Does anime and manga promote pedophilia?

http://goboiano.com/bbc-reporter-claims-anime-and-manga-promotes-pedophilia/

So recently, a reporter from BBC made a documentary about the sexualization of underage girls in Japan. A topic that she touched upon was the effect that anime and manga might have on society's perception of such.

Unfortunately the documentary itself is hard to find legally online, unless you live in the UK or use a VPN, and every article about the issue is biased towards one side or the other. The documentary, from the tidbits I've seen, is pretty good, except for the anime discussion since the reporter uses very bad examples.

One thing I find interesting from the article is the following exchange:
"The core difference between this interviewer [Dooley] and myself [Nogami] was the attitude towards human beings. My position is ‘all human beings have dirty desires. Isn’t it better to be vented appropriately?’ On the contrary, Ms Susie stated this. ‘All human beings are naturally innocent and have no dirty desires, and reading media depicting erotic, pedophilia, and gore contents will affect them to be corrupted."

So what's your take: underappreciated art form or lascivious propaganda?

 

For my own part, I think it's important to make the distinction between anime that is made to be exploitative and anime that is made for the sake of the art form. A significant portion of modern anime is made to be exploitative and pandering to the audiences, which is where we get such egregious "fanservice" from. High school settings are some of the most generically successful due to their relatability with both teens and adults (the former because they're experiencing it, and the latter because it's nostalgic), while fanservice remains one of the easiest way to make a quick buck. Naturally, these will find an intersection in most any series meant to be exploitative.

However, it's disingenuous to paint a picture of anime using just that brush; even in western media, we see clearly exploitative films and TV series, just in different ways. Many movies push for an edgier rating (e.g. "PG" -> "PG-13" or "PG-13" -> "R"), even when they don't really need to, because doing so will sell better. So-called "reality TV" is a huge offender here, too; so many reality TV series are based almost entirely on schadenfreude, playing up the bad parts of humanity. If anime is making people pedophiles, then reality TV is making them sadists.

Clearly, if we're going to say that modern media is bad because it's exploitative, it's not just "anime" that is at fault here. Sturgeon's law says that "90% of everything is crap," and the exploitative series absolutely fall under that umbrella. But conversely, that means there must be 10% that is good or even great.

Just off that alone, it's obvious that anime as a whole doesn't promote pedophilia any more than movies as a whole promote violence, but what about the anime that are geared toward being exploitative, that do feature underage girls in potentially compromising situations? Even with these, I would argue that this is a case of correlation and not causation. Until relatively recently, it's not even been possible to measure what percentage of the populace is attracted to underage teens, though "jailbait" has been around quite a bit longer than anime has been mainstream. Similar to the case of violent people preferring violent games, rather than violent games making people violent, I suspect that it's primarily people that already were attracted to underage teens watching the exploitative fanservice anime, rather than exploitative fanservice anime making people become attracted to underage teens.

It's an important distinction, and not one that shows up through a simple correlational study. The existence of these series provides an outlet for people that already existed; it doesn't necessarily convert new ones.

 

Nah.

 

Any anime that uses over-titualization (my made up word) such as the above falls into this category. It's the biggest thing I dislike about anime. Keeps me from watching it with my sons. But not just how they draw it, the sexual interactions the write in as well. It appeals to the nerd teen boi type who is their target market. So yeah, it's pedo but the true intent is simply more readers/watchers.

You can see the effect in the Japanese culture when now the adults seek this type of dress and behavior IRL as adults. They were exposed to this at a young age, before they should have been seeing that type of thing and it's imprinted itself in their mind as what sex should be.

 

Pretty much

The only ones I watch are the ones more focussed on a whole other thing like Attack on Titan or Tokyo Ghoul.

Or pokemon, i mean. Its pokemon.

 

This feels a lot like the violent video games cause kids to take the violence to the real world. While I agree fan service is pretty much a genre of anime I wouldn't want to say that increases rates of pedophilia/whatever other type of perversion. If anything it gives those people an outlet that doesn't harm anyone.

 

I wouldn't say that it breeds or causes it. But it's a little too much for my taste.

Again, the Greek did all this wild stuff way before anime or whatever the argument is. But sometimes it just feels a little off in certain animes (I don't actually watch them, as I said, so I could be misinterpreting this), when browsing the internet and fragments are thrown around at time, it's just not that... idk. Then again, I know that I'm quite conservative on the whole sexuality thing (not in a political way, i fully support gay marriage etc), but it just feels off. I can't quite express it. Maybe I'd have to actually watch it to put my finger on what it is exactly.

I guess in a way it's very soft porn, and I am not opposing porn (in the general sense, some porns, maybe, but that's a whole other story), maybe it's the weird mix of child experience watching anime and the adult me that sees the boobs swinging that clashes. Who knows. Not sure if any of this makes any sense in particular

 

Greeks invented anime?

 

Are you sure about this?
https://myanimelist.net/anime/season

To me the recent anime seasons have been extremely varied. Just this season, among the good (higher than 7.5 rating) shows there is only one with the 'harem' tag, and its a romantic comedy anime. The only isekai recently have been re:zero (which is great) and Konosuba (which is a great parody of isekai shows).

Ignore the trash shows and only watch the good ones. Anime is worth a lot more than it's critics make it out to be.

 

I always wondered, is paedophilia something that is natural (like being attracted to the opposite sex) or something that is developed or environmental (say, "societal beauty expectations". No clue if fetishes work in a similar fashion).

Anyone know?

 

I am no expert by any means and forgot where I read stuff but I believe it is developed in part because of the pedophiles desire to feel more powerfull than the other participant so yes similar to some other fetishes in the less than savory direction.
this also means that people having been the less than powerfull participant can have the effect of turning from being the victim into being a perpetrator.

as for the stereotypical repressed nerd they do fit the criteria for being "weak" relationship-wise and combined with other factors be an at risk group for developing such behaviour.

I believe those would be the main cause, though I would not discount nature and soceity as factors.

Youjo Senki is good. though the protagonist is a loli... sort of? it is complicated.

 

Konosuba is one of, if not the funniest anime I have ever seen. The myanimelist description and the trailer fail to capture what actually makes it appealing, instead making it look like a generic fantasy show. It is absolutely not pandering garbage, even if it's marketed to look that way. It's a goofy comedy that twists and subverts every fantasy, isekai and video game trope it can find.


/end rant.


On the topic of manga/LN/VN adaptations in anime, I'm pretty sure anime has been mostly adaptations for years now. Original series have always been more rare because they lack an existing fanbase, making them bigger risks for anime producers.

 

I enjoy a bit of it but this is sad.

 

We probably just have different sense of humour. Konosuba's jokes are exactly what I like. For reference, what's your funniest anime?

 

Detroit metal city is my funniest anime.

Anyway, pedophilia seems oddly specific. I would just call it degeneracy.

 

Another, Youjo Senki and Attack on Titan

I think maybe my sense of humour is a tint darker.