Bōsōzoku
The bosozoku subculture quickly gained popularity in post-WWII Japan. Japanese leather wearing greaser motorcycle gangs. Their version of Easy Rider.
Figure moe zoku
The Otaku subculture is the continuation of Consumerist zoku subcultures.
These examples you give are really interesting to me, not totally straightforward, and I wasn't familiar with either. The first seems to start as simply the Japanese version of the post-war veteran driven motorcycle club phenomenon that you see in so many other countries, but I can see how it morphed into something more about image and consumerism; I suppose the other, of collecting those figurines, is relatively straightforward, but the angle of it being given a name by an out of touch journalist which the community then ironically takes up is amusing, and familiar. I'm wondering, with bōsōzoku, do you mention it because it is the earliest such zoku? As I said, it seems it started out not really consumerist; do you think it was coopted intentionally to defang it?
I have seen Century of the Self, but I'm due for a rewatch; and I'll check out that story too, but I haven't even begun looking into the other book you suggested.
Couldn't that just be the same as "damn that tree got a nice ass", but actually, well, better? Aren't gays all crazy about "bulbous" features in men, like straight men are in women?
I really do not have my own full theory of homosexuality, other than feeling rather sure that in some cases it follows more closely my latter "narrative" psychological model I offered, based on the heightened prevalence of molestation in the backgrounds of homosexuals (while causality can be hard to establish, and it is possible that, by some mechanism, a child's existing gayness causes him to be molested, I find that theory less plausible). But you are correct that my first heuristic model could explain cases as well, and there are likely multiple mechanisms and types.
@Safir thank you for all the information, I don't feel I have much to add but it offers some valuable context and I wanted to acknowledge it. I brought up Soviet animations because of my experience of them as being refreshingly pure adaptations of fairy tales compared to much western animation, and I compared them to Disney specifically. Your mention of marketing and toy empires may not seem immediately relevant to the question of perversion and animation, but as conversation has turned towards capitalism and consumerism as amplifiers of perversion, it may well be an important component. In any case, it is certainly another depressing part of the cheapening of art; a t-shirt or a plastic toy is so much cheaper to make than a film of any kind, and it's easy for that marketing to become the end itself of creation in such a system.
@YWNBAM your contributions have been very interesting, and offer me the best chance at bringing any of this back around to strict relevance to the original topic; I also saw that you had been posting on these topics in the DMZ, and reading those posts helped me understand your perspective better.
But even for such non-sexual Soviet animations, there are retarded men who masturbate to them and pay artists to draw porn of freaking Alisa Seleznyova and Cheburashka, just like their fellow coomers do in Japan and the USA. Again, the problem is not any particular culture, but the combination of capitalist demand X coomer men reacting like monkeys to anything feminine.
I was not familiar with Alisa, and while I managed to avoid anything untoward while educating myself, your assertion is absolutely horrifying. This, I think, gets to the heart of the matter: men are horny and perverted, but it is the ruthless profit motive of monetizing those impulses that both amplifies them and allows them to seep into the wider culture. As I understand it, to you this is also crucial to explaining the participation of women in the creation of such art, not simply because of the profit motive, but the distortion of culture which happens when so many resources are put towards sating such a gluttonous market for perversity means that the women grow up in a world where such things are normalized, and it forms an existing subculture which girls who perhaps don't fit in or are confused growing up will find immediate reward and validation upon entering.
Anime, like most media, was a man's game in the 20th century because men were the ones with the money.
This is kind of why I'm interested in the issue of female sexuality, because your assertion here posits that it is irrelevant simply because it was not amplified for material reasons. However, that would mean that a change in those circumstances could
make it relevant, and that counterfactual is interesting to explore; also, women have entered the workforce, have greater independence, and have their own disposable income to spend at their own discretion, so under your model, it would seem at least possible that female sexuality now can exert its own pressure on the market, so if it does not this would tell us something about either the market or the sexuality.
Reading man-hate thread posts, it seems male sexuality is often defined and explored, and female sexuality is very little, except in a sort of negative space formed from assertions that men have gotten something wrong in their assessment of it. I want to acknowledge that I myself have spoken of sexuality of any kind only in abstract, academic terms, and I would be embarrassed to do so in any more personal way; and obviously for you as a woman female sexuality is inherently more personal than male. Anyway, I'm basically just apologizing for even asking, but I hope you can see why I think it's relevant.
I did a little research into Studio Kyoto who made
Lucky Star because I was interested in untangling some of the issues around gender; going into it I associated them generally with productions like
Lucky Star, focused on female protagonists, generally school kids, and either slice of life or...slice of life, except it's focused on a school club; and a lot of them will have "the bikini episode". What I wanted to know was, who is creating those series. I found out that they are...as the DMZ might put it,
heavily moided. As far as I could tell, every production from 2003 until 2015's
Hibike! Euphonium (based on light novels by true and honest woman Ayano Takeda) was based on a work originally created by a man, either manga or light novels. Who knew grown men had their fingers on the pulse of the issues most important to groups of 3-4 teenage girls! Actually, I did not know this before, but several of their earliest series were based on erotic visual novels created by a company called Key; I'm sure they were just
doing research for the character of Konata.
In contrast, they also received a "diversity award" from Women in Animation in 2020 for creating a gender balanced workforce and encouraging women to enter the profession; this is after a horrific arson attack in 2019 which killed many employees, but I believe they did embody those ideals beforehand...and this wasn't a 1940s Disney model of women in animation, apparently the studio had a reputation for hiring salaried employees instead of freelance, and treating them well, and had women in positions as animators and even directors.
One of particular interest is Hiroko Utsumi, who worked for the studio since 2005, almost their founding, and in 2013 was given the task of directing the series
Free! in 2013, based on a light novel by Kōji Ōji. Now, I failed to track down Ōji's gender, someone who actually reads Japanese probably could, but this is possibly a red herring; his novel, titled
High Speed! (literally ハイ☆スピード!,
Hai☆Supīdo, which I only mention because it is amusing) was entered into a contest run by Kyoto to find manga and novels they might publish, and even develop into anime series. It was only an honorable mention (apparently 2018's
Violet Evergarden was the first time anything actually won a prize, so...maybe a slightly fucky contest), but apparently good enough to "loosely base" an anime adaptation upon; given the anime's description as being a sequel to the novel and lack of an intervening manga adaptation, it's possible Utsumi may have had particular responsibility for its tone, visuals and content (along with its male screen-writer, Masahiro Yokotani).
Free! stands out among Kyoto's lineup for the exact gender inversion of their most typical formula; it follows a set of male protagonists who participate in their high school's swim club. I'm not very familiar with it, but I watched a little of the first episode; based on the scene early on in which the protagonist's best friend gives him a hand out of the tub and pointedly looks down to remark he's bathing in his trunks, followed directly by said protagonist cooking himself breakfast in nothing but swim trunks and an apron, it appears to be somewhat fan service-oriented, but in a way likely not directed towards straight men. Now, this presents some questions: was it intended this way? Was it received in this way? Is it for gay men? Straight women? High school swimmers? Is there any significance to its being female directed? (2009's
K-On! was Kyoto's first solo-female-directed anime, by Naoko Yamada.) Did anyone even watch it or care? More or less than the bikini episode of
Hibike! Euphonium (written by a woman (maybe, dunno if that's in the novel...and that anime is a male-female co-direction))?
What's the point? I have no idea. Tl;dr: I should have hit delete, but I'm hitting post instead.
Bai bai!
Female (repeated names left untagged)
