The consensus was definitely in Soul Eater's favor amongst everyone who'd actually seen the shows (or at least one of them), and I'm inclined to agree that Soul Eater is a more solid, sleek package. There are definitely times when I'm more in the mood for D.Gray-Man though. Hmm!
Favorite points include:
Lan
"My favorite character is Black Star--YA-HOO! He's all brawn and no brain, but something about the way he just rushes into things and always wants to be #1 makes me love him."
FoxxFireArt (Mild Spoilers!)
"I really liked the scenes where the spirit of Medusa haunted Stein. All their scenes together were awesome. Even before she was exposed as a witch. In a way. she reminded me of Mystique in X-Men. Beautiful, intelligent, treacherous, and a secret agenda. Now that I think about it. Both also have questionable mothering skills."
JJOR64
"I haven't seen/read either of these series yet. Can I pick Pokemon instead?"
Since last week's question was a pretty quick one, I decided to make this one a bit more topical-- and more serious. Do you think that lolicon and shotacon (e.g. hand-drawn materials featuring underage-- sometimes VERY underage --characters in sexual situations) should be banned? It's something we've discussed here and there as news came out, but I also wanted to open up the topic for those who didn't feel like they could air their opinion in the comments of a news post.
Really, where do you draw the line on how thing are drawn and why it goes too far.
Take for example Volume 18 of Negima!. In chapter 166, Negi, the ten year old teacher, is in the large public bath house of Mahora Academy. The high school aged girls are having fun teasing him by playing keep away with a magical ring given to him by Evangeline. Running back and forth he eventually slips and falls. Thus causing by accident the completely nude Fumika to sit right on his face.
Another example from the same volume in chapter 165. Misa Kakizaki of Negi's class asks who she thinks is a priest, "Does an average ten-year-old have any interest in sex?". She's speaking of Negi, and the note next to the dialog bubble shows she's being serious. In Volume 5, chapter 35, Misa also says in once scene, "I wanted to talk dirty to Negi-kun but... *heart*".
Does this now count as exploitation of a minor character? Sure the scenes aren't terribly graphic, but it does involve a minor boy.
I dislike underage or even normal hentai, but even so is a form of art and you cant ban it....
I SOOOO <3 Soul Eater. It;s one of the funniest anime's i've seen!
Regarding the second question: in some manga/ anime, sexual content is a comedy resource (Ranma 1/2 comes to my mind inmediately), pointless fanservice (Shinji Ikari Raising Project, but how many other series fall into this category, anyway?) or actually one of the key elements of the story (Chobits, Utena to mention a couple). But hentai is another thing. I've seen good, bad and ugly hentai and the only types of hentai that I have found disturbing are the loli/shota ones and rape related. Those give me the creeps, even if it is fiction, but I don't think all things published that have sexual content have to be banned. That would be absurd and would generate a huge black market. And we would be back in the 30's.
No one here will probably give you much argument that there are thousands of interesting/funny/insightfully/terrible uses of drawn minors in this, that, or another story, but can we think of the situations where it does harm. I'm not asking for any statistics or graphs, but when people throw out numbers like...
Its an unknowable number, but my general faith in humanity says that there isn't a definable link between the two.
1) no actual children need be involved with the making of lolita or shota hentai, so they are not real people. only schitsophrenics need worry about morality involving fictional characters.
2) negima is a bad example as it isn`t hentai. it`s eechi, (think softcore porn). you will find few mainstream lolita hentai series out here, and it`s the same as in japan, as most are just dojin works of completely innocent characters. (a message for moonstone - if you read where they are now, there is very little dirty stuff and lots of plot. the series took a reversal from dirty comedy to action science-fantasy.) (though the creator of negima, ken akamatsu, did start his manga-ka career with hardcore card captor sakura doujin.
3) flat chested small bodied midgets who shave and are between 18-10000 years old problem solved.