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Evaluation

This project has been both super interesting, and also challenging at some points. I was excited about being able to choose my own topic to research, however it was a little bit disorientating having so much freedom since there are so many topics that can be covered. At first I was in a state of confusion as to what route I should go down topic wise, however I soon found my footing after a really informative and helpful session with Lynsey and the rest of my group that gave me the confidence I needed when it came to whether the topic was interesting enough. 

Since I am so passionate about the topic I chose, I found it really easy to conduct all sorts of research and look into the context of how and why it was such an issue in Japan in particular. I was able to gather lots of information online, yet found it a lot harder to find relevant paper text that I could use, so the electronic sources heavily outweigh the paper research.

Writing the proposal itself was a bit of a struggle as I found it hard writing about myself in such a way whilst also keeping a professional and formal tone. However, I am satisfied with the work I have conducted throughout the project.

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A good article depicting Natalie Portman, an actress who was heavily sexualised and harrassed after appearing in Leon. This shows how people can be affected by such behaviour

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A really good source of information and sad cases where paedophiles and child molesters have treated victims as if they are ‘comic characters’. Also using the term ‘loli’ for their victims links back to Nabokov’s book ‘Lolita’ 

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Some good contextual information 

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Information and an example of how the issue of sexualisation affects real people

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Lots of info and other sources to look into

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Despite the annoying presentation, this video has quite a few pieces of info on how lolita came to Japan

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This article talks a little bit about Shintoism and animism that is present within Japanese culture. The idea that Shintoism has extended from giving inanimate objects souls, to the modern day fictional character is an interesting contextual idea, offering a little more theory as to where the modern ideology has come from

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Some interesting views from people defending their right to own/produce such material

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Weekly summary 3

I watched a documentary by Stacey Dooley called ‘Young Sex for Sale In Japan’ which is very relevant to my topic indeed. It explores the ways young children and teenage girls are being sought after to sell their company as hostesses, and even shoot for quasi pornographic photos called ‘chaku ero’. 

I realised that it is a very heavy and disturbing topic, however I am determined to do as much research as I can as I have always found that that dark underbelly to anime and Japan has made me uncomfortable and I want to find out why it is so popular and also why it has been defended by so many people.

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Weekly summary 2

We had a group session with Lynsey to talk about our possible ideas already. I was in between two or three ideas that I could expand upon consisting of discussing the way women are portrayed in animation and films in general, discussing the possible ways in which bestiality has been apparent in some animated films, and finally exploring and discussing the notion of paedophilia within animation (anime) and manga in Japan.

The topic that got the most interest from Lynsey and the rest of my group was the topic of paedophilia being present in Japanese anime and manga, so I wrote down as much information I could get from the suggestions people were making and decided to look a lot more in depth into the subject at hand. I found lots of different articles, all with the same notion of it being very obviously wrong and unnatural, however the more I looked the more I saw posts of people condoning such material.

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This article is from 2012, so is based before the ban on child pornography was enforced in Japan