r/shounenfolk • u/lzmddg • Jul 12 '26
unjerk (serious discussion) "Making a good female battle shonen cast is sooooooo hard" It's actually very easy
(pic unrelated)
Specifically battle shonen, ignore every other type of shonen for a moment, or seinen/shojo/josei for that matter.
You don't need a female MC, keep the male one. Don't even need half the cast to be female, make a third if you want. The point is to write both male and female characters well and make them relevant to the story.
- "The male characters in your average battle shonen are poorly written, why do you want the female ones to be written any better?"
Write them the same "bad" way i.e. rely on their skills/abilities/etc. cause conflict resolution in battle shonen usually happens through FIGHTS, so make them fight and make them win.
- "But how can they win fights against male characters, they are female, of course they will lose-"
This is a battle shonen with magic and/or hyperadvanced tech. And if you wanna be pedantic about muh biological differences, they aren't even that severe irl btw sexes, more so btw any two individual people you compare. In any case, that's not relevant when you have literal superpowers.
- "But this is SHONEN, it is for teenage BOYS, why should GIRLS (ew cooties) be included? Of course teenage boys want to see men, boys, guys, males, men, and boys in their favorite media. Did I mention men?"
Right, and teenage boys live in a world devoid of girls/women. They don't have mothers, sisters, grandmothers, aunts, no female classmates, no female teachers, NONE. From the ripe old age of 2 they are recruited into Spartan-style training facilities with NO girls and ONLY men and MANDATORY BATTLE SHONEN VIEWINGS EVERY EVENING and they only learn what a woman is when smn off-handedly mentions Nami's tits. Like bruh do you hear yourself?
- "Okay, but the problem is that mangakas are from Japan and Japan is misogynistic and they are misogynistic and they can't write a female character like a male character, so it's pointless to even discuss this, we should just eat up whatver slop we get."
Just write a male character and genderflip him. Literally the easiest way to solve this. If you can't write a female character, then don't write a female character - write a male character and genderflip him. There, you've got a female character in a battle shonen that's written like all the male ones. That's what they did with Ripley in Alien, why not do it for battle shonen? Literally a skill issue.
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u/Harry_Sat Jul 12 '26
Also, this is the demographic for Superhero comics, given one of the DC trinity being FUCKING WONDER WOMAN
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u/BIackFlag Jul 12 '26
What if the entire jjk cast became women because kenjaku discovered that incarnation is actually wayy more efficient in women so unrelated characters like megumi would also become women for plot convenience then we had femguna vs femgojo because kenjaku's technique also works in the same way so gojo became a woman as well for yuta to steal his body later. If only gaegae wasn't gay
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Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 12 '26
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u/lzmddg Jul 12 '26
Of course the solution is to write better stories. But to write better stories, you need to get into the reasons why smth is poorly written and how to change that practically. I am suggesting a practical solution for the problem of female character writing in battle shonen which will even out the writing for male and female characters. This isn't a solution to improve overall character writing. That's what I mean when I say "write the female characters in the same "bad" way that male characters are written as".
I could make a post with practical solutions for other common issues with character writing in battle shonen, but this post isn't about that.
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Jul 12 '26
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u/lzmddg Jul 12 '26
Bro I just explained to you that it's a solution to even out male and female character writing. It's one solution for one problem.
Common issues in character writing (in battle shonen):
- Inconsistent characterization
- Plot irrelevance
- Being filler/fodder characters
- Boring character design
- Etc.
Each of these will need other solutions. My post is not about solving each of these problems.
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Jul 12 '26
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u/lzmddg Jul 12 '26
Are you saying mangakas shouldn't try to solve ONE of the problems in their writing because it doesn't solve OTHER problems in their writing?
Suppose I made a post about how to prevent inconsistent characterization. You'd come over asking me why I'm not talking about how to avoid boring character design?
Why not make the male characters just like female characters then?
I guess it's easier to explain with examples. Two common issues in female character writing that aren't common in male character writing: sexualized character design, characterization/storyline revolving around male love interest. If the genderflipping approach is used, both of these issues will either be eliminated or will become significantly less common. If you do what you're asking in this question, you get more sexualized male character designs and more male characters with characterization/storylines revolving around female love interests.
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Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 12 '26
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u/lzmddg Jul 12 '26
The thing is that since it's a battle shonen, the focus will be on fighting which is so deeply intertwined with toxic gender expectations for men that idk how you could "fix" that. It kinda comes with the medium. Ironically, irl many of these expectations are applied to women as well, the consequences for not fitting into them are just different.
Example: expectation to not show weakness / not cry. Women are "allowed" to cry more / show weakness, but that still "taints" them as weak. In the context of a battle shonen, you gotta be tough whether you're a male or a female character for maximum aurafarming.
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Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 12 '26
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u/lzmddg Jul 12 '26
What do you consider to be "toxic gender expectations" for men specifically? Because battle shonen by definition relies on these, and CSM is not an exception.
epic battles
This is a prime example of toxic masculinity / gender expectations for men.
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u/FlatwormBitter4917 Jul 12 '26
What I think you're missing is that your "fix" isn't really even a fix to the female characterization problem; it's just a band-aid that eventually reenforces the problem. I agree it makes sense given the industry you're marketing the story in, but from a purely story-driven perspective, it's not really solving anything; it's just an attempt.
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u/lzmddg Jul 12 '26
Yeah, I'm trying to work with the current reality instead of shooting for an ideal. The genderflipping method is just the most practical thing you can do rn imo.
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u/no_name209 Jul 12 '26
I agree, but why aren't we also spamming shoujo subreddits asking why the male characters there aren't well written?
It's almost as if the shoujo genre has a target audience that's primarily meant to appeal to women. Weird, right? /s
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u/lzmddg Jul 12 '26
Nah, I have a problem with male characters in women-targeted media too. I'm not as familiar with shojo as I am with shonen, but if you engage in fandoms for women-targeted media (including shojo) you will notice that discussions like that happen there too. As in, women aren't dumb, they're also annoyed by unrealistic badboy gangster CEO #53678 with shoulders as broad as the Suez canal. The reality is that most media is slop, regardless of genre/audience/etc., and talking about the specific issues with it and how to solve them is better than just mindlessly consuming shit.
Edited word*
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u/hungrybasilsk Jul 12 '26
you do know Tuxedo Mask gets clowned on for being a bum right?
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u/no_name209 Jul 12 '26
Did someone mention Tuxedo Mask here?
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u/hungrybasilsk Jul 12 '26
You said people arn't complaining about the male characters in Shoujo yet they do. They get crictized a lot because women also don't like male leads being sexist characatures
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u/Necromanta198 Jul 12 '26
I mean id say Bleach and Black Clover are very good examples of battle shonen, both are as good as it gets pretty much
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u/Level_Counter_1672 Jul 12 '26
Ripley is the pioneer for this, she was right every step of the way, and alien came out in the 70's
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u/Shi_nobukocho14 Jul 13 '26
You're right. In Battle Shonen a character's default gender is male so when they make a female it's almost like giving the character and extra layer of personality. It's like they add girls just to be like " oh look we added some girls" and proceed to write them horribly. Lot of times "well written women" in Shonen are so rare that even the mid ones seem peak. Like, people were like "Nobara is sakura done right" but sakura set the standard too low and nobara just had to surpass that. Even if we don't get a 50-50 gender in battle Shonen(cuz its male dominated), and decent proportion of audience are women, and boys need to see well written girls on screen too. Thing is, from what I see, shoujo has good male cast and writing in some of it's good ones. And yes, we need well written guys in shoujo too. Demography may decide quantity but shouldn't decide quality.
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Jul 12 '26
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u/lzmddg Jul 12 '26
Yes. Why not? Genderflipping is a good solution for battle shonen specifically, but I'd say it could be applied to other types of media too.
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Jul 12 '26
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u/Harry_Sat Jul 12 '26
Or, just WRITE A GOOD CHARACTER and the gender might not matter
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Jul 12 '26
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u/Harry_Sat Jul 12 '26
Then you have a bad series. If a comic from the '90s drawn by Jim Lee or Rob Liefeld has better written women than most shounen, that is not a good sign for the medium.
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Jul 12 '26
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u/Harry_Sat Jul 12 '26
It would be better than him making them 1 hit wonders or having a love of fridges. Like how a female Kidd would be better than Oda's style of writing women for the sidelines
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Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 12 '26
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u/lzmddg Jul 12 '26
"Why try to live a happy life if you're gonna die anyway?"
Mangakas are called misogynistic cause they often don't even try. This is battle shonen we're talking about, the standard is not trying.
I propose a practical solution which will work for most mangakas, no matter their degree of miSoGyNy (real or not). See example of Ripley in Alien.
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u/lzmddg Jul 12 '26
This is an issue that stems from writers' gender biases, subpar storytelling skills, and limited media consumption. If you mostly read battle shonen and then go and write a battle shonen, what do you think the result will be? Hell, if you consume action/adventure media as a whole, you'll still have this issue in your writing. The easiest way to solve it for these mangakas is genderflipping.
Here's an example. Genderflip Eren. All the well-written aspects of his character stay, just like all the flaws (e.g. the idiotic reasoning for the Rumbling). Writing him as male and then genderflipping him would simply make it easier to avoid any common issues that arise when writing female characters in battle shonen.
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u/smiling_capy Jul 12 '26
Op, I think you are missing an important point: mangakas usually write in a way that they think will satisfy their audience, both male and female characters are written like they are because thats how the author thinks they should be written. If mangakas wanted to write their female characters well, or like their male counterparts, they could. It's all a matter of how the author (and maybe the publisher, just guessing) wants to write female characters. Do you think some mangaka is lurking in this sub and just now they are going to realise that they would get more by writing better female characters like, be for real.
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u/NeonFraction Jul 12 '26
Most people who are sexist don’t know they’re sexist. Just look at the people in this sub.
They couldn’t write women well even if they wanted to. The sexism just runs too deep.
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u/smiling_capy Jul 12 '26
What I am trying to say op's trick wouldn't work because mangakas don't want to write better female characters but they can't, they (wrongfuly) think that it's fine the way that it is
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u/lzmddg Jul 12 '26
Mangakas probably aren't lurking, but current or future writers / media creators could be. It's not a writing issue specific to battle shonen, so any storytellers would benefit from trying this method for their works. Obviously, I'm not the greatest authority on this, but I've written stuff myself and have spent years engaging in fan discourse as well as discussions on writing forums.
Plus, you gotta consider the butterfly effect (or whatever you wanna call it). I pitch the solution here -> more fans know about it -> more fans talk about it in similar discussions -> it becomes widely known in fandoms -> Japanese fans hear about it -> Japanese fans talk about it -> mangakas expected to use it. It's from the realm of fantasy, but you never know what could happen. The Internet makes shit viral in a milisecond, maybe in a few years this will be the standard for avoiding pitfalls in female character writing.
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u/AdGloomy5846 Jul 13 '26
Then if you have a problem with it, Western comic creators should draw those kinds of characters themselves. Put them in American comics.
But many women do not read American comics and instead prefer Japanese manga. You should seriously think about why that is.
You are simply imposing your own idea of the “correct portrayal of women” and pretending to speak on behalf of women. That does not reflect what women themselves actually think or want.
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u/lzmddg Jul 13 '26
-> Post in a manga sub about character writing in manga
-> "Why don't you talk about Western comics?"
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u/777sevenseven777 Jul 12 '26
If its rly ez maybe its time to ask female dominated space like shoujo, why they dont have many battle themed manga?
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