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First I’d like to give some background so you can see where I’m coming from. I’m an 18 year old male and I’m not a super feminist type or anything. I enjoy watching anime and have seen maybe 15-20 individual shows, in addition to a few currently running ones. From this description you can probably tell I’m not a hard core viewer either. I got to thinking about this topic after hearing George RR Martin’s response when asked how he manages to write such compelling female characters. He said (paraphrased) “It’s because I’ve always considered women to be people too”.
Every year in high school and college classrooms there are numerous discussions about the sexist nature of fairy tales e.g. Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, etcetera. To briefly explain the arguments for this (I’m not well versed in depth on these issues by the way), people say that in these stories, the female characters, because of their sex, unjustly lack the agency to solve their own problems and are reliant on the male character to do everything for them. Recently, I’ve noticed that there are some popular anime shows where a male protagonist follows these same tropes.
In Fate/ Stay Night http://myanimelist.net/anime.php?id=356 the protagonist, Emiya Shirou, a moderately athletic non-mage takes it upon himself to fight powerful mages and warriors, while preventing his summoned protector from doing the same. In the show, his protector is the female incarnation of King Arthur. He often states that it’s not her place to fight because he’s a man and it’s his duty to protect her even though it’s obvious to every other character and the viewer that his actions are irresponsible and dumb.
While it could be argued that Shirou’s change of heart halfway through the show invalidates my argument, the fact that it took so long to change his mind and that it was only changed when he witnessed the overwhelming power of King Arthur’s sword makes me think that Shirou never really changed his views on women, he just relented out of necessity.
This pattern is present in many other shows as well. One of which being the new show Dakara boku-ha H ga Dekinai http://myanimelist.net/anime/12549/ . Yes, this show is ecchi and quite bad imo, but the sexism is still there. The
protagonist takes it upon himself to protect his female friends not because he values their friendship, but because “Women are treasures and treasures are meant to be protected”. I rarely am the type to declare sexism, but this line kind of surprised me.
Now, I’m not writing this to say “anime and culture must change immediately!” or anything like that. This aspect of anime is just something that intrigued me when I noticed it and I wonder what the rest of TL thinks about this.
Finally, I’d like to say that I can name many, many shows off the top of my head that have fantastic female characters. FMA, Ergo Proxy, and Fate/ Zero are a few. Also, I have absolutely no problem with fan service and stuff like that. I don’t think the human body in any of its forms is offensive, though it does annoy me a little when a serious story is randomly derailed by a bikini scene or something.
Thanks!
 
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You read too much into it.
It's always been men protecting females simply because they can and they believe that men are naturally stronger (despite the situation eg. Female being stronger than male).
At the end of the day, if you didn't see the male at-least trying to do something in the storyline - he becomes a useless character.
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Thats typical Japanese culture for you. Especially shounen series targeted towards young male viewers ... what more do you expect? I don't really see anything wrong with it in this context, when it comes to fighting and physical tasks males do often have an advantage. There are also many counter-examples where an anime series has strong female leads / characters and useless male characters.
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Well I think redoxx has a point. I'm not an avid anime/manga fan but it's true for pretty much all fictional media; films, video games, cartoons, most mainstream stories we are exposed to.
It's easy to say that "but men are stronger, so they should take on the protector/fighter role", but in a fictional world those boundaries don't necessarily exist, with the existence of super powers or advanced weaponry. There's no physical reason, in these scenarios, why a woman can't be the one leading everyone into battle in a (hopefully) non-cliche manner.
Perhaps it's not so much a matter of male VS female, but rather about character. For a character to fight unwinnable battles, to put their lives on the line, there has to be a real reason; something to validate their behaviour. I don't think that many writers (who I am going to assume are mostly male) know what a female warrior *is* and so they become either a an over-masculine character who is denying everything female about themselves, or they go to the other extreme which is the over-sexualised female "sexy assassin" who is really just some kind of male fantasy and doesn't have any backbone.
There was a really good episode of Extra Credits that looked at this, I think it was this one:
http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/true-female-characters
On a broader note, I've been noticing a lot of *really* bad writing lately, especially in Hollywood films. It's amazing that so much money is spent on so many scripts which contain nothing but strung-together cliche sentences that you've heard a thousand times before.
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On August 21 2012 09:15 Xyik wrote:
Thats typical Japanese culture for you. Especially shounen series targeted towards young male viewers ... what more do you expect? I don't really see anything wrong with it in this context, when it comes to fighting and physical tasks males do often have an advantage. There are also many counter-examples where an anime series has strong female leads / characters and useless male characters.
That is actually true. Japanese culture (referring to males/females) is what you see in animes, while obviously not to that extreme extent.
It's just that most females in Japan often are content with going to a good HS and even University then getting married to a good male and live a housewives life while the male goes to work rararararara.
At the end of the day, the male is still in charge of most things.
Well that's how I see it here when I compare it to Australia.
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On August 21 2012 09:15 Xyik wrote:
Thats typical Japanese culture for you. Especially shounen series targeted towards young male viewers ... what more do you expect? I don't really see anything wrong with it in this context, when it comes to fighting and physical tasks males do often have an advantage. There are also many counter-examples where an anime series has strong female leads / characters and useless male characters.
I agree that typically males are the fighters, who, because of their skills, should fight. What I'm trying to point out though, is that there are many examples of shows where the male refuses to let the female fight simply because she's female. This is with complete disregard to ability.
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I agree, I think the fact that FSN is an eroge / adult visual novel is the reason that its so ridiculously sexist though. I don't think its a common scenario at all, nor a surprising one.
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On August 21 2012 09:53 Xyik wrote:
I agree, I think the fact that FSN is an eroge / adult visual novel is the reason that its so ridiculously sexist though. I don't think its a common scenario at all, nor a surprising one.
Don't you mean you don't think it's an uncommon scenario, unless I misinterpreted what you were trying to say?
But yeah...it's Japanese culture, it's generally quite pervasive anyway, and ffs it's an ero game lol. Nothing surprising. Obviously they also have female domination if OP is into that kind of thing, but the demographic is generally young male adults so they're probably going to cater to them.
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I really liked Fate/ Stay Night, although I'm sure you could come up with several other better examples of men showing more strength than women in anime. After all, wasn't Gilgamesh's downfall his lust and unrequited love for Arturia/ Saber? And I think at the end, Shirō doesn't even get to be with her (I remember watching it and realizing that it wasn't a traditional happy ending and being so sad at first).
So I think this anime in particular was about men underestimating the strength of a woman.
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On August 21 2012 11:00 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
I really liked Fate/ Stay Night, although I'm sure you could come up with several other better examples of men showing more strength than women in anime. After all, wasn't Gilgamesh's downfall his lust and unrequited love for Arturia/ Saber? And I think at the end, Shirō doesn't even get to be with her (I remember watching it and realizing that it wasn't a traditional happy ending and being so sad at first).
So I think this anime in particular was about men underestimating the strength of a woman.
yeah, Shirou never gets to be with her, but it's basically implied that she got to go to Avalon/ heaven in the end. Unfortunately, I don't have a wide range of anime experience to draw from so the only other examples of this I have are are from the occasional harem that by nature is male-focused. I do think it's significant, though, that Sabre eventually defeats Gilgamesh, thus proving herself able to claim a place above powerful men. That's a good point.
By the way, by male focused I mean that it's targeted towards males and the main character is supposed to be a type of alpha male.
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On August 21 2012 09:47 redoxx wrote:Show nested quote +On August 21 2012 09:15 Xyik wrote:
Thats typical Japanese culture for you. Especially shounen series targeted towards young male viewers ... what more do you expect? I don't really see anything wrong with it in this context, when it comes to fighting and physical tasks males do often have an advantage. There are also many counter-examples where an anime series has strong female leads / characters and useless male characters. I agree that typically males are the fighters, who, because of their skills, should fight. What I'm trying to point out though, is that there are many examples of shows where the male refuses to let the female fight simply because she's female. This is with complete disregard to ability.
This doesn't just happen in Japanese media, though. It pervades many Western films/stories as well. I tried to get through Jim Butcher's Dresden Files the other day but plain couldn't stomach the POV character's sexism, which he (that is, the character) tries to pass off as "chivalry." :/
Incidentally, I do think FMA is one of those mangas that depicts female characters well, which I think is a byproduct of the mangaka being female ... despite my problems with that manga, I appreciate how it's more than "FEMALE CHARACTERS HAVE AGENCY," which I think would've cheapened it and turned it into little more than a "message fantasy." I like how Arakawa writes female characters who clearly act with agency (e.g. Olivier) but at the same time doesn't shy away from writing female characters who also ... well, very clearly don't have much a backbone and whose lives revolve around men (yes, I'm looking at you, Hawkeye) and then those who kind of sit in between (e.g. Winry). I find it hard to stomach both sides of the extreme: overt misogyny and sexism and ... overt empowerment stories. In the end, I just want to read stories about well-written characters who feel like real people.
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What? How come Hawkeye doesn't have a backbone when she goes on all the dangerous missions and fights in the Ishbal War while Winry "sits in between" even though the biggest role she plays in the series is a hostage so that the higher-ups can have Edward Elric cooperate with them?
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I knew someone would take this up with me, lol.
Hawkeye doesn't have a life outside of Roy. Quite literally. She's one of the best examples I can come up with of a woman who's "bad-ass" but mentally weak, someone's whose life revolves exclusively around One Man. I think her first anime incarnation is stronger than the manga/second anime version of her character.
Winry is a mixture of both. She is stronger than Hawkeye mentally -- she at least would not give up on life if Ed and Al kicked the bucket, though she'd obviously be distraught -- but she is obviously not as bad-ass, since she is physically weaker than Hawkeye and untrained to boot. I might gripe about her place in the story and her very stereotypical character as well as her very stereotypical role as a "healer," but she is portrayed well in terms of what the mangaka wanted to do with her, and despite all her weaknesses and shortcomings, she still finds a way to help the Elrics. (Once again, I prefer her first anime incarnation though.)
They are both pretty "ehhhh" examples of strong characters, tbf. One of the strongest characters (male and female) I can think of atm coming from Japan is probably someone like Yuna from FFX (ignoring FFX-2 even exists, that game is wtf like a giggly slumberparty ...).
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On August 21 2012 11:59 writer22816 wrote:
What? How come Hawkeye doesn't have a backbone when she goes on all the dangerous missions and fights in the Ishbal War while Winry "sits in between" even though the biggest role she plays in the series is a hostage so that the higher-ups can have Edward Elric cooperate with them?
If I remember correctly, in Brotherhood there's an episode that explains her backstory in which her dad inscribed some sort of fire alchemy rune thing into her back as a forced reminder that he controls her or something. This parallels her relationship with mustang (also a fire alchemist and student of her dad) where she is somewhat reliant on his approval. On many occasions she does save his life though, so it's not like she's completely weak.
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Oh yeah, redoxx, if you want a rec of a very good anime with well-written characters (female main character who is amazingly well-written), you should check out Seirei no Moribito. If you like that series, then you should check out Kemono no Souja (the story is written by the same author), which also has a pretty well-written female main character, though she might be a bit too Mary-Sue for some people's taste; I still find that I love the way she takes hold of her own life and displays a lot of agency despite all the shit that happens to her.
Moribito definitely though. I think you'd enjoy it. :D
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Korea/Japan are just way behind the West in terms of female empowerment. What they show in anime's is exaggerated of course but still I think it's basically accurate. I've talked to young women here whose life goals/dreams are to be good housewives. It's slowly changing but it's still more of a 1950's mentality towards marriage and gender roles.
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Are you complaining about females being portrayed as weak and needy (what you initially argue) or males being sexist and supporting the weak and needy stereotype (what your examples are)? The former is standard sexism you'll get in any medium or culture; the latter is actually an indication of poor writing of characters. Honestly, I can't think of a single show I enjoyed with male protagonist like that but probably plenty I enjoy that merely have stereotypical females, and I usually end up forgetting about those girls anyway cause boring. In the end, good writing will give you good stories and characters while bad writing will leech off tropes and stereotypes for as long as it can survive. Incidentally, Shirou the moralfag is a very hated character lol.
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On August 21 2012 12:55 Scarecrow wrote:
Korea/Japan are just way behind the West in terms of female empowerment. What they show in anime's is exaggerated of course but still I think it's basically accurate. I've talked to young women here whose life goals/dreams are to be good housewives. It's slowly changing but it's still more of a 1950's mentality towards marriage and gender roles.
Who's to say that's a bad thing? I actually prefer the girls in Japan more than Australian not because of their looks but because of their personalities. They aren't up themselves or feminist or think that everything deserves to be given to them on a silver plate.
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On August 21 2012 12:32 babylon wrote:
Oh yeah, redoxx, if you want a rec of a very good anime with well-written characters (female main character who is amazingly well-written), you should check out Seirei no Moribito. If you like that series, then you should check out Kemono no Souja (the story is written by the same author), which also has a pretty well-written female main character, though she might be a bit too Mary-Sue for some people's taste; I still find that I love the way she takes hold of her own life and displays a lot of agency despite all the shit that happens to her.
Moribito definitely though. I think you'd enjoy it. :D
I'm very interested in what you say not only in the full metal alchemist stuff but also about the female from seirei no moribito.
I wonder what you think about females such as Asuna from Sword Art Online.
I'm very interested in your opinion because this series portrays different type of women that can be connected to the common tropes but even though that happens I somehow feel attached to them. I don’t know if it’s the story or the situation they found themselves in but I get a different feeling from them compared to women from other series.
I know I might be biased because I liked this light novel very much. I’d recommend to anyone interested to read the first volume of Sword Art Online. As a bonus if you have ever played a mmo or mmorpg you are going to be delighted.
http://www.baka-tsuki.org/project/index.php?title=Sword_Art_Online:Volume_1_Prologue
I’m pretty sure that if you find that interesting you are going to want to read more about Aincrad.
http://www.baka-tsuki.org/project/index.php?title=Sword_Art_Online
There’s enough information there so be my guest.
And Babylon if you have the time, I’d like to hear your thoughts about Asuna. There’s an anime adaptation but until now I haven’t enjoyed as much as the light novel.
It’s important to mention that I make no promises about the story outside of Aincrad but if it’s just the first volume: READ! DO IT!
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The concept of men protecting women isn't always done in a downgrading fashion.
In the manga Higurashi When They Cry: Eye Opening Arc (Spoilering it because I don't know how much of a spoiler it is) + Show Spoiler +The way that Satoshi protects his little sister Satoko, it's done more like "Big brother protecting his weak little sister (because she is a weak character, not that she's a girl)" then "All women are weak and should be protected by males"
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EPT
