4 Comments
User's avatar
Porter Woodward's avatar

Passively active or actively passive...

Glad you brought up Manga and thus by extension: Anime. As I was reading this I immediately went to the typical manga/anime harem... The hapless "hero" unable to fathom why the gals are into him, and competing with one another over him. It's much the same. So to some extent I accept the hypothesis that as these became ever more available - P.A.'s star shrunk.

But as you note the heavy overlap seems like a contra indication. Perhaps as Gibson said: the future was already here, just not evenly distributed.

Expand full comment
Hal Johnson's avatar

Well, when do you reckon PA started waning? When do you consider harem manga to wax in America? Urusei Yatsura is widely considered the ur-text of the genre, and that started reprints here in 1989.

Expand full comment
David Perlmutter's avatar

Piers wants his characters to have active sex lives, I guess...

Expand full comment
Hal Johnson's avatar

Sometimes active, sometimes passive…

Expand full comment