Thanks for the info

However this was before the Taitou building crackdown, and seeing as Futaket has been held there for each of its first three (plus Hentai Matsuri) incarnations I’m guessing the May event is on hold, if not canceled altogether.

Does anyone on here know whether Futaket is scheduled for next year at all and if so what dates?

There’s always going to be a bunch of knuckleheads ruining good times for everybody. And people in the government needed to do SOMETHING less they want a bad reputation for being lazy and turning a blind eye.

Is it about “free speech?” I think it’s more about “highly paid crybabies.”

We must remember that Japan is one of those “burnt-out societies;” high unemployment, high drop-out rates from school, high suicide rate, everyone going to bars and anime to drown out their own collective misery.

And the real victim is creativity. I’ve been joking about the idea that “Japan is a country full of ideas, all done the wrong way.” But Hideaki Anno (of Evangelion fame) had it right when he said that the whole society is stagnated. They haven’t gone over the fact that they lost WWII.

Less shows and art about loli? (I, for one, am saddened that “Boku no Pico” had been de-fanged during its 3rd episode.) Less shows about highly-detailed murder? (When Kira Dies / Higurashi is my favorite show.)

I’d like to more shows where the male lead is hardworking and slightly successful as oppose to being either someone’s punching bag or nonexistent. But then again, I live in America (California). :(

So the question now will be: Will the Japanese anime industry start doing more shows that feature guys with spine? Or will they join with the rest of the moody otaku and go deeper into the dark of doing shows that end up being played between 1 and 6 in the morning?

The ‘benefits’ of virtual media comes in the form that it is possible to do things in them which would be impossible or illegal in life-action, simply because of the risks involved to the actors.

Given the mind-boggling variety of Japanese life-action porn cinema, up to and including more violent and misogynistic fetishes and bondage, it strikes me as incoherent that the virtual type would bear the brunt of the attacks. Especially since NO REAL PEOPLE WERE HURT, COERCED, OR OTHERWISE EXPLOITED in virtual porn, unlike in life-action cinema. At least not on screen, anyway.

It started long before the elections. Furthermore the DPJ had more than enough ammunition with the whole pension shebang.

This isn’t about otaku versus the world, it’s only about otaku versus the government. After all, the source of this alleged persecution wasn’t from the grassroots level. To me, it all just seems like another case of the government needing some enemy to attack, and there’s always the fallback plan i.e. blame porn, violence, other stuff outside the current social norm. I doubt that this sort of persecution (witch-hunting a phantom threat to public morals) is new, nor unique to Japan.

So what do otaku do? Time to stop fapping and start thinking. I for one, am not caring too much yet and will continue sleeping.

Pedophiles are pedophiles. The internet has a ten *billion* dollar (real) child pornography industry. Somehow I believe that if a pedophile, that is, you know, the people dangerous to children and the ones who support the exploitation of children through real child porn, will simply get the real deal and not some idealised and stylised drawings. They may have it on the side, but then again, many pedophiles have children of their own to support their habits. Getting rid of lolicon makes a statement, but in the end achieves nothing.

I’ve never believed in censorship, but I believe in restriction. It seems strange, but maybe it’s because of the collective society of Japan that you see these problems.

What I hate the most is that this will come back to bite us in the asses. The Japanese otaku community is pretty damn weak when it comes to sticking up for itself, and some stupid intrepid reporter or scholar looking to stir up shit will discover lolicon and equate anime and manga to pedophile material. So, I hope everyone enjoys pedo jokes.

If this happened in the West, it’d probably be much worse, but at least there’d be one crazy otaku activist nut or two dropping photocopied sheets of lolicon off some bridge in the city to make a statement. I mean, at least we’d go out having fun.

Since japan did have elections recently.

I think it is a bad thing when someone tries to say what you should do and what not. There have to be borders. But everyone sees things differently. You might love heavy metal but I don’t! If heavy metal music would be baned I might be happy but you would say that this is wrong. But this is happening in Japan at the moment. People try to say other people what is right and whats wrong. They don’t see that in all this years there was no problem with the situation. They try to use unrelated tragic incidents to force their thinking and moral onto others. “I doesn’t like those otaku crap at all! Now you see whats happened! We must keep people from becoming otakus!”

Law should prevent people from hurting other people. It should not tell what to like and what not!