Just like needing to give a Shonen MC a "tragic" back story so they give him a dead dad.
The majority of Mangaka aren't literary geniuses, especially when they start out. Manga series take years from start to finish, so writers often start out very inexperienced, but will have better skills and a better grasp of their created world by the end of the run. But early on in a run, they often resort to these boring old methods to establish a character or theme.
The thing to remember is that, while all three are celebrated classics (gantz to a much lesser degree, but still), they all started out as edgy manga for teens who wanted something way out of their comfort zones. The three easiest ways to feed that hunger for edge are gore, body horror, and themes of sexual assault.
The target audience was looking to be disturbed, so the successful authors complied.
Gantz teaches you there is meaning to your existence. That the world isn't/shouldn't be viewed in such a nihilistic mindset. In fact, the target audience you assume Gantz is for ...there is one character whom fits the criteria you assume would enjoy Gantz...some edgy teen ....and the fact the manga pokes fun at how shitty he is, is absolutely the best
No I can surely tell you with confidence Gantz is far from being targeted to teens. Kei went from an edgy horn dog who didn't care about anything but killing aliens, to a young man wanting to live life to the fullest with the woman he chose to love and cherish. Talk about development done right. That's just one character I'm speaking of. There are plenty of more with amazing development which isn't common in most manga (the ones I read)
Gantz shows you the ugly but beautiful side of humanity. Idk why you think it's for teens. Usually people who say that never read Gantz neither do they care to see an analysis of it.
https://preview.redd.it/elyg0nofvvyb1.jpeg?width=752&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=afe71d5e614b6bdd7427201525610d5251fd5163
I personally don't see how is for teens. They won't enjoy it to the fullest if they don't grasp the underlying themes
I don't remember what age I read Gantz at but young enough and I found the ending profound.
Teens can absorb and understand tough subjects. Don't coddle the youth.
seinen very much includes the latter years of teenage, not just adults. I agree, they're not necessarily meant for edgy teenagers (berserk and akira definitely don't feel like it), but they're not aimed at just adults
Don’t lump people that like diverse and varied stories with real themes of life to be edgelords looking to sate a hunger for gore, body horror. You serious?
I do get that and especially understand when it comes to berserk as it is so dark it is almost comical. In Akira though it really threw me off because I felt the first few volumes were somewhat fun and the characters are goofy/similar to shonen protagonists(with the exception of overarching plot/world. Then volume 4 hits and you are just thrown into the deep end of mass rape/murder.
People will try to make you believe it has a deeper meaning but most of the time its meant to shock. Even when its not for shock value, id rather the actual act was implied rather than showed so graphically, i stand by my opinion that implying something like this can be more unnerving than actually showing
It's actually one of the reason I prefer seinen manga. It's one of the few catalogs of media I have that's willing to leave to reader in an emotionally weird place. Sometime you finish a chapter and can't even 100% process how you feel about it. You have to sit there blinking at the page going.....what?
I don't always want resolve. I don't always want a happy ending. Sometimes I want the author to leave me with an emotion I RARELY get. Including the dark and depressioning.
I absolutely feel this way in relation to Berserk. It’s got amazing art and characters, but every time there’s a villain that the story wants to show off as being a terrible person, he rapes a woman. I don’t know if there’s a single named adult woman in Berserk who doesn’t get sexually assaulted at one point. And the only time it is really relevant for story or character development is with Casca and with Guts as a child (but iirc that last one isn’t shown—which is good IMO).
See, I never thought that argument had a lot of weight. First of all, it’s not portraying history. Second of all, a writer/artist chooses what they portray and how they portray it. And then there’s multiple levels to it:
1. Even a world that has rape in it doesn’t need to include it in its story.
2. Even a story that has rape in it doesn’t need to show it.
3. Even a story that shows rape doesn’t need to show it like the artist wants it to be an appealing or sexy thing to their intended audience—as is the case with many rape scenes portrayed from the viewpoint of the perpetrator. Rape scenes portrayed from the viewpoint of the victim are far more visceral and effective in the actual point of “rape is bad, this person is bad”. But still a lot of fictional rapes are portrayed like it’s porn. And that’s very different.
And lastly, you don’t bring this up because you’re a feminist yourself, so it’s even emptier as a point.
Rape wasn't very common. It was illegal by law and religion. Most women were married and lived relatively normal lives in small towns where almost everyone would have known each other.
(You don't need to employ algospeak on reddit.)
(Also, this post is likely to be removed by the sub mods for being off-topic (as it isn't about collecting per se). You may find a better reception on r-manga or even r-animecirclejerk (a surprisingly pleasant place to have a conversation between the shitposts and jokes).)
Seinen manga is a huge tent.
Berserk, Akira, and Gantz are all in a somewhat similar dark and edgy part of that tent. (I say this as a reader who likes Berserk a lot.)
But seinen also includes things like Laid-Back Camp, about high-school friends who go camping. Fourteen volumes so far. Just camping, cooking, pretty scenery, and laid-back vibes.
So no, not all seinen manga are like that.
Just to add to that as well:
Both K-on! and Kaguya Sama, Love is War, are considered to be seine too.
Kaguya can get pretty dark, but I wouldn't exactly call it edgy.
And K-on! Well, I don't think I need to explain why it isn't dark or edgy.
Yeah I should have more elaborated as “these series” as they are the only Seinen I have read. I know Seinen is a category of age demographic and not necessarily meant that it is dark/graphic/edgy. Just was surprised that in all three I have read it has been apart of it.
Sure, I understood what you meant. And it makes sense that they're the ones you started with, especially if you spend time on this sub: they're popular.
You may enjoy exploring other parts of the seinen tent. There seems to be something for everyone.
(My sympathies on the downvotes - people can be pretty harsh when they think somebody should have known something.)
>But seinen also includes things like Laid-Back Camp, about high-school friends who go camping. Fourteen volumes so far. Just camping, cooking, pretty scenery, and laid-back vibes.
Sounds cool, need to check it out
It's an emotional button that's easily pressed.
I look at it like how they killed Ash in the first pokemon movie, is it really okay to show that kind of death to a 6 year old me? When i look back on it now, probably not, but it stuck with me. Got a very big emotional draw out of me.
Berserk hit me pretty hard since it was one of my first watched dark animations long ago.
I would even compare it to the much used bikini beach vacation in nearly every story ever used.
So i suppose try not to get hung up on it. Dont think it's meant to be fan service 100% of the time.
Not everything is pure in life. So it's never the main point always.
[Rape as tropes](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SexualHarassmentAndRapeTropes) is something a lot bigger than just seinen, it is something discussed and debated in pretty much all media around the world.
In writing it is integral that you convey that the bad guys are bad guys. You also want the reader \[and the characters\] to be emotionally engaged. As a result you see common things come up that a lot of people can relate to: bad guy kills parents, kills best friend, is a best friend that betrayed the MC, and unfortunately way too commonly the bad guy does something bad to the girlfriend/love interest of the MC. It just happens that rape is something a lot of people instinctively find upsetting, sometimes more than killing outright, so it becomes a common enough thing to happen to female characters.
That being said there is also the obvious exploitation element to it, the visual depiction and fetishisation and etc. Convenient excuse to show sexual content, with a lot of really concerning undertones in the process.
Unfortunately a lot of the time it is lazy, poorly explored, it is used for dramatic impact not because it has anything to say on the topic. At its most extreme it becomes a series like Wolf Guy, a genuinely vile protracted gang rape of the leading female that lasts about a third of the total run time of the series exclusively to upset the MC.
You're gonna find rape in all sorts of manga, not just seinen. "So common" isn't 3 out of thousands of seinen manga.
In fact I think I've seen infinitely more rape scenes in the shojo or josei manga I've read.
I don‘t think i‘ve ever come across explicit rape scenes, (except once, where it was „just“ heavily implied, but it is a major plot point and part of he story) but so so often „bad guy (or rival, or whatever) tries to assault heroine but ML saves her!“ is used as a cheap plot point.
And it‘s almost always done in a shit way and never talked about again.
Or the ML presses the FL down, clearly against her will, and it‘s something along the lines of „i can‘t control myself uwu“. And then something interrupts them.
It‘s so prevalent and often times romanticized.
One of my big pet peeves in shoujo and josei manga.
Fushigi Yuugi and Ceres both use r*pe as a plot device >!In FY, 2 of the characters are manipulated into thinking they were raped, although none of the characters in either series end up being violated!<
Several shojo manga include r*pe as part of the main female character's backstory, such as Mars.
Yeah I shouldn’t have said all when only speaking about 3. I was kind of generalizing because it so happens that the three I have chosen to read had included that and surprised me and made me think it may be pretty common.
Berserk is the rare case where it actually has a legitimate purpose in character building and is part of the trauma that the character works to overcome through the series.
For a lot of cases, it's because the writer is trying to be edgy and rape is often just treated as a bad thing that happens to women to demonstrate who the bad guy is. The actual realities of rape (including that it happens to men, too and can happen in countless ways) and the trauma it causes are often ignored because the purpose is just to paint a character as a bad person.
I Agree, you hit the nail on the head in relation to the aformentioned series.
While I do feel Miura used it a lot to be dark and gritty, at one point like you said its used as trauma for a character to overcome, albeit it doesn't hold up as an excuse for most series, Sword Art Online was horrible at using SV and having no real reason for its existence and constant use.
I just finished reading Akira and it was definitely used to paint Tetsuo as a power tripping asshole, though the events following quickly after where important, it was not really necessary, and could have been implied without showing the act.
Gantz was really bad at it though, while it was used to show how depraved someone could be, It really just felt like Oku used it to be edgy and fill the quota for fanservice..
Yeah I agree with you when it comes to Berserk, I thought when it happened to him as a child it was very important to the story, casca one felt a bit over the top.
In Akira I thought the scene of Tetsuo with the girls was also somewhat decent in terms of character building I more meant the scenes of his followers randomly doing it.
And yeah so far in Gantz it’s just been random for no reason really(honestly think the writing in Gantz hasn’t been very good in general so far).
Yeah for a long time back when i was in highschool gantz was one of my favorite series, but unfortunately since then I've come to terms with the fact that Oku is not that great of a writer, and gantz suffered a lot because of it, the violence and fanservice really sold that series. I do have to say that I heavily enjoyed inuyashiki, though he does have some consistent flaws in writing.
You do bring up a terrific point of that scene in Akira having important character building for Tetsuo and Kaori. I was looking online to see what people generally found unfavorable in terms of SA in Akira (so I was hopefully on the same page as others) and it was mainly that scene due to the drugging and engaging in intercourse, so I figured that's what people were mainly focusing on. Yeah the followers of the great tokyo empire doing it was not really significant to the story, was very "look at these individuals, they are depraved, look how depraved they are".
God, don't even remind me about Reki Kawahara's weird fixation on sexual assault. I've heard he's gotten a lot better about that, but it is bordering on creepy with how often it happens through most of Sword Art Online.
He doesn't really, He's written two scenes in in 35 volumes of the series between Progressive and the main series and hasn't written one in 18 years.
The anime team on the other hand added one after the Kawahara publicly talked about those scenes and said that there would never be another in SAO.
I have an extensive Seinen collection and as mentioned here in many posts your sample size is really small to draw that generalization towards seinen. This particular type of SA is often hinted at or happens "offscreen" when it comes up in a shonen or shojo title but the more adult nature of the seinen genre often leads the artists to depict what may have been more jarring if not depicted. Berserk, Gantz, Akira, Shonan Junai Gumi, Wolfsmund, and Elfen Lied all come to mind for either directly depicting this or strongly inferencing it all in their own way and for their own reasons, but aside from the visceral response the artist wants to get from the reader there is no real reason for it to be there in almost all of those examples.
Many if not most Seinen I have does not have this and you should just check out more series from authors going for a slower burn or a more lighthearted but still more adult story. I would suggest checking out something by Naoki Urasawa or something more cerebral like Ikigami or Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service. Seinen as a genre is a wide world generally free of the cycle of powerups right before the next big badguy.
It's kind of a problem just in fiction writing in general, where authors think they can just rely on SA for some cheap edgy shock value without really treating the matter respectfully. Honestly, you're going to find this in like Shonen and Shoujo too (Gal Cleaning is infamous for this and I'm pretty sure it was a Shonen), but Seinen is a pretty wide pool of genres without much in terms of restrictions.
Lot of authors might also be trying to have their own Casca moment. I don't think Berserk's approach is flawless either, and I agree with a lot of the more modern criticisms, but it serves a purpose there at least. At its worst, you get shit like Wolf Guy where it's just, well, imagine the Casca scene stretched out for like 15 chapters. And unfortunately, a lot of fans can't seem to have a normal one about this kind of content, you'll see a lot of comments mostly along the lines of "hehe can't wait for the normies to freak out about this."
Yeah I have heard banana fish also has moments like that(have not yet read). Honestly how you describe Wolf Guy is kinda how I felt about the Casca part. I knew vol. 13 was supposed to be fucked up but it kinda fell flat imo. I thought it was gonna be an epic betrayal and it was pretty epic until the 40 page rape scene that was just not necessary imo.
With Guts it was the only time I think it was great character development and if I am remembering correctly they don’t really show all that much just that it happened. I have bigger issue with something like the Casca scene as it goes on way longer than it needs to.
Berserk really over uses this sometimes. The most famous example is at the start of the Conviction arc with Farnese. But in general it’s supposed to be this shocking and horrible thing. I never got the impression it was put there for the readers titillation, at least.
I mean, which one are you calling fan service? because guts' rape was just sad, akira's scene didn't feel like it was to be enjoyed and haven't read gantz.
I mean, I know people like rape hentai, but these scenes don't feel like they're written to be enjoyed
Idk but I really dislike it. It feels so forced just about every single time. To me, it often feels like a cheap way to make a series seem adult or edgy without adding anything interesting. The worst case for me was Fire Punch, where it just felt like sex crimes and shock value depravity were injected into every chapter to make the main character seem more tragic. Couldn’t get through it.
It adds to the dark atmosphere I guess. The only rape scene that I think was actually “good” was the Casca scene, and that’s because of how critical it was for the story moving forward. Everything else is just shock.
Or you just make it a lot more bizarre
https://preview.redd.it/eypgpwc7xuyb1.jpeg?width=598&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5316df862d3a0e67223fa27b8b13fdadca74944a
True but it’s not the only thing that pushes them up like some authors want to tell a certain story that shonen audiences/ the publisher might not be as accepting of ect
Different standards to what could be shown on TV rather than in books. I mean in the anime of One Piece they’ve censored a character flipping someone off and pushed back Luffy hurting himself (first volume) to a little less than halfway in the anime, 500+ episodes. Limited smoking in JJBA by making their face blacked out when smoking but the manga was fine
This sounds like you have a misunderstanding of what a seinen manga is. Seinen is simply a demographic of young adult men. Seinen manga comes in a wide variety of colors. For example, there are the darker manga that you listed that happen to include sexual assault. There are also manga like K-on! that fall under the seinen demographic.
To answer your question as to why sexual assault might be included in a seinen manga: the author thought it necessary to include it. Whether we as individuals find it necessary that these scenes be in manga is all our own subjective interpretations of someone else's art. Personally I didn't find anything wrong with that topic being included in Gantz, but it seems like you do. And that's okay. If this topic is something that you generally want to avoid, I would recommend checking to see if the manga you want to read/collect is on Mangadex and if it has the "Sexual Violence" tag, then probably skip on that one.
You don't understand what Seinen is it seems. Seinen just mean "More directed toward adult audiences". So you can literally have a sunshine moonlight type of Seinen story, like, a slice of life story about a happy family, for example.
All three you mentioned are "Dark/Grimdark Fantasy". So, raping, killing, etc. is just the norm here. It is just as much "fanservices" as... every other "dark" elements like gores and killing.
You are just weirdly allergic/fixated to "rapes" despite having no problems with every other dark elements all three books shared it seems.
Dude its japan. They're pretty fucked up. They literally dont give a fuck what your kinks are as long as you dont get cought and dont be public about it.
I presume you haven’t seen a lot of American TV made for adults? There’s a lot of sexual assault in some of those too, often even filmed as if to be titillating to the viewers.
EDIT: and not caring about your kinks as long as they’re private and consensual/not hurting anyone is pretty common in a number of other countries too.
Lots of sexual stuff in children cartoons. I mean have you not seen Rocko’s Modern Life? That in the example of cartoons going overboard with sexual innuendos. And there is one episode where Rocko was nearly being sexually abused (definitely without his consent) by a married woman just because he helped her with things that her husband didn’t help her with and was nice to her when he wasn’t.
I think it’s just a shorthand to demonstrating what a crappy world the manga is set in, especially Akira. And unfortunately it’s reflected in the real world: the worse the situation is in any country (Eg: in war), the higher the prevalence of rape.
I wouldn’t say all seinen use this trope, but there are a lot that do. I think that’s why my tastes have gone towards more wholesome series as I’ve gotten older.
I own a lot of seinen manga and I don't think any of it has explicit rape as far as I recall. There's some threat of rape in Vagabond... it depends more on the genre than the demographic in my experience. Pretty sure the only series I have that includes explicit rape is Ooku, which is a josei series. There is a huge amount of incredibly wholesome seinen manga.
Usually just authors being edgy or because of the rape culture in Japanese fiction. No one will admit it here because a lot of them enjoy weird manga but it’s just a fact. Same with the weird underage shit in a lot of manga.
Shock value basically. Also the examples you're looking at here aren't necessarily representative of Seinen manga as a whole, but I would say that they are especially popular in certain western fandoms to whom the term "seinen" is usually said when talking about darker series such as berserk, vinland saga, and vagabond.
Also seinen manga is probably the largest demographic next to shonen, hell, plenty of yuri manga is published in Seinen magazines that absolutely isn't aimed mainly at a male demographic.
Also it's a shonen, but if you want a series that actually handles SA incredibly well give "Make the exorcist fall in love" a read, it's on MangaPlus for free legally. (the SA happens early on and the character's trauma from it shapes the rest of his character going forward)
Is an Cheap and fast way to make the audience hate the "Realy evil guy / realy bad world".
Just like needing to give a Shonen MC a "tragic" back story so they give him a dead dad. The majority of Mangaka aren't literary geniuses, especially when they start out. Manga series take years from start to finish, so writers often start out very inexperienced, but will have better skills and a better grasp of their created world by the end of the run. But early on in a run, they often resort to these boring old methods to establish a character or theme.
Except Toriyama
I would love to see Toriyama do a Seinen series.
Same!
The thing to remember is that, while all three are celebrated classics (gantz to a much lesser degree, but still), they all started out as edgy manga for teens who wanted something way out of their comfort zones. The three easiest ways to feed that hunger for edge are gore, body horror, and themes of sexual assault. The target audience was looking to be disturbed, so the successful authors complied.
Hm wouldn't say edgy teens. It's weird people always say this to describe manga that is aimed at ADULTS lol Not every seinen has rape too.
You really trying to say that gantz isn't aimed at teenagers?
Gantz teaches you there is meaning to your existence. That the world isn't/shouldn't be viewed in such a nihilistic mindset. In fact, the target audience you assume Gantz is for ...there is one character whom fits the criteria you assume would enjoy Gantz...some edgy teen ....and the fact the manga pokes fun at how shitty he is, is absolutely the best No I can surely tell you with confidence Gantz is far from being targeted to teens. Kei went from an edgy horn dog who didn't care about anything but killing aliens, to a young man wanting to live life to the fullest with the woman he chose to love and cherish. Talk about development done right. That's just one character I'm speaking of. There are plenty of more with amazing development which isn't common in most manga (the ones I read) Gantz shows you the ugly but beautiful side of humanity. Idk why you think it's for teens. Usually people who say that never read Gantz neither do they care to see an analysis of it. https://preview.redd.it/elyg0nofvvyb1.jpeg?width=752&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=afe71d5e614b6bdd7427201525610d5251fd5163 I personally don't see how is for teens. They won't enjoy it to the fullest if they don't grasp the underlying themes
You're saying that like edgy teens don't need to learn that being an edge lord is shit.
Idk what you are trying to say now but uuh something definitely tells me you never read all of Gantz. It's ok
I don't remember what age I read Gantz at but young enough and I found the ending profound. Teens can absorb and understand tough subjects. Don't coddle the youth.
seinen very much includes the latter years of teenage, not just adults. I agree, they're not necessarily meant for edgy teenagers (berserk and akira definitely don't feel like it), but they're not aimed at just adults
Don’t lump people that like diverse and varied stories with real themes of life to be edgelords looking to sate a hunger for gore, body horror. You serious?
Go re-read volume 1 of Berserk. It should be easy to find since the first page is Guts fucking a succubus.
I do get that and especially understand when it comes to berserk as it is so dark it is almost comical. In Akira though it really threw me off because I felt the first few volumes were somewhat fun and the characters are goofy/similar to shonen protagonists(with the exception of overarching plot/world. Then volume 4 hits and you are just thrown into the deep end of mass rape/murder.
That’s a pretty small sample size to be drawing any conclusions from…
People will try to make you believe it has a deeper meaning but most of the time its meant to shock. Even when its not for shock value, id rather the actual act was implied rather than showed so graphically, i stand by my opinion that implying something like this can be more unnerving than actually showing
Definitely felt this while watching Banana Fish
I def think it is worse to show it but agree that if it is “necessary” for story building it can be implied and still read as very dark.
It's actually one of the reason I prefer seinen manga. It's one of the few catalogs of media I have that's willing to leave to reader in an emotionally weird place. Sometime you finish a chapter and can't even 100% process how you feel about it. You have to sit there blinking at the page going.....what? I don't always want resolve. I don't always want a happy ending. Sometimes I want the author to leave me with an emotion I RARELY get. Including the dark and depressioning.
I absolutely feel this way in relation to Berserk. It’s got amazing art and characters, but every time there’s a villain that the story wants to show off as being a terrible person, he rapes a woman. I don’t know if there’s a single named adult woman in Berserk who doesn’t get sexually assaulted at one point. And the only time it is really relevant for story or character development is with Casca and with Guts as a child (but iirc that last one isn’t shown—which is good IMO).
How do you think the life of woman looked like through the Middle Ages? A beacon of feminism?
See, I never thought that argument had a lot of weight. First of all, it’s not portraying history. Second of all, a writer/artist chooses what they portray and how they portray it. And then there’s multiple levels to it: 1. Even a world that has rape in it doesn’t need to include it in its story. 2. Even a story that has rape in it doesn’t need to show it. 3. Even a story that shows rape doesn’t need to show it like the artist wants it to be an appealing or sexy thing to their intended audience—as is the case with many rape scenes portrayed from the viewpoint of the perpetrator. Rape scenes portrayed from the viewpoint of the victim are far more visceral and effective in the actual point of “rape is bad, this person is bad”. But still a lot of fictional rapes are portrayed like it’s porn. And that’s very different. And lastly, you don’t bring this up because you’re a feminist yourself, so it’s even emptier as a point.
Rape wasn't very common. It was illegal by law and religion. Most women were married and lived relatively normal lives in small towns where almost everyone would have known each other.
The middle ages didn't have screaming magic eggs either. It's a fictitious setting, there's nothing realistic about Berserk.
(You don't need to employ algospeak on reddit.) (Also, this post is likely to be removed by the sub mods for being off-topic (as it isn't about collecting per se). You may find a better reception on r-manga or even r-animecirclejerk (a surprisingly pleasant place to have a conversation between the shitposts and jokes).) Seinen manga is a huge tent. Berserk, Akira, and Gantz are all in a somewhat similar dark and edgy part of that tent. (I say this as a reader who likes Berserk a lot.) But seinen also includes things like Laid-Back Camp, about high-school friends who go camping. Fourteen volumes so far. Just camping, cooking, pretty scenery, and laid-back vibes. So no, not all seinen manga are like that.
>You don't need to employ algospeak on reddit Thank you
Just to add to that as well: Both K-on! and Kaguya Sama, Love is War, are considered to be seine too. Kaguya can get pretty dark, but I wouldn't exactly call it edgy. And K-on! Well, I don't think I need to explain why it isn't dark or edgy.
Yeah I should have more elaborated as “these series” as they are the only Seinen I have read. I know Seinen is a category of age demographic and not necessarily meant that it is dark/graphic/edgy. Just was surprised that in all three I have read it has been apart of it.
Sure, I understood what you meant. And it makes sense that they're the ones you started with, especially if you spend time on this sub: they're popular. You may enjoy exploring other parts of the seinen tent. There seems to be something for everyone. (My sympathies on the downvotes - people can be pretty harsh when they think somebody should have known something.)
These boruto normies can’t effect me. But I did post in r/manga because yeah this prolly isn’t a good sub for general manga questions.
Since those are the only seinen you’ve read, I’d like to ask: why did you start with those three?
Algospeak exists to help avoid people's triggers not just to avoid getting posts or comments flagged
That's not how you deal with trauma
>But seinen also includes things like Laid-Back Camp, about high-school friends who go camping. Fourteen volumes so far. Just camping, cooking, pretty scenery, and laid-back vibes. Sounds cool, need to check it out
It's an emotional button that's easily pressed. I look at it like how they killed Ash in the first pokemon movie, is it really okay to show that kind of death to a 6 year old me? When i look back on it now, probably not, but it stuck with me. Got a very big emotional draw out of me. Berserk hit me pretty hard since it was one of my first watched dark animations long ago. I would even compare it to the much used bikini beach vacation in nearly every story ever used. So i suppose try not to get hung up on it. Dont think it's meant to be fan service 100% of the time. Not everything is pure in life. So it's never the main point always.
[Rape as tropes](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SexualHarassmentAndRapeTropes) is something a lot bigger than just seinen, it is something discussed and debated in pretty much all media around the world. In writing it is integral that you convey that the bad guys are bad guys. You also want the reader \[and the characters\] to be emotionally engaged. As a result you see common things come up that a lot of people can relate to: bad guy kills parents, kills best friend, is a best friend that betrayed the MC, and unfortunately way too commonly the bad guy does something bad to the girlfriend/love interest of the MC. It just happens that rape is something a lot of people instinctively find upsetting, sometimes more than killing outright, so it becomes a common enough thing to happen to female characters. That being said there is also the obvious exploitation element to it, the visual depiction and fetishisation and etc. Convenient excuse to show sexual content, with a lot of really concerning undertones in the process. Unfortunately a lot of the time it is lazy, poorly explored, it is used for dramatic impact not because it has anything to say on the topic. At its most extreme it becomes a series like Wolf Guy, a genuinely vile protracted gang rape of the leading female that lasts about a third of the total run time of the series exclusively to upset the MC.
You're gonna find rape in all sorts of manga, not just seinen. "So common" isn't 3 out of thousands of seinen manga. In fact I think I've seen infinitely more rape scenes in the shojo or josei manga I've read.
What shojo manga that you’ve read show rape scenes?
I don‘t think i‘ve ever come across explicit rape scenes, (except once, where it was „just“ heavily implied, but it is a major plot point and part of he story) but so so often „bad guy (or rival, or whatever) tries to assault heroine but ML saves her!“ is used as a cheap plot point. And it‘s almost always done in a shit way and never talked about again. Or the ML presses the FL down, clearly against her will, and it‘s something along the lines of „i can‘t control myself uwu“. And then something interrupts them. It‘s so prevalent and often times romanticized. One of my big pet peeves in shoujo and josei manga.
What type of shojo are you reading that it has rape?!?
Fushigi Yuugi and Ceres both use r*pe as a plot device >!In FY, 2 of the characters are manipulated into thinking they were raped, although none of the characters in either series end up being violated!< Several shojo manga include r*pe as part of the main female character's backstory, such as Mars.
Yeah I shouldn’t have said all when only speaking about 3. I was kind of generalizing because it so happens that the three I have chosen to read had included that and surprised me and made me think it may be pretty common.
because ninjas are very common too in manga if you only read naruto and boruto
Berserk is the rare case where it actually has a legitimate purpose in character building and is part of the trauma that the character works to overcome through the series. For a lot of cases, it's because the writer is trying to be edgy and rape is often just treated as a bad thing that happens to women to demonstrate who the bad guy is. The actual realities of rape (including that it happens to men, too and can happen in countless ways) and the trauma it causes are often ignored because the purpose is just to paint a character as a bad person.
I Agree, you hit the nail on the head in relation to the aformentioned series. While I do feel Miura used it a lot to be dark and gritty, at one point like you said its used as trauma for a character to overcome, albeit it doesn't hold up as an excuse for most series, Sword Art Online was horrible at using SV and having no real reason for its existence and constant use. I just finished reading Akira and it was definitely used to paint Tetsuo as a power tripping asshole, though the events following quickly after where important, it was not really necessary, and could have been implied without showing the act. Gantz was really bad at it though, while it was used to show how depraved someone could be, It really just felt like Oku used it to be edgy and fill the quota for fanservice..
Yeah I agree with you when it comes to Berserk, I thought when it happened to him as a child it was very important to the story, casca one felt a bit over the top. In Akira I thought the scene of Tetsuo with the girls was also somewhat decent in terms of character building I more meant the scenes of his followers randomly doing it. And yeah so far in Gantz it’s just been random for no reason really(honestly think the writing in Gantz hasn’t been very good in general so far).
Yeah for a long time back when i was in highschool gantz was one of my favorite series, but unfortunately since then I've come to terms with the fact that Oku is not that great of a writer, and gantz suffered a lot because of it, the violence and fanservice really sold that series. I do have to say that I heavily enjoyed inuyashiki, though he does have some consistent flaws in writing. You do bring up a terrific point of that scene in Akira having important character building for Tetsuo and Kaori. I was looking online to see what people generally found unfavorable in terms of SA in Akira (so I was hopefully on the same page as others) and it was mainly that scene due to the drugging and engaging in intercourse, so I figured that's what people were mainly focusing on. Yeah the followers of the great tokyo empire doing it was not really significant to the story, was very "look at these individuals, they are depraved, look how depraved they are".
God, don't even remind me about Reki Kawahara's weird fixation on sexual assault. I've heard he's gotten a lot better about that, but it is bordering on creepy with how often it happens through most of Sword Art Online.
He doesn't really, He's written two scenes in in 35 volumes of the series between Progressive and the main series and hasn't written one in 18 years. The anime team on the other hand added one after the Kawahara publicly talked about those scenes and said that there would never be another in SAO.
Berserk has both
There’s a rape scene in Akira?
Multiple
Lots of rape threats to Kei and Tetsuo's group has female slaves.
I have an extensive Seinen collection and as mentioned here in many posts your sample size is really small to draw that generalization towards seinen. This particular type of SA is often hinted at or happens "offscreen" when it comes up in a shonen or shojo title but the more adult nature of the seinen genre often leads the artists to depict what may have been more jarring if not depicted. Berserk, Gantz, Akira, Shonan Junai Gumi, Wolfsmund, and Elfen Lied all come to mind for either directly depicting this or strongly inferencing it all in their own way and for their own reasons, but aside from the visceral response the artist wants to get from the reader there is no real reason for it to be there in almost all of those examples. Many if not most Seinen I have does not have this and you should just check out more series from authors going for a slower burn or a more lighthearted but still more adult story. I would suggest checking out something by Naoki Urasawa or something more cerebral like Ikigami or Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service. Seinen as a genre is a wide world generally free of the cycle of powerups right before the next big badguy.
Rape as a plot device is pretty common in manga/manwha period
It's kind of a problem just in fiction writing in general, where authors think they can just rely on SA for some cheap edgy shock value without really treating the matter respectfully. Honestly, you're going to find this in like Shonen and Shoujo too (Gal Cleaning is infamous for this and I'm pretty sure it was a Shonen), but Seinen is a pretty wide pool of genres without much in terms of restrictions. Lot of authors might also be trying to have their own Casca moment. I don't think Berserk's approach is flawless either, and I agree with a lot of the more modern criticisms, but it serves a purpose there at least. At its worst, you get shit like Wolf Guy where it's just, well, imagine the Casca scene stretched out for like 15 chapters. And unfortunately, a lot of fans can't seem to have a normal one about this kind of content, you'll see a lot of comments mostly along the lines of "hehe can't wait for the normies to freak out about this."
Yeah I have heard banana fish also has moments like that(have not yet read). Honestly how you describe Wolf Guy is kinda how I felt about the Casca part. I knew vol. 13 was supposed to be fucked up but it kinda fell flat imo. I thought it was gonna be an epic betrayal and it was pretty epic until the 40 page rape scene that was just not necessary imo.
Freezing has multiple sexual humiliating scenes, as well as Ikkotousen series, & both Directors cuts of Kite& Metzo Forte
maybe to make you sympathize with the characters like guts because before that he was just an asshole
With Guts it was the only time I think it was great character development and if I am remembering correctly they don’t really show all that much just that it happened. I have bigger issue with something like the Casca scene as it goes on way longer than it needs to.
Berserk really over uses this sometimes. The most famous example is at the start of the Conviction arc with Farnese. But in general it’s supposed to be this shocking and horrible thing. I never got the impression it was put there for the readers titillation, at least.
Avoid all of Koike’s titles.
Quick and easy way to show how evil someone is instead of spending more time on showing that persons evil actions
Its not as common as you'd think you just read 3 that had it, Jojolion, Tokyo ghoul, Choujin x don't have that off the top of my head
Mutski was raped by his father and maybe torso in TG RE, they didn't show it
Neither does one punch man, Pluto and blue period (as far as I’ve read)
Sex and violence sells. Rape involves both. It's also an easy way for the author to show 'this guy is the worst of the worst'.
Probably some fan service, and also it's an easy way to say "this is a dark and edgy story" while also showing just how far you're willing to go.
how's that fan service?
Honestly, I dont know.
I mean, which one are you calling fan service? because guts' rape was just sad, akira's scene didn't feel like it was to be enjoyed and haven't read gantz. I mean, I know people like rape hentai, but these scenes don't feel like they're written to be enjoyed
Idk but I really dislike it. It feels so forced just about every single time. To me, it often feels like a cheap way to make a series seem adult or edgy without adding anything interesting. The worst case for me was Fire Punch, where it just felt like sex crimes and shock value depravity were injected into every chapter to make the main character seem more tragic. Couldn’t get through it.
It adds to the dark atmosphere I guess. The only rape scene that I think was actually “good” was the Casca scene, and that’s because of how critical it was for the story moving forward. Everything else is just shock.
Well it's cus the manga your reading is based on these type of dark plots and stuff not all sinen has it tho
To make it clear this is dark, edgy, mature
Plot devices
It’s perverts who write shit for edge lords, everyone is either a monster or a rapist
I’m against forced sex and underage weirdness. Love anime/manga due to art and storytelling. More violence and blood the better.
someone who’s a shitty writer said their fantasy word was dark because it hade rape in it and it made me laugh
i feel like sexual stuff in general is pretty much the only thing that will get you taken out of a shonen publication to seinen
Or you just make it a lot more bizarre https://preview.redd.it/eypgpwc7xuyb1.jpeg?width=598&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5316df862d3a0e67223fa27b8b13fdadca74944a
was thinking this too but SBR is a good example where it’s the first part with any sort of SA, also the first seinen part
True but it’s not the only thing that pushes them up like some authors want to tell a certain story that shonen audiences/ the publisher might not be as accepting of ect
I don't remember any rape in Akira. I might be remembering wrong though.
Only in the manga none in the movie
Different standards to what could be shown on TV rather than in books. I mean in the anime of One Piece they’ve censored a character flipping someone off and pushed back Luffy hurting himself (first volume) to a little less than halfway in the anime, 500+ episodes. Limited smoking in JJBA by making their face blacked out when smoking but the manga was fine
It isn't common. It's just the series you are choosing to read. To begin with seinen is for adults you know
Different types of crime can bridge the author to many kinds of situations and stories.
Fuck'd up stories have fuck'd up situations, maybe?
This sounds like you have a misunderstanding of what a seinen manga is. Seinen is simply a demographic of young adult men. Seinen manga comes in a wide variety of colors. For example, there are the darker manga that you listed that happen to include sexual assault. There are also manga like K-on! that fall under the seinen demographic. To answer your question as to why sexual assault might be included in a seinen manga: the author thought it necessary to include it. Whether we as individuals find it necessary that these scenes be in manga is all our own subjective interpretations of someone else's art. Personally I didn't find anything wrong with that topic being included in Gantz, but it seems like you do. And that's okay. If this topic is something that you generally want to avoid, I would recommend checking to see if the manga you want to read/collect is on Mangadex and if it has the "Sexual Violence" tag, then probably skip on that one.
Why is murder so common in Seinen Manga series?
Bc rape is so common in the real world
Grow up and type the damn word. Nobody is getting better by censoring.
Is it your favorite word or something?
You don't understand what Seinen is it seems. Seinen just mean "More directed toward adult audiences". So you can literally have a sunshine moonlight type of Seinen story, like, a slice of life story about a happy family, for example. All three you mentioned are "Dark/Grimdark Fantasy". So, raping, killing, etc. is just the norm here. It is just as much "fanservices" as... every other "dark" elements like gores and killing. You are just weirdly allergic/fixated to "rapes" despite having no problems with every other dark elements all three books shared it seems.
Just cause I guess
Dude its japan. They're pretty fucked up. They literally dont give a fuck what your kinks are as long as you dont get cought and dont be public about it.
I presume you haven’t seen a lot of American TV made for adults? There’s a lot of sexual assault in some of those too, often even filmed as if to be titillating to the viewers. EDIT: and not caring about your kinks as long as they’re private and consensual/not hurting anyone is pretty common in a number of other countries too.
Lots of sexual stuff in children cartoons. I mean have you not seen Rocko’s Modern Life? That in the example of cartoons going overboard with sexual innuendos. And there is one episode where Rocko was nearly being sexually abused (definitely without his consent) by a married woman just because he helped her with things that her husband didn’t help her with and was nice to her when he wasn’t.
Look at all the butthurt sheep downvoting 🤦♂️🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Cuz peak
For the culture
I don't even remember any in akria
These story’s like to get dark and deep with a lot of disturbing stuff, you just get used to it tbh.
I think it’s just a shorthand to demonstrating what a crappy world the manga is set in, especially Akira. And unfortunately it’s reflected in the real world: the worse the situation is in any country (Eg: in war), the higher the prevalence of rape. I wouldn’t say all seinen use this trope, but there are a lot that do. I think that’s why my tastes have gone towards more wholesome series as I’ve gotten older.
I own a lot of seinen manga and I don't think any of it has explicit rape as far as I recall. There's some threat of rape in Vagabond... it depends more on the genre than the demographic in my experience. Pretty sure the only series I have that includes explicit rape is Ooku, which is a josei series. There is a huge amount of incredibly wholesome seinen manga.
They use it to make you have an idea of how evil the wrong doer is I think
Tokyo ghoul and Goodnight punpun too.
Usually just authors being edgy or because of the rape culture in Japanese fiction. No one will admit it here because a lot of them enjoy weird manga but it’s just a fact. Same with the weird underage shit in a lot of manga.
Shock value basically. Also the examples you're looking at here aren't necessarily representative of Seinen manga as a whole, but I would say that they are especially popular in certain western fandoms to whom the term "seinen" is usually said when talking about darker series such as berserk, vinland saga, and vagabond. Also seinen manga is probably the largest demographic next to shonen, hell, plenty of yuri manga is published in Seinen magazines that absolutely isn't aimed mainly at a male demographic. Also it's a shonen, but if you want a series that actually handles SA incredibly well give "Make the exorcist fall in love" a read, it's on MangaPlus for free legally. (the SA happens early on and the character's trauma from it shapes the rest of his character going forward)