Japanese Reading Report: 27 July 2025

タコピーの原罪 episode 4

And with that, the first week of my last semester of school has begun. A lot has happened in the last week. Of course, I've become acquainted with my last set of courses, but we've also seen a wave of censorship and kowtowing to conservative interest groups with regards to adult game listings on Steam and Itch.io. I've wanted to write furiously about it all week, but I always find myself drained of the energy to be an advocate, so I'm doing it here. This isn't the first time private interest groups and legal threat have transformed payment systems (Mastercard and Visa being the big two) into would-be internet police. Websites like Dlsite and Manga Library Z were affected around a year ago. That wasn't the first instance, but it was the first point where I recognised the overreach. In my opinion these aren't just free speech violations, they're violations of national sovereignty. Of course, as private entities, the payment systems are technically able to engage with others voluntarily, but the issue is ultimately that Visa and Mastercard are a duopoly where each entity parrots the policy changes of the other. I hope that, as a collective internet, we can advocate for a society that embraces all forms of expression, no matter how distasteful some content may be to us personally.

On another small note, and perhaps part of the reason I feel emboldened to use this platform to speak my piece, I've been reading Karl Andersson's new book Real Journalism. I think Karl is a pretty admirable person. I believe he does a great job exploring taboos with curiosity and rigour.

英雄伝説　空の軌跡ＦＣ

This week I finally reached my previous furthest point, the arson of the orphanage.

After hearing about the fire at the orphanage, Estelle and Joshua rush to Manolia to meet with the victims. Thankfully no one was hurt, but it's clear that the fire was not an accident and someone out there is to blame. The mayor of Ruan pays a visit, pointing the finger at the Raven gang who hang out at the Ruan docks, but their culpability is pretty questionable since they're basically just a bunch of petty criminals. Unfortunately, Clem (is that really how you romanise クラム??) overhears the discussion, jumps to conclusions, and rushes after the Raven gang to get justice.

After catching up to Clem, we have a fight with the Raven gang, Agate shows up, reveals that he's the former Raven leader, and determines that they're definitely innocent of the arson. However, he also takes the case away from us, so for now the mystery is unsolved.

Instead we agree to help Kloe at her academy. Before that, though, the game sort of presented a, "Hey, when we go do this we'll be busy for a while" warning, so I decided to clean up the side quests first. I climbed the third ancient tower, I (poorly) mediated a royal intruder out of a checkpoint mess hall, and I solved the mystery of a missing gemstone. Now I'm finally on my way to the academy to see what's up with the main story.

タコピーの原罪

Two great episodes of Takopi this week.

Episode 4 focused entirely on Azuma's struggle. It went further into detail about his family history, how he felt that he always lived in the shadow of his brother and, despite trying his best, he was never able to live up to his mother's expectations about him. The only person who seems to be there for him is Shizuka. As the stress of his life is coming to a peak and he feels like he's totally cornered, Azuma's brother, Junya, reaches out. It's a very touching heart-to-heart between both brothers. However, Azuma's "salvation" leads to Shizuka feeling that she has lost a confidant, and she decides to go to Tokyo to see her dad and Chappy by herself (and Takopi).

Episode 5 starts with Shizuka and Takopi rushing straight to Tokyo. I suppose I had forgotten it from the manga, but I was surprised that the story was set in Hokkaido and that they took a ferry from Hakodate.
Shizuka finds her father, but it's not the reunion that she was hoping for. Her father has started a new family, has new children, and even refuses to acknowledge her as his daughter in front of his other children. (Of course, Chappy is nowhere to be found. He was never sent to "live with dad".) Distraught, Shizuka feels like she's lost all hope. She asks Takopi for a happy tool that can fix things, but nothing can mend her situation. She kills Takopi.

And then Takopi wakes up. It's 2022 (a few years "after" the events of the original storyline) and Marina is somehow still alive. Takopi befriends Marina, learns about her life through her eyes, and attempts to help her in the same ways he helped Shizuka. There is a brief moment of hope for Marina when she's reconnected to Azuma, now older and disconnected from the drama of their youth. But in a second twist of fate, they're also reconnected with Shizuka. Seeing her again rekindles Azuma's infatuation for Shizuka, and Marina's short-lived relationship with him ends. Marina's relationship with her mother becomes catastrophic; her mother dies in a struggle, Takopi apologises for failing again, and is pulled home by his mother. Takopi can't accept this outcome. He still believes he can figure the situation out and help Shizuka and Marina. He meddles with the space-time clock on the happy planet and wakes up back in the original timeline (sort of..?)

感じない男

This is probably a long time coming, but I've been feeling somewhat guilty that every instance of referring to "the author" of books I've read, I've often just called them "the author". It feels impersonal, incomplete, and unprofessional. With that said, I want to remind myself and readers that the author of this book is Masahiro Morioka. With that said, let's begin the review.

This week I finished Morioka's chapter on lolicon and begun reading his closing chapter on himself and other "Numb Men" (this is just my crude translation of the title and condition which Morioka coined).

Just like last week I found myself agreeing with some points (or, in this case moreso finding them to be a compelling) and then finding many of the conclusions harder to agree with. As a start, Morioka presents quite a lot of evidence of a lolicon culture within Japan. He points at a lot of idol group content (though, when looking up some of his examples I wasn't totally sold on them all) and he also shows that the age of models in commercial photo albums has gone as low as 9 years old.
Interestingly, he explains that while young models are often dressed to present them as more mature, there's also a market of adult models who are intentionally presented to make them appear more immature. So basically there's a sort of "gravity" drawing models in towards a sweet spot (sort of).
Morioka says that part of the allure of young girls for "numb men" (and I should make it clear that he is specifically attempting to understand these men, not male sexuality broadly) is that they're at the crossroads of puberty and developing secondary sexual characteristics. This isn't because the numb man is attracted to the ambiguity, but because (not unlike the school uniform situation), he sees these girls as an opportunity to eject himself out of his own life and into theirs. He sees his own life as a failure in some way, and wishes for the chance to take a different path in puberty that might make him more content.

I think his observation of the turning point is compelling. I recall that Kaoru Nagayama also described an allure of lolicon (and shotacon) as the desire to return to a world without adult burdens in Eromanga Studies (エロマンガスタディーズ). Morioka's idea that numb men feel burdened by secondary attributes of manhood (body hair, sweating, body odour, and particularly ejaculation) sort of creates a counterweight that makes my brain tingle. I think both are right and, as always, I wish to learn more.
Unfortunately that's about the end of the lolicon section of the book. Morioka also discusses how numb men may imagine themselves impregnating these girls, embodying these girls, and then giving birth to a new child who also themselves, making them father, mother, and child. It was kind of a messy concept to read, and I may not be doing it justice, so I'll just leave it there if you want to read it yourself.

The last bit I read was a return to the concept of, "What is the numb man?". Morioka describes some of his own struggles in more detail, and I felt this was the most honest and enlightening section for me. He explains how puberty shocked him. In particular, he explains that he begun to struggle with wet dreams, how masturbation and ejaculation became routine not because they were pleasurable, but because he felt a great deal of shame when he had wet dreams and made a mess unconsciously. At one point he says that the urge became so bad it felt like it burned him inside. He didn't have anyone to talk to and, though he suspected his mother knew what was happening, she didn't feel comfortable talking him through it. So he developed a sense of shame about his body, and he resented his development into a man. On top of that, his sexual prospects didn't work out when he was a young man. Women his age weren't interested in him. He was approached by gay men and older women, but that only caused more insecurity.
Morioka's history is very tender, and I liked reading it. I feel like this, more than anything else, made me understand numb men more, and made me more compassionate towards them.

Morioka suggests some solutions for other numb men. First, he tells them that they have to admit to themselves exactly what they are. They can't externalise their problems, and they especially can't blame women for their sexual inadequacies. He offers some external solutions; he suggests that certain religious and historic cultural practices like Karma Sutra have helped some men, but he warns numb men against putting all their eggs in any hope of "cure", urging them to first find love for themselves as they are.

I had a lot to say about the reading this week. Next week I'll likely be finishing the book, so let's hope it has an interesting conclusion.