More than a week after Seven Seas Entertainment announced it had decided not to publish an American version of Nymphet (Kodom no Jikan), a manga about an 8-year-old girl who wants to have sex with her adult teacher, there’s still news to report.
The manga’s creator, Kaworu Watashiya, has written about the cancellation on her online diary, commenting on cultural differences between the United States and Japan, and responding to statements made by Seven Seas Publisher Jason DeAngelis.
“There are differences in the border [between what’s acceptable and not] for representations of young girls in each place, time, and culture,” she writes, “so if the people there have decided that it’s unacceptable then that’s that.”
Japanator has the full translation of Watashiya’s comments.
Speaking of DeAngelis, the publisher isn’t finished discussing the Nymphet controversy. On his new blog on the Seven Seas website, DeAngelis details how the company settled on a title for the American version, and how a scene in Volume 3 changed his mind “about the appropriateness of this title.”
“See, my whole defense before was based on the idea that Nymphet was not so bad because it was about a girl who tries to sexually entrap her teacher but fails because he in no way reciprocates,” DeAngelis writes. “But in this scene in the third volume, it shows him getting literally, physically aroused by her (the original Japanese text unmistakably and unequivocally backs this up.) This is what completely crossed the line for me, and showed me that I could no longer defend releasing this title. Yes, there are other questionable scenes as well, but it isn’t my job to go through a graphic play-by-play of all the objectionable material. Suffice it to say that this one scene crossed the point of no return. I don’t see how anyone can possibly defend this scene. ‘Nuff said.”
June 8th, 2007 at 6:03 am
That DeAngelis person is a bi of an idiot, right?
I don’t see how anyone can possibly defend this scene.
Well, it’s fiction, it doesn’t need to be defended. No actual kids were harmed and the book doesn’t encourage people to go out and have sex with 8 year olds. So, raelly no defense necessary whatsoever.
That said, I get why he wouldn’t want to publish it, either because _he_ is uncomfortable about the extremely remote possibility of encouraging pedophila or _he_ is worried about backlash from social conservatives. That’s fine. But to say that the scene can’t be defended is to say that certain things “can’t” be said (why?) which is incredibly stupid in that the scene already exists and he speaks out in favour of establishing thoughtcrimes. Then again, he probably is not smart enough to realise that doesn’t go well with a free society.*
* Yes, I know, I’m harsh. Apologies for assuming a grown up in that situation chooses his words with care. If he didn’t, it doesn’t really matter whether he’s an idiot for not considering his words or for considering them and ending up with what he said.
June 8th, 2007 at 6:57 am
“But to say that the scene can’t be defended is to say that certain things “can’t” be said…”
No, it’s to say that certain things *shouldn’t* be said. Big difference.
June 8th, 2007 at 10:01 am
Well said Paul. I was going to say something long and rambling that was similar, but you summed up my own thoughts in two sentences.
June 8th, 2007 at 1:13 pm
Markus, I usually agree with you, but not in this case. As a business move in our culture, that scene CANNOT be defended. Is murder (a crime that is portrayed in all manner of media in our culture) just as bad a crime as pedophilia? This is open to interpretation. Some people would probably say that a pedophile is worse than a murderer. Is the graphic portrayal of pedophilia using a medium that is largely regarded as kid friendly going to pass muster in our culture? No, and I for one am grateful.
June 8th, 2007 at 4:30 pm
“Is murder (a crime that is portrayed in all manner of media in our culture) just as bad a crime as pedophilia?”
That’s missing the point completely, though. The criticism of NYMPHET concerns the *way* it deals with the subject. Rightly or wrongly, the series stands accused of legitimising paedophilia. That’s the point.
Compare PUNISHER PRESENTS BARRACUDA, which has a comedy paedophile priest and is doing fairly crass gags on the subject. Nobody’s complaining about that, because it’s Garth Ennis, it’s a black comedy, and the underlying premise of the joke is that we all accept it’s Horribly Wrong.
June 8th, 2007 at 4:48 pm
@Paul
Sorry, no. “shouldn’t” is an opinion, “can’t be defended” is an absolute statement. Big difference.
Apart from that, both are laughable in this case, see below.
@Sean
The scene in #3 apparently shows the teacher getting a hard on after the girl rubs herself against him. There is no penetration. Now, if someone thinks that this means the book should be “adult”, fair enough. I’d agree but could also see a case for something like 16+. But if you’re seriously arguing that such a comparatively normal physical reaction, however unpleasant to the fictional character puts the book outside the real of what can see print you’ve completely lost your moral compass. Unless of course, the constant stream of rape and murder in all kinds of fiction also has you up in arms and you support not producing a sizeable chunk of entertainment.
Oh, and the people who say a pedophile is worse than a murderer are idiots. A pedophile as such is a person suffering from a desire to do something which has to be forbidden because it can’t be done without damaging the other party. Many pedophiles manage to push that urge back, I imagine it’s somewhat like being a recovering addict in terms of craving. A murderer per definition has murdered someone.
Even for pederasts the claim is shaky. Everyone probably knows a couple of victims of pederasts who managed to put together a halfway decent (sex)life and are more or less happy. Heck, people escape from genocidal wars all the time and manage to again find joy in life. A horrible as it is, everything strongly suggests that murder is the worse crime. (My pet theory being that this isn’t as immediately obvious as it should be because murder victims are not around to tell us how horrible it was.)((In case I wasn’t clear: I doubt anyone thinking it through actually believes child molestation is worse. Because, uhm, you can recover from that.))
As for passing muster, I agree, American society is probably not ready for Nymphet. I just think that’s because in this respect American society is dominated by puritan nutcases and not the fault of Nymphet.
June 8th, 2007 at 5:00 pm
“stand accused of” is only relevant in terms of baklash and public outcry. I already agreed that fear of same is a fine reason to not publish the book. However, in moral terms, “stands accused of” is meaningless unless the accusation is credible and backed up by evidence. As mentioned, the evidence is beyond slim on that one. To my knowledge and now one has yet claimed otherwise, the male lead always maintains the relationship is wrong and tries to avoid the child.
As for the comedy, well, Nymphet’s suppoed to be one, too.
Finally, even if (which IMO clearly isn’t the case, but just for the sake of the argument) Nymphet legitimised pedophilia, so what? America has a Hitler museum and it’s fine to deny the holocaust, but it’s beyond the pale to support pedophila? Sorry, but that’s fucked up. And it has nothing to do with morality and everything with some things being more icky than others.
(Again, it’s fine to not what to be seen promoting pedophilia, I wouldn’t eithe, but - once again - my original issue was with the categorical statement that that view can’t be held.)
June 8th, 2007 at 8:30 pm
You can twist yourself into heady philosophical knots all you want, but there’s just nothing funny about a teacher popping a boner over a slutty eight year old girl.
June 9th, 2007 at 6:29 pm
Markus- Actually, it’s NOT fine to deny the Holocaust. It’s protected by the First Amendment yes, but it is NOT FINE. Are you referring to the Holocaust museum in DC? The purpose of musuems is to preserve and share HISTORY and KNOWLEDGE for the consumption (and hopefully for the betterment) of civilization. Museums dedicated to one of the greatest (and most recent) monsters of human history and the greatest wholesale slaughter of innocent people have a clear and IMHO noble purpose.
I’m not saying that Nymphet promotes pedophilia, but from what I can tell, at the very least it plays up pedophilic themes for a LAUGH. Which is just tasteless, tacky, and frankly disturbing to me. Any psychiatrist or school teacher would tell you that if an 8-year-old girl started coming onto her teacher, you could be damn sure Social Services would be visiting her house that very day.
And DeAngelis is in no way promoting the establishment of thoughtcrimes: he simply does not want his own business associated with such thoughts. And what he clearly (I thought) meant about being unable to “defend” it was that he could not find, nor would he be able to argue, that Nymphet has the artistic merit to carry such scenes.
June 10th, 2007 at 3:48 pm
Excuse me, but have any of you dealt with child sex abuse victims? My husband has, as a deputy prosecuting attorney; the Sex Abuse Treatment Center social workers would bring these little ones to my husband because kids somehow instinctively trust him. Promoting sex between children and adults, no matter how the creator justified it by showing the child as instigator, is not a good thing, because most kids aren’t emotionally ready. I’m not necessarily a Puritan, but having seen my strong, tough husband break down emotionally after a session with a child sex victim (and some of them were toddlers who could barely verbalize what had happened to them), I could never read such a book. If the series were to see publication in the U.S., I would not buy nor read it. As a parent, I could never read such a book. And what would have been the age rating on this had it been published in the U.S.? BTW, my husband also prosecuted criminals who had been sexually abused as children and never recovered; they chose to deal with their pain by abusing others and committing other crimes.