Nymphet [Kodomo no Jikan]

[Risaa]

Originally Posted by bleakessence

@Risaa

The Philippines ... we're a remote and obscure collection of islands just a stone's throw from Japan and Korea. (A REALLY long stone's throw, though XD )

Don't worry, I'm not a typical American (I know where the Philippines are).

[Vexx]

Originally Posted by mdauben

I actually thought of Hoin as more of an adult parallel to Usa. Overdeveloped but shy and rather innocent. Other than the fact that both Hoin and Rin are "interested" in Aoki, they really don't have much in common, do they?

I meant mostly in looks (not in personality as such). There's a few points in the manga where Aoki explicitly notices their facial features are very similar (to his internal embarrassment).

[Lordshade]

Thany, Why do you think this is ONLY for loli-fans? Hell, a number of them are getting rather disappointed that it doesn't cater to them all the time...

Rin isn't portrayed as "perfect", If it WAS for that group, she wouldn't have as many problems, she'd just be cute and somewhat dirty-minded. But the story is entering rather dramatic territory, so it ISN'T just "loli Fanservice".

Also, it's targeted at the male crowd that likes Shoujo-type stories, that's what Comic High! is about. It's more Shoujo for a Seinen Audience.Bassically it combines some Seinen aspects like fanservice, with Shoujo-type storytelling, albeit more mature.

It is HARDLY targeting the "HARDCORE" loli crowd. And targeting that crowd is rather dangerous right now, given the way police and PTA groups in Japan have been getting about it...

[Vexx]

argh.......
I think we've established that the story appeals to a variety of interests. Thany is just very sensitive to the "loli+nudity=omigod" noises that come from a group of people who get over-agitated at the bathtub scene in Totoro (I've had to explain that one to a couple of Bible Belt relatives who seem to have forgotten that was also pretty normal in America til the latter part of the 20th C. and just still happens to be in the Rest of The Bloody Planet! ). The news from Japan is rather mixed in regard to real life, though the media is portraying it as "Things are being Done and They're being Punished" though I'm getting a kind of Faux News diversionary "smoke'n'mirrors' feel to it. The japanese media is really bad about focusing on a very few incidents and making them seem much more prevalent (repeating the same story several times but modifying it so it *sounds* different to the casual consumer).

Actually, it is kind of interesting how this story is genre and label crossing as it is, both in where and how its being published as well as the multi-genre content. The author has said in interviews that she wants mainstream audiences to have move out of their comfort zone. I think she wants people to realize that their simplistic lines are fuzzier and murkier than they think.

[robertness]

Originally Posted by Vexx

The news from Japan is rather mixed in regard to real life, though the media is portraying it as "Things are being Done and They're being Punished" though I'm getting a kind of Faux News diversionary "smoke'n'mirrors' feel to it. The japanese media is really bad about focusing on a very few incidents and making them seem much more prevalent (repeating the same story several times but modifying it so it *sounds* different to the casual consumer).

Why is it that I think the Japanese news media seems intent on copying the worst aspects of American news media?...

Another point related to something mentioned earlier, the yellow ducky hat and smock "uniform" is most often associated with pre-school and kindergarten. Japanese kids in normal, state run elementary schools don't wear uniforms. I'm not sure about homeroom teachers following their students in Japanese schools. They're subject matter instructors and get homeroom as an additional administrative assignment. (e.g. Yukari-sensei from Azumanga was an English teacher. ) In the Azumanga 4-koma, they made a point of saying that Yukari chose to follow her students from year-to-year (so she wouldn't have to learn a bunch of new names.)

[Kyuusai]

Continuing with what Anh_Minh and Vexx have said...

It's just recently that we as a society, especially in the US, have started to see sexuality in anything involving children recently.

In the Bible Belt of the United States more so than the rest of it, bathing together with children and "skinny dipping" (swimming without clothes on) was quite common for children. It wasn't unusual for toddlers to run naked through the yard, and for pictures or paintings of naked kids to be prominent on books and magazines. When a child emulated some "adult" behavior somehow, so long as it wasn't a sign of something wrong, it wasn't shameful, just cute.

If a child did something inappropriate, it was by definition not inappropriate or actually sexual, because they were children. No, it was the adults that needed to be careful about acting appropriately.

Today we are at the exact opposite. Sexually-mature adults acting lewd barely have an eye batted at them, while even the hint of nudity or inappropriate behavior in children causes an uproar. Fifty years ago, the Coppertone advertisements featured a little girl with her pants being pulled down, and the art was made by a prominent pin-up artist, but no one really cared. It was considered adorable! Today, Coppertone has had to change things to keep from raising the ire of those on witch-hunts, and has a less revealing image.

The people driving these witch-hunts and overly paranoid social mores may have good intentions, but this has reached levels of insanity. This isn't just the case in perception of children, but in many areas. These are reactions to very real problems, but our social reactions might just be making things worse in many cases.

Japan itself is also experiencing the same divide of and "progression" of values (not necessarily positive) like the US is, but this is still a country where parent-child bathing is very common and children grabbing and poking each other's privates can be considered a fun game.


There are two elements to consider when you're trying to objectively interpret a creative work: The creator's intent and the audience's interpretation. Awareness of one element can effect the other.

I find it very interesting that out of all the other potentially controversial content, the author assumed it was the bathing scenes that caused the backlash. It appears that even though she's trying to push certain limits, that she thinks either the fact that it's still children she's writing about makes this presentation less objectionable, or that the message makes it acceptable. I won't claim this is entirely the case, but it must at least compose part of it.
And if she is trying to push certain limits, the fact that she is trying to challenge the readers in order to send a message (as opposed to merely "trying to challenge the readers", which usually means "attempting to offend or titillate with no higher purpose"), that gives her a lot of leeway in any moral analysis of her or her work. Similar things could be said if she knew she were trying to attract a certain audience in the hopes of spreading a relevant message they would not otherwise read.

Audience interpretation is... entirely subjective. An artist has to be aware of the audience's interpretation, and can CHALLENGE the audience with something in order to send a message, but the ultimate point is that different audiences have different standards and expectations. Any one who's done any amount of figure drawing learns that objections to nudity alone go right out the window, and that poses intended to be innocent or provocative can easily be interpreted as the exact opposite. But how much do you try to accomodate the potential stupidity of your audience?
- If I say "I kissed my grandmother" and you think I was doing something perverse, I'm not the problem, you are.
- If you see me walking through the park holding a little girl's hand and occasionally giving her hugs and kisses and you assume I have an inappropriate relationship with her, I'm not the problem, you are.
- If you see a middle aged man and a teenage boy running around in spandex and masks and assume they're a couple instead of a crime fighting team, then--well, OK, if you saw that in real life, that'd be pretty weird, but there are people who said that Batman was propoganda written gay pedophiles, and that was ridiculous. ...Probably.
(I've had to step back and re-examine content that I originally misinterpreted--including parts of KnJ)

Kodomo no Jikan's content covers a LOT of all of these issues.

There are plenty of examples of celebrated creative works that are tragic and occasionally humorous, and include "edgy" content, but accomplish nothing more than being lewd. This is different. The characters' have complex psyches and two-layered deeper-than-the-stereotype personalities and the girls are all clearly designed from the personal emotional experience of a woman, and all of this shows that the story's crafting is clearly with purpose. (It even surprises me at times. For example, Shiro seemed to be such a stereotypical antagonist that I didn't expect her to have any deeper motivations. Likewise, Houin's non-typical attitudes and motivations were surprising, not to mention entertaining.)

For every reason listed above, I think this is a very socially important work. I wouldn't have thought so if you'd told me that before I'd read it, though.

[Vexx]

I'd cookie that post 4 times if the cookie gods would let me. Sometimes it's *good* to be old enough to remember the "before-times" so the idiots-at-the-head-of-the-mob can't re-define reality so easily.

[Kyuusai]

Originally Posted by Vexx

Sometimes it's *good* to be old enough to remember the "before-times" so the idiots-at-the-head-of-the-mob can't re-define reality so easily.

True, true. What scares me, though, is how many people old enough to remember those times are spearheading the current insanity--or at least not standing up to it. I honestly worry about our next generation.

Myself, I'm not that old. Just old enough to remember real sugar in soda, role models on television, and the days when we couldn't tell Freddie Mercury was gay just by watching him perform (I mean, in RETROSPECT, sure... but we had no idea!)

Yes, just old enough to remember that, and the time before people were afraid to have normal relationships with their children for fear of being accused of pedophilia.

I'm amazed at how FAST this change has happened. How did so much of our society change so quickly in only a decade or two?

I did throw in the Batman and Robin reference to throw things off a bit, though. That particular bit of insanity was from the 1950s, as I'm sure some of you knew. Looking back, I figure it may need a bit more explanation to those who weren't aware of it: I just threw it in to reference the fact that these sorts of paranoid mis-interpretation of materials is not anything new. What's new is how mainstream that thinking has become.

[Anh_Minh]

What Vexx said. Excellent post. But I have to disagree with this bit:

Originally Posted by Kyuusai

- If you see a middle aged man and a teenage boy running around in spandex and masks and assume they're a couple instead of a crime fighting team, then--well, OK, if you saw that in real life, that'd be pretty weird, but there are people who said that Batman was propoganda written gay pedophiles, and that was ridiculous. ...Probably.

http://www.superdickery.com/seduction/1.html
http://www.superdickery.com/seduction/17.html
http://www.superdickery.com/seduction/28.html
http://www.superdickery.com/seduction/68.html ...

[Thany]

Originally Posted by Vexx

argh.......
I think we've established that the story appeals to a variety of interests. Thany is just very sensitive to the "loli+nudity=omigod" noises that come from a group of people who get over-agitated at the bathtub scene in Totoro (I've had to explain that one to a couple of Bible Belt relatives who seem to have forgotten that was also pretty normal in America til the latter part of the 20th C. and just still happens to be in the Rest of The Bloody Planet! ). The news from Japan is rather mixed in regard to real life, though the media is portraying it as "Things are being Done and They're being Punished" though I'm getting a kind of Faux News diversionary "smoke'n'mirrors' feel to it. The japanese media is really bad about focusing on a very few incidents and making them seem much more prevalent (repeating the same story several times but modifying it so it *sounds* different to the casual consumer).

I would also like to add (since it seems some peoples seem to have misinterpreted my posts) that I only meant that this manga seems to have the interest of the lolicons and not that it was a lolicon only manga.
I seriously don't see how a normal manga can be group-specific only, especially when it has a story^^
However I also meant that idiots will obviously tag you as a lolicon without any thought, like there are peoples who do for Ichigo Mashimaro (that happened to a friend of mine not too long ago too <__<).
Personally I see the nudity as some sort of self satisfaction (same satisfaction as when I see something released uncensored, because censor annoy me, whatever the censor did), because you don't usually these kind of fanservices (wether you believe they are or not) in a Japanese manga.

[Risaa]

*scratches head* I'm too young to be posting about this, aren't I.

Originally Posted by Kyuusai

Yes, just old enough to remember that, and the time before people were afraid to have normal relationships with their children for fear of being accused of pedophilia.

I personally don't know anyone who would immediately accuse a person of being a pedoperv just because, say, it was a man and he slept in the same bed as his little daughter. However, media attention and exaggeration of innocent acts of affection towards children is what really seems to have set people off on a pedophilia-hunt; after all, there are lots of people out there who are easily influenced and believe every word they hear on their evening news or the radio... Thus, once they see him in the news, the same people who would normally think the man sleeping next to his daughter is just being a good father suddenly think he's committed a heinous sexual crime against her, all because of how he was presented in the news. (The worst part for me is... I'm *related* to some of those people!!!! ) What annoys me the most is when news anchors emphasize certain words to make the situation sound worse than it is, for example, "Police arrested a man who was found actually SLEEPING with his own DAUGHTER." (This example was even worse because "sleeping" was emphasized, and is often synonymous with "having sex".) This sort of thing, in which the message is completely factual however the tone of voice used provides an underlying message, is far too common. -_-;

In any case... I guess I would've been too young to remember a time when Americans really did have "normal" relationships with their children (I never liked watching the news anyways - it was all Sesame Street and MTV for me). I grew up blissfully unaware of the differences between how I was being raised and how a typical American child was being raised. (When I was very young, I often took bubble baths with my mother, and then I'd do something cute and she'd call for dad to bring the camera, and then they'd snap a dozen pictures... I hate when guests go through photo albums at home. D: ) Whoops, got off-track again.

[Vexx]

My wife (japanese-american for newbie info) routinely bathed with her parents til she was well into elementary school and they just didn't all fit into the tub anymore. I have family photos of me as a 3 yr old in the small wading pool with the same-aged neighbor girl next door ... omigod we're both topless ... o the horror....
(sorry, I'm in one of my "Puritan peabrains need serious slapping" moments).

Anyway... rant, rave, froth. I seriously don't know what to do about the assault on reason in my country other than to keep poking it with a stick until I can "get the hell out of Dodge City".

Ah well... no point in adding to thread count til we get more chapters to discuss.

edit: omg, anh_minh, those links had me "shooting coffee out my nose" I was laughing so much.

[Wervy]

I think people are getting the wrong idea here. It isnt being seen as pedo reading materal because simply it has underaged nudity and stuff like that.

Its being singled out because it is a comic targeted at pedophiles, with a story and themes that seem to be mostly for them. It dosent mean others cant read it and like it without being a pedo.

But I for one hate loli, especialy for the way it is all over the place these days. I think its weak to say they are just drawings. In order to like it you must have some feelings towards younger people, may not be sexual but the genre sure as hell is.

[bleakessence]

Its being singled out because it is a comic targeted at pedophiles, with a story and themes that seem to be mostly for them. It dosent mean others cant read it and like it without being a pedo.

The underlined text says that all those who read the manga makes them a pedo, since "doesn't" cancels out "without." Did you mean to say, "It doesn't mean those who read it and like it are pedo's."?

That aside, loli isn't synonymous with pedophilia. From what limited experience I have had with anime and manga, mainstream loli is a celebration of the innocence, energy, cuteness and exuberance of youth infused with adult-like characteristics (ie wisdom, dreams, maturity, strength of character etc.). Two examples are Nanoha and Manabi Straight. Not all type of loli is bad.

From what I've seen in KnJ, though, it's pretty far from mainstream loli. What I focus on seeing is the possible trauma or tragedy that profoundly affects Rin into making her so openly precocious and promiscuous. What others might focus on seeing (and they do see a bit of it) in KnJ is the nude content and sexual innuendo. Depending on what one chooses to see in KnJ makes KnJ either "barely mainstream loli" or "barely pornographic loli."

My two cents.

But I do have to agree with your second paragraph: KnJ was (and still is) targeted at the loli crowd, Mainstream or otherwise...

@Bathing naked with kids
Hm... I recall some silly baby-shots of me being naked while taking a bath being in our photo album. Does that make my parents pedophiles? Should I call our local child-welfare and have their bums arrested? o_O; [/sarcasm]

EDIT:

Also, it's targeted at the male crowd that likes Shoujo-type stories, that's what Comic High! is about. It's more Shoujo for a Seinen Audience.Bassically it combines some Seinen aspects like fanservice, with Shoujo-type storytelling, albeit more mature.

I just remembered this line, and it made me a bit sad. Does it mean that the stories for young men (seinen) are mostly about frothy fan-service and dripping testosterone, while the stories for young women (shoujo) are mostly about the depth of story and character interaction?
If that's how these genres define their target demographics, then damn... I guess it's just really sad on what most men prioritize in their art and culture

[Thany]

Originally Posted by bleakessence

Two examples are Nanoha and Manabi Straight.

I don't think Manabi Straight is a good example, I think a better example to put along with Nanoha would be Ichigo Mashimaro^^ (SD (Super Deformed) characters aren't equal to loli)
Also, if you compare Kodomo no Jikan to others animes/mangas like Girls Bravo or what not, it doesn't involve as much fanservice as them.
However, it's true that loli fanservices is also something kind of rare to see as well^^
From what I read on the anime thread, it seems like at least the OAV will have some fanservices in it BTW.

[bleakessence]

I stand corrected: the ANIME of manabi straight is mainstream loli. Not so sure about the manga it was based from, though. (x.x );

edit:
MS may be super-deformed, but the way they are deformed makes them resemble little kids... like, elementary kids. I was surprised they were in high-school XD

[Vexx]

As for whom KnJ is "targeted" to... that remains undefined explicitly. The author herself seems to be aiming at the mainstream "shoujo for seinen" with the intent of stretching their comfort zones in telling this story.
Watashiya's interview where she discusses what she's doing with KnJ was link posted early in this thread. Of course, we can always "interpret" who this is targeted at... but only the author knows for sure what she *intends* on accomplishing

Bleakessence's remark: 'loli isn't synonymous with pedophilia' is completely correct and I've gotten very tired of troutslapping people too lazy to understand the difference

[Thany]

Originally Posted by bleakessence

MS may be super-deformed, but the way they are deformed makes them resemble little kids... like, elementary kids. I was surprised they were in high-school XD

Well then you might as well say that dwarves are loli
If you look at the character profiles you'll notice they're all way above 150cm too plus apart from their height they don't really look loli

[bleakessence]

@commenting on dwarves being loli
Dwarves, as portrayed in the fantasy genre, usually have beards, ripped muscles and six packs for stomachs. iRL dwarves are only defined as short because of their height... the rest of their physical features mature according to their age.

(Imagine seeing the dwarf of LotR lore, or even WoW defined dwarves. If the first thing that comes into your mind is "loli," then that's... just... not... )

It's just that they (the characters of MS) represent the core ideals of loli: a combination of the innocence, energy, curiosity and/or earnestness of youth... oh, and the undeniable cuteness that loli is most famous for

[Vexx]

No point in getting into a pissing contest over "loli or not loli" (since the term has pretty murky edges). The Manabi girls were often confused for being much younger than they were (usually by people who lack the wits to pay attention to the story which clearly identifies them as high schoolers).
They have 'loli' aspects in that way. Are they *actually* loli? ...

I really don't give a flying fickle ... it was a fun series to watch. Period.

I'm getting to the point where I tire of seeing people labeling anime and manga just so they can more lazily make fun of it. Or its some sort of criteria for whether they can like an anime/manga or not.
e.g. "Oh, that's shoujo - I hate shoujo" (wtf does that even mean? no don't answer ).

I do like Bleak's loli definition though.... just that burst of innocent youth and cuteness that invokes the 'moe' response so you want to shelter them from all evil.... or at least watch them create their own mischief.