Well, America’s fault, anyway. Watch and learn.
Sadly, I don’t even care to watch tentacle porn — it’s abuse of cephalopods — and, to really piss off a lot of people, I don’t care much for anime. There. I said it. Now you’re all going to go away.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
I got sick of anime years ago, although I liked that it had some genuinely good stuff aimed at teens back when I was into it.
It’s more that I wish there was more space for animated series/movies for adults than comedy and the occasional arthouse product. I like stylized stuff, and animation lets you do stuff that would never be cost-effective to do live-action (although full blown CGI movies are extremely expensive).
re 1:
you probably already are aware, yet I’d still like to shill for Studio Ghibli productions. The latest, The Tale of Princess Kaguya, is quite worthwhile. A nice blend of fantasy and romance to tell moving story. ~Arigato.
Well… I suppose I’m not surprised, really. I was always more into werewolf porn*, though, personally.
*Don’t worry, that’s not really a thing.**
**As far as I know.***
***Come to think of it, I think there are some mods for Skyrim, so it probably is a thing.****
****Oh dear god, now I’m thinking about it.
Athywren: RULE 34, RULE 34 RULE 34!
For those of you who don’t know: Rule 34 states that “If you can imagine it, there is porn of it on the internet.”
Athywren,
Harry Potter franchise. Fanfiction. Remus.
When I first arrived in Japan in 1979 as a horny 24-year-old, I was astonished to see nudity on late-night TV almost every night (this is before cable, of course), albeit with the famous mosaickization of genitalia. There were even live sex shows in big cities, including those with audience participation. Topless and bottomless coffee shops were around, as well as what became known as “soaplands,” where guys could have their bodies rubbed by young, sudsy women. This all came to a crashing stop in the 1990s for reasons I’ve still not quite understood. I don’t think it was necessarily foreign pressure, but I’m not sure what it was. There is now occasional nudity on TV shows, usually at hot spring resorts (onsen), but nothing like when I arrived. Artists have tried pushing the boundaries of what’s acceptable, to mixed success. The mosaics are so tenuous now that it’s silly to even have them, but they do still exist. Japan is a conservative country, so they don’t give up on these kinds of things easily (although abortion is completely acceptable, drugs are serious no-nos along with guns). General attitudes toward sex are pretty laid-back, but private. The overall absence of Christianity (about 1% of the population) has helped a lot to keep sexual taboos away.
The rule 34 example that astonished me was (not sure what it’s called) “dinosaur p0rn”, which is not p0rn for dinosaurs, but fiction about people ______(fill in the blank)______ with dinosaurs.
@Hairhead & Beatrice, 4 & 5
*screams in horror forever*
I’m always confused at people who say they “like anime”. It’s not even a genre, it’s a style of animation that comes from a place. I understand that the difference in cultures makes it for a different experience, but there’s no reason not to think that as in everything else that varied and huge, some of it will be good, a lot of it will be bad (for a particular person’s tastes).
And yeah, Miyazaki’s movies are something else.
@9
Yeah, people treating a medium like a genre always bugged me.
re 10:
at Kotaku site there was recently an article about the use of the word “anime”, comparing usage in Japan, vs usage in America. How in Japan, it just means “animated cartoon”, while in America it has been characterized more specifically, as { Japanese animation }.
It is a mistake to generalize any animation from Japan as “anime” and from anywhere else is “animation” (or ‘toon).
it is also a weird case (to me), of specifying the source of an animation by anglicizing the Japanese word for “animation”.
Yet it seems to have become an implication of judgement even though it may be used respectfully (ESP would be required to understand the intended use of the label).
.
ack … running mouth off too long. carry on
And “manga” is just the word for comics. Further, “anime” obviously comes from “animation”, and it’s written in katakana. It seems to me a lot of westerners (not only in the U.S.) give these media some kind of special almost mythical reverence as artforms and felt compelled to distinguish them like that. There’s obviously fanboyism and even some misguided pedantism, as for example putting a diacritic on “animé” (hint: this is not Spanish, and even in Spanish the accent wouldn’t go there), or some argue about the correct pronunciation of “manga”, which usually yields some pronunciation that is further from the Japanese one, like “monga”, which I’ve heard an American “manga” artist call it).
Reminds me a lot about the fascination that a lot of westerners have with “eastern” cultures and philosophies as something far away and mysterious, and wiser. I guess it’s part of that.
Cultures always use foreign loanwords in ways native speakers of the original language don’t, or come up with new variations. However inaccurate I’d say anime makes for a better term for cartoons from Japan than the clunky Japanimation that some English speakers used to use.
andyo@14 the accent over the e may come from the fact that it’s correct for the French term for cartoons, dessin anime. (Which of course is missing here because my keyboard is set to English.)
Athywren – not the moon you’re looking for @ 3;
Why, Athywren, why did you have to taunt Rule 34? Quick, everyone evacuate the thread before it comes for us al.. Wait, what’s that noise? Dear Imaginary Sky Fairy, it’s here…
@14: If you have a number pad, you can do special characters by holding Alt, then typing in the ASCII code for it. For é, it’s ALT+1,3,0. And yes, the use of it this way is most likely from French, not Spanish, as this is the proper use of the accent aigu in French to denote a lone e should be pronounced as “ay”.
andyo @9:
I didn’t know anything about his work (still don’t know much), but a few years ago Princess Mononoke was on the telly. Thought I’d give it a look, and was mightily impressed.
Y’know, some day I’m going to hear about a form of sexual repression around the world that isn’t at least partly because of shitty European missionaries or European/American colonialism.
redwood @6-
*slips on Asian Studies Major cap*
Several factors IIRC: The economy slumped at that time and the party was over. That party generation was also buckling down and having kids and even here when that happens we need to start “Won’t someone please think of the children!”-ing about everything that was acceptable before. Both of these trends allowed for a more right wing government to take hold which is why they have that idiot Abe who prays to war criminals up there now.
With the two decade old economic doldrums in Japan and rapidly aging population, the taste for late night sexy times on TV isn’t as profitable as it was in the 70s and 80s. And now that we’re in an era where naked bodies are a cell phone away that decline is probably terminal.
It’s typical for loanwords to mean something more specific in the language that’s borrowing them than in the language being borrowed from. What’s extra fun is trying to teach Japanese kids the rules for when they can and can’t use “manga” and “anime” in their English conversations and compositions.
They also seem to think of English as the source of all loanwords, and not a language that has imported plenty of loanwords from other languages, including their own. Some of them get really irritated when I “won’t” tell them what a word is in English. Like last week one girl was extremely skeptical that “karaoke” is a word we use in English and all she had to do was write it in roman letters.
Also, however gonzo, the out-and-out porn here bugs me less than how much male entitlement towards women’s bodies and sexual objectification of girls and women ends up in media for teens. It’s gross, and someone really should think of the children and get a strong counter-message out there.
Interesting – there’s an episode of Begin Japanology about bath houses that also discusses how westernization changed everything about nudity etc. (that discussion starts about 18 minutes in)
A. Noyd #20
She might find it easier to believe if you tell her to pronounce it ‘kerryoaky’.
carlie #21
I’ve been watching Japanology for years.
Peter Barakan has the best job, evar.
Chigau (#22)
I did try and it helped a little, but then it got into why it kept the same spelling when the English pronunciation is so whacky.
PZ should get a kick out of this picture that I found here: (and no, it’s NOT a porn site)
https://www.facebook.com/imnotrightinthehead/photos/a.267549740376.299961.212641675376/10157467468860377/?type=3&theater
I live in Tokyo, and I hate anime AND manga.
But I went to a shunga exhibit a few months ago, and that was amazing! No tentacles, but I was surprised and delighted to find that woman-woman erotica was not neglected. ;)
And just FYI, the video gets several things wrong, and exaggerates others.
I don’t have time to take it apart, but suffice to say….why do Americans assume Japan was adapting THEIR values…? Shunga was always considered an underground art form, and there are still public baths…even mixed gender ones, and some are out in the open. I went to one that was on a public beach in Izu. Yepp…Japan is great for us exhibitionists! ;)
I’m always confused at people who say they “like anime”. It’s not even a genre, it’s a style of animation that comes from a place.
It’s not like people will casually use phrases like “avid reader” or “film buff” or “comic book fan.” So when PZ says he is bored by comic book movies, for example, I can be pretty sure he doesn’t actually mean the Viggo Mortensen starring David Cronenburg character study/crime thriller “A History Of Violence.” He still might not like it, but no one in their right mind thinks it’s a “comic book movie.” Same for “anime”
I have no problem with anime fan as a concept, especially since “anime” as it’s normally referred to in the west isn’t actually all anime. No one who calls themselves an anime fan means they watch Sazae-san, which is an absurdly long running (debut 1969. Still ongoing.) family comedy somewhere between Family Circus and The Simpsons. People will have individual tastes but they’ll mean mostly the youth demographic with attachments to the otaku subculture.
@11, I recall with some pain, errors social.
Initially, recalling the entire rated-G genre as “Japanamation” and worse, actually using that term to a JDF member, to mutually horrific results.
A handful of other errors later, we arrived at understanding. Thankfully, my remorse and apologies were more than socially acceptable to get an understanding, if still somewhat deficient linguistic/sociological complete conceptualization.
I get the general idea, lack the entire constellation of concept of the taboo.
But, I’ve long been an skirting concept or general concept guy, this is far, far, far, far more complex.
Worse, it involves politics, adding artificial complexity.
Would that an opportunity would be advanced for a contract in Japan.
I’d get an excellent wood cutting sword, more importantly, I’d learn more about a culture I lack significant information that is meaningful about and was exploring when I was forced to return home when I learned about the health of my father.
I honestly find the culture fascinating!
Even their porn culture, which is indeed, the most revealing.
Its my understanding that, at the moment, Japan is in a very odd place on this stuff.. There was literally, a few years back, a public exhibition, which included a 50 foot male dick, but, at the same time, some woman was arrested for having protested the bias against female genitalia being allowed to be seen, without censoring, by doing a 3D scan of her own, and a) making a kayak, where the opening was, her genitals, and rowing along one of the rivers, as well as selling dioramas, made by painting 3D prints of the same, and adding things like trees, and figurines, fighting battles, or the like.
See.. the 50 foot penis was, “totally OK”, but any artistic use of a vagina… no matter what it is, is indecent, and an arrestable offense.
So.. You don’t need to worry about tentacles, so much, unless you include women, and then.. well, “they” still have to be blurred, or its somehow offensive. Yeah.. our good old “western values” have done a real number on them.. far worse, in some case, that we did to ourselves, since.. *we* could still have an art exhibit of some of this stuff, as long as it was not like.. in the middle of the street, while over there.. if its got women in it.. you dang well better not even hold it in private, or the authorities will get real unhappy, and arrest you for selling/showing bad things! Its totally bloody nuts.
@blf: You should check out Charles Stross’ short A Bird In Hand.
chigau – definitely. I discovered it on youtube a year or so ago and can’t stop watching them.
Two other really neat videos about Japanese traditions (not from that program):
this video of a soba master demonstrating the craft
and this one on making kokeshi wooden dolls (both videos are also very asmr-y).
Oh not even. I am so sorry. I swear it looked ok in preview. I cannot believe I just auto-embedded those. I’m gonna go sit in the corner now.
OK, so that’s the tentacle part sorted. What’s with all the rapeyness of it though? I mean, even in this video, you have a quivering fearful woman staring nervously at an encroaching ersatz cock. What’s the deal with that aspect?
And what’s with all my purple prose? Damn it.
throwaway-
I don’t know about the historical nature of it, but I know in the modern day and last decade or two, it’s because of the notion of “female modesty” that went into things. Basically, the idea that a “proper woman” was one who would protest “no, no” during sex so that her “purity” was in tact.
I can’t help but imagine that this also has at least some origins in the same weird bag of Christian morals that give us things like “a woman who has condoms and is prepared for sex is a sinner, unlike someone who gets ‘carried away'”.
So, tl;dr, global rape culture.
“Global rape culture” does cover it. I think it has less to do directly with Christian morals, and more to do with market forces, though, particularly in terms of Western involvement.
Back in the late 70s and early 80s, when anime started being imported into America through fan-clubs, the notion of ‘cartoons for grown-ups’ was still pretty alien in the U.S. While the market was already pretty broad in Japan, the U.S. market initially glommed onto stuff with varying degrees of nudity and sex. It ranged from the fairly tame stuff like Ranma 1/2 (the original gender-bender comedy, with boobies), to grimmer things like Crying Freeman (which starts as a dark story about an assassin, and devolves very rapidly into a story about rape, rape and more rape), all the way down to Urotsokidoji: Legend of the Overfiend, which is pretty much the archetypal tentacle-rape anime.
So when the Japanese studios started realizing there was an American market for this stuff, they also realized that they could make a LOT of money by selling Americans images of women being raped by alien monstrosities.
The market has, of course, expanded now, with lots of stuff that doesn’t require a bucket of brain-bleach out there, but the roots of those early fan days mean that there’s still an awful lot of “hentacle” crap out there.