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"Western countries generally respect that rape is a horrifying, potentially life-destroying trauma for the victim. Add that to American puritanical nature when it comes to anything sexual, and you basically have a culture where it's nearly impossible to have fictionalized rape at all."

Don't agree with this at all, I think rape in fiction is an issue in Western fiction too. Just read Outlander which is currently a new hit series on STARZ.

Last edited by jsevakis on Fri Oct 17, 2014 1:37 pm; edited 1 time in total

818941 wrote:

Uh, is the columnist aware that women's "rape" fantasies in shojo and yaoi, if we are to call them that, are actually not about rape at all and they are not limited to Japan in the least?

[ridiculously long research deleted]

Aaaand the award for "most effort expelled to 'well-actually' me" goes to....

Seriously, though, I can't think of a single example of man-on-woman rape in shoujo that's meant to titillate. Plenty of gay rape, and plenty of rape-as-horror (girls eyes go dead, followed by melodrama, etc), but I can't think of a single example of what you're talking about. Maybe it happens in josei manga, but I haven't read enough of it to consider myself expert in dirtier josei manga.

As for rape fantasy in Western fiction, I am not a woman, and I have not explored the subject with any of my female friends and don't intend to. I am also not a psychologist. So as it has nothing to do with the subject we're discussing, I did not mention it.

Utsuro no Hako wrote:

The idea that Japan is especially rapey compared to the US is an odd contention to make. Have you read many modern fantasy or crime novels? They are full of women getting brutally raped to show how gritty the world is, or how evil the villain is, or how heroic the hero is when he rescues the victim. A Game of Thrones is the same BS as SAO.

It seems to come up a lot more in Japanese fiction, at least from what I can tell. It does come up in Western stuff from time to time too, and I don't think any of what I wrote flies in the face of that. Which country wins for "most amount of fictitious rape" is beside the point -- Japan is more apt to draw it out for titillation.

And NOTHING I wrote even suggests that rape doesn't occur in the US.

Bamble wrote:

Justin Sevakis wrote:

I was unaware that this was now public knowledge. Okay then. Yes, Crunchyroll has the home video rights to FREE!

Interesting. I wonder how many other series' home video rights are actually known, within the industry, to be tied up with Crunchyroll?

Public knowledge of this could at least afford fans of such unfortunate productions an opportunity to import physical media from Japan rather than wait for a domestic release that will likely never come.

Yeah, not sure what to think of this. I had no idea that CR had any Home Video Rights, but now I'm very interested to see what they are going to do with them. Same with Netflix. I love to see the market growing and changing like it has been recently, but as a collector I get a few beads of sweat now and then when I think about the possibility of a good show not getting a physical release.

Last edited by 818941 on Sat Oct 18, 2014 12:10 pm; edited 2 times in total

jsevakis wrote:

I can't think of a single example of what you're talking about.

All mainstream yaoi? It's made by women, for other women, and it follows exactly that women's fantasy. There's not a single instance where the "victim" actually suffers, instead they experience pleasure and are completely unharmed, and by the end they've smoothed out the differences with their partner and are happy ever after, just like the fantasy describes. Bara, gay porn made by gay men for gay men, may be different, but unlike what many people mistakenly assume that's not yaoi. If you want an heterosexual example: Yuuwaku no Bansan by Katsumoto Kasane, Mayu Shinjo. As a western woman who enjoys that kind of smut I am still offended by such a women-shaming article, as if women don't get enough crap daily for having interest in smut at all.

818941 wrote:

jsevakis wrote:

I can't think of a single example of what you're talking about.

All mainstream yaoi?

Holy crap, it's like talking to a brick wall. LITERALLY started that paragraph with the sentence, "I can't think of a single example of man-on-woman rape in shoujo that's meant to titillate."

Quote:

As a western woman who enjoys that smut I am still offended by such a women-shaming article, as if women don't get enough crap daily for having interest in sex.

Oh, cry me a river. There's nothing women-shaming in this article at all. I'm happy to poor-reading-comprehension-shame, in this case, however.

jsevakis wrote:

Seriously, though, I can't think of a single example of man-on-woman rape in shoujo that's meant to titillate.

Check out pretty much anything that ran in Cheese! or Sho-Comi magazines. There is a whole sub-genre of shoujo that is smut. Smut about teen girls who fall in love with the main male character after he rapes her. This is Mayu Shinjou's specialty.

Last edited by 818941 on Mon Oct 20, 2014 1:33 am; edited 5 times in total

I also gave heterosexual examples which last I checked were listed as "shoujo" on manga reader sites. If manga reader sites are miscategorizing, my bad, I guess they count as josei examples.

jsevakis wrote:

Oh, cry me a river. There's nothing women-shaming in this article at all.

Except the part where the article calls for people to "be decent in nature" and indirectly calls one of the most common female sexual fantasies gross? Don't you think women already get enough of that in real life that people have to insult and condemn our fantasies in escapist media too? I don't expect you to, but I'm tired of women being made to feel bad for having fantasies all the goddamn time. Also:

"It's often asking us to identify with the abuser and enjoy the view, rather than identify with the victim and feel their trauma"

That really shows you understanding nothing of women's fantasies, because that's not one what one who identifies with the "victim" experiences.

Literature has always been given a bye, when it comes to that. No matter the explicit detail or the ages of the subjects. Much as it seems unfair to anime, it would be worse if literature faced that same scrutiny.
Even non-anime movies can get away with more than anime. Like a certain scene in the Evil Dead series, and another one in the "Galaxy of Terror" movie.

As to the past of anime, well, Justin is right. Ninja Scroll anyone?

818941 wrote:

Except the part where the article calls for people to "be decent in nature" and indirectly calls one of the most common female sexual fantasies gross? Don't you think women already get enough of that in real life that people have to insult and condemn our fantasies in escapist media too? I don't expect you to, but I'm tired of women being made to feel bad for having fantasies all the goddamn time.

Are you identifying as the rapist in that fantasy? Because in your first post, you say the exact opposite, that it's a fantasy of being dominated, not the fantasy of viciously attacking someone. It's the latter, very very clearly, that I call out in the article.

You are clearly trying very hard to be offended by something that is not in the article.

I think "rape as drama" is a more common plot device in Western fiction than the article suggests, but it is handled very differently here than it is over there. It is pretty taboo to outright use it to titillate, and the viewers are encouraged to identify usually with the victim rather than the abuser. It's more commonly as a way to give a woman a reason to feel traumatized, a man who cares about her a reason to save her (and/or a motivation for his angst, this is where the term "manpain" comes from), or to show that the villain doing it is EXTRA SPECIAL BAD and not just BAD. It's still tired, and still gets plenty of rightful criticism from feminists for how its effect is to normalize sexual violence even when it's done to show your show is ~EDGY~ (see: Anita Sarkeesian's most recent video for an example of said criticism), but outside of video games you don't get the sort of sexualized camera angles that Justin is talking about--because, for one, they usually don't show it on-screen due to the aforementioned American puritanism.

In particular, the "but how can you get mad at SAO/Cross Ange for having rape when you like Game of Thrones!" thing is getting really tired. In the context of this particular argument, it's worth noting that Game of Thrones is kind of the exception to the stuff about American puritanism, since it's on HBO, a premium channel that can show more nudity and violence due to said premium status, and which has built a lot of their audience on that aspect. But also, there's a difference between using rape to show "our world is really harsh and cruel!" and using it to titillate. It's all in the camera angles, and if you know how to read that stuff the difference is really clear.

And also because, as I mentioned before, what shows like Game of Thrones do with this still gets a lot of cultural criticism in the mainstream US media (there was a rape scene in the most recent season that I remember had piles and piles of both thoughtful and clickbait articles written about it). You just don't see it on an anime website because it's off-topic.

Last edited by 818941 on Mon Oct 20, 2014 1:32 am; edited 3 times in total

jsevakis wrote:

Are you identifying as the rapist in that fantasy? Because in your first post, you say the exact opposite, that it's a fantasy of being dominated, not the fantasy of viciously attacking someone. It's the latter, very very clearly, that I call out in the article.

You are clearly trying very hard to be offended by something that is not in the article.

As I said in the previous post - I identify with the so-to-speak victim, but I do not feel pain or trauma. I feel being loved and desired, because that's what the 'victim' is experiencing, as shown by the narrative. That's the point of the fantasy, please do bother to read the research I posted. If you know it's actually a fantasy of being dominated, you should not have included shojo, yaoi and yaoi doujinshi in your article, because that's what most often plays out in those, as they are women-made and women-oriented. There is a huge difference between fantasizing about raping someone and fantasizing about being dominated.

It's days like this I wish FUNimation and Crunchyroll could meet in an abandoned parking garage, exchange a briefcase full of unmarked and nonconsecutive bills for a signed contract, and be on their merry way.

Want to believe FUNi wouldn't take on the risk of full rights to Free! Eternal Summer without some sort of confidence that the first season would see a disc release. Can't remember anything like this happening before, and I've been around the block a while.

While I'm known to have a sharp tongue with FUNi, here's to hoping they can work this out for the sake of mutual benefit.

Last edited by Keichitsu0305 on Fri Oct 17, 2014 3:36 pm; edited 1 time in total

I 'think' I know where the rest of this thread is going, so I'll just leave a short comment.

Bamble wrote:

Justin Sevakis wrote:

I was unaware that this was now public knowledge. Okay then. Yes, Crunchyroll has the home video rights to FREE!

Interesting. I wonder how many other series' home video rights are actually known, within the industry, to be tied up with Crunchyroll?

I really wished Crunchyroll had made this announcement back when they got the streaming rights for Season 1 (now I can't but wonder if this is why Nichijou hasn't been licensed yet).

*fixed*

jsevakis wrote:

And NOTHING I wrote even suggests that rape doesn't occur in the US.

No, but you did say:

Quote:

Japan is horrifyingly behind the times on a number of (usually sex-related) human rights causes. Rape is one of them -- while the official numbers are low, it's estimated that a stunning number of incidents go unreported. Stories abound of rape victims being laughed out of police offices when they try to file a report, or even being accused of enjoying it.

Everything in that paragraph applies to the United States as well, so to suggest that Japan is behind the times compared to us is highly problematic.

Being a fan of Berserk and Game of Thrones, the topic of rape typically isn't new or shocking to me. But there was just something about how it has been portrayed in SOA that creeped me out, which is weird since both instances were merely attempts and neither were graphic. I can't quite put my finger on it, I think it's just due to expecting it in stuff like Berserk/GoT so I'm prepared, but the rape attempts in SOA came out of left field.

As for awkward panel questions, having been both a fan in the audience as well as a guest at a con, there's always that one really inappropriate question. But fortunately 99.999% of fans are totally cool and don't ask questions that make guests uncomfortable.

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