sense of humor -vs- sense of morals.



"Kodomo no Jikan's story revolves around a male twenty-three year old grade school teacher named Daisuke Aoki employed at Futatsubashi Elementary School (双ツ橋小学校, Futatsubashi Shōgakkō). Daisuke is in charge of class 3-1, and one of his students, a mischievous young girl named Rin Kokonoe, has developed a crush on him, and has gone so far as to proclaim herself Daisuke's girlfriend. Rin continues her efforts to be with her teacher despite the fact that he will lose his job if she gets too close." (from Wikipedia)

Sounds like a hit, right? I mean, a 3rd grader making sexual advances on her adult teacher...that's what comics are for! But I'm afraid Kodomo no Jikan, or Nymphet as it's been dubbed in English, has been causing quite the controversy in the US manga market. A while back, Seven Seas Entertainment announced that they would be translating and releasing the series in the US. Seven Seas has published several popular Japanese comics in English, and Kodomo no Jikan had already made such a splash in Japan that it seemed ripe for the Yankee picking. When debate sparked up regarding the pedophilic undertones of the story, Seven Seas head Jason DeAngelis defended the title in this statement, saying that the comics were harmless, reflecting Japan's "wacky" sense of humor, and that "if it’s good enough for the Japanese, then it’s good enough for us."



Then, abruptly, the company announced that it would not publish the books, and DeAngelis released a lengthy second statement. Now it appears he has changed his tune, saying that his decision to cancel the title came upon reading later volumes of the series which featured pages and situations that "cannot be considered appropriate for the US market by any reasonable standard." Let me just note here that Seven Seas also has the publishing rights to Wicked City, a story which features women being sexually violated by parasitic tentacle demons. But I guess the tentacles and the women are all over the legal age of consent, so it's okay for Americans.



So what about the "good enough for Japan, good enough for us" philosophy? Apparently DeAngelis came to the realization that the wacky, bizarre sense of humor that thrives in Japan translates into an inappropriate, dangerous breach of morals in America. It turns out what's good enough for Japan isn't always good enough for the US, or rather, what can be laughed at in a harmonious, progressive society is still threatening and abhorrent to a turbulent, conservative one. The author of Kodomo no Jikan, Kaworu Watashiya, hinted at this on her blog: "The boundaries of depictions of lolitas and so on vary with each locale, era, and culture, so if people there decide that it's out of bounds, then that's that." However, Watashiya is a little off on pin-pointing what actually caused the ban. She goes on to assume that the offensive pages were those involving adult and child relatives taking a bath, thinking that this would be viewed as incestuous and not suitable for Americans. But in fact, as Wikipedia explains, DeAngelis specifically described the most inappropriate pages as those depicting a scene in which the young girl and her teacher are stuck in a cold room, holding each other to keep warm. The girl "accidentally rubs Aoki's crotch, who gets an erection." I guess Watashiya didn't find that part very provocative.





Above are a couple Nymphet pages I found, showing that wacky Japanese sense of humor ('ejaculate inside me!' What a punchline!). Call me deviant, but frankly, I can see how this concept could be a comical goldmine. The whole joke is that the story is essentially a "what if" scenario, where this poor guy, Aoki, is relentlessly hounded by forbidden temptation personified by the girl, Rin. The comics could be viewed as a sharp satire of manga's tendency to consistently over-sexualize female characters who appear or act very young (the whole Lolicon universe); the only difference between this title and countless other titles is that this one goes as far as to say that the girl is actually a 3rd grader, not just a youthful looking character that is, say, 17.


Nymphet and a Battle Athlete. Can you detect a 10-year age difference?

Of course, I haven't read the books, but something tells me that this story will find it's way to the States. After all, considering that Kodomo no Jikan was a major hit in Japan, with a cartoon series in production, chances are there will soon be several new titles cashing in on the subject matter. How long will Seven Seas be able to stay in the business if they start picking and choosing which comics cross the society-values line and which are merely wacky or bizarre? Thanks to all this publicity, already Nymphet has become a highly desirable forbidden fruit. You can't tell the public how racy and unacceptable a series is, immediately after praising its creativity, and not expect the public to salivate more. In a way, this series and its controversy are a major turning point in the evolution of Japanese comics, and readers want to see what the fuss is about.



But the main point, folks, is that Kokomo no Jikan is a fantasy, a parody, and a comic, not a piece of literature that children are going to read and model their behaviors after. It's meant to be taken as somewhat of a dirty joke, making you laugh while at the same time shocking you with its boldness. If you get the joke, then you know that this is not necessarily art imitating life, so there is no chance of life imitating this art. Japan gets the joke. Too bad the U.S. doesn't.
.

Hoodryde.

Japan has a way of picking up the misplaced pieces of a foreign subculture and reassembling them into a vibrant, cartoonish doppleganger of the original. Photographer Akif Hakan Celebi has done a series that beautifully documents one such "doppleculture."
Presenting HOODRYDE.
(and you MUST have the sound turned on.)
.

flour power.


Pair arrested after making flour trail through parking lot.

More evidence (in addition to the whole Mooninite scare) that America is in danger of becoming one of THOSE countries. You know, the kind of country where stupid shit like this happens. And, once again, a city official releases another disturbingly paranoid/idiotic statement. This time it's the aptly-named Mayoral spokeswoman Jessica Mayorga, who utters this as she announces plans to seek restitution from the "terrorists":
"You see powder connected by arrows and chalk, you never know...It could be a terrorist, it could be something more serious. We're thankful it wasn't, but there were a lot of resources that went into figuring that out."



A lot of resources? Like what, the daft police officer wasting his breath by asking "Is this flour?" How many millions did the city spend in cracking this case? For fuck's sake, the guy biked back to IKEA once he heard his flour trail was stirring up the local morons and told them all it was only flour. Any damages, financial or emotional, can hardly be blamed on he and his accomplices.

And what does Mayorga mean by her cryptic suggestion that flour could be evidence of "something more serious" than a terrorist? Wouldn't a flour-armed Al Qaeda be bad enough? Could she be suggesting a more ancient evil, something inhuman, something Sumerian perhaps, something that has been lying dormant since the dawn of man, waiting for the right time to rise up and invoke the wrath of the Old Ones by way of flour?? The WHITE DEATH??

who doesn't love Edie Sedgwick?


Poor Little Rich Girl, Andy Warhol, 1965

"Miles and miles of people in striped shirts looking like the Kingston Trio singing 'What Have they Done to the Rain?'" -Chuck Wein's dream
.

practice lookin' hard:
the blindingly bad artwork of rap albums



The artwork that graces an album will always be an opportunity for the recording artist to express visibly the feeling, theme, or stylistic stance of the music within. In the past we've seen fine artists use record sleeves as canvases, from Andy Warhol to H.R. Giger, and we've been exposed to the work of countless relatively unknown designers and artists who bear the task of creating an image that will not only represent out favorite musicians, but serve as a permanent stamp that will forever be associated with that collection of songs in the listeners' collective consciousness.

When browsing the gallery of hip-hop cover art, a viewer will no doubt be struck by the brightness of the images, the sparkling streamlined texts, and the unflinching hardness expressed by the posing rappers. We may stop to question the aesthetic and compositional decisions made in these pieces, or we might just laugh, but one question will no doubt plague the viewer as they inspect every bling-tastic work: seriously, what is wrong with these guys?



A classic. Note how everything is shiny, and that Snoop apparently lives in Chateau de Chenonceau.


This one seems to tell a story, and I assume that by listening to the record you find out who the dork walking around in the "SNITCH" t-shirt is.




This one's just cute, obviously a group of small-timers wanting to look like the big-timers. But what a weird choice for a title.




Pretty homo-erotic, and judging from the rappers' faces, quite uncomfortable also. What the hell is he cooking for Raekwon?





I had to throw in the above Dr. Dooom cover, because Kool Keith seems to be the only one who gets the joke of the baffling, throw-everything-you-can-think-of-into-the-frame cliche. (Note the baboon watching from the roof.) Although I should point out that, as far as representing the depth, artistry and quality of the music within, ridiculous rap covers usually do their job perfectly.
.