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Mom considers cutting off financial support for son who wants to make eroge
| The woman, who we’ll call Mom-san, has a son in university, and he has a pretty clear vision of what he wants to do after graduation, which ordinarily would make most parents feel happy and reassuring.
However, Mom-san’s son isn’t interested in following the traditional Japanese path of applying for a job with an established company after graduation. And even though entrepreneurship is becoming more common and smiled upon in Japan these days,
| what’s really bothering her is the field he wants to work in.
| Mom-san’s son has been an anime otaku since high school, and his goal after graduation is to start a company that produces music for and video game adaptations of anime, as well as planning promotional events for anime/game titles. Some might call that a pie-in-the-sky ambition, but her son has actually already started getting work in the video game field. What’s really got the woman worried, though
| is that she recently found out her son is currently contributing to the production of a pornographic video game, or ero game, as they’re called in the fan community.
“The main character is a nurse, and if a woman who works as a nurse were to see the game’s contents, she’d be so humiliated and hurt,” Mom-san laments. “I’ve asked my son many times to stop working on these kinds of games, but I can’t change his mind.”
| On the contrary, Mom-san’s son has responded by digging in his heels, asserting that it’s impossible to have a career in or related to the anime industry without ever working on pornographic content. “Games like this have the societal effect of preventing large crimes from taking place, and they’re displayed and sold so that kids can’t see them, so there’s no blame on the makers,” he argues. “All of the people working on these games are kind-hearted, normal people,
| people with real talent, so I’m going to continue working with them, instead of being prejudiced towards them.”
The idea of her son being involved in work that, in her words, “hurts people and can’t be shown to children” is just too much for Mom-san to take, and she’s now thinking she might stop paying his tuition and living expenses, under the logic that financially supporting his education is indirectly contributing to the work he plans to do after graduation
| work that she is strongly opposed to (it’s unclear whether her son’s field of study is directly related to animation/video game production). Still, before she pulls the plug on his student life support, she wanted a third-party opinion, and she got one from none other than Toshio Okada, one of the founders of anime studio Gainax and the man commonly called Otaking.
| Okada, who’s now transitioned from creating anime to being a sort of social anthropologist regarding otaku culture, knows a thing or two about the overlapping fields of Japanese animation and ero games. While Gainax has produced a number of landmark series, it’s never been a particularly stable company, and Okada says that during a period when its anime ventures were losing money, the money the company earned making adult video games saved the company,
| so he can definitely see how they’re, at the very least, a means to an end for someone wanting to work in the anime industry.
That said, Okada also recognizes that Mom-san is uncomfortable essentially indirectly investing in the creation of products she finds morally reprehensible by continuing to financially support her son. “Just as he has a dream he doesn’t want to give up on, you have values you don’t want to compromise,” the Gainax founder says.
| “It isn’t a situation where one of you is right and the other wrong, so please discuss the issue together and see if you can’t come to some sort of compromise.”
|
It’s a level-headed, conscientious response, but you can’t help but wonder if there’s much mental flexibility to be found in a mom who apparently never knew that nurses were fetishized in pornography and a son who believes that every single person who works in the ero game industry is kindhearted.
| There’s also the looming fact that a large number of newcomers to the anime industry continue to require parental support to make ends meet, so Mom-san might be worried that if she doesn’t cut the financial cord now, she’ll be paying to help her son make ero games for years to come.
| In any case, it looks like Mom-san and her son have a long, difficult discussion in their future. Even if she does say she won’t be paying for the rest of his education, though, he can always take solace by remembering that Okada himself was a college dropout.
| Sounds more like some family's dirty laundry than legitimate news.
| Oh it's like Sato's friend in NHK. Life imitates art.
| >>203442
>a large number of newcomers to the anime industry continue to require parental support to make ends meet
Why though?
| >>203914
Their boss gives them money and the money they give also happens to be less than a supermarket employee's.
| I'd say that the mom can do want. Stop feeding him or paying for his rent.
However, just keep in mind that her son is very passionate. After he is out of money, he'll either quit his dream career and be a soulless and depressed salaryman. Or, he'll find "other ways" to support doing his career. It just that if the mom finds making porn game is disturbing, this "other ways" would be worse
| *I'd say the mom can do what she wants.
| >>203853
>a large number of newcomers to the anime industry continue to require parental support to make ends meet
>Why though?
Isn't it the same all over the world? Chance equality has been insanely decreased everywhere, starting in the mid/end of 90s. In other words ones parents wallet has become very important in general for individual success, whith a continuous increasing tendency.
It's just logical in this neoliberal hegemony.
| People watch porn, that's just standard. In the grand scheme of things I believe its harmless. I'm of the mindset that if possible a parent should always help their child pursue their dreams if possible even if the parent doesn't fully understand it. As long as it doesn't harm anyone else its fine. I think intentionally sabotaging his studies because your not happy about the dream your child has chosen is just straight up wrong
| >>204693
No, I didn't mean even that. I wanted to ask: why a seemingly thriving industry can't afford or doesn't want to provide its most critical assets,- people who actually draw the fucking thing,- any sort of adequate compensation? So they could at least go on living?
| Are skilled artists there so dime a dozen and worthless?
| >>204964 believe you raised your kid to know what's right and wrong and actively engage in what he is passionate about and try to understand it rather than disregard it all together. If people spent more time understanding and less time assuming, a child is merely a reflection of the teachings of the parent after all
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| In Japan it’s customary for parents to cover their children’s university tuition and living expenses. Yes, a lot of college kids have part-time jobs, but what they earn is generally theirs to spend shopping or on their social life, with Mom and Dad footing the bill for the last part of their education before they enter the working-adult world.
That brings us to a 50-something woman who wrote in, anonymously, to the advice column of the Asashi Shimbun Digital newspaper.