In the modern world, humans are very concerned about media consumption. I feel as though I tend to separate myself from this discourse but due to this being my "media logs," as it were, I want to state a variety of my beliefs regarding this subject. I will be using a lot of Japanese media that ties to my specific axis of oppression because I am a Black woman who reads a lot of manga.
Media & Bigotry
> I believe all media is bigoted, but people tend to be most concerned/affected by what affects their status specifically and are also less likely to show concern for a variety of problems across human history in fiction. Misogyny in fiction has been done across the entire history of the human race, so people are more likely to brush it off because it is a major aspect of human culture (ie. Léon) or unless it is extremely comical or obvious (ie. The Idol).
> As a result of viewing all media is bigoted, I do not believe in ethical media consumption. I am actually quite morally against this concept due to me it naturally results in hypocrisy. But I am also against analyzing without thought. I believe all media can show important aspects of the work itself, the author, or the society we exist in.
> Example One (The Promised Neverland): I dislike The Promised Neverland as a result of Sister Krone. I believe it is hard to pinpoint one problem with her due to her entire character being an "idea" of an African powerful Black woman. Her facial features get across otherness, along with her skin tone and mass. The reason even her anime redesign can't save her is because of the way she is written. No design can remove her from her meaning to be a powerful protagonist whose power is associated with Blackness. I think Sister Krone is important in the context of The Promised Neverland and can't easily be removed. She can even be liked by the viewer despite her offensiveness. I hate her but other Black people are fond of her at times. I do not consider The Promise Neverland to be “unethical media consumption” but it personally makes me uncomfortable to watch
> Example Two (Durarara!): Simon Brezhnev from Durarara! has elements of many Black caricatures. He is large and has that fish lip vintage cartoons love along with animators from various studios. Simon is an extension to me of a lot of Black stereotypes of men in the media in general. He's big and theorized to be the strongest man in Ikebukuro. I do not really.. feel very strongly about him because he is every Black male stereotype in the media. Durarara! was watched quite a bit. People would say blanket statements about how he is racist, ignore him, just like him, or say “It’s just like that in anime” and not really care. I just think he’s overall a pleasant person in the work itself which makes it hard to really feel strongly about him, unlike Sister Krone, who is just a villain.
> Example Three (Carole and Tuesday) The Mermaid Sisters were the biggest piece of discourse post the release of Carole and Tuesday. They were reacted to at the time as being Black transfeminine caricatures.. which they are, but I do feel there is more to the picture here. In a world where a lot of gender ties back to whiteness, especially white men and women, I just think depictions of nonbinary characters needs to be done way better or else they fall onto the transphobic stereotypes of the past. I know trans masculine people who really like The Mermaid Sisters and transfem people who dislike them. And people across the gender spectrum who have a variety of feelings in between. Ultimately, to me, a lot of that would've been better if they weren't joke characters. They make it to the competition then can't even finish their song and have a violent tantrum while appearing to be Black and transfem. They are Cute to me, but they really do play off every single transfem stereotype by the end of their run.. If the person who wrote them was not transfeminine, I feel like watching media with trans and GNC Black people and studying its reception (positive and negative) would've been really helpful. I have other thoughts. I do think The Mermaid Sisters are kind of based on drag queens, but they are not drag queens.. They are nonbinary. It completely fails even if it was not the creators intent. The way Carole and Tuesday handles the nonbinary and androgynous characters is sometimes.. bizarre in general which does not help. I just wanted to continue my line of thought with them.
The Actual Irredeemable Media of my Heart
> Let's begin. I dislike words like Nazi, Klan Member, TERF, etc being thrown around because they are tied to very specific ideologies. Nazis killed millions of Jewish people. Klan Members burned Black churches. TERFs celebrate the deaths and share the SA of trans women online. We have words to describe bigotry already that are facets of these groups that don't remove the weight of these words.
> Media written with the ideology of these groups (and adjacent ones) are truly the irredeemable types to me, and I consider it to be important to actively fight against propaganda. Propaganda is defined as "the spreading of ideas, information, or rumors for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person" by Merriam Dictionary. This is kind of a vague definition which is why what propaganda is or is not is widely debated upon. The true arbiters who decide what is or isn’t propaganda in culture tend to be academics far removed from all of the discourse, whether it be to distance or time.
> Authors and people who do not write can be affected by propaganda, whether it is large or small, even after the decline of organizations spreading this propaganda or their philosophies spread to other groups. Perhaps Nazi eugenicists aren’t being funded to the degree they used to but many uneducated people still believe Black people are naturally stronger than white people. This is still prominent in how we are depicted in fiction.
> Modern propaganda is still being made and affecting people outside of your minority group, whether or not people choose to acknowledge it.
> Example One (Birth of a Nation): I don't have the energy to explain why this is racist. The film uses the same title as a 1915 KKK propaganda film because it is explicitly aligning itself with Ku Klux Klan ideology. I do not call it Nazism especially since The KKK still exists. It is a white supremacist film. I need it to be understood that while it is obvious to people in the Leftist, queer, and feminist spheres that this movie is total ass, it is highly regarded amongst people who strongly believe its message and could be considered a “successful” piece of propaganda that can turn people. Its message needs to be actively fought against but a blank “this is irredeemable” message is stupid. I know people who have watched this film who were easily swayed by it. My thoughts on racism and how white people engage with anti-Black film are not positive on every side of the spectrum.
> Example Two (What Is a Woman?): A film that pushes beliefs popular amongst gender critical individuals (TERFs, conservatives, etc) with no actual statistics, cherry picking of abusive parents and detransitioners, and lying to trans rights activists who showed in the film. It is transmisogynistic obviously though it has eye rolling conservative misogyny too. "I need a big man to help me open this jar". This film is really loved by transphobes and conservatives despite a lot of the depictions in it being extremely easy to shoot down. It is loved really as a result of ignorance. While transphobes love it, someone who is not educated on the trans community can easily be convinced by its propaganda in a similar way to Death of a Nation, especially because a lot of statistics for trans people are being actively misrepresented as TERFs get a stronger foothold in the UK, conservatives focus on actively targeting trans people, and men in general are trying to actively push misogynistic ideals throughout society again. It’s important to differentiate these different groups and how they work together, especially since these groups’ ideals tend to even misalign with each other but they work together to oppress trans people along with pushing the misogynic rhetoric that feminists of the 20th century fought against.
> Example Three (Manga Kenkanryu): I am not Korean or Japanese and well, I am not Asian at all, but I do consume a lot of Japanese and Korean media and feel I must mention this. I can easily name Birth of a Nation and What is a Woman because I am an American who is forced to see everything. While I can try to understand the nature of propaganda and the legacies of offensive stereotypes in countries I choose to consume content from, I cannot ever fully comprehend it. However, I do have eyeballs. Anyone who denies anti-Blackness in Japan is ignoring it, but something I do think that is easy to miss in Japanese media if you are not actively looking for is xenophobia and Japanese nationalism.
In the 2010s, Attack on Titan was a major aspect of discourse due to antisemitism discourse, and while I understand why this discourse appeared, I dislike that it was spoken about in a vacuum. Though, I also just cannot discuss the subject I was to delve into well even if I observe it because I am really not as educated as I’d like to be on it, but I recommend reading about its history and propaganda made for this to at least try to put yourself in the shoes of minorities affected by Japanese nationalism. Manga Kenkanryu is a good example of this in that it overlaps otaku culture and anti-Korean sentiment. It was extremely popular at the time of its release which is how I was able to easily find it. But more things like this exist.. whether or not they are translated or accessible. I don’t think AOT is propaganda like Manga Kenkanryu. Honestly. I don’t have any strong feelings on Attack on Titan because I view it as a war story which I just am not skilled enough to analyze, but if you choose to analyze it with a pro or against attitude, I think it's important to explore why you feel this way about the media itself rather than explicitly going “the author is nationalist” or “it is antisemitic.” I really feel like a lot of critiques of AOT exist for a lot of war media in general. I am bringing up AOT because it is the most popular example in recent memory and it’s really how I got introduced to Korean War denialism in Japan.
> I chose these three specific pieces of media because while a lot of media exists made by various groups that act as propaganda, these are modern pieces of fiction enjoyed by people from various groups who fall for their propaganda. There is a common attitude of things being left in the past, but it is not. It is still visible in the work you like. I just don’t think it’s possible to completely analyze a creator’s belief based on their fiction along with the fact that it is just not.. really feasible. You choosing to not consume a piece of media like AOT won’t change its popularity but understanding critiques around it and certain beliefs of the author / that are common in Japan will help with analysis of this media. It helps you also differentiate AOT fans who have fascist beliefs versus those who don’t believe AOT is genuinely a good story. Anime fans are somewhat notorious for having a tendency to wear nazi symbolism for a reason. Did you know they do it with symbolism of other hate organizations too?
> They are by all means “successful” and to actively fight against them requires the ability to analyze media and being educated about the topics you align yourself with. I’m not really saying you should consume this media. Don’t. Oh my god. But like, this media is made by people who twist history on purpose and tend to ignore a lot of statistics and research papers.. Do you really think calling something bigoted as a blanket statement stands up to an intentionally made piece of propaganda? A “good” person doesn’t have to make something convincing. To just call something bigoted without thinking about it makes sense for propaganda in some regards, but as you push this label onto other pieces of media, it simply becomes a synonym for not caring. If people online think you dislike something problematic, then who cares?
Censorship, Misogyny, Anti-Anime Sentiments
> I need it to be understood that I have very complex beliefs on the globalization of Japanese media and uses of words like lolicon. I wish orientalism was talked about more. The popularization/ironic use of the word “weeb” to me is a sign of not caring. Another thing is the lolicon wars. While I don’t view the western use of the word lolicon as an alignment with pedophiles, I think its constant push and assignment to girls in fiction and its presence everywhere is misogynistic and irritating, especially for women. I hate the word lolicon, and I wish that we could describe cute girls without using the word loli. I’d probably hate it a lot less if it were used specifically to refer to “lolicon” as a genre, but it is not.
> Even beyond that, I view the lolicon push in anime to be anti-women in general. The manga Disappearance Diary has an entire page dedicated to how it was created to push against yaoi, another popular fetish genre. While it did successfully bring more men to Comiket, now every anime space is full of lolicon and sexualized young girls. Just cute art styles and liking works with young women makes it hard to avoid the entire lolicon sphere. Even none 18+ works by women who have nothing to do with lolicon are still lumped into being lolicon despite art styles even associated with lolicon branched off a shojo, a medium created originally created BY WOMEN aimed AT WOMEN. While shojo did also have a very large focus on young girls, the depiction of their image as something to be viewed as almost voyeuristic (regardless of the gender of the author) has become ingrained into discussions of anime. Now, ALL cute girls are lolicons, and if you like girlishness in anime, of course, you MUST LIKE LOLIS
> This is not a anime only problem and did not start with the popularization of lolicon (though it is really common in anime.) Everything associated with cuteness and girlhood is now associated with fetishes LIKE lolicon. Whether it’s lolicon, ageplay, DDLG, etc, it is extremely irritating to enjoy cute things as a girl because girliness has to be for a fetish. Fetishes to me require consent, but it feels like you are constantly dragged into them for liking cute things and people take pleasure in that fact if you are a girl. In anime spheres, it’s with lolicon, outside of them, it’s with other fetishes.
> While I think that attraction/sexualization of girlishness is prominent across cultures, anime is affected by the proxy of its popularity and anti-anime sentiments. And well, with fiction, some stores only distribute fiction and the most popular “underage” NSFW works nowadays tend to be Japanese. I view it as being anime specific though because if something is in an anime art style, it is more likely to face censorship and difficulties from distributors because of the lolicon (and by proxy shotacon) shadow casted over the world. A sissy or DDLG fetish game done with a Western art style is less likely to face distribution problems than if its art style were more “moe.”
> So, I am anti-censorship. While I do hate lolicon and prefer to keep talk of it out of my spaces, I don’t think platforms can be trusted to censor “lolicon.” Along with the fact that while I dislike lolicon, it is a very big part of otaku culture and history. It affects “non-lolicon work.” I think focusing on censoring results in harshly cracking down on cute or "girly" art styles and affects everyone negatively as a whole, especially the people censorship laws claim to protect. And well, while I think platforms can moderate how they like, with major distributors, they often don’t care about moderation, they care about profits. A site like Vgen can moderate underage NSFW and “lolicon” because the moderators are aware of the cultures and subjects, but with larger entities like Mastercard (and by proxy stores that need good payment processor relations), they consider it better to be safe than sorry. Now every anime girl is a “loli.” And well, depictions that are gotten away with in Western media (any high school setting with cute girls; the entire slasher high school genre) gets moderated more harshly because it is anime or Japanese.
> Lastly, while I dislike lolicon as a genre and subject of fascination for artists, as I mentioned, it is a big part of Japanese anime culture. I don't think of loli as a word in my vocabulary because I hate it. I think a lot of girls are lumped into being a "loli" when I don't think I'd ever view them as that if it weren't for the culture they're in, but like, sometimes, the original artists might be a lolicon, consider the girls they draw to be lolis even if they are not a "lolicon" or popular culture has deemed a girl as a loli. I can hate it if I think about it (like I did above), but in truth, it is indistinguishable to me when looking at artwork I enjoy. I have no way of knowing how an artist felt when they drew a cute girl looking lacksaidaiscal, and if I learn later, I, as an adult woman, feel as though I do not need to be told "the artist is a lolicon." I don't think the word "lolicon" differentiates a certain kind of consumer/artist from other misogynistic concepts and ideas in our culture. It is inescapable. I am not going to tear my hair out over it.
> I had my friend read this after I read it who is often much more succinct than me and I wanted to include what she said.
i am a bit older than you, but it was (& still is) rampant in the mainstream television media i grew up with (even if we're not in the television commercial era anymore). young girls aren't seen as people, they are seen as objects that men (& patriarchal society as a whole) can push their view on. without agency, they are seen as nothing more than objects, which is willful cruelty but cruelty that is baked into the culture itself
people like to claim things are different or have changed now, but it's just the same message in a different color of candy wrapper
