manga and anime in a new light

[mogzilla]

saw something regarding this on bbc last night but bleeding cool had this
http://www.bleedingcool.com/2014/06/19/manga-and-anime-exempted-from-new-japanese-anti-child-pornography-laws/

I thought a lot of manga was dubious with the whole sailor moon school girl types but didn't realise it went as bad and nasty as it does ,the most shocking thing being the "loophole" they've used to allow people to still possess such vile images being that they are not "real"  and only drawn.
  Years ago when my daughter was very young and had an obsession about fairies I got a book from the sci fi book club on top of a stack of dredd gns which was a book on fairies or so I thought ...it turned out to be full of sexually provocative paintings/drawings etc of women with wings but in a full frontal tits out capacity ,the most disturbing though was one which depicted pre pubescent faires full frontal nude...
 
  I had a hell of a time returning the book and getting a refund from them and had to resort to threatening them with the police if they didn't withdraw it from sale ,I heard nothing more from them and not even so much as an apology ,they hadn't even put a "expilict content" disclaimer on the ad . it was one of those times we were glad of a lazy postman dumping a parcel on the floor in the middle of a rainstorm as we might not have checked to see the book was damaged and may have missed this ! 

  this Japanese story has me worried.

[Fungus]

Good grief 

[Jim_Campbell]

Alarmist claptrap, according to the CBLDF.

Cheers

Jim

[Richmond Clements]

Alarmist claptrap, according to the CBLDF.

Cheers

Jim

You didn't need to look any further than the words 'Bleeding Cool' to figure that out.

[Spaceghost]

The Western media loves nothing more than depicting the entire population of Japan as panty-sniffing, tentacle porn addicts, hell bent on ravaging schoolgirls dressed as French maids. Or something.

Fucking stupid.

[mogzilla]

Alarmist claptrap, according to the CBLDF.

Cheers

Jim

You didn't need to look any further than the words 'Bleeding Cool' to figure that out.

it was on the bbc as well who also had a reporter find shocking imagery in a comic store.

[Jim_Campbell]

it was on the bbc as well who also had a reporter find shocking imagery in a comic store.

Oh, well, it must be true, then.

[Bolt-01]

The same reporter would probably find a lot of potentially inappropriate images or themes in many US based comics too. If you want to find dodgy stuff, you can.

[mogzilla]

please feel free to provide evidence they're all making it up. If it is true it is a very worrying subject one that may reflect negatively on the comic community as a whole.

[Jim_Campbell]

please feel free to provide evidence they're all making it up. If it is true it is a very worrying subject one that may reflect negatively on the comic community as a whole.

You didn't read the CBLDF link, did you?

[mogzilla]

I did thank you, something came up I was concerned about. if it turns out there's no porn images with young children in Japanese comics at all then fair do's.

cheers

mogz
xxx

[Jim_Campbell]

I did thank you, something came up I was concerned about. if it turns out there's no porn images with young children in Japanese comics at all then fair do's.

Could you prove the same thing about French, or English, or American comics? Seriously? Lurking in some dark corner of the internet? Plus, and I think this bears stating: the purpose of anti-child pornography laws is the protection of children. Regardless of my distaste for the material, I am uneasy at the idea that the fictional depiction of a reprehensible thing in which nothing real or living is involved can be prosecuted under legislation designed for the protection of real, living things. (If we afford drawings on paper the same legal status as human beings, isn't every issue of 2000AD effectively a snuff movie of epic proportions?)

It's not pleasant subject, and I am profoundly uncomfortable with almost every aspect of it, but it's broadly true that paedophiles are made not born: some forms of psychopathy (of which child abuse is almost certainly a manifestation) are the result of neurological damage, and many paedophiles are the product of being abused themselves. Given that these people are, by any definition, victims themselves then, surely, as long as they don't act on these impulses, they are deserving of some sympathy and every help possible to keep them from acting on those impulses. Does this sort of material help them? I don't know, and, frankly, I don't particularly want to Google for data to answer that question.

I'm just observing that this is a complex issue that OMG! Paedos! doesn't really help. I can't pretend to have a coherent argument, never mind any answers, because I just don't want to think about it that much.

[Professor Bear]

The hardcore anime and manga stuff is almost entirely confined to the internet and fan works (doujinshi), but some nudity and violence spills over from fan-wank much as it does in western superhero media (though to a much lesser degree in anime/manga from what I can see).

The BC article - though perfunctory - does make some good points missing from the wider reportage that hinges on reporting that something icky exists, mainly that once you make something illegal just because the viewer could assume that the characters "seem" young, it creates a dodgy legal framework open to misuse by making things like Twilight child pornography rather than just one woman's dodgy teenage sex fantasies written down and shown to other people for some reason where things then got out of hand.

I'm always wary of Western reportage of Japan when it comes to things like this because they (Japan) have a much lower number of real-world sex crimes than the West does, yet because they insist on tackling their problems out in the open they've long been held up as the worst offenders rather than merely the most visible.  Social media and projects like Everyday Sexism have laid to rest that lie with a depressing and soul-crushing regularity and shown that in the West we're just more likely to blame victims and brush our problems under the carpet.

[M.I.K.]

I did thank you, something came up I was concerned about. if it turns out there's no porn images with young children in Japanese comics at all then fair do's.

There are images of EVERYTHING in Japanese comics. There's manga devoted to, (pretty much), every subject imaginable, aimed at every demographic imaginable and a huge proportion of the population of Japan read the things. There's manga that tell you how to improve your golf swing. There's manga that give you recipe tips. There's manga about other manga. Comics in Japan are just another medium, like books or film.

The dodgy stuff, (though undoubtedly there and very unpleasant), is no more a comic thing than your issues with the fairy folk was a book thing.

[mogzilla]

it was more of an "apparently easily available" thing rather than a book or comic thing and it shouldn't be. I do take offense at anyone using the "but it happened to me officer" as a reason excuse or defence for what they do .I work with kids and over the years have seen many issues of safeguarding and have know several people who have been victims  I have never heard of anyone going on to commit that sort of crime . to describe paedophiles as "victims"  is pathetic .they are evil,pure and simple or was jimmy saville and stuart hall misunderstood ?