-sexualzed twelve year old is a tramsparent justification.
At the same time in general it depends on the motivation. I love the show Lucky Star. It depicts a group of girls in middle school just being girls, and living their life. Which is something i missed out on as a young person, and so fulfills a empty part of me. I’d hoped for something similar in yuruyuri, but that felt more sexualized.
You’re causing harm to real kids with looking at lolis? Spoiler: No
Why ask the question if you’re just going to stuff the wrong answer into your straw man?
When I turned it out into an straw man?
I’m just pointing out that you’re conflating and equiparating fictional beings and mere drawings to real people when you say they’re both pedo, and that’s not how it works.
You also equiparate causing danger to real children to just being obsessed to a bunch of pixels or a bunch of lines on paper. The second may be cringe, but not more than that.
Okay, cool. You also gonna point out the difference between ephebaphilia and pedophilia? Im sure it’ll help your argument.
Those girls in Lucky Star are no l16-17 and all become 18 over the course of the show. Still weird for anyone over 23. Love the show.
Stuff happens though. I liked the show when i was 18 and I still recall liking it now at 38. You’ll get old too and the things you enjoyed when you were young won’t magically become acceptable later, looking at hazbin hotel after gen z’s kids grow up to be our next big puritans, everyone will be retroactively unacceptable someday.
It’s a comedy slice of life.
Is it weird for adults to like Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Or any number of shows where the main cast are school aged kids?
Adults with anime school girl avatars
Some of them, I’m sure. Some people I think just have a favorite character or look like them or relate to them somehow. I live in Japan and it’s not uncommon for adults to have a character for an existing anime or even something drawn for them in that style based on their own appearance (men and women, old and young) in LINE (messaging app) or whatnot.
As for the rest (i.e. being actually attracted to or overly-obsessed with), yeah, that’s getting in to creep/pedo territory.
