Book Review: Impossibly Cute Boys: The Healing Power of Shota Comics in Japan

Karl Andersson, Impossibly Cute Boys: The Healing Power of Shota Comics in Japan (Breakout Bits: Berlin, 2024), 218 pp., $25.

This book is by far the most detailed analysis of the shotacon genre in the English language. The author, Karl Andersson, is a Swedish-born journalist and independent publisher, who has studied Japan and its culture industry for more than a decade.

“Shotacon” (or shota), is a genre in hentai and eromanga comic art. Outside Japan, most people will know “hentai” as referring to cartoon pornography, in similar styles found in Japanese manga and anime. Whilst the word “hentai” literally means “pervert” or “weird” in Japanese, as an art form hentai is known for its many non-normative or “edgy” themes, such as cuckoldry (netorare / netorase), rape, incest, nose hooks, hypnosis, school uniforms, and the infamous tentacle monster (Ortega-Brena, 2009). “Shota” is a genre of hentai art which portrays young male (or “boy” characters) “in a cute or, most often, sexually explicit way” (Andersson, 2022: 2). Like many other genres in hentai, shota is widely read and viewed, but has triggered sensitivities and sparked hot debate.

“Shota” is the male counterpart to “Lolicon,” or “Loli” for short. A contraction of “Lolita Complex” – with “complex” denoting obsession – the name is taken from Vladimir Nobakov’s famously controversial and complex novel Lolita, about an older man’s obsession with a 12-year-old girl. Lolicon emerged as a focus on cuteness, and can also refer to a fashion trend aiming for a “cute” or kawaii aesthetic (Hinton, 2013; Monden, 2013). “Shotacon,” by contrast, has been researched in Japanese works by Manda Ringo, Yoshimoto Taimatsu, and others, but less so in English. The term itself, we learn, is a contraction of “Shotaro Complex,” named after a character from Mitsuteru Yokoyama’s manga series Tetsujin 28-gō (1956-1966), Kaneda Shotaro.

In this book, the author presents his findings from a survey of 45 shota fans (33 men, 11 women, and one male-to-female transsexual), distributed by Andersson at Japanese shota events, where self-published erotic comics known as “dōjinshi” are sold. He explores how his participants read shota comics, the features of characters they most liked, and the meaning and value that shota art brings to their lives. The book was published in the wake of Andersson’s MA thesis about shota fans conducted at the Free University of Berlin, his award-winning film “Unreal Boys,” and his rise to international scandal after publishing his first scholarly “research note” as a PhD student in the United Kingdom (Brienza, 2022).

Andersson addresses the explosive discourse around his PhD research throughout the book, including a dedicated chapter “Scandal! The Power of Shota” at the end. In doing so, he frankly and convincingly addresses many questions that the public surely want answers to. As he puts it: “The strict division between desire for 2D and 3D – fictional and real people – may seem a little too good to be true. Are lolicon fans really not interested in real girls at all? Not a single one of them?” (p. 43). Unafraid to tackle the hot-button issues, this review summarizes the key points and findings of Andersson’s book, and responds to the controversy surrounding his research.

Shotacon’s female origins

Andersson begins by foregrounding the human capacity to distinguish between fantasy and reality. “Shota is not the actual world,” he writes, “It’s a dream world invented by women in Japan in the 1980s.” (p. 1) Shota, we learn, emerged as an offshoot of homoerotic “yaoi” or “Boys Love” (BL) stories, genres which remain popular today and are typically created by women for women. As genres, yaoi or “Boy’s Love” tend to focus on relationships among characters, and sometimes take the form of written novels. In the West, the animated comedy “South Park“ dedicated an episode to yaoi, where the female students become obsessed with their fantasies of romance between Tweek and Craig – two straight male students – who end up becoming a gay couple.

The “shota boom,” as Andersson calls it, happened in “three waves” from the mid-90s to the early 2010s. The stage was set through the popularity of the manga (1981) and anime (1983) of Captain Tsubasa, about elementary school students playing football / soccer, which triggered an explosion in dōjinshi culture. By 1987, “the height of the boom,” Andersson claims that Comic Market participation had doubled to 60,000, made up of mostly young women creating Captain Tsubasa dōjinshi.

Andersson draws on Yumiko Watanabe, who argues that shota’s use of younger characters opened up the possibility for more playful roles (p. 16). It also introduced a sense of taboo, where the homoeroticism of yaoi that had once been transgressive was starting to lose its “dangerous edge” (Ibid.). While these comics of Captain Tsubasa were not initially considered as separate from the yaoi genre, now that a burgeoning market of artwork focusing on young male characters had emerged, the seeds for shota’s arrival as a distinct genre had been planted.

The shota waves

According to Watanabe, it wasn’t until three “shota masterpieces” of anime in 1994 had included feminine and timid boy characters that male viewers began to take a larger interest. It took until 1995 for shota to have its own dedicated event, known as “Shotaket,” which was held on May 5^th on a public holiday once known as Boys’ Day (until 1948, and thereafter Children’s Day). In contrast to yaoi, this event was mostly organized and attended by men, though a later report states that “there were slightly more female than male circle participants [i.e. creators].” (p. 20)

Initially, shota was considered a female genre. In 1991, a “terminology dictionary defined shotacon as “a ‘boy interest’ among girls” but expanded the definition in 1997 to “a woman interested in boys only, as well as such a hobby.” (p. 18) By 2000, this definition became gender-neutral: “a person interested in boys only, as well as such a hobby” (p. 21, emphasis Andersson’s).

During the first wave, over 25 shota anthologies were published as books with magazine-style features. The decision to publish as books with International Standard Book Numbers was an innovative move from publishers, as it meant that shota anthologies could be sold at bookstores. This first wave boomed partly due to the continued appearance of boy characters in popular media during the 1990s, such as Shinji from Evangelion (Andersson’s example), and partly because the commercial publishing of erotic comics aimed at men exploded after Japan introduced its infamous “adult comics label.”

Scholars have seen censorship as both restrictive and productive, since the people whose work is affected usually attempt to continue their passion projects and creative pursuits while navigating legal restrictions. There are many banned books throughout history, or books burnt by regimes like the Nazis (see Haeberle, 1981). The hyper capitalist case of Japan, however, involved the censor’s nudge rather than outright banning or burning its well-established and profitable heritage involving comic art.

As Japan scholar Anne Allison argued in her book Permitted and Prohibited Desires (1996), “Although the law permits scenes of child sex in mass media, it has forbidden the explicit representation of genitalia. What results is sex acts involving underdeveloped – both literally (by making the characters prepubescent) and figuratively (by keeping the image graphically simple) – genitalia.” (p. 151) By targeting the explicit depiction of the genitals in obscenity law – “restricting one bodily sight / site” – the Japanese state “permits and stimulates the mass production of a host of others.” (p. 150)

In the case of shotacon and material potentially affected by the “adult comics label,” Andersson tells us that shota comics authored by women were often not considered erotic enough to need the designation, since Japanese censors focused on male artists and heterosexual and explicit sex (p. 22). Shota comics could therefore be bought from bookstores by people who hadn’t reached the age of majority. This makes a rare exception where legally defined “children” could access a medium depicting people like themselves, so long as they were okay with homoerotic sex. (Whether something similar occurred with lolicon comics, Andersson does not say).

Similar to today where evidence suggests that over 90% of real-life pornography featuring minors is self-produced (IWF, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023; Finkelhor et al. 2023; cf. Halliday, 2019; Mirkin, 2009), evidence indicates that young teenagers were not only readers who enjoyed comics featuring shota, but also produced and contributed their own shota artwork! Andersson quotes from some examples, including a 14-year-old whose birthday was marked by having his art published in a shota magazine. The editors wished him a happy birthday, and remind him to be proud of himself. Popular with both sexes, as one male reader wrote to the editors of XX:

“I read it because it was recommended to me by girls in my class […] The girls in my class are really into this stuff.” (p. 37)

Romeo (21 volumes, 1991-1996) was the most successful shota anthology during this period, taking its name from the character Romeo in Romeo and the Black Brothers (1995). This first wave subsided partly because these anthologies weren’t as profitable as publishers had hoped, and partly because of “fear of a new law around child pornography” set to come into effect around 1999. The law targeted “compensated dating between female high school students and men,” Andersson explains, but also included regulation around comic art in its first draft. (p. 26)

The law eventually excluded comics, but publishers began to self-censor. Sexual depictions saw a sharp decline, and interest in publishing shota waned until around November 2002, when a new shota wave was set in motion. The magazine Shotacomi was launched, with editors who explicitly wanted to revive the genre. They arguably succeeded: shota–themed publications were once again produced, but this time, many were far more sexually explicit than the first wave had been, and yet faced minimal censorship.

In publications aimed at men, many shota characters of this period were created with more feminine characteristics, often resulting in a “flat-chested, Lolita-type shemale” (p. 28). The theme of cross-dressing was trending in mainstream media, Andersson writes. He places the decline of this second wave to 2006, when Recommanding Lusty Boys and The Aesthetics of Boy-Love ceased publication. Although this wave was over, Andersson contends that its aesthetics had spread into regular eromanga for men, making cute, coquettish, feminine boys a common trope. “Shota” was expanding to appeal to women, children, and men.

Why is shotacon popular? From kawaii to gender-bending

The androgynous boy had become a cultural mainstay, and the third wave from 2010-2013 was characterized by magazines based on the “otoko-no-ko” trope, meaning “male daughter” in English. Gender–bending and cross-dressing as women became a hugely profitable commercial topic, with magazines now being sold with sports bras and striped panties, giving men tips on how to approach cross-dressing. As this publishing wave subsided in 2015, “otoko-no-ko had become an established theme, both in erotic comics with the adult–comics label, and at dōjinshi conventions, along with similar genres like joso (cross-dressing) and futanari (hermaphroditism).” (p. 29)

Gender-bending had been a feature of popular manga since the 1950s, speculated to serve various psychological functions. “Girls’ dressing as boys in shojo manga has been interpreted as ‘a desire to avoid growing up,‘” Andersson explains, “since men’s clothing can be seen as a girl’s refusal to become a sexual being in the form of an adult woman.” He adds that:

Beautiful boys dressing as or looking like girls, on the other hand, may be a reflection of “the continuum of male beauty” in Japan, where feminine and delicate men are not only accepted as a beauty ideal, but often preferred by women, whose taste – or “female gaze” – has influenced media depictions of men. (p. 13)

Shota and ideal pasts

A second major reason for shota’s popularity relates to homophobia and sexual liberation in Japan during the 1970s and beyond. For women, erotic media aimed at them had been highly restricted and toned-down compared to men, so female artists stepped in to create a culture where they were permitted to view hardcore sexual expressions. “For men,” Andersson writes, “the pressure to live up to the masculine role was strong, [… and] forced them to take a lead in sex and romance.” (p. 25) Shota allowed them an outlet to become the uke, “to imagine themselves as the passive.” (Ibid.) Nagayama Kaouro, an expert on erotic comics, argues that “young and cute characters might have made it easier for male readers to embrace shota, whilst adult characters engaged in gay sex – […] (think sweaty action between muscular men) – becomes too stark [an image] and therefore causes a homophobic reaction.” (p. 26)

A third reason for shota’s popularity comes from one of Andersson’s most compelling and key arguments, concerning “ideal pasts” and “reclaiming one’s past.” Many shota fans, it is claimed, find shota so appealing because it allows them to relive and reimagine alternative pasts. This aspect of fantasy projection probably applies to most hentai comics if his argument is expanded to imagining alternative futures – perhaps a desire for a new or different life – but shotacon and lolicon would seem especially relatable to a person’s younger years.

Andersson illustrates this “ideal pasts” argument through many examples. One of his homosexual informants, bullied in school, told of projecting himself on to the boys in shota comics as a way to reimagine his school life as sexually active, accepting, and reciprocal. “I feel strongly that I want to return to that time, and be surrounded by energetic boys,” as one participant put it (p. 88). Andersson draws a parallel to Elin Bengtsson’s (2022) study of “age play” amongst adults, where “participants had found a way to ‘explore a childhood one could have had.’” (p. 92)

Many participants had “traumatic or uneventful” childhoods, and “engaging with shota,” Andersson suggests, “seemed to be a kind of self-help that healed the wounds of the past.” Just as “brutal” themes in non-shota eromanga have been “understood as a way for the reader to handle self-destructive impulses and even suicidal thoughts” (p. 91), Andersson sees a potential therapeutic effect or “healing power” of shotacon.

“Ideal pasts” is an extremely reasonable, understandable, and non-pathological explanation for shota’s popularity. It’s a reason that I believe most people can relate to. I can remember longing for sex since at least 11 years old, and for so many years I dreamed about what could’ve happened in my childhood and schooldays if only I’d had the courage to initiate with peers and older women. Even for people who simply longed for more sexual activity at school – where many stories in shota comics will be set – during one of the few times before work life takes over: many people can relate to the notion of ideal pasts.

The ideal shota?

What character traits do shota fans tend to like? Quite incredibly, Andersson finds that across multiple research studies, shota fans coalesced around a preference for boy characters at 12 years old. From Andersson’s ten-participant master’s thesis, to his present study of 42 shota fans, alongside past work from Manda Ringo and Yoshimoto Taimatsu, shota fans emphasized puberty and the gap or transition which puberty signalled. “It is the contrast between wanting to be a man but still having a child’s body that creates moe, or affection, one participant explained.” (p. 73) No matter if “the ideal boy was naughty or quiet, or hot or cool, […] he was described as: ‘pure,’ ‘innocent,’ ‘cheerful,’ ‘honest,’ ‘curious,’ and ‘kind.’” (p. 75) Participants expressed a range of personality traits they found attractive, from “hot” to “cold,” “cocky” or “naughty” and mischievous to “quiet” or “serious.”

Some liked characteristics such as tanned skin or tan lines, shorts or a plaster on the knee, which served as signifiers of an active and sporty lifestyle spent outdoors. Someone who’s playful, bashful, gets in to trouble, but always with a cheerful disposition and often indomitable spirit, seems to sum up the favored traits of shota characters. Unsurprisingly then, the most popular character in Andersson’s 45-participant study was Reg from Made in Abyss (p. 78), a robot boy who embodies these traits.

Only five respondents, three men and two women, brought up “brutal” themes such as gang rape, kidnapping, despair, sickness, and death as particularly enjoyable narrative plots. Most respondents favored the “relatively innocent scenarios of first love, exploring sex with a friend, or being surprised at one’s physical development in puberty.” (p. 83)

Participants had “shota routines,” where shota artwork entered into daily life in various ways. From posters on the wall at home, to work desks decorated with postcards, to being bombarded daily on Twitter with cute artwork. The author is conscious that his respondents did not only engage with shota artwork: some were heterosexual, bisexual, or simply liked real-life adult-adult porn or artwork with female characters as well (p. 100). Andersson quotes from two male participants who didn’t find shota artwork erotic or use it for masturbation purposes, but instead found it “cute” (kawaii). What emerges, then, is a variety of ways that males and females across the age spectrum read and engage with shota comics.

‘Real’ boys, the ‘No touch’ rule, and shared ethics of desire

Some participants had no interest in real life boys, or even found them annoying or disgusting compared to the idealized fantasy depictions in hentai art. Manga characters were seen as “derivative” of reality, “an image that keeps the cute and attractive parts and throws away the horrible parts.” (p. 139) Many participants pointed out the gap between real and fictional boys, with some saying that real boys look “cute” until you get close: “In the shota, in the manga, they stay in that ideal” (p. 140). But, for those whose sexual interests crossed from 2D to 3D, they held to an ethical rule or “ethics of desire” – the “no touch rule.”

Against the Western view that shota readers are somehow “predators,” Andersson defends his participants. Far from “predatory,” some like 24-year-old Akira were still virgins, as research suggest that the majority of 24-four-year-old Japanese men are (p. 151, Ghaznavi et al. 2019). Many shota fans were lonely and “vulnerable” people, navigating hectic work lives, trying to avoid karōshi or “overwork death” while living in Japan. Andersson does not deny that sex crimes or harmful non-normative sexual behavior occurs, but this was not an issue amongst his shota-reading sample.

In contrast to the Western disposition to “live authentically,” “live your truth” despite what society says, the Japanese perspective appeared to emphasize compartmentalizing, not standing out, and separating different aspects of one’s life. There was a view that “one’s personal desires are irrelevant as long as one fulfils one’s societal duties” (p. 152). So, whilst some participants worried that an interest in shotacon could hamper their chances of marriage and family, others saw shota as a hobby or otherwise inconsequential interest, to be kept private or separate from their role as partners or parents.

Andersson argues that the shared ethics of shota, or what Patrick Galbraith called the “ethics of affect” – here the “no touch” rule – was a tool used by the shota community which kept people’s desires safe and in-check. Because people cared a lot about what other shota fans thought, their desires for “real boys” became irrelevant if they knew there was no point or realistic basis to act on them. Andersson sees this openness as preferable to the alternative of silence, fear, and shame: wandering through life with no support and no safe space to express one’s feelings. (pp. 158-160)

Scandalous sexualities and desire on trial: Does hentai have a future?

“Desire on trial” is Andersson’s second key argument. The author brings up examples of legal trials of individuals over cartoon porn, or old music albums with “problematic“ cover photos, where debate focused on what the purpose of the ownership was. Although unspoken and often displaced through an ostensible focus on the material itself, what was actually on trial, Andersson contends, was their “sexuality,” “hidden secret” – one’s desire and inner life itself.

Andersson is himself no stranger to controversy, or accusations of having a “prurient interest“ in the topic. Having worked as a magazine professional, in 1999 he headed Straight, Sweden’s first glossy gay magazine, before working for Aftonbladet, Sweden’s biggest daily tabloid newspaper. He would become known, however, for Destroyer magazine (f. 2006), an LGBTQ+ magazine which focused on adolescent male beauty. Destroyer sparked heated debate, and became the subject of Andersson’s first book Gay Man’s Worst Friend – the Story of ‘Destroyer Magazine’ (2011). When he later became a PhD student in Japan studies at the University of Manchester in the UK, it might be expected that controversy would follow.

And it did! But not straight away. As retired manga studies professor Casey Brienza documented in her analysis of what she dubbed “The Masturbation Article Affair” (2022), it took over three months for Andersson’s first PhD publication to be scandalized. Titled “I am not alone – we are all alone: Using masturbation as an ethnographic method in research on shota subculture in Japan” (2022), the article was lambasted as “a PhD in wanking” on Twitter, setting off a cavalcade of hate comments that academics in the humanities are especially susceptible to (see e.g. the case of Dr. Ally Louks).

I have my original, heavily annotated print-out of Andersson’s short “research note“ in front of me, from before scandal broke. When Andersson quipped that his body could give him a “first-hand understanding of shota” (emphasis in original, p. 2), I wrote – and I’m not kidding – “Aaaah! The memes! Your right hand or your left lol! :p”. In other words, I found it funny. Many passages were shockingly frank and open about a sensitive subject, for sure, but an otherwise obscure academic text is hardly cause for alarm, panic, or public shaming. Having actually read the article and considered its arguments, I found it innovate and unique and could see why it was positively regarded by both Andersson’s supervisor Dr. Sharon Kinsella, the journal’s editors, and peer reviewers.

Following sustained negative publicity, Andersson was suspended pending investigation and eventually expelled from the university – a decision which is practically unheard of. How does he now, years on, interpret this controversy?

Shota and “certain kinds” of people

Andersson explains the difference between Japan and the UK, East and West, through Michel Foucault’s famous analysis of the Catholic confession box in The History of Sexuality (1984). Foucault saw the confession as part of an “incitement to discourse“ on sex, focused on revealing an “inner secret” or “hidden truth” we all hold – what we now refer to as a “sexuality” – rather than focusing on sexual acts themselves. Through labelling and categorizing people by what we believe their behavior shows about them, the homosexual became a “species” – a “certain kind of person” – as Foucault put it.

Andersson calls this the “born this way” discourse, and rails against “born this way” countries like the UK and US. He argues convincingly that the academic discipline of queer theory didn’t take off in Japan because, unlike Europe and North America, “identities were already seen as roles that were performed” (p. 179). Japan, he contends, doesn’t have the same heritage of “born this way,” “confessional,” and “inborn sexuality” discourses, nor a focus on sex as sinful (see Mirkin, 2000). Whilst the West hunted “sodomites” – burnt them, castrated them, scandalized them – Andersson explains, Japan had a flourishing homosexual culture based on roles and practice rather than identity: the Wakashū (p. 178).

Andersson tells us that during the Japan’s Edo period (1603–1867), when pederasty among the Japanese samurai flourished, a forelock of hair designated the role of the adolescent boy. As was common in many cultures before the 1950s (Cleves, 2020, reviewed here), including antebellum America which “had a functional, rather than chronological, understanding of childhood” (Syrett, 2016: 4), intergenerational relationships were sometimes institutionalized and viewed as beneficial for the young. (Ibid.) While scholars since Philippe Ariès (1962) have examined the social construction and use of age norms (Rennes and Bozon, 2015; Rennes, 2019) and age as a category (Syrett, 2020), the lack of emphasis on precise age meant that a wakashū could technically be a “boy“ even as he aged, simply by retaining his forelock. It may also be the case that these roles were not “identities“ as such, but were instead roles and acts normalized as simply human. Whatever the case, since Japan honors its own history and often teaches the history of the samurai in schools, many Japanese individuals mentioned the widespread knowledge of the wakashū to Andersson as one reason for the tolerance of shotacon.

For Andersson, “The idea that people come with inborn sexualities is not an objective way of understanding the world. It is simply one way to understand it, one that has its roots in Christianity.” (p. 169) He argues, accurately I believe, that “born this way” countries have adopted what scholars have called the “pedophilic gaze,” seeing the world – and especially media depicting children – through the lens of the imagined pedophile’s desire (our review of Taylor, 2018 discusses this concept).

To me, as what would be classified as a teleiophilic heterosexual, it is obvious that a person can read shotacon hentai and not be preferentially attracted to prepubescent children (i.e., a pedophile). I have had gay experiences, but that doesn’t make me gay. I sometimes find males attractive, but it’s not my preference. The same applies to eromanga, especially in practice where online hentai comics may have extremely busty or well-endowed adult-looking characters as the focus or cover image, then spring shota on readers for a single page without warning. Such readers are obviously not “pedophiles,” but … what if they were?

Conclusion: The criminalization of fantasy material

Andersson ends his book by reflecting on his cancellation. He recalls the positive feedback after submitting his masturbation article for review, and how the UK parliament summoned the university to explain themselves after scandal exploded. But, he concludes, it’s not about the research or him as such. Again, it’s his desire which was on trial.

Andersson is well-aware that fantasy material said to depict “children“ (people under 18) is, in varying degrees, technically illegal in Western countries such as the UK, Canada, United States, and Andersson’s native Sweden. For his master’s research in Germany, he consulted a lawyer and was reassured that Germany has exceptions for academic research. Germany’s “Basic Law from 1949 states that “[a]rts and sciences, research and teaching shall be free,” a constitution written as “a direct response to the crimes of the preceding Nazi regime, which had banned certain artistic expressions” (p. 59).

Andersson suggests that shotacon comics “are neither realistic nor depict actual acts,” and (in Germany) would not count or be prosecutable as “pornography“ (Ibid.). Casey Brienza argued similarly, writing that, “Of course, no real children are directly harmed in the production or consumption of these comic books, and neither shotacon nor lolicon would ever be mistaken for realistically-imagined representations of children, never mind actual children.” (p. 4) Respectfully, this is cope. While both arguments are reasonable and manga artists like Kentaro Miura and Ken Akamatsu have defended loli / shota, Andersson also seems well-aware that many in “born this way” countries don’t care whether something is harmful or not. They care about rooting out and perhaps killing “certain kinds” of people. Those who feel the persecution of others based on their perceived identity alone to be a grave injustice tantamount to hate crime (Haas, 2022) or who simply don’t want to live in a world where people go to prison for drawings, risk being labelled as “one of them“ if they dare speak out. Andersson experienced the immense force of this stigma, where as he puts it: “in the ‘born this way’ culture of the UK, that dōjinshi is made for a pedophile, simple as that.” (p. 169)

Controversy erupted in the UK, but would be far less likely in Germany or Japan, because these countries have wildly different national values and heritage. Anne Allison argued that, “What is proscribed as “obscene” by the state […] is also that which is most sacred and central to the state’s ideology,” which for Japan she argued was “stable families, reproductive mothers, and orderly homes” (p. 151). In the UK, US, and other Western nations, “children“ are sacred and meant to be asexual or desexualized until at least 16/18 years of age, despite the sexual activity we begrudgingly admit they get up to (see Angelides, 2019, reviewed here). The discourse of “child protection“ (Egan and Hawkes, 2009; Clapton, Cree and Smith, 2012, 2013) and what scholars have called the image of the “monstrous“ pedophile (Danay, 2005; Lancaster, 2011, ch. 3; Lowenkron, 2013; Stegermaier, 2020) are center stage (Chenier, 2011), meaning that neutral or positive discussions of lolicon, shotacon, age-gap sex, and so on, are perceived as dangerous, suspect, or at best eccentric and unusual.

While statutes do not, to our knowledge, make distinctions between 3D and 2D pornography in legislation – meaning that we cannot know the prevalence of police investigations over cartoon porn – some cases have made news. Casey Brienza gives the examples of Christopher Handley and Christjen Bee, who were served prison sentences in the US, and Robel Hoque in the UK who received a nine-month suspended sentence (p. 4), all of whom were convicted over cartoons.

Andersson has written on the case of Simon Lundström in his piece “Sweden’s War on Fantasy” (2016), where Sweden’s foremost expert and translator of manga faced a lengthy legal battle when police raided his home to investigate his manga collection. In a unique twist, because of his acquittal, the artwork under scrutiny could now be made public for the world to see. Finally, the public could see for what their government wanted to put a man in prison.

Andersson says that most in the public found the artwork “silly.” Maybe so. But the very idea that anyone – man, woman, or child – could be jailed for possessing drawings or animations, having to live with a conviction for “child pornography” with no obvious distinction between reality and fiction in the charge – strikes me as “disgusting,” abhorrent,” even “evil.” As Casey Brienza put it: “I do not personally endorse the criminalization of cartoon images and consider such laws which target people who have never harmed real children to be unjust on principle.” (p. 8)

One of Andersson’s participants – a married woman he calls Link – stopped drawing shota due to social stigma and restrictions imposed by companies like Amazon. She thinks that the trend of having “fewer and fewer places where you can express yourself … will accelerate in the future” (p. 153). Andersson’s book is extremely concise, reasonable, and insightful. But, unless more English-language researchers, writers, media pundits and lobbyists are willing to think critically and talk openly about the harmless, joyful, and “healing” effects of erotic art including shotacon, his book may be preaching to the choir.

What Andersson has shown, however, is tremendous perseverance after such an undoubtedly traumatic and harrowing ordeal, publishing this book on the date his PhD course was set to finish. He has broken new ground in English-language scholarship, and shown that you don’t need to have a PhD to conduct quality and ethical research. Andersson certainly deserves a doctorate, but given that any public forum suggests UK academia to be a failing, hellish nightmare, he may now be too authentic and “real” for a British university. If he persists in travelling to Japan, however, meeting artists and professors who research eromanga, there’s a chance he’ll be awarded an honorary doctorate for his efforts.

Hentai and shota do have a future, but it’s a precarious one. Western culture is obsessed with identity politics and the identity of the “pedophile” in particular, with “age gap” discourse expanding to stigmatize even lawful adult-adult relationships (Crispin, 2020). Erotic art is one vulnerable niche which is difficult to defend in the West because it’s already illegal. In the UK, for example, the Labour government in 2025 has announced its plans to crack down on what it calls “AI abuse material,” which could well involve cartoons (Channel 4 news, 2025).

From the popularity of “barely legal teen” porn, to the enormous legal porn market featuring “stepmother,” incest, and other intergenerational themes – intergenerational desire is everywhere. Whilst Western law seems to care more about policing desire and the bounds of normalcy than about improving people’s living standards and reducing harm, the “edgy“ themes of hentai may be disavowed, but they will never disappear.