I’ve been looking into the manga a little after this thread started. In Japan it is just Dragon Ball, published over 42 volumes. In the US the first 18 volumes are called Dragon Ball and the next 24 volumes are called Dragon Ball Z. Dragon Ball starts out as a zany adventure comic similar in tone to Dr. Slump but over time as the story progresses and the characters age (covering decades in in-universe time) it shifts in tone to a fighting story (as in martial arts, not RPG). The Dragon Ball Z style stories really aren’t my thing, but I think I might like the earlier volumes.
Porn can have stories. Ultimately, it’s “romance” and not “porn” (or something else) because it’s marketed at women. Genre is a marketing tool; men are allergic to the word “romance” so something is labeled romance if aimed at women, something else if aimed at men or a general audience.
Heh, I recall a thread years ago where a woman mentioned that she and her husband had been discussing one of the Vorkosigan novels. She was amused to discover that she’d classified it as “romance with a science fiction setting”, while he’d classified it as “military sci-fi with a romance subplot. The funny part being that both were correct, it just depended on how one chose to look at it.
That’s pretty funny and I’m going to guess they were talking about Shards of Honor. One of the great things about Bujold is her ability to write many genres, sometimes in the same book!
I might have to check out Bujold, one of these times. I don’t like stories where romance is the A plot, but I enjoy a good romantic subplot in a book about something else.
Then run, don’t walk, get Shards of Honor ASAP and start reading, you can thank me later.
Be sure to read all the Vorkosigan saga books in order as it’s really one very long story, starting before the titular hero is even born.
Bujold also has fantasy series, like those set in the world of the five gods, especially the Penric books. Then there’s her romance/fantasy series collectively known as the Sharing Knife.
Do you mean T. Kingfisher’s The Saint of Steel series? That one features the aftermath for his followers of a god dying, which should get the god defenders up in arms.
Already banned in Utah, among others including Judy Blume (a favorite target of teen-book banners for decades now).
Yes, although if the argument is that depicting fictional characters engaging in activity that would be illegal or immoral in the real world is somehow harmful, the context doesn’t matter much. Historical romance in particular is rife with characters presented in titillating, explicit ways who are below the age of consent. Irrespective of the context, it’s still (often, and presumably) intended to be arousing and the rogueish lothario is still not seducing a grown woman no matter how many paragraphs of exposition are spent on him.
This is also in the context of payment processors forcing formerly adult-content/queer-content friendly sites like itch.io delisting said content, which itself follows the by-now-rote pattern of a new platform emerging, claiming to cater to all content creators, and then gradually cracking down on anything transgressive as they scale big enough to no longer need the sexy-visual-novel-creators and want to turn “legitimate.” And in the context of Michigan legislators introducing a bill to ban all pornography, as well of course as depictions of trans people.
I would say “using moralizing about the corrosive influence of pornography purely to go after queer people is saying the quiet part out loud,” but that bill would also, inexplicably, target ASMR content and I don’t want anyone to think the Michigan GOP is doing anything slutty.
Tone being difficult to judge on a message board, for context: I’ve also written romance, erotica, both, and neither. I do not really “get” the seduction (or corruption) of innocence as a trope, but I’ve managed to avoid being scandalized by it through the expedient of not reading those stories or manga or anime or whatever. I have yet to see a cogent reason for The Harms of Anime that isn’t, well…
But maybe that’s a good point. I was a middle and high-school student in the Denver Metro area during the late 90s. After those two Doom players shot up Columbine, the United States had an obvious, singular, and ultimately squandered opportunity to ban murder simulators. Instead we catered to the creators and consumers of so-called “people shooters,” and look where we are. 25 years after the tragedy, Id Software even released a compilation of Doom games without a trace of shame.
Yup, I liked that one. Heard about it here, actually. I get a lot of great book recommendations here.
(I also learned about the Vorkosigan saga here.)
The best way I know how to sum up how I feel about this series is to tell you my son is named after the protagonist.
Bujold is the one who made me stop complaining about science fiction not being character-driven enough.
I don’t think Shards of Honor is her strongest work but it lays the foundation very well. And of course the book after that, Barrayar, is a masterpiece.
I can remember when Mortal Kombat, Dungeons and Dragons, and heavy metal were blamed for causing kids to take up Satan worship and otherwise causing the downfall of society.
Hey I remember an afternoon getting high while listening to Bob Larson blame the downfall of society on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It was rolling on the floor levels of funny.
I take blaming D&D, heavy metal or any video game for society’s ills about as seriously as I take Bob Larsen.
You definitely want to read the books in order, but I think you’ll enjoy A Civil Campaign.
That’s just the spirit of Jezebel in you talking!
The only time I ever fell off the couch from laughing too hard was reading that book.
Hell, I had the misfortune many years ago to inadvertently tune into a Christian TV channel discussion group where the topic was the terrible Satanic corruption of My Little Pony attacking the innocence of good little Christian children.
Cutie mark of SATAN!
I call upon the sea ponies to do my bidding!
According to some internet lore, the Doomguy/Doom Slayer (or some incarnation of him) is a Catholic. So now he’s back in the fundamentalist Satan-sense crosshairs.
Is there any call to ban Japanese comic books that follow the same story lines as the anime?
Despite the bill popularly being called an “anti-anime” law, it covers manga, too, and manga is what the original articles in this thread are about.