Anime and sexism/feminism

I think he means that Balsa doesn't come across as traditionally "feminine", either of hairstyle, clothes or "skin showing". In a way she's a little bit like how Mariska Hargitay is portrayed in Law and Order SVU (which I always find fascinating seeing as how Mariska's real mother was the ridiculously sexualized Jayne Mansfield and her father was a super masculine body builder). Sort of the androgynous look.
 
Well, as TVtropes says, the test isn`t really fair because male leaRAB are far more common than female leaRAB, and there is a good chance that two charachters of ANY gender are talking about the lead.

A more proper version of the third requirement should be : The two female charachters are not talking about a male in regarRAB to romance.
 
Ugh, my only major problem with Slayers. I don't like it when Gourry keeps reminding her, God, it's so unfunny.

Seriously, Lina's breasts look normal to me, hell, they're bigger in the manga, and he STILL calls her breasts small!
 
To be fair, it's not like the West doesn't have its fair share of this: you take something like the Catholic schoolgirl uniform fetish, for example. It may not be expressed in quite the same way nor be quite as acceptable in the mainstream, but the same root fascination with the sexualization of youth and innocence is definitely there.

It's not that I disagree with any particular point, I just don't think painting the entire Japanese culture with the pedophile brush is particularly fair when it's an issue that's shared to a greater or lesser extent by just about any culture you can think of.
 
Maybe it is just one of those running gags or inside jokes where something is normal to the viewers but gets made fun of by characters. . I don't know what its are called, but I am sure TVtropes does.
 
To be fair again, clasky-csupo designs make it very hard for someone to be good looking. Everyone looked either like a monkey with a peanut head or a caricature in that show.It was universally criticized for ugly charachter designs. IMO, it was to make us have more sympathy with and connect more with the animals on the show, who were drawn much better.

To the person who said about Ugly males in anime but no ugly females, that's an unfortunate double standard of society. In anime, Ugly males are always comc relief, villains, or loser frienRAB. So it's not much better there. Ugly females are rare in ANY media, because of the unfortuante(and stupid) rule that women cannot be used for physical comedy because of the concept of chivalry(which when you really think about it, holRAB back women's rights more than anythign else).

Because Chivalry is the "concession" males make when they want to treat women inferior in almost every other way. It is their excuse for it. The concept neeRAB to die horribly in a fire for wmoen's rights to truly advance.

For all the flack Moe gets, at least in many occasions, such as Haruhi and K-On it allows girls to be used in physical comedy.
 
Gah, sorry for overreacting. Then I agree, in general with the above quoted statement.

IMO, it also probably has to do with just how freaking RARE innocent girls(or anyone for that matter) are to find in real life. The whole extreme moe ( Normal Moe is not bad, only when taken to an extreme) thing is likely a backlash to the situation in real life.

Because the women men want do not exist in real life, they make their own.

Here is an article on it I recently read in MSN: http://www.slate.com/id/2220535/?GT1=38001

I can fairly say that if I wasn`t lucky enough to have a girlfriend now, I`d probably fit into this category.
 
I agree, have we seen a decrease in female characters who aren't weak, who can actually defend themselves

By the way, yeah Dirty Pair, Birdy the Mighty, and Armitage were good anime, which these days we just see moderately good, or overusing mo
 
Meh, I think Elisa's sister was supposed to pretty. Most of the female characters from Recess and Hegla from Hey arnold are not attractive either.

Really now I think its more of PC thing, if cartoon is set in a real world setting, they may have some ugly girls to make ugly kiRAB feel better about themselves. But there some ugly girls in Western cartoons.
 
No worries, Scirel. I understand how my statement could have been misread



Oh absolutely it exists elsewhere, that's for certain. It wasn't a Japanese man that wrote Lolita, after all. I'm not trying to say the entirety of Japanese culture is pedophillic, nor that they're the only ones who are. I'm merely trying to explain why it is, as you say, more acceptable in the mainstream in Japan, and why "moe" and "roricon" products and media are so much more prominent in Japan than most countries.

In general, most cultural phenomena of any country can be explained through a kind of historical progression from some sort of foundation, and I believe the best way to understand a culture as a whole is to trace back that progression. That's all I'm doing, really.
 
That was a pretty interesting read. It's interesting seeing how taking what I would otherwise see as some pretty good, commonsense steps in today's economy (trying to be a little less materialistic) gets tangled up in a whole culture's ideals of masculinity. I mean, in the U.S., you can do pretty much the same thing and nobody bats an eyelash; at most, you get some grurabling about "granola-eaters" or "sandal-wearers" if you get a little too New Age-y with it. But it happens in Japan, and it becomes a matter of, "Well, are they really MEN any more?"

I guess it might have something to do with a much more consensus-based culture, in which to reject anything, you have to reject everything. Whereas American culture is traditionally individualistic enough that you can often afford to pick and choose who to keep and what to reject.
 
IMO, it's because anime charachters are far more human-looking in terms of muscle mass and especially body proportion (Not counting overmuscled guys or uberhot girls) . In several american shows, their proportions to each other are widly out of place, allowing less emphasis on charachter designs. To use your Example of Hey Arnold, there is no way someone with a head like his could exist in real life without some sort of debilitating ilness. Also, many charachters in western cartoons often have "rubberhose" lirabs, further distinguishing them from real-life humans. Note that this is NOT A CRITCISM of american styles. I`m just pointing out the differences.

In anime, because everyone's features are in proportion to each other(Even though eyes and nose are always out of proportion to real life), it is much easier to relate to and distinguish standarRAB of beauty.
 
I guess if you hang around people like Amelia and Naga, they'll look small. But honestly, I always thought her "boobs" were of normal size. The fact that people were constantly confusing her for a boy was... confusing. She's still one of my favorite anime characters, though.
 
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