If you've ever--you know, accidentally--happened to watch some anime porn (even of the R-rated variety: I recommend I Dream of Mimi), you might find this illustration of the moral and legal perils involved and the editorial fictions invented by importers to ameliorate them amusing.


To better understand what a "figurine" is, go here and click around (at your own NSFW peril).

Of course, there's the irony that characters somebody drew having "sex" are considered more "dangerous" to our moral health than actual human beings pretending to be underage and having sex (American Pie). You can even garner yourself an Oscar for doing so!

Regardless of what the Supreme Court said, anime importers follow the "stagecoach rule" in this regard. "First Amendment" rights are even hazier in Canada, which is also DVD region 1. And just to be safe, outfits like Greencine won't send "porn" to Utah and a couple of other states.

I once came across a hentai tape at a Hollywood Video here in Utah County (it wasn't half bad). The same store also had a copy of In the Realm of the Senses (meh), so it was probably part of the startup stock, and the owners had no idea it was there.

Until the irate parent stormed in, I suppose. Is that why Netflix doesn't ship I Dream of Mimi anymore? They do ship In the Realm of the Senses, which is about a billion times more explicit. Go figure.

Here's the Wikipedia entry for Kodomo no Jikan (haven't seen it, don't want to). The teacher/student romance typically involves a female high school student, and it is ubiquitous enough to constitute a standard girl's comics genre (and is often quite explicit).

The flipside is the "harem" genre featuring a prepubescent boy surrounded by developmentally precocious teenage (and often older) girls, such as the enormously popular Negima! and the just plain creepy Please Teacher, Happy Lesson and Mouse.

To sum up Negima! Imagine that Harry Potter as a nerdy ten-year-old and Hermione as a spunky, resourceful sixteen-year-old, and she and her coed classmates at Hogwarts have a habit of "accidentally" getting undressed around him. Oh, and they share a dorm room.

Actually, if Rowling's Hermione had been more like this Hermione, I might have stayed interested in the books. Stupid "fan service" aside, Negima! takes some interesting plot turns and is far less annoying than Ken Akamatsu's big harem hit, Love Hina.

But as I argue at length here, I've concluded that the Freudian subtext is really all about family formation (and the lack thereof).

Labels: anime, deep thoughts, moral outrage, politics, sex, utah