Kodansha, which had planned to put the latest issue of Young Magazine on sale tomorrow (January 12), has been forced to postpone the publishing date to January 21st.
Why? Because it suddenly realised that an ad page announcing a new photo book for Tomomi Kasai, soon to leave AKB48 formally and concentrate on her solo career, was “inappropriate”.
Yes, Tomomi and her “hand bra” poses are too sexy for Kodansha (admittedly, the “hands” are not Tomomi’s but those of a young boy). The issue would have featured Kasai heavily, including on the cover.
Instead, the next issue will appear on January 21st now, the same as should have been on sale yesterday, only without the offending Tomomi Kasai photo.
Young Magazine always features lots of bikini-clad girls and, despite some manga, is at least in part a soft core idol porn mag. So we at Tokyo Kinky are a little shocked by their conservative stance here.
This is last week’s issue.
Admittedly, the Tomomi Kasai picture is pretty tasteless and has been causing a stir since it first was released.
For fuck’s sake, if you show that much you might as well just show her complete breasts. And the foreign boy lurking at the back there is exploitative and an odd ball choice. We’re not sure about the artistic aims of the image — or even the erotic ones. The boy is frankly just off-putting!
Some people have been saying it’s close to pedophilia — but the boy isn’t the one who’s actually showing flesh. Certainly the juxtaposition between a youthful, sensual female form and an asexual, possibly naked infant is unsettling. But as far as we are concerned, it’s just a bad photo and does not do achieve a satisfactory effect in any camp.
At the end of the day, this is AKB, remember: A soft-core adult video industry masquerading as a music group.
Kasai is one of the rare AKB girls to “graduate” the group not due to scandal but her own ambitions.
The jury is out on whether the twenty-one-year old can actually flog stuff by herself but Tokyo at any rate is plastered at the moment in ads for her CDs.
AKB and their controllers are no stranger to going too far, whether it be bizarre Lolicon dancing or overtly lesbian kissing ads.
And here’s the rub.
At least with straightforward idols, there is no pretence. But trying to give off the air of something sophisticated (in this case, music) is rather risible when in fact they exist primarily as fuel for masturbatory fantasies.
