Is the picture I uploaded an example of Japanese comic pornography? To answer Jay's question, I have to approach it from three different parties' points of view: the Americans', the Japanese's, and mine personally.
The American answer would be, "The picture is not hentai. It is softcore ecchi."
The Japanese answer would be, "The picture is not eromanga. It is manga."
My answer would be, "The picture is hentai. Sort of. Okay, let me explain ..."
YOU CAN STOP HERE IF YOU WOULD LIKE. :)
You got your answer. The rest is me feeling compelled to provide further explanation with the aid of both pictures and text. I will further clarify my answer at the very end of this update. Cheers!
All three parties would likely say the following: "the girls are physically attractive. Both the school girl uniform and the maid uniform are iconic costumes in Japanese erotica. The obvious emotional displays, in conjunction with the costumes each girl is wearing, suggest the tsundere fetish, or a girl who acts cold and indifferent towards someone to whom she may in fact be attracted. Furthermore, the blushing of the girl in her maid uniform is one source of moe."
But does any of this make the picture pornographic? Is it enough that a person can find something erotic that we label it as being erotic? Of course it isn't. But what, then, can lead Ryan to say that the picture is hentai?
To me, a drawing would be classified as hentai whensoever a picture would be classified as porn. I do not waste my breath distinguishing between "softcore" and "hardcore" hentai any more than I do softcore and hardcore porn.
Is this porn? Ryan says it is.
I believe that this picture is pornographic. It is not enough that the person who retains the photo finds it to be visually pleasing. He must also find it sexually pleasing. But nor is this enough! For a man may find a rock sexually pleasing, or a book, or a spoon! A man may indeed by insane! And an insane man's beliefs should not guide our own when deciding what is and is not pornographic. No: the major consideration for us ought to be what we think the photographer's intent was. Was he taking a profile picture for work? Was he taking snapshots while on vacation for his scrapbook back home? Was he spying on his fiancée and took this photo as proof that she was having an affair? Of course not. It's obvious to anybody just by looking at this photo that the photographer took it meaning for it to be erotic. The woman's pose, her dress, her beauty ... all of these things alone could prove the case, but taken together they almost have to prove it. It's all but impossible for this photograph to have been taken without pornographic intent.
Is she nude, or can we at least see any of her genitalia? No.
Is she performing sexual favors for others, or partaking in sexual intercourse herself? Unless by sexual favors we include "posing for the camera with only the top half of your boobs showing," then no, she was not.
Conclusion: it does not take sex nor does it take nudity to make a photograph pornographic. What matters most is the photographer's intention, and what matters second most is the overall gestalt feeling one gets from the photograph.
Which one's hentai, and which one isn't?
Takeda Hiromitsu, one of my favorite hentai comic writers, is both an author of eromanga and of regular manga. Consider if the same woman were both an Oscar-winning actress and a popular porn star. Better yet, consider if Stan Lee wrote Spider-Man by day but wrote sex comics by night, and was known for both of them? That's what Takeda-sensei does. What I want you to do is identify for me, which picture came from his sex comic and which one didn't? It's a rhetorical question because I'm sure you can point out to me at least one obvious reason why the hentai one is hentai and why the normal one isn't, but from where I'm standing, and I hope from where you're standing too, you see my point -- my point that the line between hentai and not hentai is a fine one. :)
Finally, to give you the specific answer you've been seeking all this time, I ask you to reflect on the initial answer near the very top of the page. "Ryan says yes, but your average bloke says no whether he's American or Japanese." Now I can justify to you why I believe what I believe, even if I am wrong according to society-at-large.
I called the picture hentai because of many reasons. I found the themes erotic (tsundere, maid). I found the character design visually appealing. I asked someone on a hentai webforum to draw it up for me. But like I said before, what I believe isn't enough to classify this as hentai! We have to ask ourselves what the photographer's intent was. Or, in this case, the drawer's intent.
(1) Look at the picture. There is NOTHING THERE except for the girls. Their bodies, their clothing, and that's it. If the purpose of all pictures is to be looked at, then the purpose of this picture must be either for me to look at clothing or for me to look at girls. Which is it?
(2) (Regardless of the fact that I asked him to do this), take note of the subtle difference in the girl's apparent breast size. On the left, her school dress makes her breasts seem slightly less large. On the right, her maid uniform makes them seem slightly larger. This could be the fault of the uniforms alone. It could also be genuine growth of her breasts. Regardless, the difference in breast size informs us as art students, not as perverts, that the artist wanted to draw the onlooker's attention to this. Had he not considered them important, he would have drawn them identically. Or perhaps not at all! That she has boobs, and that her boobs change in size from one side of the page to the next, means that the artist wanted us to look at boobs. Sounds pretty pornographic to me! ;p
(3) Finally, consider the fetishes at play here. The idea that a cold icy bitch could transform into a blushing, hand-knotting cutie. This is further aided by the removal of the glasses (whose presence is commonly associated with professional-minded women and whose presence-turned-absence is commonly associated with the tsundere fetish.) The idea that an authority figure could transform into a subordinate. (The glasses-wearing tsundere is commonly associated with being the class rep, though of course this is merely an association and not a hard-fast rule.)
Can I step back, look at this picture, and admit that it's probably not hentai technically speaking? Sure I can. But does my gut instinct agree? No. Absolutely not. My gut instinct says 9 times out of 10 "this is the first page to a hentai comic" and only 1 time out of 10 "this is any one page from a non-hentai comic." It very much convinces me, by sheer virtue of its subject matter, that it's a teaser of the story that's about to come.
5 comments:
Sorry, I can't ride on this bandwagon! Your statement, "the major consideration for us ought to be what we think the photographer's intent was" is a direct contradiction to my personal philosophy of art. Intent may not be a totally worthless consideration, but to my mind, it's very near it.
Come on Ryan, I realize I'm sexually disinterested in the subject matter, but I don't think that drawing even qualifies as softcore!
What do you think of this picture of Jessie, then?
Would you call that pornography (at least she's showing her midriff) or a glamor shot? How can we make judgments of art in the absence of knowledge of intent?
It's neither. She's ugly, almost fully-clothed, and neither the artist nor the average home viewer perceives this as anything else but a villain pose. Glamor shot hardly, and porn downright impossible.
Also, don't get so caught up with a bandwagon mentality. Let me table that statement you took issue with just for now, and let me point you back in the direction I really wanted to.
Look at the picture of the nurse. Tell me, is that pornographic?
Look at the pictures drawn by Takeda-sensei. Is one pornographic? Are both? Is neither?
If anything, your Pokemon picture proved my point and not your own. I think you agree with me that the picture is not pornographic. But what if I had said to you, "Jay, I masturbate to that photo every night." (Perish the thought! >_< But just suppose, for sake of argument.) Had I said this to you, it would not have made any difference. You would have insisted the picture was not pornography, in spite of me using it as assistance when masturbating. And why is that? BECAUSE: "EVERYONE KNOWS IT'S NOT PORN," you would have said. "Everyone" being (a) most normal folks in the audience + (b) the creator himself. You would have 100% said, "Look, Ryan, YOU may see it as porn, but that's not what the animators were intending. CLEARLY!" And you would have listed off all the examples of how this picture is 99.99999999% positively not meant to be pornographic.
Right? And so, Jay, does this not prove my point? ^_^; Isn't this the very issue you supposedly took with my argument? that I argued that the individual's perception of the piece should not and does not determine whether or not it is pornographic? that the individual's perception, while important, is impotent without the say of the artist himself?
My point was that the Jessie image is more pornographic than your image. (even though neither image qualifies as hentai)
Art is an offering made up to an audience; the viewer ultimately decides the meaning. So, while I can accept the statement "To Ryan, this is pornography," I think the statement "This is not pornography," has more weight because more people would agree.
Now, in 100 years, if social mores become more conservative and most people agree that your image is hentai, then I'll have to change my tune. But to me, it doesn't matter if the artist intended to make something racy. It either is or it isn't. Whether an artist fails or succeeds in illustrating his or her intent is up to the audience.
Sorry kid, that's not scissors.
LOL @ image
I wonder if it's fake, if only because of how the scissor blades curve. If they didn't curve, it'd be more 50/50 to me. But the curve definitely sells the phallic interpretation.
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