Reading Report: 13 November 2022
I post these on the 日本語と英語 Discord learning server but I thought why not post them on cohost as well for posterity. Basically they're just a record of what I read (or watched, or listened to) and interesting points I wanted to talk about. The discord server is an all-ages, SFW server so in cases (like this week) where I read NSFW texts I tend to tone down the language. The version here is slightly edited to re-introduce discussion of some adult content.
エロマンガ表現史 (by 稀見理都) 140 Pages First: 断面図, the use of cross-sections for eroticism. There were a lot of interesting points made about what it's employed, the grey-zone of how it interacts with censorship, and how is can be used to express things you can't really express otherwise. For example, the inside of a vagina isn't under the same scrutiny of the law as the outside. Interview with mangaka ジョン・K・ペー太 and it turns out he chose the penname after ジョン・カーペンター (John Carpenter). He's a huge horror and gore fan and also considered adopting a moniker based on Sam Rami. He said that in a way he's a little bit worried about the proliferation of this type of expression since, as it becomes more popular, he worries it will also be under more scrutiny by censors. In a manner of thinking, 断面図 is a sort of way to show a person's insides so... yeah, there's a connection to be made between gore and cross-sections. アヘ顔: A particular, pop-culture face people make, commonly recognised by three visual cues:
- The eyes are rolled back
- The tongue is sticking out
- Some kind of liquid (tears, drool, possibly others) are coming from the face
It really only gained popularity in the early 2000s and the name wasn't settled on until the mid 00s. Interestingly the first use of the word was the cover of a JAV decades earlier, then Manga adopted it, then it was used in other forms of media such as LNs, and these days it's used commonly in JAV (as a reference to the manga version). Just as 永山薫 said in エロマンガ・スタディーズ, it's all about shared gene-pools dipping into each other. オノマトペ: This chapter focused on two particular onomatopoeia, くぱぁ and らめぇ. くぱぁ is specifically a sound-effect that has more or less only come up in erotic contexts and refers to the sound made when a vagina is opened (usually with the index and middle fingers). らめぇ is a word common to a manner of speech I read about earlier in エロマンガ・スタディーズ called みさくら語 (popularised by みさくらなんこつ). Basically it's a way of slurring speech, but its history goes back before みさくら as forms of 役割語 (手塚治虫 used it with one character as 幼児語 for example). The core idea for expressions like this is "using the whole buffalo". Manga has images but it also has text and sound effects and if you can make them all work together the end result is better for it. Lastly was 修正: There was a lot of discussion on types of censorship employed, how artists worked around them, how they evaded them, and how the standard has changed not only over time but across genres. There's also mention of how words were introduced into the list of "fair game" to censor after eromanga opened up to the international market. Amazon has a list of banned words which has evolved over time, causing some manga to require republishing under new, censored names to conform to the standards.