Papillon is the best. Remember the Hawkeye Initiative? Putting male characters in the kind of ridiculous sexualized poses and outfits that comics often reserve for objectifying female characters?
Papillon is the Hawkeye Initiative of anime.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.He quite literally did.
Ironically enough for him, he was more alive as a Homonculi than he'd ever been when he was actually alive as a human.
One Strip! One Strip!Another irritating thing about Kaoru's writing is not just the way she's not treated as a serious fighter like the male characters despite supposedly being one, but the narrative doesn't really respect her at all. She's often treated by the story or sometimes by the characters themselves in the same way as Yahiko, a literal child - heavily patronized and accepted as a hindrance in serious situations. Said child is her "student," but learns maybe one thing from her in an early episode before actually learning everything that results in him becoming major character material from Kenshin - plus he's flagrantly disrespectful, and her irritation about it is a joke.
And this is all treated as natural, which is the big issue. It's difficult to put into words just how ingrained into the story the issues with Kaoru's character, because it just something you start to notice whenever she's plot important.
A modern comparison is, like, the first season of Iron Fist, where male lead Danny shows up in female lead Colleen's dojo, usurps authority from her, marginalizes her goals and desires and essentially rewrites her existence as his supporting character because he believes whatever other contribution she has is pointless. Except instead of it paining Kenshin as a toxic person like it does Danny (at least then we had a specific character to hate about it, even if the writer was completely blind to it), Kenshin doesn't encourage it at all or even really comment on it - it just happens because the narrative believes it's inherently supposed to.
It doesn't end with her, either. The other main female characters are a Femme Fatale turned Tsundere archetype (bigger in the anime than the manga), and a comically-outmatched ninja who's defined almost entirely by her desire and expectation to stop being a ninja and settle down with a psychopath and is - again - typically treated as silly rather than serious whenever she's not doing that.
Also, the one time the series did introduce a female character who fights on par with the male characters, she turns out to be a male crossdresser for no discernible reason and impact, beyond presumably lampooning the idea that a character like that would be a woman in the first place.
TL-DR: It's not great. I get passionate about it because it's a series I otherwise adore so much.
Edited by KnownUnknown on Sep 26th 2019 at 9:00:36 AM
That would not be an explanation for anything...
Rules of the Internet 45. Rule 45 is a lie. Check out my art if you notice.I suppose it remains to be seen, but I find myself doubting 17's going to be a major recurring character going forward, such that his absence whenever something big goes down is likely to be explained. He doesn't really fit into the character dynamics of the series, and that's caused powerful characters to get the backseat before (read: Adult Gohan).
Then again, the sheer extent to which 17 got attention in the TOP is surprising in the first place, so I could be wrong about that.
Edited by KnownUnknown on Sep 28th 2019 at 12:50:32 PM
Now, you are being unfair. He learned a second thing from her near the end of the manga, a really cool unique move at that! Of course, she can't always pull it off and he then proceeds to be master said move immediately surpassing his teacher and showing once and for all how completely worthless Kaoru is as a fighter. The one cool move she knows she can't do right and her kid student master it before her.
I feel you. Loved the series, but it is kinda hard to look back because of that. I mean, it is not completely awful, there is little to no sexualization and no normalization of sexual assault as far I can remember, which is sadly a plus compared to many shonen jump manga, but it is still sad to recognize just how casually misogynistic the series is.
Edited by Heatth on Sep 29th 2019 at 5:33:02 AM
Some people are kinda... scary, in terms of handling the hiatus.
Edited by Eriorguez on Oct 23rd 2019 at 12:28:10 PM
you might want to put the entire comment chain
cause I was extremely confused at what was going on.
The somewhat scary thing to me is that kaiserneko is apparently reading all of this shit and somehow musters the strength to give peaceful responses. Like, huge respect and all, but doing that on a prolonged amount of time must be stupidly stressful.
"when you stare too long into the abyss, Xehanort takes advantage of the distraction to break into your house and steal all your shit."

Well, nothindlg Watsuki ever made after Kenshin was quite as sucessful, so the series could just be bad.
Granted, "not as successful as Kenshin" doesn't mean much, considering how much of an impact the series made pretty much everywhere it was published.
Not the kind of thing that can be easily repiclated, if at all.
Edited by HailMuffins on Sep 26th 2019 at 10:42:57 AM