Isn’t one of Hugo/Nebula bad, and we don’t like it? I forget which.
I think it was the Hugo Awards that were determined by WorldCon attendees that almost turned bad, but was saved by other not-bad WorldCon attendees. Don’t quote me on that.
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I would say that Luke is a bit oversimplifying in the original post, but I can very much understand where he is coming from. There is a ton of anime that overtly objectifies women in rather unpleasant ways. However, there are also a lot of anime that thankfully don’t do that. Unfortunately even they are subject to marketing tactics that put female characters to the forefront largely to appeal to male audiences by fulfilling certain character archetypes, even if they are just meant to be cute and aren’t overtly sexualized. The medium definitely has ways to go in that regard.
It can be argued that certain female characters are written as independent and owning their sexuality. Unfortunately that can also be abused to excuse certain writing that is again only there to titilate male audience members.
Also, Misato Katsuragi is from Neon Genesis Evangelion.
The issue of picking out the best or worst or trash or anything isn’t the issue. My issue with anime is that every time I’m asked to look into it so I can understand that it shouldn’t creep me out, I’m exposed to images and concepts that creep me out, both in the moment I see it and later when I understand that it’s all just part of life for an anime fan. That doesn’t happen with superhero comic books or science fiction novels or anything else.
Sorry that anime stands alone in this regard, for me.
Right. The old guard of “sad puppies” have been soundly rejected.
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If I do a search for her, how many folds of her labia will I see in the top page of image results?
Result: oh shit! None! I don’t think I’ve ever searched for any female anime character and seen this few nipples.
Pity she isn’t in the thumbnail of that YouTube video, or if I remember, mentioned or pictured anywhere in the first half of it that I watched.
I dunno what your usual search behavior is, but I ran the test with a couple of female anime characters that came to my mind, and found no real objectionable pictures in the top search results.
- Chika Ogiue (Genshiken)
- Kaguya Shinomiya (Kaguya-sama - Love is War)
- Celty Sturluson (Durarara)
- Shima Rin (Yuru Camp)
- Mio Naganohara (Nichijou)
- Karin Maaka (Karin/Chibi Vampire/Cheeky Vampire)
Even with a rather explicitly sexualized character like Zero-Two from Darling in the FranXX the objectionable stuff is rather limited. The worst result I got of the ones I tried was Fujiko Mine from Lupin, and she is explicitly positioned as a femme fatale and is using her sexuality as lure. You can decide for yourself whether she counts as empowered or fanservice, though most people think of her as a great example of an empowered female character.
Again, I think it very much varies by series. Maybe the recommendations you follow are shit.
As much as I support the google image search result test, I think it will not serve you well for anime because of fan art. Even characters or shows that might not ever contain anything distasteful are likely to have fan-art show up highly ranked in search results.
This brings up something else that I just realized.
A novel typically has no canonical visual design for its characters. It’s hard to make fan-art. Searching for the character is unlikely to bring up fan-art. Even if it did, you might not recognize it as the character.
Live action storytelling mediums have, well, actual actors. Searching for the characters brings up the actors first. Even if there is fan-art. There is also rarely official artwork. If there is, it is often photo-realistic.
Anime, comics, and other purely drawn visual mediums have strong fan-art culture. Even if you search for spider-man, you’re going to find some sexy Spider-Man.
Not only that, but the visual mediums allow for unrealistic anatomy. This is where the folds of the labia come in. You’ll never see disgusting labia folds even in an actual XXX rated live action porn because you’re going to see an actual video of actual labia. When it comes to drawings, which anime and superhero comics both are, that is the only place it’s possible to see things like comically large breasts or revealing costumes that no human could actually wear.
So maybe what has happened is not that anime and superhero comics have a higher rate of disgusting misoginy than other mediums. It’s that when they do have it, it’s just more visually disgusting and harder to ignore.
Anime’s problem for English language fandom is that we were pitched anime as “the grown up cartoons” for decades and there’s certainly a good amount of that but it falls apart as soon as you get past Attack on Titan/Death Note/Full Metal Alchemist. It’s a medium and in between the grittiness that is often a lazy way to make a stupid idea be taken seriously, there’s all the other stuff. Any term that can describe Voices of a Distant Star and Sgt Frog is useless. But the anime fandom has had a turnover rate so bad for decades that it’s been 60-90% people who don’t get that for decades. Western animation starting to mirror the more narrative based assumptions of Japanese animation means we’re getting fans who will likely actually stick around to discuss it, instead of arguing over who is the better waifu: the girl who will likely cut you or the girl who’s a clone of your mom.
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Sure. In this case, my normal search behavior starts with someone else saying:
“Hey, this anime isn’t problematic, look up more about it and you’ll see it isn’t all about objectifying women! The problem is you, not the images associated with this anime!”
And then I search for that anime, and I feel bombarded by boobs.
If I search for a particular anime character outside of the context of their depiction being questionable from a taste and objectifying standpoint, or a character that has been picked specifically because she isn’t objectified as much as others, then no, I have to scroll down a few pages before seeing the up skirt shots or swimsuit fan art.
To be clear, this entire conversation began with someone sharing a video essay about a woman being sick of how many harem shows there are compared to shows written for and by women. This is illustrated with a thumbnail of the video essay author being smothered by boobs. Maybe Sword Art Online doesn’t feature so many boobs. Who knows. The thumbnail image resonated with me anyway.
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I know.
GOOD GOD DO NOT WATCH SWORD ART ONLINE.
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Once again I’m kindof with Luke on this, I am not that into actually engaging with a lot of anime series because of (among a lot of things) the overt boobs and stockings and miniskirts. Even though I absolutely enjoy seeing some anime boobs (and the stockings and miniskirts) it does appear in places where by all rights it probably shouldn’t; and when that happens I start to question the story and the creative culture around the creation of it.
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I just finished watching the video and boy, this was really good and gave me a lot of perspective. I still haven’t finished watching Fire Force, but I was definitely uncomfortable with the rather bizarre level of fanservice it included, but I never really considered what it feels like for a female fan either, which it seems would feel infinitely worse. I also don’t really watch a lot of Isekai, but I also feel for the oversaturation of the subgenre in the anime space.
To make it short, thanks for posting the video, and I also fed the algorithm and left a note in the YouTube page itself to thank the creator for making it.
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So anyway, music.
I don’t know how to preface this piece by Robert Christgau besides saying it is the most wildly passionate piece about the first century of popular music in mass consumption possible. Christgau is generally a critic who I am idolizing at the moment, taking hours or days to internalize why he writes like he does, and become a better writer through it. This piece is celebratory, but anything that goes against what it’s celebrating receives the most vicious attacks he can verbalize, notably in his takedown of Dylan worshippers who he decries as only seeing the tip of what Dylan draws on, which is unfortunately not available online but I found riveting.
https://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/music/century-99.php
Or, if you wanna listen to him explain for an hour why he does what he does, which I find to be what’s driving me and making me a better writer, this is on YouTube.
I don’t think this forum is particularly the target audience, because I would imagine all of you already understand the topic discussed, but nevertheless I thought this video about translation, localization and censorship was pretty well done and wanted to share it.
Ya girl’s got a new outlook on how she wants to write going forward. Check it out.
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For some reason I’m having a rather emotional day. I am not even sure why, but I’ve already been on the verge of tears a couple of times today while listening to some anime songs in my home office of some enjoyable anime, some of them sad, some actually rather idyllic, full of love and kindness which is kind of missing from this world at the moment.
While listening to those songs through YouTube, this video was in the recommendations. I put it in my watch later queue and just watched it in the evening. And fuck me, now I actually bawled my eyes out. The world could be so good if we wanted it. Why are we humans just so stupid, cruel idiots?
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FilmCow has come a long way on YouTube since he made it big with Charlie the Unicorn. His newer videos have become increasingly irreverent and experimental.
If you haven’t watched FilmCow in years, BluShades gives you reasons why you should be watching him right now.
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So I’m super proud of this one. I dunno if it’s my best, but it’s definitely a model for my future writing.
I think this is my best yet.