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Over sexualization of minors is one of those things that can make it hard(and embarrassing) to be an anime/manga fan.
For high school characters at least(depending on the series) you can usually rationalize it the same way you might with an american show that hires adult actors. Theyre intentionally drawn in a more adult fashion and the characters themselves, while exhibiting cute traits are often still hyper competent and independent in a way that resembles college students more than high schoolers.
Is it still conceptually gross? Absolutely. It’s something that you just get desensitized to and I dont think thats a good thing, but at least on some level I can see how it can be tolerated in SOME series depending on how it’s handled, but I can also see how it’s a deal breaker.
The full on child stuff full stop is gross. All the time. There is no desensitizing and I hate that its so goddamn common in anime and that it’s so accepted. To the point that the community has a cute little term for sexualized children that they throw around. In any other community this would be a fringe dark corner of the hobby that never touches the more mainstream stuff, but in anime land it’s front and center.
I’m certainly seen this kind of thing way too often in anime and it’s generally an instant turn-off to any show that has these kinds of characters.
I don’t have an art background so I’ve always acted on a “I know it when I see it” basis so it’s interesting to see that put in art terms.
Similarly but with JRPGs. It’s not about not wanting any sort of adult content in my RPG, it’s about not wanting the weird objectification/sexualization of women or worst, girls some JRPG titles feature.
One of the biggest issues is how horny the art can be. Western media is guilty of this too if you look at comics made in the late 80s till today, but western comics have started to tone it down in the mainstream(and with how hard the market crashed even mainstream comics were fringe in the 00s) .
Still the horny super saiyan male gaze is the worst and ruins a show. Dragon maid is exhibit A. Even if you age up the 16 year old to 25 and if the camera treated the child character like a child, it would still be a hard sell to someone who isnt already indoctrinated into how anime is. The story itself is fun and wholesome and the animation is great, but the character designs and framing of the women is still just too much. Tits jiggling wildly, distracting angles, situations that should be played straight played SUPER erotically for no reason. Its bad.
Whenever fanservice is criticized there are tons of members of the community who come out of the woodwork to defend it and act like the wanting my media to not be embarrassing is the result of being a prude, or not being sex positive or something when its just like, no this is just objectifying and distracting at best, and at worse it is detrimental to the story.
Of course then you have shows like dragon maid or how heavy are the dumbbells you lift which are ecchi series. Fans of ecchi will come out and say “why are you watching ecchi if you dont want to watch titties bounce. Do you get mad when people have sex in porn?” which is fair, but porn also doesnt represent a significant portion of each tv season and big budgets and quality animation isnt diverted away from other non pornographic projects.
I had the same issue with Dragon Maid where the main couple - Tohru and Kobayashi - are actually a fun, cute, well handled queer couple, but every other character after that (besides Fafnir and Kobayashi’s male coworker, Makoto) just really made me feel iffy and suspicious.
Overall I think this was a pretty good video discussing the topic and I think the author handled it pretty reasonably.
I got about 20 seconds in before the constant rising inflection of her speech drove me mad.
They also made a thematically related, follow-up essay video: I’m Worried About Cancel Culture