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alt title(s): Loli "You and your dad are really close, Konata." 
Japanese abbreviation of the English phrase "Lolita Complex." The term refers to the book Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, which describes an older man's illicit sexual affair with a twelve-year-old girl. Sometimes written as "roricon" or "rorikon" due to the inexact mapping between Japanese and English phonemes. Not so much an Anime Trope as a Japanese cultural trope, this is the term used to describe the fetish/fascination some mature Japanese men have for underage girls, particularly sailor-suited schoolgirls. There is an entire industry in Japan devoted to providing legal but schoolgirl-themed pornography, taking advantage of the cute childlike appearance some Japanese women maintain well into their twenties.
Because anime can have a fairly low age grouping depending on the audience, fans often consider lolicon to be below 12 years old. This can be pushed higher if the other character is much, much older, though.
Lolicon themes are far more common in hentai material, but can still be found here and there in mainstream anime. One particular device used to skirt the boundaries of taste and legality is the exotic being (alien, creature of magic, robot or the like) which takes the form of an underage human girl, but is in fact for all other practical purposes an adult. Interestingly enough, Nabokov himself addressed the subject with far less sympathy and jocularity, describing said older man in his book as "a vain... cruel... hateful person."
Another reason why lolicon is fetishized by people may be because some of them just view it as a substitute for their fetish for flat-chested, but otherwise well-developed, women.
Oddly enough, many idols among the fetish are from shoujo series intended for girls. However, this may have more to do with the innocent fetish the younger female audience has with having a cool older boyfriend. On the other hand, some Moe Moe series tend to be more blatant in their aims.
In Canada and Australia, lolicon is considered child pornography, so Canadian/Australian readers are advised to tread very carefully.
See also Joshikousei and, for teacher-student relationships, Mary Kay Letourneau Teaches Here. Compare with Shotacon.
Examples
Anime and Manga
- Sakura Kinomoto from Card Captor Sakura is infamous for her lolicon fandom; at ten years old, there's probably more Rule Thirty Four of her than of any other shoujo heroine.
- Likely fueled by her numerous ridiculously intricate battle costumes. Let us all give thanks for Tomoyo!
- Then you have Rika who's going out with her teacher, and gets engaged to him before she even starts middle school.
- Some of Wataru's sisters in Sister Princess can be viewed as catering to lolicon.
- Neon Genesis Evangelion very subtly hints at the possibility that NERV Commander Gendo Ikari is sexually involved with 14-year-old mecha pilot Rei Ayanami. Until you learn that he cloned her as a replacement for his dead wife. What are you supposed to conclude then?
- Also, 14-year-old mecha pilot Asuka Langley Soryuu is very smitten indeed with Misato Katsuragi's thirty-something ex-boyfriend Ryoji Kaji, and throws herself at him quite aggressively. To his credit, he always declines her offers - though this may be less due to his morals than to the fact that Asuka is, to put it gently, seriously disturbed.
- According to Word Of God, it's because he has no such feelings for her, both because he raised her since shortly after her mother's suicide and because he wants to get back into Misato's pants/skirt/whatever she happens to be wearing.
- Keep in mind that just because Kaji acts like a lech, doesn't mean he doesn't have standards/morals.
- Rizelmine, a series which revolves around the (initially unrequited) love between a 12 year old synthetic human girl and her 15 year old crush (who has the reverse of a Lolita Complex - he likes mature (25-30) women). Made more disturbing by the fact that in order to biologically grow up, Rizel needs the 15 year old's "love" (in both the physical and spiritual sense). A RunningGag in the show is that Rizel is too innocent (being only 12) to realize how perverse what she is saying can be taken, but the protagonist is definitely not.
- In Steel Angel Kurumi, the general's obsession with Karinka.
- Paranoia Agent is not a lolicon show, but it has two plot lines about the phenomenon, both done very disapprovingly: a twisted otaku who obsesses over underage girls, and a pedophile who puts a hidden camera in his teenage daughter's bedroom.
- Hazumu's father's obsession with her after her transformation in Kashimashi Girl Meets Girl.
- Chika in Ai Yori Aoshi caters to lolicon (and Fanservice). She spends most her time in a swimsuit and gets naked at least three times as often as most of the other characters.
- Bokusatsu Tenshi Dokuro-chan hangs a lampshade on this repeatedly: part of the premise of the show is that Sakura is destined to create a longevity drug that has the effect of making all women stop growing at the apparent age of twelve - not for the good of humanity, but because he was attracted to young girls!
- This goon shared a theory with one of his minons that the whole reason for Sakura becoming a pedophile- and lets be frank, that's exactly what he would end up if this whole deal is true- is Dokuro's fault. I meen, if I had my head blown off my sholders every time I inadvertenly saw someone naked (and I saw someone naked as many times as Sakura unfortunely does), I would be quick to associate "Anything my age" to equal "death" and hence go down the dark path.
- Evangeline A.K. McDowell of Mahou Sensei Negima seems tailor-made for the lolicon crowd. She stopped aging when she became a vampire, so although she is actually very old, her body appears pre-teen (though her favored disguise is a well-endowed adult form). Similarly, the twins Fuuka and Fumika Narutaki are actually 15 in the series, but they look younger than their 10-year-old teacher.
- Don't forget about Chachamaru's alternate bodies. Those are designed in loli fashion, also. Some of the other characters (mostly Chisame) take on a loli form with the age deception pills. So, yeah, this series is just full of loli deliciousness. Er, Did I Just Say That? ^^
- Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni - Dr. Irie has a complex about Satoko. Oddly, this is never taken seriously, he's shown to actually care about her as an authority figure, and he ends up an ally of the kids against the Hate Plague.
- Excel Saga has Dr. Shiouji, who blatantly eyes prepubescent girls and models the android Roppanmatsu II after them; he later takes the young Cosette to a love hotel, although that backfires. Roppanmatsu II herself spends an episode lusting after the (relatively) adult Excel and eventually has apparent (non-consensual) sex with her off-camera. (As is the style for the series, all of this is played as over-the-top slapstick.)
- The young girls of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, enough that there was a substantial backlash when StrikerS aged up the protagonists to 19. However, they haven't lost the lolis; Vita is still a child, due to her nature as a program, and new lolis Lutecia, Caro and Vivio were introduced in this season.
- Bubblegum Crisis's Anri is a rolled up Ridiculously Human Robots & Robot Girl hybrid. She's also a specifically designed sex android with a physical appearance of being underage.
- Most Tokyo Mew Mew hentai doujinshi, of both couple and self-insert varieties, is of Ichigo, who begins the series at age 12 and ends at 13. The second most popular character for self-insert doujinshi is Hwang Bu-ling, who can't be more than ten.
- When the American publication of the manga Kodomo No Jikan (under the title Nymphet) was announced, it was just as quickly cancelled, after the publishers realized the difficulties of selling a manga that's all about an eight year old girl trying to seduce her teacher. The whole "I'm going to raise my stepdaughter to be a substitute for my dead wife" part probably doesn't help.
- Lucky Star: Konata's dad, Soujirou:
Soujirou: I not only like younger girls, but I like normal girls, too, so "I am also a lolicon" is correct.
Konata: You fail at life either way.
- Kinda-sorta subverted since Kanata was actually slightly older than her husband. Not that she looked it.
- It is later implied that her growth was stunted due to health problems which eventually killed her, making this border on Deconstruction territory.
- The fact that Konata shares her mother's height at that age does not bode well...and this has been explored in dark fics.
- Someone please tell this Troper that those dark fics cover the possibility of Konata inheriting her mother's health problems, and not about what this Troper fears they may be about. This Troper's faith in humanity hasn't been completely shattered yet.
- I referred to the health part only, thanks.
- If you're fearing Konata/Soujirou fics, don't. For one, it's an epic Crack Pairing, and for two, it wouldn't necessarily be a Dark Fic if it was that pairing.
- The above optimism would be sweet if it weren't so futile.
- Also, Konata does know she and Yutaka's body condition would be Fetish Fuel for lolicon.
- In Pokemon Pearl, in the restaurant, you may battle a Veteran (an old man) who is dining with a Lass (young girl). Of course this could be a grandfather/granddaughter outing, but still...
- The opening text those two have explicitly says that they are father and daughter. Additionally, the in-battle pictures for the Expert trainers in Diamond/Pearl is that of a man in his late thirties, at the most.
- I disagree. They're definitely graying. I estimate fifties, maybe forties. Forties would be plausible, actually—this troper, a firstborn child, was not quite two when his father turned forty.
- Speaking of Pokemon, in the anime, many fans have noticed that May (ten years old) is...um...quite developed for her age. The writers also seemed to be fond of showing her in swimsuits.
- Somewhere else on this wiki, it was pointed out that the exact level of this development is not consistent, suggesting the use of a push-up.
- Not to mention Shorttank Misty/Kasumi, whose outfit in the manga by Toshihiro Ono, based on the anime, is essentially half a tube top and a bikini made out of denim pants - daisy dukes taken a bit too far, more or less. This is toned down in the US Manga, where her outfit is changed to a more reasonable tomboy outfit.
- Parodied in webcomic Megatokyo, where the protagonist's incarnate conscience disapproves of a younger girl who has a crush on him, so instead sets him up with someone of more suitable age.
- Jenny in Cosplay Complex is very forward about her passionate feelings for young Athena, very much to the dismay of Athena's older sister Maria.
- Rin from Mnemosyne probably counts, as her immortal girlfriend was in her young teens when she became an immortal. She also seems very aware how her relationship looks to others, and seems to enjoy watching people squirm over it.
- The female characters in the infamous Transformers: Kiss Players
 were intentionally drawn this way, despite the fact that every single one of them is over the age of twenty.
- While this may not seem all that bad at first, you then notice the insane overabundance of sexual imagery.
- Kinda-sorta averted in the Spiral manga: sly Badass Lolita Rio is actually seventeen and lives independently, but she looks like a shy twelve-year-old and uses it to her advantage. It actually becomes a joke as Ryoko calls Kousuke a Lolicon whenever she feels particularly jealous of his friendship with Rio. In the Prequel, after Kousuke is introduced as the "young detective," Imari asks if Rio is the "loli-loli detective."
- Azumanga Daioh's Chiyo-chan gets a certain amount of this. Yuri lolicon fans like to pair her with Sakaki. No, you can't ever un-read that. (Though, to be fair, some non-lolicon Yuri fans will set the story years after the story's end when she's older and then pair them up).
- One part of the Tenchi Muyo manga series (the second manga, that is) shows Sasami's guardian, the afro-styling Mamamiya (nom de guerre for her Juraian bodyguard) defending Sasami from random perverts eyeing her over. One scene shows the pervert-detector issued (yes, pervert detector) reading everyone in the area lusting after her.
- And for those who wonder, the Tenchi/Sasami pairing is in the top three of Tenchi Muyo fanfic ships. It helps that she's Really Seven Hundred Years Old ... until you realise that she spent the vast majority of that in suspended animation. Some fanfics will merge Sasami with Tsunami in order to instantly increase her physical and mental maturity to match Tenchi's and thus avoid the lolicon, though this troper doesn't know how common this is compared to leaving her as-is.
- In the dub of Shin Chan, Action Bastard's sidekick is named Loli Pop. She is directly stated to sleep around, which Mr. Bastard finds disturbing.
- Devil May Cry The Animated Series introduced Patty Royale to the cast. This somewhat out-of-place element may have contributed to the Dis Continuity regarding the show, and she has not shown up in the games yet - or, as some fans might hope, if ever.
- Moetan. Just... Moetan.
- All the SWA girls in Gunslinger Girl. They're all essentially in love with their handlers - all much older men, in or around their thirties - while the oldest among them, physically, is at most 14. (The exception to this is the new team, Petra and her handler Alessandro; Petra is 16 and Alessandro is much younger than the others.) Interestingly enough, the series' prototype was originally full-blown lolicon.
- Inverted in Midori No Hibi. While main character Seiji would love to have a girlfriend, he always blows off the advances of his 11-year-old neighbor Shiori, much to her frustration.
- The main characters in the anime Sky Girls are all 16 and 17 years old, but they're drawn to look like they're much younger. It doesn't help that they wear skimpy battle costumes.
- She may be sixteen (or maybe thirty...), but in the Suzumiya Haruhi novels Kyon gives Mikuru a...really lolicon description.
- Which is kind of odd, given that her most prominent physical features are her impressive breasts.
- Ryofuko-chan does the whole lolicon shtick with the characters from Romance Of The Three Kingdoms.
- This is the most common Fanon interpretation of 24-year-old Li Xingke's feelings for 13-year-old Empress Tianzi in Code Geass R2. And he's NOT likely to live for too long so he can wait for her to grow up, either.
- Strike Witches - 'nuff said.
- The characters around the age of Nagi Sanzenin, a 13-year-old, in Hayate The Combat Butler are clealry made to appeal to the lolicon crowd. There's even quite a number of Fanservice bits provided for said characters which, thanks to the nature of the series, are often lampsahded and lampooned. A character, Maria, is even disturbed when she observes that if the main character, a 16-year-old boy, were to fall in love with Nagi (and, due to a lot of misunderstandings, Nagi does believe he is in love with her) then: "A pedophile might be born."
- The 14 year-old Lucy from Steel Ball Run is frequently the target of several male characters' sexual desires (including an almost-hentai Attempted Rape scene by the president).
- In Fruits Basket, Sohma Shigure (secretly) likes high school girls. Shigure is 28. Also, his ultimate love interest, Akito, is in her early to mid twenties. Shigure may actually not be a lolicon, since he slept with Akito's mother. He claims this was because she slept with Kureno.
- Speaking of Kureno, This Troper feels as though he's a lolicon too. While the age gap between him and Akito, who he's slept with is smaller than that of Akito and Shigure, he does end up with Arisa, who is in her late teens.
Comic Books
- In a recent Supergirl comic, Kara develops a big crush on Nightwing and ends up kissing him, which makes him look kind of like an Accidental Pervert. Apparently his charms don't just work on legal women...
Film
- Mathilda, the young girl from the Luc Besson film Leon: The Professional, is no more than 13 years old, but engages in some disturbing banter with the hired hitman she stays with. At one point, she dresses up in lingerie (over her regular clothes) to sing Madonna's "Like A Virgin", and at one point, asks Leon to take her virginity (which he refuses). Much of this is because the character was originally written to be in her late teens; but it's telling that when then-thirteen-year-old Natalie Portman was cast, the character was not rewritten.
- The film Interview With a Vampire is an odd subversion, in that Kirsten Dunst was eleven years old when she played the role, but her character was a centuries-old vampire trapped in a child's body. Your Mileage May Vary on the Squick that results when she kisses Brad Pitt.
Literature
- One Hundred Years Of Solitude: in his youth, Aureliano Buendia fell in love and managed to marry the incredibly young and pretty Remedios Moscote. The relationship was approved only because his intentions were serious and she was wise beyond her years. Although exact numbers were not given, it's said explicitly that she was so younG that they had to put off the marriage until her menarche. Unfortunately, she becomes Too Good For This Sinful Earth and she dies during childbirth.
- (nitpick) Not really during childbirth, but while pregnant.
- And, of course, Lolita.
Live Action TV
- Just about every discussion in which Stephanie from live-action children's show LazyTown comes up outside dedicated fan circles (as well as inside certain fan circles) has some adult male fan bring up her sexual attractiveness, despite the character being just eight (the actress is older, being 13 when she took the role). That and the brightly-coloured, unreal-looking world have lead some non-fans to conclude the show is of Japanese origin or heavily influenced by anime.
- "Miri", an episode of the original Star Trek, featured Kirk giving the Kirk Treatment™ to a girl of about thirteen (Soft focus effect and all.) Of course, she was a couple centuries older than she looked, but they didn't know that, and when they did, it was repeatedly stated that the long-lived kids matured just as slowly emotionally as physically (until finally mutating and going Ax Crazy at adulthood and soon dying.)
Tabletop Games
Videogames
- MOMO. Just...MOMO...
- In the Disgaea series, although Etna and Flonne are both thousands of years old, they are drawn as though they were twelve. Also, Laharl, who is also thousands of years old and drawn as though he were twelve, has an actual physical aversion to large breasts.
- Xianghua was the loli appeal character in Soul Calibur. She grows up by Soul Calibur II, so a new young girl, Talim, is brought in to the cast. By III, she's almost legal, so in comes Amy, who is also extremely goth.
- In the original version of Super Robot Wars Original Generation, Latooni Subota and Shine Hausen, are young girls (around 14 years old) who would go into battle wearing huge frilly dresses. This was toned done in both the Divine Wars anime and Original Generations remake, where they were given Latex Space Suits (like everybody else, mind you), but their Combination Attack "Royal Heart Breaker" which, we should mention, is performed in Humongous Mecha that look like young girls in huge frilly dresses, still shows them in their dresses with them acting incredibly cute, mecha and all. Even their teammates wonder what that attack says about the two men who designed the mecha (and even did the motion data for that attack).
- In School Days, all of the five heroines are 15 years old. But one of them, Setsuna, actually looks much younger than that. She's pretty aware of it as well, showing some envy against her much curvier friend Sekai as well as towards Kotonoha, the girl with the biggest chest in the game.
- Also, in the Spin Off game Summer Days which has Setsuna as the heroine, 13-year-old Kokoro (Kotonoha's sister) joins Makoto's Unwanted Harem. And yes, you can have Makoto sexing her up.
- Lillith in the Darkstalkers video games is made all the more appealing to Lolicon fans by the fact that she is a succubus, just like her progenitor, the busty Morrigan.
- Ilya from Fate Stay Night is blatant with her attraction to Shirou. Since she looks about 12 and also happens to be Ax Crazy, he's not interested. Despite this, the hentai fandom for that pairing is disturbingly large, and the fact that Ilya is never going to get physically older adds to the Squick. (For that matter, it's also technically incest.)
- The Shingetsutan Tsukihime character Ren (Or Len for the purists) is an extremely moe lolicon idol to just about any fan of the series. Many references are made in both "official" and fan works suggesting that Shiki may have a lolicon streak, and result in his great infatuation with her... Though Ren is actually Arcueid's demon familiar who is able to change between the form of a little girl and that of a cat, and happens to be several hundred years old. This resulted in the famous internet meme A Cat Is Fine, Too.
- Albeit technically, by the end of Kagetsu Tohya and the beginning of Melty Blood, Len has already gone into Shiki's possession/protection as his familiar - she was dying trying to keep Shiki alive, and Arcueid, not being a Magus, cannot form a contract with her, while Shiki can, since he's a human and a Magus, albeit rather undeveloped in this regard. Best part of all this mess? Said contract is made by... yep, you guessed it, Intimate Healing. Takes the whole Lolicon complex to an entirely new level.
- The story of Stalvan and Tilloa (anagram of Lolita) from Worldof Warcraft mimics the story of Lolita.
- One of the main characters in the Blade Runner Adventure Game is Lucy, a 14 years old girl whose makeup and clothing leave little to imagination (take a look◊). In case she is revealed to be a replicant, you can found out that she was created exactly to fulfill Lolita fantasies. Some of the dialogue suggests she may have more than a crush on the main character, and in one of the endings you can escape with her.
- Dirge of Cerberus, a TPS spin-off of Final Fantasy VII, introduced a 19-year-old girl stuck in the body of a 9-year-old named Shelke. She has memory fragments of the protagonist's old love interest in her mind and starts taking on bits of said love's personality—not to mention she's rather...developed...for someone who's supposed to be pre-pubescent...
- In SHUFFLE, Primula looks like she's about 12 (she's actually technically younger, being an artificially created being). Although the anime is pretty bad about this (an episode dedicated to buying her a bra?) it pales into comparison with the original H-game, where she has her own story (meaning that Rin can have hot, graphic sex with her!)
Western Animation
- An episode of Teen Titans involving time travel led to a still-teenaged Starfire meeting up with a near-thirty Nightwing, and though naturally there was nothing overt the entire affair gave off a very creepy air. Not to mention that an awkward cutaway makes it look as though he kisses her before sending her back to her own time.
- Just try to watch this and not think about this.
- Batman The Animated Series introduced Baby Doll, a former child star with... issues, whose body would never age beyond childhood. Thus, she had a hard time looking for love, as everyone (including Killer Croc) found it creepy.
Batgirl: "What do you think they do on a date?"
Batman: "...I don't want to think about it"
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