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INTEREST: LaLaport Numazu Removes 'Sexualizing' Panel of Love Live! Sunshine!!'s Chika

Ironically the initial outrage came from a Japanese model living in California, and boosted by an American living in Japan, personally I believe this is more a reaction to internet outrage then anyone living in Numazu. I still think it’s a shame and quite the over reaction to pretty tame imagery.

NiPah wrote:

Ironically the initial outrage came from a Japanese model living in California, and boosted by an American living in Japan, personally I believe this is more a reaction to internet outrage then anyone living in Numazu. I still think it’s a shame and quite the over reaction to pretty tame imagery.

It's not that ironic. Expats, JETs, and forigners in general are always complaining about things like this and trying to stir the pot. Every week it seems like I read about some foreigner living in Japan getting into discourse with Japanese Twitter and being dogpiled on by Japanese people to the point that they have to go into protected mode to lie low for a bit. The worst I saw was someone trying to cancel Kyary Pamyu Pamyu a few months ago and getting absolute ravaged by her fanbase for it. As usual, the overwhelmingly majority of Japanese people had no issue with this poster, but the general idea is to get a lot of foreign attention on things like this and hopes it shames Japan into doing what they want. It really only works when they go after small targets like this though. A store that isn't used to being in public discourse can easily be spooked into caving into your demands with enough noise. But every time something like this happens I notice more and more people pushing back against it and being more and more vocal about it. All this really does in the end is make Japanese people hate foreigners even more.

Crispy45 wrote:

NiPah wrote: Ironically the initial outrage came from a Japanese model living in California, and boosted by an American living in Japan, personally I believe this is more a reaction to internet outrage then anyone living in Numazu. I still think it’s a shame and quite the over reaction to pretty tame imagery. It's not that ironic. Expats, JETs, and forigners in general are always complaining about things like this and trying to stir the pot. Every week it seems like I read about some foreigner living in Japan getting into discourse with Japanese Twitter and being dogpiled on by Japanese people to the point that they have to go into protected mode to lie low for a bit. The worst I saw was someone trying to cancel Kyary Pamyu Pamyu a few months ago and getting absolute ravaged by her fanbase for it. As usual, the overwhelmingly majority of Japanese people had no issue with this poster, but the general idea is to get a lot of foreign attention on things like this and hopes it shames Japan into doing what they want. It really only works when they go after small targets like this though. A store that isn't used to being in public discourse can easily be spooked into caving into your demands with enough noise. But every time something like this happens I notice more and more people pushing back against it and being more and more vocal about it. All this really does in the end is make Japanese people hate foreigners even more.

It's almost like expats and JETs need to do a ton of research before taking the plane, boat, whatever to Japan. It would cut down on the senseless outrage nonsense.

Oh these grifters know what they’re selling, outrage is easy money, I don’t believe for a second any of these people actually care, they just want to sell ad space on their blog that suddenly has thousands of page views since they got a poster taken down and directly insulted a fan base.

(Also, like, if you're choosing the desire to publicly display fictional teenage girl crotch as the hill you're willing to die on, you...might want to re-evaluate your life choices.)

Putting everything else aside, this is a profoundly shitty piece of artwork. I'm thoroughly convinced the artist has zero idea how a skirt works, especially since he seems to do it repeatedly.

This is a perfectly fine and innocent image. If you live here long enough, Japanese teenagers roll up their uniform skirts to ridiculous short lengths all the time.

Sure. But this particular character is not known to do that.

Yes, I'm aware of that.

The point I was trying to make was that short skirts like that are perfectly normal fashion here in Japan, so if someone (like that guy) sees it as obscene and thinks anyone who defends that fashion are "pedophiles" (based on what he's implying), then it is that person who has a perverted head, and is in no position to be moral policing.

IMS Judi wrote:

Yes, I'm aware of that. The point I was trying to make was that short skirts like that are perfectly normal fashion here in Japan, so if someone (like that guy) sees it as obscene and thinks anyone who defends that fashion are "pedophiles" (based on what he's implying), then it is that person who has a perverted head, and is in no position to be moral policing.

It is possible to identify things as being intentionally perverted/having a certain intent without having a "perverted head". Both the arguments of "if you're defending this you're a pedo" and "if you're seeing this as sexual you're a pedo" are not as strong arguments as people here seem to think they are.

Putting everything else aside, this is a profoundly shitty piece of artwork. I'm thoroughly convinced the artist has zero idea how a skirt works, especially since he seems to do it repeatedly. It's like those shirts that perfectly outline a female characters' individual breasts in a way no fabric on Earth ever could. And before you make the argument "well it's anime so it doesn't have to be realistic!", it doesn't really hold up when the artist is drawing something that actually exists in real life. It doesn't look sexy, it just looks...stupid.

(Also, like, if you're choosing the desire to publicly display fictional teenage girl crotch as the hill you're willing to die on, you...might want to re-evaluate your life choices.)

An exaggerated skirt fold doesn't make a piece of artwork "profoundly shitty", especially given the stylization of the entire image. Insulting the artist is unnecessary. They likely do know how it works, and just like those boob sock shirts made an aesthetic choice; a perfectly valid one, even if it isn't to your taste. The argument that it needs to be realistic because he's drawing something that exists in real life doesn't hold up when the character's eyes are the size of golf balls and her nose is a dot. Human faces also exist in real life, and they look nothing like that. This extremely selective enforcement of real life accuracy in stylized images has never been anything more than a lazy, dishonest potshot at subject matter people disapprove of.

So they're making drawings that emphasise the location of the vagina on characters intended to be seen as underage because they want to make drawings with arrows pointing to exactly where your penis would go if they were real people you could fudge.

Dude, that's the accusation, not a defence.