Donald Trump continues to kill it in the Anime/Nazi fanboy demographic

Admittedly we tend to be somewhat jumpy on this sort of thing because anime has, or at least did when the fanbase started to get going, a rather negative reputation. So we get more defensive than we would if there were a similar article with Star Wars imagery, essentially because if the first picture had Luke Skywalker in it I would expect everyone to know the plot outline. So I wouldn’t have posted a comment explaining it.

Personally I went #NotAllAnimeFans mostly because the, well, I guess strictly speaking anime fan perception of the general perception of anime fans is that people who don’t watch anime think all anime fans are like that, and would not expect my mom to be a massive fan of a major female character from one of those legendary Japanese porn games. Because the range of female characters men like turns out to actually be really broad and Saber is just straight-up a knight in shining armor. Literally; she’s a helmet and shoulder guards short of full plate. Apparently the story is that the author wrote a fantasy action story and then was advised to add some erotica to boost sales.

Basically I reacted differently to this post than I would to a similar post on Hollywood movies because I feel like some people’s only experience of anime or the fandom is posts like these. It does certainly have its problematic aspects and much as I like A Certain Scientific Railgun I do not watch it with my mom. But when Fashy Neko is using Mikoto-with-cat-ears as an avatar and people ask why anime is linked to nazism, I get the distinct feeling that not everyone reading the post knows that Mikoto hates murdering people in scientific experiments because they’re viewed as less than human more than anything in the world. That has specifically come up.

I guess I was wrong, sorry David. The post came across to me as one of those “the anime people are all like that” kind of posts. Funny thing is, I don’t even watch anime myself. But most of my friends do, and none of them are Nazis or Trump supporters. Another thing interesting to point out is despite all of the ‘anime porn’ or whatever it is going on, Japan actually has less sexual assault cases per capita than the United States and many other places. Less violent crimes in general. I’m not sure how fair it is to blame anime for many of the world’s problems.

Although as you clarified, that isn’t what you are doing here.

Again, sorry.

I actually wasn’t trolling, if you were referring to me. But like I said it was just a misunderstanding.

Funny thing is, I don’t even watch anime myself. But most of my friends do, and none of them are Nazis or Trump supporters. Another thing interesting to point out is despite all of the ‘anime porn’ or whatever it is going on, Japan actually has less sexual assault cases per capita than the United States and many other places.

Firstly I would note that sexual assault statistics are notoriously inaccurate the world over because [everything this site says about rape culture goes here]. Japanese culture is different in many ways and I’m not sure exactly how that impacts reporting rates.

It’s also not actually the dominant form of media in Japan; it’s more Star Trek than House in terms of presence. And the popular series in Japan are the sort that you might have seen on Cartoon Network growing up; Pokemon, Dragon Ball Z, Sailor Moon. They got censored a bit for ten year olds, but not much.

However, there is totally anime porn. It’s called ecchi or hentai based on some distinction I don’t care to investigate and is not shown on TV because of content laws. It’s not generally licensed in the US because duh. Japan also has a thriving fanwork culture, some sold for profit*, and like fanfic the world over a good chunk is porn. Internet being the internet you can find it if you look.

And then there’s the part that crosses from porn like any other into disturbing. Apparently, as it stands Japanese child pornography laws only apply to depictions of real children. So it’s perfectly legal for these fanworks to feature ten-year-olds, and a small percentage of them do. If you really cared to poke around you could probably find porn featuring every character in this post, and not grown-up versions.

But that’s the creepy fringe and mostly not what people are talking about. Most likely, the stuff your friends watch that people here would complain about is mainly shounen harem anime. It’s targeted at teenage boys. The hero is generally a teenage boy (16-18) and there are at least three love interests, generally teenage girls (maybe a bit younger than the protagonist), and romance plotline hijinks ensue. The portrayal of women strongly tends towards problematic. In the worst cases they’re strategically-placed beams of light away from outright porn, and even in the better cases there’s pretty much guaranteed to be a hot springs or beach episode and some number of panty shots. Some of that is a matter of different cultural standards and some isn’t. Even filing that under “for teenage boys” there remain problems. Broadly, the female characters are meant to be popular with teenage boys. In some cases this is unproblematic because as it happens Imperator Furiosa is popular with boys, but in other cases the hero winds up rescuing girls who by all right should be rescuing him.

Basically I think the genre’s reputation is somewhat overblown but there is also a legitimate reason why the fanbase is almost entirely men and lesbians. It’s quite easy for me to say “if you ignore the fanservice, A Certain Magical Index is an awesome action show” but that doesn’t make the fanservice go away. Even as a man there’s parts where it gets uncomfortable.

*Copyright holders can sue over this but generally give it a pass on a small scale. Exception: Nintendo has a family-friendly image to maintain.

Tacking politician’s heads on anime characters? Damn, this daily fare on the net, Trump or not.

Well, that’s a foreigner’s experience of reporting a sexual assault by a Japanese person, which brings in other factors. If a native reported an assault by a foreigner it would probably have ended the other way around, and the reporting rates of those incidents probably reflect that.

There’s nothing wrong with mixing a little anime and nazism to make a funny meme post about Trump. The mainstream media just doesn’t get it. Nothing about any of this is serious. no one is a nazi. No one believes anime is real. How this became a forefront issue in the mainstream media is beyond me. Are they seriously focusing on a troll website that is supposed to only be jokes and nothing taken seriously?

How exactly are pro Holocaust “jokes” funny?