I was mostly speaking of Chi-chi and Videl, though I've come to accept the circumstances.
Chi-chi was only fighting to get Goku to keep his promise, though I really wish Toriyama hadn't decided to make her so firmly against Martial Arts, even if Goku is kinda a bum who doesn't know how to do anything else (in fact, I've come to feel marrying Goku to Chi-chi for the reasons he did was a really dumb idea as a whole).
As for Videl...there's technically no correlation between what happened to her and what she became later, but we've had that discussion about her many times, so I won't go there again.
18 I'm cool with after I watched that one video by Masako X that put her actions in a better context.
One Strip! One Strip!Is it really that bad when Chi-Chi never had any interest in being a fighter to begin with though?
I feel like it's a bit worse with Videl since she actually liked to fight, but then was shunted into a motherly role.
But alas, Shonen. Men doing manly things while women play the support role...Is there a Shonen that doesn't have this problem?
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.![]()
Claymore, Kurohime, Rosario To Vampire, High School Dx D.
Quite a few, actually.
edited 29th May '17 10:10:52 AM by Demongodofchaos2
Watch SymphogearAttack on Titan, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Part 6 (it didn't because Seinin until Part 7), The Asterisk War, The Irregular At Magic High School, I could go on.
edited 29th May '17 10:30:20 AM by Zelenal
Let the joy of love give you an answer! Check out my book!Quite. Most anime in general - hell, most works in general - have problems when it comes to gender depictions. Shonen is no exception. However, while it's rare to find a shonen that doesn't have some issue here or there, visibility of female characters is far from a universal one.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Don't move the goalposts. The initial argument was that there weren't any shounen works where the women can be just as awesome as the men so we listed a fair number of examples where that wasn't the case.
Let the joy of love give you an answer! Check out my book!![]()
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YUP lol.
But yea, that's moving goal posts. I don't think we're ever going to get a series with absolute perfect equality for genders because there's always going to be some bias one way or another. That said, the more series that have a balance of Men/Women in either an active or support role, the better.
It's sad tho because I feel like how prominent it is has just as much to do with how people look down on the Non-Action Guy in any given work. Because how dare a man non being an ass kicker.
Ok, I don't wanna turn this into a discussion about gender politics. Back to DBZ.
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.I think people are overreacting to a casual absolutist statement. Like all such statements, it actually means "generally" or "in my experience." Saying battle shounen have problems with female empowerment is not going to be countered by bringing up fruckin' Claymore. I noticed nobody mentioned any of the Big Three. I guess they aren't so big anymore but One Piece, Naruto and Bleach are way bigger than anything else mentioned and that popularity carries weight. If the most popular shounen around can't be used as examples of shounen with great depictions of women, then there's a problem.
There was also Death Note if we dial things back a bit and for all its other great qualities compared to other shounen, its depiction of women was not one of them.
Furthermore, most of the popular shounen we grew up with - DBZ, YYH, RK - feature huge sausagefests while women function as love interests and little else. Naturally our formative years and experiences also cloud our perception.
Also why did nobody mention Inuyasha? It fucking owns and it has a great cast of female characters.
edited 29th May '17 11:36:05 AM by Nikkolas
You ''really'' don't want to bring up women in One Piece
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.
Outside of gag scenes, no. (and it seems some people advocate taking gag violence seriously. I do not. But if we do, Inuyasha is a serial child abuser given how he loves beating up Shippo) Generally stuff with Kikyo or Koga or something makes Inuyasha act dumb and Kagome gets her feelings hurt.
Do we still have the Takahashi Couple trope? Both Inuyasha and Kagome, being teenagers(mentally in IY's case), are pretty incompetent with regards to this whole love and relationship thing. But neither of them takes it to levels of emotional manipulation or physical abuse.
edited 29th May '17 11:46:29 AM by Nikkolas
@Moth: If you actually read the other sentence in my post, you'd have your answer. Also, nothing about Chaos' post suggests that they're looking for recommendations.
edited 29th May '17 11:50:00 AM by Zelenal
Let the joy of love give you an answer! Check out my book!![]()
I watched Inuyasha a lot when I was younger; there looked like a lot emotional manipulation on the part of Kagome since Inuyasha still had lingering feelings for Kikyo, he was blatantly portrayed as in the wrong because of that.
And that's outside of gag scenes.
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.Well it is wrong if for no other reason than Kikyo is a horrible abomination made of clay, dirt,bones and stolen souls.
But even when Kikyo becomes more-or-less a hero again, Kagome isn't actively trying to say "BE WITH ME!" She's merely reacting to the person she loves being in love with someone else. That kinda hurts and you want it to stop. It's not some conscious, nefarious plot on her part. Inuyasha is always the instigator, that is absolutely the case every time and the fact the series "sides" with Kagome in making us sympathize with her isn't wrong in my view.
Perhaps I'm too biased in this case, though.. I've always felt a strong attachment to Kagome and related to her.
This is all making me think of HP and how the narrative sides with Hermione there, too. Huh. Never thought about this similarity before.
edited 29th May '17 12:05:15 PM by Nikkolas
I mean Inuyasha never actually had any closure with Kikyo before all of that shit happened; they died thinking they betrayed the other and then the truth comes out. It's a bit of a complicated issue that goes beyond "How dare he still have issues with his ex-girlfriend and try to resolve them" that series seems to always shit on him for.
I didn't have a problem with Kagome being uncomfortable about it, because it was understandable like you said. But rather how their friends always gave Inuyasha shit because of it.
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.Rumiko Takahashi was really bad about "gag violence" dominating her couples. Ranma 1/2 had a major problem with it too. Pretty much every character in that show was some different flavor of asshole, with audiences drawing battle lines over which asshole they most related to and therefore absolved of all wrongdoing versus all the other assholes whose flaws naturally made them irredeemably evil.
Being a harem manga, this naturally resulted in a lot of intense Ship-to-Ship Combat that frequently turned personal, given that everyone's favorite character was whoever's deep-seated character flaws most matched them, personally.
edited 29th May '17 12:11:12 PM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Nikkolas: I can only dismiss so many gag scenes until I have to conclude that a character really is just kind of a dick. And people generally use Belligerent Sexual Tension now instead of Takahashi Couple. Honestly, I thought that was just a redirect for BST now.
Sounds about right. Even though Ranma could have serious fights though, it was really more about the humour when I think about it. Takahashi kinda kept up the same dynamic for Inuyasha when it might not have been such a good idea to do so.
One Strip! One Strip!Ranma One Half was basically Sadist Show for the most part; a bunch of assholes being dicks to each other. So, it depends entirely on how much you can relate to the characters if you can find their antics funny or just them a bunch of assholes.
There's only so much Comedic Sociopathy you can take before it stops being funny and starts crossing into "Why do these characters even like each other"
edited 29th May '17 12:19:08 PM by BlackYakuzu94
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.

Caulifla became a Super Saiyan (and is going to become Super Saiyan 2 in the next episode?) and Kale becomes the Legendary Fem-Broly next time as well.