But then it was some new anime that was shitty through and through. It felt a bit like Jojo, what with all the extremely buff and disproportionate dudes being buff and disproportionate. There were some nice jiggle physics, I guess, but they didn’t make up for anything.

I made it all the way through the first episode of Needless, surviving off my masochism, and then…

… I was rewarded.

The ending animation entails three lolis kissing each other, rubbing each other, licking each other, rubbing against each other, and so on and so forth and doing all the things that three lolis normally do whilst removing each other’s clothing, and I went to heaven, dying a million times and coming back to life a million times.

Then the preview for episode two replaced the loliyuri and I cried a million times and died and didn’t come back to life.

Verdict: shit.

Anyway… without further ado, let me present to you: Meditations on First Lolicon.

Cast of Characters

でか ルト—a man approaching the limit of being able to call himself “young,” Ruto is an otaku and a NEET. He spends all his time alone in his room, safe within his room; he touches no one and no one touches him. Simon and Garfunkel song lyrics aside, he is a total recluse as far as meatspace is concerned. He has no friends, has no contact with his family, and eats only what food can be ordered online and delivered to his doorstep. Ruto is a lurker in cyberspace, and makes his name only through the number of days in his myanimelist.net account—over nine thousand.

God—a PHLAG, minus the “anime” because she’s (allegedly) real. She resides in Ruto’s closet, though he doesn’t know this because he never turns away from his computer. Her origins are mysterious, the extent of her powers unknown, her motives secret.

The Christian Anime Club—a group of anime watchers who contest Ruto’s discoveries after he publishes them.

The Atheist Anime Club—a group of anime watchers who contest Ruto’s discoveries after he publishes them.

Part 1

Ruto, after witnessing countless arguments between self-branded philosophers on myanimelist.net, decides to seclude himself from the last vestiges of civilization with which he associates himself (MAL and anime), and pursue the truth of the world. Along the way, he becomes good friends with his long-time companions the fridge and the alarm clock, who act as his loyal yes-men. In the end, he discovers the truth—God exists!

Part 2

After Ruto makes his discovery, we get more insight into God, the little girl living in Ruto’s closet. We learn about her backstory; why she’s hiding here, why she ran away from home, what kind of a person she is, and so on. This is done with extensive use of flashbacks and too much exposition.

Part 3

In what amounts to one long Phoenix Wright parody, objections regarding Ruto’s discoveries (which he published on his otherwise unpopulated MAL blog) are raised and responded to. In the end, Ruto runs out of cup ramen and withers away at his computer.

There will be a tearful epilogue in which his computer, a thinking, feeling thing, unfolds its haunches, gets up from its perch, buries the philosopher otaku’s body in a mausoleum constructed of DVD boxes, and then, mistakenly correctly assuming that everything is God’s fault, kills God.

AAAAAND that’s all I’ve got so far, folks. Tell me what you think. Also, if anyone wants to take this up, feel free to, though I will be critical of the style with which you do it (note: style here is synonymous with “classiness”).

Rock!

EDIT: acknowledging that the intellectual masturbation may be lost on some, here’s some context.

In the more common contexts, guilty pleasures are negatively valued/low-culture activities and pursuits relative to high-culture media. For example, a person with a ‘cultured’ self-image may feel guilty taking pleasure in a lot of reality TV programs as opposed to watching classical theater or the ballet.

I am not interested in this particular context. I don’t make value judgments, or subscribe to the high/low culture binary. It’s all deculture to me. But as should be clear in my first meditation on this, there is such a thing as a guilty pleasure. But taking pleasure in what things exactly?

In the aforementioned post I confessed to an attraction to and an appreciation for evil characters in anime. Here the guilty pleasure is thinking dirty thoughts about 2d females in fictional high school age. The freshman high school student in Japan is 16 years old. I will be 32 in less than 3 weeks.

Every year, it gets worse and worse. I get older and older, the girls stay the same age. I’m even attracted to a particular subset of 2d high school girl: the loli.

Like Izumi Sou, Konata’s dad, I too, am also a lolicon. However, according to the source of all that is good and true, there’s nothing wrong with me:

Some level of sexual attraction to late adolescents is common among adults of all sexual orientations.^[8] The term ephebophilia is used only to describe the preference for mid to late adolescent sexual partners, not the mere presence of some level of sexual attraction.

I’m actually married to an older woman (though I admit she looks younger than I am and is often described as more girly than womanly). But if there’s nothing clinically wrong with me (I am neither a pedophile nor an ephebophile), why do I feel guilt? A clinical psychosis would actually absolve me of guilt because it takes away my freedom. But I am well, and I am free. And I use this freedom to indulge my attraction through the consumption of media that allows for a certain level of wish-fulfillment: I get to pursue thinking dirty thoughts about these underage females.

While I get to see these characters in a large number of anime, and the experience is quite voyeuristic especially for slice-of-life shows watched in marathon sessions, I don’t feel as guilty as I do now. What’s different about now? I’ve discovered eroge, having started playing Fate/stay Night. The difference in the experience is that the eroge is so much more immersive.

I feel like I’m living with these girls. After hours and hours of play, which is weeks in ‘anime time’ is merely a day or two in the game. The frequent breaks the text-based medium allows also gives an added ‘lived-in’ impression. Mind you, at this point in the game, I have yet to encounter a hentai moment. So I’m really confronted with the guilt only freedom allows.

How so? It’s because I’m free to stop this at any point. I don’t have to pursue this pleasure. Only that I most probably will. It’s this exercise of freedom that makes me feel the guilt. Nobody’s forcing me to perform vile acts on these girls, as vile as the thoughts I have tell me I’m so ready to do.

I’ve theorized in the recent past that there are two broad categories of otaku behavior: the amassive, and the expressive. My immersion in Fate/stay Night has led me to some amassing activities:

These toys aren't cheap, hence some of the guilt.

Fraulein Revoltech Toshaka Rin (in previous photo, Revoltech Enoki Tomohide-sculpted Saber)

However, being the expressive person that I am, I put together the ff. images. Like I said, nobody’s forcing me to perform vile acts on these girls. I put these images here (NSFW) not because I underestimate your imagination of what I am capable of doing, only that I’m very fond of my own imagination thank you.

Click to Reveal [NSFW]

"Let's buy ALL Revoltech": Toshaka, Gurren-Lagann, Eva Unit-01 Test Type

Going beyond the impossible

The heavens are being pierced, WITH HIS DRILL!

This was my bed Thursday night and Friday night

I woke up and went down to catch AMV Hells 3 and 3 mkII. Rika stabbing herself to What is Love made me laugh uncontrollably for minutes after the clip was over. Yeah, I’m a sick, sick man. After the AMVs, I watched the first Rebuild of Eva movie, which I deem a complete waste of my time. Yeah, it was cool. Yeah, it was slick. But it brought nothing new to the table, and that made it far from interesting.

At some point I went outside to get a shot of the convention center.

After Evangelion, I went over to the Dealer’s Hall, where I bought some prizes for our game-panel (which I’ll get to in a bit) and a mini Aria figurine. I wasn’t yet ready to spend big money, so I didn’t get anything extravagant. I asked at one stand if they had any larger Aria figurines; all they had was a model of the Aria Company. Suteki as it was, I wasn’t about to spend my hard-earned lioncash on a model building.

Somewhere around this time (between 1 and 4) I picked up five or so more allies. That was tight.

After the Dealer’s Hall, I failed to go to an interesting panel (read: I managed to go to a fail panel), so I left and sat on the floor of the main hall for about half an hour, allowing the traffic to revel in my sign:

<3 me i’m lolicon

I got some awesome reactions, and it was good. I met up with more members of our party, and that was awesome. After that, I grabbed some burgers a block away and then returned to get a picture of the coolest Maka cosplayer EVAR…

you can resonate my soul anytime, if you know what I mean ;)

And actually, that’s just about all the pics I took on Friday. I took one more (of a fraction of my party) but I won’t be displaying it here for whatever reason. Friday itself—you know, the non-photo aspect—was far from over. Between eight and nine we collected more supporters, and at nine we ran our panel—Create That Anime!, based off of Mr. Savage’s AOD game. We spent the first twenty minutes or so spewing random (and apparently hilarious) nonsense at our audience, which was maybe fifty times as large as we’d expected. Then we ran the game for a bit. The game, for those not in the know, involves lists of tropes and improv summary.

After that, we loitered around for a while. A couple dudes and I went to watch AMVs but they had this one that was like an hour long and completely unbearable and eventually we got bored and turned in around eleven. Yeah, it’s a weak time to sleep, but we had big plans for Saturday night.

And that, people, was my awesome Friday.

(Yes, it’s Sunday as I conclude this post. Also, I’m sleep deprived and high on School Days and completely fucked in the head. I also just discovered that Jason Miao is at this convention, and am thusly sort of freaking out. ANYWAY, I apologize for any incoherence, and I laugh at those of you who wanted more pictures.)