Smells like little girl spirit in raunchy manga

By Ryann Connell - Staff Writer - December 11, 2004

Tokyo housewife Yoshimi says she got the fright of her life when she had a look at the type of manga her 12-year-old daughter was reading.

"I started shaking in terror from the moment I turned the page. I never dreamed my daughter was reading such a shocking manga," the 40-year-old mom tells Sunday Mainichi (12/19).

What Yoshimi saw on those pages of that manga was a young schoolgirl, her uniform ripped open to bare her breasts and cords binding her to all limbs were extended. Behind the girl stood a boy of about the same age who was rubbing between her legs and inducing a look of sheer ecstasy on her face. The boy turned to the girl and said, "You still haven't come yet, right?" and sent his probing fingers driving even deeper into the girl's welcoming recesses.

Steamy stuff even for adult magazines for grown men or women, but totally startling considering they were actually found in a shojo manga, one that deliberately targets girls in their early teen years.

"They're selling in ordinary bookstores and my daughter buys them with her pocket money," Yoshimi says. "I liked manga, too, when I was a kid and I wasn't worried at all when my daughter first started reading them."

Yoshimi's worried now...and so are others.

"Manga for teenage girls are becoming increasingly raunchy. There're about 30 shojo manga on the market. Those following a particular storyline for several issues are still in the majority, the number of manga dealing with sex themes started to grow rapidly about three years ago," shojo manga expert Yayoi Kobayashi tells Sunday Mainichi, adding that topics once even taboo among adults, think of incest and pack rape, pop up in little' girl's comics. "You've got to think that theses comics are being read by girls who perhaps a year earlier hadn't even begun budding breasts and they're now reading stuff like, in one manga for instance, finding a young boy to 'train' and turn into a sex toy. It even made me feel sick."

A popular shojo manga editor explains why he thinks little girls like the raunchy materials.

"Manga editors and artists do nothing more than reflect the world around them and provide fiction that the times are calling for," the editor says.

Kids don't seem too perturbed by their reading matter.

"Of course I'm interested in sexy stuff and it's a bit exciting to read it," a sixth grader from Tokyo tells Sunday Mainichi. "But I know there's a difference between manga and reality and I don't pay much attention to what I read."

A third-year junior high school pupil is dismissive of the attacks on shojo manga.

"Before adults get stuck in to attacking comics, they should thing about all the dirty sites on the Internet and all the sex-related spam we get. They're much bigger problems," she says. "You can see people getting down to the real thing in those places. At least with manga it's clearly a fantasy world."

Some schoolgirls say raunchy shojo manga are no threat at all.

"Cool girls are already out with their boyfriends having sex and couldn't give a damn about manga," a third-year junior high schoolgirl from Kanagawa Prefecture says. "Just sitting there reading a manga is proof that the girl is not cool, which naturally means she hasn't got a boyfriend and isn't having sex. Rather than being worried (by shojo manga), parents should feel at ease."

Some girls, like another in her final year at a Tokyo middle school, find sexy shojo manga educational.

"I'm less worried about when I lose my virginity, but how it's going to happen. I want it to feel good and I suppose I've got to satisfy my boyfriend, too. I don't want to have uncool sex, but, to be honest, I haven't got a clue about how to do it," she tells Sunday Mainichi. "When I look at the girls in the shojo manga who are doing 'love play,' I'm amazed at how much they know, I feel really jealous."

Psychiatrist Tamaki Saito says shojo manga pose no threats.

"Manga, or any other media for that matter, are hardly likely to influence girls' sexual behavior," he tells Sunday Mainichi. "Girls have already learned about sex from their friends or amongst themselves. Information they learn that way is going to have a far greater influence over what they do."