Japanese launch campaign to marry comic book characters

[maximus otter]

In a reflection of the nation's growing obsession with escaping reality, more than 1,000 people have signed an on-line petition to present to the government to establish a law permitting marriage to comic characters.

Comic books known as "manga", animated "anime" films and on-line virtual reality games have become increasingly popular in Japan, with fictitious characters frequently elevated to celebrity status.

Among the most high profile of manga fans is the current prime minister Taro Aso, who recently complained he had not had time to read any comic books since taking office last month.

The on-line campaign for cartoon marriages was masterminded by Taichi Takashita who claimed he was motivated to pursue the unusual change in law because he felt more at ease in the "two dimensional world" than reality.

"I am no longer interested in three dimensions. I would even like to become a resident of the two-dimensional world," he wrote.

"However, that seems impossible with present-day technology. Therefore, at the very least, would it be possible to legally authorise marriage with a two-dimensional character?" A growing number of Japanese "otaku" geeks are spending an increasing amount of time escaping the social challenges of modern-day life by seeking refuge in the "virtual" two-dimensional reality of manga, anime and on-line games.

The new campaign was launched only days after a woman was jailed in Japan after "killing" her virtual husband after he suddenly divorced her as part of a popular interactive internet game.

Weeks earlier, police charged another woman who posted an on-line message plotting to kill her parents after they told her to clear up her several thousand-strong manga collection in their home.

While single sex marriage is not permitted in Japan, the popularity of the cartoon-human unions was instantly apparent this week as more than 1,000 were enlisted to the campaign.

Among them, one supporter wrote: "For a long time I have only been able to fall in love with two-dimensional people and currently I have someone I really love.

"Even if she is fictional, it is still loving someone. I would like to have legal approval for this system at any cost."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/3283463/Japanese-launch-campaign-to-marry-comic-book-characters.html

maximus otter

 

[goth13girl666]

Among the most high profile of manga fans is the current prime minister Taro Aso, who recently complained he had not had time to read any comic books since taking office last month.

well surely during work hours office should be more important than managa comics and that, he is after all a prime minister and if he was not ready for the commitments then he should of given the position to someone else right?

 

[PeniG]

I'll be the first to admit that I'm not Japanese, but I don't see anything more here than an audience-participation satire along the lines of Statehood for Moosylvania or Pat Paulson's presidential bids. (Yes, I'm that middle-aged.)

And the prime minister is clearly making one of those self-congratulatory humorous complaints that busy people make to show how hard they're working: "I don't even have time to read my comics/watch my story/read blogs anymore, I'm working so hard running the country/raising the baby/managing the company."

But, pretty much every time I watch an anime I wind up shaking my head and saying: "Wow! I really am not Japanese! I don't understand a thing that's going on here." So perhaps the whole country is living in fantasy land and is about to tip over into a dystopian SF future with everyone locked into their virtual reality bubbles and living online while the world rots, and I don't take things seriously enough.

 

[goth13girl666]

i think its more to do with the fact that the japanese have more technology than we do and got into the hole virtual world thing years before we did.

 

[Anome]

Are we sure it isn't just an over-reaction to Spiderman's "Brand New Day" storyline?

 

[tamyu]

Ah, the joys of the western media...

Outside of Japan, any group who made an online petition about something completely silly and crazy would be looked at as just that.
But if it`s Japan - wow! Let`s jump on that and make it into a media sensation!

I don`t even think that 99.99% of the people who "signed" the petition in Japan even take the thing seriously, let alone the normal population. But it`s Japan! So anything that will make the country look weird, bring some laughs, etc, is hunted down by western media outlets and presented as if Japan is really like that.

No wonder everyone outside Japan seems to think I live in a weird wonderland.

 

[goth13girl666]

Re: Ah, the joys of the western media...

Outside of Japan, any group who made an online petition about something completely silly and crazy would be looked at as just that.
But if it`s Japan - wow! Let`s jump on that and make it into a media sensation!

I don`t even think that 99.99% of the people who "signed" the petition in Japan even take the thing seriously, let alone the normal population. But it`s Japan! So anything that will make the country look weird, bring some laughs, etc, is hunted down by western media outlets and presented as if Japan is really like that.

No wonder everyone outside Japan seems to think I live in a weird wonderland.

its always japan that come up with the weird and wonderful contraptions and inventions, they seem to have a knack and a like for all things virtual and strange but hey its better than boring same old same old routine right? :lol:

 

[Kondoru]

I dunno, Tamyu, what other nation has a PM who admits hes a comic fan?

You should come here...we are quite strange.

 

[PeniG]

I think this coverage is an interesting mix of taste and racial bigotry. The Japanese are so silly because they're a nation of fantasy-obsessed nerds!

This is one of those stances that is so thoroughly divorced from reality that you can't shoot it down without catching the truth in the crossfire. Not all Japanese are nerds and nerdism is far from a bad thing - far from it! People who are confused about reality aren't nerds; they're insane. All the nerds I know with mental problems find that their nerdy pursuits - gaming, comics, computer coding, historical recreation, whatever - are essential to maintaining their mental health.

Say it now and say it loud, I'm a nerd and I am proud!

 

[GNC]

What's the difference between a nerd and a geek, though? Apart from the whole biting heads off chickens thing.

 

[lupinwick]

Free dictionary again? No idea about the difference other than slightly different negative connotations. Perhaps the terms are now interchangeable

 

[Anome]

I've always seen the distinction as being "nerd" is someone with poor social skills, and "geek" is someone who knows a lot about a particular subject.

It may be an arbitrary distinction to some, but I think it's important to keep the two things separate. Not all nerds are geeks, and not all geeks are nerds.

I'm both.

 

[James_H]

Perhaps having an excessively obsessional and tunnel-viewed knowledge of something is the distinction between someone between 'geeky' and not merely 'knowledgeable' (a positive descriptor).

 

[tamyu]

I dunno, Tamyu, what other nation has a PM who admits hes a comic fan?

You should come here...we are quite strange.

Where is "here"?

 

[Xanatico]

Would be bad if you ended up having to pay alimony to a comic character.

 

[PeniG]

If the character's popular at all, it would wind up paying alimony to the divorced real person.

The real problem would be sorting out the claims of people to marry the most popular characters. And what about in-story marriages? Much too complicated.

Americans tend to use "geek" and "nerd" interchangeably - I have seen both used in professional contexts as part of the names of technical service companies - and I usually choose "nerd" because there is no context in which I would ever bite off the head of a live chicken. If there is a nuance, it is that nerds are shy while geeks shine with enthusiasm about things which people perceived as normal by society at large find inexplicable or boring. The usage has come around to the point that the jocks who traditionally have beaten up geeks are finding it harder to avoid the great truth that they are, themselves, sports geeks.

When I was born, such terms were entirely perjorative, but now they have been embraced by subcultures and we find people tripping over themselves to claim their geekiness, as in the comments to this LiveJournal comic:

http://get-medieval.livejournal.com/400867.html#cutid1

(The cartoonist has a sound geek fanbase, as demonstrated by the long and intense discussion of how to determine the mass of a balrog in order to figure out how fast it falls in order, ultimately, to determine the size of Middle-Earth, in a different comic.)

 

[goth13girl666]

Would be bad if you ended up having to pay alimony to a comic character.

i think that depends on how far they actually take the whole situation if they are goning to go all the way with it?

 

[Xanatico]

How long before we see one of the Sailor Moon characters charged with bigamy? Also can you only get married to humanoid cartoon characters, or could you get away with marrying a pokemon?

 

[RabidReader]

Re: Ah, the joys of the western media...

Outside of Japan, any group who made an online petition about something completely silly and crazy would be looked at as just that.
But if it`s Japan - wow! Let`s jump on that and make it into a media sensation!

I don`t even think that 99.99% of the people who "signed" the petition in Japan even take the thing seriously, let alone the normal population. But it`s Japan! So anything that will make the country look weird, bring some laughs, etc, is hunted down by western media outlets and presented as if Japan is really like that.

No wonder everyone outside Japan seems to think I live in a weird wonderland.

Bingo! Somehow the tongue-in-cheek does not translate very well from Japanese......

 

[RabidReader]

I think this coverage is an interesting mix of taste and racial bigotry. The Japanese are so silly because they're a nation of fantasy-obsessed nerds!

This is one of those stances that is so thoroughly divorced from reality that you can't shoot it down without catching the truth in the crossfire.

Regrettably, half of what is written about Japan in the western press is like that

 

[tamyu]

Regrettably, half of what is written about Japan in the western press is like that

Only half? In my experience, it seems that even serious news is somehow twisted into a form that makes it suitable for the "weird news" corners.

 

[stu neville]

How long before we see one of the Sailor Moon characters charged with bigamy?

Come to that, what of Donald Duck? Aggressively unstable, prone to sudden bouts of violence, lives with three young nephews all dressed as sailors and none wearing trousers. Social Services would be in there like a shot*.

Perhaps having an excessively obsessional and tunnel-viewed knowledge of something is the distinction between someone between 'geeky' and not merely 'knowledgeable'..

I think that's it - your authentic geek tends to have relatively low self-awareness vis-a-vis their own obsession in relation to those of others. I know a compulsive D&D gamer who scoffs at yours truly for my interest in Fort stuff whilst ignoring the fact that he himself wanders around Bristol suburbs at night, sporting a wooden sword and plastic chain-mail proclaiming himself to be Brouhaha the Ostrogoth (or similar) and meeting with like-minded folk to pretend they're orcs, or whatever. I've pointed this out to him on more than one occasion, adding that I don't dress up as an orc or whatever in pursuit of my interest, but always get a lengthy, self-righteous, po-faced justification as to why it's all part of the tradition (sic). I'm not singling out gamers btw, but as in any discipline there are those that let it take over their entire being.


*or sadly, given recent evidence, maybe not.

 

[PeniG]

I embrace people who throw themselves unreservedly into their hobbies and interests without embarrassment. (Nitpick - nobody does live-action D&D - there's no rules for it; he's in some sort of LARP.) These people who get "too into" things are so vanishingly rare as to be mythical. In thirty years of fandom and a lifetime of living in a culture of sports fanaticism, I've never met anyone who confused his hobby with his life or chose his hobby over his family, job, or civic duty.

It's darned annoying when somebody pursues his own joy and simultaneously disses others for embracing a different enthusiasm, as if one kind of fun could be right while another equally harmless one can be ipso facto wrong. It's a small-scale, less serious version of people competing for civil rights, as if these rights existed in finite quantity and if one group gets them another one can't. (Cf the high proportion of black Californians who voted to repeal gay marriage, and the tendency of gay activists to respond with racial slurs.) Why do we do this crap to each other?

No wonder I'm a misanthrope.

 

[stu neville]

I embrace people who throw themselves unreservedly into their hobbies and interests without embarrassment. (Nitpick - nobody does live-action D&D - there's no rules for it; he's in some sort of LARP.)

Fair enough - he used to be heavily into D&D about twenty years ago, and today says he's into RPGs so I put two and two together and got five. However...

...These people who get "too into" things are so vanishingly rare as to be mythical. In thirty years of fandom and a lifetime of living in a culture of sports fanaticism, I've never met anyone who confused his hobby with his life or chose his hobby over his family, job, or civic duty.

..a mutual friend of Brouhaha the Ostrogoth and I ended up sectioned about ten years ago, as his alter-ego, a powerful chaotic knight seeking a fair maiden and riches, eclipsed his own personality to such a degree he would wander around the local Co-op challenging varlets (shoplifters and assorted yobs) and propositioning wenches, who worked behind the ciggie counter. All would have been fine but for the broadsword. Luckily the Police got there before it escalated much further.

He's fine these days, by the way. Good job and a nice girlfriend, so he got his maiden and wealth .

It's darned annoying when somebody pursues his own joy and simultaneously disses others for embracing a different enthusiasm, as if one kind of fun could be right while another equally harmless one can be ipso facto wrong.

Hope I didn't give the impression that I think the whole RPG thing is somehow worthy of derision - apart from anything else, he's a good mate, and it makes him happy - it's just hard for him to see that others can find enjoyment in equally outre things. He's especially critical of train-spotters. And stamp collectors.

I do tease him, but he knows it's not borne of malice. In fact, it's somewhat ironic that I find the idea of elementals. goblins and elves having some kind of objective existence more credible than he does .

edited for clarity