I don't think it was justifying rape, I've seen way worse and no one bats an eye or even mentions it (love is illusion). With this one it show a more realistic review of a child being sexual abused. Not saying it was perfect in any sense. But the small things like Yukito not wanting to be touched or the why he would shut down when he was next to his father, shows what sexual abuse does to somebody. I think your points are valid, but I believe that this story did a far better job then most on this genre.
I didn’t say it was justifying rape. It wasn’t. But it was using the rape and depravity to fulfill sexual desire and a lot of people see it as some beautiful literary device instead of just rape porn (which is essentially what this was)
It's possible I'm misunderstanding you, but I feel like you're just posing an argument against the concept of Death of the Author. If you or anyone else who happens to read this is unfamiliar, here's a really good explanation from a website of what this concept is:
"Death of the Author is usually understood as meaning that a writer's views about their own work are no more or less valid than the interpretations of any given reader. Intentions are one thing. What was actually accomplished might be something very different. The logic behind the concept is fairly simple: Books are meant to be read, not written, so the ways readers interpret them are as important and "real" as the author's intention."
Your opinions on the piece are valid from your own perspective, but if someone else has read the same story and come away with a different takeaway or interpretation they're not wrong either. Creative works are subjective and I think that's part of the beauty of them.
my dude there's only so many ways you can interpret child rape. This wasn't some off-screen, brief mentioning of the rape to make a point or to be used as a plot device. it was showing a kid getting raped by his dad. mostly adult him but the parts when he was still a kid were way too graphic. go read a book in literally any other genre other than josei, where rape is mentioned and it shows it portrayed like this. It was made for sexual gratification and regardless of how the author intended for it to look, she went out of her way to graphically draw sex scenes between the kid and his dad. That isn't my "personal takeaway" that's a fact. she did that. if I go out intending to make an indie film but end up making a porno, no matter what anyone says, its still a porno at the end of the day.
Maybe I am misunderstanding you then? I feel like you're saying "my way is the only correct way to interpret this work" and I'm disagreeing with that. Anyone is free to interpret or take away from the work whatever they want to.
im not saying my way is right, but no one seems to address the fact that this is child rape. i cannot stress that enough. a child. being raped. everyone just brushes over the fact that here is a graphic porno depiction of a dad raping their son. all anyone sees is the end chapters where the seme helps him get over his trauma. what about the 4 chapters of the author drawing child porn and then the adult version of the child still having sex with his rapist dad. no one? no? all I hear is "yes, so beautiful" and its not like this is the first time either. authors do this a LOT. I've read over 3000 mangas on this site and even while trying to stay away from this sort of manga, I've definitely read over 30. and no one calls it what it is. sexual gratification for the author. imagine reading the comments about a book saying "Oh how wonderful that the mc got out of this abusive situation and that he and the other mc have such a wonderful healing romance" Only to read the book and find its 80% borderline child porn. you can find the ending beautiful while still adressing that the beginning is insane. or at least saying yeah its some kinky type of rape porn.
Well, I don't really think you're necessarily wrong. But the way people feel about the ending might only be possible because of how they felt about the journey to get there. But honestly if you've read so many manga then I'm sure you know that most of them are garbage. I think the genre as a whole has made progress in the last 16 years (as long as I've been reading BL), but publishers are only going to put out stuff that will sell. So if anything, the existence of this manga points to a larger societal problem in Japan. If I can guess, I'd say that living in such a repressed society can cause people to seek out culturally forbidden topics as a reprieve. And thus you might end up with a creative work that's more gratuitous than it might need to be in order to communicate the story. But now I'm just guessing. I nor anyone else can truly know what the author was thinking when they wrote the work. Maybe it was the editor or publisher who forced the author to make it more gratuitous than they originally planned. It's impossible to actually know and I don't think it's worth debating the content of someone else's mind at a particular point in time.
Completely agree with everything you've said! it really has come a long way. I've been reading for 12 years now and its nice to see the happy, unproblematic yaois that exist today compared to the flaming rape trash that used to make up most of them. shoutout to natsume isaku and yamamoto kotetsuko for getting me through those years
"flaming rape trash" - I laughed out loud at this! Couldn't be more true! And a terrible thing for impressionable young people to read. There's still a lot of problematic manga, but hopefully Japan continues to weed them out of production over time.
I might get hate for this but I think some manga authors just really like rape and abuse and that sort of “licking the taste of despair and desperation off your lips” sort of twisted. It’s a sadistic sexual fantasy but you can always tell when it’s about the story and when it’s about the author. I keep seeing a lot of these out there and I feel like the authors/readers don’t see what they’re doing when they create/read something like this. You should recognize it for what it is otherwise I end up with this black feeling of disgust in my stomach. This wasn’t inspiring or beautiful, it was fulfilling a sexual fantasy and people don’t seem to be able to tell the two apart when it comes to works of fiction. I don’t know how to correctly express how I’m feeling but I did my best. If someone could add on that’d be great.