Sexism In Anime

I'd say it depends on how much the character's gender influences the actions of those around them.

Like, Other M aside, Samus being a woman doesn't really have any effect on her being a planet busting bounty hunter.

That said, there is this trend for female fighters to have less offensively oriented powers compared to their male peers. And if they do have offense orientated powers, they're usually underpowered compared to their male peers.

To give Fairy Tail some credit on this; it isn't afraid to show it's females getting down and dirty and roughed up, but more often than not, it's used for titillation so it's like...one step forward, and two steps back...

A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.

That's something I gotta give to Radiant. The girls can kick ass close- or long-range, get roughed up and die just like the guys.

I don't if that's because the series is French, but it sure is refreshing (even if Mélie is slightly chickified in the anime's first season).

Flippé de participer à ce grand souper, je veux juste m'occuper de taper mon propre tempo.

I don't know if this has come up, but there's been some criticism of Sora in the upcoming Digimon movie, Last Evolution.

Basically, it seems that Sora will be sitting out the final battle. This is especially troubling given the infamous 02 ending which saw Sora become a fashion designer.

Why was her being a fashion designer bad again?

Aren't most of the kid don't actually directly participate in the battle sine it the digimon that fight? And isn't Sora mother a fashion designer so she want to follow her mother foot step?

E.T technically is a Isekai movie

She’s apparently the only one out of the entire cast whose expclitly retiring from the all of the Digimon stuff because she wants to be a housewife.

Compared to everyone else who still tries to help out on daving the world, she’s actively choosing to sit things out permanently.

Edited by slimcoder on Feb 18th 2020 at 1:20:16 AM

"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."

It was considered out of character given Sora's tomboyish nature and a lot of people didn't like how the show validated Sora's mother's dismissal of her daughters interests for something considered more stereotypically feminine.

But Sora did reconcile with her mother and she wasn't dismissal of S Ora interest, Sora was injured that day and she don't want Sora to play soccer with a broken angle.And you can expect someone to stay the same as when they was 10. Also saying just because she a tomboy she can't have interest in fashion just sound wrong. Heck in the second season she even do some girly stuff when she in high school.

Edited by BattleRaizer on Feb 18th 2020 at 4:25:36 PM

E.T technically is a Isekai movie

The fact she is retiring & the only to do so in a battle cartoon where every problem is resolved with violence because it’s not proper or whatever kinda makers her look like a gigantic coward.

Like her being a housewife isn’t necessarily bad but choosing to exit the fights because of that makes her look like again a big old chickenshit.

Edited by slimcoder on Feb 18th 2020 at 1:48:44 AM

"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."

Also it just comes off as odd because, if anything, Mimi was the more fashion-savvy one in the Adventure cast. Apparently even in Kizuna she's running a fashion blog or something like that.

"I'll show you fear, there is no hell, only darkness." My twitter

Sora explicitly sits out the first big battle, but apparently Piyomon vanishes before the final battle without absolutely any interiority or focus given to why Piyomon is the first to go despite the central narrative tension being about Agumon and Gabumon disappearing, so yeah the sidelining is very apparent.

And then she doesn't even have any involvement like getting kidnapped into the Lotus-Eater Machine like anyone not named Taichi and Yamato which is another big Voodoo Shark as to what the hell anyone was thinking in this exclusion.

That seems to imply that violence is male.

Anyway, getting female characters involved in violence is important for a lot of works if you want them to be prominent characters. If they're not involved in the violence, they're just less involved overall, and usually take a backseat.

Conversely, I'd say that for a lot of action heroes, them being male doesn't really affect the plot either. Mandatory romance subplot aside (which you probably can just switch gender anyway). It's just that there exists the idea that it's somehow important that they're male, usually for no reasons related to the plot.

I find it a bit on the male default side, as gender irrelevant roles tend to be male. Especially mooks. This also means male characters are more often written without (or little) regard for gender. I think that's the first step for female characters. It's as been said, don't write good female characters. Write good characters.

Honestly, this is one reason I don't like mainstream shonen action all that much. Female characters are way too secondary way too often. Even if it's something like a battle harem where everyone's a badass, the one male character is still the strongest one most of the time. Mostly, the series that avoid it have a more or less purely female main cast, which isn't really a solution either.

I think that's a bit harsh. It's probably easier to remove the titillation than to add the grit in the first place, so it's more forward than backward.

Also, regarding Digimon, I like Mimi.

Check out my fanfiction!

Considering Mashima also has moments of weirdly sexualized torture for his female characters, I'd agree Black Yakuzu.

I think one of the major reason why female power in manga/anime usually agility base or long range is because most authors and most viewers don't like seeing women being brutalize. It kinda a double standard thing, when it happen to male, it okay but it's really uncomfortable when it happens to female characters.

E.T technically is a Isekai movie

I don't think that's a factor given how often female characters get tortured or maimed in these types of stories. It's just that they have little or no ability to defend themselves compared to their male peers.

Hell, some of the "weak" super powers that female characters in shonen possess have been depicted as being far more deadly when male characters have them. Look at Rangiku Matsumoto from Bleach and Skullion Raider from Fairy Tail: 100 Years Quest. Both have powers of ash which seems weak but the Skullion's are far more deadly in application than Rangiku's.

Edited by windleopard on Feb 18th 2020 at 4:50:59 AM

I'd point out the very image for the trope really. "I can create mostly harmless thing" becomes hilariously broken if there's no limit to how much or where you can create it.

Secret Signature

Beside Fairy Tail most battle manga/anime really shine away from potrait those things. They still aim at kids and teenagers after all. Most female character either have them go down in 1 hit( so minimize the damage) or the damage mostly appeal as invisible cut, basically PG violent. For example in Bleach, Naruto, DBZ,.... Male character is completely okay to have them in a brutal melee brawl, got their limb cut off but it's rarely done with female.

Edited by BattleRaizer on Feb 18th 2020 at 7:58:50 PM

E.T technically is a Isekai movie

I do recall Rangiku getting a hole in her abdomen during her fight with Harribel's Amazon Brigade. And there is Hinata getting impaled by Pain.

Though thinking it over, I guess it doesn't happen as often as I thought after all.

Edited by windleopard on Feb 18th 2020 at 5:02:49 AM

I said most of the time but also female character rarely get damage on the face. Most of the wound they suffer in battle are either in the stomach or scratches. Basica;;y this trope Beauty Is Never Tarnished

Edited by BattleRaizer on Feb 18th 2020 at 8:04:38 PM

E.T technically is a Isekai movie

As said, there's some level of uncomfort when a female is getting brutalized, but that's mostly a Male related feeling. It's why "fridging" exists.

But it's why we have a trope like Would Hit a Girl. Violence against females is something we're instinctively taught against.

A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.

The trend of female characters not being allowed to fight or get injured in the vein of male characters definitely has elements of Beauty Is Never Tarnished (when being used for eye candy, you have to make sure your female character still looks good to keep the Male Gaze intact, without veering into making the intended audience feel uncomfortable about enjoying a scene where a character is in too much pain), but I think it’s more due to the fact that violence against women is socially encoded to evoke references to domestic violence (especially if the fight is male vs. female) and centuries of abuse women suffered at the hands of men.

That as well as the sexist and paternalistic attitude (subconsciously for most of society) that exists that women are weaker, more fragile, and inherently inferior to men in the scope of combat. This attitude says that women can only be victims in violent situations and in any fight; when it comes to battle manga aimed primarily at elementary and middle school aged boys, the whole “you shouldn’t hit a girl” thing that parents and society repeat kinda goes for the genre as a whole. Designated Girl Fight was invented so creators could have their women get involved in any battles at all, while keeping them safe from audience discomfort.

Whenever this conversation comes up, I just think back to Uraraka vs Bakugo during MHA’s Sports Festival arc and how it simultaneously deconstructed and lampshaded the whole idea.

Bakugo refusing to hold back against Uraraka just because she’s a girl makes him the immediate “bad guy” in the fight (granted, not that his attitude has an issue doing that for him normally) and earns him the crowd’s disapproval, and the big “He wouldn’t go all-out on a girl, would he?” question is raised before the fight starts. It’s one step short of a Curb-Stomp Battle due to the disadvantage her power puts her at, but we get to see her get roughed up while the crowd yells for the fight to be stopped. Aizawa has to jump in and remind everyone that Bakugo going easy on her would be disrespectful to her, that people wanting the fight to stop see her as weak, and after the fight Bakugo dismisses the idea that she’s weak, treating her with some of the most respect he’s shown any of his peers.

I think that it’s a pretty great moment that demonstrates Uraraka’s resolve despite the odds. Of course, when it comes to opposite gender fights, the rest of the bouts aren’t great for it... Yaoyorozu vs. Tokoyami ends in about 10 seconds with Momo on the defensive the whole time, Iida vs. Mei is a commercial (albeit a funny one), and while Mina gets a knockout victory on Aoyama, at that point Aoyama was little more than the Joke Character of the class.

MHA is great and I like it a lot, plus it does a lot to dismantle some Shonen cliches, but Horikoshi does cool things with his female cast one moment only to never give them the same focus that the male characters get. The anime-only focus episodes episodes help a little in this regard, at least, though, yeah, the female characters don’t tend to get the same destructive offensively-based powers the main male characters get either, with a few exceptions like Ryuku.^note Disclaimer, I’ve only been watching for a few months, caught up fully with the anime but haven’t read past that point in the manga. Not sure if things change significantly.

Edited by ILikeRobots on Feb 18th 2020 at 10:12:52 AM

Adventurers: homeless people who steal from tombs and kill things.

This isn't really a spoiler, but no, she does not sadly.

That being said, Hori does introduce a more physically orientated female fighter later down the line.

Its interesting you bring up that mindset because I think it's just as engrained in females as it is in males. Shojo will generally not feature many prominent male characters, so most of the main conflicts remain between the females.

A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.

It's a shame really that so much of Manga is divided into pretty black and white demographic groups. Are there any gender neutral manga magazines? Are there any gender neutral series within any magazines? Or is everything slotted neatly into shonen/seinen/shojo/josei?

Now, I know many examples of the above will have cross-demographic appeal, but it remains that they will always be predominantly aimed towards a specific gendered demographic.

"...in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach."

Part of it is probably due to Japan's culture, part of it is due to marketing. Easier to appeal to one demographic than it is to multiple.

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet Unless I grew it. In that case, throw it in the trash.

Sure, but if we look at Western literature - specifically genre fiction which is probably the closest equivalent - you market by age group and genre usually rather than age group and gender as Japan do.

"...in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach."