Sexism In Anime

Just look at what Nanoha chose to emphasise, and you'll get an idea of what those reasons are. It didn't create the action, the fanservice, or the mecha references ex nihilo.

Madoka Magica caused a storm because while Seinen and aired at Otaku Oclock parents complained that their daughters were TV Oing it. So it can work both ways.

Moral guardians is a thing in Japan?

They work very subtle.

Don't you remember Ishihara?

I forgot about him.

They are pretty big actually and get shows censored all the time. remember this disaster. Naruto's anime gets censored all the time from the manga due to broadcast standards and yada. The only reason the more racy stuff makes it to air is because of Otaku O'Clock.

They also censored Star Ocean V recently too and sales of it in Japan didnt break 100k.

Also their ratings system for things like gore and such are willing to get labeled 18+ unlike the west. Before the 18+ rating Moral Guardians were forcing video games to turn blood green and such.

edited 29th Apr '16 11:39:46 PM by Memers

Can vouch, a lot of anime is censored for public broadcast, even more then what you guys see.

It is not unheard of to see black bars and digital editing even at otaku o'clock that will not be there in either the disk version or the international releases.

The fun part is anime is targeted more then live action, live action can get away with stuff anime can not.

Edit: If were talking videogames as well, PSO2 was censored too to remove the Chrysanthemum Crest and all identifying markings from the Yamato.

edited 29th Apr '16 11:04:00 PM by Imca

One reason for censoring is to encourage buying the all-revealing disks.

That shounen gets more money that shoujo owes a lot to there being more girls reading shounen than boys reading shoujo. The studios are simply following the money. And josei is small because seinen is the catch-all for anything that won't fit in the younger demographics, leaving only stuff obviously aimed at women in josei. Telling perhaps, but don't take the demographics at face value.

Its also that we have moral gaurdians out the ass.

They put the fucking HOME AND GARDEN MANGA in the 18+ section.

They deliberatly target anime and manga, and flat out tried to ban both in certian areas of the country.

I might as well ask this here then since you are Japanese and have some insight into this? All the weird porn Japan produces, the ones like guro and loli that people try to say "represent all of Japan," are these just niche products most Japanese have no clue about? They just find their way online and are shared in the same small circles of fetishists across the world?

Because I've seen some fucked up stuff man, stuff no moral guardian would ever allow to exist.

Porn is not regulated by the moral gaurdians if it is just drawn by an indivudual and posted online, so using it as a baseline is not an accurate thing to do.

Porn that is produced comercialy is though, and is all censored.... thats right they censor porn.... blur every thing out, and appluy lots of pixelation which kinda defeats the point of porn ._.;

The majority of your statement is right though, a lot of the weird things are actualy disturbing and weird to us as well, its just that diversity exists like in any population, but the internet only notices the abnormal.... not the normal.

It does not make it online and get spread around unless it is interesting, therefor the only stuff you see in the west....

TL:DR citing that stuff as represntitive of Japan, is like me going to deviant art, finding Sonic Mpreg and citing it as represenitive of Amercia. >.<

edited 30th Apr '16 12:22:28 PM by Imca

Im reading the excellent book called "Embracing Defeat" which is about Postwar Japan. The author takes great pains to point out the diversity of Japanese thoughts and feelings here, in spite of the Empire's rigid attempts at uniformity or how American propaganda tried to portray the entire Japanese country as some sort of hivemind robot.

What I'm saying is, I think America is still laboring under that delusion. I see so much "matter-of-fact" racism against Japan online. Japanese are racist, Japanese are pedos, Japanese this and that, and all attributed to teh fact you live on islands and are thus some sort of rigid, insular culture that never changes and everyone is the same.

I'm no expert on Japan but it shouldn't take an expert to point out every country and people will have diversity. Yet this fact goes over people's heads all the time.

The culture itself is racist and sexist, and you will encounter plenty of people who are, that much is actualy accurate... Things like marital rape are never prosicuted, hell there have been cases where a guy raped a woman and stole her purse... and gets more of a punishment for stealing the purse.

The problem is you can't just lump the entire population under one banner... and the younger crowd tends o be a bit better, the bigest problem being were still run by people who are from the era you mentioned.

And online people cant seem to make a distinction between an individual level and a cultural level, if this make sense. >.<

...

The Pedo thing is total bullshit though, if you want to cite the age of concent being 13, it would technicaly be 0 in the United States... AFIAK all prefactures overwrite that with there own laws, just like the State/Fedral thing in the US.

edited 30th Apr '16 12:32:44 PM by Imca

Japanese is the language where a young woman can be called a "child", and "husband" is synonymous with "master", among other things. That kind of stuff doesn't help. Of course, in many Western languages, neutral = masculine, so we're not exactly one to talk in that regard.

However, the recurring aspiration of girls in manga to become housewives, as if it was either some kind of dream life or something obvious, never ceases to disturb me. As does the clichéd phrase "hey, you would make a good wife!" every time a girl can cook decently.

edited 30th Apr '16 12:55:57 PM by Lyendith

Like...this happened in 2010s? Not...late 90s or early 2000s?

Yes.

What an eyesore.

Yikes.

Jesus.

I will certainly agree that it's certainly not fair to judge an entire culture by there worst groups of individuals. That's a problematic attitude at it's finest being that it's by technicality pretty hypocritical.

...Basically by that logic every culture on the planet is the worst because a few individuals spoiled the populace.....

edited 1st May '16 12:10:39 AM by Ecrivan

x7

I always wonder when I see that sort of thing in anime, when even the most capable woman in the cast wants nothing more than to feed the loser protagonist his lunch, how much of that is a reflection of a particular Japanese reality, if idealised and how much of it is just wishful thinking years behind the times.

The problem when this thread goes beyond the medium into the nation's culture is that hardly anyone has hard data or good local knowledge.

I would advise against reading things into the language. It can be informative, but given the pace of language change you end up with something that is centuries out of date. Half the languages I know (French and some dialects of Gaelic) use "my woman" for "my wife" and "my girl" for "my daughter". And every language in history has mixed words for "man", "person" and "adult". Not to mention the age to which "girl" and "boy" apply.

One thing I find interesting is that the Yamato Nadeshiko, the traditional ideal bride, often features as a character type but doesn't usually get much attention in harem setups, compared to the more modern tsundere. Is it that male tastes have changed, otaku now don't care about marriage or children and only focus on the build-up of the relationship, or that a nadeshiko is a rather boring thing to write unless you put actual skill into it?

Marido y Mujer: Husband and Wife(Woman). Huh, it does too.

I don't know about the YN, but the sweet, demure, family-oriented girl is still very high in popularity polls, if Haruna or Kosaki are anything to go by.

But yeah, the tsundere tends to come out on top, these days, probably because they make for a more hectic story.

About the language… I guess you're kinda right. I remember a text from my Japanese classes titled "the mother who didn't want to say 'shujin' (husband/master)", it was too difficult for us at the time but I should reread it someday… it looked interesting. Language certainly evolves more slowly than society in these cases.

edited 1st May '16 5:06:14 PM by Lyendith