He Seems Like A Nice Guy

First, to start things off, let me say that I know there are lots of kinks out there. Romance and sex is like one of those things, right, where tastes are - what's the word - highly subjective. Culture and environment have a lot to do with it, of course. Why, just today I was reading an article about girls being sent to force-feeding camps in .. Mauritania? Because stretch marks and having an equator rather than a waist is considered the epitome of feminine beauty there, or something. Point being, you see extreme opposites in this world, when it comes to appreciation of the fellow human being.

Now, Japan is known for exporting a lot of weird <expletive>, and a lot of it does have to do with sex. You hear about stereotypes with suggestive movements of sea creature appendages, and then there's a rather worrying preoccupation among some circles with the bosom department... and of course, to western eyes, some of those characters seem mighty young..

Why do I care about this? Well, truth is, I watch a good amount of anime (or, japanese animation). And possibly nowhere else in my life does Sturgeon's Law apply more aptly. When it's good, it's a masterpiece that sends me into inspired bouts of artmaking - those are creme de la creme, the epitome of entertainment I have the good fortune to encounter. There's also the generally-good, solid titles, marred somewhat by its insistence on ridiculous double standards for female characters (with regards to "armour", intelligence, and all-around capability/need to be rescued) but still palatable on the whole.. oh, and the forgettably mediocre, there's always plenty of those, but even then they're not usually much worse than most of western entertainment (and believe me I have seen western entertainment).

And then there's stuff like this. Stuff like... like this. Have you read Twilight? I did. The whole series. I had to do it for a project, you see. Well, this is worse, much worse. If I remember correctly, the problem with Twilight was a somewhat inappropriate glorification of the romantic relationship between the two main characters, a romantic relationship that has been described by some as skewed, unhealthy, or abusive. Kind of like Beauty and the Beast, but less kid-friendly.

But at least Twilight had the excuse of a male love interest who did, honestly speaking, appear to care for the wellbeing of our lovestruck heroine.

Meet Laito Sakamaki, a potential "love" interest for the player of the lady-catering visual novel game, Diabolik Lovers. Let's see what the wiki has to say about this strapping youth's winsome personality..

"Laito is extremely perverted. His perverted nature causes him to be suspended from school often. Laito is a Do-S (extreme sadist like all of his brothers). He is always cheerful and loves to joke and is similar to Ayato when teasing the heroine.

However, his personality suddenly changes when something goes against his wishes and when Yui is too defiant around him. He doesn't like it when the heroine disobeys his orders and he often punishes her because of that. Laito can also be shown to be good at interpreting peoples' motives.

Laito takes pleasures in making Yui do what she refuses to do and then to make her enjoy what she hates. He is an open pervert type of character and also a voyeur, which makes him wish to share his prey with others and enjoy seeing her get messed up by others, but then he becomes possessive and jealous and punishes her for it. It is shown he also doesn't mind if people observe when he is messing Yui."

Hum. Well. This is a game catering to women's fantasies, right?

After pushing myself through a few episodes of the anime adaptation of the game, I began to understand better - the harem of vampiric men do openly refer to the heroine as a masochist (among other flattering names), so perhaps this was supposed to cater to a select niche of ladies with particular tastes?

I would be happy if that were the case. Truly, I would be. There's nothing wrong with having particular tastes, exactly, when it comes to matters of more personal and intimate nature, but I'm kind of worried at the trend I'm observing with these highly successful and supposedly women-catering romance titles. I mean, looking at Twilight, 50 Shades of Grey, and this slew of japanese-made material.. have I possibly misunderstood something about women's fantasies? Is what I had called a "niche" actually much more widespread than I had previously thought? It is a sobering realisation, considering rape and domestic abuse statistics. It all reeks of the romanticising of frankly unhealthy and abusive relationships.

Erotic material catering to male fantasies is far more straightforward for me to understand. How could it not, when it plants itself firmly in front of the camera, drapes itself suggestively all over the furniture and contorts itself in (painfully) awkward, inviting poses? It is also, I sadly suspect, more healthy than the material for women mentioned above. A lady with exaggerated secondary sex characteristics trips over nothing and lands inappropriately on the male protagonist, fine. She's naive and air-headed and doesn't really contribute to the plot (if any) outside of being a rescue target, okay. She seems like an independent, self-sufficient character who turns out to have a softer, feminine side and just ends up serving her purpose as auxiliary to the male character after falling in love with him.. annoying, but not unbearable.

I mean, none of this is positively good by any means, but at least the worst it can do is brainwash people into a highly inaccurate belief of what women are like (people, just normal people, by the way). This already has terrible consequences all over the world, don't get me wrong, but what really gets me is thinking that the supposedly women-catering material is brainwashing them also into normalizing abuse and generally rather poor behaviour from their partners. It's one thing to have to deal with the world having unfair expectations of you, but quite another to realise you've been shackling yourself all along with some of them. It's like the instinctive reaction of disgust when comparing external abuse to self-harm.

Now, then. I've talked at length about the context of my chosen area, and I think my intentions are pretty clear - I will be "stealing" that charming gentleman's design up there, and repurpose it to make a piece more clearly representing the character. Here's the sketch I did on some foolscap paper prior to making use of digital tools:

It's the generic pose with a hat, and that oft-used 3/4 face for character profiles. I specifically chose this character out of the other lovely young men from Diabolik Lovers (which I had in turn chosen because I'd just happened to check it out/been aware of recently) because he seems to most obviously physically embody the spirit of <profanity>-ness common in popular media - the fancy hat to go with an exasperating personality, the fur-lined coat (fur seems to be commonly associated with villainous characters), and of course, that smarmy grin begging for a fist.

My digital sketch is only slightly cleaner than the ballpoint pen sketch - I'm still not very skilled with the tablet, unfortunately, and this is my first time really working with colours using CS6. You can also probably tell where the transfer from paper to tablet failed... a lot of the original drawing actually changed, and I'm not too happy about it on the whole, but I'm not sure I can do anything about it without spending time that I don't have on it. Another thing I wish I could have done better is bring out that general <obscenity>-ness in their expression. The original image really does that better, with that condescending look and mocking eyebrows. And I do wish I could draw hands, poses, etc everything better, generally speaking, but that's always a given.

The surrounding words should be pretty clear, I think - we start out with an elegant script at the top, and change to a more mundane and ordinary type for the rest of the words below, as suits their meaning. The intended effect of the words themselves should speak for itself too, I think. You could call it mockery of the supposed suaveness and attractiveness of the original character, I suppose. The stiff formality of the words is also supposed to juxtapose the sheer impropriety of the question, kind of like how I went into this thinking the characters would be genuinely attractive to women in general but personally finding them quite repulsive instead. Certainly the impeccable dress of the characters seem to conflict greatly with their beastly personalities.

The background colour is reminiscent of some of the joke valentines cards I see sometimes on social media - they're usually accompanied by some kind of pun, but if I have to make a pun about vampires with this thoroughly unlikeable character I'll.. I'd much rather not. Honestly speaking just drawing this generic animesque character took a lot out of me.

I'll just end with one last paragraph on this - it's okay to like and enjoy content with dubious or problematic aspects in them - but it's important to be aware of the problems and be critical in the consumption of media. It's the only way to keep fantasy well-separated from reality, as enjoyable as the world of the former may be. So go forth and indulge in the world of physics-defying swords, hair and bosoms, of world-saving children, of suspiciously willing harems of the opposite gender... just don't forget to pull back every now and then.