Forum - View topicSisCon in anime -- giving sibling love a whole new spin.
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quoththeraven
 Posts: 27 Location: Baltimore, Maryland |
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You don't jump from Cutie Honey and Mazinger Z and Original Gundam to following the convoluted Brother/Sister love relationships that have cropped up in the mid-90s onward in anime.
Where did it all begin? I know someones going to try to play the "its a different culture card" but having spent a year in Japan during my high school days, I can at least point out that there plenty of people i met who were weirded out by the concept of either "Wincest" or even the "Not Blood Siblings" work around. |
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Wu Ming
Posts: 113 |
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I am reminded immediately of Araragi Koyomi's quote in Bakemonogatari. To paraphrase him: “Liking little sisters is a fantasy of guys who don't have any.” 
I always thought either version of "sibling love" was just a writer's method of trying to add taboo/tension to the classic "Girl from my Childhood" archetype. Its literally the fastest way to throw a girl at the main character. Don't even bother setting up a "Girl Next Door" - port her directly into the house. Now why this would even be considered desirable/appealing is well beyond the scope of my understanding. Although now that i come to think of it, the trope has become quite prominent, showing up even in what people might consider more main stream works like Love Hina. There's actually a bit of science that stands against the trope called the Westmarck Effect. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imprinting_(psychology)#Westermarck_effect Its less likely that a person reared with another person in those tender golden years of childhood would ever find that person to be attractive. If anything, the drive toward genetic recombination tends to make people seek out the foreign/exotic. |
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Dorcas_Aurelia
 Posts: 5344 Location: Philly |
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And Love Hina justified it by stating that Kanako was adopted, so it's not biological incest. Are there really that many shows that have blood-related siblings involved romantically? There's Koi Kaze, obviously, and we've had threads about it before. Do we want to try taking this in a different direction than has been done before by discussing the "not blood siblings" solution to the incest problem? |
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Wu Ming
Posts: 113 |
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Simple. Somebody decided to exploit the fact that the taboo would sell. Now as to exactly "where" it came from, i remember reading a Japanese literature magazine deconstructing odd themes in Japanese manga and i believe the finger was actually pointed at Shoujo manga during the late 80s. I suppose it must have added a flair of drama to it. 
However the forbidden relationship seemed less sexualized and more idealized. When the trope got ported out of Shoujo manga and was made to appeal to a male audience is where we get the stomach-turning situation.
I assume the whole "Not Blood Siblings" was a counter reaction for those who wanted to keep the trope around but not violate the blood line so to speak. Last edited by Wu Ming on Tue Sep 22, 2009 7:53 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Zalis116
Moderator
 Posts: 6921 Location: Kazune City |
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Wu Ming
Posts: 113 |
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Lol, you right. I had completely forgotten about the comment in Genshiken. Sasahara's ko-gal sister speaks volumes as to the reality of the situation. 
At the end of the day, the whole SisCon trope is essentially a contained phenomena - a fetish aimed at a particular audience. For those who are outside of that small subset (ie: Us), Siscon will remain a running joke/insult that secondary female characters will hurl at typical weak-willed primary/secondary male characters to get them all flustered. It will just be yet another insult in the arsenal of peversion accusation along with panty fetishes, swimsuits, and lolicons. For those who want to actually try to play the trope straight, we can expect heavy usage of the "Not Blood Related" clause. Off the top of my head, Gift: Eternal Rainbow and Da Capo both use that dodge and i'm sure others will in the future to set up love-comedy awkwardness. |
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Ralifar
 Posts: 205 Location: League City, TX |
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I don't understand the not blood related business. It isn't blood that makes someone your family. I have two adopted sisters, and I find the idea of a romantic relationship with either of them completely repulsive.
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Skylark
 Posts: 827 Location: ORE NO TSHIRT |
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On the flip side, I met my younger sister when I was 19 (and she was 16) for the very first time; and I find myself highly attracted to her (to the point where I actually forcibly separated myself from her again). Family is who you grow up with. |
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Ralifar
Posts: 205 Location: League City, TX |
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I honestly don't have a problem with that. You weren't raised together as family. I wouldn't consider her family. |
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Xanas
Posts: 2058 |
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I think that's unusual. Why is it the "raised as family" thing that's important? Isn't the whole point the "biological diversity"? So it should matter most that the biology is the same and those who are "adopted" should matter not at all.
I have the same "weird" feeling about it, but logically I have less problems with it because most reasons against incest apply when it's done through multiple generations. And none of that applies if one of the siblings has a totally separate mother/father. The Imprinting article actually did refer to a strong attraction developing in many cases if the children weren't together early in life. I'm wondering if there is also a biological reason for that...? |
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Mistypearl
 Posts: 517 |
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My personal take on the whole sibling incest is if it's really a mishap of being attracted to a 'forbidden' person, or really just liking something that isn't socially accepted. I wonder how it would be like if marrying your sister was socially accepted, would it be more common? In what way really?
I have a hard time telling if its really just liking something that you aren't supposed to have. Though I think it's natural to have some attraction to someone of the opposite sex (or similar sex) even if they are related to you. I think it depends on how strong that attraction is and what you do with it... |
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Craeyst Raygal
 Posts: 1383 Location: In the garage, beneath a 1970 MGB GT. |
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A: To clarify potentially incestuous leanings in Tenchi Muyo, Ayeka and Sasami are in fact Tenchi's great-aunts. In a bit of shameless self-promotion, I wrote an article for ANN on just this subject back when the 3rd OAV was new.
animenewsnetwork.com/feature/2005-07-14/6 As to WHY Ayeka is so comfortable with the idea of being in love with (at first) her half-brother and (later) her estranged half-great nephew it's explained that she was raised to be her brother's bride ever since she was young. Intra-family marriages are common amongst royalty (Heck, even the Roosevelts) so it's not as bizarre a concept as one might think. B: Incest in anime, whether full-blown "My mother's my sister!" or just the occasional "Hmm, my stepsister IS kind of hot" is generally done for either comedic or dramatic effect. It's not so much a cultural ideology at work as it is an easy route to take to create some conflict for male and female characters. |
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jxsilicon9
Posts: 58 |
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Well of course nobody is going to say they accept incest.Especially in a place like Japan that are staunch in publicly following the culture.Nobody in the US would agree with it either.Who knows what they truly think? But Japan has way too many incest,loli,etc entertainment for there to be nothing to it. Like the whole groping on a subway theme.I never knew that really was such a huge problem in Japan. So who know show much art imitates like or life imitates art in Japan. |
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Jrittmayer
 Posts: 304 Location: New Jersey |
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I don't think thats true at all. I have a younger sister (and brother lol) yet I like imouto/siscon/incest anime. I don't really know why, I just do. But thats anime, I think the idea of it in the real world is just plain strange. I never really connect fiction and fantasy which anime as well as movies, videogames and books are, to real life. |
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Errinundra
Moderator
 Posts: 6695 Location: Melbourne, Oz |
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I think you have something a bit wrong here. We do not seek out the foregin or exotic. People almost always select as partners people who are similar to themselves. The Westermarck Effect is a counter effect that occurs with people we associate with closely in our early years. May I suggest you read Jared Diamond's book, The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee, especially chapter 5, How We Pick Our Mates and Sex Partners. To quote (italics are his): "On the average, spouses resemble each other slightly but significantly in almost every physical feature examined. This is true of all the obvious traits you would first think of when asked to design your ideal beloved - his or her height, weight, hair colour, eye colour, and skin colour - but it is also true of an astonishing variety of other traits that you probably would not have mentioned in your description of your perfect sex partner. Those other traits include ones as diverse as breadth of nose, length of ear lobe or middle finger, circumberence of the wrist, distance between eyes, and lung volume! Experimenters have made this finding for people as diverse as Poles in Poland, Americans in Michigan, and Africans in Chad." After some discussion he argues, "The reason we tend to resemble our mates is that many of us are looking for someone who reminds us of our parent or sibling of the opposite sex, who in turn resembles us. As children, we already begin to develop our search image of a future sex partner, and that image is heavily influenced by the people of the opposite sex whom we see most often. For most of us that is our mother (or father) and sister (or brother), plus close childhood friends." It needs to be noted, and Diamond does cover this, there are important social similarities, eg religious, cultural and political similarities, that play an important role. I suppose the inference is that the Westermarck Effect occurs to counter our tendency to select partners like our immediate family. |
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