I blame human evolutionary trait, but then again Japan has a culture of liking anything cute (and businesses exploiting it).
From what I recall it was to do with males and females in Japanese culture being segregated from the start of puberty, so the only females that unmarried pubescent/post-pubescent males would regularly get to see were prepubescent girls, which obviously means that prepubescent girls were the only people to which heterosexual males could direct their amorous attentions.
This caused lolicon as a Japanese cultural phenomenon to take root, and even with the removal of harsh gender segregation it has persisted to this day, where the internet has made it more widespread and given it a more perverse nature.
On the topic of this comic: Holy crap, what a tease. I would pay many moneybucks for a comic exclusively following the Eri x child Nozomi subplot. I don't care if that makes me a creepy paedocon.
last edited at Aug 15, 2014 3:23AM