Only one problem...

100% Agree.

Do you never read any problematic romance? Saying a line must be drawn and that it can't be romanticized feels a bit silly to me. It's fine to point out the problematic parts and to not enjoy it being romanticized. But it's also okay to enjoy the manga as it is, it's not hurting anyone. Once we start policing what problematic tropes are okay and not okay, it will only spiral downwards. How boring would it be if every single romance story was only about completely healthy and non-problematic couples that's only okay if it would be okay in real life? The beauty of fiction is that you can explore themes and dynamics that would normally not fly in real life.

I can understand your perspective, but I still don't think romanticizing relationships between minors and adults is a good idea. A problematic relationship between adults is something that can be more easily glazed over as still enjoyable despite being problematic. Even when it comes to age gaps, if it was still between two adults, I wouldn't say a word. My main concern is adults sexualising or romanticizing minors and minors thinking that it's okay. Especially when genres such as shoujo manga are catered towards a younger audience, I think there needs to be limits.

Sure, as a functional adult, I can look at this and say it's just fiction. It doesn't hurt anyone-- but how does it influence people? How old are the target readers? Do they understand and acknowledge the difference between a relationship with an adult and someone their own age? This is the one trope that I think could be easily avoided or toned down so that it's at least with someone who's 18. The girl being legally an adult wouldn't make this already good plot line boring, they could still have an interesting age gap, and it would feel more appropriate. I'm not claiming that every story should only have healthy relationships, I just think the bare minimum should be that those involved in the relationship, albeit fictional, should be adults when they become involved with one another or close to the same age if depicting relationships between two minors.

Obviously, this is a personal preference of mine, as I don't see her being a minor as just problematic, but also unimaginable because of my own age (not to mention illegal, at least where I live, there's also the matter of emotional maturity and a person's understanding of relationships). I'm not at all attempting to point fingers at problematic or dark romances, simply the issue of romanticizing minors with adults which has been a noticeable trend in Japanese manga series before.

Side note for anyone else reading this: Just for clarity, in case it wasn't clear from the ridiculously long response above, I am in no way passing any form of judgement at the readers. None. Not even a little. From beginning to end, it's an opinion on what the creators have decided to publish and the implications it may have on a possibly susceptible audience. If you can separate fiction from reality and still enjoy the plot while recognising it's flaws, that's fair. I just also think that it's fair to say that the line should be drawn at relationships with minors to prevent it from being normalised.

First off, thank you for such a mature and respectful answer, I LOVE that!

If you read a lot of BL I'm sure you're familiar with all the problematic themes there; rape, abuse, toxic relationship are left and right. But they're usually between adults. Compare that to this manga, while they do have a big age gap and it's between a minor and an adult, the relationship between them both is healthy, loving and genuine. Which one do you think is more damaging for the youth? I think when you're young, rather than age, it's the actions themselves that would affect them more (but even this argument is flawed, since it follows the same one as "video games makes you violent" which just isn't true). But as you say, when they grow older they will see how perhaps they had "young colored eyes" when reading certain stuff. I have definitely been a victim of this myself haha. But generally speaking I have always had a good grasp of reality and fiction even as a teen. I think perhaps we underestimate them sometimes. We also have to take into consideration where this manga is from, Japan, where I'm pretty sure the age of consent was 13 at the time? Nowadays it's 16, which still is within range for this manga. Where I'm from, age of consent is 15 haha. Age gaps were also waaay more normalized in the past, and it was not looked down upon the same way it is today. Doesn't that mean that getting exposed to it so much actually DIDN'T affect us so negatively? Since we've made a lot of progress in that area, not the opposite? When I read this as a teen, NOBODY criticized the age gap, but now that's all I see people talking about.

I don't know where you draw the line when it comes to darker themes, but why would for example themes where one of them is in a toxic relationship or maybe even abusive be better just because both of them are adults? Compared to a manga where the relationship ASIDE from the age gap is depicted as loving and healthy?

Obviously I TOTALLY understand personal preference in the matter and I'm also NOT coming for you if you think one thing is worse than the other. Where I'm struggling to understand you is the way you say "it's not okay to write a story like this and a line MUST be drawn" rather than "I really don't like this type of story because of the problematic themes". How would one go about this? Would you like certain themes to be "banned" and not allowed to be written, or are you suggesting something else? Obviously, as times change stories also change, so stories like this has already been on the decline. But I think limiting fictional themes will always be a slippery slope. It will start with age gaps between minors and adults, then it will just continue spiraling downwards until only healthy relationships are okay to write about (AND THAT WOULD BE SOOOO BORING TO ME)

I'm also glad that we can have a proper conversation about this haha And you've made some very fair points.

I feel like we could spiral when talking about the age of consent, because so many countries are divided on what's appropriate. Thanks to this conversation, I've done more research and realised that my own country has laws differing per state. I was always taught that the age of consent was 17 and I'm just now realising it's 16 in other states. So it turns out my own country isn't even on the same page when it comes to consent.

You're right, toxicity really has the potential to do damage. But as you said, it follows the same idea as video games being bad for youth (although toxic manga can be more extreme). Maybe it's because toxicity is easier to identify as being bad? Even when we were kids, we knew hurting people was bad so we avoided it. Of course, some people are exceptions to that, but that's a much smaller percentage. I feel like romance is easier to fall into. It's healthy, warm, loving. Getting swept up and seeing the world through rose coloured glasses is a bit easier. I've known a lot of younger women and girls in my teens who didn't see the problem with getting involved with older men until later in life. I've also known plenty of men who try to start relationships with young women who are barely legal. It's difficult to say whether limiting media to not romanticise those relationships will help. Maybe it won't. Maybe it's too deep-rooted in society. But I suppose there's a lot of people out there hoping it'll somehow help even if it's false hope.
We've definitely come a long way, age gaps like those aren't normalised quite as often.

One thing I tend to forget about when reading on here is age restrictions. Abusive and toxic relationships are generally hidden behind age restrictions (depending on their severity). I'm not exactly sure what the age restriction is on Dengeki Daisy, it's likely higher because of the content, but aside from this manga it would be interesting to explore what age restrictions romances have in Japan. Are there any romances between adults and minors that are accessible at a PG13 age restriction rating? I might have to go down a rabbit hole later to figure that out.

Dengeki Daisy is definitely one of the least problematic of the bunch. To be completely honest, I think I was just feeling a bit peeved that day when I wrote my original comment. Which is my bad, I should've given myself more time to phrase myself better before commenting. I do think there's a way to satisfy both parties and age restrictions might be a good middle ground, even though it's certainly not a perfect solution and might even seem questionable. Ironically, it doesn't apply to us here, but choosing to read manga for free was our decision haha

There could be other solutions, but I agree, it's difficult to put limitations on content being published without it going downhill real quick and applying to everything.
Restricting age gaps to being a minimum of school leaver age / last year of high school (18) could be possible, but then I'm curious whether anyone would actually push for a maximum age? What if they start trying to dictate all age gaps? It could become complicated. I also don't want things to become too boring haha
Thanks for having this debate with me because it's made me think about it more deeply too.

how old is she? and him?

Thank you omg.