What makes Lovable Sex Maniac "lovable"?

It occured to me when watching the first season of Haganai that Rika Shiguma's behavior is pretty disturbing, no matter how whimsical and funny it is, yet she is listed on the wiki as an example of a Lovable Sex Maniac. But instead of wondering if she really is an example of this trope, I began to wonder what actually makes Lovable Sex Maniac "lovable"? It's not chivalry because we already do have Chivalrous Pervert. But just pervert being shameless and having funny antics (which really is up to debate) does not really make them lovable, does it?

I think this may be a partially Discredited Trope where certain antics may be Played for Laughs that really should evoke a Dude, Not Funny! reaction from the audience, but I could be wrong.

I have raised elsewhere that this trope has a bad description, and is being used for two different things. One is sexual harassment that is bad by any real standard but brushed off and played for laughs by the work (this is what the description seems to be getting at). The other is someone who is entirely shameless about their sex life (or more often, about what pornography they use) and will bring it up in conversation.

I would say that Rika falls under the second category most of the time, as she merely talks about her yaoi doujinshi, but at times she does get rather pushy towards Kodaka.

The use of "Lovable" is questionable, but it is in line with other tropes like Lovable Rogue, where it means the audience is supposed to like them.

Yeah the basically above, this is a trope that is / was common in anime and in particular tended towards Dirty Old Man characters but also sometimes young Handsome Lech types as well as young and dweeby looking characters who are supposed to evoke a "he hits on women up to and including groping and stealing their underwear but he's not a bad guy" which really doesn't feel right these days and to be honest always felt "off" to me when I first got into anime back in the early 2000s. It can apply to female characters too, the more.... enthusiastic older women hitting on younger men or as brought up here very vocal fujoshi characters who invade other peoples space. Basically it's a character that gets away with some very questionable harassment and other issues because it's supposed to make them seem funny rather than dangerous.

I don't know about discredited but the trope is definitely evolving. Someone like Barney from How I Met Your Mother proudly seduces women for a one night stand, and when there is so many a handful are definitely going to call into question issues of consent or abuse.

The idea is a character who combines Really Gets Around / Extreme Libido as well as The Charmer, their charisma that lets them be the life of the party is also the reason they get away with their behavior. It's usually the same reason they are charming to the audience but that's secondary to the core idea. They straddle a line between depravity and free love.

Edited by EmeraldSource on Dec 19th 2023 at 1:35:38 AM

Yeah, social mores are definitely evolving and I don't blame folks placing this trope under moral scrutiny, but at the same time, I can't side with calling this a Discredited Trope because I have still seen it manifest in modern media, just not in the same manner as it did a decade or two ago.

I believe in principle the guiding it would be the intent of the work itself and how it plays the character, similar to Lovable Rogue as mentioned above: it's not necessarily whether you, the audience member, like the character, but whether the work itself plays the character as someone we're supposed to like and frames as being endearing in their sex mania. I weigh tropes and the split between "objective/written in text" and "subjective/audience interpretation" not as a black/white dichotomy as much as a gradient — in this case, while there is some outside, subjective judgement required in determining whether or not the story is playing a character as being charming, but ultimately, that intent matters more than whether you personally agree if it succeeded or not.

I do think there may potentially be some blurring of how the trope is used, though, in a potential divide of "someone who is just very sex-positive and has a raging libido but is seen by others in-universe as likable in spite of (or potentially because of) their lurid-ness" and "sex offender played for comedy". Maybe a wick check to sample the pool?

Edited by number9robotic on Dec 19th 2023 at 2:17:20 AM

I think the key thing is that they take their obsession with sex beyond what social etiquette normally allows. That could mean genuinely criminal behavior, or it could just mean shifting the topic of any conversation onto sex.

...why would that be a qualifier for a trope called "Lovable Sex Maniac"?

I'd think something like that would be necessary to make them a "sex maniac" and not simply "someone who enjoys sex".

We have tropes like Handsome Lech, Chivalrous Pervert and Covert Pervert for when their kinks are more subdued, the point of the trope is how outrageous this part of their personality is supposed to be.

That said, I think there may be a dividing line between an Extreme Pervert, the one who loves ogling magazines and stealing underwear, and the Bedroom Commentator, the one with an extremely active sex life and constantly sharing. I initially thought the trope was exclusively the latter, and was somewhat surprised Master Roshi was the page image.

See I associate the trope with more the former, the examples I would think of off the top of my head are Master Roshi, Rei Hino's grandpa from specifically Anime.Sailor Moon (he's not that much like this in the manga), and Happosai from Ranma ½ though Happosai is pretty much hated by the rest of the cast unlike say Master Roshi is it's just next to no-one can do anything about him because he's such a skilled fighter.

Thing is those characters lean more into "tolerated for their other qualities" rather than actually being liked by the rest of the cast. That turns the "lovable" part much more heavily into YMMV territory.

There are certainly some works that play this sort of harassment for laughs while still acknowledging how awful it is. Haganai mentioned above is all about a group of deeply flawed teenagers making each other suffer. I would be in favour of renaming it Sexual Harassment As Comedy, leaving out whether they are made to be lovable or not, and split off from it Shameless Sex Enthusiast. The main area where I see the latter used is for Virtual Youtubers; leaving aside the difficult question of how to trope these performers, there is clearly a gap for "willing to talk of their sex life/self-stimulation with minimal prompting".

Shameless Sex Enthusiast sounds appropriate to me.