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See, even though I don't work in comics retail day to day anymore, I still assist my former employer by helping set order levels on the manga titles. Because there's a hell of a lot of them, and he's not that familiar with them. And I'll be honest, my first reaction to seeing the solicitation for Nymphet was "What the holy hell? A comedy series about an eight year old girl trying to have sex with her teacher? Who the fuck thought this would fly in the US, and why do they still have a job?" My second reaction was "Gee, as much as it might amuse me to see Mike go to jail, I'm not sure I want it to be for selling this comic." And so, I declined to order it.
Now, I'm not a prude. Far from it (just ask poor, put upon Mike). I'll happily order hentai manga for the store, sexually suggestive yaoi, and risque manga titles of all genres from all publishers. And even though I understood that this particular title was not anything other than extraordinarily raunchy (no actual sex is in the book, in other words), I didn't feel that sexually suggestive material featuring elementary school age children was a good fit for the store. And seeing some of these sample pages, out of context as they are, hasn't persuaded me that I made a mistake.
In the long run, I think a title like this would have done more harm than good in the US marketplace. We've all been sort of bracing for a big manga backlash from the forces of social conservatism and religious authority, and this could easily have been the book that tipped it off, as the mere suggestion of sexuality in children is enough to set off major moral crusades in this country. You can sort of see it happening already, with the "all manga is porn" responses that have appeared in reaction to this news. And as stupid and short-sighted as those responses are, I have trouble seeing the "CENSORSHIP! CENSORSHIP! WE DEMAND OUR LOLI!" responses from some of the books defenders as any more helpful.