Mad creepy, son: Token Loli

I mentioned this on the discussion for the page, but I'm not sure if anyone will read that. So, yeah, man, this page is creepy as all hell. I've seen it linked to every now and then, and finally decided to give the page a look, and it's just as weird as I thought it'd be. I know, I know, Japan is a strange and exotic and wonderful and mysterious exotic land, and if I say anything bad about it I'm a dumb American baka gaijin, but it's just weird as hell. There's a legit trope here (a little kid who manages to go on cool adventures with the rest of the cast without being a bratty tagalong), but it's buried under mountains of wholly-unnecessary creepitude. I'd suggest a total rewrite and rename to turn it into something that doesn't sexualize little kids, preferably.

edited 27th Feb '11 6:32:27 PM by Gloarb

It is creepy, but it is a trope.

*looks*

No, thats the trope. You may find it creepy, but it is what it is.

Edit: Also I really get tired of "think of the virtual children!" complaints.

edited 27th Feb '11 6:36:26 PM by SakurazakiSetsuna

The trope is "Token young child used for fanservice." I'm not sure how to rewrite a trope about sexualizing a token child to be nonsexual.

Oh how I fear Nihon's standards of attractiveness.

there is most certainly a legitimate anime trope there, but my pathological disdain for anything lolicon is preventing me from judging this properly and all I can think about is how much I want this burned.

This must be cleaned. Somehow.

Why?

I don't know, it's probably the pathological disdain talking, ignore me unless I have something valid to input.

Nope the trope is fine. In nearly every Harem series or series that can come across as one (Or even a normal series there will be a young girl in there and they will have a love interest or get some fanservice.) there is almost always a Loli or at least a loli Older Than They Look mixed in with the group its the visual part of this trope that matters the most.

Example Negima who has a Really 700 Years Old Loli Vampire Eva, 2 15 year old Twins that are this and Anya who is 11 years old (And anya is a Tsundere Childhood friend who hates breasts and the only one of these 4 that is a true love interest). All get fanservice although Eva gets far far more of it then anyone else. There are even Loli Robots although they only show up twice.

edited 27th Feb '11 7:12:46 PM by Raso

We have Tagalong Kid and Kid Sidekick for the non-sexual version. The underaged character shoehorned in to provide lolicon fanservice is a common trope in anime. It just happens to be a kind of creepy one, and as cataloguers of common elements in media, we don't get rid of tropes just because they're creepy (see also: Rape as Redemption).

Not quite seeing the problem here.

edited 27th Feb '11 7:11:10 PM by Iaculus

Okay, I suppose this my beef: most "creepy" tropes (generally, rape-related, and other unsavory stuff) are all in-universe only.

But then we have this. It's a trope, yeah, technically, but it's a real life one. Putting aside all fancy rhetoric about cultural values and what have you, it's about putting an underage female character into an anime/video game so real-life guys can beat their meat to it. It's disturbing, and I feel it's only tolerated because anime-related tropes tend to get way more wiggle room here than Western-related ones.

They also aren't real children, so who cares?

If this involved actual, underage children, sure, it'd be seriously creepy. But it doesn't. So I find it hard to get worked up over it.

We have an entire index of Turn On Tropes, quite a few of them also applied in a decidedly unsavoury manner. How is this one any different?

Again, this is a site for cataloguing trends and common devices in media. Some of those happen to be really fucking creepy, but how does that put them outside our remit?

So it's totally cool if we make a Just Here For The Rape Scene trope? There's probably lots of creepy dudes who read Lets Go Play At The Adams and watch Angel Heart for that express purpose. It's all fictional, so there's no problem here whatsoever, right?

sounds like a specific sub-trope of Just Here for Godzilla.

edited 27th Feb '11 8:17:27 PM by CrypticMirror

I don't care what gets people's rocks off. As long as no one is being exploited, and no actual children are involved, why should we care?

False equivalence. This is not an Audience Reaction Trope. This is where the work itself includes an underaged character for the explicit purpose of fanservice. A better equivalent would be a list of works where the women all have improbably large breasts, a list of works where all gay people are treated as child molesters, or a list of works where behaving in a manner likely to get you a court order in real life is treated as OH MY GOD SO ROMANTIC.

We do not tell people that they have to be turned on by the Token Loli. We only tell them that the author put them in their work because they wanted people to be turned on by them.

edited 27th Feb '11 8:25:56 PM by Iaculus

The problem I have is with the description.

The very first line of the main page description is: The Token Loli is an aged-twelve-and-under (at least in appearance) female character in an anime cast that is otherwise made up of adults, or at least teenagers. Yet at the end of the description, we suddenly get: Little girls who aren't treated in this Fanservice style should be put in Tag Along Kid or The Bumblebee, depending whether they are treated as a full cast member.

And in the Playing With part, it says that the basic trope is: A little girl who's a major character among the cast consists entirely of adults or teenagers

This trope's description seems ridiculously indecisive on what it's supposed to be.

Yeah, now that is more of a problem.

I agree. That bit is important to the trope, but there should be at least some mention that she's there for fan service in the first sentence. We need to emphasize her sexualization more earlier in the description.

...Wow, that sounds wrong.

edited 27th Feb '11 8:30:56 PM by shimaspawn

Yeah, the problem here is the description meanders a bit.

Anyway, people freak out over this more than is really necessary, this character type is basically just to balance out the required Gag Boobs character.

The trope is definitely creepy and I rather hate it, but it's a trope in its current form of sexualizing people who look like kids. You find the token loli in manga and anime ever, and I know from the billion or so visual novels I've played that they turn up there all the time as well. It's like they're a requirement.

I really don't think sexualisation is the key thing here. The majority of examples are characters that were added for the 'dawww, adorable' reaction, not the 'so hot!' one. It's a moe thing, in short.

I think you're thinking of something else. This if for when they're sexualized in game. Not by the people playing the games. i.e. they have some sort of romantic relationship with the main character.

And of course it will turn on some portion of the audience, and my reaction to that is "Ok, so what?"

That's not what the description or examples say. In fact, the description doesn't mention games at all.

Rather than changing description and examples, why not make a different page?