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Brain Diving - I Don't Wanna Grow Up

However, even if you buy this argument, Kinsella is bound to raise some hackles with the large net she casts when talking about lolicon manga, including such titles as Gunsmith Cats and Ah My Goddess. This would suggest that lolicon manga to Kinsella doesn't necessarily need to be sexually explicit (which is what the term usually denotes for most fans) but rather displays a fixation on young, cute women.

If you look for lolicon elements in those series, you'll find it. I want to read this book.

You'd have to ask a pretty large number people find another individual who would think that Aa! Megami-sama and Gunsmith Cats fall into the "lolicon" genre.

Sheesh.

For how things progress in Manga/anime/games, and a complement for Kinsella's book, I suggest Hiroki Azuma's "Otaku : japanese database animals", where the author takes great work describing and explaining the Moe phenomenon. I'll be waiting for Mr. Ruh's review about this book too.

Metanomaly wrote:

You'd have to ask a pretty large number people find another individual who would think that Aa! Megami-sama and Gunsmith Cats fall into the "lolicon" genre. Sheesh.

I'd agree with you as far as OMG is concerned but Gunsmith Cats has some fairly obvious lolicon elements. I'm not saying that's all there is to the title but sexualised, naked little girls pop up frequently enough (and unnecessarily enough, in any desexualised narrative context) to make it an element that's hard to ignore and certainly worthy of comment.

To quote Jason Thompson, "although the heroines are a fairly strong lot, they're drawn like thin-hipped plastic toys with pubic hair and some of the plot elements are frankly pedophilic". I don't really see his evaluation as being particularly controversial.

And when you say "people", I guess you mean "desensitised otaku" specifically, because I'm fairly sure the average man or woman on the street would find the sexual imagery in Gunsmith Cats to be...problematic.

I was unaware of any definition whereby one could possibly use the term "lolicon" with characters that are post-pubescent (including GSC where, AFAIK, the characters are all of age even in US terms? -- admittedly it's been a very long time since I've seen it, but I don't think my memory is THAT bad).

Metanomaly wrote:

I was unaware of any definition whereby one could possibly use the term "lolicon" with characters that are post-pubescent (including GSC where, AFAIK, the characters are all of age even in US terms? -- admittedly it's been a very long time since I've seen it, but I don't think my memory is THAT bad).

It's a long time since I've read it too but, as I recall, one of the main characters looks a great deal younger than her stated age of 17 or 18 (and actually *is* under age in fairly explicit flashbacks to her past as a child prostitute). Furthermore, doesn't the same character have a boyfriend who's much older than she is and has been her lover since she was a child? And doesn't the manga pretty much present all that as good clean sexy fun rather than as being a bit...you know...disturbing?

Possibly you read the earlier release though? I've heard that the floppies and the individual 1st edition trades were fairly heavily censored (whereas the 2nd edition omnibus release was uncut) so maybe the version you read omits that material?

In my mind (and, I'd argue, in the minds of most anime/manga-famiiar folk) that sort of thing *done in the context of a story* does not make it lolicon. Similar to how having sex in a live action movie (nudity and all) doesn't make it "pornography".

It could, however, I agree, make it "culturally problematic" for most western viewers. Not that I'm endorsing that we need to censor these things just because some folks may (would?) object to them.

I suppose it's possible, but I think it's more likely we're talking a difference in classification philosophies here.

In this case, *most* folks who hear "lolicon" associate it with "underage hentai" (often to the point of being borderline or pre-pubescent).

It's a very hard thing to shake even when inaccurate, and so unless it really is through-and-through unambiguously "lolicon" in that sense, one needs to be careful to avoid attaching that "stigma" to a series/movie/show/manga/etc.

Metanomaly wrote:

I was unaware of any definition whereby one could possibly use the term "lolicon" with characters that are post-pubescent (including GSC where, AFAIK, the characters are all of age even in US terms? -- admittedly it's been a very long time since I've seen it, but I don't think my memory is THAT bad).

It's a long time since I've read it too but, as I recall, one of the main characters looks a great deal younger than her stated age of 17 or 18 (and actually *is* under age in fairly explicit flashbacks to her past as a child prostitute). Furthermore, doesn't the same character have a boyfriend who's much older than she is and has been her lover since she was a child? And doesn't the manga pretty much present all that as good clean sexy fun rather than as being a bit...you know...disturbing?

"A self-styled "bomb specialist", May learned the trade from her boyfriend, Ken Takizawa [about 20 years older than her]. While only 17 (in the original English release, her age was raised to 18 since she is depicted performing explicit sexual acts; it was changed back in the Dark Horse revised edition), she is considerably more knowledgeable and mature than the average 17-year old girl.

[Ken Taki (whom she still adores) took 13-year-old orphan Minnie-May Hopkins in and taught her all she knows about explosives. At the time, Ken thought she was a boy until one night when she caught him in bed with a woman.]

May ran away from home at 13 for undisclosed reasons and was found and cared for by Ken. When Ken had to go underground for several years, she worked as a prostitute at a brothel in Chinatown - even advancing into teaching other newcomers - before leaving and joining up with Rally to run the gun shop.

May is tiny and young-appearing for her age, having taken growth-stunting herbal drugs in an effort to stay attractive to Ken....

Gunsmith Cats is, essentially, a hodgepodge of its author's favourite fetish objects - guns, muscle cars, naked little girls - loosely linked together by a shadow of a thirdhand plot. I don't think it's pornography in the general sense but nor do I believe that there's some sort of narrative depth being served by its occasional excesses.

The nudity involving minors hardly seems intended to titillate, [...] He tossed it in there to dirty up the scenario.

nor is it clear that Sonoda is some drooling pedophile.

As it's one of my favorite manga, I take great offense at being told that I'm reading lolicon. It's more violence porn than anything.