Forum - View topic

EP. REVIEW: Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid S

Chiibi wrote:

Redbeard 101 wrote: Then comes the multitude of excuses for why that reviewer sucks and is just wrong. In this case we've already had the quite old, "but she's not really a child, so even if she looks like a child it's ok to ogle her, sexualize her, and insert her into my own fantasies and if you find the sexualization of what looks like a young child to be off putting you're just some morally wrong a-hole trying to shove western values onto everyone", excuse show up for that part that was criticized. Another prime example of that particular reasoning was with Dance in the Vampire Bund. "They're really quite old and adults so it's ok if they look like kids". The hypocritical thing is that when the situations are reversed, and it's a male character that's actually an adult but put into a child's body, that same group will say how that male character is just a child so they don't know any better in regards to questionable conduct. Like with our old pal Rudy. Funny how that one way street works.. I don't know why people are so obsessed with the word "ok" when it comes to what can be shown in anime in the first place. It's anime. A cartoon. Fantasy not reality. That means everything that happens in it is morally "ok". I really don't believe in 'immoral anime'. I only believe in 'good taste' and 'bad taste'. And something being tasteless doesn't make it "bad" or "wrong".

Art doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s a thing that exists in the real world, made by people in the real world, for people in the real world. Fiction works because it takes concepts from reality and uses them to tell stories that resonate with real people and their real feelings in reality. No matter how detached you may have convinced yourself it is the only reason you like the things you do is because of the circumstances of your own life and the reactions you’ve formed from them, same as everyone else. Reviewers are simply explaining theirs, and other people can compare their reactions to theirs based on their own loved experiences. It’s a conversation that has existed as long as art, and trying to stop it by simply declaring fiction as absent of reality is a sad way to instead remove yourself from enjoying that discussion with the rest of humanity.

James_xeno wrote:

Why was Lynzee even given this to review if she had such personal hangups about it?

You should probably pay more attention before posting. Lynzee clearly said in a previous post in this thread that she's the one who makes the final call on review assignments, so she - as a fan of the first season - chose to do this herself. (And before you try to insinuate that she must not have been a "true fan," note that is was her #3-ranked title for 2017. I think that qualifies.)

Quote:

For the mainstream audience, or anyone otherwise not interested in fanservice that involves creeping on kid characters, a show like Dragon Maid can be frustrating.

Did you just claim that "mainstream" audiences aren't interested in fanservice?!

James_xeno wrote:

That's side stepping the issue. The fact is that we are still talking about utter and complete fantasy.... fiction. You still have yet to explain exactly how or why it does or should matter, let alone why it should have any moral or ethical bearing on reality. You can't just claim that "it does" just "because." If someone feels like they have trouble telling the difference between it and reality then that's their problem. But please don't go speaking for everyone else. I mean next are we going to have to again start hearing how violent video games and media causes real violence? That kind of fallacy has been long debunked, i'd rather not try to revive it again... no matter how "icky" fiction makes some feel.

Post removed

by refusing to believe that fiction holds real meaning you’re cutting yourself off from that entire conversation.

But lately, something called 'purity culture' has many people clutching their pearls every single time something even slightly different from society's norms...and they want it removed and they want everyone who likes said thing to suffer for it.

These are the same people who claim that "sexualizing minors" in anime "is bad" even though nobody real is being harmed at all. They only want to erase it because it "makes them feel icky".

Despite all the uh, heat in here, I just wanted to pop in and say I really loved the segment about Kobayashi and her maid costume. I've always really related to Kobayashi (if that wasn't clear by my avatar), but not exactly her fascination with maids. But her explaining that it started because she wanted to be cute and pretty made it completely relatable. I wear women's clothes, but they are definitely more on the masculine side because I don't feel like girly and feminine stuff suits me, even though I wish it did. But I did discover the power of cosplay when I was younger, and I wore a Disney Princess-esque ballroom style wedding dress to my wedding even though everyone said it was so unlike me. And I do fawn over cute anime idol costumes, so I guess I have my own version of maids after all!

Anyway, just wanted to say it's really nice having a show with a main character I can relate to so well.

But consider how the other way "cuts." The idea that female fanservice aimed at het males - the a person I disagree with politically adjacent commenters who whine "no one complains about male fanservice or even female fanservice in works aimed at LGBT audiences" are literally correct but to quote Snopes.com "lacks context" about the power dynamics thing - is objectification does in fact have at its root western puritanical ideas that challenge open sexual expression and desire in the first place because the idea that sexual desire and expression will inevitably lead to violence and other harms is totally absent in the culture. (Note: I am using "puritanical" in a historical development of culture sense, not as a perjorative.) Remove that and there aren't going to be anything to inhibit depicting fetishes and kinks either.

What westerners are demanding of Dragon Maid - and more broadly the anime industry in general - is to adopt western LGBT and third wave feminist politics. That ignores that such politics did not develop in isolation but instead were a reaction to a (arguably formerly) dominant western cultural context that never existed in Japan. So ... imposing western ideas on other cultures is fine so long as they are your ideas and not those of your western political opponents? That is asking them to fight your battles instead of their own and for your benefit as opposed to theirs. To put it another way ... objecting to characters that were (almost) certainly created to appeal to het males like Lucoa and Ilulu is different from someone with a traditional western worldview objecting to the Kobayashi/Tohru and Kanna/Riko attraction how? Japan should be as free from western progressive ideology as they are from western conservative ideology to pursue themes in their artistic and mass media because both the western progressivism that you agree with and the western conservatism that you oppose are still western ideas created by westerners for westerners.

I feel like people really exagerate Kanna/Riko's sexualisation, like okay, you can argue that the twister scene sexualised them to an extent, but beyond that I really don't see how anything they did at least in the 1st season ever crossed the line into being something that could be seen as sexual, they never do anything that wouldn't be seen as a normal childhood friendship and even twister isn't something out of the ordinary for children, the angles where definitely animated in a way that did show off body parts like their thighs but it wasn't like they were actually touching each other in a sexual way. I have the first volume of the spinoff that's just about them specifically and they act like normal primary school children who are friends without even scenes like the twister scene, which I think at least to me shows that their relationship isn't actually sexual and that the scenes that have sexual connotations were more like a joke that the author can draw very lewd things with questionable subjects and they then set them up but nothing actually happens because its not that kind of manga, and the anime adaptation just adapted it, I may be wrong but that's how I saw it.

Which chapter, I actually don't remember that, and I Kanna wasn't trying to mate, she was trying to "lick" saikawa because that's how dragons "clean" each other normally, maybe I'm misremembering.

Kobayashi's magical dick is instead mostly a set-up to get her into scenarios where she could pop a boner from familial physical contact and embarrass herself as a result.

Despite all the uh, heat in here, I just wanted to pop in and say I really loved the segment about Kobayashi and her maid costume. I've always really related to Kobayashi (if that wasn't clear by my avatar), but not exactly her fascination with maids. But her explaining that it started because she wanted to be cute and pretty made it completely relatable. I wear women's clothes, but they are definitely more on the masculine side because I don't feel like girly and feminine stuff suits me, even though I wish it did. But I did discover the power of cosplay when I was younger, and I wore a Disney Princess-esque ballroom style wedding dress to my wedding even though everyone said it was so unlike me. And I do fawn over cute anime idol costumes, so I guess I have my own version of maids after all!

Anyway, just wanted to say it's really nice having a show with a main character I can relate to so well.

Tohru points out that the human population was heading towards factions; those that follow her and those that don't and it would inevitably lead to violent conflict. Elma retorts that she wouldn't have allowed that which infuriates Tohru. What Elma has essentially said is that she wouldn't have allowed dissent in the first place. Peace that doesn't allow any sort of disagreement isn't peace at all, and runs counter to their own arrangement as "judges" of humans from opposing viewpoints.