Friendly reminder: Dora is a 10-year-old girl
If you’ve been on the weird side of the internet lately—i.e. Reddit—you may have come across a certain manga strip, and then have the sudden urge to bleach your eyes after. But if you’re one of the lucky ones (bless you), here’s the gist of it: Dora. Swiper. Boots. Love triangle. Is this the live-action Dora movie? No, it’s a fanmade comic.
The original piece features an anthropomorphic Swiper the Fox, caging in a distressed Dora against the wall. With widened eyes, Nick Jr.’s favorite explorer-turned-waifu whispers “Swiper-kun,” in the style of most ecchi anime. Saving the day is Boots—who’s more human than monkey, minus the tail, declaring, “let go of her, Swiper-kun. Dora-chan belongs to me, so hands off!”
Okay, it’s weird. Some folks have shared it for the LOLs and the obligatory “This ruined my childhood” captions, but others can’t ignore the “disturbing” depiction of this happening to Dora, who is canonically a 10-year-old girl. One of these is artist Maryam Binalla (named Miyu online), who responded to the comic with art of her own.
Her fan art response presents the same scenario with Dora and Swiper but this time, the titular character strikes Swiper in the face, running away and shouting, “Tangina mo, tirador ng bata!!”
“Some people didn’t really mind it and were even thirsting for more. And that made me really uncomfortable. So I rushed at making this ‘funny’ comic to express my concern. I never thought this would blow up”
According to Binalla, she was prompted to create this when she noticed the surge of the trending manga’s NSFW versions. “Some people didn’t really mind it and were even thirsting for more. And that made me really uncomfortable. So I rushed at making this ‘funny’ comic to express my concern. I never thought this would blow up.”
While this is fictional, Binalla says this could be a trigger for the realities of certain minors and pedophilia. “People need to know that this happens in real life. That there are children who are sexually assaulted by someone older and are traumatized by it even when they grow up,” she says. “The fact that [these creators] are thinking about a minor already worries me. Making them look ‘older’ doesn’t help. Tolerating NSFW content with a minor is just the same as validating them in real life—that they are okay with pedophilia.”
“I just hope that whoever reads this comic, they read it with an open mind. That a ship between an adult and a minor is never okay. And that they shouldn’t let other people continue to make an excuse for pedophilia.”
So, when you spot that manga on your feed again, maybe it’s time to agree that, yep, that’s definitely enough internet for today.