Out of my depth - how do I deal with the worrying anime and manga content my teen looks at online?? (TW: self harm and sexual violence)

Hi all,

I'm new to the forum (and my eldest has only recently been diagnosed) but felt like this would be a good place to turn for some support.

I'm really shaken after seeing what my 14 year old transgender son has been looking at online. To say I feel out of my depth would be an understatement. My initial reaction was utter revulsion, but I know that any form of confrontation needs to be avoided and  'forbidding' him to look at certain sites will have a very negative impact on our somewhat fragile relationship.

I won't go into too much detail - I have never had to post anything online before that includes a trigger warning, but thought it might be wise to include one here. Just in case.

He's completely obsessed by anime and manga. I've been concerned about the 'dark' themes of the anime series he watches for a while now, lots of psychopaths and death themes etc, but he seems completely oblivious to it all. Often he'll want to show me clips or montages from his current series and sometimes I have to refuse and explain that I find the whole premise of the story deeply upsetting. Most recently he's been reading a manga comic online about an abusive and violent male relationship, so I've spoken to him about it to ask him if he knows that's not what a healthy, loving relationship looks like etc. However, I didn't realise how bad it was until this afternoon. I feel physically sick to look at it. 

Ultimately, I spend every day walking on egg shells with this kid. Self-harm is still an ongoing worry so I'm really stuck on how to navigate this as a parent when the usual 'teenager' approaches are a no-go. There has to be a hard line though, doesn't there? - I mean, it would be irresponsible of me not to prevent him accessing stuff like this, but I know that as soon as I take away access to it, things are going to blow up in a big way. I guess I'm scared of his reaction and the meltdown that will result.

Our situation is probably fairly 'niche', but I'd love to hear from anyone who's had to take a firm line and say NO to something and how they went about it. Obviously our children are all different, but I feel totally overwhelmed and have no clue how to best approach it. 

Thanks for reading x

Parents
  • Plain Anime and Manga are not the problem.  It's when someone gets into the more specialised forms of Hentai that the real problems start.

  • alot of plain anime are getting a bit too degenerate now though, every single anime now is all just a overpowered male and every other character is a big chested female with a skirt that doesnt cover anything and they always all end up worshipping the main char. and the main char seemingly always overly interested in his own sister... or his sister into him... it gets to the point every anime is the same and its losing its badassness by going a bit too like a self inserted fantasy of a loser lol

    tbh the sjw progressives should like it for how 99% of the characters are all female, but i guess its the fact they are all objectified that sours the taste for them.

    for me its just that all anime becomes the same copy paste thing, and the fact every char is a female fan service type character makes the animes cheapened, it loses ballance... sure have 1 or 2 fan service characters but not 99% of them all like most animes have now. the anime loses the badass feel when every char is a female thats only use is to perv on lol bleach had a nice ballance and still had that fan service, but were long past bleach to the point they got rid of the badass characters and kept only the perv fan service material. it will probably correct itself when viewership drops as its no longer as badass anymore.

    it needs more badass kenpachi zarakis and less generic panty shot girl you cant even name.

Reply
  • alot of plain anime are getting a bit too degenerate now though, every single anime now is all just a overpowered male and every other character is a big chested female with a skirt that doesnt cover anything and they always all end up worshipping the main char. and the main char seemingly always overly interested in his own sister... or his sister into him... it gets to the point every anime is the same and its losing its badassness by going a bit too like a self inserted fantasy of a loser lol

    tbh the sjw progressives should like it for how 99% of the characters are all female, but i guess its the fact they are all objectified that sours the taste for them.

    for me its just that all anime becomes the same copy paste thing, and the fact every char is a female fan service type character makes the animes cheapened, it loses ballance... sure have 1 or 2 fan service characters but not 99% of them all like most animes have now. the anime loses the badass feel when every char is a female thats only use is to perv on lol bleach had a nice ballance and still had that fan service, but were long past bleach to the point they got rid of the badass characters and kept only the perv fan service material. it will probably correct itself when viewership drops as its no longer as badass anymore.

    it needs more badass kenpachi zarakis and less generic panty shot girl you cant even name.

Children
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