I wonder if I’m the only one who’s a bit off by this?

He is relearning life because he used to be a mindless sex cyborg but got saved. So yeah, people are viewing it differently bc of the story themes not because its a mm

I get your point. However it still doesn’t excuse how the uke looks, acts, dresses like a literal child (Even the ears??). The whole “If they’re an adult it’s legal” sht all over again. People sexualises mlm sm that they ignore pedo/rapists. Bait is still bait. Don’t enable it.

Unfortunately I think that suggests that a really tall man who is 30 years old who's over 6ft is sexualizing a child when they get together with an under 5ft same age woman.

The ears were forcibly implanted on him when he was in the research lab as a way to dehumanize him. He never was taught to speak before meeting shindou because he was conditioned to be a sex android. Now I do agree that he dress and acts like a child. He even has a 5 year old friend that he hangs out with. But this is just what this mangaka makes. All their characters are like this. It even has a shota tag

I see what you mean, and I see that it’s coming from good faith.

I’ve also been trying to understand what this work implies(?) for an author and for their readers, and I think you raise a good starting point, so I hope you bear with me bc it’s a LOT. (Or not, I get it. But I’m still taking this opportunity to word vomit bc I’m on a holiday and how this story is being written so far is genuinely breaking my heart for Shindoh, and yes, that’s also been foreshadowed.. )

Anyway!

It would be easy to look at the story and dismiss it as lolicon(shotacon bs) as you put it; it has all the makings of it. (I did at first!)

If we remember the previous volumes, Toshio has, through unlawful and unethical human intervention, effectively been reduced to (pardon my french) a retard and aggressively regressed to an ‘age’ that appeals to men. The project was originally meant for a female body but they couldn’t acquire one (gee I wonder why). The author definitely didn’t pull any punches in showing how devoid of principles the project was from the very beginning.

The premise is uninspired: a shota sex cyborg and his ‘guardian’. Whichever way you look it, it’s a degenerate’s porn slop. But, as with many transgressive fiction, I think it’s reductive to stop at that point of reading without considering what the work is actually doing with those elements.

Thematically, it would be a betrayal of Shindoh’s character to interpret what happened to Toshio as simply an uncomplicated fulfillment of that fantasy.

Especially when you look back to Shindoh’s character arc. He is hardly written as someone who simply gets what he wants and is rewarded for it. If anything, it’s the opposite: Toshio’s present condition is the consequence of a system that has all the blanket resources and clearances to strip a person of their autonomy and personhood.

AND Shindoh is COMPLICIT in that system (not only complicit, he was THE beta-tester without his knowledge), which is precisely what makes his later relationship with Toshio morally uncomfortable.

As Toshio exhibits more of his age regression and retardation farther out of that system and FURTHER INTO Shindoh’s space (his lisp, clothes, mannerisms, his strategically-added & retained prey ears, like you mentioned), the narrative doesn’t simply present that shota/childlike regression as ‘now he is more desirable and more accessible solely to Shindoh.’

If anything, it is starkly presented as the aftermath of what’s done to him. And in Toshio’s better fortune(perhaps), it is something that Shindoh has to confront as part of his own complicity.

But it is also Shindoh’s impending misfortune: In the first volume, his uncle’s lead/partner researcher pointed this out quite succinctly: It would’ve been better for Shindoh if they hadn’t met at all. Disgusting I know. At that point of the story, it’s established that the researchers no longer see Toshio capable of sentience, he is ‘it’; they made it so that potential customers coild conveniently leap over major moral hurdles of committing pedophelia.

Now with me, this is where it gets more uncomfortable.

A story can deliberately employ the perfect visual and narrative elements of a sexual fantasy WHILE making them ugly, tragic, and critical of the circumstances that produced them.

Here, Toshio’s ‘innocent & childlike’ traits & personality is inseparable from the violence inflicted on his body and mind. That’s the mirror Shindoh is facing everyday when he chose to free Toshio and take him in under his wing, the very dilemma the researcher was hinting at.

In that violence, Shindoh is forced to see himself in ways that, say, humans may never truly confront when it comes to their own complicity in the ethics of farming animals while simultaneously housing other animals as pets, and calling them part of the family. Which is where the story is currently heading at, based on how more responsive he is becoming to Toshio’s more blatant request for affection despite himself.

And that makes the contrast with a female-male relationship more complicated too. You can absolutely say that the premise would be received differently if Toshio were female, and that gendered double standards in how readers perceive sexualized children are worth discussing. But that doesn’t necessarily tell us what this particular story is saying.

It’d be incredibly and undestandably easy to conflate them, BUT they are not the same.

The fact that something resembles a fetishistic premise doesn’t, by itself, establish that the work endorses the fetish.

But I get it, I really do get where you’re coming from.

We know there are no winners in this story, not even the author. There will be no catharsis for any of them beyond the brief picturesque ‘ordinary’ moments of their lives, and that’s makes their relationship more tragic and compelling.

Judging from the progression of the story, Shindoh’s character arc will eventually face what it means for him to recognize a manufactured object of desire as a being completely cognizant of consent and bodily autonomy, and what it means to see Toshio’s insistent requests for more affections SEPARATE from his manufactured retarded condition.

But that would be near impossible bc Shindoh is, in a way, a vital part, the crux of the consequences. (My unpopular take is: To be free from it all, Shindoh has to kill Toshio. That’d be the kindest and most forgiving end for both of them. Shindoh does it after he reached some kind of epiphany or it would mean nothing. But obviously, that’s not going to happen bc that’s too an easy way out of this story and I’m not the author).

And that’s why reading Toshio’s regression purely as wish fulfillment flattens the moral conflict that gives Shindoh’s character arc much of its weight, and leaves Toshio’s much more one-dimensional, which, in my opinion, is a more damning mirror on our capacity for literacy.