The first three chapters are legally viewable for free at Viz. In the first chapter you see not only 16-year-old panties but also 12-year-old penis! Lock 'em up, Texas!
(I have actually read the first couple of dozen or so chapters of that creator’s other big title, Dr. Slump)
O…k? But the 12 year old does not actually exist so this seems more like an excuse for people who are not so pure and innocent that they ride around on clouds (?) to draw and look at teenage panties.
This is the country that, when Sony’s Vita introduced touchscreens to gaming, came up with all sorts of flimsy gameplay reasons to fondle ambiguously aged characters. It was basically a requirement because they figured no one would be interested in playing a game otherwise.
So yeah, it’s an excuse. The other side of it is panties are so tame by the standards of smut coming out of Japan that they don’t really register as lewd.
What’s perversely hypocritical in all this is that while Republicans agitate for the banning of questionable anime and manga stories, in real life they continue to obstruct laws to raise the minimum age for marriage because those teens are just so “ripe” and “fertile.”
Until they take concrete steps to protect actual teenagers (and release the unexpurgated Epstein files), this kind of empty posturing can and should be mocked and dismissed as the pointless political theater it clearly is.
Yeah. The whole idea behind outlawing “indistinguishable” child porn is that it would give cover for the real thing. And the whole reason why the real thing is illegal is it victimizes children.
Actual loli grosses me the fuck out, but disgust is not a valid way to decide laws. There are a lot of disgusting things out there. The disgust reaction is one of the main sources of bigotry and we do not want to open that door.
And, if you really think about it, loli is a fantasy between consenting adults. The voice actor is an adult play-acting as a kid. The writer and consumer are both adults. So the main issue is just making sure everyone involved consents.
While I think it often causes more trouble than it solves, I can at least morally accept some attempts at keeping children away from this stuff. But adults who can enjoy a fantasy, knowing it is fake, without any attempt to replicate on the real world?
I not only stand by that being ok, but have actively participated in such.
I’ve killed a lot of virtual people and enjoyed watching others so the same.
So…what if…every anime opens with a frame of main character celebrating their 18th bday, yknow, with a cake and candles, gifts etc. Now how? Does it suddenly render any prosecution pointless? Because that’d be a sweet and easy work around to my mind!
I don’t think that’s the whole idea. It’s an aspect of it, but there are other reasons too.
Not wanting depictions of children having sexual intercourse to be acceptable in the culture is not the same thing as bigotry, and the only reason to compare the two is as a cheap rhetorical trick to make the other side of the argument appear inherently incorrect by associating it with bigotry. Pretty lame.
I don’t think that this stuff has no relationship with the way that people view the real world. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that someone like Vaush will make the argument that there probably could theoretically be an ethical romantic relationship between a very mature child and an adult, and then get caught with precisely this kind of “totally not pedo you guys” crap on his computer.
Whatever the problem, state censorship of artistic expression is rarely the right solution.
In this case, we’re unlikely to see a reasoned debate in the wider public sphere, because few people are willing to risk being accused of promoting the sexualization of children.
And so far we just see people taking percautionary steps, not actual arrests. Because nobody wants to risk getting locked up in a cage in Texas to see if they will go after them for simplified line drawings.
Like this?
Why do you think people want “simplified line drawings” of children having sex? How are fans being serviced by fanservice?
Right. The notion that anything that someone can even just accuse of being adjacent to it, should be literally unprintable and unspeakable (and ideally unthinkable) is strongly pushed from both left and right.
Not everything has to have a popular demand or be shown to be “beneficial” for me to tolerate its expression. I leave sins of thought to be handled by your confessor.
Why compare to live action movies, and not, say, novels?
Probably because amine is a visual media similar in form to live- action movies, versus purely text- based media like novels. Manga might have some relevance to novels, but amine is moving images and sound.
In a way, this could open a door to the banning of books they don’t like by banning anything written where the age of the participant doing sexual/moral/socially unacceptable isn’t openly stated.
Except The Bible, of course.
I would imagine that everything in trial always comes down to what the jury thinks. Even if there were the 18th birthday cake, gifts, celebration, etc., if the drawing or cartoon is clearly that of a young child, the jury would still convict anyway.
But why is that relevant to this discussion? We draw the line where we do in live action, because live action depicts live people. If you make a live action movie sexualizing a child character, you are also sexualizing the child actor, which is not acceptable. But there is no actual child involved in drawing a comic book, so why are we not comparing it to other art forms that also do not involve actual children?
Or more succinctly, how do you justify banning Dragonball Z without also banning Lolita?
This would make Texas join places like: Canada, Australia, NZ, UK, etc. So you can say it’s a consequence of something specific to Texas or not, but it’s hardly unique. This was also voted for by every single Texas Republican and Democrat.
Federally, it’s kind of a gray area where obvious drawings have been deemed free expression, AI might put a wrench in this. I imagine there will be challenges.
On the other hand, you’re legally in the clear if you cast a child actor in a sexualized role in a radio play.
The Supreme Court has already ruled that “virtual” CSAM is protected free speech. This law will be struck down any minute now.