Manga: Okane Ga Nai (Now P5 Only)

I'm having trouble figuring out where to place Okane ga Nai.

I can't find a way to say anything else about this, so...let's just get some input from people who have read this.

Okane ga Nai is a Boys' Love Genre light novel that was made into a manga that ran in Comic Magazine LYNX, a BL magazine aimed at high-school / college women. It has an OVA which is licensed in English as No Money!; I haven't seen it but I wouldn't be surprised if it's smuttier than the manga; OV As often are. I only know the manga; I don't think the light novel has been translated through any channels.

The story is one-half angsty relationship drama, one-half yakuza drama. The characters are a big, scary-looking, thuggish 26-y.o. yakuza and the tiny, girly, naive, incredibly-uke 17-y.o. college student that he's been in love with for years.

At the start of the story, uke-dude is being auctioned on the white-slave market to pay off gambling debts uke's brother has run up; scary-dude buys him and rapes him, then spends the rest of the series angsting over how tiny guy will never love him now, and being a dick to him to compensate. Of course, tiny guy does fall in love with him, but there's all kinds of angsting on his end over how the relationship started and does big guy really love him and other standard-romance angst topics. Eventually (many volumes later) they work it all out; it's the sort of thing where the romance plot could have been wrapped up in three chapters by a clear, sincere love confession from both sides.

All of this plays out against a background of Japanese mafiosi action-drama; there's gang wars and cutthroat internal mafiosi politicking, tiny guy gets kidnapped a lot, big guy gets shot a lot, etc. Over the course of the series, as the relationship issues get worked out, the drama elements get more over-the-top, melodramatic and violent.

The manga is kind of smutty by the standards of early-00s BL; there's one or two on-screen sex scenes per volume with full-body nudity and occasional almost-genitals, plus some more off-screen sex and lots of fanservice-y bonus art.

No-one is underage, but there's a comedy bit-part character who is called a "lolicon" for wanting to dress up tiny guy in Meido and Gothic Lolita costumes and speculating on how cute he was in elementary school, etc.

I think the major issue will be that tiny guy is really, really, outrageously uke; the general design standards for uke-ness make uke characters small and soft and feminine, and the author of the manga obviously likes the extremely uke style of uke, to the point that a lot of Western readers complain that he looks underage. I personally think he looks more girly than underage, but it's not my call.

Calling someone a pedant is an automatic Insult Backfire. Real pedants will be flattered.

He's been in love with a 17-yearold for years? Sure sounds like pedophilia to me. I don't see the need for this wiki to host content about a story with that theme and what amounts to paid rape sex-slavery, but is somehow supposed to be a "romantic comedy." I already voted devilhead and I won't be changing it, so don't worry about trying to argue the point.

edited 29th Apr '12 4:52:44 PM by Martello

"Did anybody invent this stuff on purpose?" - Phillip Marlowe on tequila, Finger Man by Raymond Chandler.

I don't really know much about this work but, Anime News Network says it's porn.

edited 29th Apr '12 5:03:45 PM by ThatHuman

something

Hm, that sounds pretty legit enough to me. With this in mind, I'm more inclined towards giving it an angel vote.

Really, now? Hm, that doesn't sound very favorable for its case...

edited 29th Apr '12 5:07:14 PM by Komodin

Experience has taught me to investigate anything that glows.

I don't believe that falls under what we're considering pedoshit. Isn't the line roughly drawn at 16? The article description claims he's 18 as well. By appearance he might fall into that territory though.

@4 That Human: That tag means there's explicit sex somewhere in the work. It's not the same as "nothing but sex".

edited 29th Apr '12 5:08:14 PM by lebrel

Calling someone a pedant is an automatic Insult Backfire. Real pedants will be flattered.

You sure? I thought "objectionable content: pornography" means that it... is, pornography. It's the only "objectionable content" rating they use that isn't an adjective. Below that is "intense".

edited 29th Apr '12 5:21:19 PM by ThatHuman

something

Well, why don't we check? What's an anime or manga that has some light sex in it but not enough to be what we'd call porn?

Edit: The Tsukihime manga has one sex scene in it but is at the level of intense rather than porn. Aki Sora is at the porn level. Anyone else have anything to check regarding how they label things?

edited 29th Apr '12 5:26:45 PM by Arha

For some reason, My Balls is only labeled intense, not erotica despite how it has A LOT of explicit sex.

On the other hand, Love Celeb is labeled erotica despite being way more tame than My Balls.

I'm not sure that Anime News Network is that reliable.

This more or less establishes that Anime News Network will name anything intense despite the ratio of plot to sex scenes.

edited 29th Apr '12 5:51:49 PM by encrypted12345

Full Battle Mode

Um, "intense" is their rating of onbjectionable content. "Erotica" is a genre. Both of those are labelled "intense" as far as "objectionable content" goes.I'm not sure what the problem is here.

edited 29th Apr '12 5:50:14 PM by ThatHuman

something

I'm not sure ANN is really that credible though. However, we don't seem to have many authorities on the subject. Is there anyone else to ask? If not, we should probably just go with what they said in light of how young the protagonist looks and the rating they gave it.

edited 29th Apr '12 5:59:35 PM by Arha

"intense" is not the same thing as porn. I think it's less based on the frequency of the sex scenes, but how explicit they are.

Well, the OVA (or at least, the second) is rated 18+, and trying to go the buying product page on Rightstuff.com (linked to on that ANN page) gets me a "mature content" warning.

something

Copied from the summary at the top of the work page:

"...he is being sold on auction by his unscrupulous cousin to pay off gambling debts"

"All of which leads to a whole lot of Rape Is Love"

"Until then, Ayase can repay Kanou by having sex with him: he gets 500,000 yen every time they do the deed to pay off the 120 million yen debt"

Sounds suspiciously like sexual slavery to me.

"Polite life will fill you full of cancer." - Iggy Pop "I've seen the future, brother, it is murder." -Leonard Cohen

Yeah, it certainly sounds like an abusive relationship, but does it depict the abusive aspects as being a good thing? I mean, it isn't like we are out to delete every story with abuse and dysfunction?

I am not completely familiar with the Boys' Love Genre, but isn't that type of thing typical for it? At least that's what I heard.

The page says that it's played for both laughs and angst.

edited 29th Apr '12 6:35:11 PM by encrypted12345

Full Battle Mode

Yaoi does seem to contain a lot of rape, however, this one actually shows it on panel apparently. Does most yaoi do that? I note that Gravitation is only stated to be at significant, which is at least two levels below this.

Admittedly, I'm not sure. Though, the "played for laughs and angst" line doesn't seem to do it any favors in my book. Maybe I'm just reading into it wrong.

edited 29th Apr '12 6:41:45 PM by tdgoodrich1

"Polite life will fill you full of cancer." - Iggy Pop "I've seen the future, brother, it is murder." -Leonard Cohen

@catbert I'm sure we're just trying to get actual porn off. (By actual porn: I mean if you took out the sex scenes, there'd be nothing but two pages left)

From my perspective, as a yaoi/slash fan who hasn't read Okane Ga Nai I'd say it really does come down to

• How many "years" the seme and uke were in love (e.g. if they fell in love when the uke was underage and that was portrayed as something good rather than something horrifically fucked up, it makes it pedo pandering even IF he's old enough at the time of the story itself). If they fell in love when the uke was 16 or 17, it gets a pass - it's not pedo. If they fell in love when he was younger, I'd say instant nuke for pedo.
  • The uke's looks do make him look underage. I think if we're strictly applying a ban on Really 700 Years Old and Legal Jailbait as excuses, extreme enough ukefication or chibification should also be considered as excuses. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

• If it's verifiably not pedo, the next question here is whether the plot (as described here) is enough to outweigh the pornography. Personally, I would say there's enough going on not to be an Excuse Plot from the description.

(ninja'd) so I'd actually be conflicted here. I'd say the young-uke thing is enough for a banhammer, but at the same time, I do recognize there's more than an Excuse Plot. Call me confused.

edited 30th Apr '12 2:00:47 AM by AGroupie

?

I don't see how it can fall under paedophilia when both of them are over eighteen. Whether it's porn or not, let's just try to give it a read and see.

"If you aren't him, then you apparently got your brain from the same discount retailer, so..." - Fighteer

From reading a synopsis as well as lebrel's write-up, it seems the older guy did fall in love with him when he was underage.

Also, from what I can see of page images, it appears to be pretty much porn, and rape porn at that.

"Did anybody invent this stuff on purpose?" - Phillip Marlowe on tequila, Finger Man by Raymond Chandler.

I went back and skimmed through the series; it's never mentioned exactly how long ago the characters met or exactly how old tiny guy was at the time. Tiny guy was nice to big guy when he was lying wounded on the sidewalk, big guy has always remembered this moment, it was at some unspecified time in the past.

I don't know what you looked through, but the entire manga series is scanlated. The series starts with an explicit rape scene, yes, but the rest of volume 1 is angsting, Russian Roulette, and relationship drama.

And yes, it's not uncommon for angsty-relationship-drama manga to include explicit rape scenes. This is true both for Boys' Love and for the more explicit josei, but no-one west of the International Date Line gives a flying fart about josei so it's most likely to come up here in relation to BL.

Calling someone a pedant is an automatic Insult Backfire. Real pedants will be flattered.

Quick GIS shows him looking more like a girl than a child to me. I'd personally say it's not pedoshit either by age or appearance, so my remaining concern would be how it compares in explicit sexual content compared to other BL work.

Tiny guy really doesn't look that much younger than he does now in that flashback, so if it's really literal years, and not figurative years, then it's two at the most which would make him about 16. He really doesn't look any younger in the flashbacks though, so I'm leaning towards it being figurative years.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick