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Which of the big SJ three (Kishimoto, Oda, and Kubo) is more sexist?


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Animeking1108



Joined: 26 Apr 2011
Posts: 1244
PostPosted: Sat Feb 23, 2013 11:30 am Reply with quote
All three writers have their sexist traits.

Kishimoto- The women rarely do anything useful.
Oda- The women wear revealing clothing and have breasts the size of watermelons.
Kubo- Both.

I want to say Kubo is the most sexist, but then you have characters like Rangiku and Soi Fon that actually are useful in battle.

Kishimoto is accused of putting women on the sidelines, but there's Tsunade, who is physically strong. Sakura got better and became a medic. Hinata spoiler[pep-talked Naruto into not giving up against Obito and Madara]. It takes more than being able to punch somebody to be useful.

Oda, while he writes women that are useful in battle, he either overly sexualizes them or makes them constantly complain. When "One Piece" started, Nami had a more subtle look. She dressed normally and her breasts were human sized. Now, she looks like a stripper.

Again, this is why I can't decide which one is the most sexist. For every negative trait they give their women, there's still something positive about them.
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DomonX2



Joined: 14 Sep 2012
Posts: 232
Location: Neo Toronto, Neo Canada
PostPosted: Sat Feb 23, 2013 11:39 am Reply with quote
Animeking1108 wrote:
All three writers have their sexist traits.

Kishimoto- The women rarely do anything useful.
Oda- The women wear revealing clothing and have breasts the size of watermelons.
Kubo- Both.

I want to say Kubo is the most sexist, but then you have characters like Rangiku and Soi Fon that actually are useful in battle.

Kishimoto is accused of putting women on the sidelines, but there's Tsunade, who is physically strong. Sakura got better and became a medic. Hinata spoiler[pep-talked Naruto into not giving up against Obito and Madara]. It takes more than being able to punch somebody to be useful.

Oda, while he writes women that are useful in battle, he either overly sexualizes them or makes them constantly complain. When "One Piece" started, Nami had a more subtle look. She dressed normally and her breasts were human sized. Now, she looks like a stripper.

Again, this is why I can't decide which one is the most sexist. For every negative trait they give their women, there's still something positive about them.


Drawing women that wear skimpy clothing=/=sexist. I hope you know this. Also, the term "sexism" like the term "racism" has lost a lot of meaning. You can be accused of "racism" by calling an "African" American black and not African American, even though not all black people originate from Africa and not all black people of western citizenship are American. Same concept goes for sexism. You can have a woman in a game made by men and they're considered sexist, even though the female is a protagonist/brave/strong. Cough, cough Lara Croft.
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littlegreenwolf



Joined: 10 Aug 2002
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PostPosted: Sat Feb 23, 2013 3:10 pm Reply with quote
First get it out of your mind that useful female characters = not sexist. That's wrong. You'll need to determine what exactly it is you consider sexist about the characters you're finding, and they're just being skimpy doesn't necessarily mean sexist. Sailor Moon has them running around in mini skirts the whole series, and it's one of the most feminist comics/shows out there in anime.

I stopped reading Oda and Kubo years ago, but I don't think Kishimoto is sexist. I think he just really has no clue in how to write female characters, and has admitted so.

But it's shonen manga, and so who can really blame him for having no idea how to portray women?

That said, even though it is frustrating that the females haven't played much any role in Naruto's storyline for a good... 2+ years now (not counting Tsunade), Kishimoto has a huge variety of female characters any feminist could be proud of (if only Western publishers like DC and Marvel could be more like that). It's the fact that they aren't doing anything in the story lately that gets to me, but then again Kishimoto has been doing a ninja war now for over two years, and all that is is fights, so the story as a whole has been suffering, female characters or not.

Design-wise I don't think Kishimoto's female characters are objectified anywhere near the level they are in One Piece or Bleach. Yeah, Tsunade has huge breasts, but she doesn't wear skimpy clothes, and I suppose the next character that comes close to skimpy clothes would be either Karin or Ino, and well, those outfits have never bothered me in the least compared to what I usually see in other shonen manga.

But hey, if you really want to play at which manga is more sexist, why don't you give them all the Bechdel Test? Since these are long running manga, limit it to the first 10 volumes or so, and see if any of them pass. I can tell you Naruto does with Sakura and Ino's relationship and interactions that don't concern Sasuke. With Bleach I don't remember too much female/female conversations/scenes. Maybe something with Orihime and that one tomboy friend, if such a scene exists?

I read a number of volumes for One Piece back in the day, but I remember it mainly being a big sausage fest, and not really liking some of the pin-up artwork what few female characters were portrayed by.

It's not one of the big three, but I'll tell you Claymore easily passes the Bechdel test. I'll leave it up to you to determine if the other series do.
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Raftina



Joined: 15 Mar 2011
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PostPosted: Sat Feb 23, 2013 5:14 pm Reply with quote
I'm not sure the Bechdel Test is useful for anything with long narrative lengths. A surprising number of works do not pass it in any case, but where the narrative is long, it is likely to give details that one expect from the setting. For example, Orihime can be seen in casual conversation about school related subjects with female classmates in plenty of situations (most often with the tomboy and the lesbian).
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littlegreenwolf



Joined: 10 Aug 2002
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PostPosted: Sat Feb 23, 2013 6:29 pm Reply with quote
Raftina wrote:
I'm not sure the Bechdel Test is useful for anything with long narrative lengths. A surprising number of works do not pass it in any case, but where the narrative is long, it is likely to give details that one expect from the setting. For example, Orihime can be seen in casual conversation about school related subjects with female classmates in plenty of situations (most often with the tomboy and the lesbian).


Yeah, but is it seen in the background, or are they actual scenes with a conversation going on? And were at least two of the females named at that point? There have been alterations to the rules of the test, but even so sometimes something terribly misogynistic can get through, and something completely feminist can fail.

I brought up the Bechdel Test because though it's not perfect, it's a good indicator to go by in seeing what exactly is wrong with female portrayal in most movies/books/comics, etc. It's not the end all, be all of determining whether something is sexist in it's portrayal of women, but it's a good starting point for discussing the merits of a work concerning the subject. Sometimes things pass which are still quite offensive to women, and some things fail that are the opposite. The thread starter here seems to think that making a female character useful amounts to the story as not being sexist, when really it's a bigger problem than that. Are the women conceived as equals? Are they just tools to promote the story, or stroke the main male character's ego? Are they their own character, or a stereotype of how a man see's a woman? I myself find that most female characters in shonen/seinin manga are just pretty little eye candy accessories added to the storyline. Shojo manga has some pretty bad styles of storytelling that would flat out fail the test too.

And yeah, long narratives in manga are kind of hard to put this test to, but in general people alter/add rules to the Bechdel test to fit whatever medium is being judged. In this case I'd say 10 volumes a rather over-indulgence in a timeframe for a manga, but I feel the first 10 volumes of a long running manga will give any reader a good feel of what the manga is about, and if one of the main characters is female, more than enough time for the female character to begin development. If the female character has not gotten enough "screen time" to warrant this, then she obviously isn't important enough to the story.

If we really wanted to be cruel we could go with the first volume of any of these series, but seeing as they introduce the main character, who happens to be male, as well as introducing the story all three of these I believe would flat out fail the test. Maybe a more realistic time frame would be 5 volumes in this case?

You could always ad a rule to it as well that the conversation has to go on for at least two pages. That's what a lot of people using this rule use for comics.

I don't use the rule to determine whether or not I'll read a comic or watch a movie or show, but I do use it a lot when I am babysitting and choosing what to expose developing minds to. Since we're talking about children's comics here, I'd say how they portray women is rather important, and honestly I don't think I have personally every suggested a comic/anime to another woman that didn't pass this test.

Maybe one of these days I'll get around to creating that site about Feminism in manga/anime and I'll have thought up a better, more specific way to apply it to long running manga.
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Raftina



Joined: 15 Mar 2011
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 24, 2013 4:55 am Reply with quote
The Wikipedia article on the Bechdel Test only mentions the named character modification to the original. Without laying out the expected modifications, merely mentioning the test is of questionable usefulness: Orihime and Rukia has a roughly one page exchange about Orihime's injury in the first volume. This would fail the two page limitation but pass the original test. It would also fail any modification that forbids any male to be part of the conversation, as the exchange is part of a larger conversation in which Ichigo is a participant.

I find the test pretty useless. It is inherently discriminatory against limited point of view narratives: By default, limited PoV conversations would involve the PoV character. If a conversation occurs in which the PoV character isn't a conversant, it is generally with a specific purpose in mind. Thus, if a limited PoV narrative has a male PoV character, then it has a much higher chance of failing the test than a third person omniscient narrative with a male protagonist.

The most obvious demonstration of this flaw is in video games, where it's uncommon for anybody to carry on a conversation with someone other than the player character. Directing a line or two to another character, certainly, but conversation is rare. Thus, if a game features a male player character, then it's very likely to fail the test quite independently of how it treats female characters.
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EireformContinent



Joined: 30 May 2009
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Location: Łódź/Poland (The Promised Land)
PostPosted: Sun Feb 24, 2013 5:24 am Reply with quote
If skimpy clothes and unrealistic proportions are sexists for females what to say about huge, muscular guys or slender bishouen ideals that no otaku can live to, unless he wants to donate talented plastic surgeon?

Quote:
But it's shonen manga, and so who can really blame him for having no idea how to portray women?


Everyone who has seen other mangas without that problem- Inuyasha, FMA, even Berserk to mention just those most popular, have full casts of both sexes. Inability of portraying a certain gender is always a flaw, just more or less jarring for a reader.

On the other hand there's a common conception that strong character= fighting along the best. Nobody praises non-action characters that heal, manage, or just stand up to won ideals in other way than physical combat. It's often seen in reviews of period pieces, when readers don't understand different standards- for example Rosalie form Lady Oscar it was brave to seek for justice, run from biological mother and have life in own way, but she didn't have a sword, so she's disqualified forever.
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RAmmsoldat



Joined: 19 Oct 2005
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 24, 2013 9:49 am Reply with quote
gee way to try and suck the fun out of everything.
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Touma



Joined: 29 Aug 2007
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 24, 2013 10:59 am Reply with quote
I read only a few chapters of One Piece so I do not have an opinion on Oda.
The only female character I remember in Naruto is Sakura. I did not notice anything about her that made me think that Kashimoto is sexist, but I read only the first two or three volumes, which again is not enough to form an opinion of the mangaka.

I have read the first nine volumes of Bleach, so far, and I think that Tite Kubo has some strong female characters: Rukia, Rangiku, Yoruichi, Orihimi, Tatsuki, even little Ururu and Ichigo's sisters.
I do think that Orihime is a strong character so far. From what I have read about things that happen later in the series it seems like she might change into a typical damsel in distress, but she has not done that yet.
In short, I have not seen anything to make me think that Kubo is sexist.
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littlegreenwolf



Joined: 10 Aug 2002
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 24, 2013 11:32 am Reply with quote
Raftina wrote:
I find the test pretty useless. It is inherently discriminatory against limited point of view narratives: By default, limited PoV conversations would involve the PoV character. If a conversation occurs in which the PoV character isn't a conversant, it is generally with a specific purpose in mind. Thus, if a limited PoV narrative has a male PoV character, then it has a much higher chance of failing the test than a third person omniscient narrative with a male protagonist.

The most obvious demonstration of this flaw is in video games, where it's uncommon for anybody to carry on a conversation with someone other than the player character. Directing a line or two to another character, certainly, but conversation is rare. Thus, if a game features a male player character, then it's very likely to fail the test quite independently of how it treats female characters.


And there you have the whole point of the test. It's to help point out the obvious issue with entertainment media these days: how uncommon it is to just see a female character having a conversation that isn't about a male. If you reverse the test requirements anything and everything could pass. If a female character can't talk to another female character about something other than a man, then it's very likely the product being looked at has a severe shortage of female characters who are actually developed and treated as full fledged characters.

I wouldn't use the test on videogames that weren't RPGs, because like you said there's very little in terms of dialogue. Comics on the other hand constantly show other scenes not with the first person POV, and so it still stands.

Inu-Yasha was written by a female, so it's no surprise that it features strongly developed female characters which would make it easy for it to pass the test, as with CLAMP's stuff. These are rarities in shonen manga, but as more and more female manga-ka break into shonen we'll probably start seeing more of them thankfully.

Berserk - as much as I enjoy it, I find it to be a bit misogynistic, but I still read it because it's that sort of Conan-like environment you're reading it for. It is however not shonen, but seinen, so it targeting an older audience means it can be a bit more free than others in terms of sexual acts, and sometimes those sexual acts are rather disturbing for the female involved. I don't think Berserk is really sexist, but I do think whoever handled the reason anime adaption might be with the removal of certain scenes and character development.

I said that comment about shonen manga because I find it mostly true. I think it's rather apparent at times which male manga-ka are actively in relationships with women, and which have rather unhealthy views of them. The treatment of women in shonen manga sometimes is downright disturbing. Based on his comics, I can't help but think Tsugumi Ohba is a sexist pig. The same goes with Hiroya Oku.
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Tamaria



Joined: 21 Oct 2007
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 24, 2013 11:37 am Reply with quote
Quote:

I have read the first nine volumes of Bleach, so far, and I think that Tite Kubo has some strong female characters: Rukia, Rangiku, Yoruichi, Orihimi, Tatsuki, even little Ururu and Ichigo's sisters.
I do think that Orihime is a strong character so far. From what I have read about things that happen later in the series it seems like she might change into a typical damsel in distress, but she has not done that yet.
In short, I have not seen anything to make me think that Kubo is sexist.


She gets kidnapped eventually, but I can't say she's the typical damsel waiting to be rescued. She continued to make her own decisions and thus remains active, which is kind of interesting, considering Stockholm Syndrome was lurking right around the corner. There were moments I wanted to slap some sense into her, but to be honest, it would have been more much annoying if she hadn't been affected by her situation.

Also, if there's something else Tite Kubo does well it's diversity. He mixes plenty of different personalities and body shapes. His female characters rarely if ever fall neatly into common categories like 'big-boobed fighter' or 'flat-chested tsundere'. Some look like they do, but he always adds some traits to make them different and unique.
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Touma



Joined: 29 Aug 2007
Posts: 2651
Location: Colorado, USA
PostPosted: Sun Feb 24, 2013 12:17 pm Reply with quote
Tamaria wrote:
Quote:

I have read the first nine volumes of Bleach, so far, and I think that Tite Kubo has some strong female characters: Rukia, Rangiku, Yoruichi, Orihimi, Tatsuki, even little Ururu and Ichigo's sisters.
I do think that Orihime is a strong character so far. From what I have read about things that happen later in the series it seems like she might change into a typical damsel in distress, but she has not done that yet.
In short, I have not seen anything to make me think that Kubo is sexist.


She gets kidnapped eventually, but I can't say she's the typical damsel waiting to be rescued. She continued to make her own decisions and thus remains active, which is kind of interesting, considering Stockholm Syndrome was lurking right around the corner. There were moments I wanted to slap some sense into her, but to be honest, it would have been more much annoying if she hadn't been affected by her situation.

I am glad to know that. It makes me more eager to continue reading.

Quote:
Also, if there's something else Tite Kubo does well it's diversity. He mixes plenty of different personalities and body shapes. His female characters rarely if ever fall neatly into common categories like 'big-boobed fighter' or 'flat-chested tsundere'. Some look like they do, but he always adds some traits to make them different and unique.

Yes. People do come in a variety of shapes, sizes, and personalities, and Kubo uses those varieties well, in my opinion.
I still have not read anything, in his books or in this thread, to make me think that Tite Kubo is sexist.
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Raftina



Joined: 15 Mar 2011
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 24, 2013 2:51 pm Reply with quote
littlegreenwolf wrote:
It's to help point out the obvious issue with entertainment media these days: how uncommon it is to just see a female character having a conversation that isn't about a male. If you reverse the test requirements anything and everything could pass.

If you reverse the test, narratives that use limited PoV would still have a high fail rate, because it is perfectly normal for limited PoV narratives to have few, if any, conversations that do not involve the PoV characters--and therefore perfectly normal to expect the narrative to fail a test that asks for a conversation between two characters of the opposite gender of the PoV character.

As for having everything passing the reverse test in general, many of the most well-known examples of anime/manga that fail the reverse test are exploitative yuri works. It is, of course, also a well-established and well-known way of passing the test.

Quote:
I wouldn't use the test on videogames that weren't RPGs, because like you said there's very little in terms of dialogue. Comics on the other hand constantly show other scenes not with the first person POV, and so it still stands.

There are a few problems here: 1. Using the first person PoV is not related to having conversations, and if a work constantly shows scenes not with a supposed PoV character, then the work is not a limited PoV narrative. 2. I did not say there's very little dialog; I said there's very little conversation with anyone except the player character. 3. The idea that RPGs are the only games with extended dialog is outdated.
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Knoepfchen



Joined: 13 Dec 2012
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 24, 2013 4:11 pm Reply with quote
EireformContinent wrote:
On the other hand there's a common conception that strong character= fighting along the best. Nobody praises non-action characters that heal, manage, or just stand up to won ideals in other way than physical combat. It's often seen in reviews of period pieces, when readers don't understand different standards- for example Rosalie form Lady Oscar it was brave to seek for justice, run from biological mother and have life in own way, but she didn't have a sword, so she's disqualified forever.


I think that's a very good and important point. While I would love to see more Sarah Connors and Ellen Ripleys in manga and anime (just to name two fictional female characters that had a huge influence on me as a teenage girl), strength comes in lots of different shapes and forms. In a shonen fighting series, it's more likely going to be measured on the scale of ass kicking than anything else. While Claymore has shown how girls (and only girls Cool) can do some pretty convincing kicking themselves, if we think about the main audience a shonen anime/manga is targeting, it's not really that big of a surprise that teenaged boys will get the coolest and most powerful moments, is it.

D.Gray-Man's female main cast member also gets the same amount of heroic and bad ass moments than the males, including defending them when they happen to temporarily loose their powers. She also does not need regular rescuing, and there isn't really more fanservice concerning her than the bishonen cast with frequent clothing damage. But well, it's written by a woman.

Personally, I find it much more irritating when a shojo manga cannot manage to portray a powerful, independent young female that does not need to define herself by which guy she likes. Teenaged girls need less Bellas and more Buffys as role models, IMHO.

Back to Bleach, I always though of Orihime as a character with a lot of potential for enormous strength. Isn't her power basically she most powerful one of all of them, being able to spoiler[negate reality]? Seems more powerful than to shoot awesome sword beams or spirit arrows. Sure, there's the boobs, but I think female Bleach fans will (and do) find sufficient eye candy to obsess about as well.
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Chiibi



Joined: 19 Dec 2011
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 24, 2013 6:25 pm Reply with quote
I don't think they're so much 'sexist' but they want boys/men to read their works so they make the women their idea of 'sexy'. Anime hyper
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