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Jumbor Angzengbang 2, ユンボル 1, manga cover art

Jumbor and the eroticism of mainstream boys’ manga

2020-12-22 by ケイ Leave a Comment

I stumbled upon Jumbor (ユンボル) by Takei Hiroyuki (武井宏之) at a Mandarake in Tokyo in October 2017. Jumbor is a dystopian manga set in a future ruled by various construction syndicates which fight each other with heavy duty construction machinery. The resistance movement get their hands on a jumbor, which is a mix of human and machine originally used to mine the valuable substance jumborite. This particular Jumbor, model 11D, is a boy: Jumbor Baru.

But enough of the background – just look at these striking covers! One of the volumes even comes with a full colour fold-out with the shirtless Jumbor, pin-up style:

Fold-out in Jumbor Angzengbang, volume 2 (ユンボル安全版, 全2巻), 2010.

Jumbor Baru has been frozen for several years, so when he finally wakes up, he has the body of a 10-year-old boy, despite he is actually a teenager. After having examined the huge mechanical hands and feet he has been equipped with, he glances down at his crotch and concludes with sweat drops in his face:

But that thing …! It’s still small, hasn’t grown at all!!!
しかもコイツは…！小せえし生えてねえ!!!
Takei Hiroyuki (武井宏之). 2010. Jumbor (ユンボル), volume 1, p. 87-88.

Jumbor Baru discovers his prepubescent penis, p. 86-87.

Baby elephant in diapers symbolises small penis — This discovery is illustrated with the symbolic image of a baby elephant in diapers, p. 88.

The jokes on the boy’s penis continue when Jumbor realises that the woman who has awaken him is in fact Princess Rivetta, who he knew as a child – when they were both children:

“That means, you must be that tiny little Princess Rivetta, right?”
“Right. Speaking of tiny little things, how about covering yourself up, Jumbor Baru.”
「するとやっぱりあんたはあの小せえリベッタ姫なのか…？」
「さあな。あれこれ聞く前にその小せえモノを隠したらどうだユンボル・バル」
Takei Hiroyuki (武井宏之). 2010. Jumbor (ユンボル), volume 1, p. 100-101.

So it’s small. Super tiny. 小せえ! But that is compensated by a huge shovel, many times his own size, that grows out of one of Jumbor Baru’s mechanical hands the first time he’s confronted by an enemy. He’s surprised by this sudden power, which he was not aware of and which he can’t control well in the beginning. Princess Rivetta observes him contentedly in the foreground as he battles with his shovel: “So that’s his secret power.”

This is what awaits all boys. Their bodies will transform and they will have a hard time mastering the new powers that demand attention within them. I come to think of the anime D.N.Angel, where 14-year-old Niwa Daisuke transforms into a “phantom thief” at certain occasions. Or why not Momonari Junta, the good-for-nothing rascal who turns into “Mega-Playboy” in DNA². Just like Jumbor Baru, Daisuke and Junta can’t control the powers they’ve been equipped with. What we’re seeing is the struggle of puberty and newly awakened sexuality, as manifested in a shovel, a phantom thief, and a playboy.

But back to Jumbor. Even after he has got dressed, Jumbor Baru is running around in several sizes too big bib trousers that expose his shirtless upper body. This imagery is erotic, but not erotic enough to be designated as such. It reminds quite a bit of Takei’s hit manga and anime Shaman King (シャーマンキング) from 1998 (and onwards), whose 13-year-old boy protagonist Asukara Yoh (麻倉葉) similarly has an exposed chest under an unbuttoned shirt:

Moe! We might call this imagery titillating, but titillating for who? For boy readers with a latent erotic interest in their peers (and themselves)? Or for older readers? The lack of furigana makes me think that the manga is not aimed at too young readers.

On the female side, people have argued that the girl characters in series like Sailor Moon were sexed up to cater to a secondary (or maybe even primary) target group of adult men, beyond the obvious audience of teenage girls (see Patrick W. Galbraith: Otaku and the struggle for imagination in Japan, Duke University Press 2019, p. 113–115). Is something similar at play in mainstream boys’ (shōnen) manga? I think it’s quite obvious that a series like Made in Abyss (on Netflix of all places) flirts quite shamelessly with both shotacon and lolicon, with Reg – like Jumbor, a boy with robot hands – being one of the most popular characters in shota fan art.

The shota genre makes explicit what is implicit in mainstream manga. No one would claim that Hunter x Hunter and other mainstream series featuring and made for boys have an erotic undertone, and anyone who claims that would not be able to prove it. And that’s exactly what makes mainstream manga so interesting – because you have to read between the lines!

Please contribute with additional examples.

Real shota in “Yay, I’m living with a super sexy boy!”

2020-09-22 by ケイ Leave a Comment

Kurumatani Haruko (車谷晴子) is my favourite shōjo mangaka. I just started reading her work Kyokujō danshi to kurashitemasu 1/極上男子と暮らしてます。①. I think the title can be (freely) translated to “Yay, I’m living with a super sexy boy!”

The story

16-year-old Ruki lives with her mother and adores the manga boy Shun-sama. One morning when she exits her room, Shun-sama is standing in front of her. How is it possible? Ruki concludes that it must be a dream, and since you can do what you want in a dream without consequences, she starts kissing Shun-sama.

It turns out, of course, that it wasn’t a dream. The boy is Senri-kun, who has come to live with them, as arranged by Ruki’s mother. And here begins the quandaries for Ruki-chan, who on one hand thinks the new boy is naughty and irritating like boys are, but on the other thinks he looks so much like fictional Shun-sama that she just has to throw herself in his arms every now and then.

Reality and fiction mixed up

After once again having told Senri-kun off (he keeps making advances on her because of the mixed signals he’s getting), Ruki thinks while looking at both Senri-kun and the poster of Shun-sama that hangs above her bed:

Wow, once again he looks just like Shun-sama up close! My god, Shun-sama is standing in front of me!

She throws herself in Senri-kun’s arms, thinking “Shun-sama … ❤️❤️”, but quickly comes to her senses, thinking “What am I doing?” She thinks:

When I’m looking at Senri-kun I can’t differ between fantasy and reality!!

I love how the discussion of fantasy and reality, or 2D and 3D shota, takes place within a fictional work, just like in Yankee-shota to otaku-onēsan/ヤンキーショタとオタクおねえさん.

車谷晴子：「極上男子と暮らしてます。」(2007) Cover art — 車谷晴子：「極上男子と暮らしてます。」(2007). Yes, I read it on the beach!

Kurumatani Haruko-san is my favourite shōjo mangaka. Her theme is “bad boys” and the girl who falls for them. I have previously read and loved these works by Kurumatani-san:

悪党男子コレクション (2005, read 2016)
最恐彼氏 (2006, read 2017)
アイドル様の夜のお顔 (2007, read 2019)

Shota and autoeroticism

2020-09-12 by ケイ Leave a Comment

I’ve just finished a close reading of the second shota section of Nagayama Kaoru’s (永山薫) Eromanga Studies (エロマンガ・スタディーズ) from 2006. While the first section on shota (p. 83-86) covers its history and the boom of female creators in the 1990s, the second section (p. 238-44) analyses the male shota reader by way of some interesting titles. This is a translated summary of those pages.

Background

In the mid 1990s, “male characters as target for desire” in the form of “shota” appeared. In the late 1980s, a dōjinshi critic predicted that “the 1990s will be the era of cute boys”. Although this prediction was delayed due to the bishōjo-eromanga boom in the early 1990s, it turned out to be true.

At first, shota was a subgenre of BL/yaoi. Various factors made it cross the border to become a genre targeted at men. Beyond readers’ and artists’ will to read and draw, there must be a business decision that turns it into a product.

Shota oriented male writers were published in shota anthologies for women. Since it was aimed at women, censoring was not needed. So what was called “for women” on the surface in reality consisted of the three types “purely for women”, “for both sexes”, and “purely for men”. However, this boom stalled in the next decade.

But although male homosexual shota was destroyed, characters that were beautiful boys, neutral-gendered boys, cross-dressing boys, and passive “non-macho boys” spread into the world of erotic manga. Works like Yonekura Kengo’s Pink Sniper (2001) and Hayabusa Shingo’s Sweat & tears (2001) started a mini-boom of “one-shota”, with couplings between a beautiful boy and an older woman. Nagayama sees homophobia as a reason to why shota resorted to the male ╳ female scheme.

In 2002, a small boom occurred with the publication of the shota anthologies “Koushoku-shounen no susume” (2002), “Shounen-ai no bigaku” (2003), and “Shounen shikou” (2003). Shota had thereby been established as a genre, but its future is unknown.

Note: Nagayama-san’s book was published in 2006, so Budōuri Kusuko’s history of commercial shota magazines provides more details in that regard:

The rise and fall of commercial shota magazines

Boy on boy shota

Although Nagayama only discusses works aimed at men, he stresses that the coupling is basically boy on boy (少年╳少年) or youth on boy (青年╳少年), but almost never boy on youth (少年╳青年).

And in the case of boy on boy, the seme/uke roles are not always fixed.

Nagayama provides a hilarious example in the form of Yōkihi’s Asoko Kinoko (1990), in which the penises of two boys are parasitised by autonomous and intelligent mushrooms of feminine forms. These mushrooms live off the boys’ semen as nutrients, and in return provides pleasure to their hosts.

Yōkihi: *The Forbidden Mushroom* (1990).

In one scene the boys are kissing deeply while the “mushrooms” in their crotches are having what must be described as lesbian sex. The boys’ seme/uke roles are fluid, sometimes determined by apparent gender difference, height and physique, but only “to some extent”.

Nagayama notes that while the female mushrooms might be titillating for some, as the story progresses they retreat into the background and the boys become the full focus:

It’s a return to a boys only secret society, where sex is the homosocial company secret. Not only is there disdain, fear, and dislike for women, but maybe also fear and dislike for “the outside world”.
Nagayama Kaoru/永山薫. Eromanga Studies/エロマンガ・スタディーズ (2006), p. 240

Male desire for boys

What kind of desire is it that male readers feel towards boy characters? Nagayama asks. Of course it could be homosexuality, conscious or subconscious. Although some shota reminds of heterosexual ero-manga in that the “uke” in the anal sex a substitute for a woman, the penis sprouting from the boy’s crotch makes it clear that we’re actually dealing with a male delight. The roles are also not that settled and the direction of power might change.

Nagayama notes that all pleasures in shota are physical pleasures. He argues that the reason why latent homosexuals fear gay porn, as represented by Tagame Gengoroh, is not that they don’t understand it, but that they understand the psychological and physical pleasures all too well. “Kawaii” suppresses such homophobia.

In other words, making the boys “cute” is a way to “de-pornify” them, since otherwise the “male pleasure” would be all too evident to the reader, which might evoke uncomfortable questions about his own homosexuality.

In addition, a major premise is that “it’s just a manga character”.

Nagayama identifies various ways in which male readers project their selves on shota characters:

In the case of youth on boy (青年 ╳ 少年), the gender roles are relatively fixed, which makes it easy for the male reader to project his self on the youth (the heterosexual pattern).
However, if the story is told from the point of view of the boy, it is easier for male readers to project their selves on an “uke” who is a boy than on an “uke” who is a woman.
In the case of boy on boy (少年 ╳ 少年), the feeling is the same no matter if you’re “uke” or “seme”.

In the latter case, an illusion is achieved through transformation, as Nagayama has written about in a quoted article:

I transform myself to a cute boy who does sexy things with other cute boys.
Nagayama Kaoru/永山薫: “Sexuality transformation”/セクシュアリティの変容. In Azuma Hiroki/東浩紀, editor: Mōjō genron F aratame/網状言論F改, Seidosha/青土社 collection 3/2003所収.

Nagayama asks rhetorically: Is there really such a big difference between “Cute me = an ideal model of myself” and “Cute you = an ideal model of others”? Even when this ideal model is temporarily entrusted to others, isn’t it always a projection of our self image?

No matter if the “other” that the boy is coupled with is a youth, middle-aged, or old, what we see is ourselves in various generations. In conclusion, shota is about “me and my sex”.

Two illustrative shota works

Tamamimi/たまみみ

秋緒たかみ: じゅぶないる — Akio Takami/秋緒たかみ: Juvenile/じゅぶないる BOYS SEX (2004).

Nagayama illustrates the autoerotic structure of shota through Akio Takami’s/秋緒たかみ work “Tamamimi”/たまみみ (in “Juvenile”/じゅぶないる, Shobunkan, 2004):

Terumi was missing his close friend Rōta, and was shocked to have grown cat ears the next morning. According to his grandfather’s reminiscence, if you have feelings for a person you can’t meet, you will grow “soul ears”/魂耳 which listen to that person’s presence. As Rōta too grows soul ears, the two realise that they love each other. The most beautiful thing in this work is the sequence when the soul ears are touched by “the person who thinks about them”, and they realise that it feels good, so they caress each others’ soul ears, their cheeks are blushing, and they get excited. And when the two notice each other’s hot cheeks they let their lips meet and their bodies get close.

In the sequence that goes from caressing to fucking it should be noted that the difference between the two is so thin that they are almost indistinguishable. Although the inner thoughts of the two fill the frames as narration, it is impossible to determine if it is Terumi or Rōta who utters things like “I want to touch” and “I want to be touched”. Even if the reader identifies with the story’s narrator Terumi, he can no longer tell who Terumi is.

This is an intentional manipulation by the author. As the story progresses from caressing to kissing, the two boys are drawn almost as mirror images, stressing the equal gender, but it could maybe also be read as a message about love having neither a lord nor a customer. “Tamamimi” features ideal love of the kind “you and I become one”.

Dream Users/夢使い

The ero-manga “Dream Users”/夢使い (Kodansha/構談社, 2002) by Ueshiba Riichi/植芝理一 shows no mercy. Cross-dressing boys lure girls to another world, where their alter egos grow penises and transform themselves into boys who rub their penises against each other. Although the manga can be seen as following the schema of “yaoi/BL”, the main focus is on “mating with myself”. As the otherness is extinguished, the unity causes a gravitational collapse towards the vanishing point of autoeroticism. We end up in the “cute me” universe with no outside world.

Boy gang rapes

Departing from “Tamamimi” (with its one-on-one coupling) and “Dream Users” (myself-on-myself), Nagayama next illustrates how individual humans don’t matter when the purpose is autoeroticism.

In the popular gang rapes of “many on one” (多数╳一人), the more “seme” that are participating, the more their individuality disappears, and the reader’s consciousness is focused on the raped boy, the “uke”. The raper squad thus turns into “a role that appeared for the sole purpose of raping cute me”.

This is the ecstacy that is at the heart of “Spitfire”/スピットファイア (Moeru Publishing, 2005) and similar stories. No matter how they are set up with boy gangs and raped boys and so on, both the “uke” and the “seme” will eventuall become “me”.

Autoeroticism and porn

Nagayama ends his analysis of the autoerotic aspect of shota by saying that it is of course only one way in which one can make sense of shota. But he argues that the position of shota is productive when trying to deconstruct ero-manga as a whole by using this keyword, and not only ero-manga for that matter, but porn in general.

Why did you become a shotacon?

2020-08-10 by ケイ Leave a Comment

I’m reading bits and pieces of Manda Ringo’s The Syotaroh and stumbled over some quite personal passages in “Manda Ringo’s shotacon discussion” (「まんだ林檎のショタコン談義」縮めてまん談) on page 102.

After lamenting how shota recently has become synonymous with the hardcore depictions seen in eromanga, as well as elaborating on shame and being judged by society, she goes on to comment on fantasy and reality:

When I see a boy in reality, I feel no sexual desire. Well, sometimes I want to hug them close from behind. But that only happens inside my head. Real boys aren’t that sweet.
Manda Ringo (まんだ林檎), The Syotaroh, p. 102

Ringo’s view on real shota is almost identical to that of some of my research participants.

She goes on to explain why she thinks she became a shotacon:

I really wanted to become a boy. I went all in and lived that gender role. But as I grew up, my body became curvy and I became a girl. Up till middle school I almost never wore a skirt. Only shorts (半ズボン). But that started to look awkward after a while. At age 14 I had to accept that it was no good. So until 14, I was basically a boy. Of course, I didn’t consciously think of it like that, but when I have looked back later and thought about it, that’s how it was. How we think about the boy as a concept is probably influenced by such things.
Manda Ringo (まんだ林檎), The Syotaroh, p. 102

Ringo-san adds that this is why her own shota interest is directed towards boys in middle school, despite shota as such can mean boys in a rather wide age span. I also think that the sometimes traumatic events that occur around puberty heavily influence what kind of shota we come to like as adults.

What do you think? どうしてショタコンになったのか？

Real shota

2020-05-05 by ケイ Leave a Comment

A scene in ヤンキーショタとオタクおねえさん (yankī-shota to otaku-onēsan ≈ yankee boy and otaku girl) by 星海ユミ (Hoshimi Yumi) beautifully captures the sensitive subject of “real shota”.

The story centers around a fujoshi who a month earlier was befriended by the 11-year-old boy next door, Aikawa-kun. In the book’s first scene, Aikawa-kun insists on following the woman to a dōjinshi event (which turns out to be for BL manga) and sort of makes a fool of himself and her, so they leave immediately. In the subway on their way back the woman laments that she didn’t buy a single book because of the stupid boy. But looking at the beautiful sleeping boy next to her, it suddenly dawns on her: “This is my chance to touch a real shota!” (Devil horns!)

「これはもしやリアルショタを触るチャンスなのでは！！？」（ヤンキーショタとオタクおねえさん）

The moment is broken when their stop is announced: “We will soon arrive at Tanizaki station.” (Obviously a reference to the Japanese author 谷崎潤一郎/Tanizaki Jun’ichirō, whose books presented “a shocking world of sexuality and destructive erotic obsessions” according to Wikipedia.)

The woman gets up with the boy and says to herself: “That was close … what the hell was I doing!!!” And: “If this came out, I would be dead …”

I really liked how the manga brought up a theme that certainly occupies the mind of many shotacon. It is of special interest to me, since my research is focused on how we think about 2D and 3D realities.

A full review of this amusing series will follow!

国際おたく大学―1998年：最前線からの研究報告

2020-04-03 by Leave a Comment

This anthology, edited by Okada Toshio, contains the essay “Shota research” (ショタの研究) by Watanabe Yumiko (渡辺由美子), under the section “Otaku Sexuality 1” (おたくのセクシュアリティ1).

Watanabe-san’s essay is unique in that it interrogates female and male shota fans in the 1990s, while outlining the history of shota aesthetics, as well as providing an analysis of shota’s allure. I read it in great detail and used it as a springboard to watch several key animes from the 1980s and 1990s, “Mashin Eiyūden Wataru” being the most important of them.

Part 1: The history and definition of shota (p. 32-41)

Regarding the etymology of shota and shotacon, Watanabe-san mentions that there were several terms used within shōjo and shōnen-ai manga, including “ribocon” for “little boy complex”, but that the dōjinshi world eventually settled for the better sounding term “shotacon”, which first appeared in a 1981 issue of Fanroad.

Footnote 2 describes how Animecku’s editor Komaki Masanobu (小牧雅伸) and Fanroad’s editor Hamamatsu Katsuki (浜松克樹), pen name “イニシャルビスケットのK”, came up with the term. It was the lolicon boom in the early 1980s and they wondered what a male equivalent would be, for “boys in shorts” (半ズボンの少年). After Komaki dropped the hint of Kaneda Shōtarō (金田正太郎) from Tetsujin 28-gō (the original manga, not the remake which was broadcast at the time), the editors decided to call it “Shōtarō complex”, which became “shotacon”.

Watanabe-san goes on to describe how a number of mainstream boys’ anime, most importantly the “shota trigger” Mashin Hero Wataru (魔神英雄伝ワタル, Mashin Eiyūden Wataru) from 1988, awakened the “shota mind” and established shota as a new genre, separate from yaoi, among dōjinshi creators. I have summarised this development in a separate post:

Wataru and the birth of shota in mainstream anime

As for shota’s definition and age range, Watanabe-san writes that there might be as many opinions as there are shota fans. However, a shota character’s face should not have adult length, and the character must possess some kind of cuteness.

When it comes to shota characters’ personality, Watanabe-san has created a “shota gauge” (ショタゲージ), or “shotameter” in my translation, where she places the qualities “hot-blooded” vs “cool”, and “shorts” vs “skirt” on two continuums, in which she places the popular boy characters from mainstream manga and anime.

Part 2: Female shota fans (p. 42-47)

This section is a conversation between Watanabe-san and X-Kids mangaka Suō-san, who started out creating aniparo dōjinshi in high school. Starting out with Yuu☆Yuu☆Hakusho and Gundam W, both popular among aniparo creators, her taste turned towards shota with Shinji from Neon Genesis Evangelion (新世紀エヴァンゲリオン, 1995):

I didn’t think of him as shota until episode 24 when Kaworu appears, and I was like ‘What, is Shinji like that?!’. (laugh)

Suō-san

Episode 24 of Evangelion spurred a Kaworu ✕ Shinji boom among female creators, both in yaoi and shota. Kaworu’s arrival made fans realise that Shinji was a “total uke”.

Survey results from commercial shota magazines for women show that age difference, as in older/younger brother or even father/son, is the most appreciated feature among female readers. However, shota is much less strict than yaoi when it comes to the seme/uke division. If yaoi was a way for women to escape the uke role to become a seme with the power to “attack” male characters, shota is a whole different “playground” which much more open possibilities, Watanabe-san argues.

Part 3: Male shota fans (p. 48-54)

Watanabe-san begins with explaining how male shota interest emerged from the loli boom in the 1980s. Since the characteristics of loli are smooth, flat chests, and the cute style of shōjo manga, the step was not far to smooth boys. The yaoi boom made it easier for loli mangakas and publishers to experiment with boy characters, which made their ways into loli magazines like Lemon People (レモンピープル) and Hot Milk (ホットミルク). Surveys confirmed that the male readers liked “boy stuff” (少年もの). Eventually the main shota genre “big sister and me” (お姉さんと僕) emerged from this.

Watanabe-san now turns to interview Usagi-no-Tokei-san and Hakuo-san from the shota circle Shiro-usagi, and they claim to not “come from loli”:

At least, we are not shota who came from loli. Both of us were shotacons already in elementary school.

Hakuo-san

They explain how they watched robot animes as children and how they attracted to the boy heroes of animes like Triton of the Sea (海のトリトン) and Babel II (バビル二世), not to mention Kappei of Invincible Super Man Zambot 3 and Amuro of Gundam.

The most appealing thing in boys’ anime is hot friendships. When boys’ friendships are depicted in anime, it moves me and it makes me think of “something” beyond friendship. That “something” is not just friendship or affection.

Hakuo-san

Usagi-no-Tokei-san explains how he experienced “pseudo-love” between boys in elementary and middle school, and how he “got stuck in that stage” when other moved on to male-female relations. He thinks that “staying in the boy stage” is something that shotacons may have in common.

Next, Usagi-no-Tokei-san distinguishes this personal trajectory from that of shota fans who come from loli:

For people who come from loli-kei, as long as it’s smooth (tsurupeta) and cute, a boy too is okay, they seem to reason. Because only the lower body differs (laugh). Therefore they focus on the sex in their shota manga, whereas we who have been shota fans for a long time, for us the boy’s attraction is a much more special thing. That’s how I think about it.”

Usagi-no-Tokei-san

They call their thing “genuine shota” (真性ショタ), and say that there might be more of them than expected. They have set up a website where they collect impressions from other shotacons. They hope that people who find the website might feel relief that they are not the only ones with those feelings. Usagi-no-Tokei-san says that before they found fellow shotacons, they thought they were sick. Interesting here is that the Japanese word shinsei (真性) is also translated as “inborn nature”, and the literal meaning of the kanji is something along the lines of “true sex/sexuality”.

As for their relation to real (actual) boys, they keep a distance and talk about a “compromise” (割り切り). I understand this as a way to rationalise one’s inclination, “I’m ok, I’m not bad”, sort of. Hakuo-san likes 2D only, whereas Usagi-no-Tokei-san likes “2D Plus” (二次元プラス), in that he enjoys watching real (actual) boys, but that is where he draws the border.

Watanabe-san seems very surprised by the mindset of these “genuine” shota fans. She felt a strong sense of “shame”, which is non-existent for female creators who draw yaoi or loli. She observes that shota is drawn differently by men and women. In male shota, not only the seme but also the uke expresses emotions. The reason might be that male shota fans can identify with any boy character they like.

Watanabe-san mentions the recent (that is, recent in 1998) trend of youth ✕ boy (青年 ✕ 少年) couplings, which Usagi-no-Tokei-san exclaims would be “impossible”. Impossible is exactly what makes it good, Watanabe-san argues (with a laugh), and Usagi-no-Tokei-san replies:

(Laugh) I’m more like … Both when I look at shota manga and when I draw it, I immerse myself in that situation, they are not other people to me. If there is a relation between two boys, I too can feel like a boy, but if it’s a youth who does what he wants with a child, that’s a crime. It’s obscene, no matter how much 2D it is …

Usagi-no-Tokei-san

Watanabe-san concludes that for “genuine” shotacons, the boy character is used for self-identification, and that they through shota might be chasing the “imaginative boys” of their own past.

Finally, there is a discussion on homosexuality and how discrimination made it hard to say that you are attracted to your own sex, which I suppose the “genuine” shotacons are? If the word “homosexuality” was not so loaded, liking boys would be just another hobby, like “sabu-kei” (さぶ系) or “shemales” (ニューハーフ), Watanabe-san writes.

In the end, whether people are accepted or not depends on the ‘words’, as conceptual rules, that are attached to them. The fact that we have started to come out little by little is thanks to the word “shota”. I’m a shota, I’m an otaku, whatever the genre, the words attached to people do not only discriminate, but also have positive meaning, which leads to a feeling of acceptance.

Hakuo-san

Watanabe-san concludes that since “shota” is a word that spread from inside out, and wasn’t used by outsiders to discriminate, it can be used to accept, empower, and express oneself.

In the last section, Watanabe-san describes what she calls “borderless gender transformation” (性ボーダレス化):

Men turn from loli to shota, women turn to loli, in the shota world phenomena like “female Shinji” appear, whatever, whenever can be meshed together.

Watanabe Kumiko-san

However, my impression is that the “genuine” shota fans are not included in that optimistic analysis. Even so, Watanabe-san’s interview with Hakuo-san and Usagi-no-Tokei-san is indeed groundbreaking, and a great stepping stone for further research into shota and its readers.