Ask John: How Much Anime Sex is Too Much For Kids?

Question:
With shounen anime becoming raunchier with it’s sexual material for children, the line between erotica for young boys and adult men has become blurry. How does one distinguish ero material appropriate for younger and older audiences?

Answer:
Typical Americans automatically presume that 2D animation is a medium for children and therefore should exclude content unsuitable for viewing by impressionable, innocent children. American animation only rarely breaks out of that stereotypical compartmentalization. Japan takes a somewhat more broad-minded approach to 2D animation, readily accepting the idea that animation is typically most appealing to children but isn’t limited to just a child demographic. As a result, Japan produces a majority of its anime for a teen and young adult audience, with smaller yet still significant percentages produced for pre-adolescent children and adults. Moreover, unlike America that assumes animation should be sanitized for viewing by small children, Japan takes a more latitudinarian perspective, accepting as normal imagery in children’s animation that American viewers would typically find shockingly inappropriate for children’s viewing.

Take note that the earliest episodes of the 1986 Dragon Ball anime – at the time a shonen anime for very young boys – depicted Bulma selling glimpses of her body, Son Goku groping the sleeping girl’s body, and Oolong wearing her panties on his head. Nobita walking in on nude Shizuka’s bathing is a famous running gag in the Doraemon children’s anime. The 1982 Cybot Robotachi children’s anime distinctly fetishisizes the sexy attractiveness of curvaceous adult female character Sachiko. The 1984 children’s anime comedy Ranpou is still shockingly crude even by today’s standards. The 1973 Dororon Enma-kun anime frequently caught female co-star Yukiko-Hime in provocative & revealing poses. The 18th episode of the 1997 Pocket Monster anime is famous among American fans due to its sexualized depiction of Kojiro cross-dressing and holding his own artificial breasts. Particularly the Crayon Shin-chan movies occasionally expose Shinnosuke’s privates for comedic effect. So even children’s anime has been a bit sexually precocious, by American standards, for decades. Japanese viewers raise little objection to this “sexual” content in children’s anime because Japanese society views sexuality as a natural human characteristic, and therefore not something that children need to be “protected” from seeing. However, while children’s anime are sometimes more risque than American cartoons, even anime doesn’t expose children to egregious or explicit sexuality. In fact, observation suggests that contemporary children’s anime including Jewelpet, Zumomo to Nupepe, Demashitaa! Powerpuff Girls Z, Happy Lucky Bikkuriman, Bakugan Battle Brawlers, Duel Masters, Yattokame Tanteidan, Net Ghost PiPoPa, RoboDz, Negibouzu no Asatarou, Element Hunters, Kaidan Restaurant, Danball Senki, Inazuma Eleven, and Chibi Devi are much less sexually provocative than older children’s anime were. Contemporary kids’ anime series like Penguin no Mondai & Beelzebub retain their bizarre and gratuitous violence, but nudity and sexual references have been distinctly toned back compared to earlier children’s anime.

At the same time, anime for teens and young adults has become increasingly provocative and explicit. I can certainly understand a natural impulse to shield children from exposure to very suggestive and provocative contemporary anime titles like Kanokon, Manyuu Hikencho, B-gata H-kei, School Days, and High School of the Dead. The target audience for these young adult shows should be obvious in contrast with anime suitable for children based on the appearances of the shows. Character design, the relative ages of the lead characters, and the publicity art and trailers for anime aimed at teens and adults should be relatively easily distinguishable cues to warn parents and elder siblings of what anime are ideal for children and which aren’t. Simply due to differences in cultural standards, parents that don’t want to expose their children to any degree of sexual suggestion may be best suited to avoid anime altogether, or strictly supply kids with safe, expurgated anime released on American children’s DVD. The extent to which particular American children should be exposed to “fan service” or gratuitous sexual humor in Japanese animation is practically a concern for individual parents & guardians and their particular children. The best way for adults to determine the suitability of particular anime for their children is to simply pre-screen anime and make individual, personal judgements.