Beako – Bane of Lolicon

The delightful rorikon oppressing figure of ベア子 / Beako seems to be an obscure one to all too many, especially in the English speaking world, so this article attempts to serve as a comprehensive guide to her history, and also attempts to introduce some of the great artwork produced with her in mind.

There are a lot of images of her on the Channel, so here I reproduce only the most noteworthy images.

This is the curiously named バックベアード / Back Beard, a character from the famous and very long running supernaturally themed manga ゲゲゲの鬼太郎 / GeGeGe no Kitaro, by 水木 しげる / Shigeru Mizuki. Over 40 years the series has expanded in typical fashion to cover a wide variety of media, so it is very well known in Japan.

However, Back Beard is only a side character, and a strange one at that, being described as a floating black sun with a single eye, hailing from America. It seems to be entirely an original creation of Mizuki, which might go some way to describing the strange name.

Where the saga of Beako begins is with this stunning, iconic image:

Back Beard is saying “このロリコンどもめ!! / Kono Lolikon-domo-me!!”, or “Damn all you lolicon!” It is said that he watches over rorikon looking for an opportunity to chastise them, which so far fortunately seems limited to appearances on 2ch and in the occasional Akiba shop.

The meme originated on Futaba Channel, with the original manga panel being photoshopped and inserted into a thread, from whence it soon spread.

Since then he has been given a variety of elaborations, though none so popular as the highly recognisable original, save Beako; for example, he is also depicted saying “Shota are not at all forbidden”.

The elaboration which soon eclipsed Back Beard was ベア子 / Beako (from the “beard” part, unsurprisingly), his somewhat demonic daughter, who uses the same phrase to chastise lolicon.

This character, created three years ago by doujin illustrator とろてい / Torotei, takes Back Beard as basis for a moefied female anthropomorphic version, which becomes the loli mascot so many are enamoured with today.

She chiefly appears in a variety of doujinshi and artwork, both by, and independent of, the original creator.

She has a particularly strong following on Pixiv, it seems.You can see examples of all of this on the Channel, including one of the obscure but rather interesting doujinshi: Ushiro no Beako-sama. She even has a number of figure incarnations…

Torotei publishes a wide variety of rather amusing short manga relating to Beako on his site, so if you are interested to read her adventures (such as sneaking into Akiba comic shops and drawing in mosaics and pubic hair on all the loli manga) you might like to check them out. Hopefully some will appear in translated form on the Channel.

Knowing all that you do, you are admirably equipped to visit the Beako section of the Channel, which seems to be shaping up to be the most comprehensive source of Beako images on the Internet; you can find the various sources of the images there as well, so that should spare you hunting through Pixiv and elsewhere.

She seems to be shaping up to become the de facto mascot for Sankaku Complex, so any new images you come across and see fit to contribute are well received..

Should you have any questions, I will do my best to answer them, though information on this is certainly difficult to come by.