Watashi, Maou. Naze ka Yuusha ni Dekiaisarete imasu

[forget_it]

All these comments must be discouraging to read if you're a baby faced adult. I'm sick of seeing these comments myself. The implications of these commentors are so nasty.

All these comments calling the hero a pedophile for being attracted to her are basically saying that baby faced adults shouldn't be allowed to have consenting romantic relationships with people their age because "you look like a child therefore your lover must be a pedophile to be attracted to you" and "you should date someone whose face matches yours" Beyond how rude and disgusting that is to say to someone, are they implying that these baby faced adults should date teenagers? They're still adults, you know. It's insulting.

So a two hundred year old woman should date a fourteen years old because "he looks her age"? Does this sort of statement not seem strange to you? She's hundreds of years old. That's a lot of life experience. If she is an adult, then she just has a young appearance but is still an adult inside. How can she date an underage child? That would be illegal.

I don't see this kind of attitude in stories where there's an isekai and the main character is mentally decades older than the underage teenagers they're salivating over. That's even more questionable but nobody ever talks about that.

People care more about feeling comfortable than the actual reality of the situation. The mangaka was careful to make the hero legal age, but not too old so as to prevent it from being unbalanced. She looks like a fifteen to sixteen year old at most and the hero is nineteen.

If she's a grown woman for her demon kind, then her emotional distance is expected. It's not like she can do anything about this situation. If she's a teenager in demon years (looks about fifteen to sixteen), then it's not too bad either. They're both teenagers so there's no argument here.

You should really think things through before commenting blindly. It's one thing not to like the story, it's another to make the wrong assumptions and then drown the comments section in hate because you don't understand the popular manga concept of "looks younger than she actually is".

 

[beeqwop]

Lol it’s the 20,000 year old demon in a child’s body trope. People see that for what it is. Cope.

 

[ichirako]

Thanks for the update, Endless Journey!
Your hard work is very much appreciated.. 😁

Well said, @forget_it! I totally agree with you. 😉
Those people who keeps on bashing the hero applying their 'morals' and 'logic' are actually funny.
Didn't think they really thought really hard for the 'logic' behind this and just based it on their own selfish views~

Oh well, like what I've said, to each its own~

 

[TearsketchTI]

This would've been a lot of fun as a SMUT...😉

 

[forget_it]

@ichirako

Thank you! I'm so tired of people saying "even if she's an adult, she looks like a child so anyone attracted to her must be a pedo". No, she's still an adult and it's not always about appearance.

Them saying "anyone who thinks baby faced adults can date other adults are using pedophile logic to justify their crime" is really shallow and disgusting. A lot of Japanese women look young for their age, but that doesn't mean you can infantilize them.

This manga was fairly innocuous until people decided to make it dirty. Considering the discrimination of East Asians in the west, where the women tend to be infantilized and fetishized for being Asian, I find it really disgusting how these people in the comment section behave. There's been a recent flood of "moral police" trying to enforce dogmatic westernized views that lack understanding onto others in places where people come to consume and share their thoughts on East Asian media and I think that's kind of racist. You need to understand the situation and recognize that some things are not necessarily about wrong or right. Sometimes, it is merely a different cultural perspective. A lot of Japanese women look young for their age so you will see this trope often in their manga.

 

[Uthred]

Weird to see people ignoring the creepiest thing about it, he broke into her house, beat her up, kidnapped her, is holding her in his house by force and grooming her to be his sex slave.

 

[immortalartisan]

your guilty of breaking and entering, kidnapping, and grooming a minor. What do you plead “hero”

 

[Kevadu]

@Uthred Nah that always bothered me too. This story is extremely creepy when you think about it, and it's got nothing to do with anyone's appearance.

 

[ishnia]

super cute art! creepy story though, yeah. ever heard of consent, hero?

 

[Pokari]

Would have been closer to palatable if any of a number things were different—this seems like about the worst case-scenario you could get without forfeiting the pretense that it's all a light-hearted comedy of the sort it makes itself out to be.

Spoiler

Her being too-young (in "demon years") is compounded by her being drawn to look even younger than that; The hero being a pervert, an apparent lolicon, a kidnapper (like we can call her a prisoner of war but that really isn't how it's presented), a selfish person completely oblivious to the qualms of his supposed "beloved"...

And then to add insult to all those injuries, we're supposed to think this is all adorable and cute and endearing, apparently. Yikes!

...Interestingly, looking at the publisher via MangaUpdates (...because I could hardly believe that "shoujo" tag with how much this is structured as a pedo shounen gig)... There's a lot of stuff from the publication this comes from, "Comic Pash!" that seems to be deemed "not shoujo" by fans even though the magazine itself is said (...somewhere on the internet...) to proclaim itself to be for a female audience.

This, remarkably, doesn't even seem to be the least "shoujo-y" manga from them; it's pretty middle-of-the-road. I wonder what that's all about. Is it a joke? Edited by young men who have no idea what girls like to read? Or edited by/for ladies of obscure tastes...?

Edit: Okay, but the stuff about the magazine is from an old single-issue run of a physical magazine by the same name, whereas this is from a more recent online site from the same publisher... I think. Which definitely isn't just hosting shoujo. So from whence the assertion that this is shoujo, I wonder...? (I'm not saying it's wrong, I'm just suspicious because it seems an... odd... demographic-target choice for this)

@forget_it:

Having been to Akihabara once, well... Alas, the pedo stuff is exactly what it looks like from the outside; the cultural differences you're talking about do not account for the weird pedophilia problem that's specific to otaku-dom. I realize that may be hard to swallow, or that my assertion of it won't sway your steadfast opinion. That's fine. If your reading of stuff like this manga doesn't take into account the motivations behind "legal loli" characters, good for you, honestly. But it would be good for you to understand that the rest of us may have in fact formed well-informed opinions on this topic that disagree with your own: It's not just some mindless moral panic towards the unfamiliar, alas, but the more turgid disgust that comes with intimate familiarity over time with something most-unpleasant.

Also, as an aside... honestly, this particular manga wasn't "fairly innocuous until people decided to make it dirty", one of the first things we get is the hero ogling her thighs. >_>;

 

[amanimal]

FBI open up

 

[Justanotherone]

So basically, the hero kidnapped the 200 year old demon queen (15 years old in human year?) because he found her cute and wants her to do wifey things to him (welcome him back home, cook, etc). Glad this is lighthearted....

 

[Mwood2015]

Yes go with the cute demon queen and leave the king behind

 

[Cumology]

ew. actually grossed out.

 

[forget_it]

@Pokari

The hero is outright said to be 19. The demon queen is 15 in human years according to the first chapter. That's a four year difference and it's not uncommon for such a pairing to exist in real life. This is a medieval fantasy-ish setting.

He's attracted to her so he gets flustered or delighted to be around her or see a glimpse of parts of her he finds attractive. This is not pedophilia unless you consider it a crime for a nineteen year old to date a fifteen year old or for him to hold hands with her. She dresses more childishly so it makes her look younger, but this isn't an abnormal fashion style.

This is a shoujo manga. The male lead will look cool. It is a trend for shoujo male lead characters to act like him. The female lead will look cutesy and childish, likely dress soft and innocent. Mature is usually a rival or friend character. It's a female fantasy so the female character will have her every want and need cared for. Character designs are typical.

I know what you were referring to when you talked about Akihabara and I'm going to tell you that not everything stems from that. Though the issue of child pornography is a serious issue, this manga is not child pornography and it's not ecchi and it's not even from the perspective of the male gaze...it's not pedophilia either.

This manga is a shoujo with a primary female audience that describes the fantasy of having a capable older boy to take care of their wants and needs. The age gap trope is common in manga. You see even greater gaps in several famous and legendary shoujo manga and it's not always about...kinks.

Some young girls will want to feel like a handsome prince will still like them even if they have not yet fully developed. It is a harmless fantasy. Some want to see expression of their own fantasies about their crush that's forever out of reach. That's why no matter how cold she is, he still loves her without feeling truly disheartened.

Not everyone develops quickly when it comes to puberty (although some develop more quickly) and a lot of Asians look young for their age. There will be clothing made to suit these looks, sometimes it is merely a cute and feminine style which is not uncommon. You will see older women dress very young sometimes. Some people will like certain looks and it's not necessarily due to anime or porn. It's simply fashion and appearance.

I think judging based entirely on looks is lookism so I pushed back against the comments that I felt did this. If they want to protest it that's fine, but don't throw aside her true age because you think she looks younger than she actually is. Many readers did. She's fifteen. She's not actually thirteen even if she looks like it to you.

For example, you cannot reasonably expect to be able to demand the lady of eternal youth, Masako Mizutani, to date a recent college graduate because she looks like she's in her twenties and not look crazy for demanding it. It would be even worse to criticize her husband for marrying her (and likely looking older than her) and make rude assumptions about his character. Masako Mizutani is a grandmother already.

I hope you never look at InuxBoku SS, which is a shounen (written by a woman, may she rest in peace). That one is a little similar due to some character tropes, but has a plot and is lot more spicy. The female main character is also fifteen, looks young and even tinier, and wears a garter belt beneath a short skirt and thigh highs. The male is an adult man and has stalker pictures of her plastered all over his room.

 

[GizmoJP]

I'm really enjoying this cute story.

I honestly don't see what the fuss is about, it's like people never consumed japanese comics until now and is _REALLY_ looking for something to be upset about lmao

 

[Pokari]

@forget_it:

I think you rather missed the broad point of what I wanted to say to you: That some of us have well-formed low opinions of these things, and are seeing things from a different perspective from you not because we just "can't see the truth" that you see, but because we've looked at this from lots of different angles, including the ones you're talking about, and reached a different conclusion than you.

But at this point I want to dig into one particular crucial point.

In this case one of the most profound differences in philosophy we're running into, I think, is the idea that I, as a reader, can object to things portrayed in a work based on what and whom it panders to (stereotypes, bad ideas about relationships, toxic worldviews, sexual content in questionable taste; in this case pedophilia) in circumstances where in the real world I would be totally okay with the same facts (this manga about abducting someone and sexually harassing them would not really one of those instances for me, mind, but...). This takes two basic forms:

1) I can be unappreciative of stereotypes, in particular, even if someone coincidentally acting to a stereotype would be totally reasonable and objectionable in real life—because repeating stories are how stereotypes spread. (This has no pretty much no bearing on this particular manga).

2) I can be skeptical of the authorial motives behind the facts on the ground, in fiction. The cleanest-cut example of this I've ever heard of (I'm probably getting the facts slightly wrong but it's the perfect example):

Spoiler

There was some fantasy/sci-fi thing where there were a bunch of super-scantily clad bodacious women of some-or-other non-human race (as happens). This was recent enough such that people were being appropriately unimpressed. An author responds to the criticism by saying, "A-ha, but you don't know what I know about the story, you're all going to feel so bad when you find out how prejudiced you've all been". Then later says, "You see, this race actually breathes through their skin so the super-thin bikinis are necessary for their survival! Don't you feel awful for shaming them now?"—to which the universal response was pretty much, "Yeah, we'd be totally sympathetic... if they were a real people. But no, you blathering idiot, it was your idea to come up with such a race, and draw them that way, and it's bloody obvious you just wanted to draw some scantily-clad women."

To wit, something being excusable in-universe does not absolve the author if what they're doing is making excuses to get away with something bad. Reasonable people can disagree, in some cases, as to whether that's what's going on in a particular work, mind.

All of which is to say, I can be super-skeptical of this work—as I am—at the same time as I am totally sympathetic to real-world couples who are the same age but look to be very different. Futhermore, I can respect mangas that approach that appearance-gap premise seriously and sincerely (which definitely exist, I can't remember any of the names off the top of my head), while denouncing those that I feel are a poor-taste veneer for something much less tasteful. (We disagree on that point on this manga. I get that. But the "lookism" you're concerned about just really isn't the problem at hand, here. We're not "judging entirely based on looks", or at least I'm not, but rather on the totality of what I've read and my doubt towards it being at all in good faith and good taste.)

That is really the difference in our reasoning that I would most like to convey to you today. I'd honestly be happy to go through a point-by-point discussion of why we disagree so strongly about this particular manga, but I feel if I go into that now without saying this first it will muddle the message.

 

[forget_it]

@Pokari

Ok, let me rephrase since you've seen something in my comments that was not my intention. You can disagree in the same way I can disagree. There. That's it. As someone who is concerned with the real life issue of human trafficking, pedophilia, and child abuse (sexual abuse, child porn) and once worked for a nonprofit organization that carried these concerns and as someone who is politically active, I think it's not good to blur the lines and water down the topic like this so I brought it up. That's my perspective. If people disagree then that's their perspective. I won't think less of them morally because of it.

You can call me ignorant all you like because you've been to Akihabara and talk about how you've issues with these tropes and that's perfectly fine and entirely valid and entirely common. There's a lot of different tropes that are cliche or annoying or should be changed. That's your perspective, but that's not all of these comments are saying. They have their own perspective and they're free to say it in the same way I am free to pull up my concerns. I don't think it's right to call something that's not pedophilia pedophilia. I think it's important to investigate first before making such accusations.

I was talking about the lookism on the part of several commentors, not from you. If it doesn't apply to you, then you're not the one that's directed towards. Lookism is a serious issue in several Asian countries and it's not a joke. It is not funny. It is a societal issue and it is something I and my friends experienced. Ever interview for a job only to be treated unpleasantly due to your appearance? The interviewer becomes rude and unpleasant the moment they see your appearance. Ever had people give you a hard time based off of appearance over the smallest things? Refuse to give you service at a hospital and then publicly bully you over it? Have people make nasty moral assumptions based on your weight and then publicly humiliate you over it? These are all things that have happened to me or others. There's a webtoon called Lookism that draws attention to this issue, but this is a common theme in other media because it is a problem.

It is harder if they're older than you or in a position of power over you because of the stratas in society. You cannot always fight back. They may passive aggressively delay your medical report (you may have paid but they may never even send it to you), pretend to fumble several times when checking out your purchases while making eye contact with you, make snide comments about you when you can hear, or make rude comments loudly where people hear you. They give you judgey looks without caring if you notice or not. And it doesn't stop. And it happens everywhere. Comments like the ones many people made here were only over a manga, but words can still affect and influence people online.

I also made some mention of cultural imperialism in one of my comments due to the attitude of some commentors and I'm not the only person who has brought that topic up. I'm not going to argue with you over that one. There's no value to it.

That's my perspective and I'm not ignorant for saying so. I don't think it matters whether you agree or disagree, since I think everyone has their perspective (as I have mentioned multiple times my previous response), but this is mine. You have yours, I have mine.

 

[Pokari]

@forget_it:

Honestly, the extent to which our different experiences are giving us completely orthogonal ways of looking at this is fascinating. I'd love to discuss it at length, though I'm not sure if that would be too exhausting for both or either of us, and alas this is now getting amply off-topic as to no longer belong in this manga's comment thread.

I apologize for the pious tone of my original post, for what it's worth: We differ enough in our underlying assumptions (of what's going on in the world, where the moral dangers are, and towards manga itself) that I took what you'd said rather wrongly compared to what you'd meant, I think.

 

[forget_it]

@Pokari
That's what discussions are for - to settle differences and understand the other perspective. Though we both take in information from different angles, our life experiences and perspectives can still differ. It added to the discussion 🙂

Apology accepted. Thank you for apologizing and I hope you did not take too much offense to my straightforward way of speaking.