Posted on 06/18/2014 3:31:10 AM PDT by Olog-hai
Japan’s parliament has passed a law which bans possession of child pornography, but excludes sexually explicit depictions of children in comics, animation and computer graphics. […]
The law provides for prison terms of up to one year and fines of up to 1 million yen ($9,800) for having pornographic photographs or videos of children. It allows a grace period of one year for people owning such materials to dispose of them. […]
Child advocates and other critics of the new legislation say it is a long-overdue improvement, but are unhappy with the exclusion of depictions of sexual fantasies involving children in “manga” comic books, anime and video games. Pictures of children as young as toddlers posed in sexually suggestive ways are easily found online in Japan. …
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...
There is a basic legal problem with trying to outlaw cartoon child porn.
This is best described by the “stick figure test”. Draw two simple standing stick figures.
Caption them as two adults having a conversation about politics. Quite legal. Caption them as two young children having sex, even if they are not touching, and it is child pornography. The porn is in the text, not the pictures.
Cartoon characters can have adult features, child features, anthropomorphic animal features, even mechanical features, that are vague enough to be subjective, and can even be modified by descriptions. Likewise, they can change or morph, age or become young, say one thing and do another.
The US tried banning child pornographic cartoons, but it has ended up with federal judges *subjectively* deciding cases based on their own opinions, not the law. This means that some judges will define child porn as most anything, and some rejecting real child porn as nothing.
Stick figures and explicit drawings are two different things.
What principle is that?
> Stick figures and explicit drawings are two different things.
Legally, not so much. There are so many different ways, styles, of making cartoon people, and caricatures of people, that you end up with a mess. What if the proportions of the human are inhuman, impossible?
Legally how? More “penumbras and emanations”?
Physical sexual characteristics are unambiguous.
Princess Mononoke is scary enough for me. Very graphic.
> Physical sexual characteristics are unambiguous.
There are even problems in determining whether human porn involves adults or children. Recently, the South American porn actress “Little Lupe” had to fly to NYC with a LOT of paperwork to prove that she was an adult, though petite, for fear that her extensive work would be banned in the US, costing her a fortune.
Some have even suggested that women, no matter their age, should not be allowed to work in pornography unless their breasts are over a certain size. Which shows how ridiculous the argument can get.
Another problem with child porn is that of “provocative poses” being illegal, even if dressed. But often this is entirely dependent on the fetishes of the audience. For example, normal people would not be excited by a video of a girl making a cake. But some deviants would be. So is what she did pornographic? Especially if marketed to deviants?
In Japanese animation, there is a frequently used motif called “Chibi”. Chibi is a Japanese slang word meaning “short person” or “small child”. But in this case, adult characters who have an emotional outburst, hate or love, for example, are morphed into Chibi versions of themselves, along with exaggerated emotional behavior.
Chibi are not children, but represent adult characters either behaving or reacting like children. And yes, Chibi have sex, yet represent adults having sex.
“What change did the Japanese do to their immigration laws?”
I don’t know; it was a much more insular society 20 years ago. They probably had to loosen the restrictions just for workers.
That said, there is a lot of anime that is not only totally clean, but exquisitely crafted. It’s a shame that this true art is in the shadow of the nasty, poorly illustrated, fetish-laden stuff.
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That is what I was exposed to not knowing of the other. Her father let her have the other stuff at his house.
Not to pick a fight or point fingers, but you allowed it. My kids don’t see/watch anything that I do not watch/research first. They especially don’t watch 99% of the cartoons/animation crap that is out there.
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I did not allow my kids anything of this nature. After their father left the kids were permitted to do everything they wanted at his house so they would stay there and lessen his child support burden. My house was derisively termed Little House on the Prairie because of limitations..
It may be quite true that manga is simply a form for presenting stories, as you said. However, in order to experience the stories, you actually have to *watch* it. And the artwork is so mind-stunningly bad, the cartoons so amateurishly animated, that watching it is utterly impossible.
Given a choice between watching manga or a My Little Pony marathon, I think I’d get rid of the TV...
I’d rather gouge out my eyes than have to watch anime. Calling it an “art form” is much the same as calling rap or hip-hop “music”—it stretches the definitions of those words to the breaking point.
Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons weren’t exactly high art, but they were not grotesque mockeries of art, either.
On the principle that nothing so grotesque and lacking of anything resembling artistic merit should be allowed to pollute the airways or take up valuable bandwidth that could be better used disseminating quality programming like reality shows and Honey Boo-Boo.
We'd have to disagree on this. Both of the examples I gave are better than 90% of what WB ever produced.
Well . . . the style that became “anime(shon)” was ultimately derived from the Betty Boop cartoons; any Japanese animator will always point to that. So that’s who to blame there.
Sorry to hear that.
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