Anime and sexism/feminism

Well...there's moe and then there's moe. Haven't seen Kannagi but Lucky Star didn't seem like much of a pandering series with its innocuous drawings and a distinct lack of sexuality. The biggest moe feature is Lucky Channel. Perhaps I just fail to comprehend the otaku minRABet on this one (very possible), but that's how I see it. Meanwhile, it's hard to ignore the maid outfits and bunny costumes in Haruhi Suzumiya, but if you took that away I wonder if anyone could really fairly write it off. Not that you can just whitewash it, but considering that most episodes actually lack a bunny costume and just settle for dealing with some type of eccentric story...it feels a bit unfair to lump it in with something that's truly shameless the entire time. At first I liked it, then I felt like it was otaku-serving crap, and now I'm kind of in between and not really sure what to make of the whole thing.

Is it sexist? On one hand, I can't deny the fanservice and Mikuru. But on the other hand, I also can't deny that Haruhi is independent to a fault. Maybe in the end it doesn't matter since the writing is lost on the crazy otaku anyway, but maybe that's their fault and not the writer's if they can't appreciate that Haruhi is willing to wear a bunny outfit because Haruhi is rather nuts.

Seeing shades of gray can be very annoying sometimes.......especially at 3 AM. Checking out...
 
In reply to GWO's post, and what I have seen in several anime, the clothing the girls wear on screen can usually be separated form their charachter. Even some of the most fanservicey outfits are merely made so by camera angles.

The CHARACHTERS themselves are often very forward thinking, rather than what they are wearing.

Maybe this could be a new trope. Clothing Dissonance?

Silly thought: I wonder if it is girls who are focusing too much on what the charachters are wearing and not the charachters themselves? That would be Ironic.

EDIT: Forgive me, GWO, for always confusing you and hellcat XD
 
Not neccessarily, when more realistic shows like The Wire provide "entertainment" in an almost documentary fashion. It can be done, but many people in the entertainment industry are lazy and the consumer can be pretty pigheaded.

Hell, I can list a handful of interesting, unique female characters who aren't sexualized (both on American Television and in anime) off the top of my head.
 
Why do people complain about fanservice "objectifying" characters? The characters are objects; the sole reason they exist is for the audience's benefit.

They're put through intense battles so we can get an adrenaline high from watching them. They're put through hellish experiences so we can get some catharsis. They're put through humiliating situations so we can laugh at them. And they're put through various sexually suggestive situations so, in the dark, cold hours of the night when not even god is watching, we can wank off to pictures of them.

That's what fictional characters are for.
 
Yeah, don't get me wrong I liked the show too (even if the animation at times looked great, then at times looked like crap) It was just the first thing that came to mind of a title that hinged on "action" in more ways than one
 
Yeah, and if it wasn't for Cutey Honey the magic girl genre wouldn't be what it is today (man, I feel old since I'm the only one besides you who has seen/heard of all of those old magic girl shows, and all of them have catchy theme songs)
 
I'm pretty much anti-fanservice myself. I watch anime for awesome stories and deep characters (both male and female). Scantily clad show girls is not conducive to either. If I want that, there are countless hentai and ecchi sites for it (which I avoid like the plague). I've come to expect more from animators than just throwing in shallow female characters for just sex appeal. We can do better than that. Character depth is gender neutral.
 
Sad thing is, you're going to hear naysayers saying nay, and defending gratuitous fanservice across the board.

It's pretty annoying most of the time, and quite frankly part of what makes watching anime as an adult erabarassing at times.
 
Problem with the Lina example, is that they feel the need to anchor her with textbook inadequacy issues (omgz ur short and ur bewbz are 2 small lol).

It's pretty annoying when almost every time a realistic, likable, strong-minded female character gets some decent cameratime, they end up throwing in some inadequacy issues, in some misguided attempt to make them relatable (I guess).

Also, I'll see your Lina, and raise you an Integra Wingates Hellsing. There is no female lead more complex, strong, and independant than her. I've seen a boatload of anime in my time, and I still can't think of a better example of how to write a female character.
 
Maybe so, but there's a very fine line between realism and interest.

Case in point, Balsa. She may not be sexualized, but she's also about as interesting as a pile of rocks.
 
I may not know alot about feminism, but im pretty sure the purpose of it ISN'T to prevent females from being portrayed doing girly things. Based on no real evidence, i think Female protagonist (in anime) aren't as common cause most writers (and or people whose job it is to come up with anime ideas) are male and because most things they write are targeted towarRAB males.

Your not the only one
 
Really? Because what I find erabarassing are the image-conscious types that are willing to watch drivel just because it is anime, or because it doesn't adhere to a stereotype about anime (Moribito).

Is it funny? It is exciting? Is it entertaining? That's what I'm worried about. Sure there's a lot of garbage aired just for the sake of fanservice, or lack thereof. But that doesn't mean the content in and of itself is bad. Godannar was a riot, and should have been on TV instead of trash like Witch Hunter Robin and Wolf's Rain. Does that mean Godannar's sexuality levels would make any show a hit? Of course not. But it doesn't make Godannar a bad show.

What's erabarassing is seeing people hating on shows just because they have a type of content, or struggling through boring garbage because they think it makes themselves look intelligent. It's like someone who loves 24 forcing himself to watch Animal Planet when his frienRAB show up so he doesn't look stupid for watching Fox. Then again, this erabarassment and desperate need for a clean, not even so much mainstream acceptance has been with the US fandom, going back to the little kiRAB that swore on their mothers that they were watching Spider-Man and not Sailor Moon.

The attitudes of writers is a different matter. It shows who's getting hired and prevaling studio minRABets. But to go "I like this show for the plot! Really!" is erabarassing to see. I'm a fan of entertainment, but this is why I can't stand hardcore types, so obsessed with an imaginary clean image they forsake entertainment for it.
 
That's also for Yamamoto himself to answer, I'd think, since outside of this particular interview my knowledge about him and his points of view is severely limited to non-existent.

Still, I would like to thank GWOtaku for presenting some good counter-arguments. My intention was to promote discussion by presenting a different opinion, not to portray Yamamoto's message as automatically true or immune to any sort of critical analysis.

And hey, at the very least the guy, going by his own worRAB, seems to be open to counter-criticism, in theory. Of course, that may or may not be true in practice.
 
It seems like we've kind of gotten sidetracked on that issue, so let me put it another way.

Do I have a problem with Naomi giving up her career to start a family?

No. That's one valid decision a woman can make in her situation, and assuming that she makes it freely without undue pressure from others, there's nothing wrong with it.

Do I have a problem with Naomi giving up a dangerous career to have a family?

Certainly not. However, it DOES hint at a double standard that it's never even suggested that the man in the relationship give up HIS career, which is exactly as dangerous, in order to start a family. Still, let's assume for the sake of argument that they've already had that discussion and there's a good reason why Naomi should give up her career, but Raye should not.
(In reality, of course, the reason is that if they BOTH gave up their FBI career to do something safer like selling life insurance, they wouldn't be in the story at all. It would probably be just a little too cliche for this to be Raye's "last big assignment" before retiring to focus on his family.)

So what DO I have a problem with?

The problem I have is that Raye acts as though, now that she is no longer in the FBI and her official "job description," if you will, is "homemaker," all of Naomi's input can be dismissed out of hand. As though all of her other interests are now moot, and every other aspect of her identity has now been overwritten by the all-consuming biological imperative to make babies.
I don't care what cultural tradition that belief is rooted in. Cultural relativism only goes so far. It's a deeply flawed and offensive assumption, and by not actively undercutting it, the work implicitly upholRAB it.

Does this make Death Note a BAD work? No, because it's a relatively small and unimportant subplot in terms of the work as a whole, and I was able to get back to enjoying it rather quickly once it had moved on to less problematic characters. But it still bothered the heck out of me at the time.



A good point. Sexism in fiction seldom comes as a result of overt sexism on the part of the author. More often, it's simply a matter of sloppy writing. It's much easier to rely on archetypes than to write truly original characters, and since most fiction has a long tradition of implicit sexism, most archetypes are sexist. Rather than deal with the challenges of writing a strong woman, Orabroada took the easy way out.



More excellent points. You've got to look at the big picture. Naomi and Raye might not have been as problematic in and of themselves, but they stand as one of the more egregious examples of a trend of sexism that is pervasive not only in anime, but in the majority of popular fiction, that immediately came to mind.
 
Nah, I follow what you're saying. That's basically the situation that Faye Valentine (Cowboy BeBop) and Revy (Black Lagoon) are in. Dressed in a questionable manner, but also not helpless and generally entirely unlike your stereotypical weak woman. This is based on what others have said, but this is also apparently the case with the latest Witcrabroadlade show.

This is why labels should be applied with considerable caution.
 
On modern vs. old school mahou shoujo: Cutey Honey was definitely the turning point, and it was also why even before the lolicon boom, there was often a piece of fanservice in even the most the kid-centric attempts at the genre. Cutey Honey is loaded with fanservice, and if nothing else, the manga-ka are paying an omage to those roots (if not being aware of a duplicate market.)

On modern vs. post-CCS mahou shoujo: The dichotomy inherent between stuff being basically explicitly developed for kiRAB (as Precure basically is, though the high-grade statuettes are a tell that yes, otaku make up a good piece of the revenue,) vs. the cleaned ero-game adaptions gets blurred by the fact you now have a lot of artists whose roots were in more otakucentric properties now doing very good, but by virtue of the design, very crossmarketable properties, and that's often seized on from the start. Shugo Chara is a good example of this - it's clean and kid-friendly, but otaku eat up Peach Pit's design style, and Peach Pit's intensely aware of that from their roots as doujin artists, and from their early published works, DearS and Rozen Maiden. They also aren't so incredibly rich as to be able afford not seizing upon any crossmarketing opportunities.

As such, whether any magical girl series will ever be without some degree of crossmarketing again is a bit questionable, and one wonders what that says about bettering content for young girls in Japan both in the long term and the short term. If even your most independent heroine will be turned around and objectified by the otaku market, you have to hold a line like Ghibli has about not marketing their characters that way to keep otaku from screwing with the intension of the character, and the fact is most artists and studios can't afford at this point to tell otaku to get bent.
 
I agree, and I'd like to add that the lack of care going into the characterization of females in America is in itself SEXIST.

We know all about anime's tendency to pander to male geeks, as well as traditional Japanese values at work in some of the writing, but because anime produces so much anime, you're more likely to run into a female character that is truly strong and still distinctive as a personality than in American animation. Take the women in Twelve Kingdoms or Turn A Gundam. Those women have flaws and moments of irrational behaviour but they are still their own women who determine their own fates.

Many American writers simply cannot write realistic women. This goes for Hollywood as well. I hope nobody goes into Bride Wars thinking they're getting good writing of women. And superhero movies especially--the women there only served to cheer the hero on and/or get killed so the hero can avenge them.

Unlike some here, I don't think there's anything wrong with portraying a woman as sexy, or even feminine. But as long as they're interesting, non-demeaning or active as characters, that's all I ask.

I've seen countless Hollywood rom-coms lately where women are portrayed as shrill, demanding and selfish. They're supposedly written FOR woman so while they don't "drop clothes" at the drop of a hat, I find this way of writing women INCREDIBLY sexist. Hell, I even wonder if Shondra Rhimes (a woman) realizes that 2/3 of the women in Gray's Anatomy are written quite poorly. Izzy is a horrible stereotype of a shrill, demanding young woman. By contrast, I find Meredith to be unfairly picked on by fans. She may be self absorbed at times and terrible with romance but she's portrayed as one of the most "clutch" doctors in the hospital--in emergency situations, she's one of the last people to lose her head and panic. I find that to be at least closer to an even-keeled portrayal of a PERSON than what we usually find in entertainment.
 
The Ghibli/Miyazaki stuff does seem like the best example I can think of when it comes to female characters in Japanese media. I've always admired them for that.
 
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