Seen any good anime lately? But I keep running into a problem. I forgot, after sticking with the same series for years, how frequently anime sexualizes young girls. And, even more so, how often those characters either look like, or are, children.

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Child Pornography in Japan
Chat with us in Facebook Messenger. Find out what's happening in the world as it unfolds. More Videos Japan cracks down on child porn Story highlights Japan bans possession of child pornography but not explicit animation Some manga, anime shows children being sexually abused Cartoonists say a ban would hurt the entire industry Welfare advocates say the material is being used to groom children. They stare wide-eyed from the pages of magazines, childlike in stature but engaged in extremely explicit sexual activities.
Latest AWN Must Reads
This most recent controversy began with a November 30 mention on KK's Twitter , which criticized, from the child-porn viewpoint, an illustration from a popular anime show Sound! KK approached AWN previously about working together to translate, edit and publish pieces regarding what the penetrating anime critic considers an indefensible position taken by some anime and manga publishers in Japan. This is the first of such pieces. Seeing is believing.
Last month I went to the London Comic Con convention at the Excel centre to hang out with a bunch of other people who are into fantasy, video games and other things that the Japanese tend to do very well. It's billed as an event for all ages and free entry is offered to children, so I was expecting to spend most of my day taking photos of people dressed as sailor girls and browsing Dragon Ball Z merchandise. Which I did. But I also stumbled across a veritable sleaze-pit of explicit material involving very young-looking girls — illustrated porn pillows, mouse mats, posters, comics and DVDs — at stalls all over the event. Which isn't particularly great when adults are doing it to each other, and even worse when it involves characters that look young enough to still be playing with Polly Pocket. None of the preteen hentai smut was hidden away in mucky, pokey corners of the show, either — it was littered throughout the event, which created a scene I've never had the pleasure of coming across before: a trough of ageing perverts browsing cartoon kiddie porn next to a bunch of children queuing up for a Dr Who DVD signing. It was like I was trapped in some "edgy" art show devised by a person who still thinks art is capable of shocking people. However, what I saw at Comic Con was just the cuttings off the workshop floor. You know, one of those workshops that's obsessed with sexualising young girls and somehow gets away with heavily relying upon them in the majority of the products it puts out.