Been out of the thread for over a month, and the hundred-page jump in that timeframe is making my head spin. And so while I'm trying to play catch up, I've noticed no one has yet brought up Kaoru Watashiya, a.k.a. the creator of
Kodomo no Jikan.

People are rightfully skeeved out by the series, though I've seen some people try to soften the blow by saying that because it's written by a woman, apparently there's more to it than meets the eye, that there's an actual story to tell when it comes to stuff like child abuse and the psychological damage it does to them. You just have to get through all of the lolicon ecchi to get to it, however, but when a literal-ten-year-old is showing off some lingerie she had managed to find because she
knows her teacher (whom she's been teasing since day one) is going to end up walking in as she's changing and then getting all flustered, you have to ask yourself "
Is there an actual story to tell?" The prototype one-shot involved the girls literally blackmailing the principal or vice principal with gravure of themselves (I don't remember the reason why, think he was always a nonce?), and one of the girls is shown to have self-inflicted scarring because of something in her home life, but no idea if that actually carries into the final product.
Something tells me Kaoru may be an actual lolicon, though, if not totally okay with the concept and pandering because she's done lolicon stories before and after
Jikan. You can look up her list of manga, like yeah, not all of it is lolicon-centered,
however, there's still an uncomfortable number of lolicon titles (adjacent or otherwise) that she's done that I'm honestly unsure if I should really fully trust that she was telling a serious story. I don't think it helps that on her
Twitter (I have no idea if there's any porn for those who're going to go skim it), she still posts artwork of the main girl, Rin. Like I get it, the character is cute and all that when she's not being flirty, but it's not helping matters that
Jikan is her most famous work and that she still references it.
If it was a story about child abuse, why would she still make artwork of this
one character to this day?

For the record, this big-titty teacher
is present in the story and has her share of fanservicey moments, and there is some adult female nudity (early on, you see Rin's mom banging her high school-aged cousin (I didn't stutter) before she dies of cancer), but it doesn't balance out the uncomfortable lolicon shit to be able to ignore it. You
will still feel the ick in trying to focus on the teacher as brain bleach.
I've been debating on whether-or-not I should take the bullet and be able to confirm for myself if there's
actual depth to the manga as claimed (after all, the manga
did once get greenlit to be localized out here before Zac Bertschy took up arms). I did it with the
Loveless anime (doubt I'll touch the manga tbh), I was tackling
If My Wife Became an Elementary School Student to prove that it's
not lolicon at all (still haven't finished because I know it'll rip my heart in two; it's still not lolicon), and I did an episode-by-episode summary of
Higurashi Shitsugou against my better judgment and sanity that I can be the sacrifice if I have to.