Discussion: Going Too Far Day

Another interesting topic of discussion has recently been popping up among older anime club members and it deals with an event we used to do called Going Too Far Day. Essentially what the club used to do was set aside one day of the anime club meeting and show titles which often pertained graphic hentai, yaoi, and yuri titles. As of this year the event has been discontinued. With a new officer elect approaching the question being asked is whether they should bring this day back. So here's the question being posed;

Do you want Going Too Far Day to return?

I would hold off on coming to a firm answer until reading my and other people's opinion on the subject. I am not going to put up a poll because I feel as if people will simply respond to it without reading the arguments for and against the topic. I wish to have a discussion/debate on the issue with any club members willing to participate. Hopefully the new officers and new members can read this thread to help them decide whether or not they should bring Going Too Far Day back next year.

In order to start the discussion/debate off here is my say on things and I will be arguing for both not having it return and for having it return. I will be my own devil's advocate.

Going Too Far Day is a day often held in march in which we as a club used to watch a number of hentai titles often with at least one accompanying yaoi or yuri title. There were a number of problems with this day and as a former officer who actually helped coordinate the day and as a previous member in the two years prior who went to club on the Going Too Far Days I believe I have enough credibility to say that I think doing Going Too Far Day is a mistake.

The first major problem with the day is the location itself. We do not move rooms when we have this day and I highly doubt that we could change our club meeting room to a more secluded area for this day. As such we are in the same room we always are in. Unlike most of the clubs on campus we do not actually pay for the use of the room but rather it is offered to us freely by the communications building. We essentially have built a type of business relationship with the university and without knowing how they would react to essentially porn being shown in club it is against our interests to break this relationship. It is possible that the university would simply allow us to continue regardless but if they were offended or came under the notion that all anime was pornographic in nature there is a very high possibility that our club would be discontinued. We are a free club on campus that makes no money nor helps the university in anyway. We are essentially free-loading and if we were to break the rules of engagement we might actually lose the club room altogether.

The question might come out how could they possibly find out what we are watching and the answer to this is extremely simple. First and foremost is the fact that they lock the doors in the communications building every Friday around 4:50-5:10 it would be quite simple for that someone locking the doors to simply peer in and report us for abuse of our privileges. In the past we covered up the windows and tint with newspaper which when you think about it simply makes us more suspicious and although we have been lucky fortunate in the past our luck may not hold. If the newspaper were not suspicious enough I can say from experience of walking to get a drink and walking back that anyone entering the building during the meeting can possibly hear what we watch in the club room. Hentai generally is louder during sex scenes and the walls are not sound proof. It does not help that sometimes there are meetings in the rooms around us. We generally have Going Too Far Day in March or end of February and this is problematic for another reason. Tours. Again we've been lucky but during the month of march the school usually has tours going around to show high schoolers the new campus. If the actual faculty would have been fine with the content we show it is almost guaranteed that any tour groups will likely have parents that are highly offended and cause us constant strife. The tours change times every year as sometimes they have some in February or April as well so it is difficult to actually know when we would have a day to safely watch the titles. So the possibility of getting caught when we have this day is important not just for the awkward social moments we may have if a newspaper article is written about the anime club watching hentai but we may also lose the room and by extension the club altogether.

We haven't even gotten to the content itself yet which as a participator of the previous events I can say completely honestly that it is awkward as hell to watch what is essentially porn in a group. My first year here was actually acceptable since I had previously seen Mezzo Forte and new what to expect but the constant worry of someone possibly seeing us watching hentai loomed over me and then again some people in the club do not seem to know how to restrain yourself. One of the years (first I think) I was sitting next to someone who was panting...so yeah not just awkward but creepy. If that were not enough however Going Too Far Day is the day that we generally lose the most people in the club...they just don't return. Whether or not it is because of school or because they were offended we do not know but we lose people every year we have Going Too Far Day.

So aside from the social and club member problems associated with the day there is also the fact of what to show. The honest truth is that there is a fine line between quality and shit and as far as hentai goes the dividing line differs depending on who you ask. As far as hentai goes there are only a few shows that are actually worth seeing and even fewer that are tolerable to watch as a group. There is a small selection of decent shows and a huge variety of what is essentially horrible shows. The fact that some people may like something someone else doesn't raises this factor immeasurably on going too far day. If the actual members were allowed to bring something in the likelihood of them simply bringing in hentai as opposed to good hentai is extremely high. When I say good hentai I mean hentai with actual plot. Mezzo Forte, Kite, and a select few other shows are the only ones in the genre actually worth watching and even then the content in these shows are problematic. Kite is one of the best hentai titles I've seen and I even go so far as to say that it is lowest tier anime status (I treat hentai and anime as separate entities) but that doesn't make it watchable. The content in it details child molestation/rape and both of which topics are extremely on the far end of what is acceptable...and this is one of the good titles. It doesn't matter what happens but on going too far day you are almost definitely going to offend someone and possibly just feel disgusted watching something.

You probably do not realize this since many of you likely do not understand how hentai could possibly have quality but actually finding shows that are not only acceptable but not creepy/disturbing is not easy. Unless you were to show the same titles every year which would get boring so quickly there really aren't a lot of decent shows to show. As an officer you have to walk a fine line when choosing hentai to show because of the fact quality hentai is low in number and if you pick something wrong you may lose a club member for good. Generally comedies work the best for shows to show but the problem with this lies with the fact many hentai comedies are not even on par with the worst regular anime comedy...there is a different type of humor with hentai and generally it deals with rape which is a subject that will also likely offend people. The fact that generally we try to also show at least one yaoi/yuri is further influenced because there is even less yaoi and yuri shows than regular hentai making the selections for yaoi and yuri likely to suck...there is also the possibility of future officers getting rid of either yuri and/or yaoi because of personal biases and the original intent of going to far day was to show things that would cause people discomfort and yet still maintain interest.

I'm likely missing something but now onto the reasons why we could continue Going Too Far Day;

Going Too Far Day is a day that has been maintained in the club and its founder (our current president) since the beginning and was only gotten rid of as of this year. The day has been done at least 4 times in the past with varying degrees of success. It is quite understandable to say that having the actual club members bring titles in for Going Too Far Day is possibly one of the worst things you can possibly do. So if Going Too Far Day was to be continued it would be necessary for the officers to pick the titles.

We haven't gotten in trouble for having the day in the past and it is probably just pessimistic to thing that we will for this. The club members are adults after all and this type of content despite whether or not the majority of people likely do not care for it they shouldn't be able to actually influence us unless we give the university a bad name. If the time to actually host going too far day was changed to a time in which the club was positive it wouldn't get caught then the possibility of hosting a Going Too Far Day is more acceptable. A few possible solutions to this would change the day when watching it to a day when no tours will be on campus, having the event after the regular club meeting which would mean the majority of people in the building would have left, or better than any of those is to have the event off campus or in someone else's place of residence. This would get rid of the need for caution essentially.

There is also the fact that hentai despite all its flaws is a type of animation and since we are the anime club one could potentially argue that hentai/yaoi/yuri is a type of anime that should be represented and experienced by its members. It would give a cultural view on porn in Japan and if people really wished debates upon debates could be extracted from the content that is shown. If the club wanted to take the day to actually hold a lesson or type of lecture on the topic of say Japanese culture and its porn/hentai industry then this could actually be a good reason to have the day. Show the darker side of Japanese anime culture instead of just the regular and publicized view of anime culture. Explain how hentai is often the reason for anime's bad rap in the U.S. and possibly hold a type of lesson and show a title of the show afterwards. Not only would this give legitimacy to the day (you'd be watching hentai/yaoi/yuri for an educational reason) but it might even hold up if the club were to get caught watching the shows and the club might not lose the club room since Going Too Far Day was made into an educational experience. This might be wishful thinking though but there are possibly ways to go about doing a Going Too Far Day without having to worry about the overall consequences. I may do a quick lesson on visual novel day about visual novels and visual novel adaptations which could serve as example of how to possibly run an educational going too far day. but then again who knows.

I am for the most part opposed to the idea of going too far day simply because of general awkwardness and the fact that the majority of shows suck (Ha!) but despite that I also gave reasons for why we could have a going too far day. take that as you will. I hope you will participate in the debating/discussing of this topic and hopefully we can come to an understanding on whether or not to or to not have the day next year.

Very good discussion Baccano!

Anyway for me I agree with about almost everything you said, I do however feel that if you guys want to do this, just do it at your dorms and what not. Seriously I have always tried to prove people that anime isn't always porn. While I came up with the plan and the first year we did (spring 2008) I showed mostly just ecchi anime titles with the exception of Kite and an episode of Ogenki Clinic. I just did it as a random one off chance but people seemed to really want this again. Now If I had an opportunity I would probably go back and never would have done that day. While I tend to show the best of the best, there is still little amount to show without it getting too creepy.

Also what I really hated about this day was one major reasoning. PEOPLE BITCH!

Seriously every year I had to have a handful of people bitch about "how we didn't show the nastiest title out there" or the lack of yaoi/yuri titles. When I even did show those people still complain, and with last year with the club to even show "My little pony: Friendship is Magic" it just got really pathetic. So I took it out and I hope to never do that again. Plus I had people come to the club for there first meeting and they show up to "Going Too Far Day" how do you think they handle that? Not very well because they didn't want to return.

So in short, do you really want to have a bad reputation as a club who watches porn? While we do some ecchi titles once in awhile, this just takes the cake. While I was responsible for starting it, I do regret it going too far.

I WANT TITS DAMN IT.

But seriously

The thing is, people don't realize the work that goes into properly watching hentai. They think hentai is something that slackers can do, or jerk offs, or perverts. It's not true. Hentai is a dying artform and if you don't see that, I don't know what's wrong with you.

First of all, you sacrifice spending real time watching anime. You can't participate as much as you'd like to because you're so busy watching shit shows that you can't. As a result, you miss a lot of really great hentai. Still, it's a sacrifice, so you do it.

There's also the problem of "censorship". This message can really hurt your progress. You should try to get your hentai into every active meeting and if you have to sit there waiting for people to actually leave, you lose valuable time. This is also very difficult.

Also, picking which members should get a hentai first are sort of difficult. There are members that don't stay for the first show for very long, so you may be missing some of the more prominent hentai. Of course, you should try to hit them all, but for the desire effect, you need to get into bigger hentai quickly.

Finally, there's the moral problem. One thing about hentai is that sometimes it feels good, but sometimes it feels bad.


And thats my argument.

..... wow

Here, Here Mr. Bones spectacular post!

what if one day you woke up and your nipples were completely gone
like no scars or anything, just flat skin
and then once you leave your room you find out your dad died last night
and then several days later, you find out that for your entire life your dad had been sneaking into your room while you slept
and sucking on your chest to make to gigantic hickeys where your nipples should be
because you were born without them
not for any sexual reason, just so you would fit in

This is what it means to have a club without my hentai.

lol

Is there anyone out there that actually has their own opinions on this topic...hell argue for or against my case I don't care...but when lulu, chelsea, chris, dan and myself are the only ones posting on this entire forum it makes me sad that people left the other one...my guess is forums are simply dying these days or people get lazy. whatever.

I made mention that despite all of its reasons for not showing the show that hentai is still a type of animation and in complete honesty I have to agree with Lulu (Bones) that hentai is an art form. Then again just about anything can be made into art with the right motivations behind it so this is a slippery slope. I mentioned quality but hentai that can actually be looked upon as a positive representative of this type of art is far and few between although there are some titles that would probably be possible to show.

If people are really adamant about continuing the day be careful. Even if the day were to be outside of the club room at someone else's place if the actual day and time is at the same time as the regular club meeting then problems of attendance will arrive. People might just not show up or might not know that it isn't being had on that day. There is also the possibility of people coming to that day first and either not finding the club in existence (because the members are all off watching porn) or will follow any sign put up and go to the makeshift club meeting not fully realizing what they may be getting into.

I think that if you were to have a successful going too far day then it should be not only outside of the club room but also outside of the usual club meeting time. Have it at maybe someone else's place on say Saturday or after the usual club time. Just don't cancel club to go to a hentai marathon...we haven't done anything in the past with worrying about this primarily since we typically had it during club meetings...this is problematic. Especially if someone comes in during the watching of the show...or is trying to speak with someone from the club room.

Essentially my current belief is this; if you don't feel as if denying the club a going too far day is necessary then at the very least do 2 things if nothing else.

1. Have it outside of the club room. (have it somewhere else. preferably off campus or if no other option then at someone else's place of residence).

2. Have it at a time outside of the normal club meeting.

just my two cents.

I'm confused Lulu hasn't posted once on this forum. I can view his account over and over. Not a single post.

Mr. Bones is Lulu. He made a second account to troll with. Ask him if he's mr. bones...he won't be able to keep a straight face. I thought you would have known this considering you live with him. that entire post was to derail the thread...and it seems to have worked despite my effort to keep it on track. Ignore lulu being Mr. Bones if you want just get back to staying on target with the actual topic of the thread.

I gave my response to how to fix the problems with it and although problems of what would be appropriate/reasonable to show would still exist at least the day could be done without negativity of the actual club meetings.