Why is anime so willing to show rape and assault from villains, but never the MC and heroine having sex?
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Posted Dec 22, 2019, 1:31 AM UTC
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Not gonna lie, that's something that's annoyed me about anime for awhile now. Depicting a healthy relationship between two people that involves kissing/sex is like out of the question. And I can't even use the "most anime is geared toward teenagers" excuse cause if freakin Frozen 2 (a Disney movie geared towards children) can depict a couple kissing and in a relationship, most anime should be able to handle it. And teenagers aren't that innocent for that matter lol.
Don't get me wrong, there are anime that depict relationships maturely. But for me personally the way romantic relationships are shown a lot of the time is downright stupid.
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I agree. It's not even just the teenage anime. Kenichi has the main girl's boobs being groped by everyone and her being forcefully kissed by people and perv'd on by gramps meanwhile Kenichi is yet to do more than hold hands with her even though they quite clearly had mutual feelings for each other the whole time.
I just don't get how it's so easy to justify rape and sexual assault/harassment for cheap writing purposes but impossible to justify that perhaps anime should have at least a kiss scene and a sex scene every now and then between the main couple.
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Why does every form of media need to have romance? This is what annoys me so much about Hollywood; there’s so many forced romance scenes that shouldn’t even be there. Is Saving Private Ryan a bad movie then because there’s nary a kiss in it?
I can understand that some genres need romance for sure, but why would you need to see a sex scene in something like Attack on Titan? In fact, part of the reason why I watch anime is because they don’t feel the need to shove romantic moments in there for the sake of it.
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I mean it's an extreme right? Saving Private Ryan is in a battlefield scenario and it makes sense with the setting for there to be no sex.
Kingdom is kind of similar. Shin is rarely ever not on a battlefield so it makes sense him and Kyoukai have never had sex.
But AoT? I'm supposed to believe that the entire class of these now mid-20s people have never had sex despite being home for months at a time if not most of the time?
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Why AoT? First off, we don't know if they're virgins. Maybe Connie did some fan girl off panel that we don't know about it. I'd he did, I don't understand why isayama would even show it. Unless it's relevant to the main plot, there's no reason to waste space on a sex scene for the sake of "realism".
Everyone has to go to the bathroom. It's strange that we rarely see people in AoT go to the bathroom. Isayama should start adding panels where members of the survey corps are taking dumps for the sake of realism. You see how asnine this logic is? Just because something doesn't happen on panel doesn't mean it didn't happen off panel. Just because something happened, doesn't mean it needs to be given a panel; it should only be included if it's actually important.
And for the few romantic subplots that actually do exist in AoT, sex is largely unrealistic and unimportant.
AoT is no less extreme than the aforementioned kingdom and saving Private Ryan. Most of the time, the characters are too busy trying not to die to worry about getting laid.
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It's never implied that any of them have sex. Nobody goes to bars to meet girls, even though we've seen tons of bars, nobody is shown going into a brothel or anything. Nobody introduces their new dating partner or their fiancée or significant other. It just doesn't happen. You'd think it'd be thrown in there for the sake of realism yes. And actually you're correct. If daily life activities like brushing your teeth or going to the toilet were acknowledged more often that'd be realistic.
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Anime that show rape are not that common outside of some seinen series like Berserk, Garden of the Sinners and normally those have heavy implications on the story. Now, anime of this genre are rare. The same about consentual relationship, they are common on seinen manga but those are rarely adapted into anime.
Now, there are some animes with consented sex like Domestic na Kanojo (unless brutally censored), the Heaven Feels movies, Berserk (Guts and Casca) and surely there are other whithout resorting to stuff like Schools Days or Nana
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Parasyte also did I recall.
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Sexual Assault is an easy way to make a character look bad w/o much effort. Consensual sex, on the other hand, is hard to write w/o appearing to be pandering.
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Consensual sex, on the other hand, is hard to write w/o appearing to be pandering.
Lol, I don't think a large percentage of anime have ever cared about the optics of pandering. Some might say it's a medium built around pandering.
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Some shows I agree. But overall I think sex is a lot easier to fuck up writing-wise than most other topics, hence why a lot of authors stay the fuck away from it.
Though admittedly, I say that as someone whose favorite "sex scene" in ANYTHING is from Tzuredure Children, so maybe I'm coming from a position of someone who can't properly appreciate the average sex scene.
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I don't think sex scenes are harder to fuck up then rape scenes lol
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sex is a lot easier to fuck up writing-wise
We remember Tohsaka's anus which is amazingly good average representation of sex scenes in VNs and how terrible they are.
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kuzu no honkai was almost revolutionary in this regard for how far and authentic it went in its depiction of raw sexuality in a tv anime
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If it hadn't been a "guilty pleasure" anime that relied on an entire cast of unlikable characters, the concept of sexual experimentation being brought to anime may have been far better received. I agree that it was revolutionary in the regard of sexuality in anime.
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unlikable characters
It's literally in the name, "Scum's Wish". All of these characters have serious love and sexuality problems and they aren't suffering alone but taking down others with them.
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You can be flawed and still be likable. Like Bi Hei from Kingdom or Rem from Re;Zero. It's just that none of those characters in Scum's Wish are likable to me. I could be wrong.
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Also, you can be flawed and not likable. It's not like liking is a necessity or something. Liking is your personal preference and is different for everyone.
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Ya, wtf with that guilty pleasure of his. Did he enjoyed those sexual scenes? I mean sure without context they're hot and steamy. But if you know the context all you feel is this isn't going to go down well. These characters will only increase their sufferings afterward.
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So revolutionary that Parents association made a complaint about it to the TV airing the anime.
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And I'm glad anime did justice to the manga. Didn't censor or tone down any of those.
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yee boi, infact improved with the ost and SERIOUSLY erotic voice acting and sound design
shit beat any hentai ive seen at making me hot and flustered under the collar hoo boi
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I think I got as far as half way into the second episode before I quite that show. The characters were unlikable and the story was just boring to me. I normally try to get through three episodes before giving up as some shows start out a bit slow.
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The characters were unlikable
Umm... I mean it's literally in the name "Scum's wish". What did you expect, some wholesome wifu having dirty thoughts of handholding?
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kuzu no honkai
for tv anime maybe
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Pseudo-Psychological-cultural-societal theory time (aka im talking out of my ass):
Normal sex falls under the cultural eye of "intimacy", something that should not be pryed on by others, ie the viewer, and should only be seen by the participants. There is also little point in showing it in a non-ero work, as that will just make it porn, or at the very least borderline porn and fan service.
Rape on the other hand, falls under the "its acceptable to show because its evil and it shows how the bad guy is evil". Within the legality of aired shows and not full blown porn of course.
Aka, sex has little narrative value to be shown beyond "theyre having hot sex" and maybe "they love each other", while rape is a, usually, piss poor easy way to show "heres the villain, ya geddit?".
Normal sex = fanservice
Rape = its the bad guy(s)
e:words
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I don't care about actually seeing a consensual sex scene, but just the implication that intimate acts are happening off-screen seems equally rare.
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Game of Thrones shows sex all the time. Kingdom shows sex (mostly consensual, although it still doesn't show any development for the main couple yet). Nobody would be calling them porn.
I think on the contrary, sex, or at least implied sex, should be shown as it is a very important part of a relationship and declares intimacy.
I don't disagree with you, I think you're probably bang on the money with your reasoning, and I also agree that it's cheap, I just think it's a flawed mindset that anime would do well to break out from.
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Keep in mind that Game of Thrones is a show for adults. Shows based on seinen are far more likely to have casual sex too than shows intended for kids (ie. Shounen).
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Idk about kingdom but as for game of thrones, thats a generally easy answer: "There are always exceptions."
Western culture generally treats nudity like the plague.
Game of thrones, imo, (the show with general audience, fans via book is a whole other story) was popular for two main reasons: the gore/story where "everybody can die" and nudity (im not sure how it was shown to the public, whether just streaming apps or also on actual tv). I dont think any other show during the time showed such nudity (or ever). So Game of thrones was seen as "that bold show to show such culturally divisive things".
Compared to most anime, sex isnt really "ingrained" into the narrative, while game of thrones threw out sex and nudity like their deaths. Of course, exceptions for anime also exist. Anime based on eroge for example (as another commentor said), since sex tends to be usually "ingrained" into the narrative.
But again, yeah, the whole "dont show the privacy of intimate sex" thing.
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That's a good point. Maybe Japan just needs that breakout anime that completely tears up previous conventions about what is acceptable and unacceptable. One example being that rape is shown in GoT but is always taken extremely seriously and is not forgiven by the victims like in some anime, and generally rapists are depicted in a bad light, unlike manga such as Domestic na Kanojo where Al is still a friend of the MC and his girlfriend despite trying to rape her. Or Sun-chan in the current OreSuki anime who is instantly forgiven for threatening he'd rape Pansy until he was interrupted. Anime seems to imply girls should just let sexual assault go unpunished and forgive it, in some cases even make friends with the scum.
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Idk about the anime mentioned, since i didnt watch them, so im likely out of context here, but as for,
Anime seems to imply girls should just let sexual assault go unpunished and forgive it, in some cases even make friends with the scum.
I can probably give a potential basis for that.
The first half is the japanese culture along the lines of "do not shame your name/family". Example, to cause a scene. To cause a scene is to be loud, attract attention, and to not be "upright". Even if a victim in question may be in the morally right, they are expected to "not be barbaric". Imagine a bar fight in america where someone is defending their friend from being hit, throwing punches themselves is not an "upright" thing to do. In case of the japanese, you are expected to diffuse the situation in a calm and orderly manner. This meek and reserved method is one of the reasons train molesters can get away with their shit. Its obvious to state, but the reserved japanese are not like their bulky, defend-thyself american/western buddies. I think this culture comes from the peasant-samurai relationship. How the peasants choose to be meek.
I would say its similiar to how english/europeon royals are expected to be always "proper". Without anger, without yelling.
As for the friends with scum thing. I think its just a (albeit likely poorly) way to show the viewer (likely shounen demographic) to "befriend the enemy". Typical shounen morals. Kind of similiar of heroes not killing their foe, but forgiving them.
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But... both Grancrest Senki and SAO feature a couple who consummated their relationship during the show. And Kirito and Asuna have kissed multiple times on screen and unambiguously said they love each other.
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SAO 16.5, just saying
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That's author's (self)fanfic that he decided to bury deep underground after he realized how terrible it is but unfortunately for him it's really hard to erase something from the internet that's how we know about it. Still, it's not released in any official way.
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Not on the same level though. One has the character get groped up and molested for minutes multiple times in the series but when it comes to normal relationships they have their their usual "walk her home gently" fade to black.
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True, and it's distasteful and badly written to boot. But OP used words like "never" and "refuses" when describing these examples' willingness to portray a sexually active couple, and that just isn't true.
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didn’t parasyte have a sex scene
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It did.
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Baki did as well
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What bout cautious hero right now lol
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I always hated that Anime is always weird like healthy sexual relationships between two consenting adults bad but molestation, rape, and all forms of sexual assault are perfectly fine especially if it’s done to school aged girls like what the fuck is wrong with Japan.
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I don't disagree with what you're saying; anime gets fucked up like that. But, speaking as a devil's advocate, it would be due to their relevance to the plot moving forward.
A rape scene establishes the rapist as a villain and the victim as someone to be rescued, allowing the existence of a hero to swoop in it for the victim to recuperate after that traumatic experience and then plot revenge, for instance. In my opinion these are cheap ways to paint someone as evil. I guess it says says something the writer of they have to go that far to say "hey, look, this person is supposed to be evil!"
As for consensual sex, it doesn't have as much of a plot-driving strength. Personally, I love seeing wholesome couple moments and consensual sex falls within that. However, for a plot to move forward there has to be a problem to occur. Thus, this wholesomeness is "less useful" - for the lack of a better term - than other plot devices that can give rise to an issue and thus drive the plot forward where the heroes need to solve the issue.
Just my two cents ¯\(ツ)/¯
I don't think berserk fits here. Berserk has both. There's that tender sex scene between Guts and Casca, and there's the other side of that. If berserk relied extensively on rape as a plot device, that would be cheap. But, its uses are countable for such a long story. And there are many other subtle and not so subtle ways Miura showed us how bad the world is for Berserk's inhabitants.
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I get where you're coming from and I appreciate you sharing your opinion. The only part I disagree with is that you can't see much of a plot-driving force behind consensual sex, but I'd see it playing out much in the same way as Tsuki ga Kirei in an adult tone. If we're to assume a relationship is an important part of character development, then navigating that relationship and growing together is just as important to build that relationship.
That's why Tsuki ga Kirei is my favourite anime. It has nothing adult in it but it's more about the navigation of a relationship built on mutual feelings for each other. And despite that being the ONLY point of the show it still never gets boring. I think there's something truly beautiful in being able to write that without being boring.
Whereas sexual assault is just cheap anger that demeans characters and sometimes even ruins the character (bear with me here). And by that I mean the character forgiving their attacker kind of devalues their own agency in my eyes and makes them seem weak. I wouldn't want to see Yoko from Gurren Lagann do that shit because it would ruin my image of her as a strong character who would seek justice for that treatment.
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Example of anime where sex is used in the way you described is KareKano, btw
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The only part I disagree with is that you can't see much of a plot-driving force behind consensual sex
That was just me talking based on personal experience in anime. I couldn't think of any examples where the main character/s have consensual sex and it helps move the plot forward.
Tsuki ga Kirei
Guess I'm lengthening my to-watch list! :)
Whereas sexual assault is just cheap anger that demeans characters and sometimes even ruins the character
I don't disagree with you at all. I think I either said something along these lines or alluded to it in my comment
And by that I mean the character forgiving their attacker kind of devalues their own agency in my eyes and makes them seem weak.
I don't know. I think it'll have to depend on what they went through after the incident and what sort of perspective have they gained. Sometimes forgiving isn't about letting the attacker go free, but for the person to set their soul free. Of course if they do not forgive the assailant it's also their complete right. Again, I have no experience with similar traumatic experiences so my thoughts don't hold much weight.
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You're right I'm getting ahead of myself by completely ruling out forgiveness. I should've said that it's the complete dismissal after the assault/attempted assault that gets me. A strong character who kills enemies or pilots a mech or is an outspoken politician or school president just "letting it go" when treated so poorly would ruin what I thought I knew about the character. It's possible they can suffer silently and be scared to bring it up, but that's not what anime usually shows. It generally just dismisses the arc in which the attempt happened altogether.
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I really enjoyed your thread overall. I'm also glad someone brought this up because I've always had this on the back of my mind. It was interesting to discuss it and see all these perspectives on the topic!
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Full rape scene in Grancrest Senki lasted like 3 minutes.
If you're talking about that scene in ep 9 between Marrine and Milza.....
That wasn't rape. Rape is non-consenstial, Marrine agreed to sex for Milza's army and alliance in the war. So she was acting like a wh**re, the literal definition, using your body to get goods or services.
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Came down here looking to see if this had been mentioned.
Everyone found it incredibly distasteful not because it was rape, but because she was whoring herself out the very episode after we learn of her entire history with Alexis and how much they supposedly love one another.
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glad i checked to see if someone else said this before i was going to. not disagreeing with the general post here, but the example is very definitely not rape. pretty heavy NTR, but not rape.
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I'm far from a die-hard SAO fan, but I seem to remember Asuna and Kirito having sex in like episode 10.
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In the manga that's the point where they have sex in their new house but in the anime, if you didn't know that it happened because of manga readers informing you, you'd be justified in saying it never happened.
And not just sex. We get no on-screen displays of intimacy between them most of the time. Kisses in anime are a thing for the end of the show. You don't see a casual kiss in anime. No hugging from behind etc.
Not only that, but I have to extrapolate that Asuna and Kirito were meant to have had sex because they wouldn't even show them going to bed in a truly suggestive way or anything, and yet I've seen some weirdo lick Asuna's body all over and rip her clothes off.
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I thought the anime implied it clear enough with cutting to Asuna naked in bed. They didn't show anything suggestive but it's not hard to connect the dots. There's also the scene in Ordinal Scale where they're clearly very intimate with eachother.
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G L O P
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Maybe because most anime characters are high schoolers? I mean, even a tasteful sex scene between high schoolers would be seen as “normalising degeneracy”. At least with rape, it enforces the idea that sex is bad and you should always wait till you’re older. (I don’t agree with this idea, but you do see where this is coming from)
Course the real reason, as stated by another commenter, is that for all their progressiveness, Japan is still rather conservative when it comes to sex and purity. To them, women being raped is fine as the woman is still pure. But a consenting woman (even if in a healthy relationship) is considered impure.
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I mean, even a tasteful sex scene between high schoolers would be seen as “normalising degeneracy”.
Wasn't that pretty much the exact reasoning used by those people who got all up in arms back when Gundam Seed was airing and they had a (non-explicit) scene of Kira and Flay having sex?
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I think a lot of this is coming down to the shows you've watched, and the shows you haven't. While not the most common thing in the world, there's plenty of anime which feature sex in them. The majority of them are VN adaptations or otherwise mature adaptations. If you expand to just kissing, foreplay level interactions, or implied sex, then most complete romance anime get there in one way or another. I think the issue is you not watching these types of shows rather than them not existing. Not denying we could use more of them, but they're out there.
As to why the popular shows you mentioned don't have them, I think there's a variety of reasons. A lot of ongoing series with romance plots will deny much physical progression until the end of the series. It's a trope for this to be a jumping off point or happily ever after signal for the relationship. So on the anime front, when you have an incomplete adaptation (the most common kind of adaptation), the anime simply never gets to the point where the source material delivers that kind of payoff. Another very common factor in popular series is that they're not actually very interested in progressing the relationship between the MC and the heroine. The girls exist more to give the show waifu appeal, than deliver a compelling romance. Often these shows will have more than one girl in play and have no interest in committing to the protagonist settling down with a single one of them (even though it may signal one of them as the "main girl").
Rape may end up seeming more popular, because the kinds of shows that feature rape seems to get pretty big among a mainstream audience. Edge and schlock seem to have a pretty wide appeal. Rape is much more common in these types of series and delivering a compelling romance is often low on the priority list (though certainly not unheard of, especially on the manga side of things). Looking at all the anime I've watched, more of them have had consensual sex than rape by a decent margin (especially if we're counting implied sex). It just comes down to watching the right shows.
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Rape in anime is only used for shock value and 99% of people hate it. As for the sex, I think most anime avoid showing it unless it’s part of the actual plot
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Romance anime will show it, provided it actually gets far enough to avoid the dreaded "read the manga to find out what happens" advertisement ending. The vast majority of romance manga I've read has it. Sometimes lots (Domestic Girlfriend, for example).
The problem outside of that genre is there isn't a lot of dating couples period. Sex still shows up in stuff like Lupin, Cowboy Bebop, Golgo 13, etc. though.
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I mean I wouldn't say its always shock value it can be put into the story and written well.
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Revolutionary Girl Utena being a good example of it being done well. That story and its exploration of toxic and abusive relationships wouldn't be anywhere near as impactful and meaningful without it.
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I swear, anime tend to treat kissing as life changing as full on sex, so no surprise that they can't even get to a healthy physical relationship. Not even when adults are involved. I get not going all the way when the story is about teenagers, but their prudishness involving adults is too far fetched. But then they go full crazy with stories about obsessed sisters trying to seduce brothers and such. WTF Japan?
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OP should read Parallel Paradise.
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Because purity culture is still pretty common in Japan, which means that girls are considered more "valuable" the purer and more virginal they are, which means they're not supposed to enjoy sex.
So a rape scene where the girl isn't enjoying it = fine, but consensual sex scene where the girl is into it = corruption of traditional values.
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you mean japanese art in the second half of the 20th century and 21st century built itself as a critic and counterpoint of what their country developed into since ww2?
Fuck, almost never caught that one
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That stupidity isn't gratifying to answer to.
Okay but how many doujins are there where the sex starts off as consensual? Because from my experience there's vastly more where the girl is raped until she starts to enjoy it, or is blackmailed into having sex until she starts to enjoy it, or- I think you get the picture.
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Dude what if anything all the doujins I read are the ones where girls make the first move, since it's the ultimate male fantasy
Then you are truly a man of culture.
4/5 of mainstream hentai magazines are vanilla because you know... vanilla sells that's why it's mainstream, pretty much every other specific fetish magazine goes under after short run.
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What a compelling counterargument.
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How do you know he’s not Japanese?
The "purity" culture is a pretty Asian thing in general, not just Japanese. In American TV, they have no problem showing or suggesting two people having sex being into each other. Lust at all is pretty censored. Romance in Asian cultures is portrayed as purely feelings and nothing physical, with the height of intimacy being kissing on the lips, but not even making out or anything