Anime Questions...

[celestial]

Why is it in Anime, The male main characters typically keep an A sexual stereotype, or when it comes to crushes or love they seem totally innocent about it it and leave all the females characters alone for no reason, but near the end after totally ignoring this or these people they are suddenly head over heals. mind boggling for me me, been watching anime for ages and i cant figure it out.

[ZhukovCodeslinger]

The best way to find out the symbolism is to get a bootleg copy of somthing that has been subtitled and put into context by fans rather than the importer. The fan translated ones will often have a different colored context text or craw running along the bottom to explain what is going on or what some object or odd konji is rather than just simple translations of dialog.

[pomba gira]

Dounishi- "same people publication". An unpublished, unofficial manga.Gotta be honest, I had to look that one up, but we're talking about anime, not translating japenese words. But, hey, I don't mind. I'll look them up, I love learning about Japenese 'stuff' (for lack of better words.)

Accurate as far as it goes... but, to put it more in context, doujinshi is fan fiction manga- an unofficial version of an existing manga drawn & written by a fan, specifically someone who is an amateur and not a professional manga-ka. Doujinshi are published & distributed by "circles" of artists who work with the same manga or within the same genre.

[Medea]

Actually Doujinshi can also be used to describe "independent" manga as well, that haven't been picked up by major publishing companies.

[DeadBurgerKing (10)]

So what's the obsession with plain white cotton panties?

Sorry guys...I forgot that I had made this topic

Anyhoo, to be honest, I'm not totally 100% sure on this one. But I do have a theory:

Ok white symbolizes virginity. And virgin girls are a rare thing in Japan. It goes into the darker area of Japan that not alot know about. Some Japanese men pay a fortune for young prosistutes if they're virgins. When I say young I'm talking age ranging anywhere from 8 to 11 years old (possibly younger). I'm not sure why virginity is so important. It could be the diffrence in feeling from having sex with a virgin compared to a girl who had sex allready. Or it could be something else in the Japanese culture and/or beliefs that makes it important and more desirable.

Also, back around in the 50's (it might've been later or sooner than that, I can't remember) the man in a newly wed couple (after their first night of intimacy) would hang the bed sheets on their balcony to show off the bloodstain in the sheets as proof to the girl's parents that she was a virgin up untill that marriage. If there was no bloodstain on those sheets (after their first night of intimacy) he would hang them upon the balcony to show the girl's parents that she wasn't a virgin and that was grounds enough for the man to leave her.

That's my guess to the cotton part of that question. Because I assume the sheets they would use would be cotton.

Like I said, I'm not a 100% sure on this, so if someone does know the answer, please spill!!

[DeadBurgerKing (10)]

Why is it in Anime, The male main characters typically keep an A sexual stereotype, or when it comes to crushes or love they seem totally innocent about it it and leave all the females characters alone for no reason, but near the end after totally ignoring this or these people they are suddenly head over heals. mind boggling for me me, been watching anime for ages and i cant figure it out.

I honestly can't say I know what you're talking about. I've seen many anime where the guy goes after the girl and gets shot down. Or I've seen guys get 'bloody noses' thinking of a specific girl. So I don't see where you get that all the guys are a-sexual...

But it could depend on the specific anime you're watching and the guy's personality. Maybe the guy is to keep a non-chalant attitude to everything to get his personality across to the audience?

I'm going to try to explain this the best I can. The closest example for you I can think of would be from Final Fantasy 7. Cloud and Aerith's (or Aeris, which ever you prefer) interaction. In which case this is what I gathered from that type of 'relationship':

Aerith was Cloud's 'other half', if you will. Kinda like the yin to the yang. Cloud was a cold hearted bastard. While Aerith was an upbeat happy-go-lucky girl. And the latter personality kind of rubs off on the guy.It completes him. That type of girl is able to get a guy like Cloud to open up.

So, Aerith gets Cloud to open up. Cloud starts talking to her. And as he talks to her, he starts to get attached to her. And then, as he starts opening up to her, something he has never done with anyone else, Aerith is snatched away from him. Now that she's no longer there, he realizes what he needed and no longer has.

This is kinda the relationship between Squal and Rinoa in Final Fantasy 8.

Well, there's my answer. I don't think it's a right answer either. But like I said, I don't really understand what you're asking.

[BrassFusion]

hmm speaking of final fantasy...

what the fuck is the jap obsession with blondes? it's fucking irritating. EVERY party member in XII = blonde. hell, one of the chicks was named "ashe."

and i just started X... tidus = vaan. i've never played VII, but I have a feeling that both tidus and vaan look and act remarkably like cloud.

[Shade Everdark]

Perhaps I can help with this one. I'm not a terribly huge fan of anime, being very picky about what I watch, as with so much else, but the predilection for asexual men in Japanese society goes back quite some way, almost as far back as Japanese recorded history. Indeed, Ariwara no Narihira is the first I can remember in Japanese literature, mentioned in the Kokin Wakashu, and being the subject and protagonist of Ise Monogatari (The Tale of Ise). Of course, the most famous for the Japanese is the title character of the world's first novel, Genji Monogatari (The Tale of Genji). He is described as being so beautiful as to appear more feminine than masculine.

I don't think there is any definitive answer as to why there is such a cultural disposition towards it, and any guess would be presumption of the highest order. If I were to venture a guess, I might suggest it has something to do with the quasi-implicit acceptance of homosexual love (closer to pederasty, somewhat akin to the classical Greeks) that grew in classical and feudal Japanese societies, and the high value the Japanese seem to place on their ideas of beauty and art. One, were one inclined to do some serious research on the subject, might even be able to make the case for some crossover between the martial male ideal and the beautiful, ostensibly innocent asexual man. Samurai, even when they became bureaucrats under the Tokugawa shogunate were expected to have at least a nominal skill in some form of creative art. Poetry, painting, calligraphy were all assumed to be part of a samurai's education (though of course this varied widely in practice, as more rural samurai and daimyo were often little better educated than the peasants they ruled over).

Too, there is the question of 'love'. The Japanese ideal of love differed in pre-modern times significantly from what the West enshrined as the epitome of love. There is no 'happily ever after' for the Japanese in romantic love; rather, suicide pacts (evidence by many kabuki plays), unrequited love, and a drifting apart of the lovers due to circumstance were what was considered 'ideal,' probably in keeping with that ambiguous and elusive term 'aware'. True love, for the Japanese, was by its very definition, too beautiful and perfect to last.

This is, of course, a generalization of the worst sort, and a tangential answer at best, but I think, without serious academic study, it's likely as good as any other.

[Troy Spiral (13)]

It has started to alarm me after 15+ years of watching this stuff that virtually every anime female is drawn as a 14 year old well developed sex object (there are obvious rare exceptions but they are very rare exceptions)... Even the "for little kids" anime does this.

"Beauty" and "sexual attraction" are largely cultural. Its not just a biological function. We learn this stuff from the culture we live in.

Its very easy to avoid the issue with long discussions about how certain styles of art came to be and blah blah blah...If it was just a once-in-awhile odd fantasy type thing it wouldn't be an issue. But many people watch hours upon hours of this stuff day in and day out for years. Basically watching anime trains you to find underage girls massively hot, yet real life teaches us thats a prescription for jail. Even in japans hyper-youth (even more out of wack than the wests youth-centric) culture.

I wonder how this slides under the radar and is basically either ignored, or laughed / winked at and always has been.

Probably because they ARE hot and we want to see more. Again, the problem here is not the "once in awhile fantasy" but the genre-wide underage sex objects in virtually every corner of the anime universe.