Sexism In Anime

Both Misa and Minmay have their own character arcs and the iconic Daedalus attack was Misa's idea. For both characters it takes rather long time to get romantically involved with Hikaru.

I've been reading Jojos Bizarre Adventure lately and it's somewhat fun observing how the series grows in portraying women.

• Part 1: The only notable female here is Erina, who pretty much only serves as Jonathan's Love Interest, and has little to do with the plot outside it. She does have some moments of strength for a Victorian era woman, like washing her mouth with muddy water to spite Dio after he stole her first kiss, but she appears little.
• Part 2:
  • Erina returns as a somewhat badass grandma, but she still matters just as much as her young self, which is not much.
  • Lisa Lisa is bordering on Faux Action Girl. She's supposed to be Joseph and Caesar's strict Sink or Swim Mentor and a master Ripple user, but she barely gets any action. The only time we see her fight is against easily-dispatched Mooks, and she got quickly defeated by the Big Bad (granted, the Big Bad was cheating, but we still didn't get to see her in action).
  • Then there's Suzie Q, which is even less relevant than Erina, other than getting possessed one time.
• Part 3:
  • Holly is classic Damsel in Distress, and the (all-male) heroes set the journey to save her.
  • Of all the Villain of the Week, only four of them are female, and all of them are the Powers Do the Fighting type, never confronting the heroes directly. Also only one is somewhat-plot-relevant.
  • Then there's the Runaway Girl, which serves absolutely no purpose other than being The Load.
• Part 4:
  • Reimi is what brought the main plot in, but she still mainly stands in the background while the (again, all-male) heroes do the work.
  • Yukako's entire character is "Yandere for Koichi". At least she got two arcs compared to other Villain Of The Weeks' one, but outside those arcs she might as well not exist.
• Part 5: Trish is the only female character in this part. She spends the early parts f the story as the subject of an Escort Mission. It's not only until quite late that she got herself the superpower and joins in the action, arguably being the first Action Girl. Even then, she doesn't get as much battles as her male comrades.
• Part 6: This part takes the lack of girls in earlier parts and turn it the other way around by making both The Hero Jolyne and The Lancer Hermes female. And they gets tons of actions as well. Although one can make an argument on Hermes being "male, but female" as she rarely shows feminine traits. There's also Foo Fighter, who is technically genderless, but inhabits a female body.
• Part 7: I'm still in the middle of reading it, but Lucy Steel gotta be one of best example of a 'strong female character'. She's just a young girl with no superpowers whatsoever, and only got involved because she accidentally overheard the Big Bad's plot. But she manages to be a Spanner in the Works by sneaking into the Big Bad's residence, using wits and fast thinking to not get caught, and interrupt his plan for collecting the MacGuffins. At one point she even goes to retrieve one of the MacGuffin herself, and at another point steal the MacGuffin from the Big Bad. She's scared and crying the entire time, but she's brave enough to get things done behind the screen.

Haven't read Part 8 yet, so can't comment on it.

edited 8th Sep '14 8:15:18 PM by TrueShadow1

Sharing because it has pasted a grin on my face for the past half hour or so.

Not all the stabs at equality will be smart, or entirely on point or even helpful. This form of feminism is new, chillingly new for how long this shit has been going on, and not everyone is good at it yet, but holy shit, friend, how can you argue against the aim of basic respect for another human being?

What's that got to do with anime?

Got to do with it, got to do with it...

Reading it helped me remember the point of this thread and others like it. That even "casually or lazily disapproving" of sexism in the most inane works of entertainment helps people in the long run.

I had felt tired of such discussions lately. Got distracted by the arguing. And well, even felt that people should not waste time being critical of "junk".

I'll probably make it my sig.

Edit: 140 characters is too short. Dammit.

edited 22nd Sep '14 8:22:04 AM by probablyinsane

One question: Is Chickification sexist? As in the case of the Ninja Gaiden OVA, where Irene Lew isn't much of an Action Girl as she was in the NES games or in Dead Or Alive?

edited 23rd Sep '14 8:56:33 PM by HallowHawk

I'm gonna go ahead and say "usually".

Almost always, as per the definition of same.

Irene wasn't even much of an "Action Girl" in the NES games.

Her single claim to fame is sneaking up on Ryu and shooting him in the back. (A scene which Ryu replies with, "Oh. Just some girl. Get out of here.")

Check out Designated Love Interest for how well Irene was used in that game.

But didn't she save Ryu in NES III? Anyways, we steered off-topic here. Apologize for asking this again, but how's Kuttsukiboshi?

edited 24th Sep '14 10:48:41 PM by HallowHawk

Sorry to double-post, but if I edit , no one would reply. Now, coming from Girls Bravo, I got this to ask: is androphobia/gynophobia sexist?

I wouldn't say it is by itself. It depends on the context.

I'd say it's technically sexist, but not maliciously or even intentionally so. As a real psychological trait, that is. How it's used is a different thing, since that tends to involve a lot of other factors and motivations.

It's also not quite what's actually in Girls Bravo, as that seems to be closer to an allergy of sorts. And that series suffers far worse from Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male, thanks to his "friend".

Andro/gynophobia probably cause implicit sexism more than they result from it.

It depends whether we mean "phobia" as in 'fear' or 'loathing'; both are used. Hence why there's always the smartass who says they ain't a homophobe because they ain't afraid of gay people, they just despise them.

In this case the "hate" definition is covered by the mis- prefix instead.

I mean, "homophobia" doesn't actually make any sense linguistically, but for totally different reasons. Literally it would mean either fear of humans or fear of anything the same as you. Nothing about sexuality in there at all.

I thought this shit only happened in Hentai stories!?

Also, holy fuck what assholes. I mean, I know GIFT is a thing, but who knew what evil lurked in the hearts of men?

EDIT: Wait, is this the wrong thread? I thought I was linked to this article from here.

edited 10th Oct '14 4:12:33 PM by TheHandle

If that's a thing in Hentai stories already, I don't see what's to keep people from actually wanting to do that.

It's one thing to indulge in revenge and power fantasies because you have a miserable time interacting with the opposite gender, and it's another entirely to go out and actually do them (for other cathartic fantasies, see Eat the Rich, Kill the Poor, Shoot 'Em Up...). It's like the difference between enjoying horror movies and trying to re-enact them.

Mocking raped girls and propagating their pictures is stupid, petty, pointless evil of the lowest kind. I'm appalled that people would actually do that.

Dafuck? Since when is Facebook like Four Chan?!

Why?

Why would anyone do that?! How does the sentence “I will skull-fuck your children” get articulated in someone's brain?

edited 10th Oct '14 4:37:32 PM by TheHandle

You know how people say perverts are just normal people who are brave enough to act on their sexual desires? How is this any different?

Saying stuff on the internet isn't brave. And "normal"?

Trolls, man. Some of it is mildly funny ("I Love the Rape Van" is clearly taking the piss), but the ones who take it to the level of doxxing and threats are just doing it for the lulz too in their own twisted way.

Back on anime and manga—I've noticed a trend in shounen stuff. In the first chapter, our protagonist is a lowly Unlucky Everydude who's bullied by his peers. Then along comes his Childhood Friend, a young woman who chases off the bullies. She may be a tomboy, but more often she's just kind of sharp-tongued and protective of the protagonist.

Shortly thereafter, however, our young man turns out to be super special awesome (or at least on the road to same) and the childhood friend is happily relegated to cheerleader status, if she doesn't become completely irrelevant. This happens in an abbreviated fashion in the first chapter of Sporting Salt, for example.

It might be interesting to see a story where this starts to happen, and the childhood friend doesn't want to go along with it.

Childhood Friend is one of my least favourite tropes. I find them often just clingy and they often feel entitled to their friend. So I'm not sure I so much agree with them being happily relegated to cheerleader status. At least the happily part. They're often the female equivalent of the "Nice Guy" (quotation marks mandatory).

edited 10th Oct '14 5:30:47 PM by AnotherDuck