It seems like nary a few months pass before another one of Scott’s entries into his Anime Almanac weblog spawns a multitude of partisan objection. The latest incident involves an challenge between himself and the Reverse Thieves, whom I don’t regularly read but are apparently well-known, to confront each other’s comfort boundaries. For Scott, it was yaoi manga (specifically, the two-volume Gerard & Jacques) and for the not-quite-Robin Hoods, it was Kodomo no Jikan. (I have read neither work involved in the challenge so I have no opinion subjectively on either.)

The back-and-forth between author and readers (not between the two blogs) mainly focused on Scott’s reaction to a rape scene in the second volume of his assignment – he has since written an addendum on the matter – but there remained something in his original final paragraphs which I still felt the need to formally comment on in writing.

Like most manga that is targeted towards women, I found the story to be too dramatic and complicated for my simplistic male brain. In a medium where I seek a harem of easy one-dimensional women ready to serve all my every needs, I found the backstabbing and betrayals of friends and enemies of this comic to be too much to handle. That is what lead to my ultimate dissatisfaction with the story.
…
When it comes down to it, yaoi is a dirty guilty pleasure only intended for its particular fanbase, but it is that way for a healthy and logical reason. That is why I can appreciate it as much as I can appreciate one of my comics about moé and catgirls. I think every manga fan has their own guilty pleasures in the medium that is based on their own personal tastes and desires, and who is one to judge one fetish from another?

So while Gerard & Jacques didn’t awaken me to the joys of yaoi manga, it has most certainly shown me that even a boy-on-boy story could actually contain some interesting and creative bits of storytelling. Now if you don’t mind, I think I’ll go back to reading some Ken Akamatsu series.

When I first read the above, I thought that Scott had resignedly returned to his regular vices but a few repetitions sparked realization of a decent commonality: guilty pleasures. Some people like to read fictitious versions of homosexual releationships while others derive satisfaction from harem comedies or from gratuitous violence and gore. I acknowledge that forced intercourse is a deeply serious transgression against another but some readers may like to, very credulously, project themselves onto the characters in these situations, not unlike if someone were to project himself/herself onto an action hero/heroine or a nervous lover.

I remain disappointed, though, that he thinks so lowly of his ability to handle complex narratives. Scott, Heroes has many betrayals of friends and enemies within its long multi-threaded storyline and you seem to enjoy watching that, yet a two-volume manga causes problems in comprehension, its sexual content notwithstanding? I don’t want you to limit yourself based on a stereotype that males are incapable of handling intricate webs of relationships. Besides, you shouldn’t feel bad about not liking Gerard & Jacques – ANN said the first volume was “just poor quality” in their Oct. 2006 review. You might have a better experience with some other manga within the genre if you decide delve further into it.

On the other side of the challenge, the Reverse Thieves did a slightly better job of evaluating Kodomo no Jikan volumes 1 & 2 and elaborating on how they felt the actions of the young girls seemed very unnatural for their age and that oversexuality was superimposed on those characters. Just to jog your memory, Seven Seas’s announcement of its North American license of the title in July 2006 – with a retitling to Nymphet, no less – raised concern that I doubt would have been as harsh if they were a European company. The publisher decided they could not risk potential bad press after reading volume three and deciding that it “can not be considered appropriate for the US market by any reasonable standard” so they decided to kill the project in May 2007.

Perhaps a less puritanical society would be a more welcoming environment for its publication. Manga-ka Kaworu Watashiya learned about certain American cultural taboos by reading web translations of North American message boards and said it was unfortunate those cultural differences exist. Not calling Nymphet would have also helped significantly – according to Seven Seas president Jason DeAngelis following its cancellation, they pitched Chibi Lolita and Hot For Teacher but Watashiya demanded they use Nymphet as its English title.

By what must have surely been coincidence, the all-female panelist “Chicks On Anime” column for ANN had yaoi as its focus for Tuesday’s edition and the conversation touched on how many fans of the genre have a skewed and uninformed sense of homosexuality, how there has been a steady change in story construction since earlier in the decade as more of the female writers come to use characters who are actually gay and exist as such in the gay community, and how the behavior of fangirls, in some way, helps to increase the tolerance of such relationships among other things.

Reflecting on the Handling of Post-Publication Feedback
One of the first things I noticed after I entering the University of California system four years ago was the prevelance of groups centered around personal attributes, be the unifying characteristic religion, race, gender, political alignment, or gender orientation. I initially and still regard all of those groups as “special interests” because each has clear intentions and goals they wish to achieve. I do not hold anything personal against any of those groups as use of the term is meant to remind me that many of those groups lobby the student government in attempts to benefit their organization through the establishment of a week of certain events (e.g. La Raza Culture Week) or funding for their own projects. I enjoy the diverse voices that they collectively contribute to the campus community but within that multitude are self-righteous people that are bound to exist within any decently-sized organization.

I credit Scott for clarifying any misunderstandings involving what he meant by calling rape “a horrible plot device” but I also call him on furthering of his increasing conversational isolationism, a position that intensifies the divisiveness between opposing sides (with him vs. against him) with each new incident. Some of you may recall that he removed comments on August 28th after bad experiences following the implemention of Disqus. During a conversation on Twitter (or ‘the backchannel’, as I like to call it) Thursday afternoon, he touted “[a] growing ‘returning visitor’ readership, mentions on some larger sites I greatly admire, and an easy press badge at every con” as to why his blog is “just fine without comments”. How could that be interpreted as anything other than self-serving?

Scott, at the moment, I do not regard your blog on the same level as Sankaku Complex, which I harbor a distaste for due to its sensationalism, nor do I forsee myself doing so in the next year, but if you are going to become temperamental each time a group of readers expresses dissent to your writing and figuratively shut yourself in a room until the rancor dies down, it will become harder for me to return each week to peer objectively at what you have written. Cooler heads seem to have prevailed for now, thanks to people like Caitlin asking you to clear thing up and reminding you that “stonewalling dissention of any kind isn’t mature, it’s pretentious” and that “not being concerned over feedback is to commit blogging suicide”. (TheBigN reminded me in the comments that he also tried to give him advice. Sorry I forgot you, dude.)

Over the past six months, I feel that you have become increasingly perceived as part of the “establishment” for your stances on fansubs, legal content, and other issues. That is not a bad thing in itself as it should allow you to feel more comfortable when conducting interviews and “cosplaying” as press at conventions, if you indeed choose to accept that perception, and I am in no way asking you to stray away from subjects that you truly want to write about. But gaining such a reputation may make you more prone to harsh criticism from certain factions and if you continue turn away from negative feedback too easily, I am confident that future bickerfests will have worse results so I reiterate my tenative satisfaction at the addendum I previously mentioned.

Earlier that same afternoon, you complained that “no one read” the piece you wrote five weeks ago about a Bang Zoom workshop in Manhattan. I remember skimming through it when you initially posted it and thought about coming back later to read it more thoroughly. Sadly, I forgot about it so I got around to reading the entire essay. Though it is a solid fly-on-the-wall account of what happened at the workshop that gives hope to those who tire of hearing the same old actors and actresses that new voices are beginning to emerge, it is not particularly interesting to those who don’t give a damn about Western voice acting. You can only do so much to influence how readers will react to your content and perhaps you should concede that you are not going to win over certain groups of readers if they continue to cause you distress. Maybe you already have done so.

Same as in an editorial I wrote in July, I do not intend to unduly besmirch Scott’s reputation when composing this (something nearly impossible to manage when voicing criticism), so I based the comments voiced above on what he has publicly written. (I regard someone’s writings on Twitter as public and fit to be referenced unless that entity has marked their account as “private”.) I do not condone the goading conducted by his adversaries who enjoy creating “lulz” at his expense, although I must confess that some of their antics made me smirk, as well as the bungled attempts carry out said antics. Since high school, I have tried to abide by the Buddhist practice of “the middle way” and resist succumbing to blind extremism, one core exception being my libertarian position on censorship and personal freedoms. (Even my support of free-market capitalism is anchored with a moral belief in conducting business respectfully and taking into consideration how proposed projects may impact the health and viability of land and citizens.) So I delayed this post by a day to let my immediate emotions mitigate to allow me to write something more coherent.

I will be interested in reading his take on lesbianism in anime and manga next week not solely as a counter to dipping a toe into yaoi, but primarily because its primary audience is more mixed across gender lines than boys’ love is. I am not sure how much of it will include his experiences at MangaNEXT such as yuri artist Rica Takashima or Media Blasters’ different brand lines but I promise I will read it all the way through.

Oh, and Scott, I have linked to four different articles of yours so far so don’t complain about not getting enough attention.

Final Comment
This post was not written with high-handed motivations – I concede that I still exhibit some naivety and life inexperience as a person in my early 20s and I would be dishonest if I claimed to hold much influence within the anime and manga blogging community. I grew up Catholic and still practice some related traditions while maintaining an agnostic viewpoint but was repeatedly reminded in high school (also Catholic) that slurs and discrimination against homosexuality or calling someone “gay” or “fag” as an insult was immoral and unacceptable. As a result, affecting one’s voice or appearance to play on a stereotype isn’t particularly humorous to me.

In the general election earlier this month, I voted against Proposition 8 more so on the grounds of not wanting to write a definition of marriage into the state constitution than on the view that gay marriage was an essential right but I would be fine if a pro-gay marriage initiative passes in a later election. I still hold that persons should be not treated unfairly based on their sexual orientation, just as other cultural or biological aspects should not be utilized in a discriminatory fashion, and I personally don’t care whether someone is gay, not gay, or transgender because that doesn’t (and shouldn’t) personally impact my everyday life.

In writing about my experiences at Yaoi-Con 2007, I said I didn’t mind the art I saw around the convention and perhaps that was due to the combination of being accustomed to hearing my club co-members talk about it and being generally desensitized to things many people may find to be offensive. There was frankly not that much lurid content out in the open anyway. I would have liked to go this past September but was unable to coordinate a ride with someone and I wasn’t going to drive myself down to South San Francisco, having learned my lesson from AOD and Anime Expo earlier this year. 2009 is a possibility depending what I am doing at the time.

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This entry was posted on Friday, November 21st, 2008 at 11:46 pm and is filed under Commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.