I am a man who likes cute things. This is sometimes a problem.

As a general rule in societies around the world, cute often falls into the realm of the feminine and the girly, especially when the ones being cute are girls. This is something I experienced when I was really getting into anime in high school, and people who knew about my interest in anime would sometimes say, “Cardcaptor Sakura? Really?”

During that period, the shock that fanfiction of Gundam Wing existed that paired men with other men was still fresh, so the idea that Cardcaptor Sakura was capable of appealing to a lolicon crowd didn’t even factor into the equation. It was more a matter of me, a guy (almost an adult at that point!), enjoying something that was made for little girls. It’s a battle I had to fight, and it’s a battle I’m sure many of you out there are familiar with and may even continue to go through. How do you break through societal standards of what is considered “umanly?” It’s a little easier when we’re all nerds and we suck at throwing objects, but even in the realm of geekdom you will find that masculinity plays some sort of role.

So when I see people bothered by how often seinen manga have this girlish, cute, sometimes moe aesthetic, I think back to whenever I’ve run into the problem of being told that I’m not supposed to be enjoying cute things made for girls.

Consider the fact that guys are guys, and while some of us like cute things we all have a tendency to like sexy things, though personal preference affects what “sexy” is. There is cute, there is sexy, and there is cute and sexy. And sometimes they all exist in the same comic, sometimes in the same character, and it can be off-putting for a lot of people while being just as enticing for others. Ask yourself, is it all right that a comic can have both sexualized characters and non-sexualized characters interacting with each other on an equal level? Does having sexualized elements in a character sexualize the entirety of their character?

If I had to take a stab at how Azumanga Daioh creator Azuma Kiyohiko felt about these questions, I think his response would be found in the character of Kimura.

Kimura appears to be a pretty creepy guy. He’s a high school teacher with a thing for high school girls to the point that, for him, age is irrelevant because “high school is high school.” But then you see how the guys in his classes react to him. They consider him a “role model” of sorts because he’s honest with his feelings. Further exploration of Kimura’s character shows that he is both a loving husband and a good father, and that he strongly believes in charity, donating a significant part of his paycheck on a regular basis. At the end of the day, taking all that into account, is he still creepy? Probably, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t a lot of other things too.

Those of you who are creeped out by the state of seinen manga’s more questionable practices have every right to be creeped out, and those of you who enjoy it have every right to enjoy it, and everyone has the right to disagree with each other. To me however, no matter how much questionable material is released and sold, the very fact that cute comics aimed towards adult men are published and manage to be successful is a great triumph that can never be taken away.