Anime and Rape/Molestation: TL;DR—I need brain bleach. · 12:25pm Feb 22nd, 2015
So my sister conned me into watching Sword Art Online.
I'm not happy with the ending, and I wish that when people recommended stuff like this, that they would be a little more respectful of other people's lack of tolerance for something. If someone doesn't like gore, for example, the answer doesn't lie in having them watch the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Well, in the second season of Sword Art Online, the main character is forced to watch the villain grope his girlfriend's bare breasts, in a scene that I'm not convinced wasn't written for the right reasons.
I feel that this sharply contrasts with the tone of the rest of the anime. My sister defended the scene with the fact that no penetration took place, making the mistake of thinking that I should be where she's at in terms of being mentally capable of tolerating this scene.
I need brain bleach.
That scene left me very uncomfortable as well, makes it very satisfying when Kirito wrecks that guys shit though. In the novel especially both scenes (the scientist tentacle things and evil elf bloke groping) as well as the villian hinting at what he was going to do to her alone in the hospital room. Eugh. The helplessness aspect, either to the character in the virtual world or in the real world they can't feel/see at the time is used fairly often by the author, threatening death or rape simply because it does bring out a strong response from the viewer/reader.
Sword Art Online is just not very good; while I liked the idea behind the first half's twist, the problem was that the show had built up a bunch and then it felt a bit anticlimactic when it all just kind of ended.
The other problem was that the female protagonist had seemed like she was going to form half of a Battle Couple with the male protagonist, but then ended up going from being an awesome warrior to being completely overshadowed.
I was pretty disappointed in the show; it had shown a lot of promise but it felt like it left way too many dangling plot threads.
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Before the second season, my biggest gripe with the anime was that it felt like it was super-rushed. The romantic subplot wrapped up in a blink of an eye. I felt like I must have missed quite a few episodes, or that perhaps I had drank a little too much while watching the anime.
After watching it again, I realized that no, it was not the drink, and I had not missed any episodes. The anime was just that badly paced.
Milage may vary. I'm quite fond of the show, personally, even though I admit it has its flaws.
Regarding Nobuyuki Sugo, it's true he was one nasty sunnovabitch, but I don't really agree that isn't in line with the show's tone. Frankly, all SAO villains are majorly messed up. Oberon just happened to be a majorly messed up sexual predator as opposed to a majorly messed up murderer.
Oh well. Have you tried Log Horizon? It's similar in concept to SAO but at the same very different. No rapists so far, if that helps.
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Really? Because I thought they devoted an inordinate amount of time to playing Married Life Online, whereas the actual final battle was wrapped up in like two episodes after that.
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No matter how much I lean on the rational aspects of my mind, it still stings to hear someone dissing something that like. I don't think that's any truer than with Zero no Tsuikaima, which can be sexist, among many other things.
This should go without saying, but I think it's important that when people diss something, they don't diss the fans, as well.
We've got an episode where Asuna cooks a meal from a rare item, and an episode where the couple is now married in the game and basically adopts an AI. In any case, I'm not talking about how much screen-time they've devoted to mushy stuff, I'm talking about how horribly under-developed that aspect of plot is.
I'm going to assume that the Light Novel is better, but Asuna and Kirito went from being complete strangers, to love-birds with very, very little interaction between the two of them. We don't get to see them getting to know each other at all. I can count on a few fingers all the anime I've watched that had an even more underdeveloped romance between two main characters.
Overall, I think Inuyasha is darker than SAO, but still very much what I would expect of a shonen anime.
Something about sexual abuse just strikes me as being darker than death, depending on the manner in which it occurred. I realize that this is entirely subjective, and I fail at backing these feelings up with a rational argument. I think that I might be a little more squicked about rape than most other folks.
It also matters to me as to whether or not such things happen to a main character, or a supporting character. I think Full Metal Alchemist is, overall, much darker than SAO and I liked it (despite being spastic attempts at comedy and then being whiny.) There's not much that the show could throw at me that would clash with everything else. If I remember correctly, a supporting character was a victim of rape, but I find this to be less abrasive than one of the main characters being raped while her boyfriend is forced to watch.
Not yet. This is the first that I've heard of it. I'll certainly look into it.
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I'm pretty sure it was more than that. Like, a third of the entire arc or something.
Don't get we wrong, I like sweet love stories, but I like awesome swordfights even more.
Well, the interaction is implied - they were trapped in SAO for two years and we're only given glimpses of those years. The basic gist is that they kept running into each other during missions and stuff, and you can sorta see the progression: The first time they meet they're totall strangers, the second time they meet they bicker a bit, the third time they're friends, the fourth time they are practically dating, etc. In that sense, their relationship technically developed a lot slower than those of most anime couples.
Really, my biggest problem with the SAO arc is that it's so episodic and spread so thin. It really doesn't have much of a overarching plot. The Fairy Dance arc felt like it should have been longer but at least it had more focus. The Phantom Bullet arc had insanely slow pacing and took forever to get to the lightsaber fighting parts, but was otherwise totally awesome. (Because it had lightsaber fighting parts.) The Calibur arc was a fun side-story and it was nice to see the gang just play their VR game for once, even if the stakes were still high. And the Mother's Rosario arc was horribly depressing and really, really sweet at the same time.
...Like I said, I do admit the show has it's problems.
Regarding the light novels, they were crazy popular but did get some criticism for the pacing and writing quality. I think someone also accused them to be a bit sexist? So yeah, I'm going to guess it's probably more or less the same as the anime.
People do have different levels of sensitivity for this sort of thing. I tend to take a: "If there's life there's hope" kind of approach, so while rape is absolutely a terrible thing, it beats getting killed because you can recover from it.
Perhaps people in general are just less used to sexual assault in media? I mean, you're not wrong in feeling this way - you were supposed to really hate Sugo for how he treated Asuna. Rather, I sometimes think people should be more horrified by death - or at least murder - than they tend to be.
If I'm not mistaken, that was in the anime adaption that went completely off the rails and started doing it's own thing. I don't recall any rape in the manga, nor do I think there's any in the Brotherhood anime.
Also, on a personal note, I always kinda wondered what hell the anime people were thinking. It's not like that particular character hadn't suffered enough.
It's really one of my favorite animes in recent years. The premise is similar to SAO, in that it's about a bunch of MMORPG players getting trapped inside their game, but beyond that it takes a completely different direction. The world they end up in seems to be an actual real world but still runs on game mechanics, and most of the story is devoted to the players just trying to figure out how to live in it.
It focuses a lot on psychological, sociological and political issues in a way that is way less boring than I just made it sound like.
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Fight scenes used to excite me more, but now I'm more interested in romantic tension, so I think that I might be the opposite of you in that regard. When I am really getting into the action, it's going to be less because of the clanging of swords, and more because some underdog is getting his or her time in the spotlight.
Oddly enough, despite what I just said, probably my favorite scene in a rom-com that I'm pretty crazy about, happens to be the only real fight scene in the whole anime. (two schoolgirls beat each other senseless with wooden sticks.)
As for FMA, I never actually finished Brotherhood, and I totally mean to. I used to get off of work at night on the weekends, drink two bottles of MD 20/20, and watch FMA and GITS:SAC on Adult Swim. I'm not particularly saddened by the lack of rape. The only reason that I could come to terms with it in the original anime, is that it was a character that I could easily push out of my thoughts.
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Probably another reason you should watch Log Horizon. There's some pretty sweet fighting, though it's not the focus. And if you like underdogs getting their time in the spotlight, oh boy. One particular battle has one of the best underdog scenes I've seen.
(Which is actually funny in hindsight, since a running joke is that the character in question resembles a golden retriever.)
As for romance, the main character has at least three girls crushing on him, and an important minor character has this slightly dysfunctional thing going on with a local princess. Though my personal favorite is two supporting characters who have been slowly developing what seems to be a surprisingly realistic and stable relationship, especially by anime standards. (Season two introduced a character who's main thing is trolling the male side about it, but that's probably fairly harmless.)
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Eww, sounds like a harem. Still going to watch it, lol.
Love triangles tend to annoy me, and harems tend to be a completely different kind of story than the one I'm looking for.
Too much emphasis on a love rival can hijack the romantic development between two characters. The whole time that I watched Inuyasha, I wanted to smack the main character something fierce for stringing Kagome along while he pines for his dead girlfriend who wants him to also be dead. I've also watched anime where the eventual pairing stopped interacting altogether to make room for petty rival bickering for an entire season.
Harems seem to be less about romance, and more about fulfilling some sexual fantasy. There are definitely exceptions, and sometimes it's both. Love Hina would be one of the few harem anime that I actually enjoy, but that's mostly because there's a strong, well-established love interest throughout the story, rather than the anime being a 'who's he gonna pick' type of story. Zero no Tsukaima is very much the same type of harem, but those aspects are probably the worst aspects of the anime—Saito is not very faithful, with wandering hands and lips, and it seriously undercuts one's investment in the romance aspect of the plot. My first fanfiction attempt was going to be an attempt at removing all the harem elements of that anime.
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Eh, not really? Shiroe doesn't seem very aware that he's the target of so much affection, for starters. Mostly because he's too busy with other stuff, like being an
evilgenius, and he's probably a bit naive about romance in general. And out of his pursuers, one pretty much doesn't intend to ever make a serious move and has decided to just admire him from afar, and another is like twelve years old, essentially his protege, and probably doesn't stand a chance against the main love interest. (Who only looks like she's twelve years old.)Oh, and the antagonist of season 2 has some kind of psycho stalker crush on him, but he more or less rejected her.
...Okay, so it has some harem type themes going on, but again, not the focus. It's actually about as much harem as Sword Art Online, come to think of it. (In that pretty much all the girls are in love with Kirito, but that's not really what the show is about.)
It's Takahashi, man. Her stuff isn't really what you go for if you want realistic, sensible romances.
You should read the manga. I hold it in an almost religiously high regard, and from what I understand, the anime is vastly inferior.
Then there's Negima, which only has a harem because Akamatsu had to trick his publisher into letting him write a kickass shonen after the success of Love Hina, and somehow that only made it better.
Seriously, Ken Akamatsu is my freaking hero.
But yes, a problem with harem anime is that it's often more about the hijinks of having a harem of potential girlfriends and less about pursuing a particular partner. I suspect this is due to influence from harem-type visual novels, where the reader/player is actually allowed to pick the love interest.
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Jeez, what's with Japan and seriously underdeveloped love-interests? Toradora and ZNT's female leads are pretty much more of the same. I'm not particularly interested in whether or not I'd be attracted to the characters, but it could be a little awkward to explain to someone why a seventeen-year-old is kissing what appears to be a twelve-year-old.
It's a little more annoying in the case of ZNT, because of all the fan-service. I don't quite understand why the creators would think that the audience would be interested in Louise's butt. Yes, I know that there are people out there fapping to that—I'm trying not to think about it.
I remember you saying much of the same before, which raises the question as to why I haven't sought it out yet.
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I think it just makes them appear cuter, which is a somewhat more appreciated trait in Japanese culture compared to ours. That, and the Japanese love their lolicon. I know you have opinions on that issue, but that's how it is. As long as it sells a lot of anime and manga and games, we'll keep seeing it.
Akatsuki's loliness is mostly played for laughs anyway, and for that matter I don't think the loli characters are ever actually sexualized at all. In fact, Log Horizon shows a remarkable amount of restraint in that department, as a general thing.
Also Shakugan no Shana, and To Aru Majutsu no Index. Both of which count among my all time favorite anime, incidentally.
God, I watched a lot of J.C. Staff anime back in the day. Wonder what they have been up to in recent years?
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*grumbles*
It makes me seriously question Japanese society, but it's not so much an issue for me that I would stop watching anime because of it. I mean, it's hard to get me to shut up about ZNT, and it's probably one of the worst offenders.
I watch a show about cartoon ponies. Scantily-clad loli tsundere probably isn't the worst thing that someone could walk in on me watching.
I watched Aria of the Scarlet Ammo a while back. I listened to the opening on Youtube, but vocalized my concern about the sexualized pose of the main character, Aria. Some people had a hard time taking me seriously considering the fact that my avatar was of Louise, from ZNT.
Also one of my favorite anime. Earlier, I mentioned an anime that halts the romantic bonding to focus on a rivalry throughout a season . . . I was actually talking about the second season of Shakugan no Shana. I felt that the male lead was never really made to be particularly interesting, and I wasn't entirely impressed with change in focus in the second season. Not enough action, and not enough interaction between Shana and Yuji, if memory servers.
Now, I thought the third season was a bit jarring, but I very much enjoyed the concept of two lovers fighting on opposite side of a war. I think made one-two-many 'lover's quarrel' jokes about that.
Fun fact that you may or may not be aware of: Shana, Aria, Louise de la Valliere, and Aisaka Taiga are all voiced by the same person.