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Anime/Manga BBC Interviews Girls und Panzer’s Character Designer – “Fiction like This Should Be Banned”

Pinkie-Dawn

Vampire Waifu
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I was debating whether I should post this news here or at the Anime & Manga subforum, but what I have to say about this would lean more towards the Discussions & Debate subforum.

Takeshi Nogami, the character designer of the Girls und Panzer anime, went on Twitter recently about an interview he had with the BBC about his work. Nogami was interviewed by English Journalist Stacey Dooley, who was questioning him on the topic of sexualizing children condemned his work on the anime and mentioned that all fiction like Girls und Panzer would be banned throughout the entire 3 hour interview.

Nogami is one of the original character designers of the 2012 anime Girls Und Panzer and assisted in the designs of the Shirobako OVA. He has also worked on various manga such as the Strike Witches manga adaptations, Shidenkai no Maki and Koutetsu no Shoujo-tachi.

According to the various Tweets from Nogami, he had an interview session with BBC's Stacey Dooley for roughly 3 hours for her documentary on young sex workers in Japan (full documentary below). He noted that their stances during the interview were polar opposites; Nogami thinks that all humans inherently have 'dirty desires'.Whilst Dooley's stance is that humans have no 'dirty desires' but are corrupted to have such thoughts through media depicting sinful material such as erotica, pedophillia and gore.

Nogami sums up Dooley's position in the interview as that of a hitman from Rei Hiroe's Black Lagoon who is determined to bring justice to pedophiles and producers of pedophilic content. He also mentions that justice can be scary when it manifests into people and infects them. Nogami mentions that this topic should not even be touched when poverty still exists in the UK. Dooley, however, ignored his statement. Dooley states that in order to tackle child abuse all fiction like Girls und Panzer should to be banned.

Nogami argues that the UK should solve the issue of poverty before tackling child abuse, and insists that legalising such fiction would result in a lowered crime rate. He assumes that this is a common line of thought for countries in the Commonwealth (explaining that you can be arrested for having pornographic comics in Canada) so his words won't be able to reach her.

Dooley's closing statement in the interview asks Nogami

"Why don't you Japanese people follow what the UK does?"

 Nogami rebuts:

"Why don't you British people follow Japan, since we're more civilized, and have lower crime rate than the UK?"

He thinks that this is where the Commonwealth should start thinking on the lines of.
Here is the full translation of Nogami's Tweets from Twitter user @walterinsect:

"I was interviewed by this lady at my workplace. One-on-one Q&A session for three hours. Through that I realized one most important thing. I was thinking about releasing it online as manga but… The core difference between this interviewer and myself was the attitude towards human being. My position is… "all human beings have "dirty desires". Isn't it better to be vented appropriately?". On the contrary…Ms Susie(sic) stated this. "All human beings are naturally innocent and have no "dirty desires" and reading media…media depicting erotic, pedophilic, and gore contents will affect them to be corrupted". Then I realized.So the definition of human being, or Operating System(sic) is different. After three hour long interview, this realization was the most productive experience, I think. Oh, on top of that, she said, with a look of a hitman in BLACK LAGOON, "My desire is to put all pedophiles, and ones who produce pedophilic media into jail". Ah, "Justice" is kinda scary when it infects people. Isn't she trying to substitute everything into the subject of that sentence? It's been two times where I was interviewed like this. She ignored me when I said… "Don't look at us to turn away from your problem within the UK"…. During the interview, we touched upon ways that we can tackle the child abuse issues in Commonwealth world. She said "banning all fictions like this!". I suggested "Well, solve poverty first. Legalizing fictions that has no victims will lower the crime rate". She seemed like she didn't get the idea. It seems that her view is a common one throughout the Commonwealth countries (that's why you get arrested… for having porn comic in Canada), so objection in words might not help much. It might be better to foster… young, enthusiastic "comrades" within them. Ms Susie(sic) asked me, with formal voice, "Why don't you Japanese people follow what the UK does?" so I answered… "Why don't you British people follow Japan, since we're more civilized, and have lower crime rate than the UK?". I think the starting line is here."

Dooley's interview with Nogami is part of her research into the sexualisation of children in Japan that aired on BBC3. You can see the full documentary here:

Girls und Panzer is an original anime series that aired from October 2012 till March 2013. The series is produced by studio Actas (Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch Pure, Switch) and directed by Tsutomu Mizushima (Another, Shinryaku! Ika Musume). Four manga adaptations of the series were produced since 2012, all of which are published by Media Factory. A light novel adaptation was also produced in 2012, as well as a video game based on the series that released on the PlayStation Vita in June 2014. An anime film titled Girls und Panzer der Film was released on November 21st, 2015 and became one of the highest grossing anime movies. The film is being followed up by Girls Und Panzer: The Final Chapter, a 6 part film series that will release its first chapter this December.

Here is a synopsis of the series from MAL:

"You may have heard of kung fu, but the girls at Oarai High School practice gun-fu—really, really BIG 75mm gun-fu, in fact. It's called Sensha-do, and it's the martial art of operating armored tanks! They take it seriously too, and since winning the national Sensha-do championship is such a huge deal at Oarai, they sometimes go to extreme ends in order to get the best students from Panzer class to sign up. Which is how Miho Nishizumi, who HATES operating tanks, gets drafted to join doomsday-driven driver Mako, even-triggered gunner Hana, highly receptive radio operator Saori and combustible tank-fangirl and loader Yukari as the incomparable Anko Team. They may not be on the half-track to fame and fortune, and maybe a few of them would rather shop for tank tops than become tops in tanks, but once their focus is locked and loaded, they're absolutely driven."

Whether or not you agree/disagree with Nogami or Dooley, both sides do bring compelling arguments. Watch the full documentary with Nogami's thoughts in mind before coming to a conclusion.

Source: http://www.otakutale.com/2017/bbc-i...-designer-fiction-like-this-should-be-banned/

I've previously made a thread about the concept of a country trying to change another country's culture in order to "normalize" them. This is what I'm seeing from this article. Western society, which involves both the U.S. and Europe, won't stop at nothing until it pressures Japan to abandon their own culture and adopt western culture, because what's part of Japanese culture (children between 13 and 17 dressed sexually in fiction) isn't considered "normal" to the west. Contrary to what's been told about lolicon not being real, it still falls under child pornography laws due to anyone under 18 marked as a "child," and it's part of "digital images." This isn't limited to just sexualized fictional minors though, but also whale hunting, death by overworking, and decreasing population.
 
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because what's part of Japanese culture (children between 13 and 17 dressed sexually in fiction) isn't considered "normal" to the west

People in Japan, that is, Japanese people, also don't care for the sexualization of children. What is culturally Japanese is not to make waves or call people out unnecessarily. So people let weeaboos/otakus/etc. do their own thing. They are still a small (marginal?) group in Japan, but they have a fairly well established industry (animation) which has some crossover appeal, but only with bigger name titles or the non-weeaboo-ish stuff like Ghibli and kids' shows.

Anyway, my default stance is not to ban things unless there's a good reason. I don't know about this series so I can't really say how egregious it is.
 

Pinkie-Dawn

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I don't know about this series so I can't really say how egregious it is.

Girls und Panzer contains little to no sexualized content (apart from a beach episode), but the reputation of moe-style anime as creepy otaku-pandering snuff has made it a victim to the hatedom from western groups for said reputation.
 

Hands

I was saying Boo-urns
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Sexualisation of children is wrong. I don't care how much you're in it for the "plot" (though let's be frank, a lot of paedotoons have terrible, terrible plots to begin with) it's wrong.

I've had a very lengthy discussion with Gimmiepie before about how to tackle Paedophilia in society and we both came to a similar conclusion that paedophiles who do not act on their urges deserve help and compassion because they're clearly ill. Toons that sexualise children and normalise paedophilia are directly dangerous to both children and to paedophiles who do not wish to act. It's sick. It's not about changing another country's culture, Japan imports a load of toons to the West, it's a global industry now.
 
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Yeah, Hands and I have had some weird discussions.

I have to say though, I actually disagree with him on the point of what is acceptable in an animated medium. I don't think it's really that bad to sexualise any form of animated fictional character so long as you're aiming at a relevant target audience. I also disagree that this sort of thing could encourage paedophilia/abuse. It seems to me an outlet that doesn't hurt anyone could only be a good thing. Of course, no government/institution has ever had the balls to actually research this so it's hard to say.

As for comments on culture... this isn't really that big a part of Japanese culture and represents a rather small and niche subset even over there. Western countries tend to have a really warped perception of what is considered "okay" in Japan.
 

machomuu

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Ah, somehow I can always tell what it's gonna be about the moment I read the thread starter. It's been almost a year, hasn't it? Good times.

moe-style anime as creepy otaku-pandering
Spoiler:

Gonna leave that there since I think that statement is horribly open-ended and incorrect because of its open-ended nature. Assuming moe has to do with the sexualization of anything is already a misappropriation of the term, and no one's really gonna look at you weird if you happen to have a thing for Nausicaa since she's probably got the most sexual appeal of any of Miyazaki's characters and, at the time, people called her a lolita.

(though let's be frank, a lot of paedotoons have terrible, terrible plots to begin with)
I dunno about that. Shows like Lyrical Nanoha, Magical Girl Raising Project (for a lesser-but-recent example), and the Monogatari series are all series that have child sexualization to fair extents but are watched by pretty broad audiences (especially the last two and definitely the last one) and are praised for their plots, if not their character interaction. Yeah, there is a market for cute girls doing cute things and shows that ground themselves on that basis, but I can't good and well say that these shows generally set themselves up for having bad and lazy plots because of their setup or anything like that.

paedotoons tho. Heh.

I've had a very lengthy discussion with Gimmiepie before about how to tackle Paedophilia in society and we both came to a similar conclusion that paedophiles who do not act on their urges deserve help and compassion because they're clearly ill. Toons that sexualise children and normalise paedophilia are directly dangerous to both children and to paedophiles who do not wish to act. It's sick. It's not about changing another country's culture, Japan imports a load of toons to the West, it's a global industry now.
I've talked about this before and while I could just copypasta what I said, I think I can cliffnotes it pretty easily. Girls und Panzer isn't Kodomo no Jikan. Girls und Panzer is about highschool girls who happen to be short and have bigger features on their smaller bodies. Kodomo no Jikan is a RomCom about a nine year old and the relationship with her teacher.

The reason I'm saying this is because Kodomo no Jikan's pretty infamous for what it is. Girls und Panzer's famous because it has a catchy theme song and the fact that it's about fucking tanks. Not fucking tanks, but that they are tanks. No kids here.

Your Kodomo no Jikans are pretty dime a dozen, and even in the case that someone does like a Kodomo no Jikan specifically for the girls in it, it doesn't mean they're a pedo, it means they're a 2D lolicon. Because they like anime girls, not real children. The problem that I have everytime I hear this pedophilia perpetuation theory is that there are a literal fuckton of normal-ass people- even on this very forum- who are into lolis and shotas but wouldn't touch a real child because they're not even the same fucking ball park. Excuse the fucks. Hell, half the reason people are into them is because they have features that children don't, and that this would enable people to go out and try to draw in real children...it doesn't make sense to me. It's the same with a lot of anime characters, really. There's a reason that a character from something like To-Love Ru is gonna be more attractive than, say, someone from Flowers of Evil, and why you see a lot more fan art of the former than the latter, because Flowers of Evil are normal ass people and To-Love Ru are girls that clearly don't look real and have proportions that are made to appeal to a wide array of audiences. Sexually.

I actually find it a bit funny because people who don't watch anime (not all of them, of course) generally act as if anime fans- well, otaku- can't really distinguish between fiction and reality, and while in some cases that's true, I don't think there's anywhere where that's more untrue than when it comes to sexual attraction. Hell, oftentimes anime fans will go out of their way to distinguish between 2D and 3D, such to the point that's become a meme.

Anyway, my point is, if pedophiles can't get their real world fix, anime isn't going to be the thing to do it for them. Largely because it isn't made for pedophiles and the two really don't overlap. The vice versa's true, too. And until we get shows that do look like Flowers of Evil sexualizing children, I don't think that's going to change anytime soon.
 

Sir Codin

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Overall, I personally question the wisdom of anyone who casts moral judgement on a work of fiction, especially one with no real human beings involved to speak of and built around pure fantasy.

I honestly cringe when I see works like this or something that is especially "I don't care what you slap on, if that thing looks like a child or quacks like a child it's a child," but I don't think it's necessary to ban them on these grounds alone, especially when there's little scientific evidence supporting either side of the issue.
 
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