Get Your Rifles, Boys & Girls - It's Hunting Season

[redbrunja]

autoschismatic  has an amazing and absolutely dead-on article about Kishimoto and his kunoichi and the problems therein. This has also brought all the misogynics to the yard.

Basically, they're saying, 'so what if Kishimoto is sexist? It's just shonen manga, it's made for boys anyway (implication: it doesn't matter if boys are taught that women are less than), you're just thinking too hard about this.'

As I'm sure you can all imagine, I look that as meekly as Maka would, because everyone knows that girls can't be kickass in shonen manga lololol.

Comments

[fani.livejournal.com]

What about Bleach? All the girls there kick their arse, HARDCORE.

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

No they don't. Personally, I find the sexism in Bleach to be worse than Naruto, partially because people keep saying that it's so not sexist.

[mildmay.livejournal.com]

Okay, so this is a late reply, but.

Personally, I find the sexism in Bleach to be worse than Naruto, partially because people keep saying that it's so not sexist.

I agree so hard. Every time I see someone say how not sexist Bleach is a part of my soul dies.

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

*nods*

Exactly. And Kishimoto, I feel, for all his flaws, is trying (he's not succeeding very well). KT just seems to get worse and worse.

[mildmay.livejournal.com]

He really does. This arc has been terrible. In a lot of ways, really (I'm not even sure what the plot is any more. Is there one? I can't find it), but the treatment of the female characters has been offending me pretty regularly. Just about every week, actually.

Kishimoto frustrates me. But KT makes me seethe.

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

Actually, I've been up and down on this arc for it's treatment of the ladies. On the plus side you have Sakura being smart with Shikamaru, punching out a monster, healing people, and then bossing people around. On the minus side you have Iruka telling Sakura to get to the kitchen, Naruto telling Tsunade to get to the kitchen step back, and Hinata NOT having the epic multi-chapter fight she deserved.

[mildmay.livejournal.com]

Ahhh, I was actually talking about Bleach's current arc. |D;

In the current arc in Naruto I have gotten frustrated a few times, but EVERY WEEK Bleach has been pissing me off.

Sorry for the confusion.

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

Oh, sorry, then I agree utterly. It's terrible and just goes to show that KT doesn't know how to write a plot that not based around utterly victimizing his female leads and supporting characters.

[mildmay.livejournal.com]

KT doesn't know how to write a plot that not based around utterly victimizing his female leads and supporting characters.

Exactly. It's awful.

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

Such a damn shame. The early chapters were so enjoyable.

[the-sun-is-up.livejournal.com]

*points up* What she said. Bleach has pretty horrid gender politics.

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

If she asked for examples, I was going to point her to your epic and utterly made-of-word rants on Bleach.

[fani.livejournal.com]

"she" would like to see the essay.

I just read Bleach up till...I think it was 5th volume and I've been busy with school and work so I haven't really updated myself on that. Bleach didn't keep my interest going as good as Avatar or 20th Century Boys, so I sort of gave it up.

And up till 5th volume it was still pretty light-hearted.

[the-sun-is-up.livejournal.com]

If you're only up to volume 5 then you haven't gotten to the head-desky bits yet. I thought the gender stuff in Bleach was fine until the Soul Society arc, which starts around volume 7 (?) and then it all went downhill from there.

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

As the_sun_is_up mentioned, it's later in the series that thinks get insanely headdesky on the sexism front. If you don't mind spoilers:

http://the-sun-is-up.livejournal.com/106642.html#cutid2

http://the-sun-is-up.livejournal.com/134043.html#cutid1

http://the-sun-is-up.livejournal.com/114182.html#cutid1

http://the-sun-is-up.livejournal.com/111664.html#cutid1

[fani.livejournal.com]

...holy cow.

And the girls probably get the depictions tenfold because there are around 20 + mangas in publications like Shounen Jump (not to mention other shounen magazines)

I wonder how they feel about all this...

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

Yes. So Bleach? Not a shining ideal of feminist shonen.

Honestly, I think a lot of girls are trained to think 'oh, that's just the way it is.'

[goldengrimoire.livejournal.com]

Yes, I never got into Bleach for this reason.

Part of the problem is that I think that there's a huge component of the female fandom in Japan that read Jump manga just for yaoi fuel, so they don't really *care* about the characterization of female characters (and of course I'm sure we're all familiar with the ridiculous female character bashing that happens in fandom if it's a character that happens t get in the way of the TRUE LOVE of Favorite Yaoi Pairing X as well.) I figure that the editors probably don't see much of a reason to encourage their mangaka to be more progressive on this front at least partially because of that. They probably get less pressure about improving gender roles than what happens here.

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

*nods*

Agreed about the pressue from editors - I think that within another decade or two, shonen jump (if it's still around) will look far different than it does not.

...unless Naruto and Bleach are still running.