redbrunja | The Girl Was A Puppet

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The Girl Was A Puppet

Thoughts on Naruto to 277:

First off, I'm as a whole, I'm really enjoying Sakura's power-up. I loved when she's running into the hospital and treating Gaara's brother, and that she had the forsight to make some antidotes even after she'd healed him.

Also, whole comparison between Gaara and Naruto, when you see all the people Naruto gained, while Gaara remained alone was excellently done, and my heart was breaking for him. That said, one of the reason Naruto had those people was because he wanted them. Now, I imagine that Temari and Kankarou were always told to stay away from their brother, and possibly packed off to be trained while Gaara was a chibi!monster and being taken care of by his "uncle". At the very least his siblings where he teammates, and he didn't treat them well then, so it's not a total surprise that with all the indiscriminate killing and the threats of death that they didn't become close.

I really liked Naruto getting pwned by Itachi. I always love the trope of other characters telling one character everything said character is afraid they really feel deep inside as an illusion or under abnormal circumstances.

Also, Kakashi is badass.

Speaking of badass, that scene where he ripped off the seal and jumps away while Sakura breaks down the wall? Win. As soon as I read it I wanted to go find out which episode it's in, because I bet it looks hella cool animated.

On the subject of Sakura...

Okay, this is another case of being told something is fantastic, and then being disappointed. I was told this fight was sheerest win, and really gives Sakura her due.... and while it's cool, it doesn't, totally.

It's about evenly split between me going 'go, Sakura!' and wincing at the unhappy feeling in my tummy. I actually read it yesterday and then re-read it today to get everything straight in my head.

First, we have another case of someone else saying, "Stay behind me," to Sakura. Granted, it's a women instead of a boy... but that doesn't really give Sakura a leg up, you know?

The section picture of Sakura's back is fantastic - harkening back to the classic "now it's your turn to watch my back scene" from the chuunin exams.

"Knowledge of traps... instant reaction... I don't have either of those...."

This line bugged me the first time I read it, and upon seeing Tsunade's training, it makes no. fucking. sense. If Tsunade was training her in escape and evasion, wouldn't those be exactly the skills Sakura would have?

I was loving the whole breaking open the first shell scene until I realized that Chiyo was literally using Sakura as a puppet. Despite the fact that Sakura willingly choose to be a weapon in Chiyo's hands, the fact that even in this, her spotlight battle, she has this loss of agency... it grates, especially since agency has been exactly what Sakura needs more of.

"I promised Naruto... I said that this time, we'd be together. I swore that... this time, I'd protect both of them."

Awesomecakes.

And then Sakura using a explosive tag to blow the gas away was sheerest win, because that was all her, being tough and clever.

"You! I'll get you! Even if you blow off my arms and legs, if I take in your poison gas and it paralyzes me, I'll get you, I swear it! No matter what you do, no matter how much you resist, I'll beat half to death and make you talk about Orichimaru!"

And the crowd goes wild. Or at least I do, until he throws a whole bunch of kunai at her and Chiyo prevents her from getting stabbed, commenting, "Do you think men stop to listen when a women's talking?"

Let me pause here for a moment for a segue. Within a text, there are two kinds of sexism: character and authorial.

Basically, you can have a sexist character, without having a sexist text. You can also have a sexist text, with sexist characters.

Now, here, I imagine I'm supposed to read this as Sasori being an ass, and disrespecting Sakura.

I don't.

To me, it reads like Kishimoto shafting the ladies yet again.

Tell me, has anyone, ever, interrupted Naruto during one of his big, important speeches? Or when his is fucking loudly talking strategy with Kakashi? Of course not. Naruto has a penis. One of Sakura's few moment to shine, and she gets her dramatic death threat truncated.

"What I do have is my master's contempt for losing!"

Again, Sakura's awesomeness shines through, and because of how SAKURA is the one going 'we're going to fight,' I have much less problem than when it was Chiyo saying the same thing.

"Perfect! What I got from my master were unarmed combat skills!"

This is where the fight gets unequivocally fun -Sakura getting bloodied up, trixy with antidotes, and hurling Sasori around with his puppet strings was delightful.

(And I am now, retroactively, pissed off at the fic I read that had Sakura having a miserable time training with Gai and Anko when she wasn't allowed to use chakra post-timeskip. I cannot believe that Tsunade would train a hand-to-hand specialist who can only fight effectively with chakra. It's just dumb. Plus, makes no sense. If you're learning how to punch, it is the exact same motion whether you're punching out a mountain with chakra or punching out, say, Ino, with nothing but muscle. Remember when she did that?)

"You call yourself a girl with that unnatural strength?"

redbrunja: Hell yes!

I really loved Chiyo comments about Sakura's analytical skills. Now, if only she'd actually been fighting without Chiyo's help...

I greatly enjoyed the glimpse of Tsunade teaching we say, and as of now, Kishimoto is actually doing a good job of making Sakura a character of value to a team, and unique to boot.

I'm inordinately displeased that apparently Sakura grew her hair out while Naruto was gone. Thank god she cut it before he came back. (Shorter than it was before, to boot.)

Sakura's antidote fake-out was total win. I love her falling, and then surging up to smash Sasori's last puppet to pieces.

"You got your personality from Tsunade, too."

And

redbrunja goes: Rentboy, no.

It was subtle until now, but I HATE HATE HATE this idea that Sakura is now a Tsunade clone. Christ, Kishimoto! Are you completely forgetting the chuunin exam arc? (Along with everybody else.)

"Sakura isn't the type of person to brag about or hurt others... she just doesn't want Ino to not take her seriously or show mercy."

Or, my favorite, "Sakura is like Naruto... her inability to accept defeat is beyond the average person."

The latter is particularly important because Tsunade isn't like that.

I'm not saying that the fifth Hokage isn't stubborn, but she doesn't have the same drive to never give up that Naruto or Sakura do. Just remember, both she and Jiraya were wandering around doing nothing in particular until Naruto showed up. Can you imagine Sakura aimlessly wandering about while Sasuke is out there being evil? Or initially refusing anything Konoha needs of her?

I thought not.

Back to the manga, Sakura taking that sword in the chest and then starting to heal herself was awesome.

I have no problem with Chiyo giving Sakura the antidote, but I hated the life exchange. It seemed like one more example of Sakura getting saved by someone else, and I really didn't see the point - so it could be revealed that Chiyo have a jutsu to save her grandson? Anyway, I didn't like it.

Sasori getting killed by his puppet parents was great, and I love the repeated image of him surrounded by those two in various ways.

Sakura's verbal and physical smackdown of Sasori was great - she's totally saying things she's been thinking about saying to Itachi.

*sigh*

I... wish I had some nice conclusion to sum this all up, but it short... "Awesomesauce! *feminist tummyache*Awesomesauce! *feminist tummyache*"

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That bit on authorial sexism? A large part of why I just called it quits. I can put up with all kinds of garbage in Bleach, Samurai Deeper Kyo, Rurouni Kenshin, Clamp, D.Gray-Man, etc. because, even though I have issues with the girl is sidelined/there to be rescued(with varying degrees of gravity), those mangaka seem to really and truly LIKE their female characters and want them to be cool and do things and be important(and they all DO make them important...though I kinda wish Clamp wouldn't tie that so closely to their deep need for Epic Angst.) In Naruto, I never got that feeling. I felt like, no matter how much I liked them, the girls were there because there had to be girls. The only one Kishimoto seemed to really like was Hinata, which I have issues with. Not issues with Hinata herself(I adore her) but with the fact that the only one he seemed to like was the almost pathologically shy wallflower who has to be pushed by the boys into doing things, and who has a massive and near-blind crush on the lead, who doesn't notice.

Yeah, I tell you, this is my last popular manga for a long, long while. I'm going to finish this series (this close to being caught up, and I'm fucking finishing it) but.... Yeah, it's just too aggravating.

It's no surprise to me that Kishimoto has admitted he has no idea how to write women.

I'm curious, though, what makes you think he likes Hinata? She doesn't seem to get more attention than, say Ino.

(And I really like her too - way more than I expected I would.)

I can totally understand that, but at the same time...Naruto is an exceptionally bad example. Neither Bleach nor One Piece, the other two components of the Big Three, are anywhere near this bad, and other manga (like Fairy Tail) are better still than those.

True. But even so, I've heard people having problems of similar nature with Bleach, and... I am so done with women not getting their due right now that I'm even pissed off with Saiyuki, which is in all other respects flawless.

Heh, yeah, you might want to let the bitterness wear off before diving into something with similar issues, even if they are far lesser.

Bleach is not even comparable to Naruto in terms of girl-problems, but there are some there. Rukia spends most of the first 150 or so chapters virtually powerless. This is due to a temporary affliction, and she gets over it, and even when she's at low power she still has plenty to do, but it got a little grating. Orihime's powers have worked exactly once on the offensive; she can shield, and she can heal, but she can't attack worth a damn (although recent events suggest that that might change soon, and her healing power was revealed as actually being the ability to undo any prior event making her potentially godlike). Tatsuki was awesome and could beat up damn near anyone, but then she failed to develop powers and got sidelined horribly (although again, recent events suggest that might change soon. God, I hope so. I'm still bitter about that =/)

There's good points, though, and a hell of a lot more than Naruto has to offer. As mentioned above, Rukia's weakness is a temporary affliction, and once the cause is removed she turned into a total badass, saving Ichigo's hide on several occasions, and defeating powerful opponents. Yoruichi and Soi Fon are Captain-level badasses who almost nobody can touch. Although Captain Unohana hasn't had a fight scene yet (sadly), the only reason for that is that she's powerful enough that most enemies would rather just walk away, whistling innocently, and she'd prefer not to fight. Kuukaku is...Kuukaku.

Oh, and Ichigo gets beaten up by little girls. Almost frequently. And not just for comic effect.

So yeah, there's good points to it, for certain.

One Piece only has two/three female characters who recurr from arc to arc, and although neither one of them are physical powerhouses, they are never without a role. Even before Nami acquired the weapon she needed to match the ludicrous mosnter strength of (most) of the men on the crew (which is also uniquely tailored to her abilities), she was still a factor both in combat, and especially out of combat, where she was basically running the joint, being the only competant member of the crew. Robin is again, not especially strong physically, but she has a keen intellect and a vast repository of knowledge, which invariably comes in handy, as well as a very very special Devil Fruit ability that makes her very powerful in combat. Basically, if she wanted to, she could snap your neck from across the room.

Again, it's not entirely devoid of issues, but...compared with Naruto, it's like night and day, honestly.

Fairy Tail is one that I pimp out a lot, and there's a few very good reasons for that: one, it's only ninety chapters thus far. So it doesn't require as huge an investment. And two, of the four 'main' characters, two are women, both of which are strong and independant and one of which is one of the most powerful characters we've seen in canon. And I don't just mean that she has all sorts of fancy special abilities that let her attack from a distance or create shields or anything: Erza is a brawler, using her magic to summon up various melee weapons and suits of armor that she uses to completely destroy everyone around her. And it's not shy about female villains, either; the most recent chapters, for example, feature a deadly female swordsman who can cut through damn near anything.

Anyways, that's enough jaw-flapping form me. It probably would be best if you let the bitterness subside before even thinking about new canons to pick up. :p

*nods*

That's about what I'v heard about Bleach. But the fact that those issues are still THERE, it's a hugely long series... I just can't handle even thinking about it. I might pick up Fairy Tail after I try Claymore which will be after I've caught up on the western, novel reading I'm behind on.

I swear, as soon as I finish the latest chapter of Naruto, I'm going to lie down with a cool washcloth and cuddle my Tramps Like Us Manga.

I'll be honest and say that I can't think of any gender issues that stand out in Fairy Tail. I mean, there's some fanservice, but there's just as much on the other side of the fence as well; one character in particular has a habit of stripping down to his underwear at random times without even realizing he'd done it.

So far(the 2 volumes that have been released in the US), I find Fairy Tail to be very nicely balanced in the fanservice area. (Actually, if you count it proprtionately, I think Grey has provided a LOT more than Lucy has...) It also helps by making it obvious that Lucy seems to be the only one with a fully, normally functioning brain. *did much fangirling over Lucy in vol 2, partly for reasons related to this icon*

As an aside, the latest Bleach chapter featured Yoruichi taking out a mini-army (that she probably trained herself) to save everyboy's butts. Unfortunately, most of the fighting was off screen. I'm more forgiving of that than I would be otherwise because she HAS kicked butt onscreen a lot. There's also a certain element to Urahara and Tessai sitting there going "we're screwed we're screwed we're screwed" and then having Yoruichi open the door, walk in, save their butts, then pretty much toss them over her shoulders and go, and then be all "ok, I did all your packing and all the saving while you were sweating, and the only reason I'm not kicking your butt for not telling me what you were up to earlier is because there's no time if I want to save it. Let's go."

Hmmm...it's not so much more attention as...I'm not sure how to explain it. Almost like, when I was reading, I was getting an authorial "aww, cute" from Hinata, and "annoying, but I have to" from the others.

As far as other popular manga goes...ok, honestly, yes, they all have their issues, but the others COMPENSATE. Tite Kubo goes, "ok, so the main girls can't fight as much, but I'll let the princess character go from a damsel in distress to an equal partner, even though she'll never be a real combatant, I'll let the best warrior in the Soul Reaper's society ever be a woman, I'll make their chief security officer be a woman, and I'll put women in various positions of authority, all with different kinds of influence and importance to the males, not just romantic, and even though I'll keep them backburnered, I'll make it clear that they can all live up to it." Whereas Kishimoto goes "fine, I'll have girl fighters, but I'll never let them be as good as the guys, and I'll always make them second best in the fights, and they can't succeed on their own."

In D.Gray-Man, Lenalee was out of action for most of the first (and so far, only) big round of fighting, but that's because her round of fighting came first, and of the boys, only one had a fight that came anywhere close to being as vicious and brutal as hers was, and she saved their lives.

In Kekkaishi, Tokine isn't as powerful as Yoshimori and Gen, but she's smarter, more calculating, and more badass they they are combined, and so far(I think I'm on vol 7-8), she's lived up to that in every way.

In Black Cat, the badass IS the little girl, and the main adult female, though not a fighter, CAN fight, and actually has a life independent of Train's, and when she goes to him for help, it's not because she needs saving, but because she needs a partner for a job. When one seeks the other out for personal help(like the current arc) it's them going to her.

In FMA, you already know about Winry, Hawkeye and Lust. In the manga, just double the awesome female characters.

Fairy Tale I think pikabot and I talked about a lot in the comments here recently.

Even Tsubasa, which literally starts out with Sakura as a brainless Mary Sue(but there are plot reasons) eventually lets her be badass, and become the primary plot mover.

Claymore is self explanatory.

Basically, while they all have some sort of problem, I could go on and on about how EVERY SHOUNEN ACTION MANGA I'VE EVER READ handles gender infinitely better than Naruto. (And am I right in thinking that, aside from FMA and Saiyuki, Naruto is your first exploration into the genre?)

Yep, Naruto is, and I've had people argue that both FMA and Saiyuki don't quite count as shounan action.

And I can well believe that EVERY OTHER MANGAKA HANDLES GENDER BETTER!

No, FMA isn't really shounen action is the normal sense, but it's close enough that I feel relatively justified counting it(unlike, say, Death Note or Ai Yori Aoshim both of which are shounen, but not remotely shounen action.) I'm curious, though, as to why they wouldn't count Saiyuki. It's not the normal type of shounen action, but has th normal stuff(especially the semi-aimless plot, the strong theme of friendship, and the not-really-enemies.)

I think because Saiyuki is so character and emotionally driven. It's not a position I agree with, but I've heard several people state it.

(To my mind, it's like saying, 'it's too good to be straight shounan action.)

A part of me also wants to say "it's harder to justify viewing it as BL action if it's shounen action."

But, seriously, ALL shounen action is character and emotionally driven(not to mention relationship) it's just that the others stretch it out so much that it's easy to forget that.

Won't get any argument from me. ^_^

I've been told recently that I should read all manga with the assumption of BL coding, and not to assume standard het shounen/shoujo coding. Actually, not just recently.

Unless it's Clamp, I don't assume ANY coding when I read something. (If it's Clamp, I assume both.)

What. The. Fuck?

So, now, I'm supposed to read everything with goddamned slash goggles just cause?

Fuck. That.

Apparently, any manga created by a female is meant to be interpretted as secretly having BL codes, no matter how much a character's sexuality is bashed over our heads, and the male mangaka work it in.

Seriously, contrary to popular belief, I do NOT read anything based on what kind of pairings there are, and couldn't care less about that(it's just the WAY 99.9% of m/m is written in canon...if they're coding as a girl, I'm just going to read something where it actually IS a girl, unless it's set up as a parody), and I've read enough light shounen-ai that I know perfectly well what BL coding looks like, thankyouverymuch.

see, I don't mind being told to watch for BL codes...as long as I'm ALSO told to look for f/f codes(which are much more prominent in manga than most want to admit) and m/f, and expected to acknowledge them just as much.

see, I don't mind being told to watch for BL codes...as long as I'm ALSO told to look for f/f codes(which are much more prominent in manga than most want to admit) and m/f, and expected to acknowledge them just as much.

Exactly.

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The Girl Was A Puppet

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