Status: It's Lolicomplicated

I Don't Wanna Grow Up, 'Cause Maybe if I Did... I'd Have to Date 3D Women Instead of 2D Kids (Neojaponisme)

As someone who spent the Eighties obsessing over animated robots instead of girls, researching this article for David Marx's Neojaponisme took me into some very strange waters. One of the very strangest involves a "lolicon" pioneer by the name of Aki Uchiyama.

His name came up again and again in Japanese sources discussing the the domestic "lolicon boom" that paralleled the "real robot boom" of the early Eighties. But there's almost nothing on him in English. One of the few mentions is a single sentence in Frederik Schodt's Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics. Schodt calls lolicon "disturbing" and accuses Uchiyama of pandering to "voyeurism and diapers," which I originally interpreted as a metaphor.

It wasn't. According to his Wikipedia Japan bio, Uchiyama is actually known as -- I am not making this up -- the "Emperor of Diaper Manga." The description of his 1982 series Andro Trio, which ran in the very mainstream Weekly Shonen Champion, reads like fetish porn cloaked in a paper-thin parody of Akira Toriyama's already scatological Dr. Slump. The diaper-clad protagonists even live inside a house shaped like a giant diaper, as Dr. Slump's does inside a giant coffepot.

Sounds like something you'd see consigned to the all-porn day of Comiket, right? Only it wasn't. In the early Eighties, Shonen Champion sold something like a million copies every single week. That a comic like Andro Trio was running right alongside the work of greats like Osamu Tezuka only goes to show how firmly entrenched this kind of fetishism was in pop culture of the day. 

Another example of how mainstream it was might hit closer to home for American anime fans. When Tatsunoko, producer of the hit anime series Macross, was casting around for talent to design characters for the sequel, Southern Cross, they actually turned to Uchiyama.

As you might expect, Uchiyama's character studies were so over-the-top "loli" that Tatsunoku got cold feet. They quickly replaced him with a pair of more experienced anime designers who turned out more conventional designs. The one rough illustration of Uchiyama's that I was able to turn up online can be seen here. (Don't worry, it's "safe for work.")

For better or worse, like many sequels of sequels, Southern Cross turned out to be a completely unremarkable show. Had Carl Macek not incorporated it into his "Robotech" trilogy, doubtless few would remember it today. Still, it's an amusing footnote in anime history. How might Robotech have turned out had a chunk of it been designed by the Diaper Emperor?

Comments

[Shii]

I saw a full set of Andro Trio in a local Mandarake. The cover art, which you didn't link to, is really something to behold:

http://www.google.co.jp/search?hl=en&q=%E3%81%82%E3%82%93%E3%81%A9%E3%82%8D%E3%83%88%E3%83%AA%E3%82%AA

[MattAlt]

That was deliberate. Fair warning to those who want to click on the above link.

[KINGOFNIGERIA]

That Southern Cross design doesn't look so bad. I just hope all of the characters didn't look like that.

[Carl]

Except...as the only person on Earth whose favorite part of ROBOTECH was "Southern Cross," I naturally bought a copy of This is Animation The Select #10, the Southern Cross mook...which not only contains the Uchiyama design concepts, but an eight-page manga by him where he explains his plans to a Tatsunoko rep (the meeting is held at Shogakukan's office--This is Animation was a Shogakukan series, but were they also hoping for a series by him?), complete with non-absorbent incontinence. I still have a distinct memory of going through the mook for the first time excitedly with friends at lunchtime, sophomore year of high school, 1985...none of us realizing the space/time oscillation bomb that lay just past the mecha line drawings and seiyuu profiles.

Matt, there's a narrative that's developed in recent years that once anime was ruled by manly mecha shows, but a menace called moe arose and took it over. Might it not be more accurate to say that moe has been around for decades, and particularly so in the "golden years" of the 1980s--and it's not so much that it arose, as that mecha declined? No more Orguss, just Mome? No more Mospeada, just Mint? No more Vifam, just...most of the cast of Vifam? One looks back at such shows in retrospect and realizes, hey--wait a minute...

--C.

P.S. Minda Nao and Hiroyuki Kitazume also contributed pieces to the Southern Cross mook, making it more 80s than a Toshiba Walky.

[MattAlt]

Well put. It's true that mecha / SF shows ruled the airwaves and got the most mindshare abroad, partly because they were actually merchandisable and partly because they were a genre that you didn't have to be an otaku to understand. But as I was saying here, even as someone who followed anime pretty closely in the Eighties, I almost totally missed the loli thread running through it all at the time. It's still hard to believe a major animation company even courted Uchiyama for a mainstream show, but it shows how deep the trend really ran. His ENTIRE OUTPUT was fetish material like this.

Or perhaps it's more accurate to say I willfully ignored what little of it made it across the ocean. I have always personally found the cutesy-pie little girls thing the least compelling and least salable aspect of J-pop-culture, and I think the general slide of the industry today is due in large part to how mainstream loli/moe has become. It isn't just something that doesn't sell abroad. It's something that actually causes non-otaku to recoil.

[Steve Harrison]

Carl, as to be expected, gives context and history its due.

I'll add my own nonsense. I think the problem lies in the Otaku Generation getting into the industry.

for just one, tiny, little example, compare for a moment Yas' work on Mobile Suit Gundam and Kiki, with Mikimoto and Moom.

Kiki followed the Super Robot tradition of the 'annoying child mascot' (something that grew when Toei started shifting from Dynamic Pro generating content to outher studios such as the nascent Sunrise) and...well, you'd have to be a real major perv to be turned on by Kiki. Moom followed on that concept but added intentionally injected sexuality because Mikimoto seems to like it like that.

And it went on and on. I believe Toriyama changed his chara design for Arele (Dr. Slump) from the sleek budding young girl to the blobish comedy machine for fear of the manga looking too overtly perverted (there was enough of that as it was! :) ) and then there's the H-fest of Galatt...

And yes, I have a soft spot in my heart for Maki from Vifam. Shut up. I go for the 'Betty' over the 'Veronica' type. :)

[MattAlt]

That's a really good point about how Toriyama changed Arale's look early on in Dr. Slump. Had totally forgotten that. I suspect that "cartoon-ization" of what had been a fairly realistic-looking young girl in the earlier episodes is a big reason for the success of the series.

Which begs a sort of side-question: Is Dr. Slump essentially a slightly "pervier" version of Umezu Kazuo's "Makoto-Chan"? Makoto-Chan is a schoolkid comic with zero overt sexuality and about 1000% gross-out factor. I don't think it's ever been translated into English, but it was absolutely huge over here in the late 70s and early 80s.

[Steve Harrison]

I don't think I ever saw any Makoto-chan manga back in the day, so I can't say one way or the other. I was under the impression Toriyama was tweaking Tezuka and Mighty Atom, among other things.

I think an indication of the 'danger zone' that Toriyama backed away from can be found in the chapter where Akane decides it would be a goof to 'switch places' with Arale because they look enough alike, which lead to a chapter where Akane decides to impersonate Midori-sensei and the drunken debauchery that took place (and balloon stuffing down a dress because Akane had small hooters and so on). Lots of that kind of humor sort of vanished soon after that. Oh, Senbei was still pervy but the kids weren't part of it.

And my internet penis is now very very small because I misspelled Arale in my previous comment. I am shamed. I blame the fact all my stuff is in boxes from the move.

[BakaTanuki]

Very interesting observations. I am especially amused by the story of Southern Cross. Essentially, Uchiyama -known for his loli sexualization- was hired to design for Southern Cross, and then replaced when his output reflected exactly that. Questionable posing aside, I'm not sure if I prefer Uchiyama's design or the one used since I barely remember them.