Forum - View topicAll/mostly-girl casts in retrospect.
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darkchibi07
 Posts: 5500 |
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This has been running through my mind for quite some time, and it's something I've noticed with recent shows. How is it that most shows that stars a mostly (or even an all) female cast ended up in either, a combination, or a variation of one of these:
1.) harems 2.) schoolgirls 3.) magical girls 4.) "slice-of-life cute girls thing on *insert subject*" 5.) crazy ecchi gimmicks? You can include idols and anthropomorphized moe (like Kancolle and such) to be part of it as well. I'm not counting yuri and sports titles since that pretty much lends itself to have a mostly female cast. Don't get me wrong, there are a large number of examples where those attributes were utilized well. Like for example the recent Sound! Euphonium or somewhat defying like Shirobako for actually having a mostly adult female cast. And there's also the big hits like Madoka Magica and Kill la Kill and the obviously world-defining Sailor Moon for example. The point is in the grand scheme of things especially among the audience's eyes, is this all the types of anime shows are capable of in order to get a starring large cast of females? Is this how these are going to be perceived as every time there's a mostly-girl cast? Even to this day, there still hasn't been many hit shows comparable to say adventure epics, stylish urban fantasies, or space operas with giant robots that doesn't use one or all of the attributes above. On a side note, it's rather telling how some peeps (myself guilty as well) jokingly nickname the Nintendo spinoff game Hyrule Warriors "Harem Warriors" or "Hyrule Waifus" for its rather large cast of playable females especially for a Zelda franchise. |
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Errinundra
Moderator
 Posts: 6559 Location: Melbourne, Oz |
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There is one other genre:
6) girls with guns I would add, though, that the classical "girls with guns" era is over. These days they either have a significant male cast or they've morphed into "girls as guns", ie Kan Colle, Stella Women's Academy and Strike Witches. You could also include Girls und Panzer in that grouping. They could be counted in one of your other groups. |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11513 |
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^ How is Stella a girls-as-guns series? They're playing airsoft, not becoming airsoft guns. Also, I'll add Noir and Gunslinger Girls to the g-w-g category. Arpeggio of Blue Steel is another girls as guns, as is Valkyrie Drive, though that also falls into the crazy ecchi gimmicks.
If Kill la Kill is considered "mostly female" then Black Lagoon would also have to fall under that as well. You've got Revy, almost the entire Church, Roberta, Balalaika, Yukio, Greenback Jane, Chenwa and her knives, Sawyer and her chainsaw. I think the gender mix in both series is fairly equal. Michiko and Hatchin also has a number of primary female characters, though the supporting cast is mostly male. That's one thing I'll give to anime over American tv and movies. The latter may have a lot of kick-ass women in lead roles, but when they are, they're usually almost the only woman in the cast, except for random side characters. In anime, unless it's a reverse harem, it's actually kind of rare to only have one lead woman surrounded by men, a la the Major in Ghost in the Shell, and to a lesser degree, Faye Valentine in Cowboy Bebop (Ed spares her from being the only female, but she hardly counts, since she's a kid). I don't think this is because of a progressive attitude though, but more to make sure they please as many people as possible by providing their type of woman in the main cast. 
One other category might be idols, but maybe school girls covers that? |
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DuskyPredator
 Posts: 15545 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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Couldn't you in general call most of them just a variation of "schoolgirls" anyway? You talking about a setting with mostly girls, well in general school with anime anyway.
A particular show with this topic I am reminded of is Cute High Earth Defense Club Love!, which takes the concept and instead did it with boys, that I don't think there was a single female character. (It is a a magical Also airsoft is totally girls with guns, especially it treats it like guns. |
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Vaisaga
 Posts: 13235 |
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Well if you want female focused mecha titles there's Gunbuster, Diebuster, Idolmaster Xenoglossia, Cross Ange, and Strain. I also recall this thing called Project ICE that takes place in a world where all the men are dead.
The main problem I have with all/mostly female shows is the lack of relevant males. If there are male characters they usually have very little screentime or they're the resident butt monkey. Sure, I get it: otaku don't want their waifu's sullied by some dude (who isn't self insert protag) and yuri bait can boost sales (yet outright yuri sells poorly for some reason). But I'd still like to see my gender get decent representation in these works and they don't even need to be anyone's love interest. In the Sound! Euphonium novels Shuuichi has a much bigger role, but in the anime many of his scenes are cut presumably to fit in more yuri bait scenes. I only take solace in the fact they he didn't get written out entirely. In K-ON the only male character with a name is Ritsu's brother Satoshi. In Saki you have Kyoutarou who's no good at Mahjong, gets no respect from anyone, and is really only there to be made fun of. The Nanoha franchise has taken non committal yuri baiting to a ridiculous extreme by shoving all the male characters onto a bus (marrying them off in some cases) and not having any girls openly hooking up with each other. Most of the characters are in their mid twenties now and still the status quo remains the same. I wish more of these shows were like a gender flipped Free! One of the things I love about Free is how Gou is handled. She's not just the token manager girl who only has occasional appearances but she's a legitimate member of the group. When the guys are just hanging out she's right there with them. She doesn't become a shoe horned in love interest either (other than for the Mikoshiba brothers and possibly Sousuke). Celestial Method was on the right path, but in the end I didn't feel that Souta contributed as much as he should have. He had his moments but a lot of the time Koharu just dumped her work onto him so the girls could go have fun. Komori-san Can't Decline was nice. Otani did become her love interest but it's adorable so it's fine. Re-Kan! was nice too. Although Yamada was firmly in butt monkey territory he still hung out with the girls and felt like he actually belonged there. Wakaba Girls really surprised me in one episode. When energetic Mao was depressed one episode I thought to myself "Maybe it's guy trouble" but immediately went "No way, this is a Kirara adaptation: no males, only yuri bait." Imagine my surprise when it turned out it actually was about a guy. Still no male characters but you don't see stuff like that often in these shows. So yeah, having one or two relevant males in these kinds of shows isn't too much to ask for, right? Though something like Tari Tari or Glasslip with a balanced cast would be best. |
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Alan45
 Village Elder Posts: 9927 Location: Virginia |
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@darkchibi07
A couple of thoughts on the matter: Anime is a commercial product. They are making what has sold well in the past and what they think their audience wants. A better question is why there are so many shows with a mostly female cast when life outside school tends to be mixed gender. The paragraph above is the most likely answer. Also your categories cast a wide net. By listing high school you have included a large portion of available anime. I suspect that much of anime is set in high school because it is the age where you are approaching adulthood without an adults responsibilities. Sometimes I wonder if most people in Japan think life ends with high school graduation. Adventure, urban fantasy and space opera all tend to be either male dominated or mixed gender. They tend to involve either warfare or small scale violence both of which tend to be male dominated in the real world. In order to have a predominate female cast for these you generally need a gimmick. Because of the audience such gimmicks tend to involve sex. There is a perception in Japan that men run the country and women serve them tea. This pertains to both politics and business. I gather this is changing to a certain extent but perception usually lags behind reality. Just where could you set an real world anime with a predominate female cast that wouldn't be slice of life? |
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Ggultra2764
 Subscriber Posts: 3943 Location: New York state. |
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Some yuri titles I've seen have mostly featured girls as prominent cast members like Aoi Hana, Maria Watches Over Us, Simoun and Strawberry Panic. Simoun is a rather unique take on the yuri genre in that the world within the series is populated entirely by women and have the choice to choose their gender when they come of age.
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Jose Cruz
 Posts: 1790 Location: South America |
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I would think that it's relatively rarer to have all men cast than female casts. I can only recall Cute Earth Defense Club as an all male cast show obviously satirizing these all girl cast shows.
I read in a book (Moe is the name of it) that in Clannad according to the creators of the visual novel the setting is high school because that's the age when people's experiences are the most affecting: the first love, flirting and friendship is the most affecting (since you had no real life experience before). I think it makes sense since its hard to imagine that all those thousands of high school anime and manga and videogames set in high school target a demographic of only 15-18 year olds, who are 5% of Japan's population. Another reason I might think though is that settings with 50 year olds characters alienate younger viewers while settings with young characters can appeal to older people who are reminded of their times as teenagers. Finally, I also think that after people finish high school or college they begin working as salary men and have no free time anymore to do anything (in Japan its common for people in large companies to work 80 hours a week). This adds a bit extra appeal to the days when they didn't have to dedicate their whole lives to work. |
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Alan45
Village Elder Posts: 9927 Location: Virginia |
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Jose Cruz wrote:
This is what I was getting at when I said that the Japanese think that life ends at high school. Apparently they can't even imagine having fun or adventures at any time later in life. There are a number of anime with predominately male casts, however they tend to be action/adventure series. I think it is mostly a case of sexual stereotypes remaining strong in Japan, or at least in the people who buy anime. |
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