Sexism In Anime

The purpose of that scene was only to make Spopovich seem freakishly brutish...

Emphasis on the "Freak" part considering the context, it didn't really work because Toriyama didn't really do anything with it afterward and Videl was just kind of the only suitable candidate for the showcase.

It probably wouldn't have been a problem if Videl hadn't been immediately benched after that, but it's not good for the only female fighter in the series who actually cared about martial arts.

@Phisat: That's cool and all, but not what me and Screwy were talking about. We never said Western Animation didn't have any action girls at all, but that it was less willing to have female led action shows for the longest time.

I do think that when it comes to a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown, there is a place for occasions where one plays up the helplessness of the victim in order to establish the cruelty of the villain, and it can even been done regardless of the genders involved. I think the problem comes from when the violence begins to feel sexualized, or at least pushing up a victim’s helplessness because she’s female.

Edited by KarkatTheDalek on Mar 29th 2023 at 11:31:17 AM

I agree with unknowing on this. Worf Effect is used here on a sense that it doesn't even go anywhere. Spopovich is forgotten, Bibidi gets killed and oop here comes Buu as the big threat here! And Gohan doesn't even do much in the long run, Videl got that beatdown for pretty much no reason in the end.

At the very least, i think that's the biggest problem of that in Dragon Ball Z. And i don't know if Videl gets to do something after that other than be the love interest and later wife of Gohan.

Edited by TheWrongOne41 on Mar 29th 2023 at 8:55:37 AM

Some of that can be blame less on sexism, necessarily, and more on the fact that the entire Buu Arc is very haphazardly written, with a lot of random ideas thrown carelessly about, weird turns and a general sense that Toriyama was throwing everything and the kitchen sink on the wall because he just burned through his creative batteries.

It's still unfortunate that Videl ends up getting the short end of the stick, though, nor does it excuse his past mishandling of his female cast.

18 at least gets to beat up Vegeta even if she got jobbed by Cell later. She did last longer than her brother, though.

There's also her Trunks-timeline counterpart killing the Z-Fighters alongside Trunks-17.

Edited by badtothebaritone on Mar 29th 2023 at 11:01:40 AM

18 i think is one of the better handled ones, even if in her arc she gets it pretty rough (Cell and all). She's still the strong as hell android who went lightly on the punching machine and still managed to outrank every other competitor.

As for participation in the story after her arc that... idk.

She's easily the best handled girl Pre-Super, for sure. Post-Super, she hands that trophy off to Kefla (or her constituents, or some combo of the three, IDK exactly).

Edited by badtothebaritone on Mar 29th 2023 at 11:09:18 AM

I'm not sure that really counts as The Worf Effect...

Kefla does sound pretty cool from what i've heard from, standing toe to toe with Goku does sound pretty great.

Well changing a bit the topic, has Jojo been discussed here? I've heard that aside from Holly's stand which can get a bit touchy today, it never goes too bad with it's treatment of women.

Weird how the best handled girl in DB is the one that isn't a combatant.

That's not really weird considering it didn't start out as a fighting-centric series.

Yeah DB start as journey to the west adventure with martial art until it growing into the...let said cosmic fighting anime that it become.

With videl....yeah a lot of that is toriyama having protection from editor so his "I write whatever it come first" in full force. So videl get out because in that moment toriyama already have a arc ready and civilians play no part on it specially given how out of this videl is.

Technically she could've played a part later on, a much more significant one than the throw-away bit she got.

It probably wouldn't have really stopped the situation from coming up here and it wouldn't have been fighting related...but a role is a role.

Edited by randomness4 on Mar 30th 2023 at 3:45:34 PM

Could have also just had some lady sayins before super...

Just saying.

Make Goten a girl.

We could've had that as early as GT, if the writers hadn't been cowards.

Edited by Rynnec on Mar 30th 2023 at 5:09:43 AM

The massive Western reluctance for female-led action shows extended into the 2000s, when executives tried to shift the lead of Card Captors from Sakura to Li!

And in the 80s, the only significant live-action Female Action Hero lead I can think of is Ripley in the Alien series. There were a few others, mostly in low-budget films that were commercial failures - Red Sonja comes to mind. There were both Charlie's Angels and Cagney and Lacy on TV.

Compare that to dozens in anime in the same time period of 1979-89 (just to list some of the most famous: Lady Oscar, Kei & Yuri, Yohko (LEDA), The Knight Sabres, Cutey Honey, Cat's Eye, Nanako (SOS), Fandora, Rem, Iczer 1 and 3, A-Ko, Gall Force, Noa Izumi, Deunan Knute, Naucisaa, Mia (Dangaioh), Leona Ozaki, Noriko (Gunbuster), Princess Kahm, Angel Cop, Lemnear). Plus the Live-action sukeban series, like Sukeban Deka and all the clones of it. This doesn't even mention magical girl shows or shojo drama series, nor strong secondary characters like Ayukawa Madoka. The sheer variety of competent, confident, and comely women set anime apart from all western media in the 1980s — It's part of what attracted me to anime in the first place in the late 80s.

And it's an interesting, and jarring, difference between that and Japanese society as a whole, and the glaring sexism in other anime properties. And even these have some sexist trappings, like the Dirty Pair's uniforms, Angel Cop's anti-semitism, and plenty of Male Gaze in all of them, among other things.

Edited by ScrewySqrl on Mar 30th 2023 at 8:28:38 AM

Let's be real, though, Angel Cop's weird shit isn't that far off from the sort of tinfoil nonsense you'd find in the average US airport technothriller of the era.

I can think of one and a half Shonen manga that have a predominantly female cast: Claymore (people seem to think it's Seinen but it serialised in both weekly and monthly Shonen Jump) and Hayate × Blade (which began in a Shonen magazine before moving to a Seinen one). Are there any others, and do they handle their female characters any better than other Shonen?

Jojo: Stone Ocean

Edited by diddyknux on Mar 30th 2023 at 1:26:23 PM

Stone Ocean technically only has 2 main women, if F.F. is counting as NB.

The two however are pretty great characters though.

Would have been 3 is Anasui were a woman as originally intended. But no, execs thought an girl-skewed main cast wouldn't sell as well. I also think FF is supposed to be a girl because this was early 2010s, not later in the decade.

Edited by badtothebaritone on Mar 30th 2023 at 2:06:24 PM

N Ot really, Anasui was really meant to be gender-ambigious.

Yeah that's a famous misconception. Anasui was more meant to be gender ambiguous.

I guess? F.F. had the body of a female (literally) but didn't seem to exclusively say they identified as such. Their goal was to become an individual, to live, whether gender mattered to them is not mentioned.

Edited by TheWrongOne41 on Mar 30th 2023 at 12:09:48 PM