Why women criticise sexualised character designs (READ OP)

Dick Justice said:

XCOM is pretty good when it comes to non-sexualized female designs. Enemy Unknown had boob armour, but they changed it with the Enemy Within expansion to look more practical. And it carried over to the sequel, which was nice.

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Boob armor needs to go man. It's too over-done and impractical. I ended up downloading a mod in Skyrim to get rid of that shit.

RedSwirl said:

Boob armor needs to go man. It's too over-done and impractical. I ended up downloading a mod in Skyrim to get rid of that shit.

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I was a fan of boob armor in my teens (For obvious reasons) but now that I have grown up a bit the sheer impracticality and logical dangers that they present just gets in the way of any previous interest I had in the concept. Once I saw a video explain to me exactly what would happen to a person wearing boob armor if you caved in the breastplate vs regular armor I cannot unsee it now.


Its all I think about now when I see full plate boob armor. Just.......ouch.

Budi said:

XCOM keeps winning! I've played (and loved) everything except the newest expansion, didn't actually notice this but it's nice. Highly recommended game to everyone. I think they also made female soldiers more common in the second game? I think it was something like 30% female and 70% male what soldiers you get in the first game, but now it's 50% gender split. Percentages could be off, but I remember reading something like this.

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I always enjoyed it as a strategy game, and it's good to see these design changes. Seems obvious given XCOM's mythology.

Dick Justice said:

XCOM is pretty good when it comes to non-sexualized female designs. Enemy Unknown had boob armour, but they changed it with the Enemy Within expansion to look more practical. And it carried over to the sequel, which was nice.

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Not just the boob armour but the trousers are improved as the original makes it look like underwear and they changed it to look more like the combat trousers she would actually be wearing. Good changes.

GGO, Princess Principal and Flip Flappers are all shows by dudes for dudes with primarily male audiences. That doesn't negate whatever good qualities they might have, but let's set things straight.

Wotakoi's source material is josei manga for women, though.

SieteBlanco said:

GGO, Princess Principal and Flip Flappers are all shows by dudes for dudes with primarily male audiences. That doesn't negate whatever good qualities they might have, but let's set things straight.

Wotakoi's source material josei manga for women, though.

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I mean, we've been over this, but again, I apologize for the misrepresentation. Doesn't give me much hope that there's a chance for anime to escape the hole it's dug for itself though. =/

Also, because it bears repeating - play Valkyrie Profile if you haven't! I had forgotten how good the music and characters were in this game.

Not sure if this has been linked here before, but I found this blog that seeks to show how absurd female objectification is in comics, games and other media by... Well, look at it http://thehawkeyeinitiative.com/

Opa-Pa said:

Not sure if this has been linked here before, but I found this blog that seeks to show how absurd female objectification is in comics, games and other media by... Well, look at it http://thehawkeyeinitiative.com/

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While we're plugging stuff, Bikini Armor Battle Damage is highly relevant to this thread in particular, as it showcases a lot of the ridiculous outfits that made this thread happen in the first place. Also shows some hilarious depictions of "equivalent" male armor and the like.

Opa-Pa said:

Not sure if this has been linked here before, but I found this blog that seeks to show how absurd female objectification is in comics, games and other media by... Well, look at it http://thehawkeyeinitiative.com/

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I legit love this.

Dick Justice said:

XCOM is pretty good when it comes to non-sexualized female designs. Enemy Unknown had boob armour, but they changed it with the Enemy Within expansion to look more practical. And it carried over to the sequel, which was nice.

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Oh hey, that's pretty nice.

cosmicblizzard said:

Wotakoi is josei though, so unless it's aiming for a periphery demographic, it's definitely meant to be consumed by women.

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Do you have a source for it that isn't wikipedia? comicpool don't have a designated target as far as I know.

Laiza said:

To be fair re: GGO, the author wrote Kino's Journey and consequently has a pretty strong history of being able to write female characters like people and not overdone caricatures, so it's easy to see how you got confused on that one. Regardless of the work's target audience, I'd venture anything written by Sigsawa has a pretty high chance of being good viewing for female viewers. The studio adapting it - 3Hz - also has an interesting history on that front (their previous works being Princess Principal and Flip Flappers - the latter being an interesting case of an anime that earnestly explores a queer relationship to the point of devoting an entire episode to criticizing a ubiquitous "yuri" genre trope). One could say that it was destiny that GGO would end up adapted by this studio in particular...

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I mean, not really. The staff for all of those three anime is complete different between each of them and the only similarity between the employees are some minor animators. Director, Series composition, character designer, chief animation director, everything is different from each other. It's not because it's the same studio that it's the same people working on it, even more because the committee of the project is the contractor of the staff with the producer of the companies doing it.

Nemesis162 said:

I mean, not really. The staff for all of those three anime is complete different between each of them and the only similarity between the employees are some minor animators. Director, Series composition, character designer, chief animation director, everything is different from each other. It's not because it's the same studio that it's the same people working on it, even more because the committee of the project is the contractor of the staff with the producer of the companies doing it.

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Well, that's just bloody confusing. Just how is anyone supposed to maintain a following for any one particular studio if the staff can change hands this much and this often? What a pain.

Opa-Pa said:

Not sure if this has been linked here before, but I found this blog that seeks to show how absurd female objectification is in comics, games and other media by... Well, look at it http://thehawkeyeinitiative.com/

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Althought it does have a point, part of it gets lost on how it looks more like goofy costumes swap.
It will be better if someone drew the popular make characters in a sexualized PoV from women.

Laiza said:

Well, that's just bloody confusing. Just how is anyone supposed to maintain a following for any one particular studio if the staff can change hands this much and this often? What a pain.

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Well, that's because we follow the people who work on the anime and not the studio. For years I followed the studio but in these days I most look at the staff since most people that work on an anime aren't from the studio (who mostly work on the animation) but freelancers or employees of other companies that work along them. Of course, in-house employees exist but in many cases you'll be looking at the first case and those will be some key animators or animators, not in such big positions. In most cases.

Pablo Mesa said:

Althought it does have a point, part of it gets lost on how it looks more like goofy costumes swap.
It will be better if someone drew the popular make characters in a sexualized PoV from women.

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That's kind of the joke. The female gaze is a different from the male gaze. Part of the comedy of the Hawkeye Iniative is putting a male in place of the females drawn with a (straight)male gaze in mind.

If you want to see male comic characters sexualized from a female gaze POV, just watch the Thor movies (especially the first one).

Maybe this is slightly off topic, but I was doing some focus groups with young children, girls. And they all said (without prompting) that it annoys them that the main characters are always boys, and hate it when you can't customise your costume to be a girl.

Now imagine if their only option was super sexualised.

Whether or not it's sexist (it is), we need more character designs that are representative of real people. Or at least in some way relatable.

Nemesis162 said:

GGO isn't made by and for women but for men, same is true for Wotakoi. GGO is a spin-off of SAO published in Dengeki, for gods sake.

Also, about your points on women is totally false. Most of those are made by men, even the ones focused on girls including Precure, Aikatsu, Pripara, Sailor Moon, Cardcaptors Sakura and many others. Female directors are also extremaly rare.Look at the ones and see for yourself if they're made by men of women.

Even then, you have plenty of women doing series composition or being director in series that have those exact problems when they are in such positions. That without counting character designs for the anime. What you said is simply unreal and a blatant lie. Few are the ones who don't do it in such positions.

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CCS is by Clamp, Mostly women
And Sailor moon mangaka was a women, hell, at the top of its popularity SM made Takeuchi the richest women in Japan

There are also cases like Ranma 1/2 by Rumiko Takahashi.

PhazonBlonde said:

That's kind of the joke. The female gaze is a different from the male gaze. Part of the comedy of the Hawkeye Iniative is putting a male in place of the females drawn with a (straight)male gaze in mind.

If you want to see male comic characters sexualized from a female gaze POV, just watch the Thor movies (especially the first one).

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I have marcel collections, but i meant it on costums designed with sex appeal over function not just Chris Hemsworth walking shirtless

Jack Orion said:

Maybe this is slightly off topic, but I was doing some focus groups with young children, girls. And they all said (without prompting) that it annoys them that the main characters are always boys, and hate it when you can't customise your costume to be a girl.

Now imagine if their only option was super sexualised.

Whether or not it's sexist (it is), we need more character designs that are representative of real people. Or at least in some way relatable.

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There are many that fall into that spectrum but whether be anime or comics those series are not "mainstream".
Read or die, genshiken, jormungand, hataraku maou-sama,

Whoops

Nemesis162 said:

GGO isn't made by and for women but for men, same is true for Wotakoi. GGO is a spin-off of SAO published in Dengeki, for gods sake.

Also, about your points on women is totally false. Most of those are made by men, even the ones focused on girls including Precure, Aikatsu, Pripara, Sailor Moon, Cardcaptors Sakura and many others. Female directors are also extremaly rare.Look at the ones and see for yourself if they're made by men of women.

Even then, you have plenty of women doing series composition or being director in series that have those exact problems when they are in such positions. That without counting character designs for the anime. What you said is simply unreal and a blatant lie. Few are the ones who don't do it in such positions.

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What are you on about? Sailor Moon and Card Captor Sakura are made by women (Naoko Takeuchi and CLAMP). Yes, they did not direct the anime, but they created the characters, story, and designs that were basically 1:1 adapated into animation. In Japan it's pretty common too for manga creators to have ultimate veto power over decisions in the anime that they don't like. CLAMP is usually directly involved with their anime adaptations as well. Also there are plenty of female directors and writers in anime, and if you count the fact that most anime is adapted from manga... well, there's a lot of shoujo anime out there.

Just to name a couple female directors and writers off the top of my head:

Naoko Yamada (K-on, Tamako Market, Sound Euphonium and many other KyoAni projects)
Sayo Yamamoto (Michiko to Hatchin, Yuri on Ice!, Lupin III: A Woman Called Fujiko Mine, and Space Dandy episodes)
Mari Okada (AnoHana, Black Rock Shooter, Black Butler)
Chiaki Kon (Sailor Moon Crystal Season 3, Nodame Cantable, Junjou Romantica)

Pablo Mesa said:

I have marcel collections, but i meant it on costums designed with sex appeal over function not just Chris Hemsworth walking shirtless

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In that case, I would look at how the male designs are in Final Fantasy (VII and up) and Tales series of games. Many of those outfits aren't going to be the best to fight in or provide armor, but are there for sex appeal. Like the FFXV boys wearing all black designer clothing while hiking in the desert. Keep in mind what's attractive to women is usually a fuck load more subtle than stuff pandering to the male gaze.

Pablo Mesa said:

Althought it does have a point, part of it gets lost on how it looks more like goofy costumes swap.
It will be better if someone drew the popular make characters in a sexualized PoV from women.

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Im going to concur just based on a few things, but the idea is the ridiculousness of it all, the costume swap is kind of a major part of that

Jack Orion said:

Maybe this is slightly off topic, but I was doing some focus groups with young children, girls. And they all said (without prompting) that it annoys them that the main characters are always boys, and hate it when you can't customise your costume to be a girl.

Now imagine if their only option was super sexualised.

Whether or not it's sexist (it is), we need more character designs that are representative of real people. Or at least in some way relatable.

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Unfortunately people tend to get very bent out of shape over focus groups, as if it's automatically the death of the creative process. I think there is value in recognising what you can do to improve the perception people have of your product.

Brian Damage said:

Unfortunately people tend to get very bent out of shape over focus groups, as if it's automatically the death of the creative process. I think there is value in recognising what you can do to improve the perception people have of your product.

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Game design can be absolutely ruined by focus groups I'm sure. Not what these groups were to be used for fortunately enough.

Jack Orion said:

Game design can be absolutely ruined by focus groups I'm sure. Not what these groups were to be used for fortunately enough.

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Yeah I meant more from a presentation standpoint, rather than a gameplay one. I very rarely hear focus groups mentioned in a positive way on gaming forums.

Pablo Mesa said:

CCS is by Clamp, Mostly women
And Sailor moon mangaka was a women, hell, at the top of its popularity SM made Takeuchi the richest women in Japan

There are also cases like Ranma 1/2 by Rumiko Takahashi.


I have marcel collections, but i meant it on costums designed with sex appeal over function not just Chris Hemsworth walking shirtless



There are many that fall into that spectrum but whether be anime or comics those series are not "mainstream".
Read or die, genshiken, jormungand, hataraku maou-sama,

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PhazonBlonde said:

What are you on about? Sailor Moon and Card Captor Sakura are made by women (Naoko Takeuchi and CLAMP). Yes, they did not direct the anime, but they created the characters, story, and designs that were basically 1:1 adapated into animation. In Japan it's pretty common too for manga creators to have ultimate veto power over decisions in the anime that they don't like. CLAMP is usually directly involved with their anime adaptations as well. Also there are plenty of female directors and writers in anime, and if you count the fact that most anime is adapted from manga... well, there's a lot of shoujo anime out there.

Just to name a couple female directors and writers off the top of my head:

Naoko Yamada (K-on, Tamako Market, Sound Euphonium and many other KyoAni projects)
Sayo Yamamoto (Michiko to Hatchin, Yuri on Ice!, Lupin III: A Woman Called Fujiko Mine, and Space Dandy episodes)
Mari Okada (AnoHana, Black Rock Shooter, Black Butler)
Chiaki Kon (Sailor Moon Crystal Season 3, Nodame Cantable, Junjou Romantica)



In that case, I would look at how the male designs are in Final Fantasy (VII and up) and Tales series of games. Many of those outfits aren't going to be the best to fight in or provide armor, but are there for sex appeal. Like the FFXV boys wearing all black designer clothing while hiking in the desert. Keep in mind what's attractive to women is usually a fuck load more subtle than stuff pandering to the male gaze.

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You two don't know how to read? I was obviously talking about the anime of those adaptations, not the manga. I didn't talk that female directors or series composition don't exist, just that it isn't common to see a female director or a female in high position of staff as it is with men and even with it, many times you'll see them doing things with the same problem.

Sailor Moon and CCSakura 1:1? Well, not really. Those two had more than 40 episode of original content. The reason for why Sailor Moon is good is because of the anime and development of it's characters, not because of the original work. The anime make the manga much better and the same is true for Card Captors in some way with how it had fillers.

Lastly, a mangaka isn't that involved like you imagine. They'll look for designs and script but not more than it in a few reunions. It's much more normal for the editor of the mangaka to be there than the author. This is only changed it they're indeed into the production of the anime. Also, there's many female mangaka in every demography (even if they dominate in shoujo and josei) but the majority of the adaptations are shounen manga and after it, Seinen, which there's have many women writing and drawing in those two but the majority are men (and plenty of those women have the same problem as men. I know that and I can cite you many examples with all manga that I read).

My point is, I know the women of the manga and anime and I know that they have the same problem as the men. The ones who don't have it are a minority compared. And to be clear, I'm talking about things that many people here have problems, not that I personally have.

Nemesis162 said:

reason for why Sailor Moon is good is because of the anime and development of it's characters, not because of the original work

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Sailor moon manga made Her mangaka the richest women in Japan at one point, how in the name of god you came out with that??

I saw a discussion about Succubus' designs a couple pages ago and I took this picture from one from Divinity 2 for reference:



The armor/clothes design of this game are quite great, if uneven. Didn't think much about this particular design. But I'd say it's ok.

Pablo Mesa said:

Althought it does have a point, part of it gets lost on how it looks more like goofy costumes swap.

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That's the entire point... to show how ridiculous and goofy female sexualization often is.

Morrigan said:

That's the entire point... to show how ridiculous and goofy female sexualization often is.

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I know but imo Part of that "look how ridiculous this suit are" get lost on "look how ridiculous this looks on men".

Nemesis162 said:

GGO isn't made by and for women but for men, same is true for Wotakoi.

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Wotakoi is as Josei , its target audience is women. Online Japaneses bookstores list it as Josei:

https://www.cmoa.jp/title/96129/
https://booklive.jp/product/index/title_id/313198/vol_no/001

Dick Justice said:

XCOM is pretty good when it comes to non-sexualized female designs. Enemy Unknown had boob armour, but they changed it with the Enemy Within expansion to look more practical. And it carried over to the sequel, which was nice.

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I honestly feel like these changes can only happen in Western games. If this was a JRPG, she would have gotten bigger breasts, a boob window, and mini-game where you touch her face, lol.

Pablo Mesa said:

Sailor moon manga made Her mangaka the richest women in Japan at one point, how in the name of god you came out with that??

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I'm talking about quality, not success (both were really successful, even if worldwide it was just the anime). The anime is much better and the characters/story got much better there because of what the anime staff did in the different seasons while the manga was mediocre at best, even if extremally influential.

RM8 said:

I honestly feel like these changes can only happen in Western games.

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Ahem:

Nemesis162 said:

I'm talking about quality, not success (both were really successful, even if worldwide it was just the anime). The anime is much better and the characters/story got much better there because of what the anime staff did in the different seasons while the manga was mediocre at best, even if extremally influential.

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Like, I hate using gifs for responses but literally the only response to that is:

Nemesis162 said:

The reason for why Sailor Moon is good is because of the anime and development of it's characters, not because of the original work.

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Whatever we can do to minimize women's contributions, I guess.

Quiet was the cringiest shit.

Photosenthisis skin? pfffffffffffff ahahahaa gimme a break Kojima

Morrigan said:

Ahem:

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Still feels like Demon's Souls is From Software's most progressive game though.

esserius said:

Still feels like Demon's Souls is From Software's most progressive game though.

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Bloodborne wins that crown, IMO

See my old post from December where I talk about the female representation in Bloodborne: https://www.resetera.com/posts/2045006/

Machachan said:

Whatever we can do to minimize women's contributions, I guess.

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Oh, for sure it's because of that, not because I said that it's mediocre. And where I minimized when I said that it was extremely influential? Without her and her work, nothing wouldn't exist. If there's someone that valorize the job of the original author is me, even if I don't like it like that much like with Sailor Moon manga that I find mediocre but all the credits are for her in many and many aspects including powers, design, personality, story and pretty much everything that was made in the manga.

And if I had such a problem like you are implying here, one of my favorite mangaka wouldn't be Shinobu Ohtaka (Magi), Suenobu Keiko (Life, Vitamin), Yoshitoki Ouma (Koe no Katachi, Fumetsu no Anata e), Natsume Ono (gente, ACCA) and many others that I'll always go to read new materials of them.

Xaszatm said:

Like, I hate using gifs for responses but literally the only response to that is:

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I mean, I'm not going to use IMO when it's clearly my opinion. I don't think too highly of the manga because I find what the anime did for development for the characters much more than in there. In many cases you'll see me prefering the manga, like in 98% (even if I still like the adaptation) but Sailor Moon is in those cases where I like more the anime.

Souls is so good. I think the only thing that rubbed me the wrong way in Bloodborne in this respect was Gehrman's oddly out of place comment about the doll when you first meet him... Then again the guy kinda had issues.

Nemesis162 said:

Oh, for sure it's because of that, not because I said that it's mediocre.

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Considering that a few posts above, you tried to spin the success of several shows entirely on male staff, even when the original authors were female...

I'm sorry, but that doesn't look quite good, especially since it's part of a larger pattern, where anime fans oddly tend to do this. A. Lot. I'm sure you have plenty of female friends, and female-written manga you also like, so it's all ok though.

You tried to give only men credit for several anime, which is completely and utterly ludicruous given the context. Again: Why the need to divorce female authors from the success of manga based on their work?

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Yeah, the souls series felt kinda shocking to me in a positive way, I never had to actually look for armor that wasn't dumb, and half the time, my hunter looked actually cool, not like a member of a lingerie rave.
And for those that must have their characters be near nekkid, there were those options, too. But they were at least options, not the majority of outfits.

Machachan said:

Considering that a few posts above, you tried to spin the success of several shows entirely on male staff, even when the original authors were female...

I'm sorry, but that doesn't look quite good, especially since it's part of a larger pattern, where anime fans oddly tend to do this. A. Lot. I'm sure you have plenty of female friends, and female-written manga you also like, so it's all ok though.



Yeah, the souls series felt kinda shocking to me in a positive way, I never had to actually look for armor that wasn't dumb, and half the time, my hunter looked actually cool, not like a member of a lingerie rave.
And for those that must have their characters be near nekkid, there were those options, too. But they were at least options, not the majority of outfits.

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I didn't try to spin anything, if anything I tried to be more clear. I'm talking what I see everyday which are men being in the majority of anime staff (even in works focused on girls, be it based or original, like Precure) and I already explained that I was talking about the anime of those adaptations and the work there, not the original manga of them. If I was talking about manga, the argument of those works would be entirely different since those are made by women.

Yes, the success of an anime is more on the staff of it than the original author since he/she don't work on the anime. Be it on any show. The basis of the original is there but the success of an anime depends on the people that work on there, be it the original good or not including series composition, storyboards, key animation, original content and more. Lastly, what you quoted me before, I was talking in my opinion why the anime is good and the manga isn't, don't have anything to do with the gender of them but the content that was better for me.

And your last part is disgusting, don't even begin with that shit with me with your clearly implication of misogyny when I'm just explaining the reality of what happens in the industry.

Nemesis162 said:

I mean, I'm not going to use IMO when it's clearly my opinion. I don't think too highly of the manga because I find what the anime did for development for the characters much more than in there. In many cases you'll see me prefering the manga, like in 98% (even if I still like the adaptation) but Sailor Moon is in those cases where I like more the anime.

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Didnt the manga author get royalties from the anime too? I prefer the original Sailor V manga personally. Just a comedy action shojo with Sailor Venus catching thiefs, an element the TV series borrowed, hence some wacky scenes.

But it is not a coincidence that anime adaptations of popular shojo turned better than the manga. In the 70s Candy Candy met worldwide success, though author and artist had a lengthy court battle that harmed the series. Lady Georgie TV series was similar.

petran79 said:

Didnt the manga author get royalties from the anime too? I prefer the original Sailor V manga personally. Just a comedy action shojo with Sailor Venus catching thiefs, an element the TV series borrowed, hence some wacky scenes.

But it is not a coincidence that anime adaptations of popular shojo turned better than the manga. In the 70s Candy Candy met worldwide success, though author and artist had a lengthy court battle that harmed the series. Lady Georgie TV series was similar.

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Yes, a manga author receive the royalties of the licensing in any media since they are the actual owners of the work with a contract with a publisher (which they can break and leave with rights for future publications like Kurumada did with Saint Seiya). But what is the relation?

But about your second point, I think that Sailor Moon is mediocre but I prefer much more Cardcaptors Sakura as a manga, even if the anime puts more content. That's also true for many other shoujo. Sailor Moon is one of the few where I find the anime better.

Morrigan said:

Bloodborne wins that crown, IMO

See my old post from December where I talk about the female representation in Bloodborne: https://www.resetera.com/posts/2045006/

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While there are fewer women in Demon's Souls, those that do exist manage to exist in a clearly feudal society in a way that doesn't denigrate but elevates their importance. In their roles, they are effectively the most powerful characters, seeming to command tremendous power or respect and reverence. It's interesting to see a character that is faithful yet also twists the concept of purity. Maiden Astraea is still, I think, one of the most powerful encounters I've experienced in a game. While I agree that women are more present in Bloodborne, it's the sort of singularity that really hit me. Demon's Souls presents women that really made me question the purpose of the journey, which was really poignant moment to me. Lady Maria is certainly one of my favorite encounters as well, but at the end of the day it still felt like a boss battle, and didn't have the same emotional resonance.

Nemesis162 said:

I'm talking about quality, not success (both were really successful, even if worldwide it was just the anime). The anime is much better and the characters/story got much better there because of what the anime staff did in the different seasons while the manga was mediocre at best, even if extremally influential.

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So let me get this straight... you're ina thread about sexualized women in media and your stance on Sailor Moon is "yes I know it was created by a woman, but the men who made the anime are what made it popular"? Have fun with that one Tiger.

Also "women are just as bad as men when it comes to sexualizing women in Japan" isn't doing any favors for you either. I don't know why you're so adamant on painting the anime and manga industry as this male dominated thing, especially when entire genres of manga exist to appeal to women.

There's a not insignificant amount of female mangaka that do good shounen/seinen. Amano, Jinsei, Hayashida Q, Arakawa, Ohtaka, Yana Tobosu, etc. You never see men doing shoujo/josei outside of Mikamoto Rei and a few other people like you see women doing shounen.

PhazonBlonde said:

So let me get this straight... you're ina thread about sexualized women in media and your stance on Sailor Moon is "yes I know it was created by a woman, but the men who made the anime are what made it popular"? Have fun with that one Tiger.

Also "women are just as bad as men when it comes to sexualizing women in Japan" isn't doing any favors for you either. I don't know why you're so adamant on painting the anime and manga industry as this male dominated thing, especially when entire genres of manga exist to appeal to women.

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In the world? Absolutely. It was the anime that did that. In Japan, it was firstly the manga and later the anime for a more general public. And what you quoted is my personal opinion about the quality of the series, not about popularity. I even said on it.

What I said is true. The predominant workers on anime are men and the same is for manga with the exception of the Shoujo and Josei demography. In Shounen/Seinen you'll see many female mangaka but not in the same as male. I'm not saying that the targeting of women and girls don't exist since I was only talking about the people working on there. This absolute exists. Even then, Shoujo/Josei are minor than Shounen/Seinen in sales, popularity, magazines circulation and adaptation of anime by it's publishers so yes, such dedicated demography exists but it's behind others as well. Even more when Shounen and Seinen attract girls and women to them too, with examples like haikyuu and Kuroko no Basket with a big number of girls reading and buying the manga.

And women does such decisions just as bad as men do. Many women work on ecchi, romcom or other type of genres and have many problems be it in design, writing or others when it comes to women in their work. I'm only saying this because I saw many doing it. Like I said, doesn't bother me for most of the time but I'm sure it'll bother many people here.

Nemesis162 said:

Yes, a manga author receive the royalties of the licensing in any media since they are the actual owners of the work with a contract with a publisher (which they can break and leave with rights for future publications like Kurumada did with Saint Seiya). But what is the relation?

But about your second point, I think that Sailor Moon is mediocre but I prefer much more Cardcaptors Sakura as a manga, even if the anime puts more content. That's also true for many other shoujo. Sailor Moon is one of the few where I find the anime better.

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I meant that the success of the anime also contributed to her becoming rich.

As for genres there shouldnt be any limit based on gender. Leiji Matsumoto started in a shojo manga magazine and Tezuka is also famous for Ribbon Knight.

Coyote Starrk said:

I was a fan of boob armor in my teens (For obvious reasons) but now that I have grown up a bit the sheer impracticality and logical dangers that they present just gets in the way of any previous interest I had in the concept. Once I saw a video explain to me exactly what would happen to a person wearing boob armor if you caved in the breastplate vs regular armor I cannot unsee it now.


Its all I think about now when I see full plate boob armor. Just.......ouch.

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I'm a little late on this but I'm in the same exact boat. Well, I don't know if I found boob armor particularly sexy, if anything I had a real naive sense of it looking cool. I just didn't really think much of it. I think the first time I heard people had a problem with it was actually back at the old place when Zelda's Hyrule Warriors design was revealed. I thought it was great (mostly because I thought it wss so nice to see a royal looking Zelda with such vibrant colors again as I just wasn't a fan of her Twilight Princess design. I think it was Morrigan of all people who made an "ewww boob plate" comment and I just didn't quite get why. But when I read up on why that's so bad, yeah I totally get it now.

esserius said:

While there are fewer women in Demon's Souls, those that do exist manage to exist in a clearly feudal society in a way that doesn't denigrate but elevates their importance. In their roles, they are effectively the most powerful characters, seeming to command tremendous power or respect and reverence. It's interesting to see a character that is faithful yet also twists the concept of purity. Maiden Astraea is still, I think, one of the most powerful encounters I've experienced in a game. While I agree that women are more present in Bloodborne, it's the sort of singularity that really hit me. Demon's Souls presents women that really made me question the purpose of the journey, which was really poignant moment to me. Lady Maria is certainly one of my favorite encounters as well, but at the end of the day it still felt like a boss battle, and didn't have the same emotional resonance.

Spoiler

The fact that the Maiden in Black and her establishing of your journey is just a huge double-cross is particularly powerful as well, especially when so many of the characters tell you that crusading against the state of the world is useless or hopeless.

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No argument there, Demon's Souls is amazing. <3