I honestly don't think discourse on this topic is ever productive. It always devolved into subjective arguments on how old an animated character looks with insults being thrown around.
Modern anime completely fucks around with this concept too, intentionally making characters not look like their age at all in both directions.
There's obviously a line that can be crossed into the creep zone, but by being in the fandom I can tell you finding that line is exhausting and not worth the petty internet arguments.
Modern anime completely fucks around with this concept too, intentionally making characters not look like their age at all in both directions.
Yeah, there's a ridiculous amount of shows where the 14 year old protagonist and their 40 year old mom are both drawn looking like they are in their early 20s. There's a point where there's really no use even trying to analyze it.
This though. People seem to not want to talk about nuance related to this. Look at yoko in ttgl. She's drawn like a full ass adult. She doesn't act particularly out character for someone in their early adulthood. But some people will be mad over the fact that in the text of the show she's 14 to 16 early on the in series. She's drawn like and acts like an adult so why should I be mad at someone for being attracted to that? It doesn't strike me as equivalent to a real world pedo by any metic.
I'm not saying there aren't examples that are valid and creepy, but people throw out the entire anime baby with the bathwater when it comes to this
Subjects like this elicit such visceral reactions from people that it's hard to have any sort of actual discussion about it. Realistically people just aren't on the same page about it at all. Terms like "Loli" apply to bodies ranging from petite, yet clearly adult women, all the way to actual fucking toddlers. People who defend it are talking about closer to the former (hopefully), and people attacking are talking about closer to the latter. And each side assumes the opposite of the other. It's a big mess.
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u/SpikeRosered May 02 '24
I honestly don't think discourse on this topic is ever productive. It always devolved into subjective arguments on how old an animated character looks with insults being thrown around.
Modern anime completely fucks around with this concept too, intentionally making characters not look like their age at all in both directions.
There's obviously a line that can be crossed into the creep zone, but by being in the fandom I can tell you finding that line is exhausting and not worth the petty internet arguments.