Cognisant
Prolific Member
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- Yesterday 4:35 PM
- Joined
- Dec 12, 2009
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Oh yes, we're going to have this discussion.
From an industry regulation standpoint the issue is a lot like those around video games (which are also heavily censored in Australia), games studios like to keep pushing the boundaries, poking the proverbial bear and they keep poking incrementally harder just to see how much they can get away with (both in terms of content and anti-consumer practices) until it predictably blows up in their faces and they get mauled by the bear (bans, restrictions, prohibitions, etc).
I don't think anyone can deny that the anime/hentai and peripheral paraphernalia and products industries have been poking the bear for a long time, the whole tentacles in hentai phenomenon exists because Japan banned depictions of both male and female genitalia so the animators worked around the issue. This only serves to antagonize legislator's further, rather than focusing on business continuity (and to be fair these are businesses, no money no business) it may have been prudent for the industry to exercise a degree of introspection and consider why they're being legislated against, what exactly is the perceived problem?
Granted not all perceived problems are actual problems, using a dildo in the shape of a non-human penis is arguably an act of bestiality or rather a simulated act of bestiality in which there's no animal involved, just a funny shaped lump of silicone and since there's no animal involved there's no issue of consent so... what exactly is the issue here? Arguably it's practice for the real act and if someone's practicing something that demonstrates intent to do it, well that's a bit of a loose argument and it sits uncomfortably close to the realm of thought crime. If someone using a non-human dildo is guilty of intention to commit bestiality then what about people on an internet forum speculating about how to get away with robbing a bank or how to get away with murder, for that matter what about anyone who commits murder and theft in the GTA games?
They are literally simulating the acts of theft and murder...
Of course we're not just talking about funny shaped dildos here but rather sex toys of all kinds and NSFW figures and other adults only anime/hentai related paraphernalia including what I believe to be the real cause of the issue, sex dolls, particularly those designed to depict people who are under the age of consent. Again I think this comes back to a lack of self awareness and self regulation on behalf of the anime/hentai industry, I don't really watch anime (I'm not subscribed to any of the services) but I see memes and funny clips on Youtube and I quite often find myself watching something which bothers me. Obviously then I'm no expert but even living under a rock I can tell that there's some popular shows where the characters are suspiciously young and engaging in suspiciously sexual activities and frankly I'm not surprised, I've literally been to Tokyo several times so of course I've been to Akihabara and questionable doesn't even begin to cover it.
Certainly there is the issue of the objectification of young women and girls, now the anime/hentai industries have the excuse that there's no underage female actresses involved in things they shouldn't be and that's simply because an adult voice actors can do the job just fine and young male characters are often voiced by female voice actors too. However where anime/hentai is potentially much worse is that it's potentially harder for guardians to tell at a glance how age appropriate a show is going to be without researching it. This is where Youtube is a big problem, people can and often do take scenes out of animated shows intended for adults and put them online where anyone can access them, now Youtube is better than the internet at large but it's not just depictions of intercourse and nudity that's the problem, it's the themes. A child could happen upon a video on youtube that's colorful and appealing to them and be introduced to concepts that they shouldn't be exposed to without the show ever tripping Youtube's censorship. Themes like a character who looks like a child and sounds like a child showing a romantic interest in an adult and there being some implied but unstated benefit for doing so (which a child wouldn't understand) that's absolutely something that needs to stopped.
That being said this isn't a problem that's exclusive to anime/hentai, the same could be said for many TV shows, movies, music videos, heck even romance novels, that last one seems more amusing than serious but consider some of the fan fiction out there and again there's little to stop that content ending up in parts of the internet where it shouldn't be.
Finally there's the issue of body casts being used to make sex dolls which is pretty much just CP, the media may be different but that's like arguing over which video codecs count as CP or not (I'm not typing those exact words because it can be damaging to a site's standing with google) and if that's CP then how much needs to be changed for it to be considered an "original artwork" indeed does the distinction even matter?
This debate interests me because there's a clear delineation and everyone who participates has to err on one side of it or another and either way sets a profound precedent, if original artworks that depict CP are CP then that will fundamentally change the media landscape and not just in terms of CP because depictions of any kind of illegal behavior could fall under the same precedent. It's long been acknowledged that there's an incredible double standard when it comes to the acceptability of adult content vs the acceptability of violence, have we perhaps as a society become unduly desensitized to violence?
Or do we go the "Mah Freedums!" route and declare that anything that doesn't impinge upon consent isn't a problem? Fortunately in that case it would be a simple ruling that given that a child cannot give legal consent and legal consent is required to participate in the production of any product intended to be used for purposes of a sexually stimulating nature that therefore it simply cannot be done legally. This is pretty much how the video pornography industry deals with the issue, there's legal certifications to prove that all participants are verified to be of age and giving consent and being justly paid (the latter I assume, I'm no lawyer much less an expert on the specifics) and it's illegal to trade in certified pornography. Conveniently this serves to starve out the bad stuff, there's not much point buying bootleg moonshine when there's a bar selling perfectly safe and legal beer just down the street and if you absolutely must have the hillbilly moonshine then you've only got yourself to blame when you go blind.
Still the line between inspiration and depiction is a fuzzy one, is an artist who makes a 3D model of a child for the purpose of making an adults only product creating an original work or just depicting an amalgamation of the children they've seen, and does a paint on canvas depiction legally count as CP?
LET THE FLAME WAR BEGIN!
From an industry regulation standpoint the issue is a lot like those around video games (which are also heavily censored in Australia), games studios like to keep pushing the boundaries, poking the proverbial bear and they keep poking incrementally harder just to see how much they can get away with (both in terms of content and anti-consumer practices) until it predictably blows up in their faces and they get mauled by the bear (bans, restrictions, prohibitions, etc).
I don't think anyone can deny that the anime/hentai and peripheral paraphernalia and products industries have been poking the bear for a long time, the whole tentacles in hentai phenomenon exists because Japan banned depictions of both male and female genitalia so the animators worked around the issue. This only serves to antagonize legislator's further, rather than focusing on business continuity (and to be fair these are businesses, no money no business) it may have been prudent for the industry to exercise a degree of introspection and consider why they're being legislated against, what exactly is the perceived problem?
Granted not all perceived problems are actual problems, using a dildo in the shape of a non-human penis is arguably an act of bestiality or rather a simulated act of bestiality in which there's no animal involved, just a funny shaped lump of silicone and since there's no animal involved there's no issue of consent so... what exactly is the issue here? Arguably it's practice for the real act and if someone's practicing something that demonstrates intent to do it, well that's a bit of a loose argument and it sits uncomfortably close to the realm of thought crime. If someone using a non-human dildo is guilty of intention to commit bestiality then what about people on an internet forum speculating about how to get away with robbing a bank or how to get away with murder, for that matter what about anyone who commits murder and theft in the GTA games?
They are literally simulating the acts of theft and murder...
Of course we're not just talking about funny shaped dildos here but rather sex toys of all kinds and NSFW figures and other adults only anime/hentai related paraphernalia including what I believe to be the real cause of the issue, sex dolls, particularly those designed to depict people who are under the age of consent. Again I think this comes back to a lack of self awareness and self regulation on behalf of the anime/hentai industry, I don't really watch anime (I'm not subscribed to any of the services) but I see memes and funny clips on Youtube and I quite often find myself watching something which bothers me. Obviously then I'm no expert but even living under a rock I can tell that there's some popular shows where the characters are suspiciously young and engaging in suspiciously sexual activities and frankly I'm not surprised, I've literally been to Tokyo several times so of course I've been to Akihabara and questionable doesn't even begin to cover it.
Certainly there is the issue of the objectification of young women and girls, now the anime/hentai industries have the excuse that there's no underage female actresses involved in things they shouldn't be and that's simply because an adult voice actors can do the job just fine and young male characters are often voiced by female voice actors too. However where anime/hentai is potentially much worse is that it's potentially harder for guardians to tell at a glance how age appropriate a show is going to be without researching it. This is where Youtube is a big problem, people can and often do take scenes out of animated shows intended for adults and put them online where anyone can access them, now Youtube is better than the internet at large but it's not just depictions of intercourse and nudity that's the problem, it's the themes. A child could happen upon a video on youtube that's colorful and appealing to them and be introduced to concepts that they shouldn't be exposed to without the show ever tripping Youtube's censorship. Themes like a character who looks like a child and sounds like a child showing a romantic interest in an adult and there being some implied but unstated benefit for doing so (which a child wouldn't understand) that's absolutely something that needs to stopped.
That being said this isn't a problem that's exclusive to anime/hentai, the same could be said for many TV shows, movies, music videos, heck even romance novels, that last one seems more amusing than serious but consider some of the fan fiction out there and again there's little to stop that content ending up in parts of the internet where it shouldn't be.
Finally there's the issue of body casts being used to make sex dolls which is pretty much just CP, the media may be different but that's like arguing over which video codecs count as CP or not (I'm not typing those exact words because it can be damaging to a site's standing with google) and if that's CP then how much needs to be changed for it to be considered an "original artwork" indeed does the distinction even matter?
This debate interests me because there's a clear delineation and everyone who participates has to err on one side of it or another and either way sets a profound precedent, if original artworks that depict CP are CP then that will fundamentally change the media landscape and not just in terms of CP because depictions of any kind of illegal behavior could fall under the same precedent. It's long been acknowledged that there's an incredible double standard when it comes to the acceptability of adult content vs the acceptability of violence, have we perhaps as a society become unduly desensitized to violence?
Or do we go the "Mah Freedums!" route and declare that anything that doesn't impinge upon consent isn't a problem? Fortunately in that case it would be a simple ruling that given that a child cannot give legal consent and legal consent is required to participate in the production of any product intended to be used for purposes of a sexually stimulating nature that therefore it simply cannot be done legally. This is pretty much how the video pornography industry deals with the issue, there's legal certifications to prove that all participants are verified to be of age and giving consent and being justly paid (the latter I assume, I'm no lawyer much less an expert on the specifics) and it's illegal to trade in certified pornography. Conveniently this serves to starve out the bad stuff, there's not much point buying bootleg moonshine when there's a bar selling perfectly safe and legal beer just down the street and if you absolutely must have the hillbilly moonshine then you've only got yourself to blame when you go blind.
Still the line between inspiration and depiction is a fuzzy one, is an artist who makes a 3D model of a child for the purpose of making an adults only product creating an original work or just depicting an amalgamation of the children they've seen, and does a paint on canvas depiction legally count as CP?
LET THE FLAME WAR BEGIN!
