Now I'm one of the many people who has always questioned why JJK fans thought Nobara and the other female cast members were "revolutionary" or "ground breaking" or anything like that when I'm gonna be real..they're not all that. Like we should've realized his female cast was scuffed when one of his cast members(Miwa)was so useless, the story joked about it. We should've known his cast was ass when he sent Nobara to the Shadow Realm and only showed her backstory just now before she got boomed,and it wasn't like she was a S-tier character beforehand.
Now the excuse I've seen for people thinking that is "the bar in Shonen and anime is just that low" and yeah it is..when you only use the bare minimum and lowest bar as a example when there are so many animes out there with great female characters and even a good amount of Shonen Animes have decently written/handled female characters like Fullmetal Alchemist, Fairy Tail, Kill La Kill, Dandadan,etc.
Of course every other female character is gonna look good and much greater when compared to Naruto's female cast which isn't the best at all,not even close..also just watch other forms of Anime outside of Shonen if you think the female casts here are lackluster.
People think that just cause a woman has little to no Fanservice and doesn't like the MC that automatically means she's Godly and S-tier when that's just..since when is someone having a crush a bad thing or bad writing?
And people will say "I'm glad she's actually a character and not a prop for the MC to date" and all that kinda stuff and I'm just like..please show me the Shonen anime outside of maybe Naruto where that happens like at all.
Seriously having a crush on the MC and making their crush on said MC Their entire goal and personality are 2 different things that people tend to confuse.
I feel like so much of this disclosure comes from people holding female characters in any form of media to a much,much higher and insane standard compared to Male characters but that's another conversation.
Bro s3 ain’t been out 3 hours and the rants with the coldest takes known to man are already back 😂😂😂
It's a bad habit to call takes like these hot,I didn't fully realize.
Also I didn't really call it a hot take.
A story joking about a female character being useless is not a sign that the femcast is scuffed, specifically when there are other female characters who aren't joked about that way. Also, I'd argue that a female character being acknowledged as 'useless' can actually be kind of positive, because in a misogynistic story it would've been assumed she was useless by the default of her being a woman, thus not worthy of mentioning. It contradicts that when the story points her 'uselessness' out as a trait rather than an inherit assumption.
But she also doesn't do anything to improve or become useful. She just..stays useless.
That's true ig. However since this was at the beginning of the story, there was no way for viewers (outside of reading the manga, which also yielded limited information) to know how/whether she would grow.
The modern western battle-shounen obsessed fanbase and its consquences has been an absolute disaster for any and all types of anime & manga and otaku related topics whatsoever.
people might not agree but Fairy tail's female cast are honestly better than alot of the more popular mainstream shounen. They just simply have alot of fanservice on top of it.
Erza is insanely well written in term of symbolism. Its also one of the rare case where the author doesnt opt out for the "tomboy who become feminine girl later"; Erza just stay as a badass female character all the way through
Exactly! People should stop treating fanservice and writing quality as inversely proportional. Erza and Lucy are great regardless of how sexy they are!
Thing is, "having a lot of fanservice," is a big asterisk. It's hard to take their fights seriously if 90% end with them being naked or having a lot of clothing damage (with a lot of focus showing that off).
One of the male deuteragonists entire gimmick is stripping
I agree Fairy Tail has a lot of fanservice, but it’s hardly a mark against its female characters when plenty of the men are treated the same
Gray stripping was always treated as a gag first and foremost. Perhaps not surprising given the author and target demographic, but it’s never really sexualized that much (and the male chest and body is simply not treated the same as the female chest. It’s not like he’s drawn with a prominent bulge and a speedo every time he strips down)
Erza always felt to me like a female character who was strong in service of the author’s action girl fetish. She’s strong because “girl who could kick my ass” is a turn on for Hiro (and also feeds into a lot of the BDSM scenarios he constantly forces her into), so even her strength feels like it exists for the sake of sexualizing her. And that’s not to say liking strong women is bad, I myself love strong badass female characters. But the execution very much makes her strength into a sexual thing as well
Male character will have like 5% of the fanservice and people act like they're equivalent. Reminds me of how Zeke from Xenoblade 2 had his shirt a little unbuttoned and people acted like its the equivalent to whatever tf Pyra had on.
By plenty of men, you mean just Gray. At most a few others get shirtless only after the women do (typically at a beach). Plus there's a difference between a gag (which is relegated to a corner of a panel), to have huge panels dedicated to the female characters in skimpy outfits or completely naked.
There's not a fight most of the male cast gets into that doesn't have them naked by the start of it, either.
Who cares. They're hot and badass. Men can also be hot and badass, see Gojo.
Erza and Lucy are both good, even a little girl like Wendy, with her buff and healing magic, has become stronger and can take care of herself without needing anyone to save her.
Literally just watch anything other than shonen ?
Noelle and Fuuko (Undead unluck) even show that female can have crushes and still be good characters.
I completely forgot about Black Clover,oh my god.
She's just another Sakura, with less clothing with each power-up, in love with the MC, and without healing magic.
Noelle is about as far from "Another Sakura Haruno" as you can get in a battle shonen.
except better written in every way
When you have a genre that for it's entire history has featured women as pin-up poster material first and characters second, you're doomed to have every exception be "groundbreaking."
Off the top of my head:
Sure, they might have fighting abilities, but that doesn't change the fact that the reason they exist in the plot is to be dating material for the MC.
But it's disingenuous to pretend that shonen anime doesn't have a long history of having barely relevant female characters that exist solely to be eye candy/waifu bait.
Chi chi is weird because she’s frankly not and has never been an important character despite being Goku’s love interest and the actual female lead was always Bulma who is a great character who stands up on her own right and is consistently important even when she’s not a fighter
I mean, the post talks about anime, not specifically shounen for the most part. If you look at shoujo, it's literally flipped. A LOT of "plain girl with a bunch of handsome men with their own archetypes chasing her". Fruits Basket, Ouran Host Club, Kiss Him Not Me. The only issue is that we hardly get shoujo adaptations. But there's A LOT of content for that, like Otome games.
Basically, people equate badassery with well written characters and treat the presence of both fanservice and romance as inversely proportional to the quality, partially because the anime discourse online is still haunted by specters of Naruto and Bleach shipping wars. Every female character gets measured against Sakura and Orihime, or rather the vague memories of their famously worse anime counterparts.
This means that there is a whole fandom culture based around hating female characters for having major romantic plotlines, not being badass enough/playing support and showing any fanservice. This fandom environment means that any character who is badass, has no fanservice and no romantic plotline gets glazed to high heavens.
In terms of the recent Shounens with related premises, it's kind of like how Nobara from JJK was praised as the new best female character despite not even doing that much at this point besides being cheeky and kicking reasonable amounts of ass, while Eiko from Dark Gathering was getting comments about people suspecting that she might be a twist villain later on.
I am specifically mentioning these series because they come from the similar time frame (DG debuted the same year and season as JJK 2s), share enough of the premise to be comparable (mix of action and horror, focus on curses as power system) and because Eiko and Nobara are pretty much opposites in how they are handled. Putting it simply, Eiko is heavily romantically involved with only guy in main trio and is team's support member. Despite that, she actually gets way more character growth, more relevant backstory, greater relevance to progressing the main plot and more importantly more personal character goals outside following the main plot than Nobara. Putting it simply, Eiko might not be as badass as her sister, the MC of DG, but she's genuinely indispensable character that the plot simply couldn't happen without. Nobara could be theoretically quite easily replaced by another character with similar power, while Eiko couldn't be swapped from DG plot even for a character with the exact same skillset as her.
I'll die on the hill that for an "action/shonen" genre mecha has been giving us great female characters since the '80s or even '70s
Mostly because when you fight with giant robots you don't have to worry about the bad image of heroes "beating up" women;reason why basically the one fight Android 18 gets in Android Saga is when she worfs SSJ Vegeta and why Spopovitch brutalizing Videl is considered a standout loathsome moment for a minor villain
Just the consequences of people dominating the discourse that don't watch anything and only parrot others opinions On actual manga forums, you really don't get such takes at all
Who tf thought the female characters where revolutionary? Like 2 or 3 people?!?!?!? I never saw any of that. Like yeah ppl like them for sure? But, i im starting to not trust what ppl say abt a how a community thinks at all lol.
People just thought it was a good female cast(which i dont agree with).
Back when JJK S1 came out there was A LOT of praise for the female cast being revolutionary. The conversation changed after Nobara got written out in the culling games and only got worse when damn near all of the female cast outside of Maki amounted to nothing
Brother jurnos were pumping out articles about how JJK girls are best in all shonen.
Ah good Jurnos those can be linked ig. Im not saying ppl didnt think that but I think yall are giving you self post hoc deillusions that that thought process was that persuasive.
When season 1 was airing, there were countless takes on how JJK's female cast was so much better than any other shounen and that it should be an example. I mean maybe you weren't around for it, but it was extremely pervasive at the time
I dont believe you or I dont think this thought process was a popular as your making it out to be. Even so Having a great cast is fair different from revolutionary fyi. Also it being your favorite vast during s1 isnt that wild. Its the later part that thing go off the deep end imo. I dont vaguely remember alot of ppl liking Nobara tho. Maybe a few favorite Female shonen protagonis but like thats all I can recall.🤷♀️
I mean you don't have to believe me. I was there. I saw it. There were rants on this very sub about how great JJK's female cast was during S1. Manga readers already knew what was up but for anime-onlies, they thought they were looking at one of the best female casts.
Kohaku and Suika from Dr Stone are pretty well written I think.
Maka Albarn from Soul Eater is so cool.
Tl;dr, please read something other than battle shounen, pleeeeeease
Whenever I see someone say this, they rationalize it by equating a leading female character's writing to a male who's a background character.
Like, Uraraka isn't a poorly written character. Look at Ojiro.
These kids ain't heard of Rally Vincent.
Beatrice from the Umineko manga is one of the best female characters I’ve seen in manga ( I rarely read things other than popular stuff and isekai/high school romance slop) (I tend to stick to normal books and webnovels)
People really gotta stop assuming "all anime = shounen"
Take a step outside and you'll see plenty of great female characters. Or better yet, you'll also see that anime targeted for women, isn't exactly all that different for the ones targeted for men. Lots of "plain girl being persued by handsome men harem". Fruits Basket, Ouran Host Club, Kiss Him Not Me. Widen your scope people.
Then you should try watching chainsaw man literally all the female characters have great personality are useful to the plot no matter who they are.
Even the useless kobeni got more character than miwa.
It also does well that the fact that every major villain is always a female so it doesn't have the whole no evil female characters like most shonen has.
Bet you've never read part 2 with stuff like Nayuta fridging
What is that supposed to mean and yes I have.
Would you say that one had a great personality and was important to the plot since you claimed "literally all CSM female characters" are like that?
There's other that get a fair amount of criticism especially in part 2
Did I just detect Nayuta slander?
Yes really literally all of them are great characters.
Mikama,Yoru, Asa, Reze and Kobeni.
One Piece with the most human characters
The stigma against violence against women holds female characters back in battle shonen more than anything. Even when they do fight, there's always the sense that the author is wearing kid gloves and not allowing them to get injured to the same extent as the male characters.