I've been ranting about a lot of things lately, so I thought I'd post them here, rather than vent at friends at NAMSOC.
Lolicon (lolita complex)
There are a lot of teenage girls in anime, partly because teenage girls DO watch anime, and teenage boys definately do. I suspect the tendancy of schoolgirl uniforms in japan to end above the knee is a factor. While jailbait is perhaps excusable when you consider these girls don't actually exist, what has become appearent is that the age of these girls has been definately been descreasing. There is a current fashion for very young girls in anime, often involved with recognisably older males. Its been a long time coming. The original harem anime Tenchi Muyo has two characters that would really upset the Daily Mail, and its a genre standard to a have little sister type in such shows. This isn't the same thing as the tendancy towards cute in anime, but is a related factor. Little girls tend to be mascots in all kinds of anime, and given the fanbase's tendancy to corrupt anything into doujins, it is perhaps not surprising that somebody thought of tapping into this slightly suspicious market.
This upsets me, I'm very much in the "consenting adults/prudish" camp of sexual politics. Is the kind of fan exploitation you find behind the worst of fanservice animes, and its exactly the kind of indulgence that shouldn't be encouraged. Yet we keep getting animes like this, such as Rizelmine, which has the slightly demeaning sight of a twelve year old singing "Lets do it for the first time" in the intro and the wider cast completely ignoring the age difference and forced marriage. Tsukuyomi Moon Phase is more of a drama, but that just makes things worse, as someone in cast should be raising an eyebrow.
In the interest of fairness, I should mention sometimes it works. Hayate the Combat Butler is almost a lolicon anime, but when the realtionship is between a misunderstanding girl with a crush and oblivious teenage butler, the definition is streched. Bokusatsu Tenshi Dokuro-chan makes much of the lolicon tendancy of the male lead and fanboys in general. In both cases the series is so damn funny you don't care.
Alledgedly Intellectual Anime
While I have yet to successful using by computer degree, I am university educated. I like to think, read and find learning enjoyable. Therefore, I don't usually find anime difficult. What DOES tend to happen though is that you get a lot of artistic anime such as Ergo Proxy or the second Ghost in the Shell movie Innocence, that people hold up as brainy masterpeices and say that I don't understand it when I criticise.
Horse shit. Dislexic I am, stupid I am not. A lot of people these days are confusion pretention with ntellect. Innocence was a half hour episode padded out with an hour of qoutes. The most recent movie is much better. Ergo Proxy felt like the result of brainstorming session for interesting ideas, but completely failed to weave a coherent story out of it. Anime must entertain and engage.