After reading the various child porn threads on Great Debates, I started thinking about various porno anime films that bore the disclaimer that all participants in sexual activity in the film were at least 19 years old. Does this mean that animated films depicting minors having sex are illegal, even when no minors were actually filmed? And how, precisely, are the lawmen going to check an animated character’s ID? Now, don’t get me wrong; I’m all in favor of protecting children from abuse. I just believe the children have to actually exist. Do our esteemed legislators share that view?
They’d probably use your preference for ‘young children’ in animated form as proof that you are a danger to the community, and put you away anyway.
Just lust after Bugs Bunny in drag, like any normal person, and you’ll be left alone.
I’ve read about states that have laws saying if you view porn in which the person depicted appears to be under the age of consent, it’s a criminal act.
I would think that’s a little too subjective to hold up. If the person’s of legal age, they’re of legal age.
A quick Internet search found what I am talking about is at least the case in Oklahoma. This article refers to how a local judge in Okla. named Freeman ruled that an R-rated, Academy Award Winning foreign film from 1979 called The Tin Drum (which I haven’t seen) depicted child pornography.
According to the article, police there, without warrants, raided video stores and removed copies of the film, and also took them out of people’s private homes.
Ah, those wacky Oklahomans.
“According to the article, police there, without warrants, raided video stores and removed copies of
the film”
Yeah, but you can still find it in a lot of video stores.
As for underage anime, that’s not allowed either.
“We found a witch, may we burn her?”
I just love the fact that this defender of public virtue is named Comstock. I wonder if there is any relation to Anthony Comstock (see: http://www.plannedparenthood.org/ABOUT/PHOTOALB/COMSTOCK.HTM and/or http://www.monitor.net/monitor/abortion/comstock.html ).
One of the problems of using the “if they look underage, they’re underage” criteria for Anime films is the way Anime characters are drawn. I just watch the movie Urotsukodoji (or however the heck it’s spelled), in which all the main characters get play (well, lots of sex and violence and violent sex and sexy violence goes on… a bizarre, twisted movie in all respects). Anime is drawn so that characters are simple, smooth, lithe… they look young. A character could be 30, and still have the same body as a person that looks 18.
I guess in Anime films, a character’s age is immaterial. An underrage character is VERY underage (short, big head, small stubby body, etc.), and all other characters seem to be entirely developed/pubescent/etc. (in short, there are no “tweens” in Anime).
Not much risk of violating child porn laws with a cartoon, I guess. If they can depict women who get raped several times in a movie, they can get away with showing characters with no pubic hair.
As stated in other posts, this issue has two elements to it:
(a) The hysterical trend among our lawmakers to “protect the children” by controlling what adults can read or watch; this includes outlawing anything that remotely may be understood to be portrayals of minors in sexual activity. Even the mainstream porno industry has had to become ultra-careful about age documentation and appearances, in the post-Traci Lords era (when was the last time you saw a porno with a “High School” setting? not that it was ever believable!) This has in recent times extended to include totally imaginary “children” drawn with CG technology. The argument is that such portrayals may be used by pedophiles as “bait.”
(b) The stylistic conventions of Anime, which involve a preference for neotenous body proportions, and absence of pubic hair carried over from when the Japanese censors’office made it unlawful to show it. Combine this also with an attitude that if the AOC is 15, then stories about 15-y/o’s having sex are fair subject matter.
Also, their society seems to hold fast to a fantasy/reality divide. A generally orderly, mostly low-crime nation, consumes a prodigious amount of porno and comics depicting gross violence, violent sex, scatological humor, sexual violence, gross sex, violent grossness,etc. (OK, OK, so their pervies -do- have a thing for schoolgirl uniforms… pro’lly 'cause they never got any while actually in school)
Since the criterion in the US for judging obscenity is the local “community standard,” everyone has to be very careful. Purveyors of cartoons and comics are particularly touchy, since authorities here tend towards an attitude that 'toons are for kids, ergo porno 'toons are attempts to sell porno to kids. (Also they are a lot easier to stomp upon than the (allegedly) multibillion-$ regular-porn industry.) So, they come up with these “Honest, we swear, everyone in this tape is over 19!! We even got ourselves some 20 year-old ink and celluloid to paint them with!” pleas and quite disingenuous tricks with the translation/dubbing (“Calling her ‘sister’ is just a gesture of respect” – actual sub-sub-title in one tape).
Not that the originals are really that bad – usually in major-studio productions any characters involved in sexual situations who are “minors” are identified as being high-schoolers in their mid-teens, hardly “children.”
jrd
In Japan, porn anime is 3D. What greater incentive for guys who live in one room all day? Makes it look like the real people they never see.
I guess I’m a little confused - are you talking about actual anime depictions of characters who are underage having sex? And by underage do you mean strictly under 18 or say, under 14?
It’s true that anime tends to feature teenaged characters quite a bit and very often they are involved in mature settings.
There is a whole realm of anime called hentai, which is pornographic. I would guess there are probably depictions of child pornography, but I’m not an expert.
On the other hand, there are certainly live action movies that contain teenagers having sex.
The translation for hentai is “lecher”.
What about tentacle porn or giant apes?
Maybe anime where the stated age is 400+
Last I heard (sorry, don’t have a cite handy) the ruling had been overturned. Turned out, one of the renters whose copy they illegally seized was a lawyer for the ACLU. Oops.
I thought it was “literally-translated” as “pervert”. Just about the same thing, I guess, but the “lecher” sounds more harsh on the tongue.
[Pedantic Hijack]
It does - although if you actually CALL someone Hentai, you’re more likely to mean lech than perv. (BTW, I applaud both of you for spelling lecher right…so many people insert a ‘t’, and it bugs me so much.)
The root means ‘Change’ and also appears in the word ‘Henshin’ - Transformation, Metamorphisis.
This concludes today’s lesson of Anime Japanese 101.
[/Pedantic Hijack]
Heard this second hand…
a friend of a friend draws porno cartoons. He did one for the new Star Wars Movie, but Screw magazine would not publish it because the girl that played the empress (or whatever she was) was under 18, and he had to change the character in the comic to Princess Leah.