You're thinking specifically of battle shounen. People may group all of those together as just "shounen", but that's not how the label would be used in Japan or any kind of official setting outside of Japan.
-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
-
We have made minor adjustments to how the search bar works on ResetEra. You can read about the changes here.
Why women criticise sexualised character designs (READ OP)
- Thread starter Persephone
- Start date
- Status
You're thinking specifically of battle shounen. People may group all of those together as just "shounen", but that's not how the label would be used in Japan or any kind of official setting outside of Japan.
This use is wrong tho (and people using it wrong in the west don't make it right, it only does misconceptions) and is completely destroyed when such manga don't use that pre-requisite. Fumetsu no Anata e and a Silent Voice are big examples being published on Shounen Magazine. At the same time, Umaru-chan, Kaguya and Youkai Shoujo are/were published in Young Jump, just like K-on, New Game, Hidamari Sketch and other Cute girls doing cute things are seinen manga in Manga Time Kirara Magazines. And that happens because they're a demography, not a genre or something that connect them in first place, they just target the same people with different genres inside the magazine.
Yeah yeah, today the same gore can't be there and the magazine changed certain aspects with Shueisha. But now you have Promised Neverland that has some things that you would see it only in the 80s and 90s.
Soft-core pornography is a somewhat close Anglicization of ecchi. And in many cases, with stuff like To-Love Ru, they are just straight up using pornography to sell product. Otaku products, especially in games, anime and manga are typically targeted at young males, roughly in the 14-30 year old age range. Ecchi (soft-core works) has expanded as a result of otaku culture idolizing the sort of barely-there clothing while having characters that also act innocent and cute (see Pyra from XB2). It's a sort of purity thing, where everything except actual straight up nudity is acceptable, because it doesn't corrupt the character in the eyes of much of the otaku culture (they are still pure, even if this sort of barely there culture has also contributed to a huge expansion of fan-based pornographic works, which has massively expanded with events like Comiket). It is definitely for otakus and young males more broadly, with the goal of creating that obsessive connection - it's also why current idol culture in Japan is so fraught (and why the same purity stuff is on such extreme display there).
How what argument is maintained? That Japan is conservative on spending? While spending has increased slightly last year, it's by no means a huge increase: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...w-strength-in-consumer-spending-idUSKBN1CZ00Z
A "boom" of spending in Japan is considered a 2% increase in spending. That's pretty paltry when you consider nations like America are seeing retail spending increases more than double that: https://www.usatoday.com/story/mone...mp-4-9-biggest-increase-since-2011/981464001/
People think that these are shounen manga, that's why. And teenagers (girls or boys) can buy seinen magazines, it's not prohibited by law. After all, seinen magazines focus on young adults and adults in the majority (but of course, not exclusive).
I'll admit, I haven't started PN yet since I like to wait until chapter 100 or cancellation with long-running WSJ series. Is it just the themes, or is there highly detailed gore in it?
If it's just darker themes, WSJ seems to have at least one of those running at a time that don't follow the normal structure of a WSJ series. Last generation had Death Note and it seems this one's is Promised Neverland.
The meaning of terms in culture is often quite fluid, and genres, themes and tropes are some of the slipperiest to define. By which I mean they have never been completely or accurately defined pretty much ever, and most consider the usage of the term to be more important than what the term correctly means (at least in academic literature).
Libraries generally try to use the terms as they are used, because it makes it easier for patrons, who typically have a common understanding of the term rather than a specific one, to find the material they are looking for (or they are defined under both meanings, so that either usage will work for patrons).
Who said they were prohibited? It denotes a general demographic. Periphery demographics buy and consume media not "for them" all the time. Look at the brony craze that happened like 6 years ago.
It should be noted that demographics can get a bit wonky when they go international or even when crossing mediums. K-on for example aired on Disney Channel and was aimed at little girls.
It's the darker themes of the series (also a bit of violence, not that much) and what happens there. It's surprising that this manga is being published in there.
You didn't responded me about the 3DS selling 24 million (and being the third best-selling console in the history of the country), Switch and big mobile spending in Japan by different people in the market. With mobile we even saw how it got bigger and bigger each year with different games in the market and how companies got a huge revenue in it. That's was basically my point.
Also, Japan market was always smaller than US in all of the fronts, it's extremely expected that it's not the same growth because the market don't have the same number for console, handhelds and mobile. And even with it, Japan is the third bigger market in the world considering consoles and handhelds, the third major considering everything and the second one considering mobile. Just look at newzoo research of 2017.
That's interesting but we're not talking about international markets and besides, K-On internationally avoided the more seedier aspects of K-On anyway and the anime itself is fairly harmless. We're talking about demographics as it relates to Japan itself. And if I say Shoujo Magical Girl Series and Seinen Magical Girl Series already you have different expectations of what to expect going in. They have a different range that can vary wildly, but still distinct in most regards. Therefore, using this titles are fine. And why are we talking about this anyway?
Ok, but what's your question here? Is there something about my own arguments that you wanted me to clarify, or did you want a reaction to those numbers or?
Sure, but being a large tech market (as they always have been since around the 70s or 80s) doesn't necessarily mean that spending on these products is stable or consistent. Japan has always been very prone to monopolies due to their culture, and the gaming industry is no exception. A few popular franchises soak up huge portions of the disposable income available in game markets (even more so than America, which is why the indie scene in America has been flourishing recently), making cheap, easy to market (i.e., ecchi products) materials a more and more popular way of gaining notoriety and money from the largest spender on Japanese games products (young males and male otaku). Indie games and games for alternative audiences have a hard time building bases because a) games are generally considered to be for young males (until you become an adult, which basically means your work is supposed to be your life), and b) because the game market continues to become more laser focused, it has become more risk averse and thus investors are less likely to fund indie projects or alternative audience products. It's become so bad that the government now often funds these projects because they're pretty much the only one that will.
I know this is very late, but a female villain from Phantasy Star II that kills off a playable character. The downside is, the rest of the team takes revenge on their fallen comrade so she doesn't last long.
Oh and Gruntilda kills off Bottles at the beginning of Banjo Tooie.
That's right, because these are different demography, not genre. The only genre in there is Mahou Shoujo that today is presented in every demography after being created in shoujo magazines.
It's more that I want you to explain me how this is possible if their spending is so low when they reach those numbers. Much more in the mobile case than others since this is the major gaming market of the country (and in every other but let's focus on this since it's the second bigger only behind china and growing every year) and also extremely mainstream with people of all ages playing and spending money into this. Square Enix, Bandai Namco, Mixi, Konami, Cygames and others have big numbers with their sales and MTX in the country and we can see that in their earnings and also in researches with the spending on these.
From the old country, here it is one news about it:
https://www./threads/japanese-mobil...obile-is-85-of-japanese-game-revenue.1449215/
It was Disney Channel Japan.
I don't know, there's not really any reason Lyrical Nanoha can't appeal to the same demographic as Precure or Cardcaptor Sakura.. Obviously stuff like Madoka or Magical Girl Raising Project won't be advertised to little girls, but those are subversions whereas a lot of seinen magical girl stuff that plays it straight doesn't really go much further than the stuff for children.
...I give up. If you can say with a straight face that you cannot see any difference between seinen Magical Girl Shows and shoujo Magical Girl Shows, the greatest example there is of an exploitation of something built for little girls for the perversion of men, then I don't know what to tell you. I don't know how to make this any more clear to you. I don't know what I could possibly say, any example I could give, any word I could give that would penetrate the idea that maybe, just maybe, the sexualization and perversion of these shows are part of the problem.
And if you want an example of how Shoujo does this and DOESN'T cater to men, look up Revolutionary Girl Utena, the equivalent to NGE and, despite constantly showing the implicit depiction of sex, note the differences in how it portrays women in comparison to other shows with women in seinen magical girl animes.
Show me where Nanoha (not counting Force and Vivid, neither of which are anime) wouldn't work being aimed at a shoujo demographic.
Explain how what is possible? How the concentration of spending filters upwards towards a few game popular franchises? If you're asking how spending is low, I'm talking in relation to other markets. Spending in terms of luxury products is not registering fantastic growth in the games market, even if spending is largely conducted on mobile platforms. In other words, the market isn't expanding anywhere nearly as quickly as other mobile markets: https://www.export.gov/article?id=Japan-E-Commerce - clothing, fashion, and travel are the largest growing sectors in mobile markets. As such, investors are much more likely to invest in markets seeing substantial growth - even if the mobile games market is large, it doesn't mean it's expanding at the same rate or is nearly as profitable as other mobile industries (and marketing is by far the largest industry in terms of market share - which isn't too surprising).
Also, as a sort general response to people on the whole seinen and shounen aren't genres: http://sevac.studiojab.com/genres-whats-that-mean/
There are more sites, but obviously this site is one of many that lists these things (seinen, shoujo, etc.) as genres.
Last edited:
I'm sorry, but I do not have the time to examine 13 episodes of a show that was clearly and publicly marked for older men from the get go to specify which specific instances of a show would denote why a show would not be demographically for little girls (and if you really want to try me, Fate gets her clothes whipped off. Reminder that she EIGHT YEARS OLD! And that's what I remember. Nanoha was built for the Otaku in mind, it's easy find reasons why it wasn't for little girls). Again, now compare to something Like Utena, which has actual sex yet somehow feels less exploitative...
For starters, the transformations are considerably more male-gazey. This is probably actually the most obvious difference between series aimed at children and series aimed at men - Yuuki Yuuna does this as well (with a particularly egregious sequence in the prequel series involving the girls checking their suits by rubbing themselves), despite fanservice being almost entirely absent from the rest of the series. There is also a noticeable difference in the severity of the violence on display - you won't see a girl explicitly break another girl's arm with bone cracking and loud screaming in a shoujo series.
The demography is important, even in a society as laissez-faire about fictional violence and nudity as Japan.
You didn't read what I showed? Japanese mobile market is the second bigger in the world, only behind China. Even US is behind Japan. In the last 3 years, this market beated US and showed growth in it's industry. You're talking about something bigger, I'm talking just about gaming and in this case, mobile. So, if we consider that, then what does that means for the US when it's behind the japanese market?
And no man, it's not an genre. People in the west is altering it for their own perception just like people altered what otaku and swastika means here. And like I said before, there's different examples for why this generalization of genre doesn't make sense when you pick the catalogue of the magazines and see it.
Mahou Shoujo was created by mangakas and is totally famous in the japanese culture because of it's shows and manga, which influenced an entire culture and it's widely known. For the same reason others trends were copied before, this one also got copied by other magazines (with other demography) and it's publishers and different authors. It's not something sacred. It's still there in it's original form and is still widely popular with Pripara, Precure and others but there's also other interpretations and deconstructions of the genre just like there's for Mechas, "Battle Shounen", Idols and others genres/settings.
Are you reading what I'm saying? I'm talking about the size of the Japanese gaming market in relation to the size of other mobile markets within Japan. Mobile spending is up in almost all luxury industries in Japan, not just games.
As for genre, again, how people use it is what's important (even if it's a misappropriation of a term).
I think the easiest to detect the primary demographic Nanoha is aiming for is to look at its release schedule in Japan, which is during midnight hours, as opposed to something like Precure which aired on Sunday morning.
Sorry, I reread it and now makes more sense. But I already reached my time with this discussion, another time we discuss this one again.
Well, that's a option because anime itself doesn't give you the demography unlike what happens with manga and in some LN. But even then, anime that have a timeslot in the midnight can be any of them because there's things like Aoharaido (Shoujo in 12am), Natsume Yuujinchou (Shoujo in 1am) and different other examples that you can find.
I'm not saying Mahou Shoujo is sacred. Nor am I saying it can't be used by other demographics. But I am saying that there are differences in style of Mahou Shoujo when aimed at different demographics and the exploitation of this has been a legitimate cause for concern.
Fair enough. I actually don't remember much about Nanoha and never watched past A's.
I'll still maintain that demographics are largely irrelevent for explicit content, at least when it comes to manga. That being said, I'm not super well-read when it comes to shoujo and josei compared to shounen and seinen. Though the existence of Screaming Lesson (a shoujo horror series that is more fucked up than a lot of seinen) leads me to believe that the same applies among that demographic.
The writer of Madoka, prior to working on this, became popular from visual novel video games, working at Nitro+. Btw that company also has a division for BL video games. Had no idea he was the writer behind Saya no Uta. That game involved sex between an adult and an alien that took the shape AND behaviour of a 14 year old girl. The sex scenes were all shown but were unnecessary from a narrative standpoint. But it is a VN after all.
I was watching the English dub of Panty and Stocking the other day. It was hilarious, full of perversion, sex jokes, scatology, even including an Afro bondage fetishized pedophile priest and parodising American movies and anime. English dub Funimation director was a woman btw, who in other instances did not even like toilet jokes. I found it less disturbing than all those VN and angst inspired series. Even Kill la Kill which I am currently rewatching. This is why I struggle with all those VN and Light Novel inspired series. They are subversive but require really a very good art director, like it happened with Madoka and KyoAni. In lesser hands they turn fanbase material focusing on torture and shock mostly.
There will always be body types and looks in general that are over-represented or not represented at all in media. In short I just think it's wrong to tackle over-representation with negativism. As for extreme curviness, the world in general is already extremely negative towards it, or half the population at least going by how this girl gets treated by other girls/women. We're talking about constant mocking either directly or by pretending to talk about "a friend" or a celebrity etc. It's sickening to witness. Unless you're super confident it's going to break you down eventually if half the world judge your personality by your looks and put a negative spin on everyone on general who resemble how you look. I'm not experienced enough to talk much about anime but western games and movies are definitely downsizing the women right now and has done so for years, the medium to small sized small chested body type is getting normalized and also applauded while the big chested body type might be used for characters with less positive character traits. And it's not like these girls doesn't have enough problems as it is just from having to carry the extra weight and being unable to find clothes that fit etc.
maybe im missing a point here, but Madoka is Shaft, not KyoAni....
You're completely missing the point here, and going off-topic besides.
How people treat real women who possess such figures is a very separate topic from the sexualized representations of such women in fictional media - specifically the fictional media that usually goes out of its way to fetishize their bodies to a degree that I can only refer to as "disrespectful". Being represented alone is not enough if male gaze cameras, posing, and writing dominate the scene. That is what I am objecting to. That people actively body shame real human beings should not have any bearing on my ability to decry poor representation of women in media, and indeed, they are two separate issues that need to be tackled with very different tactics. Internalized misogyny is a very real thing and, you know what? Actively sexist depictions of women do not do anything to help that situation. A huge part of why so many women internalize misogyny and express that misogyny by body shaming others is because so much media goes so far to appeal specifically to mens' gazes and frame women's bodies purely around that construct, rather than anything resembling healthy self-esteem. Dismantling that paradigm would only help in this regard.
I don't talk about other peoples' bodies unless asked because I recognize the fact that, frankly, it's none of my business and most people have a very limited ability to affect their body shape without invasive surgery anyway. When I'm talking specifically about fictional characters that goes out the window because they're not real. They're designed. And bringing up real women only deflects from the point that our fictional depictions can be designed more respectfully, even by simply giving them body shapes that are more sensible for the jobs they are doing. Especially military women. Athletic women. Fighting women. I'm not badmouthing real large-breasted women when I say that I feel like Raikou's design is needlessly excessive and insulting and that there is likely no real woman on the planet who has her body shape to begin with, alright? She's designed. Fiction. The designer(s) can do better. That's all I'm saying.
Yeah I agree on that, I'm not suggesting more objectification, at this point the issue I talked about is likely a result from what happened decades ago in TVs, movies, comics, games. That body type was what "everyone" wanted at least when I was young, the Samantha Fox and Pamela Anderson look, and that triggered the surgery frenzy and Lara Croft characters etc, it was the dream body and girls who looked like that naturally were called "blessed" etc. But it has changed at least where I live and there is not much hype about that anymore, these girls are now more like "cursed" and gets mocked and girls that has made surgery takes out their implants, naturally big chested girls do reduction surgery etc etc because of the negativism and lack of nice clothes and just problems in general.
Today I feel like it's more focus on the butt and hips. I'm sure there will be body shaming for that too in 10 years or so, we're already in the surgery era and girls focus their work out routine to get bigger butts, soon we'll be in the jealousy era for those that got "blessed" from birth and then the mocking will start. :/
What I think needs to be done by media in general is include all kinds of body types and not put specific personality traits to some characters just because of a certain body type, then anything is okay. Fir example a big chested girl shouldn't automatically be the flirty dumb bimbo etc, they can still have that body but let it just be her body and don't treat the character like any other character, and don't pause the camera on the chest area more than on any other character. Then it's okay I think.
I agree with a lot of what you're saying, I don't think the proportions themselves are the problem though even when just talking about fictional characters, imo it's more about how the characters with the less normalized proportions are portrayed and otherwised designed. I'm not into anime other than the Ghibli movies so I haven't seen how problematic the designs are now, I know about the Xenoblade 2 controversy though and it deserves the complaints from what I've seen, and I know the generalized anime look where everyone looks like they're 10 years old except for the chest.
However, I draw curvy women myself as a hobby artist, so I'm not helping the general de-objectifying process of women I guess. But tbh at this point I don't know if it's even possible to draw a woman without someone saying that they're objectified, pick up any Marvel comic and someone out there will say that certain features are cranked up too far in the design, clothes, hips, waist, chest, lips etc etc.
It's important to aim the complaints at the right issues though, that's all I'm saying. Without cameras slowly panning over a female character focusing on her body and without extreme clothes or extreme childlike appearance abd voices, would the body proportions even be a problem anymore?
I posted this in another thread, but I figured this would get more constructive replies here: why do straight male gamers have to have their dick hard on all the time? There's already a plethora of porn online that they can jack off to, there's already sex in most advertising, and media is already saturated with attractive women for straight dudes to be happy about. There's so much straight male dick strocking material out there, why does it have to be *everywhere*, even in almost all major games, when other posters for example say "maybe a little bit less sex in games please"? Have their been studies or articles on this constant need to have eroticism everywhere in their world?
I'm really not sure it's that they need sex everywhere but more that's it proof to them that they are being pandered to, that they are still the most important demographic.
I enjoy thing X, I also enjoy sexy women/men, therefore, in my mind anyway, X + sexiness = a better X.
That's as far as I've ever considered it.
Have you considered that it's possible for people to like visually attractive character designs without actively wanting to have sex with them? Just like, to put it the other way around, people can also easily find themselves attracted even to characters who show zero skin. I can agree about the larger point and have already talked about it before, but the way you've worded this specific part is a bit shortsighted at best.
They need it by virtue of the hostility and the defensiveness when someone even remotely suggests that maybe we could have less sexually objectified female characters in the games. You'll see tons of more honest responses like "I like attractive girls so I don't want to let it go" to weird arbitrary rationalizations like "straight sex sells" to "if you don't like it, go do something else", etc.
Like there's sex aimed at straight dudes all throughout society, but even a modicum of challenge to this is met with a strong refusal to even let go of just a couple of instances of sexualization. This is what I'm getting at.
If that's what you took away from my post, then that's quite an unfortunate misreading of it.
My point is that you should look at the situation with more nuance, not contradicting that sexualization can be toned down.
Oh, i still think they need it but not for horniness reasons necessarily.
I'm a straight guy and I honestly don't know, I can't relate. I would be exhausted. I do want breaks from titillation even if I do appreciate it in the right context. Having it somewhere where I feel it doesn't belong or fit, or just feels lazy and cheap I'm bothered by it. It hurts my experience for several reasons depending on the context, in any media.
Even as a kid I was wondering when watching several TV game shows, that why the host is always a man and then they have a mute woman there to introduce the prizes or turning over the letters in a Wheel of Fortune etc. The woman was always young, fit and attractive, but the host could very well be some old, balding and chubby dude. I'm pretty sure I've never seen these roles reversed. Maybe they have done it, but I don't watch such shows anymore.
Edit: Sorry, not really that related to this topic but since I mentioned Wheel of Fortune in my post and decided to Google if it's still on I found out that they brought it back to Finnish TV. The new host is a realtor Jethro and they also hired new "Wheel of Fortune Girl" as they are called, Miss Finland Sara. So seems like this habit hasn't changed over time. I hope they let her speak too atleast. I guess something could be said about calling a 26 year old woman "a girl" too. It's a great example where man can be appreciated and hired for just his personality, while woman is required to be attractive. Also the roles they have in the production are assigned with this same mentality.
Last edited:
I'm thinking it might be a power thing. It says "you are the most important person/demographic".
I think it's fairly simple to agree with this statement as a general principle. The thing is, individuals from distinct genders tend to have different ideas about what is the "right context" when it comes to cases that aren't extreme or self-evident.
That's where personal expectations and preferences come in, in addition to the social and/or cultural norms each of us has been taught to respect (or not), whether formally or informally.
Last edited:
Why? It's an great anime, one of the best in this decade. I don't see why a reaction like that would happen.
Saturation makes numb. Needs higher doses to kick in. Also see "How can she be sexualised, she's fully clothed!"
- Status