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...How ero manga
are consumed is as important to their constructions of meaning,
pleasure, and ideology as what is printed graphically on the
page. For comic books filled with stories of sexual violence
and images of naked bodies, they are marketed and consumed
with surprising openness. Such openness is at odds with the
way pornography circulates in a country like the United States,
where its sale is bounded (by section of town, store, magazine
rack, protected cover) and its consumption guided by a notion
of privacy (it is read in private space or only in those parts
of public space clearly marked for this purpose.) Ero manga,
by contrast, are positioned in full view in the many establishments
in which they are sold. They are placed inside rather than
outside the paths their readers will follow in their everyday
lives (particularly for those who are most mobile, constantly
moving between homes and places of study or labor), and these
paths also constitute the circuit within which ero manga are
normally consumed. Images of naked schoolgirls and stories
of their rape or sexual awakenings are thus bought and scanned
freely in the domain of open public space.
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