Quote:
Originally Posted by ahelo
If there's anything infuriating about Sankarea, it would be the viewers/fans. One moment they go "Oh hey, the father's totally an arse taking naked pictures of his daughter" and then they go ask for full-length pictures of it. What this anime, and most definitely the manga is doing is combining both child abuse and sexualization at the same time. Then what's the point in tackling child abuse in the first place if you're just gonna make the viewers imagine Naked Sanka Rea? I'd say its the fault of the material and the stupidity of people.
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There's something going on here, and I think it's complicated. But I'm not convinced that the in-show angle (that is: the father's character angle) is one of sexualisation. When I heard about the nude pics in episode one, I did
not imagine the kind of picture I've seen in episode two. They were, if anything, downplaying the sexual aspect - going for aesthetics. It sort of changed my point of view from straightforward sexually driven child abuse to something more like excessive pride in... his "creation". Like a confluence of making a child and making art. And confusing love with pride in the beauty you feel responsible for creating. And utter jealousy, not wanting to share.
But at the same time, the show's marketing can easily exploit the more hormone driven male response. The question is how this interferes with the actual show. I'm thinking most people can separate the response to story and the extra-story fanservice content. I personally think the in-story fanservicy elements are actually respectfully done, and serve character. (I'm very easy to put off even by panty shots, but I'm not feeling put off here, at all.) And I think that's what's happening with the hypocritical-seeming response. It's the industry-driven sexualisation while scanning magazines etc. vs. the in-story response while watching the show. I think that both can co-exist, without actually being hypocritical, because the fictional status of the character is much more prominent in the first instance. We wouldn't be hearing nude-shot requests if this were a news story (well, there are
always certain kind of people, but that's not what I'm talking about).