In Leslie Charteris’ The Saint Around the World
Every time I come across the use of sex as torture in any media, this line comes to mind. Why, indeed.
In Volume 2 of Ikkitousen
Later, Kanu willingly turns herself over to Sousou in order to save Ryuubi and yet again we get a slavering male who uses sexual torture because god knows, we can’t just stay away from a woman’s vagina for five seconds.
The worst part of watching Ikkitousen is that *behind* the tediousness is actually a pretty great story. But gawd, do we have to spend a lot of energy craning our head around the pathological obsession with women’s crotches and breasts. I shouldn’t complain, I know what I’m in for when I watch it. But I’m complaining anyway – why is it so damn important to you guys? I don’t get it, I really don’t.
Aside from my petty and completely pointless complaints, this is a really interesting volume if the tenuous connection between this anime and the Romance of the Three Kingdoms is of any interest to you. Kanu’s deal with the devil inside Sousou, Shibai’s role in the various strategems and Koumei’s appearance are all pretty great. You just gotta sit through some serious obsessively-compulsive sexual dysfunction to get to those moments.
Aside from everything else, Ryomou and Kanu are still cooler than everyone else and Hakufu starts to reach their level, just before Sousou pounds her flat. ^_^
I forgot to mention the OVA episodes in my review of the first volume – I’m going to forget to do so again. ^_^
And here I thought it was all part of the backstory – in this alternate reality version of Japan, all young women admitted to high school are required to have plastic surgery, and the financial burden this imposes on families explains why they can’t afford full length school uniform skirts and have to buy school uniform shirts that are quite clearly made out of paper (and a low grade of paper at that).
But on your alternative hypothesis which, as I understand, is that its tedious pandering … as far as I understand the physiology, a part of the male visual response is down in the lizard brain, and so while the specific imprinting varies, for those imprinted to large bosoms and glimpses of panties, its easy to push their buttons (even if it is tedious repetition for those with different imprinting).
Meanwhile, the creative plot button and interesting character development button are much further up in the mammal brain and neocortex, and trickier to push with any reliability.
I was going to make a snarky, obvious comment about the assumed inverse relationship between the number of breasts and panties actually seen and the desire to view animated ones, but Bruce completely owned that. ^_^
Hi Erica! Excuse me for the offtop, but I wanted to ask you that for a long time. Do you happen to have an anime-list? It would be very interesting to watch all your marks and preferences at one place. Manga-list, too =)
@Anna – Nope. I don’t have time or inclination for such a thing and in any case, my preferences are malleable and change over time.
@Anna, there is a way to snapshot top picks … the Top Ten lists are given a tag, which can be found by scrolling down the sidebar to the “Top Ten Lists” link.
Oh, that’s sad( Thanks for your reply anyway!
Thanks Bruce, I know that tag) Just wondered how much anime in total Erica has got in her list X)
I don’t think it is part of the male lizard brain. I think it is a mental diesease caused by censoring the human body.
Check out youtube and look for a man reviewing chu-bra. You have got a person there under the nickname ONVPodcast who basically claims that men can’t see woman as anything other than sexobjects. He is the typical person suffering from this “bosom/panties” disease.
@anon, if its a mental disease, it has to be happening in the brain somewhere. Looking at an example like ONVPodcast, its hard to believe there is very much going on in the neocortex beyond rationalizing “I like it because its good because I like it”.
Whether or not it is a mental disease or sophomoric idiocy that can be grown out of is above my pay grade – I’m not a people-doctor, after all, I’m just an economist.
My favorite explanation comes from the behavior of the Australian flat-headed boring beetle. And I quote: “These shiny beetles mistake the shiny surface of a 370-ml beer bottle (called a stubbie) for a female [boring beetle] and attempt to mate with it, invariable with less than satisfying results.”
The researchers found that given the choice between a real female beetle and the much bigger beer bottle, the males went for size over reality.
You know those corny old science fiction flicks about giant insects taking over the planet? They were really documentaries!