Sexism In Anime

Rebecca?

Edit: Oh, no I see. A Gundam character.

One Piece's Rebecca is also... yeah...

Edited by GoldenKaos on Feb 21st 2020 at 4:25:36 PM

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

Reccoa essentially betrays her friends and allies, joins a genocidal group of space fascists, and participates in war crimes for reasons that amount to "the guy I liked wouldn't date me."

Who wouldn't?

It's ambiguous if the main fascist involved put a magic space whammy on her mind, though.

The guy she left for was after all a charismatic ladies' man. His character was defined by having women who slavishly devote themselves to him and he's also an incredibly powerful psychic.

UC Gundam does have a lot of gender essentialism, though. Men are inherently bloodthirsty and women are more peaceful or something.

Edited by Nikkolas on Feb 21st 2020 at 9:09:43 AM

Female characters have a much higher chance of be actually being good after an evil first impression, while make character have a much higher chance of actually be evil after a good first impression. That was one of the things that bothered me in Horizon Zero Dawn, since if a quest giver was male, there was a 50% chance of betrayal, while if she was female, I don't think it ever happened.

I find that to be the case for about 90% female characters in Japanese media. Even the ones that seem pushy at start will break at some point and turn into that.

Check out my fanfiction!

I started reading a manga called Chainsaw Man and it had one of the odder instances of "guy is a pervert", specifically in how it ends.

So the main character is an orphan who lived in abject poverty most of his life trying to pay off debts to the yakuza by killing devils with the help of his own pet devil. Eventually he merges with this devil to become the eponymous chainsaw man and when he's taken in by the government to work for them. Because he's spent his life deprived of most things people would consider basic necessities (to the point of having to eat garbage to survive), he just wants to have an easy and comfortable life and experience things he's missed out on.

At one point early in the story, he wants to experience sexuality (motivated by his crush on the official who brought him into the government) and makes it his goal to finally touch a woman's breasts.

He makes a deal with a female colleague (basically an insane devilman who's even more socially maladjusted than he is) that if he rescues her cat from a devil, she'll let him touch her. It turns out she was tricking him and basically selling him out to the devil to get the cat back, but it's suggested that the MC understood her motivation because he loved his pet as well and might have done the same if he was in her position.

He does this successfully and as part of their agreement, he touches her...but it ends up being underwhelming for him and he gets existential about it, commenting to his boss that he's smitten with that maybe having a goal in life to chase after is better than actually ever achieving it, because then you won't have a purpose to live for.

She tells him that sexual contact doesn't necessarily mean anything without emotional intimacy behind it, and this is a lesson he takes to heart afterwards. Additionally the story makes it plain that he isn't willing to touch people in that way without their consent first.

What I found interesting about this is that it takes the usual "guy is a pervert trope" that seems like it would be milked endlessly for dumb and unfunny jokes, but then turns it into a surprisingly wholesome and even philosophical direction...all from him wanting to cop a feel.

So I have been considering revisting josei manga I find to be a lot more refreshing and down to earth than the other manga demographics. Its also the one demographic thats not really marketed/promoted like the others are and its very rare that they get adapted or see widespread popularity. I guess the higher ups dont see 20-30+ women worth marketing to or that josei manga doesnt have much crossover appeal?

Macron's notes

Josei manga get a lot of live-action adaptations, probably because of the Animation Age Ghetto.

They are not the highest selling manga around. I don't know the exact figures for specific manga or what the highest selling josei manga are but in 2007 (according to Wikipedia), the highest selling josei magazine was You with 194,791. Compare that with the highest selling Shonen Magazine (WSJ with 2+ million), Seinen (Weekly Young Magazine with 900,000+) and Shoujo (Ciao with 982,834) and you can see why producers aren't really rushing to make josei anime adaptations.

Edit: So after some research, I've found out the two highest selling josei manga are Chihayafuru (23 million est) and Nodame Cantabile (37 million est). Chiayafuru has 3 seasons with 24 episodes each, so that's something.

Edited by AbrahamOmosun on Feb 24th 2020 at 1:05:06 AM

Cowboys vs Samurai

Yeah of the four "main" demographics (shounen, shoujo, seinen, josei), josei is the most obscure comparatively and doesn't get much attention. Or well, that's the way it used to be but it feels like I never hear about shoujo manga or anime anymore either, but maybe that's just my bubble.

Something to keep in mind is the ones target at men tend to pick up a large amount of periphery women veiwers, the ones targeted at women with the exception of magical girl shows do not have the reverse happen.

Edited by Imca on Feb 24th 2020 at 4:30:59 AM

Typically that means the female works aren't getting enough advertising. Male works are seen as the "default," so everyone sees them and plenty of women can be interested, but I don't think I can name either a shoujo or josei besides Sailor Moon.

Shoujo manga/anime used to have more visibility, besides Sailor Moon there was Cardcaptor Sakura, Ouran Host High School Club, Fruits Basket, Pretty Cure, Princess Tutu, Utena, Vampire Knight, and some other stuff I can't recall at the moment, all of which were (or are in the case of Pretty Cure) pretty successful in their day. It's just recently there doesn't seem to be many shoujo series with a high profile.

Granted that,yeah, shojo and especially josei don't have a lot of unisex appeal but most companies don't even bother promoting them so not like they would have a chance anyway.

Its especially bad nowadays. At least in the 90's-00's had a variety of shows originally from manga that appealed to women/girls and they had some decent staying power even if it wasnt much for some.

Although maybe that's because Anime nowadays mostly sticks to the same genres/tropes that are popular. I mean of course it makes sense and isnt a bad thing but would like some variety

Edited by MacronNotes on Feb 24th 2020 at 10:14:05 AM

Macron's notes

I dunno, that kinda strikes me as similar to the common belief that anime (or anything really) was better back in the Good Old Days. And it likely happens for the same reason—all the bad, boring, unpopular, etc. shows in between have been forgotten, making it seem that there was a golden age sometime in the past with a higher concentration of good stuff.

This season, Eizouken and In/Spectre are both pretty popular (#6 and #4 on MAL's ranking, though Eizouken probably ranks a lot higher among "serious" fans) and have gotten positive reactions from the feminist crowd. Hanako-kun and Shield Art Online are also contenders, and Ascendance of a Bookwoom—continuing next season, I think?—is moderately popular, too. There are also a ton of shonen/seinen shows, of course, but I suspect that's always been the case. Even if the ratio of boy-anime to girl-anime is worse now, it seems there's more of the latter than there used to be.

Also, part of why older anime for girls like Sailor Moon were such hits overseas was because there weren't a lot of alternatives. The American distributors infamously tried to reconstruct Cardcaptor Sakura to sideline the "Sakura" part, because they didn't think there was any point trying to market a cartoon to girls. If big entertainment companies were afraid to even localize a show for girls, you can bet they were even less willing to make one from scratch; and when they did, it was bound to be painfully stereotypical (old-school My Little Pony and the like).

Funny thing is that Eizouken is a seinen manga (Monthly Big Comic), Hanako-kun is shonen (Monthly G Fantasy) and and In/Spectre is also a shonen manga (though it was originally a LN that according to Wikipedia, its demographic was "Boys"). Demographics are not the most reliable indicators of content.

Edited by AbrahamOmosun on Feb 24th 2020 at 9:23:45 AM

Cowboys vs Samurai

This came up in another thread, but has anyone here ever heard of editors making edicts that negatively affected how female characters were written?

Hmm...none that I can recall. Then again I don't pay too much attention to editor-mangaka relationships

I absolutely cannot help but adore handsome 2D boys

The only example I remember was editors telling Araki not to make Lisa Lisa too prominent in Jojo Part 2, I think?

It came up in the Chatterbox thread - the contention being that female characters are often sidelined to supporting roles in Shonen because of an editorial influence, whereas you've far more examples of better treatment of female characters in Seinen, where the influence is purportedly lesser.

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

Seem like most of the time it was the editors who told the authors to add female characters to the story but then the author don't know how to write them or what to do with them so they just be sidelined. Example: Naruto.

E.T technically is a Isekai movie

Speaking of Naruto I think Kishi was forced to skip a Tsunade vs Pain fight because people wanted Naruto to show up already or somsomething

Secret Signature

@Draghinazzo: Pretty Cure is helped that it was the original codifiers of Magical girls who fought primarily using hand to hand combat and the flashy finishers were relegated to the end of fights as opposed to using them periodically to fight like Sailor Moon did. It was more like Kamen Rider for girls with Elements of the Dirty Pair (With sentai Elements replacing the Twin fighting Dirty Pair style a few seasons later) then Sailor moon, with a dash of Dragon Ball for the overall fight speed (Dragon Ball anime Director Daisuke Nishio directed the first two seasons, in fact).

It varies from season to season, but its still a breakout hit for toei, and made series like Mai Hime, Lyrical Nanoha (Both of which aired a bit later in the same year as pretty cure debuted) and Symphogear more viable as commercial successes, and pretty much kept the Magical Girl Warrior genre alive after Utena ripped apart the cliches to the point where most studios stuck with Cute Witch styled magical girls for quite a bit after Utena finished airing.

Watch Symphogear

From what I heard, and if I remember corrextly, it was that editorial wanted Naruto to make his big return before the holiday break? And so Tsunade's fight scene got dropped due to timing.

And on the subject of Sakura, Kishimoto has said that he got negative responses from his audience about Sakura, no matter what he did. Give her fight scenes? Nothing. Try to draw her more elegantly to counter the "she is not cute" complaints editors gave him from the start? Nada. Nothing worked on that end, and it eventually demotivated Kishi regarding giving her further focus. Even the animation team wouldn't bite onto the hook he dangled for them to spin some filler out of that love letter incident during the war arc.

Edited by Tsuzurao on Feb 25th 2020 at 8:31:13 AM

Well Sakura have no other motivation regarding herself. She have no personal reason to strike forward that independence from Sasuke. Kishi kinda made her that way that prevent any further development for her. heck Ino and Hinata actually have their own motivation compare to Sakura.

E.T technically is a Isekai movie