What happened to sex positivity in anime? It feels like it was a thing all the way through the '90s, especially with home-release OVAs, but now anime that are sexual are overtly sexual, primarily sexual, rather than interweaving eroticism and storytelling.
I fully admit I may have a selective perception or confirmation bias, so I'd like to hear Yea Forums's take. What do you think? Has there been a shift toward things discretely sexual and non-sexual anime?
The only anime sex I know is when Homura Akemi hugged a naked Madoka in space. That’s all I know.
>home release nineties OVAs
>not overtly sexual
What.
Sex is evil
Good. Shit like what you posted OP is faggy Western liberal indoctrination. I've literally never seen a Japanese person praise that film; it's only braindead Westerners.
Fuck off back to /pol/ if you can't appriciate a piece of art for it's message without MUH POLITICS.
The movie is great and you're the brainwashed one if you hate it's message out of principle.
Sex in that movie a metaphor for liberty in general. Of course freedom-hating worm-people wouldn't like it.
Utena had a bunch of shit that just straight up wouldn't make it in or would be way overdone and ruined if it aired today.
Can't defile pure Japanese eyes with filth like sex
Sex "positivity"? What the hell?
Sex shouldn't be portrayed as something positive
Have you niggers never watched Cutie Honey?
Why do Americans always clutch their pearls at the sight of sex/nudity?
reminder that hanekawa being retarded cowtits slut: the character literally made the movies worse
>guaranteed replies
when will you be positive about me and my sex for 10 year old japanese cartoons
another liberal and their lies, go back to hugging niggers
>liberty
>freedom
Being enslaved to irrational desires isn't liberty, user.
>sex positivity
You mean female objectification?
go back to 1390
I hate americans so fucking much
Well said user. Interesting discussion in this thread, I hope it doesn't totally devolve into /pol/.
OP I get what you're saying in principle sort of, but I'm not sure your stated premise makes sense or is representative of an actual trend in anime. I would say that there's always been a lot of overt sexuality of the sort that western sensibilities might call low brow, crude, or pornographic in Japanese media, and some that might be considered more high brow and of the type you are asserting has declined. I don't notice any more or less than there was in older anime, or in pre-anime Japanese literature, or hell even in other cultures' media.
Even if it were, it would be attributable to so many and varied factors that it's hard to call out some overt decline in artfully utilized, thematically relevant sexuality in anime so much as you could say that the way that the Japanese media industry works and the general layout of the consumer landscape is so different that it's just a side effect of changing times and organizational structures.
What do you really mean by "sex positivity" in anime anyway? Can you define that term for your purposes?
>You mean female objectification?
which is worse then before, isn't? at least the mainstreaming of harem and moe popularity hasn't been helpful. a lot more characterizations of "slut" or "7 year old innocence" for girls sexuality. just bad writing.
All the awkward virgins who watched all that 90s stuff became the new showrunners.
>sex positivity
Rarely a thing. You either had the hoebags or the waifus with only a few exceptions.
Most of us don't know or care where your irrelevant nation even is lol.
obsessed
There has always been plenty of "objectification of women" and sexual but not "sex-positive" content in Japanese media, and I don't think you have a leg to stand on asserting that that's some kind of a bad thing, the Japanese don't cry about it and certainly don't care about what some gaijin thinks.
Also bad writing is not some new thing. I think you are trying to glorify some Good Old Days of "sex-positive anime" (whatever the fuck that means), which never actually happened.
There's plenty of the type of content you are (I think) trying to hold up as being the "right" type with Belladonna of Sadness being produced today, with female-centric perspectives and the type of attitude toward sex and sexual themes that jives with the brand of western liberal social theory that you sound like you are espousing. It's probably happening more in manga than in anime, but that's because of the way the industry has shifted in general away from more artistic OVAs and films, and a few TV shows here and there, to a model where TV anime is cranked out to make money by catering to a very specific niche market with very specific preferences and to function as advertisement to sell mass market manga and LNs. There is still the occasional great, well-written TV anime, and plenty of artistic films with critical merit, no fewer than before I think. It's just maybe drowned out for those who don't look enough by a sea of mass market cheap crap, but that's the industry and has nothing to do with a direct decline in "sex positivity". You are imposing your value structure and trying to find evidence of its suppression in a system where it doesn't apply, and isn't a relevant factor or measure.
Online porn killed ecchi anime.
It's all about TV timeslots now.
I'm an American and I hate the type of thinking and worldview that OP seems to be exuding here. The particular brand of aggressive and virulent Cultural Marxism that is being brewed in most American universities right now is fucking terrifying to me. The constant seeking to find or manufacture victimization and to censor, drown out and denounce anything that doesn't fit neatly into its convoluted worldview is dangerous and upsetting.
I'm this guy for reference:
And I'm going to stop talking about the socio political side of things and just say again that I don't think OPs premise about some decline in artful sexuality in Japanese media is real. Less TV anime with much artistic merit? Percentage-wise maybe I guess, but there was never a ton to begin with, and there's just more content in general now, of course a lot of it caters to the lowest common denominator.
No, the 90s was more explicitly sexual and willing to just throw sex in your face, where modern anime tends to cherry coat it more through implication. Just go watch Golden Boy, the MC makes active attempts to fuck some of the girls instead of just accidentally groping them and getting embarrassed about it. Modern anime is more prudish about characters actually fucking but way more balls deep in implied sexually. Neither are more "sex positive", they just focus on different kinds of sexuality. 90s anime should be way more offensive to feminists, its way more brazen about women being explicitly put on display in the narrative.
>sex positivity
Can one of you red belly discord communists explain this nu-speak to me?
Yamato Nadeshiko is a thing
I'm an american and I'm sorry we have these people too. I wish I could gun them down every day. P.S. Don't arrest me FBI, this post is satire.
sex-positivity is the rejection of the idea that sex and sexuality, particularly female sexuality, is something inherently shameful and unclean.
one example is how a woman being shown enjoying sex in a movie will get it slapped with a more explicit rating than a woman getting sexually dominated and not enjoying it. I think it was Kick-Ass 2 where the director talked about hitting that obstacle.
also the whole narrative where a woman who pursues sex is always depicted as a wanton force of corruption and a man who pursues sex is always depicted as a sleezy douchebag. you never see mainstream stories about characters who love to fuck and make other people feel good without it being a facade masking ulterior motives
Reddit tier post
I ain't the op though, user, and never looked at anime as being "sex positive but changed"
I just think it's objectification has gotten worse in stories that make it to tv (because manga has had a longer history of mature themes that wouldn't make it on tv, but also more variety). but what sells well in Japan is what will be made.
There's still sex positivity in anime.. see here
Yamada Naoko listed it as one of her favourites.
Yamada is highly overrated by the West as a director, so I'm not surprised. Hence why A Silent Voice won zero awards and Your Name along with Corner swept all the awards domestically and internationally during that same year.
Sure that's true, the industry is full of too much content and the whole system is sort of a backward-ass feedback loop that encourages the production of safe, lowest common denominator pandering content that will most likely sell just enough for the production companies to turn a calculated profit and discourages artistic risk taking. I'm in full agreement with you there.
Tumblr speak for slut acceptance, therefore something that never existed.
Why would I?