Strawberry eggs

[Not Sir Phobos]

Redwolf, the children I was talking about scarring were the children in his class. Noe real life. Imagine being in their shoes, trusting, loving, even having sexual attraction towards someone then one day *boom* surprise I've lied to you all along and by the way I'm the opposite gender. To 14 year old kids that would be seriously hard to take and would give them trust and relationship issues for years to come.

Kuzuha wasn't an advanced 14 year old you can equate to a 20 year old. Kuzuha I would equate more to a 10 year old, obviously she was deficient in her total mental capacities. Look at how ALL the other 14 year olds acted, like adults, Kuzuha on the other hand regressed and was in a perpetual state of childhood and toddler like movement. Now add to that her trying to cope with having feelings for a woman, which she herself feels is wrong, then in the end after coping with her new lesbian self *boom* nope it's a man, a man, by the way, that she avoided the entire series because he scared the crap out of her.

I'm not on a raid here about homosexuality, my point is purely what I stated above.

[Cloud]

Why now? Sorry bob I don't do math.

[wELCOME cONSUMER]

The student is supposedly 18 but only "looks young" because of some medical condition (that only exists in the series, naturally)

No need for medical conditions for fourteen year olds to look like twenty or vice versa. If you've ever tried guessing ages; it's not so easy. If you're trying to guess the age of someone of Asian heritage, it can get much harder. There's always the genetically "lucky"/"unlucky". Makeup can do wonders. Certain trans people can be impossible to guess...even if you know (often an impossible task in itself). There are people in their fourties who could easily pass for twenties, people in their twenties and thirties who could pass as teenagers, some even as young as ~thirteen.

I was simply explaining the plot of Please! Teacher. The male protagonist has some kind of made up condition known as "stand stills" where his body stops growing, or some nonsense. He looks like a kid, which is why Onegai! Teacher falls into that fun category of "Shotacon" in Japanese anime. Which is the sexual obsession with young boys, while Lolicon is the sexual obsession with young girls. Consequently, that phony medical condition was one of the things that turned me off about the series. It was so boring. Since Kei looks like he's 15, he has 15 year old friends and classmates. Several of which also engage in sexual relationships during the series. Please! Teacher should really be called "The Mary Kay Letourneau Story."

Looks have nothing to do with it. I don't care how old someone looks or acts, it's illegal and morally corrupt for an adult to have sex with a child. Period. Under no circumstances is it ok, I don't care what culture, time period, whatever we're talking about. Just because arranged marriages between 13 year olds and 40 year olds took place in the past (Middle East, Africa, Asia), or even in polygamist communities today (Idaho, Utah, Texas), doesn't make it right or acceptable. I understand that life expectancy was different and the objective was procreation but I still find it repulsive. If a person is young but looks older, they should do what Kid Rock claims to do with his groupies: check IDs. Demand to see an ID before you have sex, confirm their age. But the allure here is people who actually look young. This is not about teenagers or 12 year olds who look like adults or act like adults. The attraction, the obsession, is with people who look young and/or are young. That is why it falls into the pederasty tradition.

A quote from Hard Candy sums up my feelings on the subject.

Just because a girl knows how to imitate a woman, does NOT mean she's ready to do what a woman does.

You can find strange or questionable undertones in plenty of anime. Besides the ones I mentioned before, Suki: A Like Story, Card Captor Sakura, Please! Teacher, Ah! My Goddess the movie, here's some more:

Negima makes several asides about Shotaconism; Haunted Junction features a teenage girl who's proud of her crushes on 12 year old boys; Loveless depicts the interactions between Ritsuka (12 years old) and Soubi (his 20 year old stalker); in Ouran High School Host Club Mitsukuni Haninozuka is apparently a senior in high school but looks like an elementary school student - his young appearance allows him to cater to the fetishes of the high school girls; Steel Angel Kurumi features the young Nakahito who's the center of affection for 3 full grown women; Boku no Pico and Enzai are both well known shotacon hentais; in Coyote Ragtime Show the relationship between Mister and Franca could be considered questionable; in El Hazard an obvious "hint" is dropped concerning a relationship between Galus (adult male) and Nahato (young boy from the Phantom Tribe); there's loads of sexual confusion in Evangelion - Asuka's (14) crush on Kaji (30), Misato (29) kisses Shinji (14), Rei's (14) obsession with Gendo (48.) and Gendo's exploitation of this obsession, Gendo placing his hand on Rei's breast when they merge, Shinji masturbating over Asuka's comatose body; Living Game is about a 15 year old girl who moves in with a 25 year old salary man (they eventually have sex and marry); Demon Diary focuses on the interactions between a young androgynous boy and his older mentor/teacher; there are several story arcs in Berserk that graphically deal with rape, pedophilia, incest (Guts' own childhood being one of the most shocking); Kite and Mezzo Forte are regular mainstream animes with hentai segments involving relationships between older men and younger girls. In Kite, Akai regularly rapes Sawa and forces Sawa to become his sex slave. The under age sex scenes were edited in the American release; Maison Ikkoku is about Kyoko Otonashi, a young widow who's courted by a younger man. The problem is, her former husband was a much older man who happened to be her substitute teacher from an all-girl high school.

The list goes on but what's the point? I like anime as much as anyone else on this board and I'm not suggesting people who watch it are perverse (well, some are *looks in mirror* ) but it's hard to deny the presence of the subject, whether it's subtle or obvious. Even someone like Rousseau, an advocate for natural education and allowing young people great freedom, would disagree with adult/child coupling. This is not a matter of returning to the Victorian ideals of childhood, where a kid was considered an adult, but holding adults accountable for their treatment of children. You're not supposed to objective and sexualize a child, and puberty is no excuse to do so either. The Hard Candy quote addresses that issue well enough. Sexual awareness and fertility in a child does not vindicate an adult's pursuit of that child.

Here's an extension of the above quote, which illustrates my point: (interaction between a 32 year old male and a 14 year old female)

Jeff Kohlver: You were coming on to me!
Hayley Stark: Oh, come on. That's what they always say, Jeff.
Jeff Kohlver: Who?
Hayley Stark: Who? The pedophiles! 'Oh, she was so sexy. She was asking for it.' 'She was only technically a girl, she acted like a woman.' It's just so easy to blame a kid, isn't it! Just because a girl knows how to imitate a woman, does NOT mean she's ready to do what a woman does.
[pause]
Hayley Stark: I mean, you're the grown up here. If a kid is experimenting and says something flirtatious, you ignore it, you don't encourage it. If a kid says 'Heeey, let's make screwdrivers' you take the alcohol away and you don't race them to the next drink!

I'd highly recommend Hard Candy, great movie.

A major component of art is brevity and concision. In any medium, there is only so much time, paper or opportunity to express the point of the story, the picture, the piece. If any allusions or references are made at all, then the audience must pick up on these and accept them as canon. If you only have 15 minutes to make a presentation, then every word you say must be examined carefully and considered pertinent to the core of the art. If a 26 episode anime dedicates any time at all to the implication of a sexual attraction between an adult and child (explicitly where the adult returns the feelings and/or pursues the child, not merely a one sided crush or unrequited love), then it's going to be viewed as having pedorastic tones. I honestly don't know how else to view it, otherwise, why is it even there?

[miz ducky]

Sexual awareness and fertility in a child does not vindicate an adult's pursuit of that child.
...
If a 26 episode anime dedicates any time at all to the implication of a sexual attraction between an adult and child (explicitly where the adult returns the feelings and/or pursues the child, not merely a one sided crush or unrequited love), then it's going to be viewed as having pedorastic tones. I honestly don't know how else to view it, otherwise, why is it even there?

I agree completely. Very well put WC.

It has been proven that the human brain is still developing until close to age 25 (obviously it's not a magic switch).

That tells me that people are not fully mature until they reach a much higher age than just the age of consent.