Review of Manga/MrArashisAmazingFreakShow: Manga.Mr Arashis Amazing Freak Show

The flag here for MrArashisAmazingFreakShow was sent with the rationale

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

I (unfortunately)read a few chapters of the manga a couple of years back and the entire premise is about the child protagonist being sexually, physically, and mentally abused. That's why the series is infamous in the first place. There's nothing that can salvaged from it (or the anime) for that matter.

Edited by MacronNotes on Jul 21st 2022 at 7:52:49 AM

Macron's notes

Agreed all around.

Blatant red flags with this one. Agreed to cut.

Cut.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

I agree with cutting, at least the manga and anime adaptation. The works do have portions of the plot that don't focus on sex, and the works are not pedo-pandering, (Heck, the anime sheds a negative light on rape and pedophilia) but I think the porn-to-plot ratio leans too close to the former.

The page also mentions about the 2016 live-action film. I think that should be reviewed over too, just in case.

Edited by callmeamuffin on Jul 25th 2022 at 11:09:00 PM

Come play Character Uplift Game!

Cut per the above reasons

TRS Queue | Works That Require Cleanup of Complaining | Troper Wall

Bumping. Not sure about this one. I haven’t seen it aside from one (very disturbing but non-sexual) clip.

Why waste time when you can see the last sunset last?

I haven't watched the anime just skimmed a portion of the manga but from what I heard it's not that much better and most of the series infamy comes from the anime (the first one) anyways.

Edited by MacronNotes on Aug 15th 2022 at 8:02:50 AM

Macron's notes

Suehiro Maruo may be not right in the head, has strange interest in Imperialistic Japan as a theme, and most of his works are known as death porn (guro). This one had some notice because it's relatively tame compared to his other works which typically get publication ban on the get-go, Mr. Arashi got known and the same time became the most infamous due to still having questionable content.

1984 manga recap

• One-shot: The girl Midori (12) is selling paper flowers in pre-war Japan, but unfortunately her mother dies and already hosts rats before any doctor could be hired. Orphaned, she is sent to a local circus, who surround her after hearing she's here to stay and it cuts off. The next page she's bottomless and bleeding.
• Ch 1: The circus does not so good job to get revenue, while Midori (not part of the crew yet) has inner monologue about her life situation. A few circus members have sex with each other, and because it's a shared room Midori has nothing better to do than go for a walk. Midori finds some puppies and takes care of them, however they are discovered and turned into soup as the circus had almost nothing to eat for a month.
• Ch 2: Midori is asked to do house chores while the circus trains for performance. She complains about seeing worms in poop. During work, she scratches her finger and quickly goes with fever. One of the circus members lies on top of her and it cuts off. After the fever wears off, Midori cleans circus members. The acrobat circus member demonstrates that she's actually a boy. The next day Midori gets sick of them and tries to leave, but is captured and tied to ropes naked.
• Ch 3: Midori has a nightmare where her limbs are twisted and centipedes climb her ears, then a snake climbs from behind, while her father ignores her. When she wakes up, the ringmaster confirms that they need a doctor they can't afford. His wife tries to make a move on him, but he dimisses her. Circus members complain that they didn't get a coin in a month, and it's actually bad. Midori has another nightmare of a passing train. The circus goes all in and invites a wandering magician as a manager, who impresses others with his talent, then does more magic tricks for Midori to cheer her up. The magician kisses Midori, after which she does the same.
• Ch 4: Midori has a dream about the magician and wishes to marry him. Meanwhile, the circus is doing a performance, but the magician is the only one to get the crowd's interest. Midori and the magician do a two-person stage act, while the rest of the circus get jealous. The magician and Midori walk out on a date. The circus members get annoyed that nobody is doing laundry for them and bully Midori, but the magician scares them with an illusion and basically takes the charge. The magician and ringmaster discuss everyone's money share. One circus member becomes honest that they also have feelings for Midori.
• Ch 5: The magician kills his potential rival with a quicksand trap and makes a mockery of his lack of arms. The circus can't decide what to focus on, the first money in their lifetime or the corpse. Midori figures it out and runs away. The magician intimidates Midori to stay silent. The circus informs Midori that a movie director is interested in child actors, but the magician denies them a meeting. Upset, Midori and the magician have a fight.
• Ch 6: The magician restrains Midori in a bag and does the next performance solo. Due to stress he can't do it and lashes out on the audience, then uses Body Horror illusions to scare them off. The circus decides they'll have to find another town, but the magician tells them he'll be leaving. He asks Midori to come with him, but she says she just wants to go home.
• Ch 7: The magician puts Midori into a hypnotic dream where she's still with her parents, but notices how actually happier she is with them and stops whatever he had in mind. The circus is in despair because their only two sources of income are leaving and the ringleader also ditched them. All the cast has a farewell. Midori and the magician have reconciled and are at the bus station.
• Ch 8: The magician leaves Midori to get some apples, but gets stabbed by a running theif. Midori runs over town trying to find it, and as she can't, curses everyone she ever met, him included. It pans out while Midori is in the middle of the nowhere alone.

Thoughts

I've not seen the adaptations, but I know one of them got a DVD release (censored and unsensored) and the lead got an Age Lift to pass the age of consent in Japan.

Wikipedia page for distribution info.

To be honest, it's actually better than one may expect and almost all nude or gore content is condensed at the beginning, any sex is also obscured. The latter half deals with Age-Gap Romance, which while creepy isn't sexualized. The real question if the presence of child violation in a Horror manga at the prologue (published separately) is a sentence according to policy, and if the film making her 14 instead is important.

I'll lean on "probably keepable" depending on how adaptations go.

Edited by Amonimus on Aug 23rd 2022 at 1:31:05 PM

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup

If there's a Bleached Underpants adaptation, that adaptation can still be troped, so it's a possible keep from me.

The 1992 and 2016 film adaptations?

Both of them seem to be slightly tamer than the novel, with the latter made for a more mainstream audience and also being the one where Midori is aged up to 14.

The latter's also rated R15+ by Eirin in Japan, akin to the MPAA R rating for most films. Then again, ratings are pointless here, unless in certain circumstances.

I won't say my opinion, however, until the films are reviewed.

Edited by callmeamuffin on Aug 23rd 2022 at 9:04:07 PM

Come play Character Uplift Game!

I've watched the 1992 anime adaptation. It's a near 1:1 recreation including the one-shot. The format allows to add panoramic shots, nods to street theater the story originated from, more natural scene composition and the narration. There are a couple of bits missing, but they don't change the described in earlier post.

To reiterate my opinion (also note that the first film is 45 minutes without credits)

• I don't think the work is porn, as all nudity takes like about two seconds.
• I don't think it's peado-pandering as the only scenes the heroine is nude are brief Rape as Drama and one shot a rope punishment at the beginning, are there to establish her new family as villains.
• I don't think it counts as "eroguro" at all, despite it being the author's calling card. The only times internal organs are seen are when dogs killed (by the Sadist with ambiguous justification) and when the rude audience are shown illusions of them exploding.
• There's no content I'd call M-rated after the 8 minute point.

The only reason I'm not saying outright Keep is because I'm not sure if Pædo Hunt shot in the prologue means an automatic cut.

I'll check the 2016 live-action film maybe tomorrow, its official description says it's mostly faithful but has enough Bleached Underpants to be sold as a R15+ movie, so I wonder what's different.

Edited by Amonimus on Aug 23rd 2022 at 2:08:05 PM

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup

What do you mean by Pædo Hunt? The trope covers both hunts and pedophile villains so clarification would be nice.

Anyways. looks like misjudged the work based on the author's history and it's a been a while since I skimmed the manga anyways. If it's all played for horror and isn't explicit, then it's probably fine to keep.

Macron's notes

As previously mentioned, the circus performers surround Midori while grinning evil-y, the next frame she's on the floor explicitly naked, and next frame it cuts to a Time Skip. By this policy it may be considered already bad enough, but we had ambiguous cases before. I won't protect if it'd count. I guess the movie wouldn't have explicit scenes at all, but I'll tell about it after seeing it.

Edited by Amonimus on Aug 23rd 2022 at 2:21:32 PM

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup

To paraphrase and see if I understand things correctly: in the anime the actual sexual assault of a minor is not shown on screen and is played for horror, and it doesn't really contain any other P5 objectionable content beyond that one scene at the start?

Edited by 4maskwolf on Aug 23rd 2022 at 5:27:40 AM

In the anime and manga.

May depend on definition of "actual assault", but the act is not shown. It's still "Implied sex of preteens or younger" (definite on both), and it's still two panels/frames of full-frontal nudity of a minor, which is something that should be considered.

Other than that I think it's just "an orphan is annoyed by creepy people being jerkasses" and Suehiro Maruo's reputation as a necro porn artist preceded him.

Edited by Amonimus on Aug 24th 2022 at 11:12:23 AM

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup

Seems like I erred when I put "In particular, we don't want works with references to sexual activity involving preteens." in the content policy text, it was never meant to cover every possible reference - there are plenty of works that mention sexual abuse involving preteens but w/o qualifying as paedobait.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Midori: The Camellia Girl 2016 (90 minutes). It's a very faithful adaptation, though the acting, costumes and CG show low budget.

But the key notes:

• Midori has clear Age Lift to 14 and is played by an older actress.
• The setting was said to be around 1950's, but poor choices on filming locations and props leave some Anachronism Stew.
• Midori's mom death may have counted as Gorn but here it's visually neutral.
• Midori's first day in the circus and Rape as Drama is skipped over, though Midori is called "already impure" at one point.
• The dogs are killed off-screen, and the soup with them looks like a regular soup instead of red paste.
• Midori still wakes up to the circus members having sex in the shared room and leaves. Breasts are seen but more is obscured. The snake woman also undresses when unsuccessfully trying to charm the ringleader and at least in my video the bottom is blurred out.
• Midori doesn't have to help elder circus members bathe.
• Acrobat's Unsettling Gender-Reveal is obscured.
• There's an illusion with a severed arm and it's covered with worms, but I'm not sure if it's Gorn because of the cheap prop.
• Mummy man is given a proper funeral.
• There's a new plot of the acrobat boy (age was never specified, about Midori's height) being given to a perverted bureaucrat in an exchange for getting them out of poverty. There's a brief sex scene covered with blur filter. Then the acrobat tries to kill Midori but is put to sleep by the magician.
• In a fit of rage the magician is actually beating Midori instead of making her fall on a prop.
• The illusions on the unpleased crowd are still Body Horror, but instead of Gorn is just gross effects and a few blood platters.
• There's a new plot of the magician having a history of practicing medical witchcraft and killing ungrateful villagers, and currently being sought by police. The magician avoids capture at the end by disguising one of elder circus member and getting them arrested instead. He also gives away all the money he earned as a farewell gift, which turns into paper flowers once he's far away.
• Instead of returning home the magician lets Midori to be cast at the movie he previously didn't let her. She gets in trouble because she's illiterate, but a few magic tricks and she's the most popular actress. But she gets overwhelmed by work and quits, then bitches to the magician that she wants his magic powers to stand up for herself, which he does, dying in the process (which creates Adaptation-Induced Plot Hole because in the last scene he blames him for her misery just like the others).

I think the movie is even tamer than the manga, for which I've already leaned on "maybe possible keep+clean depending on what mods think on certain moments".

Edited by Amonimus on Aug 24th 2022 at 9:03:20 PM

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup

Given what I’ve read my vote is “keep for all versions, clean if necessary.” Sounds like the sexual assault of a minor is a one-off event played for horror/disgust, and the majority of it is off-screen. Given all those I don’t think there’s any pedopandering concerns.

Going to echo 4maskwolf. This is a horror manga, the sexual assault is not played for titillation, so keep.

I have seen someone on YouTube read and explain all of the scenes in the uncensored manga version, but I haven't watched the anime version and live-action film, until recently. They were tamer than I thought they would be.

I'm changing my vote to keep all versions. Overall, I think it's a good idea to examine, analyze, and explain what happens in works, before making final judgments.

Edited by callmeamuffin on Aug 27th 2022 at 9:58:47 PM

Come play Character Uplift Game!

Changing vote to keep per above

TRS Queue | Works That Require Cleanup of Complaining | Troper Wall

Also voting keep as per above. Seems this isn't as bad as it sounds.

Guess don't judge a book by its cover.

The page needs to be cleaned though.

Edited by miraculous on Aug 28th 2022 at 6:24:44 AM

"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."

Keep per above. Uses the questionable themes for horror, not porn.

"I like girls, but now, it's about justice."