Sengoku Rance and Radical Empathy
I, INTRODUCTION or: Brief History of Sexual Depravity
The year 2006 was a good orbit around the Sun for Japan: the 7th installment of AliceSoft’s highly acclaimed hentai computer game series, Rance, had just been released, and images of nude children were still legal to possess in all 47 prefectures.
A lawyer on an online forum once told us (“us” being the staff at “on computer games”) that we should just get to the point: “No one wants to read through ten paragraphs of pretentious philosophical drivel, so put the good stuff first and get to the point.”
I’m taking that writing advice even further by putting the inflammatory stuff first and will now present my thesis.
Japan has a sickness, and that sickness is the desire to touch kids (inappropriately) en masse. It’s a sickness fostered by centuries of sexual depravity and, up until just recently, the laws of the land. It has nothing to do with race or genetics. It’s all culture all the way down. It’s what happens when you normalize barbarism.
I will now present my supporting arguments.
Japan didn’t get around to banning the literal production of child-bonk-images until 1999,#1 and even afterwards, it was legal to possess such images until 2014.#2 This criminalization process came after years of legal debates on the harms of owning child-bonk-images and whether cartoon and computer game depictions of child bonk should also be banned. Eventually, the otakus (super anime nerds) and hikikomori (reclusive basement dwellers) won and got their precious child-bonk-cartoons approved for the sake of “artistic freedom.”
That last sentence was typed flippantly, but perhaps they have a point – it’s just drawings, right? Don’t worry, we’ll get into it.
The sword’s tip: Japan was significantly behind in outlawing child-bonk-images compared to every other first-world country,#3 and hentai (pornographic Japanese animation and comics) featuring young children (known as “lolicon”) is still widely distributed to this day.
In fact, some form of in-real-life lolicon has existed in Japan since their medieval period starting in the year 1185; “Chigos,” or child servants to Buddhist monks, were given room-and-board in exchange for the medieval equivalent of Netflix-and-chill and this practice continued into the Tokugawa period starting in year 1603, where “Wakashus,” young boys with distinctively long hair, were seen as objects of sexual desire that frequently bonked shoguns.#4
“Only members of a privileged class can understand the delights of boy love.” – Inagaki, T. (1973). The Aesthetics of Boy Love.
It wasn’t until 1907 that Japan even bothered to enforce an age of consent at all#5; the age lawmakers settled on was thirteen, and the majority of first-world countries considered this to be – uhhh – very low. Japan finally caved to international pressure and changed their standard age of consent to sixteen in 2023#6 – the same year this essay was written. For comparison, the United States of America was founded in 1776 and increased their collective age of consent to sixteen in 1920.#7
Japan was bonking kids longer than the entire history of the United States.
Some modern-day lolicon creators have the decency (and, by “decency,” I mean the awareness of the underlying shame involved with producing child-bonk-cartoons and all the cognitive dissonance that goes along with that) to conceal the obvious fact that they’re making child-bonk-cartoons by pretending that the clearly eleven-year-old girl getting bonked in all holes is actually a twenty-year-old woman cursed by an evil witch to appear childlike forever and the clearly agonized expression on her face as she’s getting bonked, complete with tears and screaming, is actually an expression of pure joy and she’s totally having a lot of fun and this isn’t rapey at all.
*she’s 20, ok?!
Why is any of this important? Well, Sengoku Rance showcases the depravity of the previous paragraphs and, in at least one case, depicts a canonical child being gang-bonked by other children complete with bodily fluids flowing full frontal in every nasty sticky detail imaginable. Sengoku Rance is a mirror; a reflection of the deeply rooted sexual depravity that Japan, the country as a whole, fostered and allowed to spread unchecked for – literally – centuries, and while they are making strides as of 1999, and most recently 2023, the psychic harm caused by child-bonk-apathy ripples through Japanese society to this day as evidenced by the endless outpouring of lolicon anime and computer games – and you’re here to read about computer games, right? It’s relevant!
Here’s your computer game content.
(If I never finish this essay it’s because the FBI misinterpreted my search-phrase history and I am fighting legal battles from a jail cell because I can’t possibly afford bail. I also think it’s interesting that “jail” and “bail” rhyme, do you think that’s a coincidence? Let me know what you think in the comments; also, like and subscribe (and hit that bell) for more epic computer game content; also, there is no bell. Re-reading this excerpt days later, I will add this disclaimer: I was three-wines-in writing the majority of this excerpt.)
II, Sengoku Rance or: Gotta Bonk ‘Em All
II.I: The Man, The Myth, The Monster
Imagine, for a moment, that you live in your parents’ garage. You’re 5’6 and weigh 270 pounds. You haven’t changed your underwear in three weeks. Your feet are comfortably snug within a pile of suspiciously crumpled socks underneath the folding table that doubles as your desk. You are obviously male. Your unshaven face all aglow from the bikini-girl wallpaper burned into the monitor of your recently upgraded Windows 11 computer. Your body mass index is 43.58, certifiably obese, but you insist that BMI is a “bullshit metric” and have ArchLinux on dual-boot. You would prefer to use ArchLinux for general-purpose-computing but it doesn’t play the computer games hidden deep within the curiously named X drive that requires three passwords to access; two of those passwords are “loli123” and the other is “password.” Your keyboard has a permanent stickiness that no amount of rubbing alcohol seems to remove and your mouse’s right-click is clogged with crunchy white stuff preventing full clicks. You’ve been meaning to buy a new mouse but spent all your allowance on hot tub streamers. You’re thirty-six-years old. Your aging mother claims the unmistakable scent of body odor permeates the room, along with another odd smell she can’t quite put her figurative finger on. You can’t smell anything. Mom says she’s going to start deducting the cost of Febreeze from your allowance. She also says you need to get a job, but the hiring manager at Office Depot said you didn’t have “retail presence.” Your parents are getting old and you’ll get a big payout when they die; maybe then you can finally find a girlfriend.
Now, imagine the exact opposite of what you just imagined: that’s Rance.
Rance was created to fulfill the power fantasies of these hypothetical hikikomori, yet would casually kill these people on a whim because of how weak they are. Rance is also a rapist. He’s the type of guy who would save the damsel in distress then immediately bonk her because he got the urge, again. He claims to be “the hero of justice who sacrifices himself for the sake of the world and everyone in it,” but what he really wants is to bonk every woman imaginable. Except children, Rance won’t bonk children unless they claim to be older than eighteen, regardless of appearance. Rance is the type of guy who would try to bonk both your wife and daughter (at the same time) and openly admit this intention to your face as you stare at him in utter horror. Rance is the living embodiment of the “You’re In The Club And This Guy Slaps Your Girlfriend’s Ass” meme. Rance is a hurricane, an unstoppable force that leaves all women weak-legged and sore in his wake and any man who dares disagree becomes little more than a bloodstain on Rance’s armor. Rance’s good deeds come with the unspoken stipulation of bonk-your-brains-out. This stipulation shields his ego from rape accusations because “I just saved your life, didn’t I?” Rance carries within him the arrogance of a Greek god who overdosed on red pills and subscribed to Hustler’s University six times just to meet Andrew Tate. Rance then kills Andrew Tate and lays claim to all his camgirls. The previous sentence summarizes the plot of Sengoku Rance.
Rance, although claiming to love women, has no respect for them, and uses them only for bonk. Women are objects to satisfy Rance’s desires, and considering this, it comes as no surprise that he owns a bonk slave; a girl named Sill Plain, whom the game’s journal claims is twenty-two years old but “physically twenty-one” (whatever that means), and in reality, resembles a prepubescent middle-schooler, complete with an obsession for the color pink and cute hair-clips. Sill is Rance’s ever-faithful “companion,” purchased for only 15,000 gold, and forced, against her will, to bonk Rance multiple times a day. A non-insignificant number of scenes veer-off into Rance bonking Sill while she is screaming “no!” and sobbing, and although Sill is clearly objecting to the forced bonking, she continues to respect, compliment, and profess her love for Rance afterwards when she’s bleeding and cannot walk properly.
Rance, in this scenario, is an abusive husband with Sill playing the role of subservient housewife.
“Rance is just a guy who likes to bonk. Sometimes he does bad things and hurts me, but he’s not always like this and he’s actually a really sweet guy when you get to know him.” – pink-haired thirteen-year-old with Stockholm syndrome claiming to be twenty-two
Murdering Rance in his sleep would be a morally permissible act. You would arrive at the courthouse and the judge would take one look at the name of your victim and give you a trophy and possibly make you deputy chief of the local police department on the spot.
*Rance’s entire personality
Rance is a power fantasy for the permanently sexless, written by members of a patriarchal depravity cult.
But it’s not their fault.
We are all victims of society – the cultures we find ourselves in – which is why being born in Japan is a cosmic stroke of bad luck that makes a strong case for anti-natalism, especially if you’re a woman. The writers of Sengoku Rance are not immune; they are victims of Japan’s culture, where women are second-class citizens, seen primarily as homemakers who should just shut up about how their husbands treat them, which is expected when they have been culturally conditioned to rely on their husbands for monetary support, and while this “male breadwinner model” is going out of fashion,#8 it is still deeply entrenched in the country’s collective consciousness. These attitudes toward women have plagued Japan for centuries, which remains one of the lowest-ranked countries when it comes to gender equality, with women forever stuck at home or in low-status work positions,#9 all the while getting catcalled and groped ouroborosly as they walk through the office to their cubicle at the call center job they have no hope of being promoted in without bonking the boss, and Rance is the boss.
(I considered putting the real racy stuff deeper into the article so only dedicated-on-computer-gamers would read it, as I have a fear of being misunderstood; when reading an article like this it’s easy to interpret the writer’s motivation as “he’s just a freak that gets off to writing about bonking kids,” and my typing that could simply be me trying to proactively nip-that-shit in the bud (damage control), but after my social media post reading simply “bing bong” received far more engagement than any of our essays I decided my fear was misplaced as no one was going to read this anyway. The truth is that less and less people are reading longform content.#10 We prefer the outrage that comes from only reading a headline and when someone challenges that outrage we post-hoc skim the article to rationalize our misplaced-headline-outrage. It’s a miracle that novels are even written anymore; maybe it’s because the older generation still loves to read, untainted by the smartphone addiction of myself and my fellow millennials,#11 or maybe it’s because Netflix would run out of material if they didn’t have authors to lift ideas from.)
II.II: GAMEPLAY or: The Virgin Collectathon
Sengoku Rance is unusual because it’s a historical piece loosely based on the 4th Sengoku era of Japan, hence the name “Sengoku” Rance. Rance games typically take place in a fantasy world, but this time Rance has “crossed the bridge” (as they say in the game with no real explanation) and is now in warring states Japan with his bonk slave Sill.
The Sengoku period of Japan is characterized as a hellmouth death vacuum of clans and warlords slaughtering each other in an attempt to control Japan after the collapse of the feudal system under a failed shogunate. The details aren’t important here. What’s important is the setting and the young women in that setting and Rance has seen those young women and must bonk them.
Dozens of warlords and clans fight for control over Japan. Each clan is pulled from a real historical example and morphed into a humorous parody; the Tokugawa House is comprised solely of tanuki (see my essay titled Shiren the Wanderer – Fate, Fortune, and Tanuki for more information on this legendary animal), with their leader, Tokugawa Ieyasu, being a large, imposing tanuki himself; Ieyasu is based on the historical “Great Unifier” of Japan. Although, a tanuki would not aspire to “unify”; rather, certain traits of a tanuki would make for a good unifier (jovialness, gigantic balls; to name a few), but certainly not all of their traits when taken together, which would result in an oddball state of constant drunken partying and nothing-getting-done (and I would argue that world, minus the negative consequences, is Arcadia).
I mentioned earlier that Rance tries to take over Andrew Tate’s camgirl business to prove himself better than Tate and also to bonk all the camgirls, and that this is also the plot of Sengoku Rance. That was not a lie; all one has to do is swap “Andrew Tate’s camgirl business” with “Clan territory,” “Tate” with “the warlords,” and remove the “cam” from “camgirls.”
Rance tries to take over clan territory to prove himself better than the warlords and also to bonk all the girls; this is the plot of Sengoku Rance.
Once Rance takes over a territory, he storms the local castle and forcibly bonks the princess of said castle. This is Rance’s reward. This makes Rance feel good and his satisfaction meter increases which makes him more powerful. Rance keeps a diary of all the women he’s bonked and this bonk-number determines the game’s ending.
*let’s take a moment to appreciate the excellent UI; linux distro: “BonkOS”
Sengoku Rance is sexual chess played like Romance of the Three Kingdoms where rape replaces romance. A computer game progressing in turns; Rance can perform two actions per turn; each clan in play can also perform two actions and they do so before Rance can make his own actions. Rance selects from an enormous list of actions each turn, with each choice costing one action point. 65% of these actions are bonking women and the remaining 35% involve declaring war on other clans, attempting diplomacy, sabotaging rival clans, quelling rebellions in owned territory, investing gold to enhance territory, or doing-a-terrosim like that one time during the aftermath of a magnitude-6 earthquake when Rance, disguised as a friendly merchant, offers free “disaster relief” to a rival clan but actually supplies poisoned food and water to innocent civilians; afterwards, from a nearby hilltop, Rance overlooks the choking blood death of the women and children before a big grin lights up his face and he remarks, “Got ’em.”
(If I were to write a sequel to this essay it would likely be a full breakdown of Rance’s psychology focusing on the why of “why are you like this?” and the what of “what is wrong with you?”)
If Japan is known for anything within the multimedia realm, it’s child-bonk-cartoons and turn-based role-playing computer games. Sengoku Rance combines both elements through a combat system in which multiple party members take action in an order determined by their speed stat; each unit can attack, use a special skill, or do nothing, depending on the player’s choice.
Sengoku Rance distinguishes its combat by introducing a ‘turn meter’ that counts down after each action performed by any unit in the battle; once this meter reaches zero, the combat ends, and whichever side did the most damage wins the sortie. Working in tandem with this battle ‘turn meter,’ each character has their own ‘turn meter,’ indicating how many times they can perform an action in battle. For instance, Rance has four turn points, whereas Sill may have three; this mechanic leads to situations where a character can use all their turns before the end of the battle, rendering them a useless damage sponge.
The combination of ‘battle turn meter’ and ‘character turn meter’ puts each battle on a timer and encourages strategic play. Success with Sengoku Rance’s combat system is dependent on playing around these two ‘turn meters’ to outplay the enemy; sometimes, it’s a straightforward ‘attack every turn’ affair, but other times it’s more complicated, especially in harder boss fights that require careful management of each character’s ‘turn meter’ by strategically skipping turns at the right moments to deplete the opponent’s own ‘turn meter’ and then launch risky counterattacks.
Sengoku Rance’s combat system mirrors how warfare might unfold in the real world, where taking action is a carefully calculated decision, and sometimes, taking no action is the best course of action.
*a combat scene; a commander (Ranmaru) and her forces attacking an enemy force
Throughout this violence, rival warlords or their subordinates will join Rance after being defeated or simply out of fear of Rance’s massive hyper weapon (that’s what Rance calls his junk). Warlords that join Rance are adopted into Rance’s fighting unit as “commanders.” These commanders have their own stats and troop counts, used for the game’s combat system but also as a form of visual novel storytelling where each named commander has their own personal story that progresses if you spend the action points per turn to peruse them; each interaction increases the commander’s story level (think: Persona). Taking the time to complete a commander’s story increases the commander’s stats but also culminates in Rance bonking the brains out of the commander in a full-on hentai scene that bares all. In this way, Sengoku Rance not only rewards you mechanically but also psycho-sexually by showing you images of cartoon women in – very – compromising situations.
This aspect of Sengoku Rance is what makes the computer game, and I would imagine other hentai computer games, such a unique experience. Sengoku Rance plays on your adrenaline in all the same ways a normal computer game would, but it also constantly tries to make you concupiscent. Scenes suddenly veer off into Rance bonking a woman in full detail, which puts the player constantly on edge when a female character is on the screen (“Is he going to bonk her?”). This experience is potent early but functionally a litmus test for determining if watching cartoon women getting bonked turns you on; no doubt, you will feel something early on (arousal or outrage being the most common ‘something’), and the idea of it all is very exciting, but how long will it last? How long before you become desensitized?
(I was bored after the first scene, which is essentially two hentai images cycling back and forth while tabbing through paragraphs of descriptive exposition detailing Rance’s junk and what he’s doing with his hands. If Sengoku Rance taught me anything about myself, it’s that I am not turned on by cartoons.)
Regardless of your penchant for cartoon women, this sexual-computer-gameplay is idiosyncratic like eating psychedelic mushrooms – interesting, because you won’t experience anything else like it, but be careful: results may vary.
In essence, Sengoku Rance is a collectathon but instead of collecting monsters or baseball cards, it’s about collecting the virginity of young women; further reinforcing the game’s terrible but very-Japanese attitude toward women as objects.
Gotta bonk ‘em all.
*(I sincerely hate writing about gameplay mechanics unless they’re intrinsically linked to the point of the essay; writing about gameplay is, at best, confirmation bias for the reader, who has already played the computer game and is seeking validation of their own opinions, and at worst: explaining how car engines work in dry detail to someone who hates cars, no one cares unless they want to care and the people who want to care would be better served experiencing the thing instead of reading seven paragraphs about it. If you’ve been following along with ‘on computer games’ (you haven’t), you’ll notice that this publication has chronologically “moved on” from clinical, mechanical deepdives to the esoteric, philosophical, or practical application of, in essence, “being a decent person,” so if you’re here for more “computer game review content” this is the point in the essay where you should stop reading, type “IGN” into your search bar and just go away and don’t come back because there’s a good chance the next chapter is going to piss you off.)*
III, RADICAL EMPATHY
III.I: Before We Go Any Further …
… let’s take a step back; why is bonking kids actually wrong? What if the kid wants to bonk? What if they verbally say, “Hell yeah, I want to bonk and I am fully aware of the possible consequences – let’s do this!”
It’s about consent. It’s simple, but there are a few arguments that cloud judgment and cast shadows on the concept of consent. Enough mental gymnastics can somersault you right onto the sex offenders registry, so to prevent this: I will debunk each possible argument – that I know of – for bonking kids. This is a defense of consent; not only to establish the basis of “yes, bonking kids is wrong” but also to clear my name for writing some of the inflammatory filth in this essay.
If a child verbally consents, isn’t that enough? No, verbal consent is not enough. It’s about ‘informed consent,’ a term primarily used in the medical world for informing patients about all the risks of potential treatments, thereby allowing their patient to make an informed decision regarding said treatments. It’s an ethical imperative because going through with the surgery only to find out that your arm is gone without any foreknowledge of this stipulation is a violation of your bodily autonomy. It’s not surprising that ‘informed consent’ in the medical world cannot be given by children, requiring the parental guardian as a proxy.#12 A child is not equipped with the proper mental faculties to provide informed consent: knowledge, experience, and emotional maturity; to name a few; and if you’re not convinced, have one of your own.
What about people with mental illnesses – can they provide informed consent if they’re mentally impaired? Depending on the illness and its severity: no, they cannot provide informed consent. In the same way you would not indulge the delusions of a person believing they see clockwork aliens outside the window by dressing up and pretending to be one of these aliens; you would not mislead them in their compromised state because they are vulnerable (like children) and you would be taking advantage of them.
*AliceSoft’s mascot, a young-looking girl in panties
OK, what about generally unintelligent people? Just because you’re of a certain age doesn’t magically grant you the intelligence or maturity to provide informed consent, right? That’s true, but we need a reasonable criterion, a cutoff; otherwise, we will reduce consent to, likely, “no one can consent” due to all the possible “what-ifs.” We understand that the younger someone is, the less likely they can provide informed consent; due to this, it makes sense to use age as a key determining factor for informed consent. However, there will be occasions when a twenty-three-year-old can’t provide informed consent due to a lack of maturity (I know several people who shouldn’t be allowed to reproduce but have multiple kids), but this is a calculated risk we are willing to accept for some semblance of personal freedom; if we didn’t accept some outliers, our society would devolve into assessing everyone’s IQ and EQ scores before engaging in any activity, and this would be oppressive and unsustainable; even a bit eugenics-y.
Last hypothetical: Suppose we develop a computer chip for the brain that grants the emotional maturity, knowledge, and intelligence of a forty-year-old astrophysicist. If we inserted this computer chip into the brain of a thirteen-year-old and they then agreed to bonk, would that be acceptable? This is a significantly more challenging question, yet the answer remains the same. The issue here involves power dynamics; as the older, responsible individual in the scenario, you hold far more authority over the ten-year-old than they hold over you. This places the ten-year-old in a compromising situation where, even if they provided consent, it would be impossible to ascertain if they’re consenting out of fear of your authority (“maybe if I do this he will drive me to McDonald’s?” or “he might ground me if I don’t agree”). This uncertainty undermines the verbal consent of the super-intelligent thirteen-year-old. It’s akin to “bonking the boss,” which is considered unethical because the boss holds the power to give you a raise or to terminate your employment. How does the boss genuinely know if they are receiving consent for the act, or if the consenting individual has an ulterior motive, such as getting a raise? And if the consenting individual doesn’t have an ulterior motive, what happens when they don’t want to bonk anymore? What happens when the consenter bonks but doesn’t get the raise they were expecting from the consentee? Would these situations compromise the work-relationship? Once again, the “what-ifs” compromise the bonk.
But isn’t there a power differential in all relationships? What about the stay-at-home spouse and the working spouse – it seems that one holds more power in this relationship than the other? That might be true, but what if one bonker has one dollar while the other has two? What if one bonker’s parents are wealthy, and the other’s are poor? What if one bonk buddy owns an Xbox and the other doesn’t but really wants to play some Xbox?
We could continue examining these outliers endlessly, but I don’t want to. Everything can be deconstructed into obscurity. Instead, we establish ground rules, accept a reasonable level of risk, and address outliers as they arise, adapting as necessary. Besides, just because there are some risks doesn’t mean we should allow even more risk.
Oh yeah, and wanting to bonk kids is gross. Ew.
Bonking kids is wrong and the desire to bonk kids is a societal taboo, but if that’s the case: why do people still do these things?
III.II: Why People Still Do These Things
Pedophilia is classified as a form of paraphilia.#13
“Paraphilias are frequent, intense, sexually arousing fantasies or behaviors that involve inanimate objects, children or non-consenting adults, or suffering or humiliation of the person or a partner.”#14 One German study concluded that up to 62.4% of people reported some form of paraphilia-associated sexual-arousal.#15 That’s a lot of people thinking about a lot of weird stuff, and while not all of them reported feelings of pedophilia, it’s in there somewhere; about 1.7% of these people said their paraphiliac fantasies caused extreme distress.#15
Distress caused by paraphilia is considered a mental illness, “paraphilic disorders are paraphilias that cause distress or cause problems functioning in the person with the paraphilia or that harm or may harm another person.”#14 This means over 82 million people are battling a mental illness that could cause them to harm children, and the only way to treat it is through medication, psychotherapy, or death.
That’s why people still do these things.
III.III: Rurouni Kenshin or: Radical Empathy
“I liked girls from the upper grades of elementary school to around the second year of junior high school.” – Nobuhiro Watsuki, manga artist, creator of Rurouni Kenshin#16
Japan, November 2017. The air is brisk with autumnal splendor, skies clear; leaves changed and ready to fall on dotted paths of wooden stakes and paper lanterns. Koyo, momijigari; truly a beautiful time to be alive.
A police siren is heard in the distance.
Famous mangaka, Nobuhiro Watsuki, was sitting in his home, sipping fragrant tea and thumbing through inked pages of his recent work when, suddenly, he heard a banging at his front door. Watsuki stood up from his seat, and before he could investigate, the police had already kicked the door down and entered the home, scattering about the rooms after a very serious policeman sat the artist down in the kitchen and instructed him not to move.
Three years earlier, the Japanese parliament had banned the possession of child pornography. Nobuhiro Watsuki was spoiled, used to being legally allowed to indulge himself and, as such, was a big collector with over one-hundred DVDs. He had been struggling with these feelings for decades.
The police found the compartment behind Nobuhiro Watsuki’s bookshelf; it wasn’t hidden very well. Watsuki was promptly arrested, and serialization of his hit manga, Rurouni Kenshin, was placed on indefinite hiatus. His legacy forever tarnished.
*Kenshin Himura of the Rurouni Kenshin manga, drawn by famed pedophile Nobuhiro Watsuki
Rurouni Kenshin is a story about the ex-assassin Kenshin Himura during the Meiji Restoration of Japan. Kenshin was a student of Hiten Mitsurugi-ryu, an ancient sword-style that favors lightning-quickness to swiftly kill on the first draw. He used this sword-style to achieve great results during the Meiji Revolution, where he fought for the Imperialist government who were tired of the old ways: the warlords, the clans, and the Rances, endlessly fighting for control over Japan. The Imperialists wanted to rid Japan of this barbarism and usher in an age of peace under one unified government ruled by an Emperor; an Emperor who took the name Meiji, or “enlightened rule.” In the Imperialist’s minds, “enlightened rule” could only be achieved by employing efficient killing machines, like Kenshin Himura, to secretly murder all your political opponents.
Kenshin Himura was motivated by this promise of a peaceful Japan where he could finally retire his blade and live a peaceful life. This was Kenshin Himura’s Arcadia. Young and idealistic, Kenshin believed that the ends justified the means and used his consequentialism as an ethical bulwark to cope with the blood he spilled across all of Japan.
Kenshin Himura murdered for Arcadia.
After the successful Meiji Revolution brought Japan closer to Arcadia, Kenshin Himura experienced a series of eye-opening moments under Meiji rule and was, ultimately, thrown to the wolves; no one wanted to admit that they fostered assassins to usher in Arcadia because that seems, obviously, opposite of what Arcadia is supposed to represent. Kenshin Himura starts to question the righteousness of the slaughter that had paved the way for this new Japan.
The blood staining Kenshin Himura’s hands wouldn’t wash away, and it wasn’t just on his hands – it covered his entire body. Filled with despair and regret for his heinous deeds, Kenshin contemplated suicide but realized that would be cowardly; instead, he resolved to dedicate his life to protecting the innocent as a means of atonement. He retired his old sword and took up a reverse-blade, the Sakabato; a sword with the dull-edge where the death-edge should be, a blunt instrument unless flipped; a forever-reminder that killing is just one mental flip away.
Since that fateful vow, Kenshin Himura swore never to kill again, yet the urge never vanished. Encountering souls so sinister, their malice so profound, the notion of killing them almost becoming a necessity. The ease of snuffing out existence lingered, a mere twist of the Sakabato potentially reviving that haunting reality.
Kenshin Himura understands regret better than anyone. He understands the human capacity for grave mistakes, the illusion of having everything figured out, and the ease of rationalizing evil. It is precisely because of this empathy that he is so forgiving of his enemies. He believes in the inherent goodness within people and makes his opponents, even those who claim to hate him, recognize that goodness and reach for it with everything they have.
Kenshin Himura practices Radical Empathy.
Kenshin Himura, Nobuhiro Watsuki’s own creation, is what Watsuki aspires to be: a conflicted hero overcoming inner darkness.
Watsuki has urges. He can’t stop the feelings. He knows his thoughts are vile. He knows he can’t look a child in the eye. He used child-bonk-images to satisfy these urges and Japan tacitly supported this behavior for years until they pulled the rug out from underneath him. Japan wasn’t wrong for doing this – they were just much too late.
Children are harmed in the production of child-bonk-images and the people who produce and distribute child-bonk-images should be imprisoned with the goal being rehabilitation and atonement. The distribution and purchase of these images supports this mephistophelean industrial complex; yet, the people watching this vile material (acceptable in Japan until 2014) are suffering from a mental illness and rehabilitation seems to be the furthest thing from anyone’s mind.
Yes, people with pedophilic urges should seek help, much like the alcoholic who can so easily turn themselves into Alcoholics Anonymous, right?
Instead of condemnation, we should be more like Kenshin Himura and exercise some Radical Empathy.
(Using the creation of man with pedophilic urges to argue for the ethical treatment of pedophiles is kinda ironic, I guess; one could say that Watsuki isn’t the best example to use here, but I disagree, only someone suffering from an illness can truly understand the illness. Some people preach that we must “separate the art from the artist,” and that’s fine in most cases, but the art, sometimes, is a representation of the artist; Rurouni Kenshin is one of the “cleanest” manga/anime out there, with practically zero sexualization of anything at all; Watsuki didn’t put that part of himself in the work because he knew it was nasty, instead, he inserted the concept of evil and atonement. We can sit back, point, laugh, and condemn pedophiles for eternity for urges they can’t control, or we can try to understand it; similar to the practice of “fat shaming” and how it’s never been proven to help people lose weight, it just gives people a complex and furthers their dissent into eating-way-too-much; we, instead, should provide rehabilitation and treatment.)
IV, THE ELECTRIFYING CONCLUSION
A child’s innocence must be protected at all costs and the way we treat children is a reflection of our society as a whole.
With that being said, simply because someone has very-hard-to-control pedophilic urges does not mean we should turn a blind eye to their behavior; however, we need to take a step back and analyze how we treat these people, particularly those who have not committed any physical crimes against children.
All of us experience violent urges, sparks of flickering evil, and generally-weird-thoughts that arise in our minds at inappropriate times; thoughts that make you wonder, “Is there something wrong with me?” Are these thoughts deserving of condemnation, or should condemnation be reserved solely for when we act upon these darker impulses? Is condemnation warranted at all, or should the focus be on rehabilitation and treatment?
As an American, it’s easy to arrive at the conclusion that people who think about bonking children should be incarcerated indefinitely to proactively prevent harm to children, even before they commit actual crimes. The American prison system benefits from this mindset as a privately funded industry dependent on a continuous influx of new inmates to make money, and rehabilitation doesn’t help the bottom line; not only is that Really Bad, but condemning and imprisoning individuals for their thoughts leads us into the dangerous territory of: which thoughts should we target next?
*brace yourself
In 2007, the Mayo Clinic published a meta-analysis on pedophilia that concluded that behavioral therapy and even chemical castration “does not change the pedophile’s basic sexual orientation toward children.”#17
Considering this damning revelation, what if we used lolicon and computer games like Sengoku Rance, which depict young women getting bonked, as a form of Radical Empathy; treatment for pedophiles. Gratification of the urge before it manifests in real-world-harm – would this be effective in preventing child abuse?
Moral outrage often clouds our judgment, and consequently, research into lolicon or AI created child-bonk-images as a form of treatment has been considered a scientific taboo up until recently.#18 As such, the lack of conclusive data around this subject is not evidence against its validity, but rather evidence that we are collectively good people who recoil at the very thought of these depictions of children, real or otherwise.
A common objection to this form of treatment is the belief that viewing simulated-child-bonk-images leads to actualization of child harm in the Real Number Domain (the real world). This argument is what I refer to as the “Jack Thompson Argument.” Jack Thompson, a prominent Christian activist and disbarred attorney, frequently voiced opposition against obscenity in contemporary media. He was an outspoken critic of computer games such as Doom and Grand Theft Auto, asserting that they prompt children and even some adults to emulate the violence portrayed in those games in real life.#19
Unfortunately for Jack Thompson, there is no established causal link between violent computer games and real-world violence.#20 It’s easy to attribute a school-shooter’s actions to the influence of a computer game like Doom, as we tend to seek simple explanations for incredibly complex issues; this feeling of understanding-how-stuff-works provides great comfort even if we’re dead-wrong. It’s far more likely that the school-shooter had serious-psychological-stuff going on that inclined them toward playing violent computer games; this doesn’t mean that everyone who engages with ultra-violent computer games has serious-psychological-stuff going on, but perhaps, in combination with other factors, may be an indicator.
And just like the school-shooter drawn to the violence of Doom, the same argument could be made for Sengoku Rance; the urges cause the computer game, not the other way around.
And with this we shall draw the electrifying conclusion.
There’s nothing inherently “wrong” with playing Sengoku Rance – it’s merely a collection of images; however, if someone is drawn to hentai games like Sengoku Rance, where many of the women depicted appear barely older than thirteen and the main character casually rapes and murders people, it may reflect something about the computer-gamer in question, and certainly reflects something about the society that spawned the computer game into existence.
If you want to play Sengoku Rance because it’s a complex strategy game with endless replayability: cool.
If you want to play Sengoku Rance because of its twist on traditional turn-based combat systems: cool.
If you want to play Sengoku Rance to watch Rance rape women who look like young girls: that’s not cool, and you should considering deep introspection and professional help – if you already know this about yourself and Sengoku Rance helps you manage the urges, then I support you.
Check your soul.
(I realize this essay is controversial; I had trouble reading through it during the proof-reading / revising process. The use of the word “bonk,” outside of not wanting this publication to be Google-mined for undesirable phrases, is itself evidence that I had trouble writing about this topic; in fact, I used the word “pornography” one time in the Watsuki very-short-story because “bonk” felt far too trivializing there. Many will come away from this thinking that I am condoning violence because “people can’t help it!” but that’s not the case. I believe in law and order. I support ethically-run-prisons. Rape and murder are morally abhorrent; I believe society would collapse if we didn’t take action against these [and many other things. If you break the law, you should go to prison, atone, and be rehabilitated; however, as a society some things are just so outrageous that we will not even entertain the idea of rehabilitation; this seems absurd for something as obviously unintentional as feelings-for-children, which can and should be treated as a mental illness; our outrage has prevented thorough research into treatment of this illness. We are often so indignant in our moral outrage that we lose the plot. This essay, while often employing ridiculous humor, is as serious as a heart attack. Thanks for reading.)
References:
#1. Japanese Ministry of Justice. (Ed.). (1999, May 26). Act on regulation and punishment of acts relating to child prostitution and child pornography, and the protection of children – English – Japanese law translation. https://www.japaneselawtranslation.go.jp/en/laws/view/2895/en
#2. Hellmann, M. (2014, June 18). Japan Outlaws Possession of Child Pornography. Time. https://time.com/2892728/japan-finally-bans-child-pornography/
#3. Wikimedia Foundation. (2023, September 25). Legality of child pornography. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_child_pornography#Asia (lol, yes, a wikipedia citation)
#4. Sluzhevsky, Megan, “The Costs of Lolicon: Japan’s Pedophilia Trade” (2022). Senior Theses. 96. https://research.library.fordham.edu/international_senior/96
#5. Penal code – english – japanese law translation. (1097, April 24). https://www.japaneselawtranslation.go.jp/en/laws/view/3581/en
#6. Yamaguchi, M. (2023, June 16). Japan raises the age of sexual consent to 16 from 13, which was among the world’s lowest. AP News. https://apnews.com/article/japan-sex-crime-consent-lgbtq-4d6432a28234939d4b54758744977b1f
#7. “Age of Consent Laws [Table],” in Children and Youth in History, Item #24, https://chnm.gmu.edu/cyh/primary-sources/24.html (accessed August 10, 2021). Annotated by Stephen Robertson
#8. Ogasawara, Y. (2020, January 1). The slow decline of the male-breadwinner family model in contemporary … https://www.jil.go.jp/english/jli/documents/2020/020-02.pdf
#9. Dalton, E. (2022, June 28). Japan’s stubborn gender inequality problem. East Asia Forum. https://www.eastasiaforum.org/2022/06/28/japans-stubborn-gender-inequality-problem/
#10. Jones, J. M. (2022, January 10). Americans reading fewer books than in past. Gallup.com. https://news.gallup.com/poll/388541/americans-reading-fewer-books-past.aspx
#11. Shibu, S. (2020, November 20). Which generation is most dependent on smartphones? (hint: They’re young.). Entrepreneur. https://www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/which-generation-is-most-dependent-on-smartphones-hint/360098
#12. Shah, P., Thornton, I., & Hipskind, J. E. (2023, June 5). Informed consent – statpearls – NCBI bookshelf. National Library of Medicine. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK430827/
#13. Brown, G. R. (2023, July). Pedophilic disorder – mental health disorders. Merck Manuals Consumer Version. https://www.merckmanuals.com/home/mental-health-disorders/paraphilias-and-paraphilic-disorders/pedophilic-disorder
#14. Brown, G. R. (2023, July). Paraphilic Disorders. Merck Manuals Consumer Version. https://www.merckmanuals.com/home/mental-health-disorders/paraphilias-and-paraphilic-disorders/overview-of-paraphilias-and-paraphilic-disorders
#15. McManus, M. A., Hargreaves, P., Rainbow, L., & Alison, L. J. (2013, September 2). Paraphilias: Definition, diagnosis and treatment. F1000prime reports. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3769077/
#16. Ashcraft, B. (2018, April 23). After child pornography fine, Rurouni Kenshin will resume publication this June. Kotaku. https://kotaku.com/rurouni-kenshin-will-resume-publication-this-june-in-ja-1825461597
#17. A profile of pedophilia: Definition, characteristics of offenders … Mayo Clinic Proceedings. (n.d.). https://www.mayoclinicproceedings.org/article/S0025-6196(11)61074-4/fulltext
#18. Leavy, T. (2021, March 22). Can technology help treat pedophiles?. Popular Science. https://www.popsci.com/can-technology-help-treat-pedophiles/
#19. Provenzo, Eugene F. Jr. and Jack Thompson. “A political odd couple’s advice on finding common ground Archived March 3, 2016, at the Wayback Machine.” Christian Science Monitor, 2004-10-19. https://www.csmonitor.com/2004/1019/p09s01-coop.html
#20. Orlando, A. (2023, March 8). Do video games cause violence?. Discover Magazine. https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/do-video-games-cause-violence
(Originally published 10/29/2023)