Shimoneta

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Shimoneta: A Boring World Where the Concept of Dirty Jokes Doesn't Exist (下ネタという概念が存在しない退屈な世界, Shimoneta to Iu Gainen ga Sonzai Shinai Taikutsu na Sekai), is a Japanese Light Novel series written by Hirotaka Akagi and illustrated by Eito Shimotsuki. Shogakukan has published nine volumes since July 2012 under their Gagaga Bunko imprint. Shimoneta is also a Japanese word for "vulgar slang" or "dirty joke", "blue joke", "erotic topic."

In a dystopian future, the Japanese government is cracking down on any perceived immoral activity from using risque language to distributing lewd materials in the country, to the point where all citizens are forced to wear high-tech devices called Peace Makers (PM) at all times that analyse every spoken word and hand motions for any action that could break the law. A new high school student named Tanukichi Okuma enters the country's leading elite "public morals school" to reunite with his crush and student council President, Anna Nishikinomiya. However, Tanukichi quickly finds himself entwined with the perverted terrorist "Blue Snow" ("Tundra's Blue" in some translations) when she kidnaps and forces him to join her organisation, "SOX," in creating and spreading pornographic material across the city as a form of protest against the regulations.

A manga adaptation with art by N' Yuzuki began serialization in Mag Garden's shōnen manga magazine Monthly Comic Blade from May 2014. An anime television series adaptation by J.C.Staff aired from July 2015 to September 2015.

Tropes used in Shimoneta include:
  • Absurdly Powerful Student Council: Averted. The student council has enough power to oversee student affairs and make sure that the school's image is kept moral, but little more beyond that.
  • Adults Are Useless: They were the ones who allowed the current state of affairs to happen in the first place. And the ones critical of it, like the father of the terrorist Blue Snow simply kept quiet, allowing the madness to continue unabated.
  • Bad Future: The whole series is set in one, where Moral Guardians and Political Correctness had already won the day over society.
  • Big Brother Is Watching: In addition to the ever-present Moral Guardians, the Peace Maker devices monitor a person's every single action for anything deemed illegal.
  • But Not Too Foreign: Anna, who's implied to be of Western ancestry.
  • Crap Saccharine World: Everything looks orderly, peaceful and moral on the surface. Never mind the authoritarian censorship, people having to wear Peace Makers at all times or the Unfortunate Implications stemming from how Japan's youth have no real idea of what sex even is thanks to said authoritarian censorship.
  • Enter Stage Window: Hyouka Fuwa does this to get into a building she wasn't allowed in.
  • Gag Censor: Except the Russian vs Japanese condom scene, this shows up a lot in the Funimation version.
  • Idiot Ball: Many of the characters in-verse in relation to anything to do with sex or "immoral" acts. Justified in that the authorities have been perhaps too effective, to the point that the youth don't really know any better. Which ironically bodes ill for the future of Japan's population.
  • Ignorance Is Bliss: Deconstructed, with the anime showing just how messed up such a situation would actually be.
  • Moral Guardians: Have become so influential that anything remotely "immoral" is persecuted.
  • Next Sunday A.D.: The story takes place 16 years after Political Correctness went mad.
  • Overprotective Parents: It's discovered that the heads of the Nishikinomiya family are the main creators and enforcers of the extremely restrictive public morals politics, and that their motivation is keep the "purity" of their daughter Anna at all costs.
  • Political Correctness Gone Mad: Satirized, especially as it takes place in a world where censorship, political correctness and moralism have become the norm.
  • Poor Man's Porn: Porn is considered contraband and hard porn is particularly difficult to acquire. As a result, the perverted terrorist Blue Snow shows a video of flies "body-melding" and dubs it.
  • Reality Ensues: The series does show the darker sides of what Political Correctness Gone Mad would look like when enforced for a prolonged period of time, which can make for some Mood Whiplash moments. Particularly in one scene where Anna almost rapes Tanukichi, not knowing how to handle her repressed sexual urges.
  • La Résistance: SOX, or at least that's how Blue Snow sees it.
  • Sanity Slippage: Anna increasingly finds it difficult to channel and repress her own sexual urges, which manifests in her becoming more unhinged as the plot progresses.
  • Spiritual Licensee: Shimoneta is pretty much a more risque version of Demolition Man especially with its satire on political correctness.
  • Values Resonance: While rather rooted in Japanese social commentary, the series does have foreign fans due in part to the resonance of its Political Correctness Gone Mad undertones with similar trends in Western societies.
  • Vapor Wear: Blue Snow's "costume" whenever she's in action basically consists of a white sheet, panties for a mask and nothing else.