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INTEREST: Online Petition Demands Content Warnings for Sexual Violence in Weekly Shonen Jump

Whenever I looked at it, I always thought I would be horrified to grow up as a kid in Japan having To Love-Ru advertised to me. So... this is kind of satisfying?

People should be able to write whatever manga they want but maybe don't market porn at kids, is all I'm saying.

You know, something tells me that most of the characters in shonen manga don't consent to getting killed or violently beat-up either, under-aged or not.

68% of Jump readers are 15 years old or younger, but I guess even checking Wikipedia is too difficult for most.

Jump is targeted at ELEMENTARY and junior high school students first and foremost.

Weekly Shōnen Jump (Japanese: 週刊少年ジャンプ, Hepburn: Shūkan Shōnen Janpu, stylized in English as WEEKLY JUMP) is a weekly shōnen manga anthology published in Japan by Shueisha under the Jump line of magazines.
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Shōnen, shonen, or shounen manga (少年漫画, shōnen manga) is manga aimed at a young teen male target-demographic. The age group varies with individual readers and different magazines, but it is primarily intended for boys between the ages of 12 and 18.

Let's face reality: there is a disturbing amount of anime and manga content ostensibly targeted at young teenage audiences that features some truly appalling treatment of sexuality in general, especially when it comes to treatment of female characters. If you're going to claim that media content doesn't affect children and adolescents, then why do we have age ratings systems in the first place? It's a biological fact that the portions of the brain that handle cognitive control and longer-term planning continue to develop into our 20s, well beyond the target audience of what's published in WSJ. If it's in a softcore porn series targeted at the 18+ crowd, then by all means do whatever the hell you want in there. Adults should be able to consume whatever content they choose, no matter how skeevy some may find it. But keep it out of mass-market series.

(If I never see another protagonist trip over a female and get an "accidental" hand full of boob it will still be too soon...)

I'm a bit confused by the phrase "trended online" in this case. 4000 signatures on change.org is basically nothing, especially after getting signal boosted by news sites. Maybe it was a hot discussion on Japanese twitter, but if that's the case it's hard to imagine it being a favorable one with such a low number of signatures. I've seen Japanese tweets on this subject that got tens of thousands of likes, so I don't really understand what makes this petition notable.

Badej wrote:

The way I read this piece is that he somehow didn't get his sexual education from either his parents or his school and blames WSJ for it. If it takes you until university to realize that unwanted sexual acts with someone else is not done then it clearly isn't WSJ's fault.

This was my takeaway as well. My friends and I watched a lot of fanservicey anime in highschool like DxD, yet none of us went around thinking it was okay to flip skirts. To say "I couldn't differentiate fantasy from reality, therefore nobody else can" is just dumb.

Nudity is definitely not something new in Shonen Jump. In fact, mangas in the early 90s like Video Girl Ai got censored becsuse they showed too much.

https://www.movie-censorship.com/report.php?ID=4130

All of you who missed the point of the petition, should ask a woman how she feels about this.

Being able to understand the difference between reality and fiction is predicated on fully understanding reality, though. Sex education is notoriously terrible in Japan, both from family and in schools, with little discussion of consent. Skirt-flipping and nonconsensual touching occurs frequently in even Japanese media aimed at young children - see Dragon Ball - so it's a much more common narrative for young Japanese children, as opposed to in American media, where children's media is generally scrubbed of sexuality.

Plus, I saw plenty of this kind of behavior when I was growing up - my brother's friend trying to peep at me while I was changing in my room, boys in high school poking my butt to make me mad during class, and so on. Saying, "Well, it was never a problem for me, so I don't think it's a problem for anyone," is counterproductive.

I'm a teacher. Children learn from media. You are not immune to propaganda. Period. Full stop. I don't know why this is so hard for people to understand. Sekiguchi's proposal isn't perfect, but I wholeheartedly support him wanting to do some good and help improve attitudes toward women and their bodies.

all-tsun-and-no-dere wrote:

Being able to understand the difference between reality and fiction is predicated on fully understanding reality, though. Sex education is notoriously terrible in Japan, both from family and in schools, with little discussion of consent. Skirt-flipping and nonconsensual touching occurs frequently in even Japanese media aimed at young children - see Dragon Ball - so it's a much more common narrative for young Japanese children, as opposed to in American media, where children's media is generally scrubbed of sexuality.

Then the focus should be on improving sex education, rather than changing media. Without doing that, you can purge all the lewd manga you want, the behavior won't get any better.

Quote:

Plus, I saw plenty of this kind of behavior when I was growing up - my brother's friend trying to peep at me while I was changing in my room, boys in high school poking my butt to make me mad during class, and so on. Saying, "Well, it was never a problem for me, so I don't think it's a problem for anyone," is counterproductive.

When I said it wasn't a problem for us, I was referring to learning that behavior from anime, not saying that nobody in high school harasses girls. Unless you know that those kids learned to do that from manga, I'm not sure how it's relevant. There were boys that pulled that sort of crap in our school too, and I'm positive they weren't anime fans. I think the fact that it's so pervasive outside of Japan works against the idea that manga contributes significantly to the problem.

Quote:

I'm a teacher. Children learn from media. You are not immune to propaganda. Period. Full stop. I don't know why this is so hard for people to understand. Sekiguchi's proposal isn't perfect, but I wholeheartedly support him wanting to do some good and help improve attitudes toward women and their bodies.

"You can learn things from media" is a true statement, but the problem is it doesn't make "these specific Shonen Jump series cause boys to think sexual harassment is okay" true. That claim requires evidence. I think it's "hard for people to understand" because people who try to speak authoritatively about the impact specific fiction has are generally presenting their speculation as fact. When that speculation doesn't line up with the experience of readers, it shouldn't come as a surprise that there's backlash.

The way I read this piece is that he somehow didn't get his sexual education from either his parents or his school and blames WSJ for it. If it takes you until university to realize that unwanted sexual acts with someone else is not done then it clearly isn't WSJ's fault.

I also fail to see how his example about his lack of capability of distinguishing between fantasy and reality works? What year was he in when that incident happened? If it was near the end of his elementary school days then it has less to do with fantasy vs reality and more to do with the beginning of puberty and bad sexual education by the parents/elementary school.

After reading a bit further he still can't distinguish between fantasy vs reality even after being "educated" as nobody gets hurt in these "unwanted" sexual acts between characters that 1) don't exist, 2) don't have feelings, and 3) can't possible think for themselves and thus makes the consent argument a moot point.

My friends and I watched a lot of fanservicey anime in highschool like DxD, yet none of us went around thinking it was okay to flip skirts. To say "I couldn't differentiate fantasy from reality, therefore nobody else can" is just dumb.

You know, something tells me that most of the characters in shonen manga don't consent to getting killed or violently beat-up either, under-aged or not.