Britney Spears cosplays for manga
And it’s a loli manga at that.
Japanese artist, Takeshi Murakami, had American pop star, Britney Spears, pose in several cosplay outfits from a manga. He sees Britney as “combining high fashion with Japanese manga“.
Britney is actually wearing a sukumizu (a navy swimsuit worn by school girls) and a randosel (backpack used by elementary students), both of which are fetish items in Japanese lolicon.
It doesn’t really matter though, because this was actually a political message condemning recent efforts to censor loli manga. Some of you may have already heard that LDP politicians in Japan are trying to get loli manga censored by using Tokyo regional government ordinances to get around the constitutional protections of free speech and art. Naoki Inose, governor of Tokyo, appeared on TV to support the censorship.
Inose displayed some loli manga while on the show, but while censoring certain parts. The manga he used was “My wife is an elementary schooler!“, and he placed stickers on it to make it look like the scene was more explicit than it really was. This action made the author of the manga, Seiji Matsuyama, furious, and he joined Murakami in the scheme to have Britney dress up as the character that the politicians were deceitfully co-opting.
If the law is passed, then not will the manga be illegal, but the magazine that Britney appears in will also be considered “unhealthy literature” and “virtual child pornography.”
[Unhealthy literature in Japan: Section 3: Restriction of the Sale of Unhealthy Literature
[...]
2. Items which through age, clothing, accessories, school year, setting, other people’s ages, or voice, seem reminiscent of a person who might be recognised as an under-18 (hereafter called a “a fictional minor”) engaged in, or appearing to be engaged in, sexual activity or activity resembling sexual activity, or which impede the development of healthy sexual faculties in youths, or which might be feared to obstruct the healthy development of youths.]
Neither Britney nor the publishing company were aware of the political message and fetishistic overtones of the costumes used in the photos.
Murakami’s take on the situation, in short: “It’s always been obvious that Japanese manga culture, especially when linked to the erotic, must always be considered as art.”
Source: sankakucomplex
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