Pornography Without Sex

Standing on the bishōjo-style eromanga side and surveying the whole of manga, anime, games, light novels and other expressive forms targeting the younger generation and otaku, one notices something. Things that were once an attraction of bishōjo-style eromanga – cuteness and beauty, the ridiculous and repulsive – have also become abundant in other categories of content since the mid-1990s. One can say that the object is that which stimulates those subtle feelings lumped together as “moe.” My intention is not to stir up trouble, but many of the memes contained in works associated with moe originate in bishōjo-style eromanga. Here I would like to trace some of this transfer from bishōjo-style eromanga.

Permeation and diffusion of course occur in every category of content. Works in various clusters cross borders, exchange genes and come to resemble one another. Take for example Strawberry Marshmallow (Ichigo mashimaro, published by Media Wākusu from 2003). One of the stars of moe content, it comically depicts the leisurely everyday of a 16-year-old girl in highschool and a group of four gradeschool girls who hang around her. That is all there is to the manga. According to the afterword to the first volume, the artist behind Strawberry Marshmallow, Barasui, started out as a “postcard artisan” (hagaki shokunin) submitting lolicon illustrations to Monthly Comic Dengeki Daioh. Scouted by an editor, he became a professional manga artist. It is not an uncommon story for the submission of illustrations of cute girls to lead to a debut as a manga artist. In eromanga, this was the case for Rie-chan 14-sai (aka Rie-chan Jūyonsai), who is one of the forerunners of moe. Like Rie-chan 14-sai, Barasui also had almost no experience drawing manga before his debut. Obviously, his technique as a manga artist is still developing, and if there are places where the paneling looks wonky, then the pacing can also be off at times.

Judging from its framework, Strawberry Marshmallow belongs to the tradition of comedy manga about everyday life, or slice-of-life comedy manga. One might describe it as sharing traits with Sakura Momoko's Chibi Maruko-chan (Little Maruko, published by Shūeisha from 1987) and Haruki Etsumi's Chie the Brat. It is also possible to see it as the successor to Azuma Kiyohiko's Azumanga Daioh (Azumanga daiō, published by Media Wākusu from 2000), which was a hit series in the same magazine, Monthly Comic Dengeki Daioh.