CAA: Christian Anime Alliance

This is probably the right place. Let me warn you (and all future posters here) that if this somehow becomes a theological debate it will be locked. Otherwise, there's nothing wrong with this thread.

As for your issue, I have this to say: if your friends are not Christian, it won't matter whether or not you present a biblical case given that they don't consider the Bible authoritative. It's good that you've taken a stand on the issue, but I hope you're asking for your own edification, not to use with such friends. Most non-Christians don't like to have verses quoted at them.

But to answer the actual question, this isn't an issue about harming women (you won't find much in the Bible to apply to something like hentai) but about lust. There are multiple verses on this subject, most notably Matthew 5:27-30. You wouldn't have a problem building a basic case here, as the very premise of hentai is to inspire lust. Unfortunately, the people who believe it isn't wrong will mostly be those who don't care about the Bible.

Not only the Bible pseudonym, but moral values in general. But case in point, it's the same.

To put it basically, Hentai was, is, and always will be a Biblical sin. On the same serious level as pornography. Technically yes it isn't "real", but it still serves as a tool for lust. And as pseudonym pointed out in the verse he linked, lusting for women is sinfully wrong to the same level. And believe me, speaking as someone who is still fighting it, it pulls you in just as easily and is just as hard to get out of.

I second UC's comment that a non-Christian will not care if you have Biblical evidence proving hentai is wrong. I mean, look at it this way, would YOU care if someone told you the Koran or Talmud or Bagavagida (I know I spelled that all wrong...>.>;; ) thought something was wrong?

Something you might wanna bring up next time your friends start challenging you (I used to have a friend in my anime club who was into hentai too, so I know how hard it can be to reach some people) saying "it's not real" could easily be then extended to most porn flicks. Afterall their stance would have to be, even though they portray real people "it's not like I'M doing it." Now they are openly accepting televised perversion, so the next step leads to accepting perversion in their own lives since it's obviously not "wrong" to them as their complaint was not a moral one but a whining "it's not real". I'm not sure if your friends DO believe it's wrong, but if they do I would point out that hentai goes against most peoples' rules of moral deceny, glorifies perverse sexuality like any propaganda does (for that matter, if I were to make Nazi propaganda bashing Jews and depicting cartoon sketches of hate crimes, would it be any less bad just because it was not real? Would I not be tempting and enticing people to follow the examples of the cartoons just the same?), it degrades women and instills the idealogy of women being toys in the minds of impressionable teenage boys (in some cases hentai degrades guys as well), not to mention obviously tempting or even encouraging the viewers to imitate the scenes depicted in the anime. That pretty much goes against any moral law that most people subscribe to. If we didn't subscribe to any moral law, we'd be no better than animals.

For your own clarity on the subject, there are many places in the Bible that deal with right and wrong sexuality which hentai obviously mocks and disagrees with. Rape is looked down upon in the OT several times for degrading women (such as the case of Dinah... David's daughter... ect.). As UC pointed out, Mathew 5:27-30 is a good place to start, and I THINK the place where it says "if your eye offends you - better to pluck it out!". Sexuality morality is also laid out in the OT rather strictly. Corinthians also details proper marriage structure to a society that was pretty immoral. Most importantly as a summary of why this is against Christianity is the verse that reads:

"Flee immorality. Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body. " - Corinthians 6:18-20.

I believe that means keeping your whole body pure - eyes and ears included. Hope this helps and wasn't too confusing.

USSRGirl wrote: it degrades women and instills the idealogy of women being toys in the minds of impressionable teenage boys (in some cases hentai degrades guys as well)

If you compare hentai to say that of real girls, you get quite the difference. Real people involve beautiful girls, often who have had plastic surgery and are even airbrushed in pictures... Hentai for the most part, is a fantasy and is a rather strange one I find... Girls are often depicted as looking extremely young (moe is slowly becoming acceptable so it seems >_< Sick very sick...), and often have this innocent look to them with giant eyes and a blushy face, and of course, the guy's fantasy of being extremely over endowed. Yes, that's exactly want girls to be seen as: young, innocent, easy, with an extremely matured body that walks around, enslaved to the guy, practically :/ THIS is the main image of hentai I've seen (in this case when I say 'hentai' I more mean fanservicey pics I've come across before), and for those reasons is exactly is what is moreso disturbing involving the anime fad.

I'm stop my ramble there^^ Just ranting on... I just don't understand sometimes how and why animated porn, if anything, can be addicting. Mind of a girl, but with the above reasons especially...

>.>;; Mmm... that's some good points to think on there, Tenshi. I'm not quite sure which is worst, though I did notice that a large majority of hentai have a kind of pedophillic undertone that adds to the disturbia and sickness. The whole point and portrayl of hentai can't really be thought of as anything other than what it is - satanic exploitation of women and temptation for guys (and girls, but I gotta recognize that guys tend to struggle more with this mentally as an addiction than girls... usually anyway).

Anywho. My rant is now done too as I gotta go. Good comments and points all.

Speaking as someone who's currently, and slowly, being cured of the addiction, I can say not all of it goes to the same level of sickness you see on the outside. That stuff was actually too intense for me so I stayed clear of it.

And if you think it's hard for boys, girls have their own special version they have to watch out for too, Yaoi. When I was at AI, over 1/4 of the girls there swarmed at the booth screaming in excitement for it. This is one of the few times I feel terrible being a fan of this subculture.

Sorry if I'm wondering, but I thought I would just add some thoughts.

Hm yes I have friends that are VERY into shounen-ai, yaoi. I myself have never completely understood it as well, and when I first discovered shounen-ai, thought of it more as something funny, more or less a big joke to me with the couplings. In that case, it goes with how the guys appear to have extremely feminine features, and just sort of an exotic appeal to things with it. Similarly, things like shoujo-ai/yuri can be the said for some guys as well.

Overall though, it just makes the same answer. It's bad no matter what.

Glad that we could be of some help.

Alexander wrote:Not only the Bible pseudonym, but moral values in general. But case in point, it's the same.

This is a minor point, but I actually phrased things the way I did intentionally. There are atheists who would oppose pornography because of how brutal that industry is to the women involved. Those same people would not object to hentai because it doesn't directly harm anyone. But it's not fair to characterize the non-Christian as being without morals.

To reflect on Alec-kun and Tenshi's recent posts (and perhaps reiterate most everything said before):

Personally, I don't understand why girls would be so interested in that Yaoi/shonen-ai trash in the first place. It (as well as hentai) is just an illustrated perversion of what real love and wholesome relationships are. Sickening. But then again, this comes from the fingers (I'm typing, not talking) of a girl who wants to avoid these things and walks in the other direction whenever she sees this type of stuff.

So in short, I agree with what everyone's been saying. Hentai is not specifically in the Bible, but the Bible talks about sexuality, as it should and shouldn't be. Leviticus also makes mention of some things in this area as well.

Yeah, my opinion is - porn is porn, no matter what medium is used. It is all for the same result - a lustful response.
But then, much of what is in today's movies that are allowed in theaters (and even given PG-13 ratings!!) do the same thing without the actual images on the screen. Technically I believe even that is wrong, because again, it produces the same lustful response.
And I don't get the yaoi/yuri thing either. I think it's disgusting. I hate it even when a manga or anime I'm into ends up where the main characters sleep together outside marriage and there's nothing wrong with it. I keep forgetting that's the way society is now, but it annoys me every time I see it. I never finished one series because that happened.
[SPOILER="about which series that was"]That would be Kare Kano.[/SPOILER]

Pornography isn't mentioned in the Bible, either. The Jews were prohibited from having any kind of "graven image" so the porn industry would not have existed in first century Judea for other reasons.

Whether or not it’s wrong has been covered well, so let me move on to the point I want to bring up.

The prohibitions in the Bible aren’t about enforcing a moral standard for a society nor are they about forcing a strange view on an unwilling public. The laws exist to show us the path to a healthy, joyful lifestyle. Jesus did not tell us that to look with lust at a woman was the same as adultery with her because he didn’t want us to look at women or because he wanted us to hate ourselves or some such. He told us that because he wanted us to think about how the things around us influence what kind of people we are. If we give into our lusts, we will be a selfish and hateful people. Resisting our baser urges is what makes us good people. That goes for Christians and non-Christians alike.

Jesus said His own about lusting... that's all I know...

I'm not sure if you realized it, but this thread is several years old. We try to discourage gravedigging--that is, posting to really old threads. I'm assuming you didn't know in this case, so just be more careful next time.

I'm sorry that our rules section is not very specific on the topic of gravedigging (in fact it doesn't say anything at all about it :| ). We're working on rewriting that section though.