First things first: Yes, this is a sensitive subject. No, I'm not running cover for the pedo that used to run rampant here. I am honestly seeking answers.
I asked about this a long time ago, and if I recall, what really happened was that mangaka Nobuhiro Watsuki had his house raided, where they found lots of porn DVDs--one of which had an underage girl on it...who, so I'm told, was maybe two months under Japan's age of consent.
Which means either she lied about her age to do it (not unheard of), or was forced into it. It's not like she was eight years old.
He had a ton of porn, but that one disc ruined everything.
Now, obviously that's really bad. But I need further context about the case and if he deserved to be condemned. No, don't show me the disc contents, good lord.
I know that he got basically a slap on the wrist from the Japanese courts and was allowed to return to work. But since it's the 30th anniversary, a lot of other manga artists are paying tribute to the series today, including Yoshihiro Togashi, the creator of Hunter X Hunter and Yu Yu Hakusho, despite his debilitating health problems.
But not everyone agreed to do it. Hirohiko Araki, creator of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, made a really lazy tribute that was basically just lineart of Kenshin's head with the hair colored. One of the few that outright refused to participate was Tite Kubo, creator of Bleach.
And if it's true that this was a mild case, and we condemn him for it...then I hope we also condemn anyone who has a complete collection of every game released for the original Xbox, because a game called The Guy Game had a girl who lied about her age to be in it, then flashed the camera, meaning that game is, by the letter of the law, legally considered to be child porn.
Never heard of this case, but assuming you've represented everything fully and accurately, people virtue signaling over it are retarded and out of line. If you want to take the "porn bad in general" stance that's totally fine, but to treat him as eternally morally reprehensible for what seems like a trivial accident that might not even be his fault is a bit much.
And even if he was aware, the whole "5 days before 18 you're an irredeemable monster but 1 day after is totally cool" thing is blatantly retarded on its face.
It's one of the reasons why there's 'romeo and juliet' laws in certain places because some older teen girls can be so mature they can easily handle the psychological aspect of sex than men their age. And thanks to how HEAVILY porn has been subtly but now more openly promoted, it isn't too far to think some of them lie about their age be a few weeks to be in them.
At being too strict with laws than looking at it case by case leads to the culture of having websites COUNTING DOWN when a famous teen turns 18, THAT is disturbing..
I think its less about them being mature and more about it being pretty much impossible to stop older high schooler from banging younger high schoolers. And that technically under law they are either both child rapists or that on a random birthday their relationship would go from standard teen romance to a horrific felony that would ruin their life.
Its a necessary legal ambiguity to not make the law into a farce of prosecuting everyone alive. Without something like it, you get the stories of high schoolers getting charged of CP for nudes of their SO or even themselves.
As I was just discussing in another thread, you cannot trust anything the Japanese legal system says. They can and will lock you in an interrogation room and beat you until you sign a confession to the crime, and its a well known fact in the country that that is the case going back decades. Between the knowledge of that and the strong social shaming element of their whole society, no amount of "we found X" or "he accepted the charges" mean anything whatsoever.
But CP possession wasn't illegal in Japan until like 2014, and historically a lot of "model" teen girls had nude shoots sold publicly because Japan. He was charged in 2017. We can't truly wax about situations like this when so many different elements are completely different than our own. Its not a man doing something clearly and well known to be ultra evil by all of society, its something that was perfectly normal until just a few years prior and he was merely charged with owning it. If they said he was producing or distributing it, it would hold a lot more "morally evil" weight.
I spent a lot of time as a weeb, consuming more Japanese media than I probably should have been. Not just anime, but actual novels and "mainstream" media too. And these things are so normalized that it barely blips anyone there. Its a problem that is beyond simple "stop making lolicon media" in terms of solving.
It's the same thing outside Japan too.
A lot of drawn 2D content (especially non-pornographic) was never even questioned, let alone illegal. Now apparently they represent the real abuse of children. They're literally drawings. And it opens up a horrid gray area in the law where if you scribble down a depiction of child abuse (like Steve-O's sick little "ostrich" tattoo), should you be held legally accountable over a doodle? Historical precedent says yes.
The SCOTUS however literally said no, and it was pretty specific about it. As long as a real child wasn't involved and its not indistinguishable from being a real child it was protected speech. This was pre-Photoshop but their ruling seemed like it would cover that as well quite handily.
So the Bush administration passed another law that basically said "we are just gonna ignore that and return to the Miller test" (which basically says if its gross enough it stops being protected, so completely arbitrary) and its remained that way since because no one wants to be the guy that goes to the SCOTUS again for that.
Its one of those things where everyone knows they don't have a solid footing to make it illegal over, no matter how disgusting they may find it, so instead they rely entirely on social shaming to basically ruin your worse than legality.
I dunno, but I enjoyed the show. I never read the manga.
Hot take:
I don't care. Someone on the literal other side of the Earth may or may not have done something that 100% didn't DIRECTLY harm anyone (he was never accused of creating, merely possessing, which INDIRECTLY harms by creating demand, but it's the person buying stolen "discount" goods versus the person stealing products to sell at "discount", one is clearly worse than the other.) but may or may not have INDIRECTLY harmed one other person on the literal other side of the Earth.
If he jailbaited, he got jebaited and should get his wrist slapped, as should the legal-less-a-day girl if it was voluntary on her part (and an entrapment charge), and the producer of the content should get something more severe for not proper vetting if unknowing, and much more severe if knowingly.
But ultimately... I don't care. Ruroni Kenshin was a decent anime... And I don't know anything about the creator other than supposed this or supposed that. Made In Abyss is a decent anime, and the creator has all sorts of unsavory rumors about themselves, but the anime is decent.
If every year, we had a "Paint Farm Landscapes In Realism Styles" day to remember Hitler's true calling of the art school graduate artist that he should have been instead of mad dictator, I wouldn't care. You're looking at non-illegal non-contentious content. The only contention is the creator's other actions. Condemn those actions specifically, and condemn them hard. Just... reinforce the glass on your houses first.
If Bleach's mangaka wants to make a panel about how sexualizing high school women is bad, maybe he can feature Orihime in it in a skintight outfit with highlight cutouts, like her standard outfit for a third the series, tut tutting Ruroni Kenshin's author for doing so. Oh wait...
Art from the artist, to simplify your comment down into four words. Which has historically always been how we treated contentious fellows from history.
The point I noticed things started to change was in the wake of Chris Benoit's murder-suicide. Suddenly you're just not allowed to talk about him anymore. Can't play him in any of the games. A brilliant wrestler but who suffered horrific mental decline thanks to his working style that we now know is unsafe, and did one of the most heinous acts imaginable. It does not change the fact he was still a tremendous athlete.
Stone Cold Steve Austin put it best.
"Chris Benoit, the wrestler? Loved him. Chris Benoit, the man I knew? Loved him. Chris Benoit, the man who did what he did? Unforgivable. Bottom line."
Is this really an accurate representation? I always heard “pedo,” but this sounds more like “completely unaware of the a fuckup he had no reason to see coming.” Did he make the disc himself? Why did the police raid him at all, anyway? That doesn’t just randomly happen to people. I suspect you might be leaving some context out…
That said, if what you’re saying is an honest and accurate representation of the facts, it does hit on an issue I have with how people use “pedophile.” Strictly, it means and implies “into prepubescent children,” but people use it interchangeably with “attracted to post pubescent women who are biologically adult but below a legal age of consent.” I’m not opposed to the age of consent—you have to set it somewhere, there should be consequences for intentionally violating it, anywhere from 16-18 seems “mostly fine” to me… but to present “attracted to sexually mature women who it might be morally questionable to get involved with because of questions of manipulation and authority” as interchangeable with “attracted to children” is insane.
The problem is, harpies are trying to infantilize woman for as late in their life as possible to prevent them from holding any sort of accountability, especially with the pop science claim that brains don't stop maturing until 25 (which is largely bullshit btw).
21 is a fully autonomous adult in 99% of the civilized world. You can drink, drive, smoke and vote in elections. In most other countries, that limit is 18 (except for buying). A woman's body indicates its sexual maturity once ovulation and menstruation begins, which typically happen considerably earlier. Go back 1000 years in history and there's no doubt there were 14 - 15 year old girls being impregnated by men close to double their age (sometimes even over). But we don't do that anymore because we understand as a species that's fucking creepy and most ninth-graders don't have a fucking clue about the world.
A 38 year old man should be perfectly fine to date a 24 year old woman (provided that's when they start dating). A 14 year gap is hardly the end of the fucking world. But foids are melting down over that idea. A 29 year old man should be able to date a 21 year old woman. And really, at the end of the day, all that matters is the younger party's consent. Leo di Caprio still gets more pussy than a typical foid simp because in spite of his age, he's still somewhat of a hunk with his hair intact, a high quality of life and a lot of fame. And women want that.
To the degree that isn't bullshit, it could be turned around as an argument traditional younger marriages (like, not 30), to finish the development of the prefontal cortex while working out a relationship that needs to last another 60+ years. Seems like if that part of the brain matures as a single woman, it's likely to help keep her that way.
It's what I was aware of at the time of writing.
Your second paragraph is a fair point, however.
Honestly unless someone has the police report there's no way to know for sure. Some sources like crunchyroll's (assuming we can even trust that) say there was a lot more than just one dvd.
"During the investigation for another child pornography crime, the police learned that Watsuki purchased some DVDs of early teen girls. Then its youth guidance division searched his house and found about 100 child pornography DVDs."
Who knows? Unlike other people he at least got to keep some amount of his career.
I've been a Kenshin fan for about 25 years now. I rewatched it recently as well: often childish, often cheesy, but still an excellent show and still one of my favorites.
Watsuki probably is a real, actual, pedo. My understanding is that he has quite the status in Japan and I feel confident in the hunch that his story was padded as much as possible upon release.
That being said, Kenshin doesn't have a single drop of satanic degeneracy in it, through its entire run. The only thing even faintly whiffing of being pedophilic was Aoshi and Misao, but it's clear that's more of a teenage crush than anything.
I often wonder for myself where I should draw the line with art, and I decide to let the art speak for itself. Kenshin is a wholesome, heroic tale with continually positive values. Contrast this to something like Sandman after the reveal that Gaiman is a weird sex-pervert: Sandman, while it has moments of brilliance, is essentially a story about Gaiman himself with unending depths of degeneracy and humiliation. Its main character is a male feminist both literally and figuratively and by the end of all ten books, you see exactly what you'd expect to see from a male feminist lead.
So yeah, Watsuki being a pedo is horrendous. I'm still going to show my kids Kenshin when they're old enough. I have recently sold my Sandman collection because I don't want my kids anywhere near it.
Apparently the laws are really lax about possessing certain underage stuff (not sure how much, if it was jailbait or worse) but apparently he had SO MUCH OF IT that what got him in trouble was that law enforcement assumed that he was a distributor.
Haha no worries. Obviously the answer is no....
She was for the streets.
That sounds suspiciously close to Pee Wee Herman.
Pee Wee Herman deliberately got caught in a theater to leverage the morality clause in his contract to end a (more or less) exploitive business relationship.
His incident was completely victimless.
I was talking about when they found nude pictures of kids in his house
Google search says hi.
I remember the anime and hating that nagging bitch Kaoru.
Like let the fucking guy fight without you always screaming in the background.
Afaik, not more so than a lot of japanese otaku
The Guy Game would just have been more realistic thanks to her. I hate that one guy who keeps making alt accounts and talking about 13 year olds, but even I'll admit many young women are hoes that would lie about their age in similar situations.
Less reason to feel guilty about 🏴☠️ing it