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LOLITA_MOE
February 24, 2011
AMERICANBEAUTY
As far as I can tell at a
distance, pedophilia is by no
means accepted or encouraged
in Japanese culture, but the
thought of it doesn't send
them into a panic the way it
does Americans.
It's possible that
that's true of An exchange on alt.gothic
"perversion" in (I think) some years ago:
general.
"Japan has vending
They don't have machines on train
the passionate platforms that sell
puritanism of girl's dirty underwear!"
Americans, and yet
it would be an "Yeah, but have you ever
exaggeration to seen the expression on But that's
say that these a mother's face as she just it:
perversions are goes by one of those scowled at,
accepted. machines?" but not a
public
uproar to
have them
banned.
An extremely common American
reaction to anime is to complain
about it's lolita-syndrome, it's E.g. see "The Rough Guide
apparent obession with little to Anime", which isn't
girls as sexual objects. even sure what to make of
the popularity of the
My impression is that rather mild "Melancoly of
this moralistic Haruhi Suzimiya".
knee-jerk may be
missing the the point... MELANCOLY
I don't doubt that you could find
some anime/manga that's so twisted
it actually endorses (or appears
to endorse) sexual relations with
underage girls, but the otaku-yaki Don't we need a
I'm familiar with doesn't qualify. joint term for
"manga/anime/jpop"?
Clearly, geezers lusting after
schoolchildren are not approved of...
They often seem to be regarded as
buffoon figures: they're laughed
at, and avoided, but not It could simply be that
particularly feared. they don't really expect
them to *do* anything,
whereas American pervs
are more enterprising.
A linguistic
puzzle: "moe". (That's two syllables I think,
something like "mo-aye").
If you look at standard
write-ups of the meaning of
"moe" it's related to "budding":
it at least originally meant
appeal to a lolita-complex.
Since then I think it's
broadened, and is on it's way to
meaning almost any kind of fetish
("I have a pony-tail moe").
I gather "moe" doesn't imply quite as
strong an obession as 'fetish' does in
English, though that alone already But then: 'fetish' isn't as strong a
seems very odd from an American term in English as it used to be.
point-of-view, given the history of It was once a synonym of perversion,
the term, but it's use has gradually changed.
"I have a shoe fetish" doesn't mean
what it once meant.
That oddity -- presuming I've
got it right -- of 'moe' being Much in the way that "a fanatic"
a weaker term than 'fetish' is turned into "a fan", "fetish"
the sort of thing I'm trying is becoming a simple synonym for
to put my finger on here. "strong preference".
I've heard it claimed
that 'having a moe'
for something is less
extreme than the
obsession with
manga/anime implied
by the term 'otaku'.
But that's a tricky
one, too, because
'otaku' is one of
those terms that
was originally
meant as a term of
derision but has
since been embraced
by the people it's
supposed to describe.
SHAMELESS_DEVOTION
There's a lot of humor about
the sexual appeal of school
girls, though they're not In the manga "Love Hina" by Ken
regarded as attainable. Akamatsu (2002), issue number 1,
one of the many women the male
main character suddenly finds in
his life is a 12 year old girl.
His relations with this girl
vary between avuncular and
embarrassment that he finds her
somewhat sexually attractive.
It's embarrassing,
but not terrifying.
In one episodes of The Ouran High School Host
Club (2006) the female fans of male-male
emotional engagment shout "Moe! Moe! Moe!" in FUJOSHI
appreciation. Is that a sign of "Moe" coming
unstuck from "budding"? But one of the guys
involved is a young-cute type, so maybe the
association is still there.
The sexual appeal of high school
girls is a running source of humor And throughout
throughout the Haruhi series. much other anime.
The opening of the show has Haruhi
determinedly stalking across the
screen, with the camera zoomed in on
her flouncing school uniform miniskirt.
They cut to her doing a cheerleader
act determinedly bouncing her breasts
at the camera, and then cut to Mikuru In the opening sequence, everyone
reluctantly doing the same act, moves in character: The humor is
bouncing her even larger breasts, a humor of recognition.
with eyes squeezed shut in embarassment.
In the closing sequence, all
the characters join together
in a group synchronized
dance, all moving out of
character-- Mikuru doesn't
stumble; the male figures do
camp/cute maneuvers along
with the girls--
The humor is a
matter of contrast:
the familiar figures
behaving in a
strange way.
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