Pedophiles in Anime: Slight Research and a Rant
- Kalani Patel
- 24 hours ago
- 7 min read
Why are there so many in shows that would otherwise be good?
If it was not clear already, I am a big anime fan. I have been a fan since I watched Pokémon, Beyblade, and Digimon when I was a kid. I’ve continued to be and have been keeping up with the latest shows that seem interesting when they come out. There are many different good anime, such as Evangelion, Steins;Gate, and Jujutsu Kaisen, to name a few (all in my own opinion, of course). However, despite my love of these anime and being an active fan of them, they all have one major flaw: they showcase pedophilic characters with no desire or showing of change. I’ve seen many anime throughout the years and many of them have pedophilic characters or tropes in one way or another, be it having a character that's 1000 years old but looks like a child (featured in Sentenced to be a Hero, unfortunately), an old man that reincarnated in another world and starts falling in love with the children when he is a child (Mushoku Tensei), or having characters who are overly perverted, often including children in their fantasies (Dragon Ball). After seeing so many, I started to wonder to myself, “Why are there so many pedophiles in anime? Who is supporting these pedophile tropes?” After doing a little bit of research, I learned that it is Japanese society.
Very Brief History
After WWII, Japan was forced to write a constitution by American civilian officials in Japan, who wrote it to be similar to the US Constitution with popular sovereignty, individual rights, and prohibiting state religion. However, they also added a clause in Article 9 that bans bellicosity and the declaration of war by Japan. This means that Japan no longer has any hard power capabilities to use against the world. In order to stay viable and have good relations with the rest of the world, they employed soft power in a strategy called “Cool Japan.” This strategy was aimed at having people believe that Japan was “cool” with many things that people would be interested in. This included food, technology, architecture, music, and manga/anime, among other things. This developed a “kawaii” culture that revolves around innocence and childlike traits (headed greatly by Hello Kitty). However, like many things, kawaii culture was sexualized, and due to the nature of the culture, childlike traits were being sexualized. This continued to the modern day, with Japan having less defined and overall fewer laws restricting child pornography. This has been reflected in the overall massive amount of “lolicon” work, which features sexualized images of young girls in an anime format. I believe that the flexible and lightly enforced laws prohibiting child pornography, with the massive amount of lolicon work, have encouraged many authors and artists in Japan to include something of the sort in their manga, just due to the sexualized nature of kawaii culture.
Rant about Good Anime
Now I want to delve deeper into the pedophilic characters in Evangelion, Steins;Gate, and Jujutsu Kaisen simply because I greatly enjoyed these shows when I watched them and am saddened by the inclusion of pedophilic tropes and characters, as they could have all done without them.
Starting with Evangelion, it is an anime about a boy named Shinji who must pilot a giant robot to save the world from “angels,” which appear to be monsters from space attacking Earth.
Evangelion is very well-liked because of the deep topics and issues it addresses underneath the surface. However, I don’t really remember them because I watched it many years ago, so I’ll skip to the pedophilic part. In the movie for Evangelion, the world and government facility that Shinji and his friends are a part of is being attacked and is going to explode. Shinji is very frightened and damaged already by numerous angel attacks and the fear that everyone he knows will die. Despite this, Misato, who is Shinji’s 29-year-old guardian (Shinji is 14), gives him a “grown-up kiss” while he enters the elevator alone and promises to give him the rest when he returns (implying sexual intercourse), leaving Misato to die below.
This shocks Shinji and makes him cry while taking the elevator. People argue that this shows the flaws in Misato as the only way she knows how to connect with other men is with sexual intimacy, and it forced Shinji to act. I believe that this was entirely unnecessary, and many other alternatives could have been used instead of that. It served as a sick sort of fan service in my opinion, and while it could have served to showcase her character flaws, I think we already saw that, and I would have preferred her acting like a real guardian at the end. Evangelion itself is not free from the sexualization of children, as Asuka and Rei, 2 other kids piloting mechs, are 14 as well, but they wear skin-tight body suits, showing Rei nude on different occasions and having camera angles that showcase their figures despite them being barely teenagers. While it could be argued overall that these scenes are important, I personally believe that they are products of fan service and could have been replaced with other qualifying scenes (especially the bed scene).
Steins;Gate is my favorite anime of all time. It’s a story about a quirky man named Okabe Rintarou who thinks of himself as a mad scientist named Hououin Kyouma, having a “lab” (apartment) to conduct experiments. He, along with other “lab members” (his friends), creates a working time machine. However, the plot rapidly progresses after that, resulting in the death of many of his friends, his traveling through time alone, and WWIII. It’s a beautiful story that continues to build in Steins;Gate 0, with good romance, plot, mystery, and action (sometimes). However, it is not without its flaws. Itaru Hashida, or Daru, is lab member 003 and the “super hacker” of the group. He is an otaku, a shut-in character who often provides humor with his out-of-pocket requests and fantasies. He is a very good character who helps Okabe through tough times and builds the time machine along with Makise Kurisu, Okabe’s love interest and super genius. Daru’s main flaw is his overly sexual jokes and fantasies that he has. He reflects one who is a fan of kawaii culture, going to see an “idol” play games often. However, due to this reflective character, he is a prime example of a pedophilic character. His daughter, Suzuha, came back to the past to see her father and the world he lived in, and he makes sexual jokes and passes about her when she is a child, and his daughter (both of which he is aware of). He also calls Maho, a girl who looks a lot like a kid, a “legal loli.”
Daru even makes cleaning with a kindergartener sexual with fantasies. Despite all his transgressions, nobody really holds him accountable for his actions, and his character does not change until deep in the future, when he has a wife and daughter. His actions are terrible and highly reflective of the young men in Japan during the early 2000s. All of Daru’s pedophilic jokes could have been replaced with funny jokes in general, and, if they really had to keep his character, sexual jokes as well towards non-children. Unfortunately, in the Steins;Gate movie, another character was made a pedophile as well: Makise Kurisu. Kurisu is also an amazing character, and before the movie, had nothing to do with pedophilic tendencies, often calling out Daru for his jokes. However, in the movie, she must travel back in time to when Okabe was a kid and instill an impactful memory to stop him from disappearing in the future. She, at this point, loves Okabe and can’t live in a world without him, so she goes back in time, gives him his mad scientist backstory, and kisses him. However, Okabe at this point in time is 13 and Kurisu is 18.
I understand that she loves him, but at this point, he is not the Okabe that she knew. He has no quirks and, similarly to Shinji, is quite frightened and alone. I find it difficult to believe that supergenius Makise Kurisu could not think of another way to solve it without kissing Okabe’s 13-year-old self. It is very out of place, and even when I first watched it 5 years ago, I thought it was strange. She also holds no remorse or embarrassment for the moment, either, regarding it as a tender, sweet action when confronted by Okabe later. I feel like this just served as fan service for men who lack female interaction. It is insulting to Kurisu’s character to make her do this, barely trying to connect it with a plot point. Many of the girls in Steins;Gate also fit the kawaii culture, the innocence trope that has been sexualized, like Faris, Kurisu, Mayuri, Maho, and Suzuha. While Steins;Gate is my favorite anime of all time, its predatory jokes and scenes disappoint me greatly.
Jujutsu Kaisen is an anime about curses that manifest from people’s worries and fears and sorcerers who use magic to fight them. Season 2 introduced the sorcerer Mei Mei, who utilizes crows to attack curses with crow suicide bombers that are very dangerous. Jujutsu Kaisen, as an anime, is amazing. It has top-tier animation and story, in my opinion, with glorious fight scenes, especially in season 3. However, Mei Mei’s character is very strange and, similar to my other complaints, just seems very unnecessary. Mei Mei has a very close relationship with her brother Ui Ui, who appears to be around 10 to 12, manipulating him to do her bidding. This is shown when Mei Mei, who appears to be naked in bed, asks Ui Ui if he would want to sleep together.
This clearly implies some incestuous, pedophilic relationship between them. Ui Ui’s devout faith and trust in his sister are important for their fights, as Mei Mei can only win some fights because of her brother's absolute trust in her. However, having this predatory relationship between 2 siblings is outrageous. Unlike the other shows, Jujutsu Kaisen does not focus greatly on the progression of the side characters, so Mei Mei’s predatory behavior is never seen to be fixed. Having a predator character serves no real purpose to the story overall, and the scene serves just to show her manipulation, which could have been done any other way. Jujutsu Kaisen is amazing, but the addition of this terrible character trait is unnecessary and tasteless.
Conclusion
Although my research is a little skewed, as the predatory behavior in most of my examples was done on boys, I think most of the same concepts still apply, and the inclusion of predatory female characters was most likely to provide fan service for male fans. All these anime are very good, and I still love them, but the inclusion of predatory characters rubs me the wrong way and makes it difficult to fully understand and support the character for the rest of the series.
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