“Are you trying to convince them to make stricter laws?”

Anime has always been a visual medium with heavily stylized aesthetics, with various motifs waxing and waning in popularity over the years, but an affection for large breasts has remained pretty consistent. Busty characters are so commonplace in the world of anime that sometimes it’s debatable how much the intent with a piece of artwork is actually to titillate, and how much is just the artist continuing with existing trends and baseline proportions for the medium as a whole.

For example, there was the debate last month about the use of the titular star of Uzaki-chan Wants to Hang Out in blood drive posters, which was a bit of a gray area. The character’s chest is undeniably large and her shirt tightly fitting, but one could argue that the presence of large breasts themselves immediately make the visual sexualized, and that the costume design provides plenty of coverage with very little skin exposed.

It’s quite a bit harder to argue that any perceived sexualization is strictly in the eyes of the beholder in this ad, however, which was spotted in Tokyo’s Akihabara neighborhood by Japanese Twitter user @m1d0r1_lineat.

It’s not clear whether those buxom young ladies’ uniforms are specifically designed to let their breasts directly feel the gentle caress of even the slightest breeze or whether they’ve chosen to pull up their shirts to offer an eyeful of their vast fields of cleavage. Still, this is Akihabara, where many of the people milling about are anime fans who’re pretty used to seeing suggestive artwork. That said, they’re not used to seeing it on this scale, because this isn’t just some poster hanging in a shop window…

https://twitter.com/milkfactory_/status/1190189530449473536

…it’s a gigantic billboard, standing several stories tall.

For those who can’t read Japanese (either because you haven’t studied the language or because the gravitational pull of those gargantuan breasts is pulling your eyes towards them so tightly you can’t focus on the text), this is an add for the latest release from Japanese adult PC game maker Milk Factory, titled More! Impregnate! Boobs of Flame Super Erotic App Academy. In case you’re somehow still confused as to what the intended appeal of the game is supposed to be, the helpful ad copy at the top of the billboard reads ““Get a boob harem with a super sexy app!!”

Even by Akihabara’s standards, the ad is pretty shocking, and while plenty of prospective customers have been replying to the above tweets with tweets of admiration and announcements that they’ve saved personal copies of the photo, there’s also a sizable contingent of commenters who feel the provocative ad has gone too far, with reactions including:

“This really isn’t the sort of thing to be putting up on the outside of a building.”
“It’s environmental sexual harassment.”
“Pretty hard to defend.”
“I can’t comprehend the mentality behind this billboard. This is an 18-and-over-only game, right? I’ve never seen a store advertise other adult-only content (like a porno video) like this.”
“Totally inconsiderate.”
“It’s one thing to make an ad like that for the Internet, but you’re not supposed to make a physical billboard of it.”
“As unacceptable as unacceptable can be,”
“They’re asking 9,800 yen (US$91) for the game. That’s expensive.”

The billboard is located at anime and video game specialty shop Traders’ #3 Akihabara branch, which does carry adult products on its fourth floor. However, the first two floors are stocked with plenty of all-ages items, and it’s not like the store is tucked away on one of Akihabara’s backstreets either. It’s right along the main street that runs through the neighborhood, which just about every visitor to Akihabara, young or old, walks down.

That said, the billboard has been up since at least November 1, and it’s continued presence suggests that it’s not violating any public decency ordinances. One commenter feels that if advertisements like are bound to bring negative attention from the local government, though, saying “Are you trying to convince them to make stricter laws?”, and maybe the marketing for More! Impregnate! Boobs of Flame Super Erotic App Academy will have some people thinking that just walling off Akihabara from the rest of Tokyo wouldn’t be such a bad idea after all.

Source: Twitter/@m1d0r1_lineat via Hachima Kiko
Top image: Twitter/@m1d0r1_lineat
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