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Women in anime.

poilk92 wrote:

i could care less if an anime is sexist or not i am just looking for interesting round characters and i see plenty of nuances and depth in many male characters but i don't see the attention to detail in alot of female characters. It seems for the most part that the female characters are more of props than characters. Also i honestly can't think of any solid examples of a romance where the woman wasn't a damsel in distress and i am sick of that lame overused archetype its even worse than the lame overused angsty hero who has to save said damsel. and if your gana use FLCL as an example all i can say that was a one sided romance so it doesnt count

Thats maybe ebcause you only concentrate on those attention to details. Or you can't see them, or you don't find them important enough... Or maybe what makes a character interesting for someone does not make it interesting enough for you, and that's the way it is, you might not find a female character good enough for your standarts, that are much higher for women than for men You judge women more harshly than male characters it seems

Maybe you should look at who is writing the stories, whether men portray women less accurately, or whether women writers do a better job at portraying women, or whether it is all the same. I don't know.

As for the romance without damsel in distress with a cool, female lead, try Skip Beat!

Bingal wrote:

You'll find sexism in any storytelling medium. Although I'm not a big fan of it... I can, to a certain degree, live with it. What I absolutely can't stand and find incredibly insulting is when female characters are basically only there to be degraded into pure eye-candy. It's one thing to make them appealing, but it's another to make them pandering machines without any value.

And there's certainly some of that in mainstream anime, but I haven't seen that there's any greater presence of it in anime than in any other entertainment medium. In fact, anime has a far better track record of showing strong, empowered heroines than one would expect based on the pervasive sexist influences still present in Japanese society. In addition to previously-stated examples, look at characters like Honoka in The Third: The Girl With The Blue Eye, who's smart, powerful, monstrously skilled, and yet still empathetic enough to solve some of the biggest problems she's confronted by in her series through that empathy. Or consider Armitage in the Armitage III OVAs/movies, who struts around in the first one wearing hot pants and a halter top but is still a fearsomely capable combatant. Revy and Balalaika from Black Lagoon are ideal examples that I'm surprised haven't been mentioned yet. (And you could probably throw in that nun - forget her name - too.) Lafiel from Crest/Banner of the Stars, Marlene from Blue Gender, almost any of the Knight Sabers from the Bubblegum Crisis/Crash/2040 franchise, nearly the entire cast of Claymore. . . and I'm only down to the Cs in my personal collection and have skipped over several more marginal options. If you just want to consider the most recent series, look at Yuri in Angel Beats! or Aoba in Cross Game. Heck, even though it's a harem series which uses blatant fan service, all of the main girls surrounding Kio in Asobi ni Ikuyo! are enormously competent individuals, too; even prime cheesecake girl Elis was able to get out of a bad fix without any help in an early episode simply on her own ability.

The point is, you can find scores of excellent examples of female characters in anime who defy sexist tendencies, and in nearly every genre, too. (Although in my experience, shojo romances actually tend to be one of the weaker genres when it comes to this.) Several of those involve romances where the woman isn't the "damsel in distress" either, poilk92; Cross Game is an exceptionally good example of that, and there are many others where the guy is actually the one in need of rescue (Blue Gender immediately comes to mind).

These overly aggressive ball busting b*tches

Quote:

These overly aggressive ball busting b*tches

Uhm dude I know this is a matter of opinion but I have seen most of the Anime key mentioned and there is not one soulless "ball busting b*tch" among those I have watched. All of them are deep interesting characters. A few of them are somewhat hostile towards men but none of them are the kind of character you seem to think they are. How many of those Anime have you actually seen?

thats a weird coincidence because all the ones on her list i am familiar with have the character i described, part of it is my fault for not being more well versed in anime but thats part of the point if people have contrary examples i have never seen i would like to hear about it

thats a weird coincidence because all the ones on her list i am familiar with have the character i described, part of it is my fault for not being more well versed in anime but thats part of the point if people have contrary examples i have never seen i would like to hear about it

. . .alot of your examples exemplify unrealistic women for the oposite reason of meak pathetic women that send the womens rights movment back another 50 years.

poilk92 wrote:

thats a weird coincidence because all the ones on her list i am familiar with have the character i described, part of it is my fault for not being more well versed in anime but thats part of the point if people have contrary examples i have never seen i would like to hear about it

Firstly, for the record, I am a "he." Making assumptions based on what avatars look like is rather dangerous 'round these parts.

Second, of the characters I mentioned, only a small number of them could, by any stretch, qualify as "ball-busting bitches." That means either you're not familiar with most of those characters (in which case they're exactly the kind of examples you're asking for) or you're misinterpreting the nature of some of the characters.

And to address your earlier statement:

Quote:

. . .alot of your examples exemplify unrealistic women for the oposite reason of meak pathetic women that send the womens rights movment back another 50 years.

Okay, I'm not at all clear what you mean here. Can you explain this better?

(And BTW, speaking as a Mod, you need to make a better effort to clean up your grammar and capitalization. We don't expect perfection, but we do expect you to at least try.)

Firstly, for the record, I am a "he." Making assumptions based on what avatars look like is rather dangerous 'round these parts.

sorry that was actually a typo because there are no girls on the internet everyone knows that

and also welcome to the internet everyone claiming to be a girl is a 40 year old man there is no proper grammar and if it exists there is porn of it (these are the inescapable truths of the internet best get used to it)

Dude chill out with the blanket statements. I know plenty of women who use the internet. Hell there where 4 women in my old WOW raiding guild. (confirmed on teamspeak one of them was a shock I was sure she was a he ) You seem to be getting pretty defensive tbh. I do that too. Jus chill there is no need to go on a rant if you mess one little thing up Getting someones sex wrong is no biggie. Getting it wrong after being told 10 times is. Annael never got over me calling her dude. I couldn't help it I was SURE she was a he when she typed she sounded more blokish than I do she was like my best friend on that game lol

thats a weird coincidence because all the ones on her list i am familiar with have the character i described, ...

and also welcome to the internet. . . there is no proper grammar and if it exists there is porn of it (these are the inescapable truths of the internet best get used to it)

now i will admit i may pay more attention to female characters and thats why i am noticing this trend with them instead of male characters as well but i don't think the state of male characters has any pertinence to the point i am trying to make :\

and also welcome to the internet everyone claiming to be a girl is a 40 year old man there is no proper grammar and if it exists there is porn of it (these are the inescapable truths of the internet best get used to it)