Picture Perfect Paranoia

Reading this Wikipedia entry on the more scientific meaning of a “stigmatized” topic reminded me of one of the most controversial anime launches last Fall Season. Remember the hullabaloo regarding the TV debut of Kodomo no Jikan (Wikientry) (official site)? For those with rather selective memories, the main premise, so to speak, of this anime involves a rather adult humor type of interaction between a young male elementary school teacher and one of his students, who happens to have a precocious knowledge of matters pertaining to relationships and sexual relations.

A lot of people were rectionary and thus engaged in a spirited discussion in talk section of both Kojikan and Lolicon in Wikipedia. Despite walls of text, both sides presented their pro and anti arguments well, especially the author of the Lolicon as a Storytelling Device, whose point of discussion is to explain the facets of familiarity with the device.

Marked differences in societal norms have led several scenes and developments in later volumes of the manga to fall victim to misinterpretation, especially by North American readers with little more than a passing familiarity with Japanese culture, a fact that the series author Kaworu Watashiya has lamented about in one of her blog entries.

Despite the “confirmation bias, social convention, pressure to conform, hypocrisy, and ego” other users have blamed on the aforementioned Wikipedian, he/she is quick to point that he/she is standing in the middle of the fence, neither agreeing nor disagreeing with the stands presented.

Here is the Wikipedia’s statement:

Instead of going the “pedophile apologist” route by dismissing any questionable scenes as figments of a reader’s dirty-minded imagination or their looking too much into things, I acknowledged their existence directly and either linked to articles explaining their purpose in the narrative or provided examples to dispel purely negative interpretations and balance things out, leaving readers to come to their own conclusions with the new information provided.

And herein lies the focal point of the debate.

I suspect that the “real” issue people have with this series is that it subtly raises questions about something Rin herself touches upon when she tearfully comments at one point that, “Aoki only pays attention to me because I’m a child, but he also doesn’t pay attention to me because I’m a child.” There’s this dichotomy in child psychology today where, while the welfare and emotions of a child are considered extremely important, there’s this tendency to call into question, if not downright dismiss or condemn, a child’s interpretations of his or her own feelings if they deviate significantly from what adults believe the “expected” or “proper” response should be. Rin is this dilemma personified: she has the feelings of an adult female (what Aoki referred to at one point as her “premature heart”), certainly has the sexual knowledge of an adult female, and definitely has more life experience than most of the adults in the series due to the losses and hardships she’s endured in her nine brief years of existence. But she is a child and has the mind of one and thus lacks the level of cognitive development required to properly and constructively deal with it all. So she engages in “black box thinking” by attempting to make her teacher fall in love with her based solely on her knowledge of sexual mechanics from various dubious sources. This strategy is akin to trying to develop a romantic relationship with someone of the opposite sex based solely on information gleamed from hardcore porn movies: doomed to spectacular failure. What makes Rin’s situation especially tragic is that her love for Aoki appears to be genuine, but no one takes her seriously because of her age, causing her endless grief and frustration.

In any case, Matthew Skala’s critique of vox populi child sexuality and the controversy surrounding this series that I linked on the main article page summarizes the points I’ve argued here a lot more clearly and concisely.
In closing, the Wikipedian merely wishes to point out that in dealing with such a touchy issue, because it concerns a child’s understanding of sexuality with a humorous tone, speaks volume about how much we teach our children about the birds and the bees.

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