Sexism In Anime

All discussions regarding this topic will go here.

Yeah, we'll get a lot of Bakuman posts...

There's the whole moe issue that I think I'll step around, and there's the harem anime with all the Accidental Pervert stuff and the character types, but out of anime I've actually watched, the biggest offender is actually probably Death Note.

It's a lot more subtle and one gets the feeling that it was subconscious, but none of the female characters in Death Note are really taken very seriously. You've got the famously obnoxious and devoted Misa, for one, and then you've got the equally devoted but thankfully less annoying Kiyomi Takada. Even Naomi, probably the most serious female character in the show, gets the wool pulled over her eyes pretty easily by Light.

edited 20th Jun '10 6:11:35 PM by Sporkaganza

There have been several threads on this subject, I'll try to dig them up.

edited 20th Jun '10 6:12:47 PM by Noimporta

^^ Bakuman was produced by the same crew.

Same sort of issues there, I take it?

Incidentally, I would love to see how the FerretBrain crowd would react to watching through CLANNAD or another Key Visual Arts adaptation. I wonder if it's possible to detect somebody's head exploding over the Internet?

edited 20th Jun '10 6:16:51 PM by Iaculus

Anime/manga traditionally doesn't really have a very good track record in terms of portraying women in an egalitarian way.

Despite all its fanservice, Negima (the manga) might be an exception. I won't say there is absolutely no sexism there, but the depth and incredible variety in characterization of female AND of course male characters is, I think, unique in the history of manga. It's definitely much less sexist than most of the other shonen manga out there. And don't even let me start on the big three.

Can't really say I've seen much sexism in my anime.

Maybe Eureka 7 and Last Exile? No, scratch E7, but LE might still be on the spot. Every female character seemed to spend quite a bit of time pining after an oblivious male character instead of kicking ass like their unrequited interests.

Then there's of course the memetic chauvinist Shirou from Fate/Stay Night but he's quite a class of his own.

edited 20th Jun '10 7:21:38 PM by C-Person

If you take out all the fanservice-y stuff, Manga/Anime might not actually be all that bad in terms of sexism. (I know, that's an awfully big If). Quite a few anime/manga tend to feature several strong female characters who have motivations and story-arcs outside any sort of male-focused relationships, which is the common gauge of these things. And yeah. Death Note and Bakuman are pretty bad for that. Really bad.

How does Bakuman do it badly?

Granted, I haven't read much of it.

Keep in mind, however, that almost all of the series whose names were dropped so far are shonen series, or, in the case of Fate/stay night, seinen. If you don't know, these series are squarely aimed at young men. Of course some of them are going to have a sexist point of view. Contrary to what most have said, I think Death Note and Bakuman, while quite sexist, aren't the worst offenders; look at any harem manga. ALL OF THEM ARE SEXIST IN SOME WAY OR ANOTHER. Likewise, there are also series that, while somewhat sexist, also show a very respectable point of view. I''s and Sai Kano, for instance.

It's not just shonen/seinen manga that are sexist. Shojo and josei (young womens') manga can have levels of male sexism that are equivalent to the female-sexist views in Bakuman. In some, women fall in love with complete assholes. Even rape is forgiven at times by the women.

So Yeah. I just wanted to give my 2 cents.

^And Bakuman does do it rather badly. Have you read Chapter 2?

edited 20th Jun '10 7:41:49 PM by troperwithoutaname

Regarding Death Note, there's always Wedy and Hal Lidner who are at least professionals. Then there's Rem, who's also female, I guess.

Those two characters are too minor to really counteract anything. And Rem's hardly better.

It's not just shonen/seinen manga that are sexist. Shojo and josei (young womens') manga can have levels of male sexism that are equivalent to the female-sexist views in Bakuman. In some, women fall in love with complete assholes. Even rape is forgiven at times by the women.

If my experience with shoujo manga is in any way representative, I would say that it's frequently more sexist than Bakuman, it's simply less overt about it. I wouldn't say that Bakuman is even close to the top of the scale sexism wise; I'm a bit confused as to why it's such a major topic in its own thread, not because it's not sexist, but because it's not distinctively so.

One of the best manga I've seen for gender egalitarianism, by the way, is All Rounder Meguru. Which I am totally pimping in this thread because it Needs More Love.

Negima makes me want to chew glass. I haven't read it, so I'm not going to go off on some huge ignorant rant, but Anarchy's post just rrrgh all the blushing girls

Seconding Desertopa that shojo is often really sexist. It's like Twilight except... no, it's pretty much like Twilight.

Abuse Is Okay When It Is Female on Male

Kinda bugs me that people complain about sexism like that. For example, even I don't mind it when in Baka To Test To Shoukanjuu, Yuuki is abused by Shouko. If it were genderflipped, there would be a huge rage about that. Same deal with Minami and Akihisa.

I managed to find one of the threads, it's not exclusively about sexism, but it has a lot of discussion on it.

I'm going to have to contest Fate/stay night, as a story — pretty much everyone thinks Shirou's being an idiot, and supposedly he only shows the attitude at all in the Fate route.

Well I wasn't really saying that the show is sexist so much as that particular character is (and much of that seems to be more memetic mutation than facts, though he does get scolded by Sabre for it instory if I recall correctly).

The show or the VN?

Ze Anime.

On the one hand, it's undoubtable that anime tends to be less progressive towards women.

On the other hand, in Western animation, I can count on one hand the number of shows with large casts of strong women in them doing...anything.

I don't understand the issue. Western society is more likely to treat women as equals, but is more likely to leave them out of media entirely. Japanese society is unquestionably behind the curve on pretty much every level, but only in Japan can mainstream entertainment feature numerous female leads - or even female-dominated casts - in media aimed at a wide audience. In America, if you want a "mass audience", well, you put in lots of guys and focus it on guys. If it's centered on a women or features more than a Token Female, it's automatically "chick stuff" and disregarded.

I can't wrap my head around it except to express that sexism is alive and well in both cultures, it just finds different ways to express itself. And not surprisingly, we're a lot quicker to berate a different culture for their flaws than try to fix our own.

edited 20th Jun '10 10:09:49 PM by Rebochan

Can someone please tell me how Bakuman is sexist?

You aren't alone in that krrack. I don't normally see this "sexism". It is hard for me unless it is rather...blunt. Like wife beating blunt.

I'd like to know too. Give some details, people.

I'd agree that Negima, despite the obnoxious fanservice, is actually pretty good at portraying a diverse and competent female cast. And I'd also agree that the Big 3 pretty much fail that (to varying degrees, Naruto being the worst in my opinion).

@Tze Tze: "I haven't read it"

Let's just say it has a humongous cast of well-developed, unique female individuals (at least 30), each of them strong and flawed in their own way, playing highly significant roles in the plot. How many shows you know that have that? Oh wait, someone else answered:

"On the other hand, in Western animation, I can count on one hand the number of shows with large casts of strong women in them doing...anything."

If you look beyond the fanservice, I really think that Negima is one of the more progressive shonen series running. Not that that's saying a lot. It's still sexist, just less so than most shonen manga I see out there.

So don't go bashing works that you haven't even read before.

As for shoujo/josei manga, remember that the mangaka drawing these live in Japan, a... shall we say, much less progressive nation in terms of gender equality. It's no wonder if mangaka, regardless of gender, internalize sexist ideals, which is then reflected in their work.

As for why Bakuman is overtly sexist, see this post:

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=exgjpwekith484hj8vut2q34&page=5#124

My feeling is that, while other manga simply indulge in sexism, this manga indulges in it AND attempts to justify it, which is worse in my book.

Another example: out of the two competent female mangaka, one sucks at drawing and needs help from other males to even get serialized, the other, while touted as a storytelling genius, has her prose scripts repeatedly described as much more inferior to the name that a male mangaka draws based off her work.

There is also the fact that said female writer is an extremely two-dimensional bitch. And that out of the four major female characters, one has no personality whatsoever.

EDIT: I would agree that Naruto is the worst at portraying female characters, out of the big three.

Let's see now... Shaman King, I think that's a pretty good manga in terms of great portrayal of female characters. Perhaps I'm biased because I love Anna to death, and it's been a long time since I read it, but the general impression that I got was that it didn't sideline or underpower female characters, like most shonen manga do.

edited 20th Jun '10 11:52:05 PM by Anarchy

Not all harem series are sexist, Umi no Misaki, as far as i can tell is very equal in its presentation.

Though honestly i'm no good for commenting on this type of thing, i have very low peception for gender differences beyond the physical, if that makes any sense...