Arson attack on Japanese animation studio kills at least 33

a reply to: projectvxn

Yes, there is some really good stuff with solid stories out there, but there is also some really depraved stuff too. Japan in general has some weird fetishes, but that's what makes them interesting.

a reply to: ketsuko

I focus on the good stuff.

It's no different than what we are exposed to here. Just have to avoid the bad stuff.

a reply to: projectvxn

If I'm going to watch anime, I watch the good stuff, but learning about the existence of the "interesting" is part of what makes people more real to me. It's like realizing that furries exist. I don't want to know too much about it, but it's interesting to have some knowledge of all the same.

a reply to: ketsuko

I want to know enough to not have to know much.

I hear ya.

a reply to: KansasGirl

I don't really get the sense that there is as much sexual suppression as there was in the past. From my impression, the sexes are pretty much equal in the eyes of employers and themselves, with an exception for pregnancy and maternity leave. It appears the females are walking away from relationships just as much as the herbivores are. A fascinating society.

For everyone that is so disgusted with anime because of some fringe creations, don't we produce porn as well? That would be like a person saying they will never watch American cinema again because they saw a porn flick produced in the states and we are a screwed up society. I wonder how some of our porn degradation of real life people compares with a cartoon?

I think their greatest challenge was life/work balance, but the younger generations are starting to change that.

There are some wonderful anime productions out there. It would be a shame to miss some of those masterpieces simply because of another sector that seems to be separate.

a reply to: ClovenSky

Well to be fair to the Japanese there culture is at some level's very different - though the culture shock for me back in 98 was finding how westernized they were.

Me and two other guy's were over there on business as back then I used to work for a Japanese company which had a subsidiary over here in the UK and we had to go over to Japan to study the details on a project they wanted to move over to the UK and do a spot of training on it's method's.

So we are on the bullet train from Shinjuku or a station near to our hotel which was in Shinjuku to a place in the Shizuoka region (A beautiful place) were they operated a semi rural plant and on the way our interpreter a very nice lady whom had studied in foreign school's growing up (and spent much of her early life in other east Asian country's) and whom was actually quite pretty but taller than most Japanese lady's by a very good margin being nearly as tall as myself was sitting on the opposite seat's, she was wearing a pretty short skirt and neither me nor my colleague knew were to put our faces as she had no underwear on.

Now our interpreter (whom had a great sense of humor and was a very nice and extremely likable lady) thought this was quite funny as both me and Lee were looking everywhere but down and everywhere but at her except when she was speaking and then only directly at her face, she knew exactly why and explained to us that the Japanese have a different mentality were nudity is concerned as in many places they have public bath's (onsen) that are sometime's unisex in nature - I am pretty certain that staring at someone's genitalia is more then a bad manners thing.

That said the Japanese in part due to there culture have mastered the art of using there peripheral vision far more than we westerners have, looking directly at someone is often deemed rude unless they are in direct discourse with you and this is notable in high population areas such as Tokyo were the city street's while ultra modern can often feel very crowded in the town center and in part due to cultural tradition and Japanese good manners as well a personal space thing they seldom look one another directly in the face compared with western society.

In this respect though we are really not that different, we seem to be looking but in fact though we may seem to stare someone in the face most of us just stare through them in a crowd, it is more about collision avoidance than discourse, the only real difference there is that they use peripheral vision and indirect observation more effectively and we tend to look directly to avoid and navigate a crowd.

Over all I found them to be lovely people, at least my generation and the younger Japanese though in a country with at the time a population of over 125 million people back in 1998 and possibly more today unless there population is static living in about the same space as the united kingdom which has only about half as many people or less there are bound to be one or two arse holes just like anywhere in the world.

They are polite, clean, witty (often a dry sense of humor), varied, intelligent and thoroughly human - though past generations may have lacked a little in this regard and they are thoroughly westernized (or rather have there own unique take on western culture which they have mastered better than we have) with traditional Japanese culture almost masked and below the surface of the modern society which is a shame as some of that ancient culture is very beautiful indeed and while there I have to say though I was always a blondes man myself (grew up to prefer brunettes in later life) I perhaps saw the most beautiful woman I have ever seen while we were there (not in a sexual manner just beautiful), just passing perhaps in her thirty's and wearing glasses but her features were exquisite beyond words I could have just stared all day but was aware it was rude so looked away as quickly as I could tear my eye's away.

Over all I like them a lot (perhaps helped by the sense of familiarity and that constant sensation of having been there before even though I had not).

So some anime does have some serious depravity but it probably caters to an immature and/or niche market - having a population that big though ensures that market is probably larger as well.

And you are correct about the Porn here, it is a bad industry but very lucrative, porn addiction is a serious issue in the west but since it is so private the chemical addiction it produces in the brain of those that spend there time viewing it is overlooked by government's for the most part despite having extremely deleterious psychological affect's.

Think about it like this, lonely guy's instead of going out to meet the right girl and socializing end up sitting in front of a TV or monitor and getting an endorphin high as there brain's are tricked into responding to two dimensional recording's as if they were actually with a lady, this is a natural state of addiction so when they are feeding this drive it only get's worse and so they can get ever worse, needing something ever more explicit until they are staring at thing's that formerly would have made them hurl up the contents of there stomach's.

Porn needs to be banned or at least far better regulation needs' to be implemented (well nigh impossible when dealing with the digital super highway) but it is a very lucrative industry and that makes it very powerful and hard to stamp out like an infestation of cockroaches, it is also linked to serious organized crime and human trafficking as well as child abuse and many other criminal activity's and people watching it, often out of simply curiosity having opened that door marked do not enter in there own psyche's are indirectly funding some very bad people as a consequence, in this respect anime adult content while distasteful is no were near as bad as the live action filth that dominates much of the net and is present in every country in the world.
As for the Porn though It is also a major cultural problem, some argue that it gives men a way of getting rid of pent up tension and all manner of excuses based on weakly disguised support for this nefarious industry, the truth is rather darker and more grim, a guy whom respects lady's but get's addicted to this will then often see them as sexual objects at a level of his consciousnesses far closer to the surface of his mind, he may develop a need for greater and greater stimuli as the affects of the natural endorphin released from ordinary porn exposure cause his brains' biochemical homeostasis to adapt to the continued output and so opt for stronger and more extreme stimuli while at the same time psychological exposure to these stimuli causes lasting mental harm to him.
And what should be behind closed door's between lovers is then cheapened and reduced to a quick fix along with the vast cultural damage this has caused.