I did not watch the show, therefore I cannot comment on the quality of it. However, I do recall one of the people who worked on the show commenting that he went through a lot of trouble with executives about making a show with a female main character that was intended to be aimed at a male audience, and he found that the boys he showed it to didn't care. That's all I'm trying to say. That boys can't handle/don't want shows with female characters is a load of garbage.Reasonable Atheist said:
Why are there almost no bad ass women in Shounen?
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Every villain? I didn't even watch the show and I know that the main villain of the last season was a woman, Kuvira. There's also Naga, Pema, Jinora, Ikki, Kya, Lin, Toph, Katara, Suyin, Opal, Zhu, Eska, Hou-Ting, Ming-hua, P'Li (Those last two are also villains) and Izumi. Plenty of female characters.inu-kun said:
I've spent the last six years of my life writing. I would appreciate it if you didn't insinuate that I "never wrote a good thing in my life". I'm not exactly asking for a resume of everything you've ever written before I get your opinion on shounen writers. Petty? I'm petty? You're gonna have to point out where I'm being better. Also "If you don't like it, do it yourself". An argument I am not particularly fond of, partially because it's unrealistic (I'm not in the anime business, I don't speak the right language, I don't have access to an animation team nor a publisher) but also because it's basically just a way of telling people to shut up every time they have a complaint about something. "I don't like this music" "Then make a better song yourself" "I don't like the way the president is running the country" "Then you run for president" "I don't like the way this show is written" "Then you like a show." It's basically just a way to silence criticism, and as a result it has earned my ire.
And as other people have pointed out, they tend to get shoved to the side. I give credit to Mikasa from Attack on Titan because she's one of the few female characters who has managed to stay relevant in fights even as of the most recent manga chapter. The main character is usually a guy in Shonuen and he will typically always be the most powerful, with males also usually taking up the slots for 2nd and 3rd most powerful characters. Any female characters tend to be dwarfed by the male characters, given less important fights, and overall not accomplish as much. It's just kinda lazy really, it's falling into cliches, and not using them well. And as you have established, boys don't really care what gender the people they watch are, so why are people bothering with these cliches? Not just in Shonuen but in a lot of western animation as well.
Except that it is precisely what you are implying. Your entire post exists because you perceive a problem.Dansen said:
Not every story needs to meet a gender quota. Some stories are about men, some are about women, some are about both and some can be about neither. Artists should be free to create what they choose without social justice crusaders getting up in arms about every perceived slight, real or otherwise. There is plenty of fiction available to cater to everyone.
Except that it really doesn't. Sure, there are opinion pieces pushing a fearful narrative that it does, maybe one or two questionable studies pushing same. But it's a narrative contradicted by many women who actually work in the industry. Are the voices of these women to be ignored? If so, why? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and we don't have that.Mutant1988 said:
It's a great oversimplification to say "old men control media so that's why we have problem X". For one thing because it denies the agency of all the women, young and old, who have been in the industry (Carol Shaw, the first female game developer started with Atari in the 1970s. The graphic adventure genre was created by Roberta Williams who retired in 1999 after a long and fruitful career.) and secondly because it oversimplifies complex, broad cultural issues to a silly degree. IF you have something like sexism in popular media, you can't enforce progress, only encourage it. If you try to do it by force it will just lead to the problems of increased (if mostly silent) resentment and bigotry as discussed earlier.
You know what those old men at the top of game companies want? Money. They'll follow the biggest markets. Show them that as many women are willing to spend $60 on a game plus $30 for a season pass and triple A will be chomping at the bit to court female consumers. To do that, you need to show enough women why they should invest time and money into games beyond the casual market, and let them know they should tell triple-A they're willing to spend the money on their products.
Shounen/shonen is generally for young boys as opposed to shojo/shoujo as you said- but you haven't figured out the rest. It's not a matter of what they can or can't handle, it's a matter of what they want to see. You can ask the same questions to a large extent for shoujo anime, but you'll get just as many weird looks.Dansen said:
And that's leaving aside a genuine argument against your point by citing a list of cool female characters- not least of which because I'm pretty sure you're missing examples within the works you do cite.
Well, except for one because I just can't let this slide.
The fact that you could mention FMA without mentioning Izumi Curtis is a crime. You should be ashamed of yourself, because that woman is about ten thousand times more terrifying than Olivier once you start thinking about it. Who's more badass, someone who is one, or someone who is one even though they're literally missing internal organs and fighting at all is an incredibly impractical choice... but do so anyways and well enough to terrify anyone with common sense?
That's a lot more than the none claim that you made earlier.inu-kun said:
So according to you, I need to be a published author in order to make any criticisms about writing? In another thread you dissed movie bob, so where's your highly popular web series that proves you know what you're talking about. SEE!? It's a frustrating and invalid argument. More successful? According to you I need to be a published author to criticize people and I also need to be more popular than them to criticize them. So can no other authors criticize Twilight because their books didn't sell as much? Also it's black sheep, not white sheep, and I'm not acting like the masses are trying to silence me. I'm acting like you are trying to silence me. Because frankly, you are, because you're saying I'm not allowed to say certain criticisms because they're insulting or because I haven't met arbitrary requirements.
Why? Why the Hell not? Why is it impossible for a show to actually have substance to it? One Piece manages to have a ton of plot and characters without skimping on the action. See it's moments like this where I'm convinced that people could find ways to make things work, they just don't.
Why is it that every time this argument happens I get accused of wanting some kind of quota? I'm criticizing trends. Not individual shows. Trends. I'm not looking at One Piece and saying "Robin and Nami are less important than everyone else, I demand this show be fixed," because it tells an entraining story otherwise, even if it does fall into the same pit that annoys me. I'm saying that, overall on average, the medium has this problem. Miles above western entrainment. That strikes me as a little "Well, that's just like, your opinion man." At least in western media I don't get tits in my face on a semi-regular basis. Because I know you're gonna comment, I'm not saying all shows from Japan do this, I'm saying that's another trend in the media and one that makes me want to roll my eyes in frustration
Sword Art Online, Soul Eater, Inuyasha, One Piece, Bleach, Ranma 1/2, even Dragonball (You know why everyone is afraid of Chi Chi in early DBZ? It's because she was a strong fighter in Dragonball, even making it to either the semi or quarter finals in the last pre-Z martial arts tournament before losing to Goku, and she's not the only woman to have done well in a tournament arc in that series) to an extent. It's basically Naruto and late Dragonball that OP is complaining about here. And for that matter they brought in Android 18 towards the end of Z and Pan in GT, so I'm really not sure where OP is coming from here.RJ 17 said:
Now, you can make an argument that you never see a female fighter who can beat the (essentially always male) protagonist in a standup fight, but this is Shonen we're talking about. If the protagonist runs into someone who can beat him, he goes and trains for a while and walks all over this previously terrifyingly strong enemy. Although Soul Eater and Inuyasha are definite exceptions here, due to having more of an ensemble cast than your average shonen. Especially Soul Eater, where Soul (a guy and about as close as that show gets to a single protagonist) is literally a weapon used by Maka (who is female), and neither of them can do much without the other.
Appa and Momo were pretty much characters in the original Avatar, so I consider Naga to count. Feel free to chalk it up to me having a soft spot for Dogs (I totally do)Asita said:
Appa and Momo also had considerably more screentime and discernible character traits, but fair enough rationale, I suppose. Chalk it up to me being unaware that you counted Appa and Momo similarly.erttheking said:
Like I said, I didn't actually watch the show, I'm going off of character lists.Asita said:
Fair criticism though.
Shounen is more flexible than shoujo or seinen, but the fact is that it's still marketed to teenage boys. What do teenage boys love doing? Aside from panicking about their role in society and slowly losing faith in their perceived ability to function as a human being?
Exactly. I could name a few, like Bleach having quite a few strong female characters, but they are very rarely the protagonist, and female protagonists in shoujo tend to just stand around and shriek while surrounded by beautiful brooding boys moping. It can be frustrating trying to find a competent female character in either genre, really.
Exactly. I could name a few, like Bleach having quite a few strong female characters, but they are very rarely the protagonist, and female protagonists in shoujo tend to just stand around and shriek while surrounded by beautiful brooding boys moping. It can be frustrating trying to find a competent female character in either genre, really.
That's all well and good...but I fail to see how that has anything to do with my comment about how (in general) shounen main characters are meant to be power fantasies for the (again, generally) male audience.Owyn_Merrilin said:
If you're thinking I was trying to say that it's rare to find a powerful/strong female character, that was not my intent. One of my personal favorites has always been Kaoru from Rurouni Kenshin.
What I believe the OP is trying to get at is "Why not have Goku be a girl?" or "Why not have Naruto be a girl?" or "Why not have Ichigo be a girl?" Yes, there are indeed strong and powerful female characters in the shounen genre, but they're rarely the "Ok, the badass has officially arrived, time to defeat the bad guys" character the way Goku, Naruto, and Ichigo are in their respective series. I suppose there's Kaede from Elfen Lied...but that's a Seinen, not Shounen.
I'm not going to defang my criticism just to make it sound nicer. On this website people are regularly called a whole lot worse than lazy and they're called it directly, I don't understand why my comment above all the others you felt needed to be called out.inu-kun said:
I would like to point out that that can be applied to the majority of all criticism. Also people do say what they want done, more female characters that actually do important things. Every bit of criticism basically says "I want this to be done better" but al lot those don't get accused of demanding some kind of quota. in fact, you just turned it into Morton's fork. Say you want something specific, you're demanding how the writer should do his job. Don't say something specific, you're pointing to an invisible goal. What kind of criticism is actually allowed in your book?
This is true, but they also have problems women in western media don't have so much. Like the aforementioned sexualization, which frankly half of the time I'm not even annoyed with because of its objectification, I get annoyed because sometimes I want to watch a show without tits getting shoved in my face. A few clips I've seen from Fairy Tail have turned me off wanting to watch the show because so many serious moments happen while main characters are in stupid sexy outfits or making sexualized posses (without enough insanity Kill La Kill style to make it work) and it makes me impossible for me to take it seriously. That doesn't happen so much in western media. Also while I can think of a few sexualized men in eastern media, from my exposure, sexualized men vs sexualized women are still outnumbered at least 5 to 1.
"Almost No"? lol.
And why is "baddass = Physical Prowess"
You just need to read more, and not just stick to the mainstreams. Just some from the current serialized works in Shonen Jump
-Assassination Classroom, Irina Jelavic, the whole female students. (Badassery varies) They're trained to be Assassins.
-Boku no Hero Academia, The whole female students (Baddassery varies) 99% of people have super powers.
-Shokugeki no Souma, cooking manga but that doesn't mean one cannot be badass at cooking. There are plenty: Erina Nakiri, Megumi Tadakoro, Alice Nakiri, Mito Nikumi etc
(I'll keep on using those manga as examples in every thread talking about Shonen...)
And why is "baddass = Physical Prowess"
You just need to read more, and not just stick to the mainstreams. Just some from the current serialized works in Shonen Jump
-Assassination Classroom, Irina Jelavic, the whole female students. (Badassery varies) They're trained to be Assassins.
-Boku no Hero Academia, The whole female students (Baddassery varies) 99% of people have super powers.
-Shokugeki no Souma, cooking manga but that doesn't mean one cannot be badass at cooking. There are plenty: Erina Nakiri, Megumi Tadakoro, Alice Nakiri, Mito Nikumi etc
(I'll keep on using those manga as examples in every thread talking about Shonen...)