Alright, there's a ton of excellent and not so excellent points and posts that I want to address, but instead of having a wall of quotes with only half articulated points I'll try to just express my thoughts somewhat cohesively to cover all the basses in between.
First of all, the elephant in the room that a few people seem to be avoiding. Certain thing's can certainly be seen as erotic to a group of people (although that word might even be too strong), and the character is under age. But I don't think that's the primary attraction. The game is designed to push emotional boundaries by messing with the players sense of space, and aims give a feeling of genuine interaction with another person. As some have put it, an interaction simulator. Further, the game gives the player a sense of being relied on and trusted, which is both a strength in the interaction department, and what it seems a lot of people are taking issue with when combined with the "erotic" aspect (but I'll talk about that below). I, and assumedly many others, find those two reasons enough of a reason to buy the game on it's own. Feeling depended upon and interacting with a video game character is a very neat experience.
The issue that's fueling the debate is of course the implicit feelings of eroticness some of the game is meant to invoke. I'm not unaware of it, and it is entirely correct to say that the idea of interacting with a girl seems more appealing to me than interacting with a guy. The potential problem is of course that the person with which you are interacting is depicted as underage, and some people see that as an issue (ie. they take issue with people buying the game specifically to feel emotions rooted in sexuality ultimately involving a depiction of an underage girl). I'm going to stick my head under a guillotine and say that that's not an issue- Now I can already feel the people bolding the previous 2 lines and posting reaction gifs, so before you do that please at LEAST finish reading the paragraph- It's not an issue PROVIDED there's a proper distinction made between a feeling such emotions from a video game character vs seeking out someone because they are underage. To put it more clearly, provided a person is simply doing it for the little bit of thrill they instinctively feel due to the proximity/etc of a virtual representation of opposite sex, rather than specifically because the actor they are participating with is depicted as underage (and this would be bad!), then there's no moral/legal problem as far as I can see. And as a further aside: being desired, even if you would clearly never even consider pursuing a relationship, feels nice.
You might next raise the objection, "But what about older people who specifically ARE using the game as a way to ogle underage schoolgirls?" I'd respond, "so?" There certainly going to be a small subset of people like that, and it really comes down to the whole 'Nazi's drank water, Nazi's are bad, thus drinking water is bad' fallacy. The number of people who will do this, especially with a limited, frankly overpriced all ages game like this is probably extremely small regardless, and even for the few that do it's not really going to cause any problems (unless you can come up with some, I'm definitely willing to change my position if you can come up with something concrete).
One of the mods raised an excellent study about how predators use child porn in the grooming process to try to normalize their actions, which in no way applies to this game as it, at "worst", normalizes leaning your head close to someone so you can read over their shoulder.
There was a few posters also talking about how the game was a (non-sexual) grooming simulator that put you in a position of power. The position of power of tenuous (You the player aren't handing out grades, just helping to prepare for a test. You don't really have any power over her) and the "grooming" aspect is literally just teaching them school work. You're not deciding how they should act or treat you, your involvement in the characters "shaping" goes barely as far as whether they learn math or english that day.
Oh and I just refreshed the OP to see the update. That analogy is laughable, and in no way describes the game. The goal of the game isn't to sit there and stare at her, it's to help her get a good grade.
And after all that, of course you can find it creepy. You set the bar for what you find creepy, and this probably falls well into that category for a number of people. But keep in mind that other people might play/see the game in a very different way than you do.
Let's see, I think I had more I wanted to mention but that should be good for now. Hope that mishmash of thoughts is understandable.
EDIT:
Oh, and I know it's a very small minority, but I need to thank the posters who were comparing this to a rape sim. I had a good laugh.
