Forum - View topic

REVIEW: Made in Abyss GN 1

@FireChick From what I've seen from partially reading the first chapter, and from what others have told me happens down the line, the author most definitely grossly sexualizes young children to a really awful degree.

No matter how much I'd otherwise enjoy the premise, I'm passing really hard on reading or watching anything by this guy.

there is a clear distinction to be made here: a pedophile is someone who is sexually attracted to real-life children (including boys and girls), and a lolicon is someone who is sexually attracted to fictional drawings of little prepubescent girls.

There is the standard Japanese humor towards bodily waste and bodily functions...As you get further into the story,one thing is clear the author uses body horror,really horrific stuff.

For those of you saying it's not a big deal or that I'm exaggerating, the first chapter has the twelve year old but younger looking protagonist tied up and naked.

Silent_Ninja wrote:

there is a clear distinction to be made here: a pedophile is someone who is sexually attracted to real-life children (including boys and girls), and a lolicon is someone who is sexually attracted to anime or manga lolis that don't resemble real-life children due to their anime-style visual character design.

The problem with this argument is that, if someone finds a drawing of an adult character attractive, it's a near-certainty that they feel the same way about similar-looking real humans; and equally likely that they are generally attracted to people of the same apparent age and gender. It seems like quite a stretch to say this strong correlation does not apply when the drawing is of a child.

That said, the situation with Made in Abyss (going by the anime, at least) is not so straightforward. Westerners tend to have a knee-jerk reaction to underage nudity, as if it automatically means a pedo is on the loose; Japan seems to be kind of on the opposite end of the spectrum, believing it represents innocence, even when sexual themes start to sneak in. For an anime fan, I'm pretty easily-offended when it comes to fanservice, but I never felt like MiA crossed that line--there's no noticeable "male gaze" camera positioning or anything of that nature. The tendency for Riko and Reg to fall into traditional gender roles (not most of the time, but too frequently to ignore) bothered me more than the nudity issues.

Some people will still find those aspects of it unacceptable, and I'm not going to tell them they're wrong, but I don't think we need to be concerned that the author might be a pedophile. If the manga was really unambiguously inappropriate, the high-concept-and-production-values anime adaptation either wouldn't exist, or it would be a slap-dash job with the nasty stuff amplified instead of toned down.

For one panel, and that was really as bad as the series ever got.

Wow, I’ve never seen such a narrow-minded review of anything before this one.

I'll tell you a bit about these charges: the author of Made in Abyss, after the arrest of Hurouni Kenshin author Nobuhiro Watsuki, said he would draw less nudity because some people were already bothering him about it. Besides the fact that he did not want the authorities to bother him because of baseless accusations. So he decided he would use less nudity so that no one would raise unfounded charges.

This I saw on your Twitter profile. I personally can not claim that he is a sexual offender based on his work, that is not enough. But I can not deny that in Japanese culture the nudity they reproduce in comics is common involving a wide range of ages. An example is Tsugumomo, Girls Last Tour and more. It is not a constant, although it is there. Made in Abyss is the same thing.

I am not against anyone who gets bothered by it; if you are troubled, then you have every right to question, but remember: justice is the same for all, you have to prove what you are accusing others of. Because I have no evidence, I will not accuse him, because I did not see anything too much about it.

Now, one question that I leave in the air: why do not these people criticize, for example, sexual tendencies in Western works notoriously charged with this?

Ronie Peter wrote:

I'll tell you a bit about these charges: the author of Made in Abyss, after the arrest of Hurouni Kenshin author Nobuhiro Watsuki, said he would draw less nudity because some people were already bothering him about it. Besides the fact that he did not want the authorities to bother him because of baseless accusations. So he decided he would use less nudity so that no one would raise unfounded charges. This I saw on your Twitter profile. I personally can not claim that he is a sexual offender based on his work, that is not enough. But I can not deny that in Japanese culture the nudity they reproduce in comics is common involving a wide range of ages. An example is Tsugumomo, Girls Last Tour and more. It is not a constant, although it is there. Made in Abyss is the same thing. I am not against anyone who gets bothered by it; if you are troubled, then you have every right to question, but remember: justice is the same for all, you have to prove what you are accusing others of. Because I have no evidence, I will not accuse him, because I did not see anything too much about it. Now, one question that I leave in the air: why do not these people criticize, for example, sexual tendencies in Western works notoriously charged with this?

I apologize if I'm interrupting the conversation between you and @FireChick, but I just want to say "Amen" to your comment because it was well-written and very well said.

As for my answer to your question, well I don't want to answer it so that it complete diverts this thread into a completely different topic altogether. However, I will say this: those people you describe are absolute hypocrites.