Personally I know people in rl that marry people 20 years older than them. That being said I don't get why it's bashed a lot in the otaku community, particularly when it's seinen/shounen. What really defines lolicon? I personally think that's a term more suited towards hentai.
I was actually revisiting some manga/anime I have read/watched in the past and a few came up that I thought were really good. Kodomo no Jikan and Miman Renai. Yes in KnJ they have perverseness but some moments, particularly back stories, rival Clannad in my opinion.
I was looking at some of the comments on the manga's page and comments online and I began wondering why is it that these manga's are bashed as wrong yet, a lot (and I mean a lot) of shoujo have teachers as love interests and nothing bad is said about them? Please, don't think I mean to bash shoujo manga. In fact some of my favorites include Usagi Drop and Dengeki Daisy.
I don't know maybe it's cause the girls are so much younger then the guys but whenever I think of my friends in rl and think of their age difference it makes me think when they graduated college there spouse was 2 years old.. So why do the manga's get bashed? How is the character's feelings in Kodomo no Jikan different from Usagi Drop?

The Answer? There is no difference. If you want to play the perverseness card there are plenty of smut shoujo out there as well as Yaoi.

[/Rant]

Intent

in KnJ
we have a mangaka who knows till will sell coz she draws sexy 8yo or whatever they are
that are very sexual in their appearance and manner

so this will be popular among all the perverts and the lolicons[i happen to think is is awful]

in usagi drop we have a messed up child who does not really know how to handle emotions
and have had a kind of rough "realistic" life
the mangaka did not want to sell it as a sexfest for perverts so there is very little sexual and sensual art

and to take up yaoi
i mean...yaoi is mostly a shot story that involves sex
it is a fantasy
kind of like reading a hentai
the magazine those manga run in only focus on yaoi[or hentai in hentais case]
so of course it is going to be sexual

comic lo and other pedophile magazines are better to take up as comparrisons to KnJ and shit like that

I work with kindergardeners to tweens and teens most days at my job so i do know how they actualy behave or look like and now i hate lolicon even more. Miman Renai and and (the first half only or the anime) of Usagi Drop are good but i won´t joining another lolicon discussion on this site cuz i wrote enough there. For reference: I was kinda anti-ban and even made pm friends. I like the movie/book Lolita for reference because it has real writing + Movie-god Kubrick on the other end so it can work.
My thoughts about the flip: My grandfather married a 13 year older woman during his 20s in 1950s Russia and it worked till their death. He died first at 67 because russian-reality is no joke. Thank god i left and the union produced my mom. Things work if you join the other side and is 100% is cool with me and the law. Let´s maybe do that instead. Piece out.
Edit: senile_seinen has a point but the american "Romeo and Juliet law" is a bit insane.

Last edited by residentgrigo at 2:34 am, Mar 7 2015

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I also read EU/US comics and am a librarian.
Manga-Masters, My ANN-Lists + Imdb

In the USA it's illegal for a person above age 18 to have a sexual relationship with a person under something defined as the 'age of consent' which varies depending on just where you are in the country, but averages age 16. A few places still allow marriage with parental consent a few years under age 16. Age of marriage with parental consent was as low as 13 in some places back in the 1980s, but I think that has since changed.

There's also a national law that makes sharing depictions of sexual acts involving anybody under age 18 illegal. I have not yet heard of anybody being prosecuted for drawings (manga/anime) as opposed to photographs, but I don't believe there's an explicit exclusion in the law either. I know that most of Western Europe has somewhat similar laws.

Japan's laws are not all that different, but do seem to be widely ignored if pop fiction has any relationship to reality.

All of that legal stuff colors the conversation. Now on to the moral/ethical question, which is focused on a rather different standard: When is a person mature enough ethically, intellectually, and emotionally to meaningfully consent? In most places you can't sign a binding contract until at least age 16. That suggests that most societies regard the age of meaningful consent being somewhere between 16 and 22 (the latter is Japan's traditional age of adulthood).

The actual age when someone is capable of wisely making permanently life-altering decisions (STDs and pregnancy definitely qualify as life altering) varies hugely depending on the individual, the society, and the circumstances, of course. And there we have the crux of the argument. The old, old standard I learned was that the younger party should be no less than half the elder's age plus seven years. The Japanese historically did not have this standard.

So you have 14 year olds dating 14 year olds, and, by that standard, absolutely no issues with, say 26x20 or 18x16. If you think about the power imbalance in a relationship between, say, an 11 year old and a 14 year old (or a 24 year old for that matter), it makes sense. It doesn't matter if or how much the younger party is attracted - they're assumed in most western societies to be incapable of making 'adult' decisions for themselves in any case.

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http://senile-seinen.blogspot.com/

Considering how much lolicon stuff there is, I think that teen boy - adult woman relationships are actually more taboo.

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It's not only age difference but also maturity difference as well. It doesn't matter if the female is over 20, but when it's below the legal and moral age...

Let's just say that it is sickening and leaves a bad taste.

It largely depends on the character and their maturity. Personally, I'm okay with age differences of up to 10 years, but after that it enters the "they're old enough to be your dad/mom" or "what do you really have in common?" realm. Legal and moral age is up to the reader too. I mean, it's legal for 13 year olds to have sexual relations in Japan and in the U.S., it's supposed to be 18 but that's more theory than practice. Unless the SO is a criminal or there happens to be a conflict of interest like teacher vs. student, no one actually gets charged with having sexual relations with a minor.

Still, it gets down to the number one rule when reading manga: don't take it seriously. Unless it's based on a true story, characters, plots, and situations get exaggerated.

I don't love age gap romances (I don't actively seek out stuff like student/teacher) tbh, but I don't have a problem with it either. I think as long as they're mature enough to handle it, that's fine. A lot of times they aren't though.

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They say, "The first taste of the forbidden fruit is the sweetest".

I do think age difference romance is a taboo. But so is homosexuality, lesbianism and transgender.

This is a commonly misconstrued law. By national law, 13 is the age of sexual consent, but all prefectures have it set at 18. There are certain exemptions with parental approval, but I'm not sure what they are, precisely.

What I'm saying is, they don't think it's normal in Japan to have sex with a minor, either. OP said the unfairly deemed unacceptable examples have "perverseness in some moments," but that's just it. People are uncomfortable with the sexualization of minors, not with thinking that they are capable of being attracted to someone older.

Weelll it's sort of because I saw Daikichi as a father figure to Rin that's why it kinda felt weird when they went there.

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I think therefore I err.