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Well, it's not wrong.
I Ts such a Shonen Jump thing where all of the boys got big impactful sounds, while the girls get mundane ones.
Oh well, more Jirou is good.
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.Is the level of What Measure Is a Non-Badass? reactions that MHA's female cast gets specifically a Jump thing, or is it more a general Shonen thing?
With what I remember about Fairy Tail (original) when it was still running, I can say that it isn't exclusive to Jump series, though there are also examples in the Jump (undead Unluck comes to mind) where that trope is largely absent, so its more of a case to case basis.
Edited by Shadow-Whisperer on Feb 26th 2023 at 3:32:31 AM
I think it's a mix of genuine criticisms of how women are written in shonen and people being full of shit and exaggerating to trash female characters. Even then, I don't think people have those reactions to characters like Mirko or Lady Nagant.
Yeah, she kinda helped with the whole plan to deal with Shigaraki. That was a good while ago, though.
I think part of it is an attitude that if a female character provides fanservice, that's all she is. Which I hate. Whatever your views on usage of fanservice in media are, acting like it invalidates all of the character's other qualities is bullshit.
Edited by diddyknux on Feb 26th 2023 at 3:40:58 AM
I can't say anything about Nagant, but I have seen Mirko get criticism on this site before for supposedly:
- Being outshined by her male peers in her debut chapter.
- Having a limited personality beyond "tough, independent woman". This was less a criticism of Mirko specifically and more of limited personality types for MHA girls in general in comparison to the guys' personalities.
I removed some of these criticisms for making MHA's Men Act, Women Are entry a wall of text, but you can look through that page's history if you want to see the whole thing.
She's literally defined as a woman who refuses to back down and give up and is driven to go down on her terms and her terms only. She's the embodiment of the phrase "No regrets". Like, that is ridiculously fucking badass and I love it. Maybe it's not that deep but it's epic and cool.
As far as the personalities of the female characters being limited, I don't agree either and I find that to be a weird and ridiculous claim. I've said it before but for every criticism of Horikoshi's handling of the female characters that I agree is genuinely an issue, there's always a "criticism" that's downright stupid and paints his writing as far worse than it actually is. Like the whole "Horikoshi mutilates all his female characters" claim that's stupid as hell and has been rebutted several times over.
I wouldn't be suprised if we do. Hori's has been recently pulling out things we haven't seen in a while.
And one last thing, I do want to clarify that the criticisms I brought up aren't my own (I agree that they're kinda stupid when applied that generally) in case anyone though otherwise. Alright, moving on.
Edited by badtothebaritone on Feb 26th 2023 at 4:39:07 AM
I wouldn't be surprised. All for One is kind of getting an epic beatdown right now, it'd be fitting if Jirou capped it off or contributed to it one more time. Plus, it'd be a poetic demise. All for One being defeated by the vestiges of the Quirks he'd stolen rebelling against him.
Edited by Diana1969 on Feb 26th 2023 at 4:41:46 AM
Here's currently what's left on Men Act, Women Are after my edits:
- My Hero Academia: While the girls do have moments of taking part in the action thanks to their careers as heroes, it should be noted that most of them barely have an impact on the major events of the storyline. A lot of their personalities fall under the bubbly, friendly nice girl trope or the "Strong Female Character" stereotype while their male colleagues are given deeper, more complex characterizations and are actively involved in the story. It also doesn't help that the girls are significantly outnumbered in the student, Pro-Hero, and villain groups.
I'm wondering how much of this is valid and how much is just complaining.
Edited by badtothebaritone on Feb 26th 2023 at 5:01:24 AM
I think there's some truth to that but the main reason isn't that Horikoshi is "bad" at writing female characters, it's the aforementioned fact that they're heavily outnumbered.
Most of the male characters aren't that thoroughly fleshed out either. He does have his pitfalls with writing them, I'd agree, but my impression is that a lot of people exaggerated the actual issues, and also just straight up complain about things I can't agree are issues. Like, the whole thing about him "mutilate" all of them or whatever.
Horokishi having issues with his female characters really came home for me after what he did during the Internship raid arc.
Like, why would you put near literally every female character in that arc in a situation where one character just stonewalls them for twenty minutes?
It really comes off as you deliberately kicking them out of the plot for a bit so you don't have to write them.
And I know you're better than that Horokishi. I know you could have come up with something better than that.
One Strip! One Strip!The Internship arc moment is incredibly frustrating but it's one of the couple of moments where I can say I was genuinely frustrated with how he handled the women in the cast. Beyond that, I guess there's Mina freezing up against Gigantomachia in the war arc, a lot of the fanservice gags, and *maybe* the small arc with Stars and Stripes, but the last example is a whole mess beyond just how a female character is treated.
I'd still say Horikoshi is a LOT better at handling female characters compared to some shonen mangakas, but that's arguably a low bar to clear. I mean, reading through Naruto...I think a lot of the reputation for shonen's treatment of women (or a LOT of preconceptions regarding shonen) is people taking Naruto's issues and applying them to the whole of shonen, and good fucking god is Naruto's treatment of female characters the most abyssmal bullshit I've ever seen. My expectations were low and I still feel let down. People joke about how Toriyama handled the women in Dragon Ball but Kishimoto handles them even worse.
As far as I've read with shonen, I'd say MHA handles its female characters better than, say, Demon Slayer or Jujutsu Kaisen, and maybe a tiny bit better than Bleach? Again, as far as I've read through any of them. Personally, I love how One Piece and Chainsaw Man have handled their female characters the most of any shonens I've read.
Edited by Diana1969 on Feb 26th 2023 at 6:17:44 AM
Eh, I'll get to that when I get there, I'm going at a glacial fucking pace at this point
But yeah, focusing a bit on the topic, Horikoshi's got some issues but compared to other shonen writers, I don't think he's nearly the worst or most egregious example, there's some moments I can praise how he's written or handled some female characters, and there's moments where I think he could do better (or a LOT better).
