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Analysis of a "trap" in the anime art style
The character in the following picture is Hideyoshi Kinoshita, who is meant to be a boy but look very much like a girl. (This is typically referred to by the term "trap" in the anime fandom; apologies to anyone who is offended.)
image (warning: possibly NSFW)
1. I get the point, and I actually agree that many such characters are subject to an androgynous art style anyway. It's like you can change Nadia's face a bit and get Shinji. This, while nothing new, basically undercuts the whole idea of "trap" -- because, artistically, they're cheating.
2. And I agree with that point, but...what the heck is "female hands"?
Comments
The opposite of man hands, obviously.Also: pretty sure nobody, of any gender, has hairy legs in anime.
Yeah, bodily hair is kinda unknown in all of anime, except for things like top-of-head hair, eyebrows, mustaches/beards, and the front of a few men's torsos.
Kind of the same way I felt about Bridget. Like, if there was NO backstory, AT ALL, how the fuck would you know?
"Female shoulders" is a bit of a stretch, too.
You know what-- never mind. I never thought much of you guys to begin with, but I never expected anything like this.
Are you planning on actually making a point or are you just going to keep being superior?
And that character's design is pretty bad too. Why the fuck does he have his fly open?
I thought we are talking about the picture.
Either way, doesn't anyone here have anything to say about this thread, the subject matter, or the fact that there's a picture posted where attention is being drawn to the genital region and "cute, hairless legs" of a kid?
lol
...I don't see how the discussion so far is notably off-topic. It was exactly my point to observe that the anime art style is relatively androgynous anyway, but then also question some of the contentions the commentary in the picture itself made in making that point about androgyny.
Unless you meant the topic to be transvestism itself. Which actually didn't cross my mind.
As for the possible implications of child sexualization, I am not entirely satisfied with the way that the picture's embedded commentary phrased some things, but the commentary is relevant to commentary about the androgyny of anime art, and I think you may be reading a bit too far into this anyway.
^You could have just picked a picture of tye character without commentary and just said "this is supposed to be a guy", the picture is pretty tasteless
Don't go down this road.
Quite a few of us have expressed our concerns about plenty of this kind of stuff in other threads over the lifespan of IJBM. There's no outrage left, especially for those familiar with the tendencies of some anime studios.
No we are not. The picture is really fucking creepy. That's an overriding factor.
I picked this picture because it came with commentary that's better than (i.e. expresses the ideas more efficiently than) my attempts to identify specifics for the first time on my own.
Anyway, no, I'm not talking about off-topic discussion, and no, I have nothing against transvistitism, and it confuses me to no end why you'd think that before you thought that I was taking issue with the fact that you posted a drawing of a kid with unbuttoned pants and commentary about their genitalia and "cute hairless legs" written all over it.
And it really doesn't matter if the creepy commentary is relevant to your creepy commentary, because my point of contention doesn't involve how well-written your thread is.
Don't even come with that. Did you not see what I was responding to, and are you blind to the context of this discussion?
This isn't something a mod should ever say in this context. And I'm not asking for outrage, I'm asking for some basic decency, however trite that sounds.
e: And yeah, I'm sure you're going to write up some gigantic post in response to me, but truth be told, I will be unable to respond to it, and I'll probably be unwilling to read it.
Okay, I'll be honest with y'all, the picture didn't register much of anything, other than a convenient commentary about androgyny in anime art. I don't know the character, and I don't have an opinion of the character either way.
This character didn't register to me as being a child, and regardless, I see this topic as being one of discussing physiology (specifically secondary sex characteristics), so the topic didn't register as being sketchy in any way. Now anime art is infamously screwy with its depiction of age; perhaps I should have been leery of this before posting this.
For what it's worth, someone says on IRC that the character is a teenager. Not that I knew any of this. But heck, secondary sex characteristics don't appear on children anyway, if you're going to argue on this point.
If you want, I can replace the picture with a link and/or mark the topic NSFW.
The comment about transvestism and the term "trap" had to do with that I've heard various transgendered people object to the term "trap" or object to people confusing transgenderism and transvestism.
^ I think your post is still slightly broken.never mindI don't get what "female chin" refers to, since a few other guys in the same show have similar chins. As for a better choice of picture, this one has Hideyoshi next to his sister, who looks mostly the same as him, even with really similar hairstyles.
The fact that you didn't see this as anything but as point for your argument, despite it being a picture of very obviously (and I mean VERY obviously) young person in a highly sexualized context, is precisely my problem with this thread.
A teenager is still a child, as in someone underage. This changes nothing.
Too late.
Another quality IJBM thread
Seriously, what the fuck is this? "Awesome female chin"? "Cute hairless female legs"? "No bulge or hidden penis"? About a character clearly underage even by the standards of anime? And all to make the point that "'traps' are stupid because anime characters look androgynous lol" I mean, no shit, dude, guys look like girls in anime a lot. IJBM that you see nothing wrong with that picture.
EDIT: And when someone points out what's wrong with it the response of a fucking admin is "ah man we're such jaded Internet people, I can't even tell there's anything wrong with things like this anymore". Give me a break.
Here's what I was responding to:
"I'd like to bust your balls, but the fact that you're already getting so defensive (!even though you have no idea if I'm being serious or not!) is pretty hilarious in itself."
I said what I said because you don't "ball bust" here. It's not your role or place to enforce anything, and even the mod team dislikes forcefully using their authority to do those kinds of things. I'm not about to let anyone in the grasp of an angry fit set the terms for social authority, and that has nothing to do with the picture or your (entirely reasonable) criticisms of it.
Secondly, being two-faced about whether you're serious or not, then calling something "hilarious" is a poor, frustrating argumentative strategy from anyone's perspective. Everyone here should know that it doesn't go anywhere constructive. There's no way for that not to drag down the discussion, so while I don't like Nyktos' "lol" response, I'm not entirely sure if there was any constructive alternative.
If you want to hear my or anyone else's complete, collected criticisms of the handling of sexualisation and sexuality in recent anime, I'm sure plenty here will oblige you. I've largely stopped following anime, and partially because of things like the image in the OP being actual characters in their particular, pandering-heavy context. I doubt many here are happy with the existing state of affairs, if anyone.
To prevent any misunderstandings, I'll boil this down:
I don't think anyone has a problem with you having a problem with the image. My only problem right now is the way you're going about it. Rather than take an aggressive, accusatory position, you could have brought up your problems with the image while the rest of us just glossed over it. That would have been constructive and been a helpful contribution within a community that is largely blind to the excesses of pandering anime from overexposure and indifference.
The other guys with the "female chin" attribute are recognized by the female side of the cast as passable to belieavable transvestites though.
Someone responded to my somewhat melodramatic reeling by suggesting that I was "acting superior". Can't you understand the implications of that? And how can't you see that I never said that I was -going- to bust his balls; I just dismissed him as rudely as I could.
And his on earth can you expect me to act as pedantic and meek as you want me to when people here, including you, are acting like it's no big deal? You literally just tried to excuse this by saying that this forum is numb to the sexualization of children are thus dismissive to outrage regarding it.
@MadassAlex: Why? I think he got his point across perfectly well. Maybe he acted disgusted and angry because its something worth getting disgusted and angry about. But I know, you always have to be polite and can never be angry about anything, beep beep boop