auikimaya posted:
it's creepy because, even if Yuzu were to take Mimika's advances and accept them, she's not yet on the point of her life to reach an understanding of what's going on.
Again with this "magical age" apparently every human has to reach before suddenly understanding everything that comes with romantic/sexual feelings. I don't wanna complain too much though, it just bugs me how often the argument gets used. :/
Seriously though, at the age Yuzu is at her brain literally hasn't even fully formed yet, particularly the prefrontal cortex which covers decision making and impulse control, and she wouldn't have gone through puberty either. She's the very definition of unable to give informed consent. In terms of cognitive ability, the "magical age" of 18 is actually rounding down.
I feel like this argument works against you here since it underlines how arbitrary the cutoff points societies have chosen are. As you say even 18 is "rounding down" development wise. The brain, and specifically the prefrontal cortex doesn't finish developing until the mid to late 20s. So why do I not see campaigns to raise the age of consent to 25?
Because tradition pulls the other way, the same traditions which once had the age set at 14 or so, and I guarantee that those rules weren't made with the children't best interests in mind. 18 or 19 or so is a compromise between various interests, and by about 18 or so they look like adults so it's hard to really sell the idea of any higher. As I recall, in the US in many areas the drinking age used to be (still is?) 21, so that falls in line. But in any case, by 18/19 they're close enough to the end of development that there's less change happening during the "home stretch", so to speak than the more dramatic changes during the period of say, 12 to 18, which is relevant here.
In any case, I don't think the "arbitrary age" complaint is really going to get you far when trying to justify "loli" stuff. I can see it if you were talking about say, Pure Water Adolescence, where the character involved is sitting right on that border line, or the student-teacher relationship in Hanjuku Joshi. But when you're talking about Yuzu in this story, it's a bridge too far.