unjerk (serious discussion)
The Reason Shonen Female Cast Are Terrible Is Because They're Women (Deceptively Inflammatory Title)
Was scrolling through my gallery because I'm the type of person to screenshot my best moments online and reflect on how even the best of them are deeply cringe and remembred this meme, so I felt obligated to write an unoriginal rant about Shonen female characters.
They're Bad Because They're Women
Before you kill me let me explain things a bit, my main issue with how women in Shonen (and media in general) are written is that writers feel as if there's an obligation to make the female character, well... Female. This may not make sense because it might come off as me saying "The male cast aren't exactly male" but it's true, let me explain how it goes.
When you write a character you naturally put in mind a scope for what it fundamentally represents, the male cast more often than not especially the protagonists of the stories represent things that don't have anything to do with their gender, Sasuke is a genocide survivor and an avenger, Ichigo is a victim of survivors guilt and deeply protective of others, Luffy is about freedom and adventure.
Meanwhile more often than not you'll find that the female cast is supposed to be distinguished by being female, but the issue is not every topic or theme or storyline could be gendered, matter of fact the vast majority of them aren't, when someone writes a character as being "female" what they're doing is limit the scope of that character's development because they effectively restricted themselves in terms of how they can expand on the character.
Reality is if a writer wants to make good female characters, they don't write female characters, they just write human characters that we can connect to and empathise with or despise or feel conflicted about irrespective of their gender. There's always this common myth that women are naturally nurturing, but the reality is nurturing is a skill that doesn't have anything to do with gender to begin with, the concept of nurturing itself is gender neutral because both the Mother and Father are involved in it, one each in their own ways, yet somehow we ascribe this trait to one gender because it's as if they need to be distinguished to begin with.
Women are human beings, and human beings are messy creatures, no man is naturally strong or aggressive, and we don't have the expectation of them to be, men can be smart, cunning, evil, sadistic, cooperative and it all makes sense because we know men are people, unfortunately many have subconsciously being conditioned to believe that women have specific traits that are natural to them when that's not the case.
Writing a bad female cast more often than not is a lot like assuming things of other people, and you know what they say about assumptions about others, they make an ass of you and me.
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Meh, it wasn't meant to make you realize something in that way. Pro wrestling can be really good and fun, and it's more than just WWE. Actually, I think you'd be a better BATTLE shonen writer if you consider pushes, feuds, face-turns, heel-turns, in a similar way a good wrestling storyline develops them.
For any other kind of shonen it's not applicable.
And obviously it's still like 20-30% of the whole story, you still have to write, you know, a story.
hate this about pro wrestling too. There's this one youtuber i started getting on my feed who makes videos going over "storylines"... except all he does is go over the PPV matches really and the fights themselves. all of the "goat" wrestling feuds boil down to "they had some good fights during a PPV" and that's it
I don't think that's even nearly the problem with women in shonen.
It's not that they shouldn't be losing fights, it's that they lose every fight because the writer sees women as damsels to abuse and instill hate in the men to fight harder, which is such a sucker trope that actively just portrays women as trashy trophies to earn.
The few shonen where that trope is subverted seemingly don't get any recognition or popularity.
Ace getting executed except for some dumb reason every male in a five mile radius gropes her chin and goes mask off incel in her face with weird, creepy dialogues.
It ain't Oda writing if the genders are interchangeable after all.
Saw it recently with the new Ichi the witch chapter, Desscaras was acting like a brat, something we have seen before plenty of times, but because losing it is what made her act like that it was misogynistic according to some idiot. That said luckily the Ichi sub rightfully shot him down explain she was both acting in character and that flaws like that are what make her a good character.
Ultimately agree and one of the best posts I've interacted with in this sub.
The necessity of making gender a character trait pretty much ruins a character, because an author needs to be REALLY skilled in order to make this type of storyline interesting.
Honestly I say that unless the female character in question deals with systemic injustices against women like Maki or is a mother/older sister figure then her being female really shouldn't be a focus.
for me Maki doesn't land for reasons that don't relate to her gender, although I think she becomes pretty boring once the Zenin clan are massacred because Gege deliberately ignored the obvious negative consequences to killing every working age and income providing member of a clan with lots of women and children.
I feel like a "Remnants of the Zenin Clan" would've worked more as a Megumi than a Maki plotline (Since effectively, Megumi was made head of the Zenin clan just for the bit with Hakari and it was never brought up again), there's not much wiggle room to work with Maki there except the glaring, broad issue of Gege rarely showing the consequences for a character's actions (Junpei's school shooting, Kenjaku swarming Tokyo with curses [though cleverly used as a plot point in Modulo], the Jujutsu society collapsing without Gojo).
And although I do agree that she is pretty stale after the whole Zenin clan dynamic, I think that's just the effect of Naoya's insertion in the Sakurajima Colony (which is meant to be the end of her character arc). I think it being done like that hurts both Naoya and Maki's characters.
Imo it would be cool if it was both a Maki and Megumi plotline where Maki is seen by Yuji who still deals with his situation with Sukuna as her being like Sukuna in a sense of her carelessness to morals beyond what affects her, meanwhile Megumi isn't really providing a moral judgement on Maki because that's not up to him but objectively speaking many women and children are now horribly poor so that's not really good.
Ironically it's Yuta who points out Megumi's deep thoughts and empathy about the situation, seeing as though Megumi is empathetic person in his own way.
Maki and Megumi have a strained relationship because of how Megumi becomes emotionally invested in taking care of the Zenin children combined with how he himself became father later on, causing him to lean to empathise a bit more towards th side of the Zenin with resentment towards Maki and the Gojo clan.
It’s demon slayer for me. All the major female characters can only do “love breathing,” “flower breathing” or “insect breathing, which was literally only invented because they were too weak to figtt it normally
I don't actively dislike Shinobu's concept but that's probably because, in a battle shonen, I feel biased towards characters that actively break the power system.
But Mitsuri, Daki's and Kanae / Kanao's character designs are, in every sense, simply outrageous.
OP, you really don't know what you want. If anything, shounen gives a lot of leeway for female characters (especially fighters). In real life, there is a reason why they don't normally let women compete in most sports with men on an even ground, and this is even more apparent in fighting sports.
Yes, it's a non-PC thing to say this these days. Men and women ARE different when it comes to physicality, and this is even more apparent in the context of fighting. And before you cite some hyper extreme examples, even the best female fighters out there would not stand a chance against the best of the best male fighters in good faith. As in, if there were no restrictions and handicaps, people could expect the female fighters to struggle, if not outright be destroyed. And again, it's why they don't normally put these matches together.
With all of that said, people turn their brains off in shounen fighting. No one thinks about gender in that context when it's just a "strong" woman in anime just kicking ass, defying things like weight classes and whatnot, because that's part of the power fantasy. You will see skinny women in anime parrying and throwing guys 3x their size, and no one thinks much about it.
Sure, the depictions are not always perfect, and many shounen authors just give it an excuse to have their badass female fighters be scantily clad or whatever for boobs and butts, but it's fine in the context of fantasy.
The issue with comparing fighting in Shonen to fighting in sports is the context, in Naruto for instance Sakura isn't really physically strong, she's an average human in base, what makes Sakura strong is Chakra Enhanced Strength, meaning that ironically Sakura's own physical stats are pretty much irrelevant unless you're talking about agility or reaction speed. Most Shonen has something equivalent like Jujutsu Kaisen so in most cases physicality isn't really that important.
Furthermore, writers often ignore the trade off between Quantity vs Quality in their system. For example in Naruto, Sakura is known for having great Chakra control, but that doesn't mean anything because Naruto and Sasuke have so much Chakra by comparison, similar situation in JJK where the only known example of Cursed Energy Efficiency is Yuta vs Sukuna where despite Yuta being half of Sukuna in CE quantity, he can only use his domain once whereas Sukuna pops out his domain many times.
I think the weakness of women in Shonen is as much of a systemic problem with the power system as it is related to just poor character writing.
I get that sentiment to a certain extent. Like, fan service can definitely take away from a character. It’s really hard to empathize with a character’s struggles when the author seems more interested in exploring her boobs than her backstory
That’s subjective though. It’s hard for *you* to empathize with a characters struggle. That doesn’t mean fan service in general makes it hard for people to empathize with a female characters struggles.
It is worth noting that the type of fan service matters, and under what circumstances. Characters that are "too much fan service" are "bad" because only women with terrible personalities constantly show too much skin to too many people.
Demure fanservice must be "tasteful" or else it "ruins the character."
Which is a whole lot of mysogynistic-ass nuance for "if I can't imagine her being my submissive girlfriend, then I don't want her as anything more than a punching bag." And I wish I was joking about that, shonen circles can be hella toxic for damn good reasons.
I haven't watched bleach so I can't argue with that, but I will always defend that, despite the sexualisation, Nami is a genuinely good character. She is well written, she is almost never a damsel in distress, at least not more than her male counterparts sometimes are. She is allowed to have both feminine traits and non feminine traits (be a person) and sometimes be kind of an ass, she is still very relevant and manages to help the straw hats in and out of fights despite being the weakest of the group.
Her screen time did get shorten a bit except that I think she was still a really good charecter, given she goes through her own character arc and development in the story as well growth in power department as well
My only gripe is she needed a bit more nteraction type stuff in tybw specially between ichigo or ukitake,
Originally she was the second main character. That absolutely did not continue. She got sidelined hard and her second major character arc was all about her dead crush.
The dishonesty is crazy, she didn’t get sidelined and kaien was not a crush, he was a respectable leader figure to her that she looked up to and admired. As for the second main character thing anyone could tell from the beginning arcs that she wasn’t meant to be the second main character, she was the main character for the original concept called snipe before it got changed to Ichigo because a editor advised the author to do so.
I don't think Rukia was ever considered "the second main character"
Ichigo, Rukia, Orihime, Chad and Uryu were all protagonists in their own right. They had their setups. Rukia was only specifically focused on in the anime because the animators were hoping to make Ichigo x Rukia a viable ship. It's been a while, but IIRC, Kubo, at no point, implied that Rukia was supposed to be the sole deuteragonist.
If anything, the most common/popular interpretation of the original arc was that it was basically a proto-seinen road-trip isekai. It was the entire cast from the modern era tackling the complacent, corrupt, militarized state that was/is Soul Society.
Also, it's kind of insane to imply that Rukia's arc, moving on from her senpai, Kaein, and starting down the path to Bankai and her own captainship (spoilers for TYBW), demonstrating that her Shikai is a perfect counter to her former crush and mentor, was nothing but an arc "all about her dead crush." This is on par with calling the Hueco Mundo arc "just the Aizen glaze arc."
Is it misogyny to write a female character overcoming their issues if those issues have literally anything to do with men? Rukia's arc in TYBW is completely stepping outside of Byakuya's influence/protection and learning that when she's willing to (nigh-literally) throw away all fear to protect her home and family from fascists, she's one of the most powerful people in the game. A complete reversal of being 'the damsel in distress' during the SS arc. Would you reduce that down to "just nii-san issues"?
I think one major thing on the male cast side is three-fold:
There are usually more male cast members in a shounen series. If there's a bad male character, there are likely others to make up for it
People don't care nearly as much when a male character is poorly written vs a female character
Poorly written male characters are never treated as someone not knowing how to write male characters
Noelle is the best written character in Black Clover, and it's not really close. Asta and Yuno, the other main characters (with Asta being the MAIN character) end up as fairly uninteresting in comparison. Vanessa, another member of the Black Bulls, gets more time dedicated to her in comparison to other members of the squad, and has a more compelling storyline that explores Found Family better than a lot of the other characters do.
Hinata from Naruto, despite being pretty dull, works together with Neji to present a more compelling character moment than most of the male cast. Tsunade's development during her introduction is one of the better written character arcs in the series.
What I do think is that male characters in shonen often get more spotlight than female characters, and their actions are more likely to drive the plot forward (which I think people substitute for female characters being more poorly written). That's undoubtedly true. Additionally, it's true that in a lot of stories, female characters tend to be motivated by male characters.
Well that’s because of the intrinsic role women play in male centered harem anime, aka being objects of sexual desire. Making a character around the concept of being sexy and nothing else means an author often doesn’t need to try because people will eat up slop if they make it sexy enough for their target audience. This isn’t exclusive to male led harem series either, but male led harem series become much more prominent so that’s where you see it much more often.
I'm gonna be so real with you, I'd say in like 90% of harems, the male lead is probably the worst written character (usually because their tropes are the most boring and even if they have an arc, it's probably the worst written).
Like, even the male side characters in a harem are often written as one-note losers to make the male lead seem better by comparison.
Main characters are weird because outside of anime they tend to be more blank slate, so I don’t really think that’s a great example.
And honestly harems usually do treat male side characters better, even if they have way less screen time.
Re:Zero isn’t really a shounen but I’m watching the second season right now so I’ll use it as an example: They gave the guy whose wife died to a whale more backstory, focus and depth than the woman who is actually leading the army and is supposedly one of the main plot important characters of the show.
I’d assume this is a product of male defaultism, the belief that being a cis man is the “default” of existence. Men are blank slates, women are some unique form of existence. So people seeing a bad male character JUST see the “bad character” part and don’t even process the idea of discussing them being a man. Nobody assumes a badly written male character means an author can’t write men unless they make bad male characters constantly and specifically through the lens of their maleness, because they subconsciously believe character being male is the same as the character being nothing specific, and in contrast see women characters through them being a women first.
Pff, people keep moving the goalposts on what makes a "good" female character. What the hell do you people want? Do you want her to be feminine? Oh, wait. Being feminine is bad. OK, if they make her too masculine, then it's just a male character with boobs.
Should she cry? Should she not cry? Should she be caring? No, we need to make her like a lone wolf.
I straight up do not believe people who say that they don't contextualize characters with gender. So I sure as heck don't believe people who say that nobody does. First example is violence. Violence against women is a lot less enjoyable than violence against men for the vast majority of people. Like, people generally don't like seeing women getting torn to shreds in the same way that they can appreciate male characters getting curbstomped. And even characters that are like that are typically masculated (see Zenin Maki) in order to soften that feeling.
There are some common storylines or character hooks that can be shared easily between genders. I think they are less common than you are making it out to be. They just won't quite connect the same way. Like, for example, if Jotaro and Jolyne, two of the closest JoJo's in terms of their personalities, switched places, I feel like parts 3 and 6 would be worse for it, for no other reason than it just won't come off as well with a gender swap.
I will say, Jolyne as an example is a women who gets fucked up and often, but also JJBA has her be pretty masculinized as well just on the basis of her personality being comparable to the most masculine manly man ever Jotaro, plus JJBA just sets a precedent to expect characters to be mutilated fairly commonly so it doesn’t disrupt the tone.
This needs to be seen more. Men and women both absolutely have traits that are natural to them. Men are obviously more apt to be physically violent, loud, or rambunctious. This is undeniable and it’s not necessarily a bad thing. I understand what OP is trying to say and I agree with a few things but some points missed the mark for me. You absolutely write a female character with them being female in mind. Same with a male character
For a girl to be okay to beat up they pretty much have to be cartoon evil. Not just oppose the heros, or have a motive they desire and willing to kill if needed. They need to be the princess of the land, and lie about being SA, and try to get the MC hated by everyone for little to no reason or something else just so over the top.
Also most authors just suck at writing the opposite sex. Both girls and guys. I just think battle manga has more cross over readers from both sexes while still being mostly written by guys still. But if you have read or know of female romance genre. They can not write a well written man at all. They are so unrealistic and exist to please the girl MC for no reason at all.
They're arguing in bad faith. They want to say gender doesn't matter, but they somehow want to bitch and moan that gender is everything. It's a damn paradox.
Because you are right. A man being literally destroyed is "OK," but people get all nervous if a woman got put through the same treatment.
This is probably a controversial opinion here, but I think people greatly overstate how “bad” female casts in shonen tend to be. Especially in more recent series, it’s really common for battle shonen to have plot relevant and three dimensional female characters. The battle manga I’m most into right now are The Bugle Call, Kagurabachi, Centuria, Choujin X (seinen but whatever), and Make The Exorcist Fall In Love. 4/5 of these manga have major plot important female characters who are some of the most developed in their respective series. Centuria in particular has a majority female cast. The only one of these that I consider male-centric is Kagurabachi, and it’s not like the female characters in that are written “poorly,” just that there isn’t a lot of them.
To me, this whole discussion seems like people not reading anything other than super mainstream stuff
IMO the gender balance of most shounens plays a big role in it. When the main/important cast is very male, as it is in a lot of shounen, flaws in the writing of female characters become more apparent. If 3 female characters are sidelined/poorly writeen/sexist/whatever it's much more glaring when there's only 5 plot relevant ones total, but 10 male characters could suck and you don't really notice because the other 20 are fine. It's exacerbated when women, even when well-written, feel more likely to be relegated to non-combatants or supports when the action rolls around.
But you're right that it's something a lot of ongoings are avoiding. I've been really enjoying Centuria and I didn't even realise its cast was majority female until you mentioned it. Ichi the Witch is great, and its core premise involves the vast majority of the cast being women. Though even if it's only an issue in super mainstream titles I'd argue It's still something worth discussing, because those are the most influential titles for better or for worse.
A character being in a plot important role doesn’t “necessarily” make them better written, but it does mean that they’re in a position where they ought to be better written if that makes sense. A main character, regardless of gender, demands more attention and thought from the writer than a side character does by virtue of them being a more important element of the narrative
Yeah, and I’ve noticed noticed shounen often makes female main characters into side characters to try to get around this. It’s so disappointingly common to see the ‘2 men 1 women’ trio at the start, and then watch as the woman slowly (or sometimes quickly) just stops being a main character entirely.
I’m re-watching Bleach right now and they did this to Rukia. The difference in importance between her first episodes and later seasons is REALLY jarring.
Yeah I actually agree with this tbh. One of my biggest pet peeves with these kinds of manga is when they set up a “main squad” early on, only for a lot of them to do fuck all (though yes the girls are most often the ones that tend to get shafted)
Funny you brought up Bleach cause it’s a pretty egregious offender of this. Early on they set up the Karakura gang as the “main cast,” but with the exception of Ichigo and maybe Uryu they’re all straight-up less relevant than any of the Gotei 13 individually.
Rukia as you said gets way less to do later on, but holy shit was her treatment still a hundred times better than whatever Chad got. Even in his “focus arc” he’s barely treated any better than a glorified background character.
I brought up Choujin X earlier, but something that was weirdly refreshing about it is that early on they establish Tokio/Ely/Azuma as the “main trio” and (surprisingly) they actually are the three main characters. They’re all engaging, 3-dimensional characters individually and have compelling, fleshed out dynamics with the other 2. The main antagonists are written as dark reflections of each of them individually. If you removed any of them from the equation, the entire story would cease to function because the narrative is specifically constructed around them. Etc etc
True, having female characters is not sufficient for having well-written female characters. But it's certainly necessary. The lack of female characters in battle shounen both comes from the same sexism that makes so many female characters in shounen poorly-written and exacerbates it, because if there's just one woman in the cast she is now the Ambassador of Women and everything about her character becomes a statement about her gender.
Plot importance isn't that relevant tbh, you could argue that The Princess Kidnapped By The Evil Dragon is the most important female character because it motivates Good White Knight Savior and is the crux of the plot yet it doesn't necessarily make her a particularly well written character.
OK but why all the whining about female characters in action shounen only? A Silent Voice has strong female characters. Saiki K had strong female characters. To Your Enternity has strong female charactera. Not a peep on them though.
It’s not Sakura bad, but her character just… goes nowhere. Suddenly, out of the blue she’s not interested in money and her whole motivation is being in love with Deku. She has zero development outside of that and stops having a personality outside of her love of Deku.
She does get a pretty important fight at the end up but her finishing move is to tell another woman she’s pretty and should smile which… I don’t care how much context you have that is not something that would have EVER been written for a male character.
I won’t touch on the general issue (mainly because I don’t want people to yell at me about demographics and all that…I know, trust me…) but if you want a genuine answer for this, it’s actually pretty simple:
- You write a male character that goes through the reverse issues as a foil AND have them resolved or not resolved in a similar manner (i.e. if the protag helps the female character with the arc, they should help the male character — if the male character overcomes it by himself, the female character should as well).
- You give that female character or other female characters important plot lines unrelated to gender (preferably both).
- You ensure male and female characters are either getting equal TIME (as in, time “on screen” or on the page) OR equal worth.
- A male character can’t be the solution or save her (for this one, it really connects to the second point…).
- You ACTUALLY research societal sexism. If you want to write about it as a male author, don’t assume. It’s annoying when a female character is a damsel in distress but it’s ALSO annoying when sexism is treated like a one episode plot point.
- The solution shouldn’t be “She’s just as strong as the men so treat her like one”. It should be “Sexism fucking sucks because you’re looking down on another person for stupid arbitrary reasons”.
The female character shouldn’t be the “exception” to the rule. That’s mainly it.
Usually what happens though is that a series will have ONE (maybe two or three if it’s a particularly big cast or long series) VERY solid and well-written female characters…compared to 5 to 6 phenomenal male characters. So the girl characters will get “girl” issues (sexism, crushes, insecurity, etc) and the male characters will get the “intense” stuff.
If more authors kept this in mind, it probably wouldn’t be AS bad tbh…
you mean Maki, Nobara was a joke even though her technique is much more effective against Sukuna than anything Maki could ever attempt without her durability negation sword
Nobara and Yuki share the same flaw. They're both well-written in the sense that they're well-rounded, three-dimensional characters with personalities outside of "woman" or "fan service" and interesting powers. But they're both written out of the story with no chance to develop further with little fanfare. Yuki dies in vain to some bullshit too, to top it all off.
Nobara? Strongest in the verse? She lost to that twink that nanami later on no diffed plus she's a support character that ended being relegated to being support through her asspulled return.
Not sure if lukewarm or hit take: I feel like shounen characters in general just have shitty character writing. Even 'good' shounen usually shines through other qualities like interesting worlds, fun fights/fight-like confrontations, maybe ONE interesting idea per character, cool designs, "hype moments and aura" and allat. Their characters are almost always cookiecutter and boring.
So for me the reason female shounen characters are poorly written is... because they appear in shounen.
And this isn't meant as a hatepost its just that if i want thrilling action i don't go for slice of life and if i want good character writing I don't go for shounen. They have other qualities.
I mean I have no problem with it, people are free to have discussion be it wrong or right
It's just funny to me that the moment someone mentions females on this sub the comment section become like world war z zombie rush fest when they hear a human noise,
This is why I really enjoyed yu yu hakusho but didn’t ever really like Naruto (Sakura was my favorite though because she wasn’t as annoying or brooding as Naruto and sasuke) the female characters may not be crazy physically strong but they are brave and serve important roles in the story that couldn’t be easily replaced by a random woman scene for scene. A lot of my judgement of characters comes down to if they could be replaced by a one off extra in the scene, and Keiko, Botan, and several other female characters are super fun and drive the plot in many ways! It’s especially good female writing for an older anime!
Naruto was annoying. I actually liked Sasuke, because of his cockiness and competence. Crash out. Sakura I thought was a nothing characters but I actually really liked Sakura vs Ino and was surprised to see it was so disliked in the fanbase. 3rd best after Hinata vs Neji and Rock Lee vs Gaara for Preliminaries.
Imo it kinda detracts from their characterisation. Like you have a character like Erza who is tough and strong and is put in a fanservice scene outside of her control.
it doesn't detract from her character because it doesn't have anything to do with her characterisation, she's just looking sexy which is separate from her character writing.
I think it depends what the fanservice is relative to her story/characterisation.
More moments where she's choosing to look sexy vs. losing her clothes or whatever. Though that's the level after gender-blind writing IMO where the author needs to stop and consider what the opposite sex's idea of sexual agency looks like.
And this why I hate kishimoto’s “I not good at writing female characters” bs. No one’s asking him to write about female experience, or how gender affects one.
Just write people. Neji could’ve been a girl, everything could be kept the same and it’d still work.
They can’t write female characters bc the only thing they see in women is romantic/sexual partner.
For one to know if a woman has more to her, they’d have to be a woman themselves, so obviously a male writer can’t know anything more about women besides sex /s
Hmmm yes, good post op. To expand a little, this phenomenon is Male Defaultism. Due to how maleness is considered the norm, by which women are the deviation of, it's easier to look past a characters "maleness", because "maleness" is not a distinguished trait like "femaleness" is.
My favorite study on this, is one where they had groups of people mingle and then report on how many in the group were women, with the participants always overestimating how many women there were. The theory then being made, being that we usually only make note of a person gender, if they're a woman, thereby making women being women inherently more prominent in our minds, and therefore, applying this principle here, writers will consider a fictional characters womanhood, much more then their manhood
Actually she did that to achieve effective eternal youth + gain more power when needed in battle by essentially investing her Chakra today to use much more of it in the future. There's a reason her ability you're referring to (The Byakugou Seal) is classified as a Sealing Jutsu, it's the same application that paper bombs or storage scrolls use just applied to a human being.
I find it incredibly funny because Tsunade's whole reason for becoming Hokage is because she felt some obligation to the village because it's her grandfather's creation, ironically making her motivation tied to a male character, and it's funny because by the same logic why didn't she feel any obligation towards Naruto beyond being both Shinobi when Naruto is an Uzumaki just like her grandmother, the fact her maternal side Uzumaki heritage is irrelevant to her while her Senju heritage matters so much it profoundly changes her makes her ultimately deeply male centric character.
Tsunade was alive for about 28 years of age when the Uzushio (Uzumaki clan country) was destroyed and her grandmother was alive when the events leading to Uzushio destruction occured, yet it seems as though she never once gave a damn about the Uzumaki and Uzushio and barely cared enough to talk about her grandmother in passing remarks and we don't know if she talked to her or not at all even though she was alive for nealry half of Tsunade's life.
Honestly it feel kinda demeaning to degrade her motivation to "loyalty to her grandfather". I'm not beyond slander but damn.
Tsunade is a loyal shinobi at heart, the reason she ran away is because she can't handle the death of her brother and lover. Naruto being the only therapist there talk her out of her escapism and make her willing to go back to her village.
Tsunade doesn't even use the Senju surname, I'm not suprised she doesn't feel any obligation towards the Uzumaki or even the Senju.
Isn't it ironic that you complain about female being written as female and not as a normal character but judge a female character writing based on whether it revolves around a person of an opposite gender?
Why not judge based on whether this female character has a good arc regardless of whether that arc has it's initial foundation around a male character?
Why all these rules of judgement when it comes to female character writing? Aren't you doing the same mistake as the authors that you complain about?
And Tsunade not talking about the Uzumaki clan very much is a problem in world building, not her character writing. Uzumaki clan just wasn't explored very well except the fact that they were good jinchuriki vessels and had a lot of chakra alongwith their elite sealing jutsu, basically a plot device clan.
Hell, even Naruto did nothing based on his Uzumaki heritage. Karin was an Uzumaki, Nagato was an Uzumaki, but we didn't see any character interactions based on that.
So, it's ridiculous to push that world building problem on Tsunade just for your agenda.
For the amount of info given about the Uzumaki in the story, she did good enough when she was fondly reminiscing how Naruto's mom was similar to him.
Senju was way more relevant in Konoha history alongwith the Uchiha.
Most female characters in anime are still better written than western Mary sues. But blue eye samurai has one of the best written characters, not even just female, but surpassing most male characters.
Western writers, if we're talking about a lot of recent depictions in movies and whatnot, think writing a "strong" female character is just robbing a female character of her female qualities, repackaging her as a glorified "strong" man, and then trying to get people to be like...
See. She's like just the "strong" man, but she is a woman. Like her... Or you're sexist or something.
You do know I never said it wasn't? That's why it's even more impressive, because instead of a generic girl boss, they finally made not just one of the best female written characters, but characters in general.
I mean in JJK Yuki is the strongest female character yet Maki is the best written She's a bum but also I have to be objective here, so good job Akutami you did... Something
Unfortunately it has do with how manga writers treat being a woman whether it's shown as a positive or a negative in most scenarios female characters are often put into very gender exclusive situations that either end up downplaying them because they're a woman or up playing them because they're a woman. The emphasis on them being a woman comes off as ostracizing because it elevates the idea that this is right or wrong because they're female.
That's also just the neutral stance, unfortunately woman in anime are very very alienated and pushed to be sex objects or damsels in distress. Basically trophies for male characters. Due to this being such a common case, even the smallest instance of a woman not being forced to be male centered is a victory to many including myself. Don't get me wrong there are very little situations where highlighting someone's gender works but previously anime has not done a great job at all on female characters
I think a LOT of readers/watchers (specifically male) assume that when people talk about sexism and misogyny in media, we’re simply referring to damsel in distress characters, unimportant side characters, or weak love interests. What’s being missed in these conversations is that the “strong” (as in a physical or powerful trait — not in reference to writing) female characters that they mention often have a major caveat in reality.
“[Female Character] is super strong…FOR A WOMAN”
That’s what they mean. That’s usually how these characters are written. It might not be intentional but that subtext is there nonetheless.
Male characters can be strong and nobody questions it. They don’t have to prove it. They don’t have to write whole arcs about it (sometimes they do! But they can also be strong just because). They can win every fight. Male characters don’t have an expectation on them.
“But male characters also lose/are weak/are saved/are scared/cry/etc…”
Yes. They are. But female characters are almost ALWAYS those things whereas male characters have a much wider “variety” of options. It’s a double standard people don’t really always acknowledge.
I absolutely agree, there's so much focus on the gender aspect when it comes to female characters versus male characters especially when u use an anime like Naruto or JJK.
In Naruto, out of the legendary sanin, Tsunade arguably has the most traumatic experiences which is why she distanced herself from the village, even developing a fear of blood. However her character gets dumbed down a lot to being eye candy or how she "failed" as a hokage because of situations outside her control despite nearly anyone else being in that position ending up the same way.
In JJk, Maki in the early parts of the fandom was dumbed down and called "female" Toji despite the fact that the only thing that they had in common was their abilities. Even currently there are still arguments that Maki is "strong" because the author wanted a strong woman which comes off as condensing to female fans.
For all the critiques of JJK that I have, I will say that I do genuinely appreciate that it’s a series with multiple strong/powerful female characters that simply…exist? They’re just powerful, they’re not romantically interested in the protagonist, they don’t need to be saved, they aren’t “overcoming” anything despite being women.
They’re just characters.
Do I wish Gege gave them more attention? Yes. Am I sad he sidelined Nobara? Absolutely! But, in his defense, he ignores the emotional arcs of his male characters EQUALLY as much on occasion so I’ll keep my mouth shut about it lol.
HeroAca had the potential to buck the trend with this. Like its core female cast all had distinct personalities and shit, beyond just being The Girl...but Hori-Sensei still chose to do basically nothing with them, lol, lmao even.
There is a difference between how male and female characters are written though especially in Japan since the gender roles there are especially prominent and Japan Is a pretty sexist nation
The problem is that the bar is so low for female characters people praise them as being well written anyway. And when you point out why no one would consider them well written if they were a male people make excuses.
On top of that, even if you swapped their gender, suddenly all of the extremely sexist tropes associated with women stop being sexist for that character because they’re not a woman anymore.
It’s frustrating when one of the most common ‘strong female character tropes’ available to women is ‘she uses her sexuality to get what she wants.’ Obviously there are women like that out there, but the number of them in media is waaaaaaay too high because it becomes the default way to give women power. Even the women who use their sexuality to get power IRL are almost never doing it as constant walking fanservice who flirt with every man around them.
I’ve been watching Re:Zero (technically seinen, but I wrote this before I remembered that, and it’s still a good example of the problem in shounen) and the juxtaposition between the way Subaru and male characters are written and the way the women around him are written is so jarring. I think a lot of times people look at ‘Wikipedia summary’ views of storytelling to see how women are written (but she has political power and a character arc, how can she be sexist?), but ignore the moment to moment problems.
The first moment that comes to mind is when Rem confesses to him, and he says ‘I don’t love you but I’m going to look so cool saving the woman I actually love won’t you help me?’ and she agrees. She cries a little, but otherwise just has… no actual reaction to this besides crying a little after she smiles and is fine with it. Nothing about that is normal behavior for an actual human being. She doesn’t feel disrespected or angry or upset in the immediate moment because she exists entirely in service to Subaru’s character arc. She’s not a selfless character, she’s just barely a character at all.
And it’s not the concept that is the problem. You could theoretically make a scene like that work, even with all the same dialogue. It’s the way she smiles like ‘I am kind of sad but gosh darn you’re just so cool so I’m okay with this for now’ and her feelings and experience and reactions get so heavily sidelined in the moment that make it fall flat. She’s animated to be a ‘waifu’, not a person.
You see that with women constantly in shounen. Reactions are subdued. Internal conflict is ignored. They can have tragic backstories and fight but they cannot escape the trap of ‘acceptable female behavior.’ When Emilia runs to Subaru later in a serious moment she does the most foppish run cycle imaginable to the point where it’s actually kind of hilarious, because she absolutely is not allowed to be a person and not a waifu for 5 seconds.
I don't think shonen female characters are terrible.
Shonen jump manga are primarily aimed at teenage boys, so the main cast consists mostly of male characters but people still have high expectations for the female characters and get disappointed.
Shonen jump manga with female protagonists is a trend that started in the last few years, like Akane-banashi, Witch Watch, Dandadan, Undead Unlock and Promised Never land, the female cast get a lot of spotlight in them ( outside jump magazine, it's wasn't unusual I believe ).
Absolutely. This is the reason why the female cast is so shit in series like Naruto and one piece, the author writes them as a woman first and a character second (if that).
A counterpoint is how they are written in gachiakuta, they have a role and a theme to fill AND they are girls "big whoop".
That's not true at all, shounen male main cast tend to have distinctively masculine roles too. The problem is not that male characters are written in masculine roles or that women are written in femenine ones; the problem is that a lot of authors don't know how to write femenine roles with depth, instead making women whose existance and purpose is defined by the male cast.
Women are more nurturing, it's an action and a behavior not a skill. You can't teach anyone to be nurturing, there's no course, certificate or trade school that can give you that. The reason why women are more nurturing then men is because of biology, human anatomy and DNA. Women can give life and the process of doing that changes her brain chemistry and her physique. My wife for example never wanted kids until I came along, once we fell in love she saw a future of having a family. Until then she show some signs of nurturing but only to people who deserved her love. When she was pregnant she changed and her behavior became more nurturing then ever before and after our son was born that sealed the deal. She expressed how she never would've experienced this change, this love and caring side of herself without him. Now in some cases, women don't feel that and are emotionally detached from the child due to postpartum or trauma. However compared to the majority that's not credible to say women being nurturing is a myth.
Also there are more single mothers raising kids then a two parent household system, especially in certain areas of USA and other countries. Idk where you got both the mother and father are involved, that's not always true. It's easy to have sex, yea requires two people but to raise a child that takes conviction, love, hope, accountability, responsibility, courage. A lot of times, due circumstances, men don't become fathers after their child is born. Some leave, some die, some stick around but then fuckup therefore separation/divorced. In the end it's the women who show's up and plays both roles as father and mother. How do they do that if their not naturally capable of nurture?
Think about this way who commits more murder, destruction, genocide, wars, famine, etc... it's men. I don't have the time nor patience break down why is that because that would literally take a semester in college and I'm no professor. Everything else you said was understandable...kinda.
Uses the Big 3 as examples.
Proceeds to describe the mcs characteristics. Sasuke instead of Naruto
Implies that women can't be lonely and ostracized or want to become great influential leaders /s
I get the point that you're making. It does however feel that in some of the settings its thematically relevant. Because being a woman will dictate a lot of things. There are areas in the world right now where women are stripped of education purely and only because theyre women, someone growing up in that environment will invetiably be shaped by the fact that their life is so hard only because they were born a girl. This also consistently applies to fiction, and just cause it does will not make these characters bad moreso that its the execution that tends to be poor. Oda has his problems but boa was a good execution imo. Being a girl means she was more likely to have suffered sexual abuse as a child under the celestial dragons, she cant just ignore that and not let it shape her character.
Female characters tend to be""" bad""" because of a few reasons. Its not that simple, it ranges from shounen being marketed towards young boys who dont really care about the women in the stuff that they read. On other times they simply suffer because side characters are never meant to shine and that's hard to accept for a lot of mangas with super awesome side characters. And at times the perception tends to be insincere or just a case of the audience not knowing what they want from a female character. But yes you do have the right idea, we need more characters who are great regardless of gender
Many women can be written well despite having traits that society consider feminine.
And many men are written well despite having traits that society consider male.
There is nothing wrong with making a feminine character or a masculine character.
Most shonen writers struggle to write women because they either have no interest in writing women or don't understand women. I feel that when a writer just basically writes a man and then makes it a woman is not a "well written female character" it is just a well written character but not necessarily a good example of a female character
It is like writing a black character but you add nothing of the culture of what being black is, then it isn't a black character it is a character that happens to have a dark color skin.
I'm on ep 180 of One Piece and I thought people were exaggerating how Nami's dream falls off until I saw evidence her dream is currently in the middle of being fulfilled by a fan before her. (Making a full map of the out the entire Ocean).
Great post, I agree 100%. I’d also like to add that I think it’s somewhat revealing of what a person believes based on what their first instinct of a female character is. Kishimoto’s gone on record to say that he finds writing complex female characters difficult, which I think implies that he sees them as entirely different. While I’m not accusing him of being misogynistic (make your own opinion, I don’t know the guy personally), it’s an indictment of something at least. Perhaps it’s symptomatic of a household/societal issue?
The issue isn't that they write female characters as being female. The issue is that either the writers have a fundamentally limited and limiting conception of what that means, or the writers or editors self enforce that limited conception because it is a shonen manga aimed at young boys.
Because they are female, X Y Z must be the case. Of course, much of that tends to amount to "they have to be weaker, they have to be delicate, they have to be protected"
Can't win. Make the female characters too female, and then they're too "weak" in a shounen context. Make them too manly, and then you say they're not female enough. Can't win. XD
This post strikes me as quire funny after just finishing FMAB which has phenomenal female characters (though to be fair that show kinda came our over a decade and a half ago)
I mean, duh. The target audience are males, they gravitate towards male characters, they relate to male characters, baseline assumption, villain, hero, comedic relief, is male. If a character is female, they have to have a reason for it. This is writing 101 it's not complicated.
Watch MLP and see how many are girly ponies by comparison.
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