Sexism In Anime

Anzu/Tea is also undefeated.

She's the only heroine to have never lost an on screen duel.

She only ever duels twice in the anime (and Mai gave up during their duel, even though she could have won, since the point was to help Yugi get his confidence back) but still.

She should be called the undefeated Anzu.

Jokes aside, a lot of what Yakuzu has said is true. The series is just really bad at doing stuff with its female duelists. Even when it seems like they have something planned, they always seems to pull back and go back to their usual stuff.

Edited by HandsomeRob on Apr 1st 2023 at 1:23:26 AM

Oh damn.

Pokemon is slightly better than this, though?

I try to at least appreciated Anzu/Tea as a kind and empathetic person? I mean, at the very least, she’s not being being built up as someone super impressive and then falling flat, and she’s even got a few wins under her belt.

That probably makes her less of a letdown than Yuzu, and less completely useless than Kotori.

It could depend a bit, but I think overall it was better, yeah. If only May or Dawn had actually won a Grand Festival (though Ash was still losing the Leagues, so it’s not like he was doing better).

Edited by KarkatTheDalek on Apr 1st 2023 at 4:32:33 AM

I think Pokemon is, eh. The first season had some weird episodes with Misty, but i don't remember if they did anything weirder than the first seasons.

Kanto did also give James inflatable boobs, so I'm not as inclined to fault Kanto for being weird like that.

I always thought (having only seen the dub, mind you) that Misty was a fun character with a lot of personality, which is more than I can say for your standard bland cheerleader girl. Plus, while some of her Pokémon are less than impressive, she’s still a genuinely strong trainer.

I’d take some points off for her not really having a clear goal for the journey, but that’s an issue that afflicts Brock too, so I don’t really hold it against her specifically.

Edited by KarkatTheDalek on Apr 1st 2023 at 4:40:22 AM

Misty was a Know-Nothing Know-It-All, but both her and Ash were losers in Indigo. Everyone was kind of a loser in Indigo...it was a different time. Other than that, Misty just kind of...existed.

But May and Dawn are loved because they each had their own character arcs were firmly the Deuteragonists of their arcs. You could criticize that their pursuits were rooted in Contests and being more feminine, but that's nothing. Iris is probably the least popular heroine, and even she has a decent character arc.

Edited by BlackYakuzu94 on Apr 1st 2023 at 4:40:35 AM

Contests might be “more feminine”, but they do seem popular across gender barriers—I’d argue that we see an equal number of male and female Coordinators.

Pokémon Showcases are, as I understand them, all-girl events, but I haven’t seen any of the X and Y anime, so I can’t really judge.

I grew watching Black and White, so Iris was nice enough for young me to tolerate.

Even then, happy she was on the tournament and gave Cynthia a fair fight. Fans were happy with it too.

Showcases are definitely skewed towards girls, if not entirely so (I can't remember which). They're basically Contests without the actual battling.

The manga was a little it better about the female characters.

This suddenly reminds me of Bakugan. Where all the female brawlers got benched or Put on a Bus for next seasons.

Edited by TheWrongOne41 on Apr 1st 2023 at 1:55:10 AM

Pokemon may not be the best when it comes to female rep, but its miles ahead of Yugioh that's for sure.

Edited by BlackYakuzu94 on Apr 1st 2023 at 4:53:51 AM

The recent series seem to be going in a better direction. In Sevens, Romin is able to defeat Yuga in episode 40, making her the second female duelist to beat a main character. And she pulled it off with a seemingly useless card too.

I'd say Digimon is overall the best of the Big Three "Mons" anime franchises.

Edited by windleopard on Apr 1st 2023 at 10:04:06 AM

Really?

Wasn't there outrage about something Sora did (or didn't do) in the Kizuna movie?

Well, they don't get subjected to jobbing or damseling as much as YGO ladies and aren't viewed expendable like Pokemon's. So I'd say yeah, they are the best. Rika alone puts the female characters from the latter two to shame.

Yeah, it involves her giving up her Digi Destined duties to run her family's flower business. Still, stuff like that is more the exception than the rule.

I want to both defend and criticize the writing around Asuka in Yu-Gi-Oh GX for a minute. I don't think it's fair to characterize her as being worse than most male characters when it comes to dueling and its effect on moving the plot forward. Most characters in GX get kind of side-lined to have the main character Judai handle most of everything, and as far as things go Asuka doesn't get it that bad. She's one of the very few characters to stay a central cast member from beginning to end. She gets a fair number of duels in comparison to other characters and is generally treated as one of the stronger characters. She beat one of the season 1 villains (the only other character to do so besides Judai was Manjoume, who fought a joke character), was treated as the toughest of the three brainwashed characters in season 2 (a couple other male characters were brainwashed as well), and was named as one of the 3 best duelists in the school when she graduated in the finale.

However, I do think there's a problematic aspect to her writing that creates as negative view of her, but it's something more abstract and hard to pin down than simply being weaker or job more often than other male characters. I think it's more that, with all the male characters they have some kind of clear role in the narrative you could boil them down to, whether based on their relationship with the main character or having some clear character arc. You can look at them say things like, "Manjoume is the asshole rival who learns to be better", "Misawa is the friendly rival", "Sho is the comic relief sidekick who learns to be stronger", etc.

With Asuka though, she doesn't really have that. Even though she's strong, she isn't particularly treated like a rival to Judai or any other character. She also has no defined goal or character arc, except for wanting to find her missing brother, which gets resolved early on. The only obvious thing you can boil her down to is that she's "The Girl". She's the only girl of the cast and any unique interactions she has with others is based on that. She's the only major character that's mostly defined by her gender.

That also makes it easy to where, you can look at the win and loss records of other characters and be like "Manjoume won this duel because rival needs to prove himself a threat, but lost this duel because it's the main villain and the hero needs to beat him", or "Sho lost this duel because he's just the sidekick", or whatnot. But you can look at Asuka think "she won this unimportant duel because they needed to throw The Girl the bone, but lost this other duel because she's The Girl and can't do anything important". See what I mean?

Yea that's why I said that while Asuka does get shafted, GX's supporting cast in general weren't treated too well. Its bad, but not that bad.

I'd say it goes from best to worst: Aki > Asuka > Tea > Yuzu > Aoi > Kotori in terms of treatment.

Like most of them are treated as "The Girl", but it varies.

Edited by BlackYakuzu94 on Apr 1st 2023 at 6:42:14 AM

That seems like a fair assessment.

I will note that when you’re a kid watching week to week, you might not notice the distinctions between plot-important episodes and “filler” (which might be a questionable term to use for a series that isn’t adapting a manga), and GX was more episodic than both its predecessor and immediate successor, at least when it started. And once you’ve realized that Judai/Jaden is going to be doing most of the important stuff, I don’t think it’s a stretch that viewers are going to come away from episodes where Asuka/Alexis duels with a positive impression of her, as opposed to “She never wins any important duels”.

I’d say the biggest misstep here might be introducing 4 new characters in Season 3 who will be taking a very prominent role…and making them all dudes (though this is all secondhand—I haven’t seen much of Season 3).

Edited by KarkatTheDalek on Apr 1st 2023 at 6:52:08 AM

What I will say about the Pokemon anime is that I think the Indigo League conference casually did a much better job with gender representation than some of the later League tournaments did.

Also I think the games themselves are pretty okay to good in that department even though it's not quite related

The Alola League is probably the worst of them in that regard. Despite the list of competitors being decently balanced gender-wise (I believe it's 6 out of 16), literally every single intergender match goes to the guy. Lana is the only girl to make it past Round 1 (by beating Mallow in the only girl-on-girl match the entire tourney), only to be taken out by Guzma the very next fight.

Edited by badtothebaritone on Apr 1st 2023 at 6:33:59 AM

Hm, I do think that while the the Contests did well regarding gender ratios, the League tournaments around that time (and a bit after) might have ended up dropping the ball there. I’ve only seen Hoenn’s though (and that had a one girl who gave Ash a pretty tough fight for his first full battle there, she felt like someone who was actually playing the games), so I can’t really say for sure.

Edited by KarkatTheDalek on Apr 1st 2023 at 7:34:52 AM

Re: Yugioh. I'll try to give context on what I know of how each series treats its prominent female characters from memory (so if there are any errors there, do let me know):

• DM: I'd say that Téa not being as into the card game or as skilled as her male friends is not quite the issue (though she did maintain a 100% win rate in both of her duels FWIW), but Mai is the more egregious of the two promient women in the series. As her tenure ended with her being traumatized by Marik during the quarterfinals of Battle City in the manga. The anime extended her role a bit...by having her be brainwahsed into a cult-like orginisation and adding a love triangle-esque subplot involving her, Joey and Valon.
• GX: Alexis had a strong start (despite losing her first duel against Jaden), but ended up not dueling as often as the series went on despite her initial display of competence. She was also eventually temporary brainwashed into a cult. Got Put on a Bus to Hell for a good chunk of the dimension hopping storyline (granted, along with three other friends of Jaden's) and was also an early victim of Nightshroud and Truman's Assimilation Plot. I think part of that entailed a bit of a jobbing streak as well. There is also the matter of how all the female students were slotted into Obelisk blue by default (with one exception, but she arrived later in the series and originally snuck into the school by impersonating a male student)
• 5D's: arguably where the misogyny is more apparent or "enhanced" I'll also have to detail each chaartcer in their own bullets.
  • Akiza likewise had a strong initial start, but her prominence faded when the Dark Signer arc ended (specially her subplot involving her origins and the Arcadia movement), leading her to find a new subplot centered around Turbo dueling and even end she ended up benched. Which isn't helped by the show actually calling her a bench-warmer at one point and put her in the jobber role for the few duels she had (bar one I think at the Arc Cradle arc). Granted I feel like that was more due to real life complications.
  • Luna fared a little bit better, but also had the same issues, namely that her character arc ended with the Dark Signer arc (this one dealing with a spirit world and possibly connecting to Arcadia as well). This also affected her twin brother Leo, so it is more to do with Yusei, Jack and Crow being the more "important" protagonists for the anime's narrative at the time.
  • for two side charterers. Carly's plotline likewise ended with the Dark Signer arc, but unlike the other two, she was Demoted to Extra. Sherry Le Blanc has some plot importance, but her appearances were scant during the WRGP arc.
  • the common demoninator here is that all of the negative developments happened either during the WRGP arc, the filler that preceded it or was a result of the character arc ending prematurely in the last major arc. The issue with Akiza and the twins is that their character arcs had concluded, but they were to important to drop due to the girls being two of the Signers (and Leo, Luna's aforementioned male twin, became a Signer at the Arc Cradle later), leaving them in a limbo importance wise
• ZEXAL: Rather straightforward this time. Tori's is in the cheerleader space Téa occupied in DM, but with less apparent depth (and lolicon fanservce) and only dueled once while brainwashed. Cathy had the issue of being a skilled duelist but with a low amount of duels. Anna Kaboom is a secondary character. Rio is also a skilled duelist, but her character seemed to be devoted to her brother Shark, even when they both became villains (long story)
• Arc-V: Prolly the first thing that should come to mind when you see the words "yugioh" and "misogyny" int he same sentence.
  • The problem here begins with the fragments of a girl named Ray, you see the backstory involved the current setting being made as a result fo the dimenion being cleaved into four, and along with it a boy and a girl, both split into 4 separate personalities. Naturally three of the four resulting pairs have some romantic elements. The protagonists here include Yuya and Zuzu. The latter, much like Akiza, Zuzu also had a strong start, including actually beating Yuya. One of her other counterparts, Celina, also proved to be competent in her own right. The other two however were sigh unseen for the early part of Arc-V. By the time the dimension hopping arcs happened (something that is kicked by by the antagonists kidnapped Zuzu), their characters began to take a downward spiral into Distressed Damsel territory, they still had managed to get some duels and winds under the belts since, but by the time the cast fought they way to the Fusion Dimensions, they were relegated to "sexy lamp"status. Their other counterparts, Lulu and Rin, were already there from the start. The issue here is they their role seemed to just to fuel the manpain of Yuya and his own counterparts, and also be a Dismantled Macguffin of sorts for the antagonist thus far, who wanted to bring his daughter back to life (Zuzu and her counterparts were the fractured versions of said daughter). His attempt would eventually serve to only get all four of them fridged. And if that wasn't bad enough, it happened after one of said villains' scientists decided to brainwash them. Oh and the borderline Post-Script Season ended with Zuzu coming back to life...but no word on what happened to her counterparts.
  • This series also brought in AU versions of some older charterers from the past three series. One of them being Alexis. Sadly she wound up a jobber.
• VRAINS: Skye (alias Blue Angel/Gal/Maiden) had the issues of losing all but two duels (and one of those were against some mooks), her attempts at improving being rendered futile and one of her losses had ended with her being faceplanted into the ground and rendered comatose. While Arc-V's treatment of women is bad by scale, VRAINS could contest it for magnitude because of how she specifically suffer (despite piloting a deck that has won tournaments in the real life OCG!). FWIW Emma (alias Ghost Gal) had fared better, but also fell off later in the series run.
• SEVENS and Go Rush: From what I gathered, those two had handled its female cast more fairly (Go Rush has one of its three protagonists be a girl and also gave her a deck usually suited for rival archetypes). Those are also the series that Studio Gallop didn't animate. Make of that what you will.

The takeaway, there seems to be a trend of female duelists having a decent to strong start, but falling off later on. One could argue that is because they are the protagonist of their respective series (and thus aren't in a position where they have to win), but that still doesn't excuse what Mai, Zuzu, her counterparts and Skye had went through. The other issue is actually more subjective as it is two cases of the female characters being more of a cheerleader to the protagonist, which is iffy (especially when the argument can be made that such roles were born from a Stay in the Kitchen mentality) but tame compared to what happened to those that had a pretense of competence and rendering that an Informed Attribute that makes them effectively cheerleaders anyway (assuming they are present that is). There might also be a brainwashing fetish, or at least, an unfunny running gag invovled with how ofthen that shows ups in the Gallop series.

The card game is its own beast as there are some metaplots where women have the spotlight (most notably Sky Striker), but there are also those where the heroine ended up like the aforementioned (Eclessia in the Abyss storyline, complete with a small stint of brainwashed damsel. Ib in World Legacy and her arc ending up as "get bodyjacked by the Airy expy>committing suicide to stop her plans>her brother trying to attempt to use the Artifact of Doom [or rather artifacts] to revive her and come to blows with their best friend as a reuslt")

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Apr 1st 2023 at 5:35:25 AM