And actually, there are games where you're allowed to kill children.

Anyway, the point is, in GTA you can be a mass murderer of women and men alike, even pregnant women, and you then don't see that reflected in reality.

No, you're just refusing to see the point. I'm sticking closer to the topic than you are.

I mean it's "the same" right? If 'enjoying stories about fucking kids is like killing an NPC in GTA'? Where are all the games about graphically murdering children? If it's the same, if your analogy holds, there should be plenty of games that let you murder kids in the street, just not fuck them.

Now you’re gonna go into an ad hoc argument filled up with fallacies, because what you’re saying is just simply false.

Good job trying to get ahead of it, but unfortunately no, I'm simply going to ask what you think my argument is.

So the defining trait that makes it ok is that it's not "real life"? If you get an artwork commissioned of an amine girl that is based on/inspired by someone you know irl, is that fine?

I guess to take it to an extreme do you think cartoons of CSAM is acceptable since it's "not real"? I guess it technically doesn't hurt anyone irl, and gives pedos a way to... yeah.

For the record I do not agree but am interested in the reasoning behind why you consider it OK.

Because only can be considered bad what causes real, verifiable harm. But this not only doesn't cause harm, but it can even avoid it because it will redirect these impulses to something safer

can I please stop seeing the idiots that think AI will just go away

aw, someone yucking your AI slop yummy?

Okay, cool. You also gonna point out the difference between ephebaphilia and pedophilia? Im sure it'll help your argument.

When you pay a shop to print out a 6-ft vinyl of said anime drawings, and then voluntarily apply it to the side of your clapped out Honda Civic, such that the fuel nozzle goes into the underage anime girls butt, it becomes reality.

Ohhhh yeah. that shit. Yaah.. used to be on multiple fake sites before AI took the fun out of it and it was common to get guys that would hit the forums with fakes made using headshots of actresses that were from when they were UA. Usually the site mods would pull down the image then have a chat with the faker and if they kept at it then they got them banned. The one that was top of the UA offender list for years was the actress that portrayed Hermione Granger from Harry Potter films. IIRC, that was Emma Watson. It was exasperating at times.

The "verifiable harm" is the normalising and disseminating sexualised images of minors under the guise of "But it's just a drawing."

Thanks to ol' muskrat and his recent lobbying to make it legal for his pet clanker to turn real images of underage women into deepfakes, most people are VERY aware that something doesn't have to have a physical impact to cause harm.

Just like the creepy anime shit;

They are depictions of children intentionally drawn that way, for a target market.

The artist intentionally drew them like that.

Nobody is forcing the artist to draw pictures of children or characters that look like children, they do it by choice.

It is not far of a stretch to say that the people drawing that type of thing enjoy it, as do the people consuming it.

So why are you defending it so vehemently?

You've posted multiple times in this thread arguing with whoever you can find, so I'm curious; what do you think you're defending?

Shit like this is why I stopped watching anime. The normalized pedophilia and xenophobia is too much.

(Unrelated but another reason I stopped watching was because I couldn't stand the squeaky falsetto female voices that Japanese culture forces women to have. I always watched a dub whenever possible.)

If what you said explained everything then there would be no need for the "looks like a 13yo, but actually a 1000yo dragon" trope.

Sure, some of it can be explained by cultural things that are totally acceptable. There's still a lot that can't be though.

Your argument is fundamentally flawed because you're discussing the media causing something, and the comment above is discussing media made for something. I don't think anyone is making the claim sexualizing (things that appear to be) children in anime is causing people to have sexual relations with children. People are saying that sexualizing children in anime is done specifically to appeal to a subset of people that we should not be making media for.

no, mostly just tired of the wishful thinking that it will vanish / be regulated out if existence, I won't deny I think LLMs can be helpful but are also extremely harmful to the internet.

I hate how normalized modern anime sexualizes kids and the people who cheer it on.

I did actually already explain that one (spiritual beings regressing to younger forms as they lose power) but here's the full version from a while back when I got curious about this specific trope: https://docs.google.com/document/d/18xJbetvBNam51ZJaj7jdaMppRXls6ilrK-IoOQ3Czt0/

And to be clear, my goal has never been to justify the inappropriate sexualization of minors. Rather, my goal is to share the context for why these things developed as they have, and provide guidance on distinguishing between actual degeneracy and cultural misunderstandings. There is certainly plenty of anime with highly degenerate content, but there is also a lot of anime with content that appears to be a degenerate sexualization of a minor to a Western audience while a Japanese audience does not perceive it that way at all (rather than seeing it that way and allowing it)

Here's an excerpt, the summary conclusion:

The origin of the trope wherein long-lived, mature spirits revert to a childlike appearance when weakened is a convergence of religious history, folklore, and modern media mechanics. It is not a singular invention but a sedimentation of:

Theological Iconography: The Gohō dōji (servant child) and Wakamiya (new spirit) established the "divine boy" as a vessel of servitude and potentiality.

Folklore Dynamics: The Deceptive Disguise of Shuten-dōji and the Vital Fluid mechanics of the Kappa established that power can be masked or drained.

Modern Codification: Kishin Dōji Zenki systematized these elements into a "sealed form" mechanic, while Bleach and YuYu Hakusho added pseudo-scientific layers of "spiritual density" and "energy storage."

Visual Culture: The SD/Chibi art style provided a commercially viable visual language for this "diminished state," transforming the terrifying into the toy-ready.

Ultimately, the trope persists because it resonates with the fundamental Japanese spiritual worldview: divinity is not static or linear. It is fluid, capable of expansion and contraction, and intimately tied to the cycle of renewal. A weakened god does not end; they simply start over, small and full of potential, waiting for the prayer, the seal-breaking chant, or the return of faith that will allow them to grow once more.

No, because the problem is again that only if something causes real and verifiable harm, it can be considered bad, but as I exposed, that content doesn't cause any harm at all and it can even avoid harm to be done because of the fact that they'll release these impulses into/towards something safer and harmless.

If your only argument is moral repulsion or mere distaste, then your position is invalid by nature.

Thanks to ol' muskrat and his recent lobbying to make it legal for his pet clanker to turn real images of underage women into deepfakes, most people are VERY aware that something doesn't have to have a physical impact to cause harm.

Yeah, but in that case there is still a real, verifiable harm: they're damaging the reputation of one or more people, and they're enabling abusers and stalkers to harass people like never before, causing these victims huge trauma, and the worst part: they're trained with real children pictures.

An anime drawing almost never represents a real child, and what's more, they're just fucking obviously fictional and unmistakably unreal; someone as Shadman that draws real people in a cartoon-ish way is gross? Yeah, but as long as they're harassing real people in the process.

Moreover, a drawing or a fictional being hasn't even an age, because they're just that, fictional beings, they don't have any real biologic story or an inner world or a mind or any kind of psychologic or mental state, they're just lines or pixels on a canvas, and their only age, if anything, is the time passed since they were first drawn. There's just a big of an ontological gap between them and the real world that the harm never is in themselves or their nature or contents, but on the intentions and actions of their creators.

It is not far of a stretch to say that the people drawing that type of thing enjoy it, as do the people consuming it.

Yeah, they do enjoy it. But they don't enjoy actual CSAM (or, that is, real childrens being abused, because no, lolicon IS not CSAM as there is not simply a real victim).

So why are you defending it so vehemently?

You've posted multiple times in this thread arguing with whoever you can find, so I'm curious; what do you think you're defending?

Because I'm a Free Speech Extremist, and an art-autonomist. That's it. Period. Recommended lecture if you're so genuinely curious about that.

Bruh some of us like the characterization, and have arrived to liking that character because were fans of the anime.

I like Mikoto Misaka from A certain scientific railgun because she is a bad ass. If she was real I'd give her a fist bump and go about my day.

Lol no, they're still just drawings, not real children.

Yeah, and I know the difference between pederasty and pedophilia, too. You don't seem to know.

well, good news: AI is going to go away. It's bubble is going to pop, it's going to take out a huge chunk of the economy, it's foolish, single purpose infrastructure will go down as one of the stupidest investments of human civilization, and it'll be a punchline for generations like tulip futures and the segway changing humanity.

edit: go back to reddit ffs, they love ai garbage

Normalizing it does cause harm. It makes them think their behavior is more acceptable than it is.

it's strange how intense the furry folks are. I don't mind adults consuming whatever porn, but a lot of furry stuff seems almost targeted at kids. baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarf.

I'm sure this will get downvoted by the fur folk.

It literally costs nothing for the author to make them 18, or 21, or 35. You just say a different number and make the school a college. They're just pedos.

That being said i love anime despite my frustration with the pervert character, the loli, the 3000 year old vampire whos a 12 year old, the horny mom/grandma, and the useless male protagonist.

I don't think you understand the criticism. It isn't the child entity existing that's at issue. Yes, that paper gives context to how it started in the culture. That's fine. It's the sexualization that's the issue. This does not provide any cultural context that makes that acceptable.

Western cultures also have similar cultural concepts, with all kinds of spirits and things inhabiting child bodies, but we don't have (much) sexualized children spirit things in media.

Yeah. Mangaka making weird shit are certainly making weird shit and it is being consumed by people also into some facet of the weird shit.

This is one thread you want to read sorted as controversial.

Wowzers…

I'm sure you're reading into it too much. Artists don't code their fetishes into things.

:C

That's fucked up

I feel like the normalization is a net negative, but not something grotesque. Obviously younger characters are necessary for specific narratives. It also allows for specific people (several standard deviations outside of normal) to feel comfortable with ever-more misanthropic fantasies.

But hey, so does AI, so...

Douses the internet in gasoline and lights a cigar

You are free to think weebs are wierd but it is cunterproductive to water down the term pedophile to include people who like anime with school aged characters.

I think media that is creepy, wierd or gross need to be allowed to exist. It is important to be able to explore topics that make people uncomfortabe and I think that freedom necessitates the tolerance of works whose artistic merit is unclear as long as they don't cause direct harm.

Then you would need to point me to a specific instance of sexualization for me to comment on it.

There is a prevalent problem of western viewers seeing "3000 year old dragon in a child's body" and immediately sexualizing it ("it's just an excuse for ...") when the Japanese audience doesn't view it that way. That's what I'm trying to address.

If you have a specific character in mind I'm happy to help distinguish whether it is truly degenerate (certainly possible) or just a cultural misunderstanding of the intent.

I don't give a shit about the companies, the models aren't going away.

Downvoted because I agree.

You might have missed the title of this post somehow?

The people with anime school girl avatars and/or the people who gush over how hot/sexy/fuckable the overly sexualised children are in whatever anime/manga, are who I'm calling out.

ive seen that, on yt i got curious when a person was ranting about woke comments, checked his profile, had all AI generated ani-mated fetishes of disney characthers, and all black or latina.

Join here if you want to fight your personal war:

https://ecpat.org/

The cultural and histotical signifucance of your horny demon child anime does not justify it existing or stop it from being pedo shit.

You gonna share with us what you find so offensive about the book title I dropped the 'r' from so the bird species spelled 'cake' instead?

The normalization of sexualized children is harmful.

Why is my saying I dislike the romance and teen genres something people are interpreting as me stating blanket rules on what others are supposed to like?

I was sharing my dislike for the genres because I was replying to a comment reccomending shows from them to me to watch.

You can like whatever media you like, people will have opinions about it and judge you for it, just like people do with everything, and that is normal. You can like things other people have negative opinions about, it is allowed.

You like sexy children in anime and I don't, good for you. I am judging you and think you're gross, but you are still fully capable of continuing to enjoy your media despite this. See how it works?

Shouldn't it be an upvote, when you agree?

I still don't understand the rules of this sub. I guess that's the same for the majority of users

Sure, except we haven't reached the stage of culturally condemming and not running the creepy anime shows yet and they're still really popular.

I'm not clicking that.

But... But you don't understand! That mostly naked 12 year old looking girl who behaves like a young, spoiled immature brat is really the oldest, most powerful...... Uh......... Demon or something from the... Uh... Whatever hell circles.

Or was it a 12,000 year old dragon who looks like a little girl and gets stalked by a middle aged man? No wait, that was Fire Emblem.

Oh by the way; this is also why I'm uncomfortable with Midna. Yes I know what her proper appearance is supposed to be. But until then she looks like a weird little girl in oddly revealing skin tight clothes.

the models aren’t going away.

sure bud.

that's like saying: z80 microprocessors might go away but the software will stick around.

no, there will be better, newer things created. your models are LLMs. hardly worthy of your adoration

Anime doesn't depict the sexualisation of minors as a bad thing. It normalises, relishes, and straight up comodifies it.

Well, the series was made for little girls. The average Brony at the height of MLP was 34. And they sexualised the characters a lot.

Not hard to make a connection there.

Their distinguishing feature is that pedos are attracted to minors.

How's that distinct from being harmful to minors?