The Cultural Context and the Interpretation of Japanese 'Lolita Complex' Style Anime

Japanese animated films or anime have been popular in the West since the early 1990s. However, media interest in anime (particularly in Britain) has tended to focus on negative representations of anime concerning violence, sexuality and young girls. The current paper undertakes an examination of the genre of 'Lolita complex' or rorikon anime, the focus of these concerns. It is argued that the term 'Lolita' has a culturally specific meaning and that it has a different meaning in Western culture to that in Japan. This has led to a misperception of aspects of Japanese society and its cultural products such as anime. Furthermore it is argued that rorikon anime reflects teenage anxieties about the adult world, and changes in society and gender roles rather than perverse male sexual desire. An examination of the elements of rorikon anime shows that, rather than the product of a cultural 'other', it reflects features common across Japanese and Western cultures. One of the key aspects of globalization is the ready availability of the cultural products of one country to other nations round the world. The development of the internet as a global marketplace and its social media role for creating communities of fans of these products has further enhanced this cross-cultural communication. This can be seen most clearly in the popularity of Japanese popular culture (in terms of a range of products such as animated films (anime), comic books (manga), video games and toys) in Western countries. During the last twenty-five years these products moved from a minority cult interest in the West to a hugely popular, multimillion dollar industry. The Western popular cultural image of Japan moved from the late twentieth century view of Japan as a dynamic commercial and industrial giant to the twenty-first century image of Cool Japan, the source of innovative and exciting popular culture including pop art, fashion and film (e.g. Condry and Fujita, 2011). Yet despite its rich diversity of subject matter and widespread popularity there is also a Western view of Japanese popular culture, particularly anime, that presents it as a confusing and potentially dangerous, trangressive cultural 'other' (e.g. Izawa, 1997), and this has had an impact on the reception of manga and anime in Western countries, particularly Britain where, despite the initial interest in the mainstream media during the early 1990s, anime for adults disappeared from the main television channels (Spall, 2009). In episode five of season nine of the American television comedy cartoon series Family