Content warning: molestation, rape, sexual violence
Last week I spoke pretty positively about one of Asanagi's VictimGirls doujins, and this week I thought it might be interesting to provide a counterpoint with an entry in the series which I find it difficult to enjoy, primarily on moral and cultural grounds. VictimGirls 21 took place in a clearly fantastical setting and involved the use of magical garments and mind control, which made it very easy to compartmentalize the morality of the scenario and simply to project onto whatever participant most appealed to your desires; VictimGirls R: Molestation Eradication Campaign, however, takes a... different approach.
The book portrays a feminist movement against molestation in which young girls appoint themselves as unofficial anti-molestation activists and publicly call out molesters on trains. Said movement is almost immediately revealed to be comprise primarily of self-serving, sadistic, or suggestible girls partaking in spurious accusations; they extort protection money out of male commuters and falsely accuse them of molestation if they refuse to pay, or sometimes just for amusement, backed by rhetoric centering around the idea of men as a whole being all being potential abusers who deserve what's coming to them.
This established, the comic proceeds to punish one of these girls; a large group of men who have been victimized by her false accusations corner her on a train car and rape her, and of course, this being a VictimGirls doujin, it's revealed that in fact she gets off to the idea of being molested and secretly enjoys it.
After this it cuts to an impromptu rally being held by the ringleader of the girls, Sophia, in which a bystander speaks in dissent of her message, and she responds by sending one of her entourage to accuse him of molesting her, forcing him to beat a hasty retreat as this attracts the attention of nearby policemen.
Sophia is attempting to contact the girl who was raped in the earlier scene, and becomes increasingly concerned when she gets no response, until several days later, when she enters a train car and sees several of the movement's girls having sex publicly with various nondescript men. Sophia is then beset by a man who quickly reveals himself to have molested her in the past, when she first game to Japan as a middle schooler; Having experienced and, secretly, enjoyed such a thing in her first public train ride, she developed a strong molestation fetish, and over time began to repress the memory, throwing herself into anti-molestation activism. The book ends with Sophia accepting her desire to be publicly used and abused, and a short epilogue depicting the women-only train cars being completely empty, as all the girls are piling into the coed cars in order to be fucked and groped along their way to their destination.
In terms of the way the characters are presented, this book isn't very different from VictimGirls 21, but the real-world contemporary setting makes it difficult for me to lose myself in this one; There are entire cottage industries today of culture warriors arguing that false accusations of sexual misconduct are an epidemic, that the legal institutions of today systemically favor these false accusations, and, less often, that feminists are some combination of sadistic, self-serving, and/or repressed, and this book reads like a depiction of the world as seen through this view in a way that really stops me from enjoying it.
To be 100% clear, I'm not arguing that Asanagi necessarily subscribes to these views (the book ends in a disclaimer that it is a work of fiction and that in the real world molestation is both illegal and immoral), I'm not arguing that people who do enjoy this book shouldn't, I'm not arguing that it was wrong to write this book.
My purpose here is to temper the point that I made last week with an acknowledgement that sometimes, art presents content which carries moral and ideological implications that make it difficult or impossible for some viewers to enjoy it on these terms, and that's fine too, you don't have to like something that makes you feel uncomfortable on a moral level.
With all that said, I do have to give this book some credit for Asanagi's customarily fantastic visual presentation; even as I recoil at some of the contextual underpinnings of this story, it's difficult not to be at least a little aroused by images on display here, because Asanagi is simply a master at drawing pornography. Unfortunately, the thematic presentation simply stops me from enjoying them to their full extent, and in light of this I'm giving VictimGirls R: Molestation Eradication Campaign a -2.
Last week I spoke pretty positively about one of Asanagi's VictimGirls doujins, and this week I thought it might be interesting to provide a counterpoint with an entry in the series which I find it difficult to enjoy, primarily on moral and cultural grounds. VictimGirls 21 took place in a clearly fantastical setting and involved the use of magical garments and mind control, which made it very easy to compartmentalize the morality of the scenario and simply to project onto whatever participant most appealed to your desires; VictimGirls R: Molestation Eradication Campaign, however, takes a... different approach.
The book portrays a feminist movement against molestation in which young girls appoint themselves as unofficial anti-molestation activists and publicly call out molesters on trains. Said movement is almost immediately revealed to be comprise primarily of self-serving, sadistic, or suggestible girls partaking in spurious accusations; they extort protection money out of male commuters and falsely accuse them of molestation if they refuse to pay, or sometimes just for amusement, backed by rhetoric centering around the idea of men as a whole being all being potential abusers who deserve what's coming to them.
This established, the comic proceeds to punish one of these girls; a large group of men who have been victimized by her false accusations corner her on a train car and rape her, and of course, this being a VictimGirls doujin, it's revealed that in fact she gets off to the idea of being molested and secretly enjoys it.
After this it cuts to an impromptu rally being held by the ringleader of the girls, Sophia, in which a bystander speaks in dissent of her message, and she responds by sending one of her entourage to accuse him of molesting her, forcing him to beat a hasty retreat as this attracts the attention of nearby policemen.
Sophia is attempting to contact the girl who was raped in the earlier scene, and becomes increasingly concerned when she gets no response, until several days later, when she enters a train car and sees several of the movement's girls having sex publicly with various nondescript men. Sophia is then beset by a man who quickly reveals himself to have molested her in the past, when she first game to Japan as a middle schooler; Having experienced and, secretly, enjoyed such a thing in her first public train ride, she developed a strong molestation fetish, and over time began to repress the memory, throwing herself into anti-molestation activism. The book ends with Sophia accepting her desire to be publicly used and abused, and a short epilogue depicting the women-only train cars being completely empty, as all the girls are piling into the coed cars in order to be fucked and groped along their way to their destination.
In terms of the way the characters are presented, this book isn't very different from VictimGirls 21, but the real-world contemporary setting makes it difficult for me to lose myself in this one; There are entire cottage industries today of culture warriors arguing that false accusations of sexual misconduct are an epidemic, that the legal institutions of today systemically favor these false accusations, and, less often, that feminists are some combination of sadistic, self-serving, and/or repressed, and this book reads like a depiction of the world as seen through this view in a way that really stops me from enjoying it.
To be 100% clear, I'm not arguing that Asanagi necessarily subscribes to these views (the book ends in a disclaimer that it is a work of fiction and that in the real world molestation is both illegal and immoral), I'm not arguing that people who do enjoy this book shouldn't, I'm not arguing that it was wrong to write this book.
My purpose here is to temper the point that I made last week with an acknowledgement that sometimes, art presents content which carries moral and ideological implications that make it difficult or impossible for some viewers to enjoy it on these terms, and that's fine too, you don't have to like something that makes you feel uncomfortable on a moral level.
With all that said, I do have to give this book some credit for Asanagi's customarily fantastic visual presentation; even as I recoil at some of the contextual underpinnings of this story, it's difficult not to be at least a little aroused by images on display here, because Asanagi is simply a master at drawing pornography. Unfortunately, the thematic presentation simply stops me from enjoying them to their full extent, and in light of this I'm giving VictimGirls R: Molestation Eradication Campaign a -2.
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