Eiken (Feedback Wanted)

Oh, my... this work. What should we do with this one...

See, going through the Content Violation reports not too long ago, I saw that someone has flagged the work page for Eiken even though it's already gone. Now, personally, I'm for keeping it gone because, while it's not straight-up pornography (being just heavily ecchi), one of the major characters is a preteen girl with breasts literally the size of watermelons. However, since I'm always for a second opinion on matters like this, I ask you guys... do you all want it to stay gone, or do you want to bring it back?

Experience has taught me to investigate anything that glows.

I don't know much about the work so I don't know if this is a keep or cut, but one observation I would make is that huge breasts doesn't sound like something intended to appeal to lolicons.

Eiken is a strange case. On the one hand, it definitely sexualizes children. On the other hand, it does it by giving them very adult features - huge breasts, obviously. My concern is that it also sexualizes the main character who's an underage boy. I really don't get the mentality behind the work so I'm not going to try to dissect it and come up with some specific fetish or paraphilia it's supposed to cater to. Either way, there's a young boy and a number of young girls in very sexual situations, which to me is still in the spirit of pedo-pandering, giant breasts aside.

I've read a few issues to check it out, and it's also horrible drivel. Even if it was well-written and drawn, I'd still vote to cut it. I'm willing to hear what other people have to say, but right now I'm on the cut side.

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

I think the girls probably get a pass so long as there's no actual sex and they don't actually look young. Weird and creepy, but not pedo pandering. I'm not sure about the protagonist. GIS shows a guy with a pretty vague looking age. Actually, I didn't find many pictures of him since apparently no one cares about him. Unless the protagonist really does look like a child the manga is only terrible, not pedo pandering.

It's creepy as shit. Let's don't waste any time on this.

Goal: Clear, Concise and Witty

Don't worry Martello, even I think it's drivel, and I usually like that genre of manga/anime.

That said, it's not worth being cut. Being poorly written and containing the most blatant yet there's-no-way-to-mistake-this-for-hentai fanservice I've ever seen*

doesn't make this too obscene for our policies.

At worst, this is worth monitoring, but I get the feeling that this was flagged by someone who either didn't know it had been flagged before, or wanted to expose the fault of being able to spam the system with endless pointless flagging.

I have no background with this series. However based on what I have read it goes absurdly out of its way to make every page fetishishy, sacrificing both consistency of proportions and reasonable camera angles again almost once a page.

Wikipedia says the reception was pretty poor and I can see why.

But even if I go looking for some subjective views it's tough to find anyone who will say anything more positive than "you will like this if you like this kind of ecchi".

I don't think it's a significant loss to have it cut (almost no plot and little else noteworthy), and I can't really argue much of a basis for it to stay.

"Nullius addictus iurare in verba magistri, quo me cumque rapit tempestas, deferor hospes."

Hmm. When The Fast One posted some snapshots of Eiken as his reason for the initial cut, I took the liberty to go through a handful of chapters.

What did I see? Well, I didn't see nudity, explicitness, sex, or the like. It's clearly not porn, so it shouldn't be cut for that reason. On the other hand, there is some sexualization of children; most of the characters at least appear to be high school aged, although there is the one girl who appears to be 12-13.

Based on the three to four chapters I've read, it's fetishistic as all heck and definitely playing for fanservice all the time, but it's not porn, and I doubt that the particular fetishes being played up are going to be appealing to that certain crowd we don't want anything to do with. If I were a P5 member, I would vote to lock and example sectionenemy Eiken - it's got enough... maybe... notoriety that we should definitely have a page, but it's not particularly well written and not much would be lost if we didn't.

I'm not sure it means anything but it was licensed and you can buy it at a barnes and nobles. I think the manga has a 16+ rating (ofcourse that's from the publisher and not a official rating board).

edited 2nd May '12 6:52:40 AM by captainpat

The first couple were 16+, but they switched to 18+ for V4 on.

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

I've seen it. I never want to see it again. I've tried to block most of it out of my memory. It may not be true porn, but it's obvious that the main goal of it is someone's arousal. It's just so bad at it...

But as Fighteer said, we aren't here to judge quality.

There's no plot to it beyond fanservice. I'd call it pure fanservice porn (because it doesn't even qualify as soft core) with a sprinking of paedopandering as they were trying to hits as many fetishes as possible.

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

As I think i said when it first came up for discussion, Eiken ran in Weekly Shōnen Champion, which is notoriously pandering trash aimed squarely at horny teenage boys who aren't old enough to buy actual porn. The readership is almost entirely males between 9 and 18, so it's age-appropriate pandering, but it has basically no purpose besides pandering. Do with it what you will.

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

So basically, it's porn for guys not old enough to buy real porn.

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

Okay. So, no one would miss it if the work page stayed scrapped, yuh?

Experience has taught me to investigate anything that glows.

No, not really. Eiken is basically the go to series for citing an anime that you want to call completely awful and laughable without risk of being disagreed with. I'd personally just lock it and cut the examples, though.

edited 2nd May '12 7:27:31 AM by Arha

I still think lock and trope sectionenemy is the correct choice, but to answer the question being asked, if cut, I wouldn't bat an eye.

I wouldn't mind this being cut, but I'm mildly concerned that the "Heavy fanservice = Porn" line would be used as an argument against things like Strike Witches and Agent Aika, which could use some cleanup of the pages but are legit, non-pornographic works that I don't think we need to cut.

edited 2nd May '12 7:30:37 AM by Catbert

Okay. Just read through the first two scanned volumes (Chap 1 - 16). Since character ages are a sticking point...

• No sex, implied or otherwise. Just loads and loads of off-model cheesecake.
• The main character is labelled as "freshman", and his friends have known him "since middle school". This would make him about 15 - 16 years old. (EDITED for accuracy.) (Chap. 1)
• There is a 6th-grader with oversized breasts. I think everyone knows this by now. As someone else said previously, it's terrible, exploitative and just plain wrong... but I'm not sure that you can call it paedo-pandering with breasts of that size. (Why make her 12 in the first case? I have no idea, honestly, and I'm not going to try to defend that.)
• There is an underdeveloped 8th-grader. No sexual undertones noted so far with said character. Not paedo-pandering.
• There is an elementary school student who has a build consistent for her age (a rarity in this series). She gets into a Crash-Into Hello with the main character and his face collides with her rear. Played for comedy, no other fanservice of said character otherwise. (Said character spends most of her time in a giant bear mascot costume.) Questionable, but contributes minimally to the content.
• The remaining characters with significant fanservice are all at least 16. (This is from the scans. If the original Japanese states otherwise, please correct me.)

So from what I've seen so far, I personally wouldn't call it "paedoshit"... I'd just call it plain "shit". Damn, that art is starting to make my eyes water, and the plot and characterisation (or lack thereof) suck.

Personal opinion: Wouldn't shed a tear if it was cut, personally... but for the sake of consistency with the current guidelines, clean and lock.

edited 2nd May '12 7:47:57 AM by Pyrite

Not a substitute for a formal medical consultation.

So let's get rid of it then. I already voted devilhead. I'm sure that's a huge surprise.

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

My understanding is that Japanese freshmen is actually equivelent of an American 10th grader. Middle school there covers 7th-9th grades and high school covers 10th-12th.

That would put a freshman in the 15-16 range.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_education_in_Japan#Middle_school

15-16, actually. Japanese highschools are only three years. Not that that really changes anything.

Yeah, I'm giving it a devilhead, too.

Experience has taught me to investigate anything that glows.

I don't mind declaring it porn, but I'd prefer it not be cut outright rather than just be locked and either cleaned or examples cut entirely. We seem to be cutting most things noted as being porn/questionable with I think Playboy and the anime version of Lotte's Toy being the only exceptions.

I think it should be cleaned and locked, but I have no issue with it being cut.

"Pancakes. Oh, I blew it." - Joel Hodgson Nobody better lay a Butterfinger on my 3DS!

The Story Of O is looking like it's going to be another exception.

That said, there's a difference to me between Heavy Fanservice, and nothing but Fanservice. Eiken is the later. Heavy Fanservice isn't the same as porn. Eiken has gone far past Heavy.

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