Mistakes of Youth: The Blog (Powered by EXCELLENCE!)

Anime World Order may not want to admit it, but lolita characters and the exploitation of said characters have been part of Japanese cartoons and comics since the 1970s, and probably even further back than that. What we can all probably agree on is that at the turn of the century this exploitation became a lot more shameless and rampant– and right now in 2008, such shows have become par for the course when it comes to a season’s anime offerings.

I can’t really talk much about the manga side of things, but when it comes to modern anime, the types of lolita fanservice you get can be divided into roughly two groups: 1) Older characters who look younger than they are (your Manabi Straights and your Lucky Stars) or 2) Characters who are actually proper children and look it (your Kyou no Go No Nis and your Kodomo no Jikans). There are various ideas and thought processes that go behind the exploitation of these characters as sexual objects– in the case of number 1, the fact that they’re actually older is meant to lift that latent feeling of guilt. It almost makes it ok for one to be attracted to them, since after all, they’re 18! Number 2 is meant to cater to the more hardcore lolicon, the guys that want as close to the real thing as possible without sharing a cell with the other Miyazaki. But this entry isn’t really about that kind of stuff at all– what I want to talk about is the honesty lolita/pedo fanservice.

When I say honest loli fanservice, I mean stuff that’s true to life. In the case of number 1, this doesn’t exist at all. It’s meant to pander– pure, simple and guilt free. However, in the case of number 2, there is a degree of honesty. Not just in the fact that the characters are proper kids, but in that kids actually do talk about sex a lot.

The kinds of discussions found in Kodomo no Jikan and 5-2 are played up as lead up and/or accessories to the fanservice, but I don’t think anyone can really deny being at least interested in such things when they were younger. I remember being as young as 7-years-old when the word “sex” first made its rounds throughout the classrooms. In grades 3 through 6 we would often ponder this mysterious act and its ramifications with a great amount of interest. Shows such as KnJ and 5-2 really do a good job of bringing back this feeling of wonder and interest in things such as the idea of sex to a young kid. Probably more so with 5-2, since the sexual element in KnJ is played up more for the boners than anything else.

I’m not really saying normal people shouldn’t find such fanservice any less reprehensible, but there is something to be said in the honesty in shows such as KnJ and 5-2. Sure it’s for perverts, but it’s true! And that’s part of what I like about it.

Original Post

This is something of a true story. Yes, it is true that in my English 101 class last year, our first assignment was to write about anything we wanted. I however, did not write about moe. That happened about two years earlier in my Junior year of high school. See, in high school I was doing the IB, and part of trying to get your IB diploma was to write this 10 page essay called the Extended Essay. Me, being more of a Japanophile then than I am now (if your mind can fathom such a thing) wrote an “anthropological study” on otaku. The paper is horrible, and if I tried to read it again now I’d probably rip my face off. Anyway, the paper had a bit on moe. Now, when I wrote this (I guess back in… 2004? 2005?) I didn’t really know much about moe past the word. So I read a bunch of essays, and basically wrote about it as a desire to protect innocence and cited examples of certain works and magazines. Some time after I wrote it, I gave it to my English teacher to look over, and he said exactly what the guy in this comic says, word for word. As far as art goes, I don’t really like it. The drawings are sloppy and rushed. I do like the backgrounds and the lighting, though. I also like dressing the English teacher up as Lupin III.

I’m kind of running short of comic ideas. Nothing airing at the moment really inspires me to write anything funny. Well, I could do something about the two horrible Gonzo shows playing, but that’d probably be the same as that Soul Link comic I did a long while back. I do have a good supply of scripts that should last for a good 15 weeks, but reading them over, they seem very not funny. Eh. I probably need to give some of them a good editing job. Whatever. I kinda know what I want to do for next week, so that’s fine.

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