* Here's an editorial I recently wrote for GoBoiano.com. Enjoy!
Sword Art Online is making a turn for the strange with this second arc. Kirito's younger sibling Suguha happens to be infatuated with him, even in love with him. True, Kirito is actually a relative who was adopted into his current household, but sibling romance on the whole isn't foreign to anime. 'Incest' might be a harsh term for me to use; after all, family pairings aren't exactly unprecedented historically, and royal families made it a regular practice all over the world. But in developed countries today, at least in the Western mind, incest is weird. Why the hell does anime indulge in this practice?
Sword Art Online. Copyright Reki Kawahara, A-1 Pictures.
As the super popular Sword Art Online is proving, this "Oniichan!" craze isn't overtly frowned upon by every one of its viewers. We take it in stride, a normal occurrence in anime if there ever was one. SAO is adapted from a series of light novels, so the actual phenomenon is entrenched deeper in Japanese culture than one might assume. Bakemonogatari and Nisemonogatari, two insanely clever anime adapted from light novels, are also recent examples of this trend.
A casual Google search on the topic is rather useless and usually states, "Oh, incest is just something anime does." One of the more developed conclusions I found was on a Q & A board:
"I actually asked this Japanese guy that I know this question once. He said that it's not uncommon in Japan for cousins to fall and love and such, it's just a normal part of their society. I think I've read somewhere that in Japan, as well as in other Asian countries, it's taboo to marry someone who isn't purely from that country in descent, even if they are pure Asian and such. Like... It's taboo for someone from Japan to marry someone from England, and it's also taboo for someone from Japan to marry someone from China and such, for example. So incest isn't overly uncommon in places like Japan like it is in western countries, and since Japan is where anime originates from, it's a wide part of some anime, too." http://www.fanpop.com/spots/anime/answers/show/313782/whats-up-with-incest-anime
Racist? Misinformed? Maybe.
Sword Art Online. Copyright Reki Kawahara, A-1 Pictures.
My cowriter at GoBoiano, Mangatherapy, wrote on the subject a couple years back, quoting an article from Japan Times that points out the religious differences between Western countries and Japan. There is, in fact, the mythical mating of the gods Izanagi and Izanami that produced the Japanese Islands, unlike the Western mega-religions that tout a single being created everything. The Japan Times article also goes on to point out that sex is generally not as taboo in Japan as it is everywhere else, and that moral obligations that otherwise control Western sexual activities don't exist in Japan. Japan just happens to love sex more than others, I guess.
The incestuous anime pairing is more often than not a brother/sister one. Mangatherapy goes on to notice the caretaker role that naturally emerges in older sibling/younger sibling pairings. This isn't inherently incestuous at all, as most people concede to the caretaker, teacher/student dynamic that is bound to develop among siblings. Younger siblings are usually naive and seek guidance, and older kids love to think they know enough to teach others. But whereas Western culture doesn't assume siblinghood leads to romance, anime would have us believe that a number of Japanese indeed subscribe to this. Is this common in real life, or simply a trope used by unimaginative writers, or a metaphor for some deeper connection humans should embrace?
I'm no expert on Japanese culture, though I pride myself on pretending to be one. What are your thoughts?
Sword Art Online. Copyright Reki Kawahara, A-1 Pictures.
Sources:
Article images via Crunchyroll.
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