May 5th, 2021
Some Short Musings on the Role of Bedrooms in Anime
The following is a short 500 word extract from my long-form review and analysis of the 2005 anime 'Shuffle!'. There's no major spoilers here and really it's more of a statement on the way bedrooms can be used in simply ways to add characterization to characters in anime. The full review itself is now around 20,000 words so far, hence why I decided to take a break and work on editing some of it and this portion seemed to work nicely as it's own little ramble.
For those who have no clue what I mean, in any forum of media the bedroom of a character in a well made show will tell you more about that character then any line of dialogue can and it's one of my favorite things to examine in a show. In the recent Visual Novel 'World End' the protagonist's empty room is described as being indicative of his unsettled lifestyle and urge to leave at any given time and it think that's an apt example. A counter to it would be Shinji Ikaria's room in Neon Genesis Evangellion, which we see is full of moving box's that have yet to be unpacked, which to anyone who's seen that show will know, pretty much sums up his personality without a word being said. On the other side of the spectrum but with the same motives is the likes of Mami's apartment in Mahou Shoujo Madoka★Magica. It's 'lush' to use a phrase, packed with exotic furnishings and interesting trinkets but in reality what it really tells us is not that Mami is posh but rather she attempts to fill the loneliness of her life with objects and possessions rather then people, furthermore the fact the whole thing is really just one large room (with her bed on raised platform) immediately clues us in, long before we see her back story that she lives alone confined to the lavish but confided rectangle of a living space.
As mentioned, in the following extract I take the same mentality when having a brief look at the bedrooms of shuffle;
"-Bedrooms;
On we move to Primula's room. Straight off the bat there's some nice parallels to be drawn between her room and that of the other characters and this is also an appropriate time to address the use of bedrooms in the show as a whole. Its by no means unique and something of a favorite thing of mine to see in anime, each room in Shuffle tells us a little something or other about the character who inhabits it. As we go along will dip into more detail on this but to be brief;
Cia's room is dominated by her mirror for obvious reasons, as well as being neater then we might except from our resident air-head (an effect of being the housekeeper no doubt). Keade's room is pretty much empty, this will be important when talking about Primula's soon but to summarize this clearly represents her totally reliance on Rin, she has no hobbies outside of looking after him and no need for excessive amounts of clothing unless it specifically helps her in her unhealthy goal to please Rin. Asa's room is choc full of two things; cloths and stuffed toys, along with a tidy little work/study table. This rather nicely tells us that she's got far more hobbies and likes to be interested in then the other girls, she takes a proper interest in cooking and fashion and as for the stuffed animals, they act both to extenuate her less tomboyish side and to remind us of how much time she's lost to her illness. In a sense some of her room is still stuck in/held back by the past, so despite it showing her greater number of interests in her daily life, its also a bittersweet remind of her ever present disability.
So then did Primula simply drew the short straw of the design budget with her barren blank room? Well for starters she hasn't actually been around for that long, only moving in somewhere in the region of 2-6 months prior, still that's a long time not to accumulate some trinkets, especially for a girl her age. No rather as mentioned, Primula's room draws some interesting parallels to Keade's. It's empty because of her lack of hobbies or interests, in fact arguable more so because where Keade has her unhealthy devotion to Rin, Primula has nothing. She isn't just disconnected from reality, she has no interest in life itself. This goes to help with her characterization as an empty/soulless doll, with the only company she keeps being the two cat plushies, which to her are gifts that represent far more then any sentimental toy could.
While were still fresh on the topic of toys and parallels, Primula and Asa's rooms both have a focus on stuffed animals (Primula because its all that's in her room and Asa because of the sheer quantity of them) and in both cases there's a good argument to be made that they represent the love others have shown towards them, with it being clear that Asa's plushies are mostly gifts from her mother to comfort her during her sickly childhood, which again mirrors Primula nicely as she two is ill due to roughly the same reasons and both teddys represent the short flash's of love she's been shown. "Its like Poetry".
Finally on this elongated tangent is actually some nice references to Keade's brief stint of sickness, the shots in places are almost identical to when Keade was temporarily bed-bound, with even the same face flannel placed on Primula's forehead. It serves to remind us of that scene, of how that moment affected Rin and Keade and of how serve that was, due to simple over-working.-"
The point in case being that rooms can tell us a lot more then you might expect, feel free to let me know what your take is and any interpretations you spotted watching these shows.
I Hope you enjoyed this shorter piece,
Thanks for reading.
For those who have no clue what I mean, in any forum of media the bedroom of a character in a well made show will tell you more about that character then any line of dialogue can and it's one of my favorite things to examine in a show. In the recent Visual Novel 'World End' the protagonist's empty room is described as being indicative of his unsettled lifestyle and urge to leave at any given time and it think that's an apt example. A counter to it would be Shinji Ikaria's room in Neon Genesis Evangellion, which we see is full of moving box's that have yet to be unpacked, which to anyone who's seen that show will know, pretty much sums up his personality without a word being said. On the other side of the spectrum but with the same motives is the likes of Mami's apartment in Mahou Shoujo Madoka★Magica. It's 'lush' to use a phrase, packed with exotic furnishings and interesting trinkets but in reality what it really tells us is not that Mami is posh but rather she attempts to fill the loneliness of her life with objects and possessions rather then people, furthermore the fact the whole thing is really just one large room (with her bed on raised platform) immediately clues us in, long before we see her back story that she lives alone confined to the lavish but confided rectangle of a living space.
As mentioned, in the following extract I take the same mentality when having a brief look at the bedrooms of shuffle;
"-Bedrooms;
On we move to Primula's room. Straight off the bat there's some nice parallels to be drawn between her room and that of the other characters and this is also an appropriate time to address the use of bedrooms in the show as a whole. Its by no means unique and something of a favorite thing of mine to see in anime, each room in Shuffle tells us a little something or other about the character who inhabits it. As we go along will dip into more detail on this but to be brief;
Cia's room is dominated by her mirror for obvious reasons, as well as being neater then we might except from our resident air-head (an effect of being the housekeeper no doubt). Keade's room is pretty much empty, this will be important when talking about Primula's soon but to summarize this clearly represents her totally reliance on Rin, she has no hobbies outside of looking after him and no need for excessive amounts of clothing unless it specifically helps her in her unhealthy goal to please Rin. Asa's room is choc full of two things; cloths and stuffed toys, along with a tidy little work/study table. This rather nicely tells us that she's got far more hobbies and likes to be interested in then the other girls, she takes a proper interest in cooking and fashion and as for the stuffed animals, they act both to extenuate her less tomboyish side and to remind us of how much time she's lost to her illness. In a sense some of her room is still stuck in/held back by the past, so despite it showing her greater number of interests in her daily life, its also a bittersweet remind of her ever present disability.
So then did Primula simply drew the short straw of the design budget with her barren blank room? Well for starters she hasn't actually been around for that long, only moving in somewhere in the region of 2-6 months prior, still that's a long time not to accumulate some trinkets, especially for a girl her age. No rather as mentioned, Primula's room draws some interesting parallels to Keade's. It's empty because of her lack of hobbies or interests, in fact arguable more so because where Keade has her unhealthy devotion to Rin, Primula has nothing. She isn't just disconnected from reality, she has no interest in life itself. This goes to help with her characterization as an empty/soulless doll, with the only company she keeps being the two cat plushies, which to her are gifts that represent far more then any sentimental toy could.
While were still fresh on the topic of toys and parallels, Primula and Asa's rooms both have a focus on stuffed animals (Primula because its all that's in her room and Asa because of the sheer quantity of them) and in both cases there's a good argument to be made that they represent the love others have shown towards them, with it being clear that Asa's plushies are mostly gifts from her mother to comfort her during her sickly childhood, which again mirrors Primula nicely as she two is ill due to roughly the same reasons and both teddys represent the short flash's of love she's been shown. "Its like Poetry".
Finally on this elongated tangent is actually some nice references to Keade's brief stint of sickness, the shots in places are almost identical to when Keade was temporarily bed-bound, with even the same face flannel placed on Primula's forehead. It serves to remind us of that scene, of how that moment affected Rin and Keade and of how serve that was, due to simple over-working.-"
The point in case being that rooms can tell us a lot more then you might expect, feel free to let me know what your take is and any interpretations you spotted watching these shows.
I Hope you enjoyed this shorter piece,
Thanks for reading.
Posted by momentie | May 5, 2021 2:24 PM | 0 comments
April 30th, 2021
On Culture Shock and Imposing the Standards of the West
Anime Relations: Super Lovers, Kobayashi-san Chi no Maid Dragon, Kobayashi-san Chi no Maid Dragon S, Hige wo Soru. Soshite Joshikousei wo Hirou.
As anyone who has spent any length of time in otaku culture knows, Japan and more particularly anime, is weird. From neko girls to gaint robots and every where in between, anime covers a wide array of topics and subject matters that tv networks in the west would traditionally of never gone near and while this is starting to change with the prevalent rise of streaming platforms like Netflix and cartoons like bowjack horseman pushing the limits of more varied story telling, Japan still holds the crown in, lets say 'Awkward to show your parents Television'. In particular to this are two of the least mainstream of anime genres, Yaoi and harems.
Think back to your earliest anime, the first time you came across these genres in a big way, if your old school maybe it was something like Love Hina, HQ holder or worse yet Kiss x Sis. As anime enthusiast we all become, over time, desensitized to it, we become used to the newest season's imouto, isekai, power fantasy romcom and eventually they have become less weird in the minds of the community and more "Well that's just how anime is". At this stage there are few among us who even give it a second thought any more, that was till recently. To anyone not living under a rock, you've probably come across the controversy over the new Dragon Maid sequel and the outraged twitter mobs both defending and attacking the merits of the show's new Lolita character. I have yet to watch the new series and as such shant pass any judgement on it here but it reminds me greatly of another controversy that was recently brought to my attention from a few years ago, about a show called 'Super Lovers'.
Before we properly delve into the meat of the topic, lets take a step back as westerns and try to understand why harem anime and all that the blanket term encompasses, exist. Maturity - no really. Harems along with isekai and the like are often viewed as the immature little brother of the more serious story telling anime has to offer, light entertainment and guilty pleasures as it were and this is by no means incorrect as for many, especially adults, this is what the genres represent but in context they illustrate Japan's differing societal views. Keeping the history very brief ( It's well worth properly reading into in your own time if this sort of content interests you ) for those of us in the west during the 60's governments and tv standard's boards alike came together to form the regulations we now abide, later reinforced throughout the 80's (epically by the likes of Mary Whitehouse in Britain among many others) the ideas that young adults and teens must be protected from sexually explict content or even the sin-full horrors of swear words - was born.
Think for a moment about your own time as say a 15 year old, how much of the tv supposedly catered towards you actually interested you? How many grew tired of the wallpaper media produced for the youthful and turned their attentions to sports, more recently the internet and if your reading this, most likely anime. We're all drawn to anime for a myriad of different reasons but when were starting out, I think it would be fair to say that a large factor is the freedom it allows, not afraid to explore 'grown up' topics through the guise of a cartoon aesthetic. Remember back to your first experience with something like 'Heaven's Lost Property', 'High-school DXD' or more tame shows like 'Infinite Stratus', how the content presented seemed taboo, not quite porn but still not socially acceptable. This feeling is no accident but by design.
Something we often forget is the actual target audience of these programmes, teenagers. Your standard harem has demographic of 15 into the early 20s, with some even being rated as low as PG 13. This is in part due to Japan's more lenient rating system but also because of the aforementioned maturity. Those making the anime and the Tv networks airing them are fully aware that the wish-fulfilment fantasies of these show's are those of young adults. There more then a little knowing of the fact that teenagers are naturally and biologically horny and taking a western approach of prudence, simply pushes the audience away. After all a teenage boy will seek out porn if they so desire, no amount of Christian platitudes will prevent this and in the modern era it's become easier to do so then ever. So in this way the anime culture of Japan accepts these basic facts and gives young men and women what they seek, titillating fanservice with a side of self-insert fantasy. None of this is to by any means insinuate that harem anime have no value, in fact many of my favourite anime are harems because of the passion clearly put in by those worked on them or by the sometime simply but honest messages the writer was trying to get across, because all this links to the second reason they exist. Sex Sells.
This one may at first seem obvious, as its far less culture shock ridden then my first point. While it may at first be hard to get over the fact that adult implication like sex are marketed publicly towards teenagers in the East, the idea that 'Sex Sells' is far to common in the West. Indeed a great deal of the genres were discussing find their origin in a cheap buck ( That's not to say all isekais are made with zero ambition, many talented animated and directors etc.. may give something their all, I mean to say that from a board room funding perspective ) but there is a second reason to include fanservice in a story aside from just the money, though heavily linked.
If you lack confidence in your story or you want it to have broader appeal and to reach more people, then you may well include fanservice to get punters in the door. The meme "I came for the 'plot' but stayed for the plot ;{ " springs to mind, where in a show will include often copious amounts of fanservice in order to capture a larger audience. Some take this a step further and incorporate it into its more series story elements, with two famous example from Gainx being Evangelion's infamous "They'll be plenty more fanservice next week" tag line and Gurren Lagan's use of fanservice to link into it's themes of boyhood and growing up. A simpler and very prevalent example would be the Shoen genre. While many anime from it curb the trend (HunterxHunter, Fma, Assassination Classroom) the majority take advantage of their primary audience being young men and chose to include a vulumtoius women in the main cast to add sex appeal to the story and marketing (One Piece, Fairy Tail, etc.).
All this is to try and get across that Japan's anime industry is less shrewd then our western television standards, appealing to horny 15 year olds and adding small amounts of sex appeal to otherwise family friendly shows is par for the course if it increases viewing figures and blu ray sales. Anime isn't afraid to appeal to a kink if it thinks there's money to be made and on a less cynical note, is that bad? The advantage of exploring you sexual desires through the guise of wish-fulfilment is far more beneficial then keeping said desires pent up and through Japan's anime scene we can often see what the 'degenerates'
are contemplating. One trope of particular note, that even many 'veteran' fans of the genre will cringe at, is incest. Once again we need to detach our western bias and look at this from their perspective. Incest is both immoral and biological counter-productive yet Japan continues to a varying degree to grapple with an issue based in what was once a very insular and almost tribe like culture.
It's a complicated topic, probably best suited for its own discussion, though we will have to touch on it again shortly. Moving past it for a moment, I'd like to conclude my pre-amble by conveying the point that not all fanservice in anime is intended to be taken as the objectification of women/men. Nor do our western politics necessarily match up with Japan's. Do harem anime objectify women? Many of them yes, especially the cheaper cash grab kind and that's because there's a market like with anything else but should you presume that all harem anime are out to get women? Never, to do so is to narrow one's own mind and miss out on the opportunity to learn and experience great and compassionate stories. The likes of Shuffle, who's narrative tries to gently show young men the folly of their self insert fantasies, or properties so well written that we can often forget their even harem anime, like Toradora, Clanned, Kanon etc. Or shows aimed at the same demographic that aren't quite harem but have many of the symptoms. The strong women of Shakugan no Shana, the flawed nobility of Zero no Tsukima's Louise, Henriette and Tabita (among others) or the highly competent and professional soldiers of Full Metal Panic like Sgt.Maj. Mou, Lt.Grey and Captain Testa.
I don't stay with this genre for 2D cleavages that I could find in any doujinshi, I stay because of a love for the heartfelt and genuine storytelling the genre can offer while still managing to be escapist, often light hearted and almost always fun. Moving forward lets try and keep all this in mind, weather you like it or not, anime is not as politically charged with the same agendas as the West and while your standards may lead you to believe a show is promoting something your specific creed defies, the truth may be far simpler or greatly more nuanced.
Part 2 - Super Lovers;
I had for some time intended to write a similar piece to this, detailing my thoughts on Lolicon culture and how in the last decade there has been a worrying and deeply unsettling trend in loli's ( Female characters of a childlike aesthetic ) becoming more and more childlike, however this week a different, almost antithetical yet contradictorily linked topic came into my attention. As someone who watched anime seasonally for some 2 or 3 years I was aware of Super Lovers ( season 2 at-least ) when it aired, however my lack of interest in Yaoi based anime meant I never went near the property. During a discussion over the perceived treatment of women in anime communities with a friend of mine, the show jokingly came up. My friend described it as Paedophilia and grooming. Seeing as it was on Funimation (who infamously took down 'Interspecies Reviewers' recently due to the public backlash about that show's fanservice) and the tendency of young people to use harmful and defaming rhetoric, I hazarded that this comment might be a bit harsh. The response I received was one of doubling down, she informed that it most certainly was paedophilia pushing and made light of such topics as grooming.
There were some context-less pictures, as-well as a comment that the show was disgusting and I should 'take my word on it'. Unfortunately I'm afraid curiosity got the best of me and I'm ashamed to say I made something of a point of watching the first 2 episodes and then questioning my friend on what exactly she found so outrageous about the show compared to any other. It was wrong of me and I've since apologies, furthermore I should make it clear that from here on the 'opposition' I refer to is not her but taken from forum posts and reviews here on Mal, reddit and even Facebook rants that I came across in the pursuit of my research. With that made clear, lets talk about a 4 year old controversy that no one cares about anymore but it's surprisingly relevant.
As mentioned I can be a bit pig headed and I'll generally refuse to take anyone's word on anime(Or most subjects) unless they've been shown to be highly reputable and un-bias, so I goggled the show and came across the discourse pertaining to it. Blog posts and Facebook rants detailing a rabid attack and defence against the show and after reading a few of these I concluded the best way to source information would be to simply watch the show. At the time of writing I'm on episode eight which I believe at this point has more then amply shown the intentions of the show and the tonal context it's striving for. I've also spent a sad amount of time reading up more on the debates over it and while I'm by no means an expert on anime, Japan or Yaoi (I'm a rank amateur if anything), I feel I've seen enough to throw out my two cents and also to simple get it off my own mind.
Lets start quickly by putting everyone on an even playing field (There'll be no major spoilers but beware of ones for the first six episodes). As this isn't strickly a review of the show, I'll skip any major further pre-ample over the exact detail of the story and cut straight to dispelling many of the myths and arguments I've seen around the show. Firstly I'm not interested in the source material which does strike me as a bit more problematic, nor does the Mal or wiki over-rule what's presented in the show, as such in episode 2 after a time skip between episodes 1 and 2, Haru (The older of our two protagonists) states that he's 22 and by episode 6, six additional months have passed with no mention of a birthday, so it is fair to insinuate that within the anime at-least, Haru is 22 years old. Where the numbers "24" and "26" come from I can only presume retains to the manga or some such.
As for Ren, his age is a little more vague, we know his birthday is on Christmas and that he's in highschool. Episode 8 actually clears it up with Ren stating he was 8 in the flashback scene and the nearly 8 year time-skip would therefore make him 16 after his birthday in episode 3, which the internet seems to agree with me on. An age gap therefore of 6 years, not 9 as many have suggested. Will get into the nitty gritty of said age gap momentarily.
Sticking with Ren(The younger of the two leads), there's some sort of misconception that he was raised by animals. This is blatantly a cause of not paying enough attention to what's portraited on screen. We're told Ren was found on the streets in Canada with memory loss and that after taking badly to an orphanage, he ran away, while were told this we are shown him down a back ally with a pack of 'dogs'. This is not meant to imply that Ren was raised by animals but that he instead has an affinity for them, as people (possibly his birth parents) threated him cruely in the past and in actual fact this is meant to draw clear and simply parallels to Haru, who also has an affinity for animals. Non of this suggested he was raised in the wild and is another piece of pure speculation, while it could be possible, all evidence suggests not, most cases of him acting 'wolf-like' are clearly down for the purpose of comedy.
For our last simple one we have the promotional poster used here on Mal. It depicts a young Haru and Ren in what can definitely be interpreted as an intimate position. This image has lead some to vastly mistake the depictions and ages of the two characters and its either a miss step on Studio Deen's PR team or a not so out of character slip up on Mal's part, that they make use of an image from episode one. That's right, from before the time skip. So yes the characters are very young in the poster because its essentially a shot from an elongated flashback. Its a bad representation of the show but lets for a moment give it another look to see if the complaints levied at it hold any water. I believe there's three ways to look at it, as paedophilia, as overly intimated brothers or as fanservice bait.
As mentioned I can definitely see someone interpreting it badly and I would happily agree with them that it is awkward and I can also understand the people defending it as brotherly. Its brotherly in the sense of wish fulfilment sense that certain young women (and men) have where they perceive brothers as overly intimate bishojen boys, interpreting it as cute rather then creepy. To most of us in the west it's very creepy but in Japan there are many who want this form of escapism, an oddly pure, non-sexual gay relationship between brothers. Its sounds weird and it is but so too is the idea of anime about self insert guys pursed by dozens of adoring girls who never actually engage in sexual activities. This is, in a sense, the yaoi equivalent to the male orientated harem genre. Its culture shock but no less real. As such I think the true answer lies in the middle, the shot does have some brotherly vibes but all in all I'd suggest its their to bring in as broud an audience as possible, those who like Yaoi, those who want shota, etc. As such, the shot interestingly doesn't appear at any point during the flashback episode, almost as though legions of angry internet uses got baited into a piece of marketing with very little relevance to the show, zero context and if anything did the promoting for it by complaining about it.
Now we get to a tricky topic. The legal age in Japan, oh boy. The debate around this is the sort that I dread, image the setting, you've watched one or two episodes and lay out a series of points in favour of the show. You feel the story while simplistic, was well set up and executed, you felt the art, especially that of the Canadian country-side was really well done and that the music for a yaoi show was in keeping with the genre but a little above average. Furthermore you feel that the story is going to handle the age gap of its two leads with tact and besides that, technically the legal age makes the pairing legal and therefore its less paedophilia and more a question of possible abuse.
The unfortunate response to this will probably be a rant ignoring all you points except for the one about the legality of it all and you'll find your opposition claiming the immorality and arguing that the law has nothing to do with it. Its a painful thing to try and recover from as it probably means your opposition has no interest in an adult conversation. If you want my advice, never get technical, people will think you're being patronizing or insensitive and the conversation will go no-where. For the sake of this essay covering all areas of this discussion lets address it. First off the majority of both sides are wildly wrong about this, the defence claiming that 13 is Japan's age of consent and the offense arguing that it's more a kin to the whims of the Provence you're in. There's some truth in both and some misconceptions. In actual fact a small amount of reading on the topic will reveal its a little more nuanced.
A 13 year old can have sex with another 13 year old, as can two 14 year olds and for the most part they will not be taken to court and charged with a criminal offence (It can still happen but its simply what the law means when it refers to 13-14 year old's), however a 15 year old and up, Can Not Have Sex With a 14 year old and lower without it being an offense. To summarize, 13 is not the age of consent. So its 15 right? well that's where the modicum of truth comes into the opposition, depending on where you are it is possible you could be taken to court for having sex with a 15 year old, however broadly speaking 15 is the age of consent, so on a technical level if our 16 year old Ren is in a relationship with our 22 year old Haru, then no clear cut crime is being committed. Does that make it right, not really but what it does do is make something clear, on at the very least, a technical level Super lover's premise is not paedophiliac instead the question is to weather Haru is abusing Ren and as to weather, consenting or not, Ren is mentally developed enough to be in a relationship with an older man six years his senior. Furthermore if their relationship was actually sexual this would get more complicated as Tokyo in specific has its own laws in place for such activities but considering Haru and Ren aren't actually in a sexual relationship, there's no need to delve into any more legislation for the minute.
This may all seem pedantic but rhetoric is a sort of pet peeve of mine and to me is one of the most dangerous things to come out of modern discourse. For example anyone who takes an interest in politics will of seen the many 'incidents' in American and Canadian collage campuses these past few years with students berating public speakers and refusing to engage in conversation. The left will often throw out terms like 'Bigot, sexiest' and the most bizarrely 'Nazi', while the right will try to dismiss the left with the likes of 'Snowflake' and 'Social Justice Warrior', all in all its a downright mess and we should all aim to be more careful in our use of rhetoric, after-all a term like 'Nazi' is incredibly loaded with negative conations and implications and simplifies an intensely complicated matter into a sh*t slinging match.
As such when you tell someone causally that a show is 'paedophiliac' or its desensitizing 'grooming' your painting it in marvellously black and white terms and instantly killing the conversation, furthermore if the person you tell parrots on your words, non the wiser, your creating a falsehood without even realizing it. I should again reiterate this is not aimed at my friend but rather at the discussions around this show and many others like 'Hige no Sous' that I've witness on the interwebs and that this is one of my main stakes in this argument, that we should be careful not to 'Cry Wolf' too often, lest no one listens in the future.
To conclude this most fragile of topics, from a legal standpoint and from a definitions standpoint, 'Super Lovers' is not paedophilia, will get to the actual evidence of the claim pretty soon but just to end this section about the use of rhetoric when discussing any piece of media; Beware the words you carelessly throw around, generalization leads to extremism and we should all take the time to try and be a little more nuanced then that in our day lives.
Part 3 - The Big Three
So we've discussed the blatant misconception that Haru is above 22 at the series onset and dispelled the myth that Ren is Mogly from the Jungle-Book, as well as explaining why the poster is little more then official fan art and cleared up a bit of the confusion over Japan's rather complicated age of consent system. Now lets finally get to the heart of the problem and the three big issues levied at the show; "It's Incest, Grooming and Paedophilia", will take them one at a time and in that order seeing as each term is a bit more damning and complicated from the last.
Incest is a very Japanese fascination, of course its been prevalent to varying degrees all across the world but Japan certainly has quite the interest in it. Let's go back a moment and remember what we've all ready discussed, the audience for a show like this is young women (and men) who like to fantasize about this particular preference and incest is a part of that. I could just leave it as that, "fanservice, magical girls, gaint robots and incest are just part and parcel of anime, deal with it" but lets have a proper look at the case in hand shall we?
Lets start by being transparent this show deserves the tag of incest - on a technical level. The problem with throwing 'incest' as an insult at this property is that it doesn't really accomplish anything, I'll happily concede that it's technically incest as long as the opposition accepts that the show isn't paedophilia on a technical level. You can see the problem correct? Will be mentioning this a-lot as we go forward but people have a bad habit of double standards and hierocracy, usually without realizing it. Saying the show isn't podophilic in the eyes of some of Japan's complicated laws, isn't productive and doesn't strike at the issue in hand - Is it right or moral?
Examining the relationship with the two above points of context we now get a new picture, categorically its fairly tame for the incest trope, for example Domestic Girlfriend, the spiciest show from a couple years back has incest between step siblings(who's parents are married) but aren't blood connected. Conversely in Sword Art Online, Suguha is actually Kirito's cousin but not his real sister, meaning that they presumably share more DNA then the previous example from Domestic Girlfriend but aren't actually siblings or even step siblings. Ren doesn't fit either of those categories nor are one of his and one of Haru's parents the same and thankfully it isn't a case of first degree incest with them sharing both parents.
No in actuality their only link is that of a piece of paper decreeing them brothers, they don't ( To my knowledge sticking solely to the anime ) share any DNA nor are any of their other relations related to one another. This is as already mentioned, still incest but its a far cry from what we are used to, compared to most anime that include incest, its really a rather tame connection. Lets go one step further though, we can infer by the time skip, that Ren and Haru have spent up to 6 months total together maximum, all of which Haru forgot after a traumatic accident. They don't seem to of had any other contact in the intervening years and furthermore neither Haru or Ren knew that Ren had been adopted until after the time-skip. So lets review, Ren and only Ren has a living recollection of 6 months spent with Haru whom he is neither related to in law via marriage of relatives or by even the faintest of blood. When you think about it like that, by looking at the actual given facts and context that your presented with, what you realize is that these two are in reality less related then your standard protagonist and childhood friend duo.
It sounds hyperbolic but actually think about it, the sort of childhood friend under-dog who we all route for in shows like Nisekoi, Darling in the Franx, etc., the type who bathed with the protagonist as kids, went to school with them, woke them in the morning, lived close or even next door to them, is clearly more of a sibling then Ren could ever hope to be and interestingly the show acknowledges this with the primary conflict after episode two being Ren trying to fit in with a family he knows he doesn't actually belong to. Shuffle is a show that touches on this idea of the morality of the childhood friend as a love interest if your interested in exploring that concept but it should suffice to say that Ren is Haru's brother but only on the most technical of levels, I'd go as far as to say Haru's best friend Iku has a better claim then Ren does.
But let's say for a moment that it was a more straight forward case of incest. Will talk more about this when addressing the allegation of 'Paedophilia' but since when can you not make a story about an immoral topic like incest? Stories have and I hope will always be, in large part about the continued communication of ideas and an effort to bring us all closer together in our understanding of one another. If a story wants to be about exploring the morality of incest, the reason those within the relationship are there and the consequences of such a union, then of course its valid for it to do so, how else are we meant to understand? There are 3 primary reasons to make an incest story, to appeal in a sexual way to a particular kink (we call this heintai and it doesn't tend to get a full length run, more like an episode or two at most), to explore the topic in a cautionary manner or finally examining the workings of such a relationship and the morality of it or in a more comical, non sexual way. The first one of those, the heintai, is the one with the least moral scruples and is by far the most harmful as it is bluntly promotional, akin to propaganda almost in a less malevolent sense. The second two are more interesting, they essentially appeal to the same audience as the first but in a safe, more tame environment, that allows the viewer to enjoy and work through a fantasy while also teaching them about its downsides and preventing them from feeling alienated and resorting to more extreme views on the matter, which brings us back to my initial point about the maturity and understanding anime shows to it's horny teenage audience base. Is it not better for a young women with this strange kink to explore it through a fairly tame slice of life anime, then to turn to the likes of 4chan incel message boards or straight up heintai?
So to finish, the show is barely incest at worst and even if that's still to much for you, its not wrong to make stories about uncomfortable topics so that we might all come to understand them better. Everyone is thought about 9/11 and the holocaust in primary school because we want to understand and prevent such event from ever happening again, so why would harsh topics like incest and paedophilia not also be something we want to learn about in order to prevent?
Grooming;
Alas if only this referred to the hygiene kind. The claim of grooming is the opposition's most baseless, however it's more implicit then the charge of incest. Where that one has a foothold, the 'grooming' claim is one of a gross miss-use of wording and a naivety to the terrible, irredeemable act that is this crime. Lets be clear the act of grooming is usual that of threating a younger person kindly before slowly coaxing them into activities of a sexual nature that which they wouldn't of agreed to prior. Its done by extreme manipulation, such as convincing the victim they have no self worth if they loose there supposed 'partner' or that they 'owe' their partner for his or her perceived kindness or by simply convincing them that the gradually more corrupt activities are perfectly normal for couple. Its a horrible thing to be through and those prediters who partake in it deserve to have the entire book thrown at them, however to claim Haru's minor episodes of teasing amount to grooming is simple an audacious act of trying to fit a text to your own narrative.
A few important points to be established here, Haru is a "womanizers' and professional host, who alongside a loneliness complex and a troubled upbringing, which included the scorn of his fellow kids and having to move around different countries. He has developed to be a very physical person, he has something of a insecurity retaining to him only being able to feel self-worth when being physically intimate with others. Think Misato Katsuragi from Neon Genesis Evangellion. Combine this with the shows need to get fanservice included to help bring in more viewers and you certainly have what seems like a-lot of hugging and kissing, Indeed Someone Could Cut all these scenes out of context and try to make the argument based on just that, in extremely miss-leading bad faith, that is till you actually bother to watch the material in full, with its context. Any kiss which Haru instigates is short and immediately met by a hearty beat down from Ren and the scornful disapproving looks of those around them. It is made very clear that Haru's overly intimate tendencies are over the line and wrong. The only scenes that are allowed to play out with a dramatic swoon of the score are those where-in Ren makes a move on Haru. Now you might be thinking that its certainly a little better that Ren is the aggressor but its still clearly eligible for grooming right?
No. In fact most of the background cast question the intimacy of the relationship, not only making it clear that they think its unnatural but also helping to clarify the nature of the relationship, it isn't sexual. It comes to ahead in episode six when Iku straight out asks Haru if he actually fancies Ren once you get past all the comedy hijinks and fanservice teasing - Haru answers with-out a second though is that he'd never go "for a kid with so little sex appeal". In fact its shown that Haru has till this point been a straight hetro-sexual. Is all this to say that they wont eventually become intertwined? Of course not, its very clear that eventually the duo will end up as something more, however its also very apparent that it will be a relationship that forms from a natural bond and not from grooming. Its abundantly obvious on multiple occasions that Haru has no grand or even small plan to captivate and manipulate Ren into a sexual relationship that he, as a teenager isn't ready for and on the contrary when the relationship does inevitably form, I'm confident on what's been presented thus far that it will be one formed of mutual consent and written in a tactful, polite manner.
All in all, Haru was unaware of even having a brother and had no memories of his teenage days with Ren. How he could of planned anything seems questionable to begin with but combine it with his actual statements and those of the people/characters around him and the fact that any actions not instigated by Ren are threated as either yaoi fanservice or as an inappropriate action by the people around him and we're left with a clear picture that indicates a complete and utter lack of anything close to resembling grooming.
Paedophilia;
As an issue within the anime community, this one is the 'biggy'. As said at the top, there has recently been a-lot of hate for Miss Kobioshi's Dragon Maid and the general twitter movement to 'redesign' loli's. It's a fascinating issue as I'd agree loli's are getting more childlike, as what was once a fan term based on a Russian book for characters of a short build (i.e. JC-staff's own big 3 of Shana, Louise and Taiga), has now become an almost meta narrative with shows like Eromanga Sensei trying to one up each other in just how child-like and just how incestual we can make Lolitas. It's a complicated trend and it has an inverse, in the form of shotacon.
The main issue as I see it is three fold. Firstly that the very concept of a story that deals with paedophilia shouldn't be allowed, secondly that the height and other features of Ren make him 'Child Coded'(to borrow a hip phrase) and thirdly that the age gap puts Ren in a vulnerable, abusable position. So lets slow down, dispense with all the hollow rhetoric and look at the work, at the facts as there presented and at the feelings of the author's intent.
First in the interest of reminding everyone that all discourse is about finding a middle ground, and an understanding between one another, allow me to give my bias, my feelings as it were, rather then the empirical view I've so far taken. Yaoi fanservice is not my cup of tea and shota even less so, in fact I find the fan service scenes (rare as they are) pretty awkward for the most part and furthermore Ren is definitely a bit shota coded, not as much as some have suggested but definitely a decent amount.
With that said lets get back to facts. For the uninitiated the reverse of harem fanservice (Top heavy girls with unrealistic personality traits and an uncanny attraction to the main male protagonist) is the bishojen boys. Even if you've never got through a whole yaoi anime you'll of seen them around, think the cast of 'Free!' or 'Haiku' and you'll know what I mean and while Shojo manga do use bare chests in the same way you might get a female's cleavage plastered on the screen, something more unique to the yaoi genre is its intimacy. Yaoi boys are almost always depicted in comprising positions which might seem a bit overly familiar even for a causal harem viewer/fan. This is actually based in biology, I did have a large segment here about how on a base level, there is a difference in men and women, where-in they search for different things in the opposite sex and how that leads to women essentially having a higher standard for their fanservice, (something which Shojo-Ai seems very aware of) however the segment was a bit bogged down in technical jargon and I think we're already being political enough as it is. If you do want to learn more there's a great lecture series from an actually collage professor on YouTube (1. Introduction to Human Behavioural Biology).
It should for our purposes, suffice to say that women in general look for a different, more personal and intimate form of fanservice in their anime, yaoi or otherwise, where as men in the para-phrased words of greater writers then I "Will go for anything with boobs that's moves". This comes to ahead when combined with shota. Every kiss in Super lovers is automatically subject to the scorn of the public because of Ren's diminutive stature and Haru's pretty boy tallness. However once again I think we hit a snag on what it is people are upset over. If it's simply the imagery of someone tall with someone short then why does the likes of Toradora get a pass? Or Clanned and Kanon? The answer is context, that of the fact that while the likes of Rioji tower a good head or two over their significant other(depending on the scene and the mood the artist is in) we are under the impression that the two are of the same age or at the very least with-in a year of one another age.
With all that said I think its therefore safe to assume the issue is not simply 'height' but rather one of perceived child coding and of an age gap. Lets tackle the former first as it's currently quite the hot topic within anime circles.
Child coding refers to the idea taught by western art schools that we intentionally design characters in such a way as to incorporate details that might otherwise be unclear. It doesn't just apply to children but to anything the character designers sees fit and there's certainly some truth to it. My problem with people using child coding as some sort of sword that proves all their claims correct, is that its a flimsy as all heck argument. Firstly while clearly all theory's of art have something of this nature involved in their creation, its heavily defined by the induvial and is something we as Westerners are trying to impose on to Eastern standards and views. Secondly its almost completely interpretation based and I ruddy hate interpretation based 'science'.
Allow me to give you a topical example, 'Kana' from Dragon maid has been proclaimed as child coded. Firstly, yes. You need to be a speical kind of person to of not noticed that Kana is not just coded but is quite clearly - a child, something which the text itself backs up, stating that while she may be some number of years old by human standards, by 'dragon standards' she's very young/a child. So straight off the bat this idea that the show is hiding is gone, because it clearly isn't hiding. Kana being technically hundreds of years old is just D&D, Skyrim or even 'Lord of the Rings' dragon styled flavour text and anyone that uses that as an excuse to 'lewd' her is out of line as the show itself makes it more then abundantly clear that she is in fact a child. There no secret here folks, no conspiracy or secret cobal of paedophiles.
To get slightly more back on track as to my issue of interpretation, some have insinuated that Kana's white thigh high socks are a form of sexualizing's her because of the view they afford of her aforementioned thighs. This is by no means a bad interpretation but its just that after all, I as someone more familiar with Literary theory have always seen her socks as being colour coded the way they are as a representation of her child-like-ness, they're white often associated with purity and their long length can easily be seen as a way to show how short she is that they reach so high, in a short of endearing Disney fashion. Furthermore I would of suggested that there white rather then black (As some have suggested would be better) because it matches her pre-existing pink and silver/grey colour pallet, which the colour black would throw off entirely and pointlessly.
I hope now you see what I'm trying to say, Characters coding is a loose subject matter based solely on interpretation that can only be backed up by the original designers (who are often unreliable narrators - see Hideki Anno for an example of an underplaying director/screenwriter) coming out to publicly verify a certain set of claims. However if we can all acknowledge that fact then lets take a proper look at post time-skip Ren. He's certainly short, in fact its stated numerous times he's short for his age in general, aside from that his features aren't particularly exclusive to that of a child, his face is the same as those around him and while he's lanky, that's a common trait of many yaoi boys (The alternative is being more buff or solid build like Haru is, most yaoi characters consistently alternate between these two design philosophies).
So after all this we've whittled down the issues from miss-read child coding to once again a simply question of height. Now I could refer again to the heroines of Key VNs and their short stature as proof of a double standard but lets be less pretentious, the reason Ren is short is not to pander to paedophiles but to pander to young men and women who have an affinity towards this particular preference. Actually stop and think about all the reverse harems and yaoi anime you've seen, just like the vast majority of standard harem anime they have a loli, most yaoi have a shota or in our case, a shorter man. Heck even universally loved 'Ouhran Highschool Host Club' has one and you don't hear anyone complaining.
Is it right? That's questionable, refer back to the top of the essay for my extensive thoughts on this but all told I don't see that big of an issue in the sorts of young men and women who have these fantasies being catered to in a tame environment where they can work through this stuff in a mature manner and then as they get older and move into adult-hood get on with their lives. I am quite confident that most of all the studies indicate (and please do check for yourself) that when kids are denied expose they simply seek out more extreme versions of what they're looking for in the form of heintai or actually illegal porn, which leads to the continued production of those far more harmful media streams. Its not a perfect solution but I think anime and manga isn't a half bad middle ground for taboo thoughts and emotions to meet up on and be explore through.
So that's height out of the way, before we deal with the age gap, lets take a moment to look at the simplest of these issues, the idea that any and all media discussing such topics should be dis-allowed.
As I already said a great length in my previous paragraphs, I think there's a-lot to be said for exploring the taboo through the harmless medium of anime or even cartoons but to add to that lets do a quick fire round;
"Does even the minor discussion of paedophilia run the chance of creating a paedophile?"; It's complicated and there's conflicted views on it, my view as should already be transparent by now, is that if the medium handles the topic with tact and sensitivity, even if it shows it in an overall positive light, as long as it also shows the immorality of it and establishes the irregularity of it, then it is free to give us the perspective of the involved parties. So that we might understand better why anyone would do these terrible things or why others might see it as something erotic. To simply try and sensory it gets you nowhere, as such I by no means condone Paedophilia or a relationship between the sensitive mind of a sixteen year old and a 22 year old but I am not afraid to see why someone else might think that's ok and then to discuss how best to deal with it in society rather then simply trying to ignore the inevitabilities of the human condition.
To end allow me to give you a different example, there are many documentary's and even some dramatized examples of WW2 from the perspectives of the Nazis, weather that be from the war cabinet or the soldiers on the ground or the innocent civilians that all sides had. Many of these will include incredibly horrifying topics such as the holocaust and may delve into how some knew it was wrong but had no choice but to go along with it and how others really believed the Aryon people were a 'supior race' that was more then justified in murdering the innocent Jewish peoples. We wouldn't call these movies and documentaries Nazi propaganda, yet Neo Nazi's are a thing . We called it - well a documentary or a record, a way to teach and warn the future about the dangers of radicalism and so on. This is what I mean when I rally that properties that handle volatile opinions, that society at large has condemned, should not only be allowed but actively used as a resource to better understand one another.
"Ya but are you sure it doesn't 'inspire' certain deviant people?"; My answer to this one may seem a bit crewed but please give it some genuine though. Does playing call of Duty turn you into a murder? A school shooter? Does a Pride march magically convert your children from straight to trans?
To anyone sensible reading this you'll already know the simple answer is, that it's not that simply. While a pride march might help an LGBT person realize that they were gay or lesbian etc.. all along and they just hadn't known the right words to express themselves, it does not mean they weren't LGBT before they witnessed the march, they always were and always would of been if that's the way they were born. People become murders due to mental illness, society, their upbringing, circumstances and a whole slew of other reasons and not because they saw it in a video game even if that migth supposedly 'inspire' them, they weren't created by said games.
The sad thing that can get lost in all this rhetoric and name calling is that a Paedophile who never acts on their ingrained urges is just a human. If they do act on the urges then they deserve the punishment they receive but most of them don't choose to be that way, they don't choose to develop unlawful feelings and I think that's worth remembering, we are all just people. So no I don't think a light hearted, well meaning, slice of life yaoi anime is going to turn anyone who wasn't already, into a Paedophile anymore then teaching kids in school about LGBQ+ rights will fundamental change them, accept to make them more open minded, caring, empathic and understanding people and I think we'd all do well to remember that.
"Are you condoning or 'Ok'ing' Paedophilia?"; God no and I think that should be more then apparent by now. I by no means condone of the relationship in Super lovers or of any other relationship between an adult and a minor. What I'm trying to communicate is two-fold, one that young men and women with this preocular kind of kink are better catered to in the relatively safe and tame environment of anime and that more importantly (but sort of unrelated to this particular anime) that we should not be afraid to discuss and portrait immoral or even evil subject matter so that we might all one day understand it better. I by no means endorse even the most minor of paedophilia but I'm not some naïve idealist who believes sticking my fingers in my ears and shouting rhetoric from the roof tops will make an issue as troublesome as paedophilia magically go away. I want to understand why any terrible thing occurs, so that one day we can all come together to help prevent it from ever occurring again, as much as possible. We can jail as many paedophiles as we can catch and so we should, just like we would jail a raspiest but that won't ever solve the problem and maybe Japan's way of allowing young people to explore all manners of socially unacceptable kinks from their own safe spaces, is a far more mature and 'grown-up' idea then we'd all like to acknowledge. I'll end this segment by just reminding everyone that when we talk about these terrible, horrible topics that put the lives of children, our most precious and vulnerable people at risk, that everything were talking about, is people and all of our continued struggles with the human condition and that goes for those born with the disease of peodifllia but whom never act on it too.
The age Gap;
So we've gone past the false claims of grooming and the rather hard cutting topic of peodifllia as well as the more silly but highly relevant topic of character coding. What are we now left with? A show staring a short guy and a tall guy in a gay relationship - except for one crucial thing, the age gap.
This is maybe the most sensitive issue of them all, where we've already discussed the merits of the other points and how all the evidence would indicate there done to appeal to the Shojo fan base and not to the ends of glorifying paedophiles, the age gap does seem to oppose this. However I hope by this point, nearly 8000 words in, to think we have demonstrated all the exhibitions we require for our fictional court case as it were.
Is the age gap right or something that I endorse? Heck no. Is it in context appropriate? I would suggest yes. The show sets a light tone but clearly takes itself seriously enough when dealing with this topic and its my belief it has every intension of continuing to do so. I haven't finished it yet and once I do I'll be happy to re-asses my opinion but I'm quite confident that the main duo will become a couple in a manner that is appropriate to the context with both being fully consensual in the matter. As of episode 6 they have introduces a second relationship dynamic involving Haru's x love for an older women and it's quite clear to me that this is being used to further examine and highlight the grey morality of the situation. As I've already made clear it is straight up normal for shows to deal with immoral topics from within a fictional realm and while I completely agree paedophilia and the technically legal relationship of a 16 year old and an 22 year old is wrong, I cannot agree that we should try to pretend these aren't both the fantasies of real life people and in a more serious way, the realities for some, which I believe it is only right to explore in a safe, fictional environment where no one is hurt.
The hate 'Super Lovers' gets in particular does strike me as strange, as mentioned 'Domestic Girlfriend' was huge amongst men and women and it involves a teenager and a women (who considering her full teaching degree must at-least be around Haru's age if not a few years older) and that brings us on to our last point - Hypocrisies. I will quickly apologies if this section seemed shorter then those previous, I didn't intended it like this but I believe I covered most of my points in the peodifllia section and I have no desire to bore anyone by reiterating facts and opinion that which have already been mentioned..
On Hypocrisy;
Hypocrisy or rather 'hypocrite' is one of those rhetoric words that I hate to see flung around so much but it is apt for this section. I think its worth including this here for its relevance to the more current discussion around the topics we've gone over here today. People have developed a habitual double standard, giving passes to pieces of media which they belief are 'higher-brow', more intellectual or more innocent then the 'lower-tier-trash Tv' that deserves no such credit.
I'll keep my examples brief, first if you still belief the idea of peodifllia deserves zero understanding or exploration, than I ask if you also disavow Evangellion who, without any major spoilers, has a 14 year old openly offer herself to a 30ish years old man, going as far to take him linger shopping and even take her shirt off for him. It goes no further but is used to illustrate her mentality. Regardless of its purpose I'd argue that if you believe 'Super Lovers' is damaging, then surely Eva showing that a 14 year old actually 'wants' sex with a far older man must surely be far more damaging, telling a potential paedophile that there 'right' could be incredibly dangerous, more so then almost anything in Super Lovers is. That's not to mention that the man in question had an almost abusively physical relationship with his mentally balmy x-lover and yet is considered by almost all (Including me) to be one of the stories best written characters.
Some smaller examples. I've already talked at length about how yaoi fanservice in context is factually a more intimate equivalent for standard female fanservice, as well as addressing how shows like Clanned, Kanon and Toradora have majortively shorter leads then is normal height or when compared to their respective significant others/spouses.
I've also already gone over how from Sao to Hagani("We don't have any friends") to Code Geass we see varying degrees of fairly damning incest and about how we have a whole maelstrom of shows (Pretty much a sub-genre at this stage/point) of shows including a teenager as one half of said coupling, with an adult as the other, that no one seems nearly as offended by ( i.e. 'Domestic Girlfriend', 'After the rain' and this very seasons 'Hige wo Soru' to name a few, thought that last one does seem to of eventually ruffled a few features).
Then of course we'd be remise not to mention the program's that claim a child is actually a 100+years old and then use that as justification to lewd them or have them be dressed in an unfitting fanservices deminer. The likes of 'Seraph of the End', 'Dance in the Vampire Bund' and 'Gate' spring to mind.
The point this should get across is it's easy to take a high ground and toss rhetoric and hyperbola down on us mere mortals but it takes a much bigger person to stop, learn the facts for yourself and form fair and unbiased opinions. If you truly have an issue with 'Super Lovers' or most of its contemporize, then maybe its time to take a look at just what else you've watched, loved and never realized is guilty in small or big ways of the very same crimes if not graver sins.
Conclusion;
As I've already alluded to, I'm not writing this as some petty retort to my friend but rather because this whole topic, from loli to shota has been one of curiosity on my mind for some time now and this simply pushed me to finally write of it, mainly because it was bugging me to continue thinking about it. Is 'Super Lovers' Paedophilia Pushing? No, while you can argue it's an element of the show, it does not promote it as a solely positive thing but instead takes a kind look at elements of it and asks you to form you own opinions and learn from it while also pandering to young women (And men) who wish to explore their particular kink. Is it grooming? Clearly not. Is it incest. Kinda, there is certainly an element of incest but it is clearly not a show about incest, making the use of the word, as with the other two, counter-productive and foolish.
I'm by no means a professional and while I try to do the best research and analysis I can, at the end of the day I'm an amateur at literary study, non-the-less I'm the sort that likes the think about and research a topic, I've been working on a 'Shuffle!' essay for months now, though progress is slow considering I only started actually writing it a few weeks ago. Shuffle itself is well over a decade and a half old now and as far as I can tell no one gives a flying monkeys about it anymore safe me and my recently introduced to it brother, regardless its a show I'm passionate about and so I'm possibly writing the world's longest and mostly needless analysis of it. All this is to say I'd rather devote my time and energy to thinking, writing and expressing myself about things I love rather then wasting brain power fighting a losing battle with those of a close minded disposition.
And I think in their maybe a simpler point, one that ignores gender politics, or harsh thoughts like paedophilia, because what were actually talking about is a show which averages about a minute or two an episode on yaoi fanservice and spends the rest of its runtime being an above average slice of life show about found family, belonging and loneliness. So 'take it from me' if you will and try divorce yourself from gender politics, the objectification of women and the grooming of children and just watch your Japanese cartoons for what they are; Wonderful, exciting, beautifully told and varied stories about every topic you can ever image, with so much passion and heart-filled effort put into even the cheapest of productions. Not afraid to go where other country's would still cringe and more then happy to accept anyone, weather you be a casual weeb, a Shoen head, an idol simp, a basement dwelling degenerate, a Sakuga nerd, or just a plain old fashion closet otaku. Enjoy what you want to because there really is not just something for everyone but plenty of it too. Judge and criticize but do so in good faith, not with rhetoric or solely your Western views, that through the careless use of words like peodifllia and grooming may lead to the devaluing of those, but as what we all our underneath the politics and bureaucracy. Anime Fans.
I'd like to end this with a quote from a man more wise, more controversial and more nuanced then I can ever hope to be. A man far more debated and maligned then any anime like 'Super Lovers' will ever be. its a kind reminder about the merits of judging others without talking into consideration their circumstance and the context surrounding them, as-well as a warning to look in on ourselves before looking outwards at others and its a quote, I think we could all do to heed more often. If you found this essay in any way interesting or valuable feel free to click the 'helpful' button on the anime's review page under my review or leave a comment here if you have a question or want to discuss something (Pressing 'Desktop Mode' is required for those on mobile). Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed;
"Let no one look down on those honourable, well meaning men whose actions are chronicled in these pages, without searching his own heart, reviewing his own discharge of public duty and applying the lessons of the past to his future conduct."
Think back to your earliest anime, the first time you came across these genres in a big way, if your old school maybe it was something like Love Hina, HQ holder or worse yet Kiss x Sis. As anime enthusiast we all become, over time, desensitized to it, we become used to the newest season's imouto, isekai, power fantasy romcom and eventually they have become less weird in the minds of the community and more "Well that's just how anime is". At this stage there are few among us who even give it a second thought any more, that was till recently. To anyone not living under a rock, you've probably come across the controversy over the new Dragon Maid sequel and the outraged twitter mobs both defending and attacking the merits of the show's new Lolita character. I have yet to watch the new series and as such shant pass any judgement on it here but it reminds me greatly of another controversy that was recently brought to my attention from a few years ago, about a show called 'Super Lovers'.
Before we properly delve into the meat of the topic, lets take a step back as westerns and try to understand why harem anime and all that the blanket term encompasses, exist. Maturity - no really. Harems along with isekai and the like are often viewed as the immature little brother of the more serious story telling anime has to offer, light entertainment and guilty pleasures as it were and this is by no means incorrect as for many, especially adults, this is what the genres represent but in context they illustrate Japan's differing societal views. Keeping the history very brief ( It's well worth properly reading into in your own time if this sort of content interests you ) for those of us in the west during the 60's governments and tv standard's boards alike came together to form the regulations we now abide, later reinforced throughout the 80's (epically by the likes of Mary Whitehouse in Britain among many others) the ideas that young adults and teens must be protected from sexually explict content or even the sin-full horrors of swear words - was born.
Think for a moment about your own time as say a 15 year old, how much of the tv supposedly catered towards you actually interested you? How many grew tired of the wallpaper media produced for the youthful and turned their attentions to sports, more recently the internet and if your reading this, most likely anime. We're all drawn to anime for a myriad of different reasons but when were starting out, I think it would be fair to say that a large factor is the freedom it allows, not afraid to explore 'grown up' topics through the guise of a cartoon aesthetic. Remember back to your first experience with something like 'Heaven's Lost Property', 'High-school DXD' or more tame shows like 'Infinite Stratus', how the content presented seemed taboo, not quite porn but still not socially acceptable. This feeling is no accident but by design.
Something we often forget is the actual target audience of these programmes, teenagers. Your standard harem has demographic of 15 into the early 20s, with some even being rated as low as PG 13. This is in part due to Japan's more lenient rating system but also because of the aforementioned maturity. Those making the anime and the Tv networks airing them are fully aware that the wish-fulfilment fantasies of these show's are those of young adults. There more then a little knowing of the fact that teenagers are naturally and biologically horny and taking a western approach of prudence, simply pushes the audience away. After all a teenage boy will seek out porn if they so desire, no amount of Christian platitudes will prevent this and in the modern era it's become easier to do so then ever. So in this way the anime culture of Japan accepts these basic facts and gives young men and women what they seek, titillating fanservice with a side of self-insert fantasy. None of this is to by any means insinuate that harem anime have no value, in fact many of my favourite anime are harems because of the passion clearly put in by those worked on them or by the sometime simply but honest messages the writer was trying to get across, because all this links to the second reason they exist. Sex Sells.
This one may at first seem obvious, as its far less culture shock ridden then my first point. While it may at first be hard to get over the fact that adult implication like sex are marketed publicly towards teenagers in the East, the idea that 'Sex Sells' is far to common in the West. Indeed a great deal of the genres were discussing find their origin in a cheap buck ( That's not to say all isekais are made with zero ambition, many talented animated and directors etc.. may give something their all, I mean to say that from a board room funding perspective ) but there is a second reason to include fanservice in a story aside from just the money, though heavily linked.
If you lack confidence in your story or you want it to have broader appeal and to reach more people, then you may well include fanservice to get punters in the door. The meme "I came for the 'plot' but stayed for the plot ;{ " springs to mind, where in a show will include often copious amounts of fanservice in order to capture a larger audience. Some take this a step further and incorporate it into its more series story elements, with two famous example from Gainx being Evangelion's infamous "They'll be plenty more fanservice next week" tag line and Gurren Lagan's use of fanservice to link into it's themes of boyhood and growing up. A simpler and very prevalent example would be the Shoen genre. While many anime from it curb the trend (HunterxHunter, Fma, Assassination Classroom) the majority take advantage of their primary audience being young men and chose to include a vulumtoius women in the main cast to add sex appeal to the story and marketing (One Piece, Fairy Tail, etc.).
All this is to try and get across that Japan's anime industry is less shrewd then our western television standards, appealing to horny 15 year olds and adding small amounts of sex appeal to otherwise family friendly shows is par for the course if it increases viewing figures and blu ray sales. Anime isn't afraid to appeal to a kink if it thinks there's money to be made and on a less cynical note, is that bad? The advantage of exploring you sexual desires through the guise of wish-fulfilment is far more beneficial then keeping said desires pent up and through Japan's anime scene we can often see what the 'degenerates'
are contemplating. One trope of particular note, that even many 'veteran' fans of the genre will cringe at, is incest. Once again we need to detach our western bias and look at this from their perspective. Incest is both immoral and biological counter-productive yet Japan continues to a varying degree to grapple with an issue based in what was once a very insular and almost tribe like culture.
It's a complicated topic, probably best suited for its own discussion, though we will have to touch on it again shortly. Moving past it for a moment, I'd like to conclude my pre-amble by conveying the point that not all fanservice in anime is intended to be taken as the objectification of women/men. Nor do our western politics necessarily match up with Japan's. Do harem anime objectify women? Many of them yes, especially the cheaper cash grab kind and that's because there's a market like with anything else but should you presume that all harem anime are out to get women? Never, to do so is to narrow one's own mind and miss out on the opportunity to learn and experience great and compassionate stories. The likes of Shuffle, who's narrative tries to gently show young men the folly of their self insert fantasies, or properties so well written that we can often forget their even harem anime, like Toradora, Clanned, Kanon etc. Or shows aimed at the same demographic that aren't quite harem but have many of the symptoms. The strong women of Shakugan no Shana, the flawed nobility of Zero no Tsukima's Louise, Henriette and Tabita (among others) or the highly competent and professional soldiers of Full Metal Panic like Sgt.Maj. Mou, Lt.Grey and Captain Testa.
I don't stay with this genre for 2D cleavages that I could find in any doujinshi, I stay because of a love for the heartfelt and genuine storytelling the genre can offer while still managing to be escapist, often light hearted and almost always fun. Moving forward lets try and keep all this in mind, weather you like it or not, anime is not as politically charged with the same agendas as the West and while your standards may lead you to believe a show is promoting something your specific creed defies, the truth may be far simpler or greatly more nuanced.
Part 2 - Super Lovers;
I had for some time intended to write a similar piece to this, detailing my thoughts on Lolicon culture and how in the last decade there has been a worrying and deeply unsettling trend in loli's ( Female characters of a childlike aesthetic ) becoming more and more childlike, however this week a different, almost antithetical yet contradictorily linked topic came into my attention. As someone who watched anime seasonally for some 2 or 3 years I was aware of Super Lovers ( season 2 at-least ) when it aired, however my lack of interest in Yaoi based anime meant I never went near the property. During a discussion over the perceived treatment of women in anime communities with a friend of mine, the show jokingly came up. My friend described it as Paedophilia and grooming. Seeing as it was on Funimation (who infamously took down 'Interspecies Reviewers' recently due to the public backlash about that show's fanservice) and the tendency of young people to use harmful and defaming rhetoric, I hazarded that this comment might be a bit harsh. The response I received was one of doubling down, she informed that it most certainly was paedophilia pushing and made light of such topics as grooming.
There were some context-less pictures, as-well as a comment that the show was disgusting and I should 'take my word on it'. Unfortunately I'm afraid curiosity got the best of me and I'm ashamed to say I made something of a point of watching the first 2 episodes and then questioning my friend on what exactly she found so outrageous about the show compared to any other. It was wrong of me and I've since apologies, furthermore I should make it clear that from here on the 'opposition' I refer to is not her but taken from forum posts and reviews here on Mal, reddit and even Facebook rants that I came across in the pursuit of my research. With that made clear, lets talk about a 4 year old controversy that no one cares about anymore but it's surprisingly relevant.
As mentioned I can be a bit pig headed and I'll generally refuse to take anyone's word on anime(Or most subjects) unless they've been shown to be highly reputable and un-bias, so I goggled the show and came across the discourse pertaining to it. Blog posts and Facebook rants detailing a rabid attack and defence against the show and after reading a few of these I concluded the best way to source information would be to simply watch the show. At the time of writing I'm on episode eight which I believe at this point has more then amply shown the intentions of the show and the tonal context it's striving for. I've also spent a sad amount of time reading up more on the debates over it and while I'm by no means an expert on anime, Japan or Yaoi (I'm a rank amateur if anything), I feel I've seen enough to throw out my two cents and also to simple get it off my own mind.
Lets start quickly by putting everyone on an even playing field (There'll be no major spoilers but beware of ones for the first six episodes). As this isn't strickly a review of the show, I'll skip any major further pre-ample over the exact detail of the story and cut straight to dispelling many of the myths and arguments I've seen around the show. Firstly I'm not interested in the source material which does strike me as a bit more problematic, nor does the Mal or wiki over-rule what's presented in the show, as such in episode 2 after a time skip between episodes 1 and 2, Haru (The older of our two protagonists) states that he's 22 and by episode 6, six additional months have passed with no mention of a birthday, so it is fair to insinuate that within the anime at-least, Haru is 22 years old. Where the numbers "24" and "26" come from I can only presume retains to the manga or some such.
As for Ren, his age is a little more vague, we know his birthday is on Christmas and that he's in highschool. Episode 8 actually clears it up with Ren stating he was 8 in the flashback scene and the nearly 8 year time-skip would therefore make him 16 after his birthday in episode 3, which the internet seems to agree with me on. An age gap therefore of 6 years, not 9 as many have suggested. Will get into the nitty gritty of said age gap momentarily.
Sticking with Ren(The younger of the two leads), there's some sort of misconception that he was raised by animals. This is blatantly a cause of not paying enough attention to what's portraited on screen. We're told Ren was found on the streets in Canada with memory loss and that after taking badly to an orphanage, he ran away, while were told this we are shown him down a back ally with a pack of 'dogs'. This is not meant to imply that Ren was raised by animals but that he instead has an affinity for them, as people (possibly his birth parents) threated him cruely in the past and in actual fact this is meant to draw clear and simply parallels to Haru, who also has an affinity for animals. Non of this suggested he was raised in the wild and is another piece of pure speculation, while it could be possible, all evidence suggests not, most cases of him acting 'wolf-like' are clearly down for the purpose of comedy.
For our last simple one we have the promotional poster used here on Mal. It depicts a young Haru and Ren in what can definitely be interpreted as an intimate position. This image has lead some to vastly mistake the depictions and ages of the two characters and its either a miss step on Studio Deen's PR team or a not so out of character slip up on Mal's part, that they make use of an image from episode one. That's right, from before the time skip. So yes the characters are very young in the poster because its essentially a shot from an elongated flashback. Its a bad representation of the show but lets for a moment give it another look to see if the complaints levied at it hold any water. I believe there's three ways to look at it, as paedophilia, as overly intimated brothers or as fanservice bait.
As mentioned I can definitely see someone interpreting it badly and I would happily agree with them that it is awkward and I can also understand the people defending it as brotherly. Its brotherly in the sense of wish fulfilment sense that certain young women (and men) have where they perceive brothers as overly intimate bishojen boys, interpreting it as cute rather then creepy. To most of us in the west it's very creepy but in Japan there are many who want this form of escapism, an oddly pure, non-sexual gay relationship between brothers. Its sounds weird and it is but so too is the idea of anime about self insert guys pursed by dozens of adoring girls who never actually engage in sexual activities. This is, in a sense, the yaoi equivalent to the male orientated harem genre. Its culture shock but no less real. As such I think the true answer lies in the middle, the shot does have some brotherly vibes but all in all I'd suggest its their to bring in as broud an audience as possible, those who like Yaoi, those who want shota, etc. As such, the shot interestingly doesn't appear at any point during the flashback episode, almost as though legions of angry internet uses got baited into a piece of marketing with very little relevance to the show, zero context and if anything did the promoting for it by complaining about it.
Now we get to a tricky topic. The legal age in Japan, oh boy. The debate around this is the sort that I dread, image the setting, you've watched one or two episodes and lay out a series of points in favour of the show. You feel the story while simplistic, was well set up and executed, you felt the art, especially that of the Canadian country-side was really well done and that the music for a yaoi show was in keeping with the genre but a little above average. Furthermore you feel that the story is going to handle the age gap of its two leads with tact and besides that, technically the legal age makes the pairing legal and therefore its less paedophilia and more a question of possible abuse.
The unfortunate response to this will probably be a rant ignoring all you points except for the one about the legality of it all and you'll find your opposition claiming the immorality and arguing that the law has nothing to do with it. Its a painful thing to try and recover from as it probably means your opposition has no interest in an adult conversation. If you want my advice, never get technical, people will think you're being patronizing or insensitive and the conversation will go no-where. For the sake of this essay covering all areas of this discussion lets address it. First off the majority of both sides are wildly wrong about this, the defence claiming that 13 is Japan's age of consent and the offense arguing that it's more a kin to the whims of the Provence you're in. There's some truth in both and some misconceptions. In actual fact a small amount of reading on the topic will reveal its a little more nuanced.
A 13 year old can have sex with another 13 year old, as can two 14 year olds and for the most part they will not be taken to court and charged with a criminal offence (It can still happen but its simply what the law means when it refers to 13-14 year old's), however a 15 year old and up, Can Not Have Sex With a 14 year old and lower without it being an offense. To summarize, 13 is not the age of consent. So its 15 right? well that's where the modicum of truth comes into the opposition, depending on where you are it is possible you could be taken to court for having sex with a 15 year old, however broadly speaking 15 is the age of consent, so on a technical level if our 16 year old Ren is in a relationship with our 22 year old Haru, then no clear cut crime is being committed. Does that make it right, not really but what it does do is make something clear, on at the very least, a technical level Super lover's premise is not paedophiliac instead the question is to weather Haru is abusing Ren and as to weather, consenting or not, Ren is mentally developed enough to be in a relationship with an older man six years his senior. Furthermore if their relationship was actually sexual this would get more complicated as Tokyo in specific has its own laws in place for such activities but considering Haru and Ren aren't actually in a sexual relationship, there's no need to delve into any more legislation for the minute.
This may all seem pedantic but rhetoric is a sort of pet peeve of mine and to me is one of the most dangerous things to come out of modern discourse. For example anyone who takes an interest in politics will of seen the many 'incidents' in American and Canadian collage campuses these past few years with students berating public speakers and refusing to engage in conversation. The left will often throw out terms like 'Bigot, sexiest' and the most bizarrely 'Nazi', while the right will try to dismiss the left with the likes of 'Snowflake' and 'Social Justice Warrior', all in all its a downright mess and we should all aim to be more careful in our use of rhetoric, after-all a term like 'Nazi' is incredibly loaded with negative conations and implications and simplifies an intensely complicated matter into a sh*t slinging match.
As such when you tell someone causally that a show is 'paedophiliac' or its desensitizing 'grooming' your painting it in marvellously black and white terms and instantly killing the conversation, furthermore if the person you tell parrots on your words, non the wiser, your creating a falsehood without even realizing it. I should again reiterate this is not aimed at my friend but rather at the discussions around this show and many others like 'Hige no Sous' that I've witness on the interwebs and that this is one of my main stakes in this argument, that we should be careful not to 'Cry Wolf' too often, lest no one listens in the future.
To conclude this most fragile of topics, from a legal standpoint and from a definitions standpoint, 'Super Lovers' is not paedophilia, will get to the actual evidence of the claim pretty soon but just to end this section about the use of rhetoric when discussing any piece of media; Beware the words you carelessly throw around, generalization leads to extremism and we should all take the time to try and be a little more nuanced then that in our day lives.
Part 3 - The Big Three
So we've discussed the blatant misconception that Haru is above 22 at the series onset and dispelled the myth that Ren is Mogly from the Jungle-Book, as well as explaining why the poster is little more then official fan art and cleared up a bit of the confusion over Japan's rather complicated age of consent system. Now lets finally get to the heart of the problem and the three big issues levied at the show; "It's Incest, Grooming and Paedophilia", will take them one at a time and in that order seeing as each term is a bit more damning and complicated from the last.
Incest is a very Japanese fascination, of course its been prevalent to varying degrees all across the world but Japan certainly has quite the interest in it. Let's go back a moment and remember what we've all ready discussed, the audience for a show like this is young women (and men) who like to fantasize about this particular preference and incest is a part of that. I could just leave it as that, "fanservice, magical girls, gaint robots and incest are just part and parcel of anime, deal with it" but lets have a proper look at the case in hand shall we?
Lets start by being transparent this show deserves the tag of incest - on a technical level. The problem with throwing 'incest' as an insult at this property is that it doesn't really accomplish anything, I'll happily concede that it's technically incest as long as the opposition accepts that the show isn't paedophilia on a technical level. You can see the problem correct? Will be mentioning this a-lot as we go forward but people have a bad habit of double standards and hierocracy, usually without realizing it. Saying the show isn't podophilic in the eyes of some of Japan's complicated laws, isn't productive and doesn't strike at the issue in hand - Is it right or moral?
Examining the relationship with the two above points of context we now get a new picture, categorically its fairly tame for the incest trope, for example Domestic Girlfriend, the spiciest show from a couple years back has incest between step siblings(who's parents are married) but aren't blood connected. Conversely in Sword Art Online, Suguha is actually Kirito's cousin but not his real sister, meaning that they presumably share more DNA then the previous example from Domestic Girlfriend but aren't actually siblings or even step siblings. Ren doesn't fit either of those categories nor are one of his and one of Haru's parents the same and thankfully it isn't a case of first degree incest with them sharing both parents.
No in actuality their only link is that of a piece of paper decreeing them brothers, they don't ( To my knowledge sticking solely to the anime ) share any DNA nor are any of their other relations related to one another. This is as already mentioned, still incest but its a far cry from what we are used to, compared to most anime that include incest, its really a rather tame connection. Lets go one step further though, we can infer by the time skip, that Ren and Haru have spent up to 6 months total together maximum, all of which Haru forgot after a traumatic accident. They don't seem to of had any other contact in the intervening years and furthermore neither Haru or Ren knew that Ren had been adopted until after the time-skip. So lets review, Ren and only Ren has a living recollection of 6 months spent with Haru whom he is neither related to in law via marriage of relatives or by even the faintest of blood. When you think about it like that, by looking at the actual given facts and context that your presented with, what you realize is that these two are in reality less related then your standard protagonist and childhood friend duo.
It sounds hyperbolic but actually think about it, the sort of childhood friend under-dog who we all route for in shows like Nisekoi, Darling in the Franx, etc., the type who bathed with the protagonist as kids, went to school with them, woke them in the morning, lived close or even next door to them, is clearly more of a sibling then Ren could ever hope to be and interestingly the show acknowledges this with the primary conflict after episode two being Ren trying to fit in with a family he knows he doesn't actually belong to. Shuffle is a show that touches on this idea of the morality of the childhood friend as a love interest if your interested in exploring that concept but it should suffice to say that Ren is Haru's brother but only on the most technical of levels, I'd go as far as to say Haru's best friend Iku has a better claim then Ren does.
But let's say for a moment that it was a more straight forward case of incest. Will talk more about this when addressing the allegation of 'Paedophilia' but since when can you not make a story about an immoral topic like incest? Stories have and I hope will always be, in large part about the continued communication of ideas and an effort to bring us all closer together in our understanding of one another. If a story wants to be about exploring the morality of incest, the reason those within the relationship are there and the consequences of such a union, then of course its valid for it to do so, how else are we meant to understand? There are 3 primary reasons to make an incest story, to appeal in a sexual way to a particular kink (we call this heintai and it doesn't tend to get a full length run, more like an episode or two at most), to explore the topic in a cautionary manner or finally examining the workings of such a relationship and the morality of it or in a more comical, non sexual way. The first one of those, the heintai, is the one with the least moral scruples and is by far the most harmful as it is bluntly promotional, akin to propaganda almost in a less malevolent sense. The second two are more interesting, they essentially appeal to the same audience as the first but in a safe, more tame environment, that allows the viewer to enjoy and work through a fantasy while also teaching them about its downsides and preventing them from feeling alienated and resorting to more extreme views on the matter, which brings us back to my initial point about the maturity and understanding anime shows to it's horny teenage audience base. Is it not better for a young women with this strange kink to explore it through a fairly tame slice of life anime, then to turn to the likes of 4chan incel message boards or straight up heintai?
So to finish, the show is barely incest at worst and even if that's still to much for you, its not wrong to make stories about uncomfortable topics so that we might all come to understand them better. Everyone is thought about 9/11 and the holocaust in primary school because we want to understand and prevent such event from ever happening again, so why would harsh topics like incest and paedophilia not also be something we want to learn about in order to prevent?
Grooming;
Alas if only this referred to the hygiene kind. The claim of grooming is the opposition's most baseless, however it's more implicit then the charge of incest. Where that one has a foothold, the 'grooming' claim is one of a gross miss-use of wording and a naivety to the terrible, irredeemable act that is this crime. Lets be clear the act of grooming is usual that of threating a younger person kindly before slowly coaxing them into activities of a sexual nature that which they wouldn't of agreed to prior. Its done by extreme manipulation, such as convincing the victim they have no self worth if they loose there supposed 'partner' or that they 'owe' their partner for his or her perceived kindness or by simply convincing them that the gradually more corrupt activities are perfectly normal for couple. Its a horrible thing to be through and those prediters who partake in it deserve to have the entire book thrown at them, however to claim Haru's minor episodes of teasing amount to grooming is simple an audacious act of trying to fit a text to your own narrative.
A few important points to be established here, Haru is a "womanizers' and professional host, who alongside a loneliness complex and a troubled upbringing, which included the scorn of his fellow kids and having to move around different countries. He has developed to be a very physical person, he has something of a insecurity retaining to him only being able to feel self-worth when being physically intimate with others. Think Misato Katsuragi from Neon Genesis Evangellion. Combine this with the shows need to get fanservice included to help bring in more viewers and you certainly have what seems like a-lot of hugging and kissing, Indeed Someone Could Cut all these scenes out of context and try to make the argument based on just that, in extremely miss-leading bad faith, that is till you actually bother to watch the material in full, with its context. Any kiss which Haru instigates is short and immediately met by a hearty beat down from Ren and the scornful disapproving looks of those around them. It is made very clear that Haru's overly intimate tendencies are over the line and wrong. The only scenes that are allowed to play out with a dramatic swoon of the score are those where-in Ren makes a move on Haru. Now you might be thinking that its certainly a little better that Ren is the aggressor but its still clearly eligible for grooming right?
No. In fact most of the background cast question the intimacy of the relationship, not only making it clear that they think its unnatural but also helping to clarify the nature of the relationship, it isn't sexual. It comes to ahead in episode six when Iku straight out asks Haru if he actually fancies Ren once you get past all the comedy hijinks and fanservice teasing - Haru answers with-out a second though is that he'd never go "for a kid with so little sex appeal". In fact its shown that Haru has till this point been a straight hetro-sexual. Is all this to say that they wont eventually become intertwined? Of course not, its very clear that eventually the duo will end up as something more, however its also very apparent that it will be a relationship that forms from a natural bond and not from grooming. Its abundantly obvious on multiple occasions that Haru has no grand or even small plan to captivate and manipulate Ren into a sexual relationship that he, as a teenager isn't ready for and on the contrary when the relationship does inevitably form, I'm confident on what's been presented thus far that it will be one formed of mutual consent and written in a tactful, polite manner.
All in all, Haru was unaware of even having a brother and had no memories of his teenage days with Ren. How he could of planned anything seems questionable to begin with but combine it with his actual statements and those of the people/characters around him and the fact that any actions not instigated by Ren are threated as either yaoi fanservice or as an inappropriate action by the people around him and we're left with a clear picture that indicates a complete and utter lack of anything close to resembling grooming.
Paedophilia;
As an issue within the anime community, this one is the 'biggy'. As said at the top, there has recently been a-lot of hate for Miss Kobioshi's Dragon Maid and the general twitter movement to 'redesign' loli's. It's a fascinating issue as I'd agree loli's are getting more childlike, as what was once a fan term based on a Russian book for characters of a short build (i.e. JC-staff's own big 3 of Shana, Louise and Taiga), has now become an almost meta narrative with shows like Eromanga Sensei trying to one up each other in just how child-like and just how incestual we can make Lolitas. It's a complicated trend and it has an inverse, in the form of shotacon.
The main issue as I see it is three fold. Firstly that the very concept of a story that deals with paedophilia shouldn't be allowed, secondly that the height and other features of Ren make him 'Child Coded'(to borrow a hip phrase) and thirdly that the age gap puts Ren in a vulnerable, abusable position. So lets slow down, dispense with all the hollow rhetoric and look at the work, at the facts as there presented and at the feelings of the author's intent.
First in the interest of reminding everyone that all discourse is about finding a middle ground, and an understanding between one another, allow me to give my bias, my feelings as it were, rather then the empirical view I've so far taken. Yaoi fanservice is not my cup of tea and shota even less so, in fact I find the fan service scenes (rare as they are) pretty awkward for the most part and furthermore Ren is definitely a bit shota coded, not as much as some have suggested but definitely a decent amount.
With that said lets get back to facts. For the uninitiated the reverse of harem fanservice (Top heavy girls with unrealistic personality traits and an uncanny attraction to the main male protagonist) is the bishojen boys. Even if you've never got through a whole yaoi anime you'll of seen them around, think the cast of 'Free!' or 'Haiku' and you'll know what I mean and while Shojo manga do use bare chests in the same way you might get a female's cleavage plastered on the screen, something more unique to the yaoi genre is its intimacy. Yaoi boys are almost always depicted in comprising positions which might seem a bit overly familiar even for a causal harem viewer/fan. This is actually based in biology, I did have a large segment here about how on a base level, there is a difference in men and women, where-in they search for different things in the opposite sex and how that leads to women essentially having a higher standard for their fanservice, (something which Shojo-Ai seems very aware of) however the segment was a bit bogged down in technical jargon and I think we're already being political enough as it is. If you do want to learn more there's a great lecture series from an actually collage professor on YouTube (1. Introduction to Human Behavioural Biology).
It should for our purposes, suffice to say that women in general look for a different, more personal and intimate form of fanservice in their anime, yaoi or otherwise, where as men in the para-phrased words of greater writers then I "Will go for anything with boobs that's moves". This comes to ahead when combined with shota. Every kiss in Super lovers is automatically subject to the scorn of the public because of Ren's diminutive stature and Haru's pretty boy tallness. However once again I think we hit a snag on what it is people are upset over. If it's simply the imagery of someone tall with someone short then why does the likes of Toradora get a pass? Or Clanned and Kanon? The answer is context, that of the fact that while the likes of Rioji tower a good head or two over their significant other(depending on the scene and the mood the artist is in) we are under the impression that the two are of the same age or at the very least with-in a year of one another age.
With all that said I think its therefore safe to assume the issue is not simply 'height' but rather one of perceived child coding and of an age gap. Lets tackle the former first as it's currently quite the hot topic within anime circles.
Child coding refers to the idea taught by western art schools that we intentionally design characters in such a way as to incorporate details that might otherwise be unclear. It doesn't just apply to children but to anything the character designers sees fit and there's certainly some truth to it. My problem with people using child coding as some sort of sword that proves all their claims correct, is that its a flimsy as all heck argument. Firstly while clearly all theory's of art have something of this nature involved in their creation, its heavily defined by the induvial and is something we as Westerners are trying to impose on to Eastern standards and views. Secondly its almost completely interpretation based and I ruddy hate interpretation based 'science'.
Allow me to give you a topical example, 'Kana' from Dragon maid has been proclaimed as child coded. Firstly, yes. You need to be a speical kind of person to of not noticed that Kana is not just coded but is quite clearly - a child, something which the text itself backs up, stating that while she may be some number of years old by human standards, by 'dragon standards' she's very young/a child. So straight off the bat this idea that the show is hiding is gone, because it clearly isn't hiding. Kana being technically hundreds of years old is just D&D, Skyrim or even 'Lord of the Rings' dragon styled flavour text and anyone that uses that as an excuse to 'lewd' her is out of line as the show itself makes it more then abundantly clear that she is in fact a child. There no secret here folks, no conspiracy or secret cobal of paedophiles.
To get slightly more back on track as to my issue of interpretation, some have insinuated that Kana's white thigh high socks are a form of sexualizing's her because of the view they afford of her aforementioned thighs. This is by no means a bad interpretation but its just that after all, I as someone more familiar with Literary theory have always seen her socks as being colour coded the way they are as a representation of her child-like-ness, they're white often associated with purity and their long length can easily be seen as a way to show how short she is that they reach so high, in a short of endearing Disney fashion. Furthermore I would of suggested that there white rather then black (As some have suggested would be better) because it matches her pre-existing pink and silver/grey colour pallet, which the colour black would throw off entirely and pointlessly.
I hope now you see what I'm trying to say, Characters coding is a loose subject matter based solely on interpretation that can only be backed up by the original designers (who are often unreliable narrators - see Hideki Anno for an example of an underplaying director/screenwriter) coming out to publicly verify a certain set of claims. However if we can all acknowledge that fact then lets take a proper look at post time-skip Ren. He's certainly short, in fact its stated numerous times he's short for his age in general, aside from that his features aren't particularly exclusive to that of a child, his face is the same as those around him and while he's lanky, that's a common trait of many yaoi boys (The alternative is being more buff or solid build like Haru is, most yaoi characters consistently alternate between these two design philosophies).
So after all this we've whittled down the issues from miss-read child coding to once again a simply question of height. Now I could refer again to the heroines of Key VNs and their short stature as proof of a double standard but lets be less pretentious, the reason Ren is short is not to pander to paedophiles but to pander to young men and women who have an affinity towards this particular preference. Actually stop and think about all the reverse harems and yaoi anime you've seen, just like the vast majority of standard harem anime they have a loli, most yaoi have a shota or in our case, a shorter man. Heck even universally loved 'Ouhran Highschool Host Club' has one and you don't hear anyone complaining.
Is it right? That's questionable, refer back to the top of the essay for my extensive thoughts on this but all told I don't see that big of an issue in the sorts of young men and women who have these fantasies being catered to in a tame environment where they can work through this stuff in a mature manner and then as they get older and move into adult-hood get on with their lives. I am quite confident that most of all the studies indicate (and please do check for yourself) that when kids are denied expose they simply seek out more extreme versions of what they're looking for in the form of heintai or actually illegal porn, which leads to the continued production of those far more harmful media streams. Its not a perfect solution but I think anime and manga isn't a half bad middle ground for taboo thoughts and emotions to meet up on and be explore through.
So that's height out of the way, before we deal with the age gap, lets take a moment to look at the simplest of these issues, the idea that any and all media discussing such topics should be dis-allowed.
As I already said a great length in my previous paragraphs, I think there's a-lot to be said for exploring the taboo through the harmless medium of anime or even cartoons but to add to that lets do a quick fire round;
"Does even the minor discussion of paedophilia run the chance of creating a paedophile?"; It's complicated and there's conflicted views on it, my view as should already be transparent by now, is that if the medium handles the topic with tact and sensitivity, even if it shows it in an overall positive light, as long as it also shows the immorality of it and establishes the irregularity of it, then it is free to give us the perspective of the involved parties. So that we might understand better why anyone would do these terrible things or why others might see it as something erotic. To simply try and sensory it gets you nowhere, as such I by no means condone Paedophilia or a relationship between the sensitive mind of a sixteen year old and a 22 year old but I am not afraid to see why someone else might think that's ok and then to discuss how best to deal with it in society rather then simply trying to ignore the inevitabilities of the human condition.
To end allow me to give you a different example, there are many documentary's and even some dramatized examples of WW2 from the perspectives of the Nazis, weather that be from the war cabinet or the soldiers on the ground or the innocent civilians that all sides had. Many of these will include incredibly horrifying topics such as the holocaust and may delve into how some knew it was wrong but had no choice but to go along with it and how others really believed the Aryon people were a 'supior race' that was more then justified in murdering the innocent Jewish peoples. We wouldn't call these movies and documentaries Nazi propaganda, yet Neo Nazi's are a thing . We called it - well a documentary or a record, a way to teach and warn the future about the dangers of radicalism and so on. This is what I mean when I rally that properties that handle volatile opinions, that society at large has condemned, should not only be allowed but actively used as a resource to better understand one another.
"Ya but are you sure it doesn't 'inspire' certain deviant people?"; My answer to this one may seem a bit crewed but please give it some genuine though. Does playing call of Duty turn you into a murder? A school shooter? Does a Pride march magically convert your children from straight to trans?
To anyone sensible reading this you'll already know the simple answer is, that it's not that simply. While a pride march might help an LGBT person realize that they were gay or lesbian etc.. all along and they just hadn't known the right words to express themselves, it does not mean they weren't LGBT before they witnessed the march, they always were and always would of been if that's the way they were born. People become murders due to mental illness, society, their upbringing, circumstances and a whole slew of other reasons and not because they saw it in a video game even if that migth supposedly 'inspire' them, they weren't created by said games.
The sad thing that can get lost in all this rhetoric and name calling is that a Paedophile who never acts on their ingrained urges is just a human. If they do act on the urges then they deserve the punishment they receive but most of them don't choose to be that way, they don't choose to develop unlawful feelings and I think that's worth remembering, we are all just people. So no I don't think a light hearted, well meaning, slice of life yaoi anime is going to turn anyone who wasn't already, into a Paedophile anymore then teaching kids in school about LGBQ+ rights will fundamental change them, accept to make them more open minded, caring, empathic and understanding people and I think we'd all do well to remember that.
"Are you condoning or 'Ok'ing' Paedophilia?"; God no and I think that should be more then apparent by now. I by no means condone of the relationship in Super lovers or of any other relationship between an adult and a minor. What I'm trying to communicate is two-fold, one that young men and women with this preocular kind of kink are better catered to in the relatively safe and tame environment of anime and that more importantly (but sort of unrelated to this particular anime) that we should not be afraid to discuss and portrait immoral or even evil subject matter so that we might all one day understand it better. I by no means endorse even the most minor of paedophilia but I'm not some naïve idealist who believes sticking my fingers in my ears and shouting rhetoric from the roof tops will make an issue as troublesome as paedophilia magically go away. I want to understand why any terrible thing occurs, so that one day we can all come together to help prevent it from ever occurring again, as much as possible. We can jail as many paedophiles as we can catch and so we should, just like we would jail a raspiest but that won't ever solve the problem and maybe Japan's way of allowing young people to explore all manners of socially unacceptable kinks from their own safe spaces, is a far more mature and 'grown-up' idea then we'd all like to acknowledge. I'll end this segment by just reminding everyone that when we talk about these terrible, horrible topics that put the lives of children, our most precious and vulnerable people at risk, that everything were talking about, is people and all of our continued struggles with the human condition and that goes for those born with the disease of peodifllia but whom never act on it too.
The age Gap;
So we've gone past the false claims of grooming and the rather hard cutting topic of peodifllia as well as the more silly but highly relevant topic of character coding. What are we now left with? A show staring a short guy and a tall guy in a gay relationship - except for one crucial thing, the age gap.
This is maybe the most sensitive issue of them all, where we've already discussed the merits of the other points and how all the evidence would indicate there done to appeal to the Shojo fan base and not to the ends of glorifying paedophiles, the age gap does seem to oppose this. However I hope by this point, nearly 8000 words in, to think we have demonstrated all the exhibitions we require for our fictional court case as it were.
Is the age gap right or something that I endorse? Heck no. Is it in context appropriate? I would suggest yes. The show sets a light tone but clearly takes itself seriously enough when dealing with this topic and its my belief it has every intension of continuing to do so. I haven't finished it yet and once I do I'll be happy to re-asses my opinion but I'm quite confident that the main duo will become a couple in a manner that is appropriate to the context with both being fully consensual in the matter. As of episode 6 they have introduces a second relationship dynamic involving Haru's x love for an older women and it's quite clear to me that this is being used to further examine and highlight the grey morality of the situation. As I've already made clear it is straight up normal for shows to deal with immoral topics from within a fictional realm and while I completely agree paedophilia and the technically legal relationship of a 16 year old and an 22 year old is wrong, I cannot agree that we should try to pretend these aren't both the fantasies of real life people and in a more serious way, the realities for some, which I believe it is only right to explore in a safe, fictional environment where no one is hurt.
The hate 'Super Lovers' gets in particular does strike me as strange, as mentioned 'Domestic Girlfriend' was huge amongst men and women and it involves a teenager and a women (who considering her full teaching degree must at-least be around Haru's age if not a few years older) and that brings us on to our last point - Hypocrisies. I will quickly apologies if this section seemed shorter then those previous, I didn't intended it like this but I believe I covered most of my points in the peodifllia section and I have no desire to bore anyone by reiterating facts and opinion that which have already been mentioned..
On Hypocrisy;
Hypocrisy or rather 'hypocrite' is one of those rhetoric words that I hate to see flung around so much but it is apt for this section. I think its worth including this here for its relevance to the more current discussion around the topics we've gone over here today. People have developed a habitual double standard, giving passes to pieces of media which they belief are 'higher-brow', more intellectual or more innocent then the 'lower-tier-trash Tv' that deserves no such credit.
I'll keep my examples brief, first if you still belief the idea of peodifllia deserves zero understanding or exploration, than I ask if you also disavow Evangellion who, without any major spoilers, has a 14 year old openly offer herself to a 30ish years old man, going as far to take him linger shopping and even take her shirt off for him. It goes no further but is used to illustrate her mentality. Regardless of its purpose I'd argue that if you believe 'Super Lovers' is damaging, then surely Eva showing that a 14 year old actually 'wants' sex with a far older man must surely be far more damaging, telling a potential paedophile that there 'right' could be incredibly dangerous, more so then almost anything in Super Lovers is. That's not to mention that the man in question had an almost abusively physical relationship with his mentally balmy x-lover and yet is considered by almost all (Including me) to be one of the stories best written characters.
Some smaller examples. I've already talked at length about how yaoi fanservice in context is factually a more intimate equivalent for standard female fanservice, as well as addressing how shows like Clanned, Kanon and Toradora have majortively shorter leads then is normal height or when compared to their respective significant others/spouses.
I've also already gone over how from Sao to Hagani("We don't have any friends") to Code Geass we see varying degrees of fairly damning incest and about how we have a whole maelstrom of shows (Pretty much a sub-genre at this stage/point) of shows including a teenager as one half of said coupling, with an adult as the other, that no one seems nearly as offended by ( i.e. 'Domestic Girlfriend', 'After the rain' and this very seasons 'Hige wo Soru' to name a few, thought that last one does seem to of eventually ruffled a few features).
Then of course we'd be remise not to mention the program's that claim a child is actually a 100+years old and then use that as justification to lewd them or have them be dressed in an unfitting fanservices deminer. The likes of 'Seraph of the End', 'Dance in the Vampire Bund' and 'Gate' spring to mind.
The point this should get across is it's easy to take a high ground and toss rhetoric and hyperbola down on us mere mortals but it takes a much bigger person to stop, learn the facts for yourself and form fair and unbiased opinions. If you truly have an issue with 'Super Lovers' or most of its contemporize, then maybe its time to take a look at just what else you've watched, loved and never realized is guilty in small or big ways of the very same crimes if not graver sins.
Conclusion;
As I've already alluded to, I'm not writing this as some petty retort to my friend but rather because this whole topic, from loli to shota has been one of curiosity on my mind for some time now and this simply pushed me to finally write of it, mainly because it was bugging me to continue thinking about it. Is 'Super Lovers' Paedophilia Pushing? No, while you can argue it's an element of the show, it does not promote it as a solely positive thing but instead takes a kind look at elements of it and asks you to form you own opinions and learn from it while also pandering to young women (And men) who wish to explore their particular kink. Is it grooming? Clearly not. Is it incest. Kinda, there is certainly an element of incest but it is clearly not a show about incest, making the use of the word, as with the other two, counter-productive and foolish.
I'm by no means a professional and while I try to do the best research and analysis I can, at the end of the day I'm an amateur at literary study, non-the-less I'm the sort that likes the think about and research a topic, I've been working on a 'Shuffle!' essay for months now, though progress is slow considering I only started actually writing it a few weeks ago. Shuffle itself is well over a decade and a half old now and as far as I can tell no one gives a flying monkeys about it anymore safe me and my recently introduced to it brother, regardless its a show I'm passionate about and so I'm possibly writing the world's longest and mostly needless analysis of it. All this is to say I'd rather devote my time and energy to thinking, writing and expressing myself about things I love rather then wasting brain power fighting a losing battle with those of a close minded disposition.
And I think in their maybe a simpler point, one that ignores gender politics, or harsh thoughts like paedophilia, because what were actually talking about is a show which averages about a minute or two an episode on yaoi fanservice and spends the rest of its runtime being an above average slice of life show about found family, belonging and loneliness. So 'take it from me' if you will and try divorce yourself from gender politics, the objectification of women and the grooming of children and just watch your Japanese cartoons for what they are; Wonderful, exciting, beautifully told and varied stories about every topic you can ever image, with so much passion and heart-filled effort put into even the cheapest of productions. Not afraid to go where other country's would still cringe and more then happy to accept anyone, weather you be a casual weeb, a Shoen head, an idol simp, a basement dwelling degenerate, a Sakuga nerd, or just a plain old fashion closet otaku. Enjoy what you want to because there really is not just something for everyone but plenty of it too. Judge and criticize but do so in good faith, not with rhetoric or solely your Western views, that through the careless use of words like peodifllia and grooming may lead to the devaluing of those, but as what we all our underneath the politics and bureaucracy. Anime Fans.
I'd like to end this with a quote from a man more wise, more controversial and more nuanced then I can ever hope to be. A man far more debated and maligned then any anime like 'Super Lovers' will ever be. its a kind reminder about the merits of judging others without talking into consideration their circumstance and the context surrounding them, as-well as a warning to look in on ourselves before looking outwards at others and its a quote, I think we could all do to heed more often. If you found this essay in any way interesting or valuable feel free to click the 'helpful' button on the anime's review page under my review or leave a comment here if you have a question or want to discuss something (Pressing 'Desktop Mode' is required for those on mobile). Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed;
"Let no one look down on those honourable, well meaning men whose actions are chronicled in these pages, without searching his own heart, reviewing his own discharge of public duty and applying the lessons of the past to his future conduct."
Posted by momentie | Apr 30, 2021 9:10 AM | 0 comments
March 8th, 2021
On Judging Anime by Jury
Anime Relations: Shinseiki Evangelion, Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, Soul Eater, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Highschool of the Dead
I've always found how we rank or judge media and art to be somewhat fascinating and this goes doubly so with anime. Almost everyone reviews and judges the media they consume in varying ways, for example there are many who would suppose that art can't be judged on a linear scale and this is a sentiment I would generally see some sense in. After all an 'out of 10' rating can rarely express how you actually feel about a work that speaks to you, however, especially in the case of Tv and Film giving a score or critic is integral to the continued improvement and expression of one's feelings on a subject. As such you may fall into the opposite camp, the one that would suggest that all media be graded the same and looked at through one single, logical lens, however for the same reason already mentioned I find this method far to clear cut to judge a medium as wide and varied as anime.
As such it would appear that the answer lies in some form of balance, after all an anime may be terribly produced, with a poor score and animation but what it makes you feel, how you empathize with the characters could be far more influential to your personnel sensibilities. Equally an anime or manga could prove to be antithetical to your personal beliefs, with poorly written characters and a sloppy story but still having stunning visuals and voice acting.
This brings me to the topic that interests me most, bottom up scoring bias. It strikes me that many of us all to often score anime up, i.e. when deciding on a token score, we start at 0 and go up based on our own system, i.e. 2 points for music, two for character, 2 for story etc. etc. Of course this gets heavily affected by bias, we all have them weather we realize to what extent or not and the issue I see with scoring up is it exenterates our biases. For example I have a friend who ranked 'Highschool of the Dead' a 0/10, it was in all likely hood, a fairly off-handed grade with no major consideration and that's totally fine, however one does have to wonder how you could possibly score it 0. Zero implies no enjoyment or value or any kind when using HOD as an example, that seems hard to believe.
Taking it that the over indulgency in fanservice or the plot simply clicked the wrong way with said person, then it's conceivable and fair that they might of given these two aspects 0 but what about the art-style? Or the highly fitting soundtrack? The character designs? By all rights, if you remove as much of your own biases as possible then it's hard to ignore that the art style is fairly standard for the modern anime landscape but with harder lines and a darker colouring scheme, which cleverly adds to the shows horror aspect by using a familiar style, twisted into a zombie apocalypse aesthetic. This alone should surely be enough to garner the show a point or two, additionally aside from the kick-ass Op there's really nothing bad to be said for the rest of the Ost, which again suggests that additional points should be given for that.
In reality its easy to see why it got a zero and that's because the scorer didn't like it and this is something you see everywhere. For example detractors of the Disney star wars films, will often claim the films are hopeless in a story sense and then offer a 0/10, ignoring those films stunning visuals and bold directing cuts. Now don't misinterpret me here, I'm personally a real hater of all 3 of the Disney star wars trilogy films but I could never give any of them much less then a 3 or 4 purely because the visual, prop designs, CGI, acting etc., is all far to good to be completely written off by the awful story and characters. In fact I'd probably if pressed, score them between 5 and 7 respectively.
This in a round about fashion brings me to this post's title 'Judging Anime by Jury''. This is a system of ranking I started using for anime some years ago when I first started adding shows on to a Mal list. My conundrum came about while trying to make a top 10 best shows list, something I still haven't managed to do ( I have a 10 favorites but I consider that a different concept ). Quite simply I couldn't decide if the likes of Soul Eater, Code Geass and many others were as good as FMAB or Evangellion, all four were shows I'd given a 10/10 to. As mundane as it may sound, this pointless thought exercise got me interested in why I'd given them all 10/10 other then as a flippant box to be ticked on a Mal listing.
In the end what I decided on was that all 4 shows were indeed 10/10s but for very different reasons, ones that were tricky to express on a scale of 1 to 10. I was made to look at the shows from their own perspectives and when I did, I realized I loved each of them, for among many reasons, one common one. That being that they all succeeded in their own goals. They all did what they promised in their opening quarters and while they all have their own shortcomings, non of these could possibly out weight the good in them, as such why wouldn't they be 10s across the board.
Is Soul Eater as important as Evangellion? Probably not but does it ever want to be seen as such? Almost definitely no. This all in turn led me to how I threat everything now, by Jury. For me to objectively ( as much as possible at least ) rank media I portion it into categories, not all that dis-similar to those I've listed at earlier points in this post, however I add in a few that are more emotionally based. For example how the show makes you feel is worth considering, equally the context of both when the show was realized and when you yourself watched it, should be taken into consideration.
I also made one other court style change to the way in which I look at media, 'all anime is innocent until proven guilty'. To elaborate on this, earlier I mentioned how people have a tendency to score upwardly, this can lead to a pessimistic view on the media we consume, where-by we inadvertently judge something harshly rather then optimistically. As such, when I go to pass inconsequential judgement on an anime, I start at ten and work down. Rather then offering a show points for each category, I take them off when it fails. This helps to alleviate my own biases and helps me to see shows from their own perspective. Even if I didn't like something, it starts at 10 and then goes down, therefore even if I didn't like the story or message of an anime, I'll proceed to only remove points for that failure, i.e. after talking two points off I'm now down to 8. Now I'll be faced with actually considering the rest of the show, if I really hated the story, rather then having my own bias cause me to write the whole show off for its poor narrative, I'm instead made to look at the rest of the show in order to understand it's perspective. This may seem excessive but I've found it can actually be enlightening when watching anything. If you find a show you didn't like still scores a 7 or 8, you find yourselves thinking about it's contents and trying to better understand it, which in turn can lead to a better understanding, a new perspective and may even lead to you finding yourself changing your opinion and coming to enjoy something you first disliked.
There are of course disadvantages, as anyone who looks at my Mal will see, I have a tendency to be really lenient and score shows far higher then they nessacerily deserve but this in and of itself is kind of the point. Surely we rank/score shows in order to share our enjoyment, in an often vain effort to express our sentiments towards a property. As such I always try to enjoy the media i consume because at the end of the day I really believe very few shows are made with malicious intent. Even the cheapest cash grab shows will probably have a handful of dedicated and talented individuals behind the scenes.
A simple example of this method of scoring in action retains to my own experience with the show 'Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann'. When i first watched Gurren, I loved it, I loved the art style, the direction, the story, the designs and the characters. The musical score was to die for and on a technical level all seems 10/10, there was just one member of the jury who stood in opposition. I'm not complete sure what his name is, he's the same one who questioned weather soul eater could go into the same bracket as Eva. Pretension maybe or arrogant, I guess you'd call it my sense of 'Nuance'. Was Gurren Nuanced? By this I mean did it explores the themes and depth of its world and character plus story of course. The rest of my hypothetical 'jury' thought it was and I'd followed the story just fine, I'd picked up on most of the character developments and so on but something seemed just slightly off. Maybe it was more a 9/10, ya know, great to look at, fun, inspiring but not deep enough. This seed of doubt lead me to reviews and inevitably to 'Best guy Ever's' brilliant video on Gurren. This video in highly entertaining fashion broke down what made the show so great on so many levels and in so many different ways and gave me a whole perspective and appreciation for the show.
I'm human at the end of the day and therefore fallible and I love nothing more then being humbled, that's not to say I love hearing how my favorite shows are bad ( thought I do often seek out counter-view points) but that I love releasing I was wrong about something or didn't quite get it, only to then have it become something speical.
Gurren for me would of always been a 9 or 10 out of ten but with this new perspective and upon re-watches I've come to appreciate it as one of the greats and as a personnel favorite of mine and it's merely the tip of the iceberg when it comes to my use of this anime Jury scoring method. So the next time your watching something and a certain aspect rubs you the wrong way, try giving it the benefit of the doubt, try understanding it's perspective and what its aims/goals are and you might just find a new favorite show, or appreciation for something you over looked in the past.
I hope you enjoyed,
Thanks for reading.
As such it would appear that the answer lies in some form of balance, after all an anime may be terribly produced, with a poor score and animation but what it makes you feel, how you empathize with the characters could be far more influential to your personnel sensibilities. Equally an anime or manga could prove to be antithetical to your personal beliefs, with poorly written characters and a sloppy story but still having stunning visuals and voice acting.
This brings me to the topic that interests me most, bottom up scoring bias. It strikes me that many of us all to often score anime up, i.e. when deciding on a token score, we start at 0 and go up based on our own system, i.e. 2 points for music, two for character, 2 for story etc. etc. Of course this gets heavily affected by bias, we all have them weather we realize to what extent or not and the issue I see with scoring up is it exenterates our biases. For example I have a friend who ranked 'Highschool of the Dead' a 0/10, it was in all likely hood, a fairly off-handed grade with no major consideration and that's totally fine, however one does have to wonder how you could possibly score it 0. Zero implies no enjoyment or value or any kind when using HOD as an example, that seems hard to believe.
Taking it that the over indulgency in fanservice or the plot simply clicked the wrong way with said person, then it's conceivable and fair that they might of given these two aspects 0 but what about the art-style? Or the highly fitting soundtrack? The character designs? By all rights, if you remove as much of your own biases as possible then it's hard to ignore that the art style is fairly standard for the modern anime landscape but with harder lines and a darker colouring scheme, which cleverly adds to the shows horror aspect by using a familiar style, twisted into a zombie apocalypse aesthetic. This alone should surely be enough to garner the show a point or two, additionally aside from the kick-ass Op there's really nothing bad to be said for the rest of the Ost, which again suggests that additional points should be given for that.
In reality its easy to see why it got a zero and that's because the scorer didn't like it and this is something you see everywhere. For example detractors of the Disney star wars films, will often claim the films are hopeless in a story sense and then offer a 0/10, ignoring those films stunning visuals and bold directing cuts. Now don't misinterpret me here, I'm personally a real hater of all 3 of the Disney star wars trilogy films but I could never give any of them much less then a 3 or 4 purely because the visual, prop designs, CGI, acting etc., is all far to good to be completely written off by the awful story and characters. In fact I'd probably if pressed, score them between 5 and 7 respectively.
This in a round about fashion brings me to this post's title 'Judging Anime by Jury''. This is a system of ranking I started using for anime some years ago when I first started adding shows on to a Mal list. My conundrum came about while trying to make a top 10 best shows list, something I still haven't managed to do ( I have a 10 favorites but I consider that a different concept ). Quite simply I couldn't decide if the likes of Soul Eater, Code Geass and many others were as good as FMAB or Evangellion, all four were shows I'd given a 10/10 to. As mundane as it may sound, this pointless thought exercise got me interested in why I'd given them all 10/10 other then as a flippant box to be ticked on a Mal listing.
In the end what I decided on was that all 4 shows were indeed 10/10s but for very different reasons, ones that were tricky to express on a scale of 1 to 10. I was made to look at the shows from their own perspectives and when I did, I realized I loved each of them, for among many reasons, one common one. That being that they all succeeded in their own goals. They all did what they promised in their opening quarters and while they all have their own shortcomings, non of these could possibly out weight the good in them, as such why wouldn't they be 10s across the board.
Is Soul Eater as important as Evangellion? Probably not but does it ever want to be seen as such? Almost definitely no. This all in turn led me to how I threat everything now, by Jury. For me to objectively ( as much as possible at least ) rank media I portion it into categories, not all that dis-similar to those I've listed at earlier points in this post, however I add in a few that are more emotionally based. For example how the show makes you feel is worth considering, equally the context of both when the show was realized and when you yourself watched it, should be taken into consideration.
I also made one other court style change to the way in which I look at media, 'all anime is innocent until proven guilty'. To elaborate on this, earlier I mentioned how people have a tendency to score upwardly, this can lead to a pessimistic view on the media we consume, where-by we inadvertently judge something harshly rather then optimistically. As such, when I go to pass inconsequential judgement on an anime, I start at ten and work down. Rather then offering a show points for each category, I take them off when it fails. This helps to alleviate my own biases and helps me to see shows from their own perspective. Even if I didn't like something, it starts at 10 and then goes down, therefore even if I didn't like the story or message of an anime, I'll proceed to only remove points for that failure, i.e. after talking two points off I'm now down to 8. Now I'll be faced with actually considering the rest of the show, if I really hated the story, rather then having my own bias cause me to write the whole show off for its poor narrative, I'm instead made to look at the rest of the show in order to understand it's perspective. This may seem excessive but I've found it can actually be enlightening when watching anything. If you find a show you didn't like still scores a 7 or 8, you find yourselves thinking about it's contents and trying to better understand it, which in turn can lead to a better understanding, a new perspective and may even lead to you finding yourself changing your opinion and coming to enjoy something you first disliked.
There are of course disadvantages, as anyone who looks at my Mal will see, I have a tendency to be really lenient and score shows far higher then they nessacerily deserve but this in and of itself is kind of the point. Surely we rank/score shows in order to share our enjoyment, in an often vain effort to express our sentiments towards a property. As such I always try to enjoy the media i consume because at the end of the day I really believe very few shows are made with malicious intent. Even the cheapest cash grab shows will probably have a handful of dedicated and talented individuals behind the scenes.
A simple example of this method of scoring in action retains to my own experience with the show 'Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann'. When i first watched Gurren, I loved it, I loved the art style, the direction, the story, the designs and the characters. The musical score was to die for and on a technical level all seems 10/10, there was just one member of the jury who stood in opposition. I'm not complete sure what his name is, he's the same one who questioned weather soul eater could go into the same bracket as Eva. Pretension maybe or arrogant, I guess you'd call it my sense of 'Nuance'. Was Gurren Nuanced? By this I mean did it explores the themes and depth of its world and character plus story of course. The rest of my hypothetical 'jury' thought it was and I'd followed the story just fine, I'd picked up on most of the character developments and so on but something seemed just slightly off. Maybe it was more a 9/10, ya know, great to look at, fun, inspiring but not deep enough. This seed of doubt lead me to reviews and inevitably to 'Best guy Ever's' brilliant video on Gurren. This video in highly entertaining fashion broke down what made the show so great on so many levels and in so many different ways and gave me a whole perspective and appreciation for the show.
I'm human at the end of the day and therefore fallible and I love nothing more then being humbled, that's not to say I love hearing how my favorite shows are bad ( thought I do often seek out counter-view points) but that I love releasing I was wrong about something or didn't quite get it, only to then have it become something speical.
Gurren for me would of always been a 9 or 10 out of ten but with this new perspective and upon re-watches I've come to appreciate it as one of the greats and as a personnel favorite of mine and it's merely the tip of the iceberg when it comes to my use of this anime Jury scoring method. So the next time your watching something and a certain aspect rubs you the wrong way, try giving it the benefit of the doubt, try understanding it's perspective and what its aims/goals are and you might just find a new favorite show, or appreciation for something you over looked in the past.
I hope you enjoyed,
Thanks for reading.
Posted by momentie | Mar 8, 2021 11:25 AM | 0 comments