For (I think) battle shounen female leads I can only think of Maka from "Soul Eater", Rinka Urushiba from "Tokyo ESP" and Kyoko Karasuma from "Kyoko Karasuma", it's been a while since I read it but "D. Gray Man" is a manga written and drawn by a female mangaka. The manga "Ga-Rei" is pretty balanced, if I remember correctly.
@@titan9546 apparently, because it happened once, that's enough to label her a damsel in distress. But the shows she said are good (soul eater and Inuyasha), didn't the girls have to be saved at least once as well? I can't comment on soul eater because I haven't watched it, but I know it happened in inuyasha.
A simple rule of thumb: There are exceptions but generally if the shounen is written by a woman it will portray women properly. If it's written by a man, not so much.
@@kirbyjoe7484 shonen was mainly focused on a male demographic back then it's changing now, bleach is the only big anime which had well written female characters this youtubwr hasn't even watched it if she thinks rukia is a damsel in distress
she improves a lot later on in the story. gets new upgrades and stuff too. Spoiler below When toga awakened her quirk, she used uraraka's gravity to brutally kill a lot of people by raising them into the sky and making them fall to their deaths. So yeah. It's not uraraka using her own quirk but there's an example on how it can be used effectively. Uraraka also got new arm attachments which she can swing around, attach to stuff and use as weapons.
Sad thing about Sakura was that she HAD potential in the first few episodes. She was the most intelligent of the three, the main genjutsu expert, had better chakra control than the other two, she had that inner split personality that made her immune to mind control, and we didn't know anything about her parents, which is prime material for a plot twist. But none of that was ever expanded upon. She was just turned into the token medic cheerleader, like all the other girls in Naruto. Imagine if Sakura had gotten as much character development as Sasuke.
@@Vocal0idSupermacy_gumimikuSoo agreed, especially Hinata. I actually really liked Temari when we were first introduced to her, she has a really interesting ability and she saved Shikamaru, though I stopped watching Naruto when I was to tired of Sakura's treatment, the "she would make a great wife" comments, and the occasional random misogynistic comments
Kishimoto was cookin with her on the very first parts of Naruto only to fall in the end, at the very least he understood that he made a mistake when writing her.
About Shinobu, I also love how her motivation is based on revenge. She is angry. But not angry for the sake of being cute or not taken seriously(like a Tsundere for example). Her feelings of revenge is justified and she doesn't sit around and weep. She doesn't wait for someone to do the work for her. Shows that anger and revenge is not just a masculine trait or that only men have that form of motivation. Woman can have those traits too. Growing up I never saw these qualities in shounen woman and its refreshing.
The best part about Shinobu is that out of all the Hashiras, she's the weakest one in terms of physical strength. But the way she makes up for it is awesome
Shinobu also is super smart. Instead of going against her body or giving up since she is too small to decapitate demons, she came up with her own method by inventing wisteria poison. Not enough people take into account how amazing that is considering she was only 14 at the time, she's a prodigy like Muichiro but in terms of intelligence not strength
@@lucyheartfilia2015I love how she’s also not shown to be weak because she’s a girl. Mitsuri is super strong, and almost like a foot taller if I remember correctly. Shinobou (sp?) lacks strength because of her incredibly small stature, but she also gains agility and through her cunningness sand agility she becomes a formidable opponent.
Agree. I love the fact that Shinobu being physicilly weak was not a trope for holding her back rather it was portrayed as an obstacle she needed to overcome in order to stand at the same grounds with the super strong people around her, which really adds even more to her character. Love her so much..
I really loved Mitsuri's backstory from Demon slayer. It provides a lot of context on why female characters are written the way they are on shounen anime. Mitsuri was basically dumped by her crush because in the society where she lived in it was not considered normal for a woman to be strong and expressive and different. No man wanted to be with a woman who is stronger than he is. At one point Mitsuri starts holding off her strength in fear that if she revealed her true powers, people would perceive her as a monster, because it's unacceptable for women to be strong.
@@aradhaybharadwaj1649 I don’t think it's a stupid reason though. About 100 years ago I bet a woman's entire human value was evaluated through male validation, and it was a common opinion that women need to married off and that they can't live without a man taking care of them. Her reasonings go deeper than she puts into words. It's not like she was only thinking of guys 24/7 or being a simp. I just think a woman in the Taisho era being concerned about marriage is a valid reasoning, it's realistic, but of course you are entitled to your opinion 🙏
@@aradhaybharadwaj1649no that wasn't her reason for joining, if you watched the anime she was scouted and stayed because there was finally an environment where no one could repress her real self. Part of that real self involves finding someone who loves her for who she is, big appetite and muscles and all, is there anything wrong with that? Saying women shouldn't desire these things at their own volition is anti feminist.
@@gilliantoh4658 now you see what these people are really arguing for. They know damn well that other genres exist but they only complain so that they can control other people and medias into thinking like them.
@@coolchamp2902 ppl really thinking girls aiming to find their prince is not feminist are the real anti feminists lol Anyway the whole video is shortsighted and way out of date.
I always found it odd that the justification for poorly written women in shounen (or any media really) is because of the male demographic, implying men under no circumstance can view women as actual people 💀
@@Mr_Mistah Basically any girls utilused only for fan service and nothing else especially when they're literally children, any girl in mushoku tensei (I didn't get that far because that show was gross so I don't know every girl but I can imagine they don't get much better in a show promoting pedophilla, most of the side girls in mha except idk maybe all might's predecessor was good I stopped watching, orihime in bleach, sakura, Karin, tenten, temari, hinata (though I know many like her)in naruto, asuna and the other harem girls in sao... just random girls off the top of my head. I tried to not to mention straight up ecchi or other harem anime because I feel like it's definitely a given they're written as stand ins for the guys to stare at their bodies or fawn over the male mc. Characters I actually like... all the girls in FMA, AOT, Rukia from bleach (I haven't seen that much of the show so idk if she sucks later which shonen sometimes does), Tsunade from naruto, haruhi in ouran, Asuna before they turned her into a harem bot, most girls from studio ghilbi, especially protags, I liked ururaka at first in mha but then she turned into a deku love interest bot (again haven't continued so maybe she got better again), yuuko in xxxholic, I love the cast of kakegurui, the girls in snow white with red hair, hondomachi from id invaded, sorta emilia from rezero but I never finished that either, avatar the last air bender girls... etc etc Basically girls written with actual personality outside of pushing the male characters and have their own goals, flaws, accomplishments, etc. Having moments of fan service isn't inherently a red flag but when the character is not allowed to be explored unless it's important to developing the male characters more. I think Tsunade is a good example, she certainly serves as fan service but she has her own character journey too unlike sakura who's entire character revolves around the two male MC's so much that even when they make it a point to say she's gotten way stronger (and is basically the mirror of tsunade in the sannin trio) she's relegated to not being able to fight and just scream at the guys to stop or to ask for help. Same with hinata, I know people like her but imo she also didn't get growth outside of being in naruto's or even neji's story (now immense grain of salt, I also never finished all of naruto so maybe it's addressed in there a little). Her relationship with neji or the hyuuga clan entirely is pretty scuffed, and they basically brush past it to say she's still has a crush on naruto and would die for him.
Also, what kind of excuse is that? There's so many stories written by women where they're able to write three dimensional male characters and their works are popular with men. So, what, we should just accept men are unable to see women as people and give them a pass? If female authors tried to use that logic as an excuse for poor writing they'd be laughed at and criticized to hell and back.
@@pusheenqueen519 What part of Shounen Jump isn't created with female audiences in mind don't you understand? There's so many pieces of entertainment that have well written female characters, so why complain about the ones that don't?
@@Mr_Mistah I feel like you missed the point of my original comment which is kind of ironic. The point wasn't to say shounen isn't trying to appeal to the female demographic, I'm saying it's weird that in order to appeal to the male demographic women can't be written as people only bodies or fodder to improve the male characters' stories. There are also plenty of shounen with good female characters, it has nothing to do with female audience. I even mentioned that fan service isn't inherently bad, as seen by many girls like tsunade or lust. You can appeal to sexuality without turning all the females into bots. And so I think it's cringey to say in order for guys to like female characters they can't be people. I have feeling this means nothing to you though so go about your business lol 😂
I think Japan underestimates the female audience and our thirst for a battle anime that's centered around girls without them being heavily sexualized lmao
there always were strong female fighters who arent sexualized. from card captor sakura to inuyasha, even in bleach, rukiya wasnt over sexualized, and while she couldnt compare, she was still strong. just now, look at black clover, it has not just 1, but multiple strong female characters who arent just strong, but also fan favorites and ARENT overly sexualized. from charlotte, to noelle and of course, mereoleona who from moment one, is one of the best characters in the entire series. and its not like they down play their feminine side either. if you check the polls, you will see all 3 in the top 10. with noelle being 3rd(above even the "sasuke" of the series), and mereo being 7th. hell, funnily enough, in the 4th poll charlotte even took 3rd place. in the fith poll, noelle took, not 3rd, not 2nd, but 1st place.
@@marcosdheleno The issue is that a lot of popular shounen don't have well written women. MHA, JJK, and Demon Slayer are the most popular of the new gen, and most of the female fans of those series just ship the men with each other. Just look at the popularity polls of those series.
can we talk about the uraraka vs bakugou fight it was so good. everyone was telling bakugou to hold back and that it was wrong for him to go all out, BUT HE STILL DIDNT he took her completely seriously and even praised her fighting afterwards.
He even has a small internal monologue implying she nearly defeated him because she outsmarted him. He himself fought with no strategy, just pure power
@@juliahock5549 okay idk about that one theres alot of competition for that but its definitely a good scene! i would give that award to gohan vs perfect cell from dbz but everyone has their preferred momentss
Not an anime, but I always thought that Azula and Katara from Avatar the Last Airbender were greatly written female characters. Other than that, I like Hange from Attack on Titan. She's kinda underrated and a side character, but still very relevant. I also adore Nami. Very well written! She's useful, has ambition, can take care of herself, can stand up for herself and her people, has a head on her shoulders, and knows what she wants. She's feminine, cunning, and my favorite financially smart $$$.
Azula carried the antagonist role hard. She was capable in fights, plotted hard and carried the emotional climax (Ozai was more of the narrative climax). Katara is shown to be soft but a fighter when she wants to he, showing emotion to not be weakness.
I’m not mentioning to take away your point because I do agree with you, but Hange is also non-binary, so that’s very cool that we get some enby representation too along with good female characters, neither of which is very common.
I mean, they're side characters, but god I love the women in Fullmetal Alchemist. Especially that Izumi's story revolves around a tough pregnancy and her stillborn child. It's like uniquely a woman's story, and the fact that it's in a shounen is really astounding. But imo FMA is just on a different level.
Honestly I'd argue that even if girls/women DIDN'T like shonen AT ALL (like 0 percent any female checking them out) that it's still important to have well written, realized female characters. It's been shown that partaking in media that involves characters with different backgrounds to oneself can have an influence on how they perceive those groups. It's not as straight forward as the whole 'video games cause violence' notion but that if you get used to seeing well written characters from other groups it kinda helps you see past any of your own inherent biases.
Yeah, I've always hated that some people (often guys) respond to the complaints about female characters with "but shounen is for boys, not for girls. Stop complaining"...so??? Women still make up half the goddamn population. It's sexist to treat them as less important solely based on their sex, not to mention the fucked up sexualization. If the male characters can get well thought out character arcs and development, why shouldn't the female characters?
@@joyc.e.7511 exactly! Or fanservice. Like, I'm not even opposed to fanservice in and of itself but if you're gonna sexualize the ladies at least give the same treatment to the men. But when it's ONLY the female characters and in literally the stupidest ways imaginable then it just shows they don't value the female characters beyond being there to be oggled no matter how they try to justify it or 'balance' it out (looking at you Fire Force)...
@@StonedHunter Yeah, I really don't mind fanservice when it's minimal, but so often it becomes the defining trait for the female characters, and any important moments they should get are ruined by needless and inappropriately timed fanservice. Ugh, Fire Force is one of the worst offenders imo. Tamaki has been treated horribly. Which is so weird to me because this comes from the mangaka also made Soul Eater, one of the only shounen with a female lead and numerous female characters. It also has a fanservice problem, but it knows when to put that aside.
@@joyc.e.7511 and with Soul Eater we at least got to see the guys shirtless or less a fair amount but with Fire Force it just feels so one-sided that I struggle to believe it's the same creator at times. Funny enough Kill la Kill has one of the best balances I've seen given by the end pretty much everyone is naked XD but Studio Trigger, aside from Franxx, is usually better about balancing fanservice between genders and still making their female characters PEOPLE
Yeah that sentiment is a bit problematic, especially when it’s used as the quintessential happy ending for their character arc. There’s absolutely nothing wrong for a female character to want to become a mother, especially when it makes sense to their character like for Hinata in Naruto or Sango in Inuyasha but not every woman sees motherhood as their personal end goal and type of female character is almost nonexistent in anime.
"us girls" No one's sexualizing you. Most anime fans would rather simp over cartoons girls than your overweight self. Stop making it about you since you're so insecure about yourself
@@coolchamp2902 wow, she's concerned over an actual issue, yet y'all replied by just insulting her, And accusing her of "Muh insecurity"? LMAO I thought yo weeb *ss could do better in giving an actual argument instead of resorting to pathetic insults. People like you are the reason why some people think that us casual animanga enjoyers as some pathetic perverts lmao
Also can we talk about how smart Sakura is, she got top grades in her classes and knew how to control her chakra way better than sasuke and naruto. Kakashi even made a comment about Sakura might become hokage before them. So 😅why make her useless and boy obsessed after that. It’s really disappointing.
@@DC... Lad, to be honest, obsessing with Sasuke is a huge red flag. Not only Saukra doesn’t understand Sasuke at all, Sasuke is literally a red flag. Not to mention that Sasuke doesn’t even know much about her, while Naruto and Lee are close to her and understand her well. And the fact that she knows and understands Naruto way better than Sasuke. If you really gonna pick among them, Naruto and Lee are definitely should be priority instead of Sasuke. I can get why Naruto or Lee just keeps a friendship with Sakura, since… Sakura REALLY doesn’t need romance anymore. Not to mention that Sasuke is so cold towards Sakura, who’s a cute and strong and self-dependent (theoretically), also a simp for him, if he has slight heterosexuality he would be softer towards her. But no, he just wanna kill her. Maybe Sasuke is just gay as hell
man i didn't care that they portrayed her as mean and weak in the beginning because i was hopping for so much development (more than naruto and sasuke since they had their own powers). Wish they made her as the rock lee type of character, not blessed with natural abilities but strong enough mentally to pave her own way and become a taijustsu expert. It would've made a beautiful contrast with naruto and sasuke and she would've earned their respect.
Has anyone else also noticed that whenever there is a girl in the main trio the two guys are always "special" and the token girl is just like, there? I noticed they did this with Nobura because people in Jujitsu Kaisen talk on and on about how special Yuji and Megumi are because of their innate techniques and Nobura is just nowhere near them?
oh my god yes. also applies to the top three students from mha. the two boys participate in a big mission and the girl just. participates in a beauty pageant?😭
Also the other questionable thing is in the manga for jjk (mega spoilers btw) Nobara is just used as fodder for more development between yuji vs mahito by being killed. She doesn't get a cool domain or any other insane powers she just fights and then they're like "ooooooo she might still be alive oooooooooo who knows ooooooooo" but she hasn't reapeared in the manga despite a decent time skip happening already. At least they really give Maki a lot of development, like all of the development and power ups ever while still being true to her character and arc.
Nah, talking jjk we trust gege for his female character dev. He already proved he can handle his female characters and their backstories and we ve all seen Nobara going all out and fighting back to back with itadori in s1. As for manga, spoiler alert, her death isnt confirmed yet despite all the openings gege could’ve used to do so and if you look closely, you can see he had laid the groundwork for her development.
Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce to you: Jolyne Cujoh, the main character of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure part 6. She's strong, independent and iconic!
I’m a boy and even I would really just like a chance to watch a show with a good gender balance without feeling icky about all the near-naked teenage girls. A lot of the time I’ll find a show and think “hey, this would be fun to watch with my sister!”, and then the fan service happens and I have to mentally file it away under “never, under any circumstances, let anyone find out I watched this”.
Yes! I used to watch a lot more anime when I was younger. I did enjoy some ecchi stuff and tend not to be upset by female characters being sexualized. But there’s no balance, I couldn’t really avoid that if I wanted to in most cases, except to watch shows with hardly any women at all, or completely different genres that I had less interest in. It’s socially isolating because I can’t share so many things I love about anime without mixing in things that would turn a lot of people away, for good reason. At the very least I’d like to see more shows with equal fanservice between male and female characters. Then it wouldn’t undermine certain characters so much.
Development doesn't make one great...also the thing with fmab is the girls are already kinda in their roles when we meet them...we don't meet winry before she became a mechanic or hawkeye pre war....she already a soldier with experience....mai is already a fighter and alchemist so there's little struggle or growth for her same for armstrong sister ..the other girls don't get that much focus but even their teacher already lost her child when we met her....we don't see when lust is created for example either and began life when it was hardest ..that's kinda an issue when you give the show so much credit for development of its females...it cheats because it skips all the struggle and just pushes the story to a point where their already established...that's less interesting to me...they skip the parts of their life where they aren't who they are already
@@razkable You're just nitpicking. Their roles as in their professions and skillset are already developed just like the male characters. The emotional struggles and sacrifices they have to make are the struggles that we get to see. Winry had to forgive her parent's murderer despite having the perfect opportunity to avenge their deaths, Hawkeye saves the other characters countless times with her defining moments being when she forces Mustang to give up his hatred towards Envy and also when her throat is slit and Mustang is thinking of saving her by human transmutation, Izumi has to struggle to find meaning in life after failing to resurrect her child and living with missing and damaged organs as a result. Mai comes back to save Ed and Al when she could have just left, LanFan has to cut off her arm to save herself and Ling. As for the minor female characters, Maria Ross comes back to assist Mustang's crew in the final fight, Major Olivier Armstrong is the one who takes out the corrupt military officials in Central HQ and is extremely essential in defeating Sloth the fastest homunculus which was a fight so dangerous that she had to take a fucking breather for a moment.
@@razkable I’m sorry, did we watch the same show. How are you going to look at the scene where Winry is on the verge of shooting Scar and tell me that doesn’t count as development? How are you going to tell me Olivier’s final words to Bradley after he killed her second in command wasn’t an exceptionally vulnerable moment for such a fierce character? How are you going to tell me that Hawkeye’s reaction when she thinks Mustang is dead and when she saves him from ring consumed by vengeance aren’t perfect representations of their relationship with each other? We don’t always need to see these characters work up to the positions they’re in for them to be well-developed and interesting characters. FMAB cheats it’s audience out of absolutely nothing and stands as one of the best representations of female characters in all of fiction.
@@razkable I think none of what you said is about them being female. It has been a long time since I watched the show but from what I can remember, the most development and focus was on the brothers. The side characters usually were in roles which were already established. There is nothing wrong with that
I'm glad to see this brought up. Poorly written female characters within action animes have been a thing for far too long. I was pleasantly surprised when I watched Jujutsu Kaisen and found female characters that I can actually root for and appreciate just as much as the other great characters in the story, Attack on Titan is another new action anime that has very well written female characters; and you can expect more of this, I've read the chainsaw man manga and it was amazing, not only that but the female characters are also really good there, so I'm excited to see it animated.
in a story though like naruto everyone reflects naruto cause its not called ninja world...its called naruto and his character is the jesus of their world to follow in the footsteps of and believe in and copy his courage and ninja way so imo even though people hate on the women the whole show is based on that so its on overall flaw then cause many of the hyped guy characters are just different variants of naruto too in some way or in how they reflect off him so to me thats a dumb critique in that series...they have a fanbase for a reason
Nezuko could have been cute without turning her into a pokemon. She knows how dangerous she is and that the demon slayers generally distrust her. Her cutesy baby act could have been a formulated move to defend herself. It disarms hostile humans and makes her seem like less of a threat. When she trusts a demon slayer enough that they won't try and kill her, she starts revealing her normal personality. The characters get to react by being surprised or having seen through the charade the whole time. She gets to talk with Tanjiro, and later with the rest of the trio. She could even have voiced her own struggle with not falling into full demonhood.
She couldve been a great obstacle in Tanjiro's eventual goal, as well. Her main goal in the series is seemingly to protect her brother as he does with her, so when its time for her to be turned back into a human you would expect some resistance since becoming human would strip her of all her combat abilities. I get that she also wants to be turned back into a human, but a big fight with muzan is coming up and she knows first hand how terrifying he is and it wouldve been cool for her to actually fight in the final battle. Unfortunately, she was Tanjiro's lackey from beginning to end.
@drfrog4077 I'm guessing the way male and female oriented fan service are presented differently is the main reason why. Oh, and I'm looking forward to getting into Jojo's. I might have to wait a while because I am in the third year of university. 😅😅
“Shounen is targeted toward boys, so the way the women are written/conveyed is excused” I never understood this argument, as strong male characters exist in Shojo. For example, the entire male cast of Fruits Basket, especially Kyo, Yuki, and Shigure. Heck, even Tuxedo Mask from Sailor Moon goes through so much of his own development alongside the main heroine. Genre and target demographic isn’t an excuse, and honestly doesn’t make sense. Okay, I see your replies! I honestly love the conversation and the points you guys are pointing out. Long story short, just write well-developed, deep characters!
ok ? shounen is still for guys, they dont give a fuck if women watch/read their shows, its just their to fill out male fantasy not for women, u guys have your own genre, shounen does not need to what shojo does cause they simply dont give a fuck
No, she's correct. What you mentioned are popular series, but less popular series tend to make the male as side character, hence why they're not popular.
God everything about Uraraka was so true! At the start she seemed like she would be a fully fleshed out character. The thing about her motive being to make money for her family, in contrast to the grand aim of achieving justice - would have been so interesting if it was explored further! Just the fact that it’s a perfectly valid reason, and it doesn’t change how good of a hero she is. But no, as the show went on her whole personality was just liking Deku :/
You’ve never read the manga, even in the anime she rejects most of her feelings for deku because she know it’s would get in the way, she’s fighting toga both in anime and manga, she’s saved deku a bunch of times without those feelings too she only had the impulse to save him like how deku does
mha just has a track record of wasting good female characters with potential. Mina had a memorable personality and design but is used as an accesory for Kirishima. Momo has one of the best quirks but is just there for the fanservice. Nejire who's one of the big 3 but while the other 2 fight in life or death situations and have fleshed iit backstories, she's religated to become prom queen.
momo has development just that a smooth brain wouldn’t notice it, Mina has had a bit of development. Please stop hating on the creator for not giving spotlight on characters when the creator is already giving spot light on so many other female, ochaco, toga, hado, la brava have gotten so much spotlight in the 2nd war arc
HOW DARE YOU!! SHE IS NOT!! SHE IS STRONG AND BRAVE AND THE ULTIMATE EXAMPLE OF SIBLING LOVE, FOR IT'S HER LOVE FOR HER BROTHER THAT PREVENTED HER FROM BECOMING FUILL DEMON!! THAT IS NOT TRASH!!! THAT IS BRAVE AND BEAUTIFUL AND NOT A POKEMON AT ALL!!
@@colleen4ever bro chill her main purpose for all parts of the story is to be brought out of her box and fight demons, she doesn't have much of a character outside of her connection with tanjiro, and she doesn't even speak until the end of the manga. She's meant to be cute bait, the token loli waifu of the series. Storywise she's just a plot device for tanjiro to have enough motivation to kill demons and get a cure.
the thing about Lucy from fairy tail is that the potential is absolutely unmatched. she is shown to be the single most kind, empathetic character in the show who can make friends out of just about anyone. it would have been so fucking great to have her be more than just a damsel in distress, because her character goes much deeper than the others’ “i love fighting bc i want to get stronger”. i love maki and nobara too, but it is undeniable that they aren’t super kind people, which is understandable, as they have their own motivations. but Lucy could have been the one instance of a powerful, capable character who is also kind, empathetic, and hopeful.
I wouldn’t say Lucy gets damsel in distress treatment, she’s show handling her own unless it’s some overpowered boss type enemy. She isn’t constantly helpless and unable to defend herself, even the final season has her being an integral part in protecting everyone and the final fight. She gets a lot of power ups and holds her own through a lot of the series
@ShurouInu I haven't finished fairy tail (currently in the middle of Tartourus arc), but from what I've seen, Lucy IS the damsel in distress. She is almost always the one in trouble and in need of Natsu's help. We've rarely seen a time where Lucy was in extreme trouble and was able to completely handle the situation by herself (and I mean, without the help of her celestial spirits)
@@bomberdawesome lucy is a damsel in the first season but become her own character the more the show continues nd while yes she relies on her celestial spirit for help she has to summoned them , her celestial spirit is her magic .in season two alone she saved the world three times and s3 her and natsu ( the pink haired dude )are the reason the main villain are defeated she's also the reason Natsu is still breathing along with other characters.
It bothers me so much to know that most manga artists get “suggestions” from their editors to change their stories, especially the second that a female character is involved. It’s so bad to the point that manga creators like Araki, have to push harder than they should just to write the story that THEY made. The fight with Lisa Lisa and Kars was almost not included at all, Giorno was (apparently) meant to be a girl, And Araki was told to make another male protagonist who was similar to Jotaro instead of Jolyne. Not only that. But I distinctly remember seeing somewhere; that the reason why shonen jump never seems to allow well written, is because they don’t want to deal with their manga/ anime being controversial or cancelled in other countries, and to also avoid going against another country’s culture (where women are seen as less than). It really bothers me to know that authors are forced to write their stories differently just because of some bs reason. I’m willing to bet that a lot of other mangaka’s are told to change aspects of their stories just to appeal to their target audience. Having a strong secondary female character will not be the end of the shonen industry’s popularity. If a country complains about it, then ignore them. And if a country’s government or whatever else doesn’t allow the story to be sold there, then ignore them too, the world will move on without them (as harsh as it sounds). If the manga’s creator wants to make all of their cast be powerful and stand-out for being individually unique, regardless gender, just let them. There really isn’t any point in censoring every small little detail that could be seen as “offensive”.
To the person who doesn't believe me just look up "was giorno supposed to be a girl" and you'll quickly find several sources stating such. And if you try to correct someone again, make sure to get off of your rear end and do some research before you open your big mouth.
The thing i liked about Shinobu a lot is the fact that she is aware, that her pure physical combat abilities aren't on par with the others, and thus uses poison in addition to her blade. Combined with her knowledge in human and demon physique i think she is the most capable person in Demon Slayer.
I feel the same about her and Mitsuri. They both were aware of their limits, but they still pushed themselves to fight Muzan, and when it came down to it they were both capable fighters and didn’t need to be saved when Tanjiro fought with them to defeat demons.
Demon Slayer just suffers in the female department because Nezuko, the main character after Tanjiro, is the least well written character period in Demon Slayer.
Yeah female characters in Kimetsu play a massive role in saving humanity, it isn’t a sideline thing like The Big 3 or My Hero. I would argue that without Tamayo or Shinobu they wouldn’t have won over Muzan at all.
I'd say Nezuko is the weakest major female character in Demon Slayer, mostly since we barely get to know her. But Shinobu, Mitsuri, Kanao, and Tamayo were all necessary to turning the tides in battle.
I mean, i think its a good time to point out that its not JUST writing either. We also want these women to break the gender stereotypes as well, like giving them physically tanky powers and abilities and general fighting styles. They should be allowed to be warriors, and most importantly they should be shown, with these powers, defeating male opponents.
If you haven’t seen Arcane, you HAVE TO!!! I am a huge anime fan and I completely understand your frustration as a female audience. While it is not a Japanese anime, Arcane does it so welllllll when it comes to female characters portrayal. This is the only animation I feel like female characters really get to shine just as much as their male counterparts without sexualizing them.
the discussion is on japanese culture. We can look also at BIrds of Prey if we want to find well written fighting girls (or even Wonder Woman, basically the strongest in the JL except maybe superman).
This is a discussion on Japanese culture but a lot of the points made in the video are also applicable to Western shows as well. Agreed, Arcane is probably the best show I've ever watched when it comes to writing female characters or characters in general! Spoilers but this is such a great analysis video: ua-cam.com/video/hML-FGHGEN4/v-deo.html&ab_channel=schnee
Castlevania is also really good in this way! It was SO satisfying seeing Sypha fight on equal footing to the two other mc. And actually get creative using her magical abilities in some of the most brutal ways possible.
This is why Nami is the best written woman in the big 3. She's the resson the ship can reach the correct locations. She might be not physically strong, but she makes up for it with her intelligence snd wit.
One scene in One Piece I found interesting in regards to Nami is how when she requests Usopp to make an upgraded staff, he goes on to mention how the two of them are out of the depth in regards to battle compared to the rest of the crew, since they are just regular people in extraordinary circumstances, meaning that they need to fight smarter not harder. I love this cuz it means that One Piece gets to cover both bombastic duels and battles of wits, the ladder being commonly found in great Shounen (as well as in any story in general).
@@Lenlon703 I absolutely loved how despite her apparent weakness to sea water she was stubborn enough to actually learn Fish Man Karate, it’s something so unique among devil fruits users that demonstrate she’s above the rest, and unfortunately her like other characters like Kid or Killer haven’t been given enough material to have fights, her being more involved would make her way more balanced since most of her runtime is surrounding her vocation, something I DO absolutely love for the lore yet I would enjoy Robin having more fights. Oh and I can shine upon how Sanji, the man that holds up that “protect all woman” mentality actually asked Robin for help? He was her prince in distress and she came to save him like the absolute she is, that’s something that’s I think is so rare in shonen and a breathe of fresh air. I might be a BIT biased, but one piece for me it’s one of the most inclusive shonen series there is, I loved Fish man island arc because of how nuanced it touched upon the themes of racism and blood feuds.
Sakura could have been one of the best characters in the entire series. She had so much potential. She’s incredibly intelligent as we saw how she took the written Chunin Exam so well without even cheating. She also was showing a lot of signs of being developed to handle things on her own. She could grown out of her love for Sasuke and finally start being her own person and have Sasuke have to work to be worthy of her love after all the shit he pulled. But no. Sakura never is able to handle shit on her own. She always has to be rescued. She can’t do a fight on her own. And the fact that her main two impacts on the series is continuing to love Sasuke for NO REASON and that she lied to Naruto about it. Sakura’s pointless obsession with Sasuke having a bigger impact than her entire character is so terrible. I can’t stand it.
Yeah you only watch 3 eps of naruto. She legit beat an akatsuki member, saved naruto and sasuke probably more than they saved her, developed proper feelings for sasuke after understanding him, and only said that to naruto in order to protect him, not to mention she hit kaguya at the end to help them seal her
@@tactly5060 Nope. I watched every single episode including the filler episodes (which was really hard at times because some of them were that bad.) And she wasn't allowed to beat the Akatsuki member on her own. She had to have help. And she got her ass handed to her more than she helped defeat him. Healing and being rescued are not the same thing. And more often than not she is saved and rescued from strong enemies rather than being allowed to fight it herself. Again not saying getting helped is that bad but more often than not, Sakura has to be helped and rescued more than she can handle beating an enemy on her own. When you compare her fights to Naruto, Sasuke and Kakashi's, it is very clear who gets the short end of the stick of showing battle prowess. Again understanding Sasuke is not a strong enough basis for a relationship or for love. It definitely could be, but it's not executed well at all. Her love doesn't feel like it's developed from anything more than what it was in her youth. It definitely again could have been but as it stands, it isn't. And yes, she did say that to protect Naruto but as a result, went on a stupid suicide mission that ranks as one of the dumbest things she has ever done. And again, her doing that has more weight and more reaction from the fanbase than the majority of the things she has done in the series. The point with Kaguya is fair but again, it doesn't change the fact that it took us WAY too long to give Sakura something substantial for her character. Nothing the girl does has as much weight as the other characters. She is a main character and she gets absolutely nothing and it's a damn shame. Kishimoto did her so dirty.
I know it's not shounen, but I've always loved the female characters from Black Lagoon. Roberta, Balalaika, Eda and specially Revy are all absolute badasses.
@@thurantpnh6687 Oh people praise the JJK females over MHA females, but in case you didn't know Miwa Kasumi's reason for joining Jujutsu Tech is the same as Ochako Uraraka's for becoming a pro hero! This girl in the video contradicts herself she excuses Bulma wearing revealing clothing, but complains about Erza who kicks more ass????????????? Hypocritical much? Why do females in battle shounen have to kick ass and compete with the males Keiko didn't???? And do these people forget that Inuyasha and Rurouni Kenshin exists? Why is Bulma's boobs popping out not an issue, but Erza's is? Heck Yuroichi is practically naked sometimes has her ass on one of the panels yet no complaints??????? This video is the same as every other video about this topic recycling the same talking points!
@@inakyu Oh people praise the JJK females over MHA females, but in case you didn't know Miwa Kasumi's reason for joining Jujutsu Tech is the same as Ochako Uraraka's for becoming a pro hero! This girl in the video contradicts herself she excuses Bulma wearing revealing clothing, but complains about Erza who kicks more ass????????????? Hypocritical much? Why do females in battle shounen have to kick ass and compete with the males Keiko didn't???? And do these people forget that Inuyasha and Rurouni Kenshin exists? Why is Bulma's boobs popping out not an issue, but Erza's is? Heck Yuroichi is practically naked sometimes has her ass on one of the panels yet no complaints??????? This video is the same as every other video about this topic recycling the same talking points!
To reassure you about JJK, whilst Nobara doesn't get too much more development, Maki basically gets her own arc, she's practically as developed as if not more so than Yuji (as in rich backstory and actually being able to fend for herself, Yuji's backstory is still rather mysterious)👌
Ya but I found Nobara getting shafted on both the Kyoto Goodwill event and the Shibuya arc totally unfair. Everyone but her was getting good fights, but when she came in, she was dead on arrival, literally in Shibuya. She was practically missing throughout both arcs. She has been deemed the heroine of Jujutsu Kaisen and she is part of the trio, so to shaft her through out two big arcs and give everyone but her so much screen time, then kill her off is an absolute disservice to her.
@@ChainsawManDude97nobody cares about her in main trio In popularity itself she barely comes in top 10 Yuji and Megumi are the important ones And in the senior areas Yuuta and gojo,
I was waiting for Asuna being named. Can we just talk of how all female characters of SAO are super badass UNTIL Kirito arrives and suddenly they become damsels in distress. It's unbelievable.
I really love Sango from Inuyasha. She is feminine and a warrior. She can stand on her own and can go to battles by herself with confidence that she can handle it. She likes Miroku, but that is in no way her character. She has a backstory, a family, and plenty of screentime. You could remove the romantic subplot from her character and she is still a fleshed out character.
Thank you I love Sango always loved her story with her brother loses her whole tribe in one night gets manipulated into fighting Inuyasha and becomes best friends with Kagome who does damage control and explains that Inuyasha is not a bad guy i wish more shonen had awesome girls like Kagome and Sango
I love sanggoooo ughhh I love her so much. I hate miroku. The dude basically sexually assaulted her from the get go (and literally every other female he comes across) but he still gets the girl. It's shown as "cute" and "comedy"...
Yeeees, I was looking for this comment. Sango is a representation of everything a female character can be. I love the way she doesn't need to be "masculine" to be an excellent warrior and a lovely friend and sister at the same time. She even wears make up, but can kick anyone's ass. The woman was buried alive after being hurt by her little brother and could stand up straight to take revenge. Like, how not admire her?
battle shonen female cast members that did not disappoint: 1. Historia (girl went from "oh she's cute" to "yes, my queen." she is a legend) 2. Emma (a bad bih saving the world, we love that) 3. Shinobu (oh I love this woman no explanation needed) 4. Nobara (she is peak confidence. Also watch JJK!) edit: guys i'm also mad historia didn't get to shine after season 3 but i love her and i pretend her "pregnant era" doesn't exist plus she had a happy ending and didn't die so that's enough for me. also stop saying nobara is dead she's not and I'm still waiting for her to come back even if it's been a year💀
the nexus Sheriff oh maybe I wouldn’t know since I only read two volumes of Bleach like 6 years ago but she was a pretty cool female character in those two I read
I feel like One Piece surprised me on how Nami and Robin are considered and acted as actual people with powerful powers. How they look would make you think it’s just for the guys to crush on when both of them are very important to the plot. Nami may have needed Luffy’s help to save her village but so did most of the other straw hats! Robin, she is literally so important! She can actually defend herself with her power! In Wano (spoilers) HER FIGHT AGAINST BLACK MARIA WAS CRAZY! SHE LITERALLY BECAME A DEMON! AND SHE SNAPPED HER IN HALF! INSANE! Plus Nami’s added power with Zeus is amazing. Are both of them possibly fan service? Probably. Are both of them important to the plot and are capable of defending themselves without needing to be a damsel in distress? YES! There’s a moment when Sanji is getting beat up by Black Maria and Black Maria tells him to call for help, what does Sanji, a womanizer, do? He calls for Robin’s help, fully knowing that she is capable of saving him and winning the battle.
One piece is surprisingly a good place to find strong and capable women. Even the girls who don't look like a human hourglass have amazing dignity, power and stature. Dadan deserves a whole award for taking care of 3 idiot brats when their shit parents wouldn't.
@@pantheman2842 linlin is powerful in her own right, but she's at her core an unintentionally twisted monster by others' making. Still a pretty chilling character on the level of the men.
I was ready to come here and trash this video as just some preachy bs about girls in shounen....but no lie, you actually changed my mind on a lot of things. The timeline breakdown of ladies in anime was a big help to see exactly how they are portrayed and yea, it actually does kinda suck that I can only think of a handful of anime women protags that can be considered as battle ready as the male counterparts. Balsa from Seirei no Moribito comes to mind as one. Either way, great video. I came to troll and left relating to pretty well to you. Thanks
If you want to watch a shonen with very well-written female characters, check out Gintama. It has by far the best-written female cast in all of Shonen Jump. It has no fan service and if so only for jokes or to make fun of it. Every female character has a personality and good development character. Kagura the female lead is very well written. She has a story of her own, a goal that has nothing to do with love and often saves the mc and other characters. She is not sexualized and behaves according to her age. Throughout the show, she wasn't romantically interested in anything. Another show with a good female cast would be BC. Noelle in particular is well written. I hope I could help you
@@inakyu I'm glad to hear that because Gintama is so underrated. We even have LGBTQ + characters such as a non-binary girl, a group of trans-men who are working in a gay bar, the MC literally slept with a man in the series and we have a cute lesbian relationship. It even ended well and the final villain was understandably beaten. There is almost never any talk during the fight and you really get the impression that the characters are getting weaker and really take damage to the individual blows.
gotta agree with this one, most notably with Tsukuyo, Otae, and Nobume Edit: my favorite female character in the series is actually Sarutobi, perhaps she may not have the strongest characterization but her she’s pretty unique as a character, perhaps the description I’ll give her is she is kinda like a female Kuwabara(YYH) but a more perverted version since she’s an M
@Mikasa Ackerman I am sorry I really want to support your argument of aot having good female cast but that's really not the case in manga the literally every single women had their character butchered by the end . Pls don't bother propagating a anime without knowing how the character arcs ends in the Manga
@Mikasa Ackerman uh so it seems you haven't completed the Manga, yes they had their moments at the beginning and here and there but while judging a character the most important aspect objectively is how their character arc ends and if it turns out be something totally contradicting to the way they've been portrayed all this while then it's called butchering .
What we like about Nami: She's allowed to be flawed and messed up as the male characters And yes that's also because of her eyeing money and gold *24/7* like a stereotypical pirate/thief/robber
I really love Nami especially before the time skip now she has a cool weapon she uses but she’s really just there now she’s still great but I wish we get to see her fight again
@@Icysted She is the exact same character except she is sexy now. Thats hardly a character break situation. No way you read whole cake arc or Zoa and concluded she did nothing except being sexy.... And going through old stuff, Oda ALWAYS intended her to be sexy and a seductive, he was just failing. Old Nami wasnt hitting that arc not because it wasnt there but because the author was failing to showcase it. He got better at his vision and NOW its bad?
Nami is more then you said, she considered as the main factor were the show start to be really great she is so well written she saved her crew multiple times, she’s the number one reason the crew still alive at sea, without her they will be so lost and it don’t stop at her navigation skills she is too smart and have multiple knowledge in different categories. she takes care of the financial matters she make deals to ensure they have enough money and food her whole personality and her backstory and how much she suffered to save her village in a young age and to fight alone without crying even she was a child it shows how much strong character she is well written female character She saves her captain multiple times in the show and she has really strong moments. It shows her develops her character and she considered as the internal captain in the ship so not everything about fighting because she prove that fighting not everything but she is also a fighter. She develops her own style in fighting, to not be burden to her friends, she’s steals yonko weapon so I think I have cleared what I meant.
Honestly Nami and Robin are both equally incredible. They dress kinda skimpy but it doesn't feel real sexualized to me. Though Nami weaponizes it on her own terms. Oda writes them just as well as the other Strawhats.
I completely agree. Another thing to note is, though Nami has become a great fighter overtime (she also has just as many fights as the others, excluding the big 3 ofc) & Robin's just always been a badass, their *roles* are not as fighters, and thus it would be unfair to judge their strength purely on that basis. However, their individual roles are so vital to the story that it would literally come to a screeching halt without them. Nami is of course everything you've stated above, & Robin is the ONLY person alive that is able to read the poneglyph. I just feel like One Piece is more than *just* a shounen about fighting, and those who fail to see that will never truly understand the complexities of its characters.
I stumbled upon this video that explains the women in OP extremely well, if you're interested. Just be warned, it's got spoilers up till the Wano Arc. ua-cam.com/video/2ZIohfgDH78/v-deo.html&ab_channel=MelonTeee
Hinata was criminally underused in the show, she had so much potential as a character, as the capable but shy person who learn to speak up and be listen to. Instead we can just imagine her develop (if any) happening offscreen, and her best glorious moment, saving Naruto, doesn't have a gratifying payoff. Nobody congratulates or even thanks her, she is immediately sidelined again and don't do anything until the very end, just to be part of the happy ending.
She was really wasted. She could have had her own arc. That would make their love in the end even more special. But for some reason, temporary bad guys get more screen time.
What gets me is the fact that Neji was killed to make Naruto and Hinata bond and fall in love, but the binding didn’t happen till a couple years after Neji’s death, and they only dated for a year before they got married, and Hinata is reduced to a house wife. Even Ten Ten, who has less screen time than Hinata, was more developed than this. Hinata’s character was Naruto’s cheerleader, and the pacing of their love story as so poorly written. Almost as poorly written as Hinata.
@@tiahnarodriguez3809 Indeed. Really this is my biggest gripe with love stories in most Anime. Instead of letting couples interact with each other in way that would let you figure out for yourself why they like each other, they would rather Just TELL you that they do like each other. With Hinata, they did a great Job SHOWING why she likes Naruto. He stood up for her and protected her, even when he couldn't fight. That's an amazing first Impression. But Naruto. They said that she always believed in him. I guess? But, like there's a whole village that also does that. It's like all he needs is someone who loves him. In a vacuum That's sweet and sad. But in context with their world, Hinata has a lot more to offer that they could have bond over, like eating freaking ramen. But apparently she wasn't important enough.
No you’re wrong, she had a lot of development on screen, and she was recognized for what she did in the pain arc which is far from her only good moment. And she was not sidelined in the war arc she did a lot of great things in the war arc that y’all are so blind to. She had some good writing
@@tacticstories7159 she pretty much did have her own arc which was the last, but even then she was very good and had a lot of development in arcs like the chunin exams, the pain invasion, and the 4th great ninja war arc
I also think a lot of these anime youtubers watch too much Shonen and shoujo. I'm almost 30 and it's honestly something I enjoy but josei and seinen are genres I relate to a lot more now. Stories and characters can be richer and more mature because of older target audience. Although I think it's fair to still scrutinize Shonen since so many young people are consuming these stereotypes but we can only expect so much depth when trying to sell to middle schoolers. The balance is difficult and when it feels forced now you get accused of pandering.
You could also talk about Death Note...when Misa appeared she was stronger than Light, having the eyes and all but then as soon as she meets him she falls in love and basically becomes a lap dog. I understand she was obsessed with Kira even before how Light looks like but still... I think she literally mentions oh you're handsome now I will do everything you do 😮💨
I was definitely waiting for Death Note to explore Misa's themes in more depth, and that time never came. she started out as a celebrity, and that's really interesting when you consider how that compares to Light being Kira. they're both figures that the public interacts with, and you can definitely compare and contrast those roles. Misa became a public figure on purpose, using her own face and name as her brand... and that actually gave her a lot less of that buffer of anonymity. meanwhile Light has become a totally anonymous public figure, and the fight to maintain that anonymity is the entire premise of the series. granted, Light has done extreme and illegal things, but he's also gotten to display his ideology, and that's what his "fans" like about him. meanwhile, most of what Misa's hardcore fans like about her is superficial... they like her looks, and might actually prefer it if her personality remained vague and accommodating, so they could better imagine her in the way they'd prefer. and yet, none of Light's followers know him personally either... it's the nature of a parasocial relationship. and what must it feel like for Misa to go from being an idol, to being looked at, by Light, as one of the masses who has only managed to distinguish herself by chasing the coattails of what _he_ started. Misa actually knows both sides of this particular coin... she's been the adored center of attention, and now she is acting as Light's most adoring fan... but Misa knows how little her "biggest fans" actually knew about her. why would her relationship to Light be any different? Misa could've been so interesting in so many ways, but it's like the author was blind to that because she was a woman, and it basically disqualifies her from being important. or I mean... if she's going to be important, it's only as a plot mechanism, not because of the way she thinks. the most complex things she does are all problems that she causes Light by either being disobedient, or not as smart as him. and that's basically all she was allowed to be, because if you look at his other works... this author has issues with women.
@@kamuyking551 Quick question, how exactly did you rationalize the leap in logic of Misa being an underdeveloped character into "this author has issues with women"? If anything her being a sycophant to light shows just how flawed their plan is due to the sheer amount of hypocrisy they hold. Light wanted to make a just world but ends up being one of the most unjust people in history while also the bloodiest serial killer. While Misa goes from being self aware and reserved in relation the the death note all the way to raving zealotry. By your... logic, the writers of WH40K must have an issue with men over the treatment of the primarchs. Perturabo being the best one to point at. I swear people need to learn that a) flawed characters exist, b) flawed writers exist and especially c) adaptations tend to be more flawed than the already flawed source material. That and not accrediting underlying malice in place of ignorance.
@@KopitioBozynski because it's not just about Misa, and I also saw the shit he pulled in Bakuman. granted, it's been forever since I read that, and I didn't read all of it, but that detail stuck out immediately, and I've remembered it ever since. it's like every once in a while the author would just make a character get up on a soapbox and profess that all women are stupid little minxes who have no value beyond their sex appeal or some shit, apropos of nothing. and it really doesn't go contested enough by any of the other characters for me not to side eye that. I understand that sometimes a character will be written in a way that services the narrative and just happens to align with sexist media tropes, and I'm telling you that I think this author is sexist anyway. don't be gullible. also, thinking the author has a problem with women was not my primary or only reason for being dissatisfied with Misa. it was literally just one sentence tacked on to the end of a lot of other, much more specific reasons. I had hoped it would be clear that those things matter more to me, because they took up way more of what I wrote. guess you gotta hedge your bets around here.
I feel like leaving out One Piece and the character building of the women like Nami, Robin, and others was great. While they don't have the same battle strength, they all have their own skills and abilities that they have to use for the benefit of the whole team. They've all had great character building over the years and have shown their increase in strength and abilities over that time as well.
Kishimoto had very little writing experience when he started Naruto, and he was terribly overworked during Shippuden. Looking back, I'm surprised the series ended as well as it did, given how much he was out of his depth.
Thanks for mentioning Soul Eater! I think about Maka Albarn all the time, she’s such a rare treasure in the world of Shōnen and I feel like some people forget she exists. Although there is some pretty cringe fan service in Soul Eater the fact that all the female characters have personalities and arcs and importance really did mean so much to tiny middle school anime fan me. Maka is the girl ever …
yeah i like that too but she falls in another trope. The whole 'beat a male character for lieerally anything 'and its played off as laughs. i hate when a male char is beaten by a female char and its not seen as problematic
Honestly, it makes me wonder what happened to the author that he wrote such atrocious female characters in Fire Force, when Soul eater had such finely written characters both male and female.
@@colesteenkamp5133 Maka's problem was basically her mother;s fault. Her mother used her to punish her father for cheating on her by basically turning her against her dad, saying no man can be trusted, and then abandoning her to be raised by the dad she now hates. And Maka admires her mom so much she never realized that and poor Soul has to suffer for it if any female even looks at him. She;s the only one with an excuse.
@@colleen4ever even then its not seen as problematic tho. like cheating is bad but turning your kid against their dad even tho he loves her and tries to raise her is shitty, but trauma or you parent teaching you bad habits is no excuse for physically assaulting a dude. Like the dad and Soul just takes the hits from her and the story kinda implies that Maka is right for shitting on them. Yuou cant tell me shes the only one with an excuse because there is no excuse for being that much of a shitty person,
One of the many, many reasons I love Gintama is that the author gives a personality to every character, no matter if it's a man, a woman, a kid or even a dog that will only appear for one episode. This means that the girls of the main cast are given backstories, battles where they get to shine and a lot of the serious arcs are centered around women. They get to save the day as much as their male counterparts and I think that's beautiful - and even the ones who don't fight like Otose, Hinowa and Princess Soyo, they are smart, strong in their own ways and just as important. And the manga began on 2003 so it's not even the author following the trend, just him creating human characters like the absolute Chad he is.
Fr love the fact that Kaguya is shown as the physically strongest out of the main trio. She's feminine, playful, and would not hesitate to drop a boulder on you if you took some of her seaweed
@@raspberrycrowns9494 I took a double look at your comment, while it is not untrue and has repeatedly referenced in Gintama, it's Kagura, but she certainly would love being mistaken as Kaguyahime. Lmao.
@@FreyjaRKim ah I guess it's worth mentioning that I haven't watched Gintama in a while but yeah she absolutely would milk the shit out of being mistaken for a deity
I agree that in Fairy Tail the fan service is excessive and unnecessary but to say that the women (especially Erza) only ever needed saving lets me know you didn’t watch Fairy Tail. Everyone men and women, girls and boys has needed to be saved in that show and in all these people being saved there are always women also saving as well as men. Erza has needed to be saved yeah sure but so has Natsu and Gray and everyone else on the show. Also to look me in the eye and say Erza does nothing and was wasted potential is offensive and she does a lot of the saving and is one of the main fighting forces of the show. Uraraka was a massive disappointment because they didn’t do anything with her (or her female classmates) after the tournament and now she’s just a potential love interest for Izuku.
I think you'd really appreciate how the girls in Gintama are portrayed, they're all flawed individuals who are in most cases way more useful than the guys ever could be. It's not done in a way where it ever feels forced and instead of it feeling like bad writing, it comes across as a really tried and true group of friends who are all equal in how they all interact with one another.
Kyubei is a character that pretty much everyone ignores in Gintama, ever since i've joined the Gintama fandom, i have never once saw a single person talk about Kyubei and the Yagyu arc. its like everyone all just collectively agrees to just ignore her existence. Kyubei after her arc didn't really do much other than serve as a gag character like Sachan, who just goes around trying to win over Otae, and even after that she eventually just gives up on trying to love Otae, making her LOSE her gag and basically just become a nothing burger in the end. I think her arc about moving on about Otae and accepting the fact that she would never have her would have been more suitable for Kondo to have. Let's be honest Kondo is a near 30 year old cop that basically just stalks an 18 year old who has shown over and over in time that she is not into him, compared to Kyubei who just hangs out with Otae and has tried to protect her life ever since their childhood, Kondo doesn't really have that much of a relationship with Otae other than some funny stalker gag, and even tho they did have a little moment in the Farewell Shinsengumi arc, it was only for a short amount of time. Idk maybe i'm just rambling about stuff lol
Yees! I'm glad you're tackling this topic. I adore the shounen genre, but some of the female characters are either slept on and underdeveloped, or just plain annoying.. which is such a shame!! Here's hoping that Jujutsu keeps on being amazing.
@@bingo784 My bad, I misspoke haha. I didn't watch too many shows (yet) so I don't have a good overview of what all is out there. So far I haven't encountered a female character I particularly liked (besides Kugisaki), but I wanted to be respectful to anyone who did find some.. inspiring? Likable? Not sure what the proper word would be lol
Female characters are not slept on and underdeveloped that's just talking points you're expected to say. Like I don't see what the problem is with Orihime? Most of the arguments people have for Orihime can be used against Keiko from Yu Yu Hakusho. They complain about how creepy it is for Orihime attempting to kiss Ichigo in his sleep, but don't say the same about Keiko who did the exact same thing?????????????
Oh people praise the JJK females over MHA females, but in case you didn't know Miwa Kasumi's reason for joining Jujutsu Tech is the same as Ochako Uraraka's for becoming a pro hero! This girl in the video contradicts herself she excuses Bulma wearing revealing clothing, but complains about Erza who kicks more ass????????????? Hypocritical much? Why do females in battle shounen have to kick ass and compete with the males Keiko didn't???? And do these people forget that Inuyasha and Rurouni Kenshin exists? Why is Bulma's boobs popping out not an issue, but Erza's is? Heck Yuroichi is practically naked sometimes has her ass on one of the panels yet no complaints??????? This video is the same as every other video about this topic recycling the same talking points!
@@lichtwykkyd6103 I apologize. As someone who has seen neither, I can't express my opinion on those. But trust me when I say that nonconsent is creepy, in whatever shape or form. If I see a character do that, male or female, I will dislike them. I think the point is that as a girl myself, I find it difficult to see a girl in shounen and think of her as a role model. When I watch shounen, I adore the male characters and look up to those (which isn't bad at all!), just wish there were more instances where I can just instantly like a female character without her being annoying.
What I love about Attack on Titan is that there is almost as many female characters as males, and they're in important roles in the show such as commanding troops, being very skilled and even being royalty. Mikasa has unfortunately not been developed much beyond her initial setup, but I hope she can end the series strong.
What I love in attack of titan is the story , that' s what you must put your focus on when u watch an anime , movie etc.. not representation. Focus on epresentation leads to the state of hollywood today, absolute void.
Mikasa is a static character, this doesn't mean she's badly written she just has a different role in the story which works wonderfully with Eren's character that constantly evolves throughout the story even if his fundamental goal is always the same.
@@gakutoigawa8177 You seem to be confused, a great story always needs to have representation. I agree that representation alone isn't enough to make up for a bad story but you can't have a good story where there is only 1 type of person or there is multiple but they're all written badly except the one.
@Anita Remenárová there's no point of answering me when you didn't take the time understand what I wrote . If you did tough and still gave that answer, it would be an intellectual dishonesty.
I love Ochako a lot but she did get neglected in the story. I don’t think she's *just* a support character but she's great at a support role and is capable of saving a ton of people. She specifically focused on improving her combat ability too. Unfortunately she doesn't get many fights. After the tournament arc she's just developing in the background for the most part. But she is still developing. Also Class 1-A in general, not just the girls, get better at using their quirks. They learn what their limits are and also increase their limits. Momo doesn’t really get exhausted later on. Ochako vomits less. Mineta doesn't bleed anymore. Kaminari doesn't go stupid as often. You could put Midoriya in this group too. I enjoyed Nobara's character and her moments. I'd say more but it involves manga spoilers. Maki is like one of my favorite jjk characters. Love her.
Yona of the Dawn is one of my favorite anime with a strong female lead. She starts off as a bratty spoiled princess but grows into a very strong-willed heroine. I just wish it had gotten a season 2. As for MHA, I'm glad some of the later seasons have focused more on the female heroes with their own episodes and arcs, but Ururaka needs to be part of the main group.
@@annaavertho4944 She’s still a strong female character, having men in her group doesn’t change that. She killed a man trafficking women, saving them all.
@@annaavertho4944 it's not really a reverse harem anime/manga. You might think that way if you don't really know Yona of the Dawn but there isn't a reverse harem plot developed in the series. Yona is a strong female character, with leadership skills, she evolves and matures to know about the hardships her people is suffering, she becomes a great leader who knows about politics and the cruelty of the world. Yes, she has a group of boys who protect her, but the reason is she was always a cared for and protected princess, she never learned to defend herself, so it is normal that at first she does not know how to defend herself (besides, she does not have extraordinary powers like the ones the dragons have) but still decides to learn to use the bow (and uses it on the enemy) and the sword so that she can protect those she cares about. In addition, there are other strong female characters like Lily's bodyguards who use weapons and martial arts and there are also two princesses who use weapons and are considered generals. Yona of the Dawn is a Shojo with well-written female characters.
@@annaavertho4944 Have you SEEN Yona of the Dawn? There is no Harem, it's just Yona and Hak and the rest of the boys tag along with no romantic interest towards Yona whatsoever.
@@BunnyandMoon nah she got kidnapped more times than I can count in the manga , she had an opening to kill the murderer of her dad but as a typical shounen sakura she doesn’t hate him or watever , yona is as strong as the plot wants her to be and for any good moment there is a kidnapping and zeno and the boys gotta save her
At this point I feel like there needs to be a group for women (why not for guys too) who give solid anime recommendations that don't have kids or teenager being sexualized, harassment normalized or plain female characters as a norm😭
Yes!! I would love that kind of content. Sometimes I start a series bc the story is good. And as soon as the overly sexualized girl appears... I turn it off. I am really tired of this stuff, either that or the weird (kinda horny) little sister shows up. I'm out. :D So yeah I am always thankful for recommendations where I don't have to ignore the nasty fan service female "lead". 😅
@@jkhaos1235 If you haven't already check out a certain magical index. The main character is not female but there was eventually a spin off series made for one of the main female characters in the show, called a certain scientific railgun. Both stories are centered around magic vs science and the female lead in the spin-off is really powerful and well written, aside from the fact that she's very important to the plot of both series. Many people (including myself) think the main series is quite good but regard the spin-off as better simply due to the female lead being expanded on really well in her own anime.
I agree 100%. Weather it's current anime shows or old anime shows. There should be a group for people that want the characters to be treated as actual people. Because, yes I'll admit I had my pervted phase, but Jesus christ, it's redundant, and just not funny anymore. Now, I'm so desperate, I'm rewatching anime shows that are over a decade old, some almost twenty years old. Shows like Claymore, Wolf's Rain, Cowboy Bepop. They had maturity, the characters, both men and women were interesting, they had dreams, goals of there own. Cowboy Bepop, Faye Valentine was sexy, but she had spunk, attitude, could handle herself, she had her own back story, she was treated not just as a woman but as a human being. Ghost in the shell, motoko was hot, sexy, but she kicked ass, was intelligent, was the leader and commander of her unit, she questioned her meaning of existing. I'm honestly horrible when it comes to what is Shonen, and all the other categories of animes shows. So I apologize if I'm being rude. Death note was an excellent show, but sadly with Misa she was put in the dumb blonde stereotype, even though she clearly wasn't a airhead all of the time. Blood + was another great show of Saya who developed and grew throughout the series in her own way, and she kicked ass. Besides Cyberpunk Edgerunners, I stopped trying to watch modern anime because of how bad it's gotten.
@@Butterflywings011 i agree. anime today is just poorly written near but not quite there hentai. i had my hentai phase too. and i admit i will still read hentai sometimes but i dont want to see that stuff in regular shows that much. its distracting. i hate that so many anime today focus on schoolgirls or weird sisters and all that weird stuff. also loli stuff is pretty scary. todays anime feels like poorly written wish fullfillment mostly. thats why i only watch older stuff. i mostly watch and read slice of life, science fiction or seinen. because there is next to none fanservice in these genres.
I remember hearing somewhere in a video that was comparing western media and anime that in anime there's a lot of stuff that's very different than western media (boys getting nosebleeds after seeing girls, women/children being sexualized, romance between siblings) she didnt mention these specific examples and she was saying anime watchers are usually fine with this stuff because they are used to it and this wouldn't be in western media because most people who dont watch anime THINK its weird (emphasize on think because she said that) and anime fans are used to it since its normal in anime my problem with it is that it IS weird. not think. not normalized. it shouldn't happen. and she never addresses how it shouldn't happen she just says that people who dont watch anime are not used to it. I dont watch much anime but i dont think any amount of watching will change how i see the weird stuff going on
"lucy is making people do the work for her." in the first few seasons, yes. it has been told in the anime and manga multiple times that the celestial spirits are only as strong as their holder. lucy can also fight on her own with "Urano Metria" (yes she uses gemini with it but look at hibiki's reaction to her mastering it despite only knowing about it for a few months) girlie can summon multiple celestials at once and back to back. she uses a whip AND uses star dress which decreases the usage of celestials because she technically uses their powers.
Yess!! Fairy Tail may have a lot of fan service but it's female characters are some of the best written in shounen! Both in power and personality and there's so many of them too! I freaking love Lucy and her development! She has many badass fights of her own I would never say she was sidelined
I would argue Fiona from Shrek is one of those Shounen girls that could've been great. They introduced the idea of a damsel in distress being more in the first one but make her kinda sidelined until Shrek Forever After where she starts kicking butt, though she's ultimately reliant on Shrek to save her again. Okay but seriously, I think shounen anime and manga writers may want to look to other influences for inspiration as to how to write complex female heroes. Chris Clairmont was known as a a writer who created some badass and 3-dimentional female X-Men characters like Rogue, Shadowcat, Psylocke, and the fricken Dark Phoenix Saga! Also, maybe hire some talented female writers? That might help...
The best manga that a female mangaka has ever made is this one called "Domestic girlfriend". Please do read it, it openly spits on FMAB which has greatest female characters in anime.
Akatsuki no Yona is my absolute favorite example of character development of a female main character. Yona starts as a sheltered, spoiled, and helpless princess who endures countless traumatic experiences, but those experiences helped her develop into an inspiring and empathetic leader as well as a skilled archer. The way the writers paced that development was phenomenal. I really hope they make more anime seasons for Akatsuki no Yona cuz the manga is fantastic
The reason the character development of a female character is so good is because Yona of the Dawn is a shoujo series. ❤ ☺️ Honestly, I think people in general should give shoujo animes a try more often. They’re not only romance, there are action, fantasy and adventure ones too! And It’s SO RELIEVING to see well written characters for a change!
I think nami is written so well because she is a normal human who is capable of so much but she also give the audience someone to relate to because she DOES have limits due to not having a devil fruit power. She’s also the one to bring Luffy back to reality when he goes too far and really advocates for the rest of the crew
One of the great things about Arlong Park is that, even though the emotional high point is Nami asking Luffy for help, *no one* could watch it and think that Nami is anything but incredibly strong for fighting on her own for so long against impossible odds. I would be happy to see more women in One Piece getting serious set piece fights, but on a character level it works for me that Nami and Robin can hold their own when the chips are down, but mostly they want to focus on doing what they love.
One of the great things about Arlong Park is that, even though the emotional high point is Nami asking Luffy for help, *no one* could watch it and think that Nami is anything but incredibly strong for fighting on her own for so long against impossible odds. I would be happy to see more women in One Piece getting serious set piece fights, but on a character level it works for me that Nami and Robin can hold their own when the chips are down, but mostly they want to focus on doing what they love.
@@annoyingbookgirl That's one of the things One Piece did good. The gender, heck, even the species, does not matter. The main cast are capable in their own ways. Even underdogs has their time to shine.
I'm so glad I found this channel, the problem of women in anime has always been something I saw very clearly, but I couldn't find any content creator who spoke in depth about that topic. Now I realize how much I was missing before I started watching content in English
You summed it up perfectly: women in shounen anime are written as "basically a guy, a child that can't fend for themselves, or if they can fend for themselves they have to wear a bikini while doing it". Spot on!
Stories with that kind of characters doesn't last long anyway. In defense on popular stories for the sake of the argument and openness, those female characters are not the main protagonist or the center of the story. The spotlight is always on the main protagonist. In Naruto, Sakura definitely has the stats to fend herself and she's equip for healing, but she's always "useless" because Naruto must always save the day. Everyone in their subconscious knows that Naruto is the centre of the story so it fits right that we always follow his journey. That's why that manga/anime sticks until the very end. But yes, if only Kishimoto knew what to do with her character then we wouldn't have this caricature problem of Sakura being useless.
I don't think you understand the contradictory nature of the criticisms... "Women are basically written as guys." >What does this even mean? Uh, sure, okay, let's write a female character that's obssessed with boys and looking pretty. And male MCs tend not to be completely incapable of fending for themselves so we'll make this female character- "No. She can't be stereotypical obsessing over male characters and being pretty. She also has to be able to fend for herself!" >Oh. Well, okay. Um. Sure. No stereotypical girl behavior. We'll make her smart, clever and- "No, she has to be able to throw down with the boys." >But... okay sure, fine. She can throw down with the boys. She's kinda samey though, so what kinda of clothes do we use that could fix that? Bikinis and skirts and- "No, none of that stuff, just dress her normally like a guy." >Um... sure. Okay. "Oh my gosh, you're just writing women as guys." >*Sigh* The criticisms almost always lead to one of two outcomes. A female character that's basically a guy, or a Mary Sue that's perfect out the gate. When we get a balance of the two, we get a character like Sakura that get's ragged on for being that balance. You can't just swap her role with Naruto or Sasuke because then you're, "basically writing her as a guy". It's a Catch 22.
@@R.E.E.D. so writing a female character that uses modest dresses and pretty accessories, has equivalent power to her male counterparts and is a flawed but fleshed out character with her own goals and struggles is impossible?
I'm really confused about Erza? She really never acted like a damel in distress aside from in a fight with Jellal because he was her childhood friend. Other than she was was always a badass character which is why she is definitely one of my favorite female characters. She is very capable of saving herself and her friends and took down some very strong villains as well. The only thing true is that she was sexualized in her costumes but that's basically every character in the anime since fairy tail does not shy away from fanservice.
I thought the exact same thing. Say what you will about any other character in Fairy Tail, but other than "fan service" there's no metric where Erza doesn't stand at least equal to every guy in the show (save obviously the main protag and villain).
While I agree with the videos overall point, it does feel like she takes like the first arc of a lot of the characters she looks at and judges from there, as many of the girls in Fairy Tail get lots of opportunity to be more then damsels in distress (like Lucy and Erza), but because they aren't strong or are vulnerable in early arcs they get labeled as damsels. This is the same for Nami who she mentions as being a damsel as well, which is somewhat true in her introduction to the crew, but she's way more then just a damsel/weak fighter in later arcs (or at least from what I've heard and seen as I haven't stayed up to date with OP).
@@nicholasjacobs6605 Yeah but Erza is one of the strongest characters in the anime since the very beginning. And her personality is almost always putting on tough act. She is far from being a damsel at any point in the anime except the end of the Tower of Heaven arc where she is saved from Jellal by Natsu.
yeah, almost everything is good about her except the way she dresses (especially in fights).I really hate her extremely revealing clothing. but other than that almost everything is good or at least ok.
I think the most tiring thing about Uraraka for me is that her screentime is about the same as it had been, they just treat her as less capable. Like we had the bit with her being helpful and thinking on her feet, we had her origin (and she's the first established working-class hero in the show), and now she's 100% only the love interest and cannot function if Deku is around or even mentioned. It's so disappointing.
I agree with half of this, I do think that the amount of time she’s thinks about deku is a lot but, she has said she need a stop her feelings for him because he is working very to be a hero and that’s she is doing now. Yea she probably still has some feelings for him but she cares so much about as a friend too and in the recent chapters we see uraraka being really strong and badass.
im not rly caught up too much with the manga but as far as im aware, shes pretty much no longer an love interest or at least, she still likes deku but put aside her feelings and put her full focus on the war
i completely agree, and it’s so frustrating to see. The show tries to convince us that she’s a badass independent female character with things like the sports festival and her fighting toga, but it doesn’t have that ‘badass’ effect when her entire morale and goals are centred around Deku, and she is consistently sidelined (along with the rest of the female characters). It gets tiring to see shows constantly making women revolve around their crushes or love interests without any personal or independent thoughts. I love Uraraka but it’s sad to see how her potential was wasted.
Ok I have multiple problems with your problem with Erza And Wendy. “Characters like Erza and Wendy just fall into the background” not once have they done that.Erza has always been in the plot and important same with Wendy once she’s introduced. “She doesn’t do much in the grand scheme” That’s just wrong.Are we talking bout the same Erza?The one who destroyed 100 monsters?The same one who was the mvp of one of the most important arcs of Fairy Tail?The same one who came in clutch at Tenrou Island And Alvarez?The same one who’s currently Laxus’s equal and is only growing stronger?The same one who was the strongest at the beginning of the series?Cant be the same one. And Wendy?Shes the main healer for a first.And if you read 100yq that girl gets more development than Characters like Gray,Gajeel and Laxus hell arguably Natsu.Also Wendy Destroyed the Faces and was 1/3 of the reason they made it out of Edolas?You heavily downplayed their contribution to say that Mavis was better written than them when she really ain’t.
Yess!! Fairy Tail is one of my favourite shounens because of how good the female characters are! There are so amazing moments of the main girls! And most of the time they win their fights themselves! With an exception to Lucy, who also has few wins of her own and has protected her friends in desperate times. It is just wrong to say Erza and Wendy are sidelined because they are NOT they are literally part of the MAIN CAST and have amazing stories and development.
This video really is such a disappointment, because I was hoping to see Fairy Tail here for what it is - namely an exception to the rule, a shounen anime with a fantastically written cast of female characters. Erza is one of the strongest characters throughout the whole show, has multiple character arcs, is pretty much never used as a damsel in distress, has many strong character traits and flaws and keeps being relevant in every single arc after her introduction. To call her a badly written character is absurd.
@@Lindbluete Fairy Tail isn't the exception! Although it DOES have among the best female characters in japanimation, the industry as a whole has great female characters all the time. I'd be curious to know that youtuber's opinion on Madoka Magica, because that show is almost exclusively female and the characters are all fuckin awesome.
Aside from the disrespect to FT's ladies, she doesn't give Bleach justice when she only mentioned the two main girls. What about the side cast? Yoruichi who is hella capable and is one of Ichigo's mentors? Unohana who is hella powerful and terrifying (TYBW reveals)?
I really like how Tome is written in MP100, while she doesn’t necessarily fight in the series, she’s just an unapologetic weird girl and she has legitimate plot relevance whenever she shows up
Wish you had talked about Winrey and Hawkeye from FMA; it's been a hot minute since I read the manga (ok a few hot years 😅) but from what I remember middle school me was super hyped to see 2 strong, independent, and capable women as strong side characters (I'd argue there were times where they also felt like main characters). Since finishing that series I almost feel like we've been going backwards. From what I remember Hawkeye and Izumi-sensei never wore revealing clothing, were super strong, and both well-developed characters; while Winrey wore somewhat revealing clothing she also was incredibly capable and had her own motivations/character development. While I see the points you're making, I feel like no (mainstream) anime series has really come close to the proper female representation in anime as FMA did.
i agree, tho to add a point to think about the author of FMA is female. a lot of the big action/manga being talked about are often written by men. inuyasha for example, a fav of mine, also has these characteristics and was written by a female mangaka. in contrast when i used to read fairytail, i would often feel kind of objectified? or just straight up annoyed at how the female characters were being written? if sexism/internalized misogyny has indeed gotten worse in manga and anime than before that probably has to do with it being seen more as a consumable good than an art form as it's become more capable of mainstream profit 😬✨
Honorable mention is Noelle from Black Clover. She was literary introduced as weak character who cant even control her magic and she looked down to most people as noble. But she learned the basics,grew more than people expected,became more kind towards others and set goal to revenge her mother. Countless times fought Dark Triad's member and became strong enough to equally fight alonside with protagonist.
@@Yoboielmo unless you're talking about the mermaid form, no she isn't; the normal form doesn't show anything. I've read the Manga, and still there's still hardly any sexualization for any of the girls.
There are two reasons the criticism of Orihime is unwarranted. One, Bleach has pretty much a complete spectrum of female characters, as far as both roles and personalities go, so even though Orihime is (one of) the main female character(s), she's certainly not representative of the show's usage of women. Two, even if she were the *only* woman on the show, she doesn't fit the role of "damsel in distress"; not a hundred percent, anyway. In the clip you showed, she actually started off by fighting the villain, but he proved too much for her. Then later, even after she was told she shouldn't be involved in battles, she still chose to train and become a better fighter so she wouldn't need to be rescued again. And while she does become a prisoner, it's not because she was captured; it was because she surrendered in order to save her friends' lives. She wasn't some kidnapped princess who needed to be rescued, even though that's the surface story that's being told. She intended to remain a prisoner until she could find a way to destroy the bad guy's MacGuffin. And even though she was abused during her time as a prisoner, her heart remained intact. We saw that in the compassion she showed her abusers, healing them after they'd been torn apart themselves. Orihime is a much more complex character than she gets credit for being, and frankly, she's my favorite character in the show. She is absolutely not "trash".
I also like her relation with Ulquiorra the fact he was MUCH stronger than her, she never bow down to him, or cry and always stood her ground against him and even slap him at one point, and while he never admitted it (partially cause he didn't understand these feelings that were new to him) Ulquiorra definitly developped some sentiment for her, at least some respect in his own twisted way (also shown by the fact he never physically hurt her, his threats were only verbal and he never actually execute them).
*13:15** the best line in this video* "either write them as they're basically a guy, they're basically a child that can't fend for themselves, or if they can fend themselves they have to wear a bikini while doing it" 😂😭😭 FACTS
well ironically, people have been arguing that the best female characters are characters that happen to be female for years now. so can we than all of a sudden complain when many of them are just written like guys.
@@MALICEM12 1. *complain that only male characters are well-written* 2. *female characters get written better* 3. *complain that they're written like guys*
Hinata is not a well written character. She's powerful, but not only does she barely speak for herself, she also pushes the male view of what wonferful woman should be. She does what women love to do in their free time, knitting. Not that there's anything wrong with knitting. Oh, but of course she's a quiet, shy character who spends her time knitting stuff nobody wears instead of training or having cool fights.
I REALLY wished we saw her thoughts on the literal slavery happening in her clan...that was kinda a big thing but in shippuden she only think about naruto and the hyuuga's slavery are irrelevant
@@shay4988 it was mentioned in passing so I'm not satisfied, not that that matters bc we still never once heard hinata's thoughts on slavery in her clan...writers never gave any time to a clan other than uchiha....
I'm not happy with how they developed her either but at the end of the day she has two kids and a husband to look after and she's retired plus the opponents are god tier aliens and now cybernetic robot androids things so yeah I would retired too if I was her.
I do feel like Fairy Tail deserves more credit in the more future episodes. I've watched all nine seasons and not once has Erza truly needed help from a guy. Sure, she has that infatuation with the one person, but she doesn't rely on his for physical strength whatsoever. There are tons of times people sat back and looked at Erza, amazed by her strength. And as for Lucy, she grew a lot and became way stronger. In the last season, even, she actually does fighting alongside her key whatchamacallits. If it wasn't for the sexual appeal they were constantly doing, putting the girls in disgusting outfits, they would be much more respected. But yeah Juvia is a lost cause.
Personally I have no problem with the outfits since most of the time it’s just for fan service, non of the characters are too creepy to go to points where it’s making the actual characters uncomfortable so I don’t really mind it. I think it mostly has to do with camera angles but still I think it’s pretty limited in what it shows, in the anime at least.
Yes I love fairy tail and I always think erza is a wonderful character and nezako too! The 100 year quest shows awesome character development. For me it’s art and they also sexulize the guys with abs and the perfect hair
I was thinking the same! Fairy tail has extremely sexualised characters, I will argue that both male and female are draw as quite sexy and seductive. But aside from the appearance, I think all the female character are quite well written. Erza is one of the strongest member of her guild, she actually become the master at the end if I remember correctly, and is shown time and time again as competent fighter. But she’s not one dimensional, I found the exploration of her past and her story with Jellal quite interesting. And I can say something similar for almost every character. Maybe aside Juvia…
Not like her infatuation with Jellal is a bad thing, on the contrary, it adds to her character. She has proven multiple times how she doesn't let her feelings get in the way of doing what's right. I'd argue her relationship with him is one of the most interesting things about her.
We need to stop this “if they don’t get fights, they’re useless”. Nami and Robin are hella useful and important. But because they don’t fight as much as other characters (they’re not really combatants like that) they’re useless? The crew wouldn’t even still be around if it wasn’t for Nami. Flawed ass logic.
To be fair she didn't say much. I was waiting for her to say something about Nami. Right, saying she called her "useless" may be a stretch, but c'mon, she is just NOT talking about Nami clearly not being a physical fighter (but always holds her own) and yet still being one of the best written characters in the series.
I love both Nami and Robin and I don't think they are useless but the point of the video wasn't to hate on them. It was to showcase that in a piece of media like shonen, men get to be badass fighters so why can't women? Why do they always have to be the support? Why can't female characters be capable combatants?
A shounen female character can have a crush on the MC all she wants, but a least give her a life outside of the guy. That's the problem I have with the female characters from the Shounen.
GINTAMA. The women. The girls. They are everything in this show. Not only are they all different and unique in their own way, they're also super relatable in many aspects. Kagura is the most adorable thing ever. Not only is she super funny and cute, she gets a rage scene (a girl rage scene in a shonen, how often does that happen??). She's hella strong (possibly one of the strongest from her show) but can also be affectionate and caring. She's a tomboy but loves doing typical "girl things" and gets to experience all the stuff girls went through in their life. She has a super interesting backstory involving her naturally violent genetic and her family. She is in no way wasted, and I mark my words, she is amazing. She isn't just standing there playing *the girl role*, she has a place among the cast as the cute daughter that has ambitions and preferences and would do anything to stay with Gintoki and Shinpachi. She's got her own little romance, friendships and family moments and the author didn't forget one thing about her. And I'm not even talking about the other women.
is it too much to ask to have a strong female character without making her a fanservice object 😔 it makes me so uncomfortable and its hard to enjoy a show with it,, still though, im really glad I watched this video and i appreciate you talking about it!! I feel like the more we talk about it the more better female characters there will be!
Go play/watch yo-kai watch, boys and enbies in this franchise can be treated as fanservice objects ironically but female characters are treated with as much respect as you can get in a nonsensical incomprehensible parody of everything. For a hideous generalization : female nudity can be teased and immediately denied in the funniest way possible and men being handsome or muscular is comedy material.
The Shounen you are referring to is mostly those serialized in Weekly shonen Jump. Jump has a system where it's serialized weekly and those that have actually bought the publication have the right to vote on which manga to continue. It's this post card you send in with your top 3 favorite series that week. When your manga doesn't get enough votes it's called Uchikiri. That's why some manga end really abruptly. The shortest is 10 weeks. The authors are tailoring the manga to those that buy the publication, mostly boys in japan. If they don't, they get the axe and lose their livelihood. Female chatacters have to appeal to young boys in japan. Of course boys want dream of saving the damsels in distress. Of course boys are going to relate more to girls they like liking someone else.
Btw female protagonist battle manga exist. Gunm is really cool. Kazeno tani no nausicaa, akame ga kill, claymore, stone ocean, medaka box, Tokyo esp, tepuu, yawara, Akatsuki no yona, shakyugan no shana
I agree with you , which pose a question , since the mangakas tries to write good female characters it's very possible that the editing team in shounen jump may not want strong female characters which we can clearly see in all of their works ,also it's stated that they let their writers do what they want but at the end they tell them to change everything which really impact the quality of the work it's been stated as an inside joke before in the Manga community that whatever you write the editor will just tell you to write something like Naruto at the end of the day , the Mangaka"Masashi Kishimoto" himself said that as an advice to not write all of you work before hand since it will be heavily changed , We see how the company policy makes a lot of difference in the quality of the work and they are not above bad decisions and corruption , honestly now the Mangas with some good writing are not part of shounen jump . Like FMAB, Hiromu Arakawa also didn't well with arslan senki with the shounen jump magazine and then she get back with square Enix magazine with her new work and it's doing great.
I think Chainsaw Man is an example of a good manga (and anime) with well written and important female characters. Yes, they are sexualized sometimes, but it never feels unnecessary or like it's just there to please fans. The female characters all have good designs, are strong and can fend for themselves, and each serve their own purpose outside of a character's love interest or as the token female character
Chainsaw Man is the only Shonen i know of in which its female characters are equally popular, if not more popular than their male counterparts. In the csm popularity poles the girl to boy ratio in the top 10 was 5:4 (1 being Kobeni's car). If its female characters are so well liked then csm must be doing something correct.
You people need to stop overusing terms where they don't belong, the women in Chainsaw man rarely get sexualized. The only instance I think of is Power on the beach in the opening but that one is very much a self-aware nod to the audience. Women simply being in sexual situations isn't sexualization, that would also need to include lack of purpose and objectification neither which happens in any of the raunchier scenes.
@@anitaremenarova6662true that and plus makima is meant to be sexually appealed cuz her whole character is manipulation by seduction and imo shes an excellent written character
Akane Tsunemori is a very strong lead in Psychopass. Not a shounen but she’s an inspiring, tenacious, and capable leader who exhibits many of the character traits common to shounen protagonists. 10/10 show and characters.
@@ryanstarlight8018 Fullmetal alchemist. Pretty much every female character in that is a total badass. Fairy tail. Ignoring this video. Both Ezra and Lucy are immensely powerful and Ezra is even made guild leader at one point. Both have good story arcs and character growth until the entire series went to shit. Bleach. Rukia once she has her powers back becomes a total badass again and eventually “spoilers ahead” gets made a captain. Black Clover most the female characters there are immensely powerful and adapt. Storywise kinda eh but that’s pretty much all the characters as since the beginning it’s felt like the author is just of fast forward mode to boost through the manga as quickly as possible. There’s honestly a lot. Most just seem to see tits and go “oh she’s fanservixe” which yes nearly every female character in a shonen manga and anime will have fanservice moments because the target audience is young boys. So while that’s it’s own thing. Fact is take that complaint out and the female characters in a lot of shonen are badasses in their own right and when they do come off kinda shit most times it’s because overall that’s how most the side characters are treated. Theirs just gets noticed more because you get the extra part of “oh they’re only here for fanservice”.
Nami is one of the team members who not only isn't useless, but we see over and over again throughout the series how much the team needs her, and how much they screw up navigating and planning when she's not around to help them. Except that not only is it not a surprise when she helps, it's just that her fighting style is very characteristic of her. And when she fights, she just does it her way with weather science and cunning. Because she is not a man, she is not trying to be a substitute for a man. She's just Nami, which is wonderful. And Robin of course - who simply has fighting strength, wisdom, knowledge and crazy abilities either with her powers or with her mind.
Robin is also super important, she's the only one who can read ponegliffs, the last survivor of Ohara. She used to be an assassin, Miss All Sunday, so she's not to be underestimated.
Honestly I'm still frustred about robin I wish oda writer her way more combat focused. she is so strong with a great df but isn't used that much. In every other aspect she is great though. I'm saying this as authentic and respectfull robin onlyfan simps
@@theflashgordon193 honestly she probably got my 5th favorite fight out of wano. Right behind luffy vs kaido, kid & law vs big mom, zoro vs king, and franky vs Sasaki. 5th may not sound like much but with how many amazing fights are in wano that's pretty impressive.
Lucy has been improved in the newer manga but it’s slow, it’s the type of improvement and characterization she should’ve had with natsu since at least season 2, definitely a lot better then when she was used as support or cannon-faddor or even if that.
When Madoka Magica exploded, the dark genre inversion idea broke through into other shows, but the fact that it was a hit of badass women fighting seemed to not really register. I'm a guy, and I love strong female characters. Give me more like Roberta from Black Lagoon!
@@MALICEM12 Mami lol, she's 15 but has a very sexualized design and body type, Homura too, when she become a demon, her transformation seems to be very sexualized despite her being 14, Madoka, Sayaka and Kyoko's designs are fine tho for me
As a boy, I feel like the writers are just taking me for a fool, when they include useless female characters or immersion-breaking fanservice. Thank you for talking about this!
Aight she made great comments abt the naruto,bleach but the way she tried generalizing one piece in the same category as those two without doing any research is just disrespectful
@@onepiecefan9249 As a big One Piece fan, I actually dislike the way that women are portrayed in the story and animation, after around episode 600. To give one spoilerfree example: Around episode 1000, an impactful fight between a woman and a man takes place. And instead of showing the fight in a deserving way, the camera literally ZOOMS into the women's armpit and tries to present her in a suggestive way, all around! I know that this is an extreme case, but I still think, that female character presentation in One Piece is not as good as it could be. Feel free to disagree. I would love to hear more opinions on this topic!
I've never understood One Piece being grouped into the weak female cast argument. Nami and Robin's character don't revolve around in love with Luffy; even Hancock who simps for Luffy pulled her weight as a character and provided Luffy with an environment to grow when he was at his lowest just before the primeskip. Even the underwhelming female characters in One Piece are going to play a huge role in the future with Shirahoshi being a ancient weapon and it looks like Rebecca will be Viola's body guard one day when she becomes the queen of Dressrosa. Most recently we've had great character writing for Bonney,Ginny and Stussy
Emma from the promised neverland was super good at the start of the manga and was one of the most likeable girl characters, since she could fight and never gave up. But as the manga progressed she got very dull as long with normal and ray
I would argue that Emma is the greatest fighter in the manga as well, she is the one who fights most times and while Ray is good, he isn't as good as her.
I personally enjoyed Ezra as she gets plenty of cool moments like fighting her mom or when she’s like fighting the person who blinded her and amplified pain. And on over fanservice, which can be very annoying (that tournament) but I feel she maintains her agency when shit goes down and I think she’s never damseled
Erza most definitely is not damseled in any way. Lucy and Wendy started out lackluster and got much stronger as the series progressed, Mirajane (my personal favorite) has really good moments, Juvia does lose points for stalking gray for a decent chunk of the series but also liked her water magic and her relationship with gray did feel natural, and Mavis was a character I liked the second she showed onscreen with her heart of gold, her tragic past, and her relationship with Zeref was truly heartbreaking.
I agree with you for the most part but that fight with her mom was so disappointing, i mean Irene ended up killing herself like?? I get that she was like really strong so there's no way Erza couldve won but still, anyways besides that yeah sometimes the fanservice goes too far in my opinion but for the most part she can handle herself which i like
Fan service is one of those problems anime trains you to ignore until it hits ridiculous levels. But as far as erza being damseled, i think it only happened once or twice which is an acceptable amount, even Batman gets damseled from time to time. Damseling isn't inherently bad, its when its overused that a character starts to feel like dead weight and only exists to be captured so the hero has motivation to save them.
the line "targeted towards young males" have become outdated, literally every age group/gender enjoy shonen. Even shojo include character development in their male characters. instead we should point out HOW MUCH THESE AUTHORS KNOW ABOUT WOMEN AND THEIR EXPERIENCES GROWING UP they should research a bit and incorporate it in their story lines. And yes there are shown progess too (JJK, AOT, TPN,DS)
bro have you not seen anything passed those titles it's like the anime men said once people's brains refresh after a year. Let me crack my knuckles of older anime and manga People tend to forget or just don't pay attention to because it's not popular even though they were back in the day. Claymore, Medaka Box, Strawberry panties which was made on shonen jump. Blood +, xxx Holic, Fruit basket, selti ray if I am say right, gunslinger girl, School rumble, Zach bell, mar, Tenchi moya, blood c, apple seed, sakura wars anime / movies, fate and everything connected too it and there's a lot And they are finally remaking their oldest stuff, hell who remembers garden of sinners,which is connected to fate, Zach bell, mar, witch blade,hell girl,de-gray man, Peach girl, black cat, hitman Reborn and many more I bet people can tell you more than I can if they want too. More than I can at the moment. And I can name 100 more. There's something for everyone but not everything's is for everybody. Everybody should be allowed to write whatever they want Australia levels of censorship or China. Like if You don't like it don't read it. For every overlord There's a Prince of tennis. No one should write For accommodating for everybody that makes no sense. And Certainly not a way to write. If you believe that look what happened to comics and look how bland and disrespectful that has Become The disrespect to those common book characters can never be recovered that's how bad it became You wanted to become like that? There's a Genre for everybody in anime and manga. You don't see people flying too the anime called free Telling them they should accommodate for How boys really should feel and be have and look. Like if you don't believe me look in the comments section of that anime or the the ending and or op comments section.
Also every time I have someone avogating for change and stuff in the modern day it never ends well you know it's true. Is never changes for the better it always gets worse. there are examples of this video games ,comics, Dungeon dragons, movies. I don't trust nobody that advocates that stuff nowadays. And then the media goes online and insults everybody and The director and everybody else and then people shell for those companies. It's a tiring wrench and repeat. If they don't like it they censor it really really badly. Stares at China in Australia and many other stuff in America. Also Change people want are Netflix Death note, db Evolution, he man robot, star wars and Currently cowboy bebot dmc devil may cry. I'm sorry but I don't trust no one in the advocates that kind of stuff And I'm of tired of it.
@@lonelywolf5659 Agreed that not everyone can be inclusive in one anime and author's have freedom to portray a character as to they like. But if you consistently make/design/write characters that are majorly female as weak and they are just there to show off their boobs and asses and are not add anything to the plot then what message does it convey. I for one believes that anime plays a huge impact on our views or give inspiration especially shonen which promotes that not to give up, chase your dreams, friendship is important, etc then why would they portray all girl character just for objectification, unhelpful , non- friendly ? Is it so much to ask if for every dumb girl character you make there is smart one too (in the main cast) so that the balance is conserved? There is nothing wrong with being weak ,fragile or dumb just as there is nothing wrong with being strong and smart. Only picking one characteristics using it again & again is a problem. Moreover to your second comment, even I do not wish toh have Netflix"s Death Note or attacking the author, artists, production team. We all are anime lovers, we can see what impact did it make in our society, reflect on it, debate on it and then move forward on a new path. We dont have to revisit those animes and re-write the contents to suit to every Individual needs, we can only highlight it, in the hope that they will consider these points to make much better story in the future.
So we should overwrite the likes of the artist now cause some are upset about few characters. Yes , yes. What is the main focus of anime fans, gender studies or good story? ,I think this is a rhetorical question. What about the well developed ones no who cares , females in anime are trash manime fans are sexist . We also agree that it would be cool if some of the characters could have being given different creative direction or some might find that the developments and character arcs pointless , still I think the artist did a good job, they made a good story and likeable characters. Should one stop enjoying a well written story cause they feel like there are missed opportunities or will it make the anime "trash " . Its no wonder art is dying.
As a guy, my favorite shonen woman is probably Jolyne Cujoh, not only is she a very good female lead but she has many more badass moments than fanservice ones, probably my 2nd favorite Joestar behind Johnny
Nezuko has agency to save her brother. Its actually a beneficial relationship. Its not the boy saves girl trope. Its the nezuko saves tanjiro and tanjiro saves nezuko. Its perfectly balanced and I liked that
@panko off topic (kind of??) but i kinda feel like since Nezuko was basically in a coma for two years, thats the reason she doesn't talk (even when she bit the bamboo muzzle) like maybe since she hadn't talked or said a single word for two years straight it just kinda feels weird to her to talk or something
@@FreakyOverhaul Its still weird in a series where every demon talks (except the Spider demon dad be guy) but she doesn't. She wears that to prevent her biting people or for others to not see her fangs. Either way its a strange choice even though the manga was written by a woman. She acts almost child-like despite her being only a year younger than Tanjiro, and she has very little agency of what's going on around her. She's damn near a plot device, a cute plot device, but still....to this day I think it was a bad idea making the Kamado household so large.
@@jamalhartley5863 I'm assuming you don't read manga so I can't spoil anything All I can say is that I get rather anxious when people saying nezuko can't talk 😭😭
what gets me about sakura is that she was implied to be very intelligent book wise. she easily could have been the nami or at least the brains and trap person in the group her healing and super strength being a bonus
She was hyped up as smart, and having great chakra control, and also had multiple moments where she resolved to become strong and even some arcs where she was good and got our hopes up. And then she went back to being useless and neglected by the story, litterally watching Naruto train and not training herself. Sakura is the tragedy of lost/wasted potential.
@@hyunweewoo That never would have happened. Naruto is street smart and has a keen sense for battle, and Sasuke has a sense for battle too and isn't that much behind in academic intelligence either. Plus, that moment was meant to be written as a rare moment they got along
Girl, Dorohedoro is a great example of good written female characters (all of them really) I highly recommend at least watching the anime (: it’s also made by a woman, loved your take on the subject
Dorohedoro has one of my favourite casts in general! hope Dai Dark gets faster chapter releases. Magi is also written by a woman and has well written female characters but this starts to fall off in the final arc - still one of my favourites and very well worth a watch!
For real, calling Erza or Lucy one-dimensional is ridiculous. I agree with the criticism of oversexualization in Fairy Tail, that always bothered me as well. But calling the female characters bad is just stupid - they're often much more interestingly written than the male characters.
One thing I liked were the female characters in fairy tail like Lucy and Erza. Mind you, I watched this show years ago as a kid so I don't remember everything. I remember a really powerful moment when Lucy's dad died and she said something like "does it make me a bad person that I'm not crying?" And I really resonated with that. A lot of the female characters had really powerful moments. I do know that the fanservice began to get in the way of the plot as things continued, but I do feel like it should be noted.
@@RKNancy I honestly didn't mind the fan services, the boys just got it as much like look how many times Gray got naked and even natsu's clothes getting destroyed during a fight 😳
I hate how Lucy was always naked, and groped. She went flying naked during the fight with future rogue and I was like wtf is this when I watch it. Is that really necessary? Excessive fan service. It makes his readers a bunch of horny boys.
I need to rant about Lucy Heartfilia. Why does Lucy constantly get shit for summoning her spirits? like.. that’s her magic. and she’s really good at it, and it gets stronger over the course of the show. She literally says multiple times that she wants to fight alongside her spirits and not use them as shields. And she does! (Especially now that she has her star dresses) But she mostly helps the guild using her intelligence and kindness anyway. I don’t like this modern-feminist idea that good female character = FIGHT GOOD. Don’t get me wrong, It’s annoying that Mashima always puts her in perilous situations where she needs to get saved, and how much she’s used for fanservice but Lucy is a great female character otherwise. She has a spunk and confidence that other female MCs don’t have, and she’s relatable. Her character is the epitome of girls supporting girls as she has so many great female friendships. Her entire character doesn’t revolve around Natsu. When Natsu disappeared for a year she was sad about it yeah but she girlbossed her way through it. She pursued her writing career, she trained, and she kept tabs on all the members of FT so they could be a guild again. By the end of the series not only was she a much stronger mage, but she finally published the novel she was working tirelessly on since the beginning of the series and won an award for it! good for her. also it’s always overlooked that she’s a NEWBIE mage. she didn’t grow up in a guild like everyone else. she’s meant to have humble beginnings, it’s not her fault everyone else on her team is ridiculously OP. Lucy is still stronger than the majority of Fairy tail wizards. (also i disagree with what u said about erza. she consistently has major fights, and is still a leader. she became guild master briefly. she’s definitely more goofy now but that’s just apart of her development. she’s more comfortable being herself and not wearing that metaphorical armor anymore. again, good for her
also celestial spirit magic consistently has plot relevancy. its lucy’s ancestral magic and it’s. really important to her as it’s a connection to her mom. she can literally pull beings from another dimension to help her fight. plus, the spirits fight using HER magic power. ok i’m done
no i need to keep going. most girls in anime have really docile polite personalities. lucy is the exact opposite of that. she’s loud and confident and weird and i love that about her. she so aggressively independent. she was literally living life as a princess but liberated herself so she could live the life she wanted. she ran away from home at 16 and never looked back! she’s not a passive character at all. i think people mistake her kindness as weakness, when her kindness has helped the guild on multiple occasions. she has her own ambitions and dreams. i just love her so much. i hope she gets more time to shine in 100 years quest. she hasn’t gotten a solo fight yet.
That's the larger problem with videos like this. It's not that they don't have a good overall point, but they just assume not bothering with more than surface level analysis is enough to coast on. It seriously reduces the issues into something very easy to dismiss as lacking context to much of interest to talk about. The Lucy sucks because she doesn't fight herself thing is the worst example of this trend because it chooses to take a persona disinterest in that type of magic and equates it to a more reasonably objective issue with Lucy having no agency in her sexualization. There's more room to analyze Celestial Magic and Lucy's use of it, but this person isn't interested in doing something as serious as that. Ironically, one of the biggest FT critics out there, Craftsdwarf, actually does this and it's a good video.
@@verymelonman12 oh shit you're right that's like saying a necromancer/ summoner isn't a good class because they aren't fighting. When they litterally spawn armies or fucking dragons
I will... defend Lucy from Fairy Tail somewhat. The whole point of her power isn't that she relies on others to save her. It's that her bonds with her celestial spirits are her strength. So the stronger the bond, the stronger her spirits are. She fails at the beginning because she's starting out. But she does attempt to fight alongside them with her whip and gets better and even summons more than one spirit at a time as the series goes on. After the second timeskip she does get a major upgrade with her stardresses which made her a more physical combatant and she really showed that she was on par. She also does have a clearly defined goal, and that is that she wanted to be a published author as well as a wizard. I think people look down on Lucy for two reasons. One is that her power primarily focuses on summoning spirits (sort of forgetting that she is meant to represent friendship as that is incredibly key to the series. Like Natsu treasures it as well, but I feel like Lucy embodies it and makes more of an effort to keep bonds with everyone). as a result it's not as flashy or cool as the other characters. the second is that... yeah. She is done dirty in terms of nearly always being made into fanservice. And there were moments where Mashima did give her a cool moment but somehow felt the need to write Natsu or Gray as needing to be there. (Note when she rewrote E.N.D and Gray just sucked out the poison out of her. Like I feel that they could've used her ancestral power to kind of help in the end) So, Lucy's issue was she got some potential. But she got nerfed like Sakura. The difference I'll give her is that she does have her own goals and isn't just SAID to be strong. She HAS proven it, and the plot to make the boys look better literally nerfed her. (like the fight in the magic games. everyone knew she was going to win. But someone cheated and canceled her magic. If she didn't have some potential. they wouldn't have done that) I can't defend the fanservice. All I can say is that if you can look past the fanservice, the women of Fairy Tail can be decent fighters... sometimes...
Thank you so much for this Lucy can definitely be see as annoying and not as strong, as the other characters and disliked by other ppl because of this which is totally uncalled for, but I would disagree to the part where she is “nerfed” to just become fan service. Yeah there’s a lot of her wearing revealing outfits and parts where she almost has nothing to cover herself but because she doesn’t let that stop her even in the worst circumstances really shows how strong she is.
Spoilers: I would recommend Fuuko Izumo from Undead + Unluck. Yes she is the supporting protagonist of the main male character and sort of a glorified power source/boost to his battle style; not to mention their early encounters are rife with problems. But throughout the first half of the series she was growing stronger emotionally to the point when the second half came about she became the super badass action main character where the lead guy is no where to be seen. I definitely love her arc.
I get mad when people say Nami is one of those useless female character that only exist to give fanserivce. Nami is so intelligent and have been useful throughout the whole show and she is badass without having to kick ass like the moster trio, she is perfect the way she is and she is really well written. Nami get alot of screen time and she can do more then just navigate, she have proven to be able fight too and have been winning her own battles. As a female character she is done right. She is also good at manipulating her enemies and is often outsmarting them. How is she a damsel in destress? Sure she have been saved time to time but she have saved the others in the crew many times too. We need to remember that she is just a normal human with no powers and still she managed to kick ass using her weapon.
I can't count how many times Nami has dispatched over 100 men simultaneously with her thunder tempo. She is a wicked witch of lightning and I'm sure nobody wants to get in her way.
Then they would give all female character realistic design, even if she is shown strong and smart, don't be stupid. In the end everyone knows she is only there to be the eye candy 🤦♂️🤮. She is just bulma on steroids, just there for fan service but gave movements for the sake of it. Don't be a fool
@@mmn7209 Both male and females characters in One Piece have weird designs and I am actually loving it! That is what makes One Piece One Piece. That's just it, the characters are never boring! They do fanservice but I don't feel like it's getting in the way of the story at all. At the end of the day Nami for example is never useless, Nami is also the 3:d most popular character in the entire show and is even more popular then Luffy in some regions like in Europe, Latin America, Caribbean and in Oceania, she is the 2:d most popular character in Africa, North America and in the Middle East making her the 3:d most popular character globally. I can assure you that fanservice is not the reason for why she's popular. She is a popular character because she is simply amazing and nothing else.
I'm not far in the show but I appreciate that the addition of Usopp means that Nami isn't the only main character who DOESNT have insane fighting skills.
I never expected that because I knew she was irrelevant to the plot. Wasn't Hermione treated just as bad? She was never really seen as part of the "gang" and Ron was terrible to her. Did you actually read or watch Harry Potter?
Remember how in the beginning of Naruto, Sakura supposedly had better chakra control and knowledge than both Naruto and Sasuke? She was setup to be the tactician and chakra control genius of Team 7, what the fuck happened?
Sakura does some stuff in multiple arcs in shippuden...yes there's a huge chunk in shippuden where she is sidelined or makes things worse is useless and in part 1 she has 2 good episodes and even stalls to protect naruto and sasuke once but is useless the rest of the time sadly besides being used for manipulating the audience to emote and be a damsel or doormat for sasuke and abusive aka give some comedy to fans towards naruto....part 1 sakura was a joke but they used that to say she developed for shippuden...it's lazy but I get why kishi did it that way
I really like The Promised Neverland. Though it’s a shonen, Emma is the main character and is really well written. Throughout the books her development and characterization is very realistic and inspirational, and other female characters throughout the series are uplifted as well and play a vital role. Off the top of my head I can list Emma, Gilda, Isabella, Krone, Mujika, Violet, Barbara, and there’s more but I can’t remember all their names off of the top of my head. They are not any less intelligent and important than the male characters. Emma’s traits associated with femininity (sensitivity, kindness) are not seen as a weakness but make her stronger, and additionally male characters are encouraged to display those traits as it is healthy to and helps them heal from trauma. (Another thing, I LOVE the way this series approaches mental health. Very realistic and has some beautiful moments of healing.) Could not recommend the series enough.
ANALYSIS OF THE WOMEN OF CHAINSAW MAN VIDEO IS OUT!
ua-cam.com/video/xEEomG4iK4g/v-deo.html
I wanted to ask a question tho how is rukia a damsel in distress? She's a grest character with a good arc
For (I think) battle shounen female leads I can only think of Maka from "Soul Eater", Rinka Urushiba from "Tokyo ESP" and Kyoko Karasuma from "Kyoko Karasuma", it's been a while since I read it but "D. Gray Man" is a manga written and drawn by a female mangaka. The manga "Ga-Rei" is pretty balanced, if I remember correctly.
@@titan9546 apparently, because it happened once, that's enough to label her a damsel in distress.
But the shows she said are good (soul eater and Inuyasha), didn't the girls have to be saved at least once as well? I can't comment on soul eater because I haven't watched it, but I know it happened in inuyasha.
A simple rule of thumb: There are exceptions but generally if the shounen is written by a woman it will portray women properly. If it's written by a man, not so much.
@@kirbyjoe7484 shonen was mainly focused on a male demographic back then it's changing now, bleach is the only big anime which had well written female characters this youtubwr hasn't even watched it if she thinks rukia is a damsel in distress
Honestly, Uraraka's quirk has soo much potential and can be used in so many different ways but she literally has to get tired and gag every 10 seconds
She's the Daphne of the east🤣🤣🤣
her power fits that of a villain so no, you won't see her doing cool shit.
Yeah but after season 4 she has improved a lot and doesn't really get sick
she improves a lot later on in the story. gets new upgrades and stuff too.
Spoiler below
When toga awakened her quirk, she used uraraka's gravity to brutally kill a lot of people by raising them into the sky and making them fall to their deaths. So yeah. It's not uraraka using her own quirk but there's an example on how it can be used effectively. Uraraka also got new arm attachments which she can swing around, attach to stuff and use as weapons.
Well with an OP power like that, they would have to make some drawbacks, even more so since she's a side character
Sad thing about Sakura was that she HAD potential in the first few episodes. She was the most intelligent of the three, the main genjutsu expert, had better chakra control than the other two, she had that inner split personality that made her immune to mind control, and we didn't know anything about her parents, which is prime material for a plot twist.
But none of that was ever expanded upon. She was just turned into the token medic cheerleader, like all the other girls in Naruto.
Imagine if Sakura had gotten as much character development as Sasuke.
Agreed. I personally think ALL of Naruto's females had a lot of potential.
They gave her super strength, sannin training and evasive training and she still gets wrecked!? She’s a one woman army at that point 😅
I despise that bossy bitch
@@Vocal0idSupermacy_gumimikuSoo agreed, especially Hinata. I actually really liked Temari when we were first introduced to her, she has a really interesting ability and she saved Shikamaru, though I stopped watching Naruto when I was to tired of Sakura's treatment, the "she would make a great wife" comments, and the occasional random misogynistic comments
Kishimoto was cookin with her on the very first parts of Naruto only to fall in the end, at the very least he understood that he made a mistake when writing her.
About Shinobu, I also love how her motivation is based on revenge. She is angry. But not angry for the sake of being cute or not taken seriously(like a Tsundere for example). Her feelings of revenge is justified and she doesn't sit around and weep. She doesn't wait for someone to do the work for her. Shows that anger and revenge is not just a masculine trait or that only men have that form of motivation. Woman can have those traits too. Growing up I never saw these qualities in shounen woman and its refreshing.
The best part about Shinobu is that out of all the Hashiras, she's the weakest one in terms of physical strength. But the way she makes up for it is awesome
Yess
Shinobu also is super smart. Instead of going against her body or giving up since she is too small to decapitate demons, she came up with her own method by inventing wisteria poison. Not enough people take into account how amazing that is considering she was only 14 at the time, she's a prodigy like Muichiro but in terms of intelligence not strength
@@lucyheartfilia2015I love how she’s also not shown to be weak because she’s a girl. Mitsuri is super strong, and almost like a foot taller if I remember correctly. Shinobou (sp?) lacks strength because of her incredibly small stature, but she also gains agility and through her cunningness sand agility she becomes a formidable opponent.
Agree. I love the fact that Shinobu being physicilly weak was not a trope for holding her back rather it was portrayed as an obstacle she needed to overcome in order to stand at the same grounds with the super strong people around her, which really adds even more to her character. Love her so much..
I really loved Mitsuri's backstory from Demon slayer. It provides a lot of context on why female characters are written the way they are on shounen anime. Mitsuri was basically dumped by her crush because in the society where she lived in it was not considered normal for a woman to be strong and expressive and different. No man wanted to be with a woman who is stronger than he is. At one point Mitsuri starts holding off her strength in fear that if she revealed her true powers, people would perceive her as a monster, because it's unacceptable for women to be strong.
@@aradhaybharadwaj1649 I don’t think it's a stupid reason though. About 100 years ago I bet a woman's entire human value was evaluated through male validation, and it was a common opinion that women need to married off and that they can't live without a man taking care of them. Her reasonings go deeper than she puts into words. It's not like she was only thinking of guys 24/7 or being a simp. I just think a woman in the Taisho era being concerned about marriage is a valid reasoning, it's realistic, but of course you are entitled to your opinion 🙏
@@aradhaybharadwaj1649no that wasn't her reason for joining, if you watched the anime she was scouted and stayed because there was finally an environment where no one could repress her real self. Part of that real self involves finding someone who loves her for who she is, big appetite and muscles and all, is there anything wrong with that? Saying women shouldn't desire these things at their own volition is anti feminist.
@@gilliantoh4658 now you see what these people are really arguing for. They know damn well that other genres exist but they only complain so that they can control other people and medias into thinking like them.
@@gilliantoh4658 wow!! I like your comment so much
@@coolchamp2902 ppl really thinking girls aiming to find their prince is not feminist are the real anti feminists lol
Anyway the whole video is shortsighted and way out of date.
I always found it odd that the justification for poorly written women in shounen (or any media really) is because of the male demographic, implying men under no circumstance can view women as actual people 💀
What's poorly written according to you?
@@Mr_Mistah Basically any girls utilused only for fan service and nothing else especially when they're literally children, any girl in mushoku tensei (I didn't get that far because that show was gross so I don't know every girl but I can imagine they don't get much better in a show promoting pedophilla, most of the side girls in mha except idk maybe all might's predecessor was good I stopped watching, orihime in bleach, sakura, Karin, tenten, temari, hinata (though I know many like her)in naruto, asuna and the other harem girls in sao... just random girls off the top of my head. I tried to not to mention straight up ecchi or other harem anime because I feel like it's definitely a given they're written as stand ins for the guys to stare at their bodies or fawn over the male mc.
Characters I actually like... all the girls in FMA, AOT, Rukia from bleach (I haven't seen that much of the show so idk if she sucks later which shonen sometimes does), Tsunade from naruto, haruhi in ouran, Asuna before they turned her into a harem bot, most girls from studio ghilbi, especially protags, I liked ururaka at first in mha but then she turned into a deku love interest bot (again haven't continued so maybe she got better again), yuuko in xxxholic, I love the cast of kakegurui, the girls in snow white with red hair, hondomachi from id invaded, sorta emilia from rezero but I never finished that either, avatar the last air bender girls... etc etc
Basically girls written with actual personality outside of pushing the male characters and have their own goals, flaws, accomplishments, etc. Having moments of fan service isn't inherently a red flag but when the character is not allowed to be explored unless it's important to developing the male characters more. I think Tsunade is a good example, she certainly serves as fan service but she has her own character journey too unlike sakura who's entire character revolves around the two male MC's so much that even when they make it a point to say she's gotten way stronger (and is basically the mirror of tsunade in the sannin trio) she's relegated to not being able to fight and just scream at the guys to stop or to ask for help. Same with hinata, I know people like her but imo she also didn't get growth outside of being in naruto's or even neji's story (now immense grain of salt, I also never finished all of naruto so maybe it's addressed in there a little). Her relationship with neji or the hyuuga clan entirely is pretty scuffed, and they basically brush past it to say she's still has a crush on naruto and would die for him.
Also, what kind of excuse is that? There's so many stories written by women where they're able to write three dimensional male characters and their works are popular with men. So, what, we should just accept men are unable to see women as people and give them a pass? If female authors tried to use that logic as an excuse for poor writing they'd be laughed at and criticized to hell and back.
@@pusheenqueen519 What part of Shounen Jump isn't created with female audiences in mind don't you understand?
There's so many pieces of entertainment that have well written female characters, so why complain about the ones that don't?
@@Mr_Mistah I feel like you missed the point of my original comment which is kind of ironic. The point wasn't to say shounen isn't trying to appeal to the female demographic, I'm saying it's weird that in order to appeal to the male demographic women can't be written as people only bodies or fodder to improve the male characters' stories. There are also plenty of shounen with good female characters, it has nothing to do with female audience. I even mentioned that fan service isn't inherently bad, as seen by many girls like tsunade or lust. You can appeal to sexuality without turning all the females into bots. And so I think it's cringey to say in order for guys to like female characters they can't be people. I have feeling this means nothing to you though so go about your business lol 😂
I think Japan underestimates the female audience and our thirst for a battle anime that's centered around girls without them being heavily sexualized lmao
there always were strong female fighters who arent sexualized. from card captor sakura to inuyasha, even in bleach, rukiya wasnt over sexualized, and while she couldnt compare, she was still strong. just now, look at black clover, it has not just 1, but multiple strong female characters who arent just strong, but also fan favorites and ARENT overly sexualized. from charlotte, to noelle and of course, mereoleona who from moment one, is one of the best characters in the entire series.
and its not like they down play their feminine side either. if you check the polls, you will see all 3 in the top 10. with noelle being 3rd(above even the "sasuke" of the series), and mereo being 7th.
hell, funnily enough, in the 4th poll charlotte even took 3rd place. in the fith poll, noelle took, not 3rd, not 2nd, but 1st place.
@@marcosdheleno The issue is that a lot of popular shounen don't have well written women. MHA, JJK, and Demon Slayer are the most popular of the new gen, and most of the female fans of those series just ship the men with each other. Just look at the popularity polls of those series.
@@queenlolo1384 that's because it's twitter. Stop using Twitter and your life will be happier
@@nanarb4733 Twitter??? Where was Twitter even mentioned???
The world doesn't care about female protagonists. Anime consumers are mostly men and therefore, they need to cater to men
can we talk about the uraraka vs bakugou fight it was so good. everyone was telling bakugou to hold back and that it was wrong for him to go all out, BUT HE STILL DIDNT he took her completely seriously and even praised her fighting afterwards.
He even has a small internal monologue implying she nearly defeated him because she outsmarted him. He himself fought with no strategy, just pure power
It’s probably one of the best fights in anime in terms of character development
@@juliahock5549 okay idk about that one theres alot of competition for that but its definitely a good scene!
i would give that award to gohan vs perfect cell from dbz but everyone has their preferred momentss
bakugou feminist icon???
bakugo and deku are the best characters in MHA tbh
Not an anime, but I always thought that Azula and Katara from Avatar the Last Airbender were greatly written female characters. Other than that, I like Hange from Attack on Titan. She's kinda underrated and a side character, but still very relevant. I also adore Nami. Very well written! She's useful, has ambition, can take care of herself, can stand up for herself and her people, has a head on her shoulders, and knows what she wants. She's feminine, cunning, and my favorite financially smart $$$.
Azula carried the antagonist role hard. She was capable in fights, plotted hard and carried the emotional climax (Ozai was more of the narrative climax). Katara is shown to be soft but a fighter when she wants to he, showing emotion to not be weakness.
@@soulstealer5625 yep, you got that right!
All of the women in Avatar were written well. Even one-off side characters like Hama are written well.
@@crosseyedcat1183blood bending queen of my heart!
I’m not mentioning to take away your point because I do agree with you, but Hange is also non-binary, so that’s very cool that we get some enby representation too along with good female characters, neither of which is very common.
I mean, they're side characters, but god I love the women in Fullmetal Alchemist. Especially that Izumi's story revolves around a tough pregnancy and her stillborn child. It's like uniquely a woman's story, and the fact that it's in a shounen is really astounding. But imo FMA is just on a different level.
FACTS and still remains as a classic TO THIS DAYYYY
Yes and a women wrote it! Represent!
the fact it was written by a woman really help I guess.
That's why FMAB is MAL's #1. Those who dared to claim FMAB's spot have good characters like you mentioned and high-tier quality aspects.
Because it is written by a woman.
Honestly I'd argue that even if girls/women DIDN'T like shonen AT ALL (like 0 percent any female checking them out) that it's still important to have well written, realized female characters. It's been shown that partaking in media that involves characters with different backgrounds to oneself can have an influence on how they perceive those groups. It's not as straight forward as the whole 'video games cause violence' notion but that if you get used to seeing well written characters from other groups it kinda helps you see past any of your own inherent biases.
Yeah, I've always hated that some people (often guys) respond to the complaints about female characters with "but shounen is for boys, not for girls. Stop complaining"...so??? Women still make up half the goddamn population. It's sexist to treat them as less important solely based on their sex, not to mention the fucked up sexualization. If the male characters can get well thought out character arcs and development, why shouldn't the female characters?
@@joyc.e.7511 exactly! Or fanservice. Like, I'm not even opposed to fanservice in and of itself but if you're gonna sexualize the ladies at least give the same treatment to the men. But when it's ONLY the female characters and in literally the stupidest ways imaginable then it just shows they don't value the female characters beyond being there to be oggled no matter how they try to justify it or 'balance' it out (looking at you Fire Force)...
@@StonedHunter Yeah, I really don't mind fanservice when it's minimal, but so often it becomes the defining trait for the female characters, and any important moments they should get are ruined by needless and inappropriately timed fanservice. Ugh, Fire Force is one of the worst offenders imo. Tamaki has been treated horribly. Which is so weird to me because this comes from the mangaka also made Soul Eater, one of the only shounen with a female lead and numerous female characters. It also has a fanservice problem, but it knows when to put that aside.
@@joyc.e.7511 and with Soul Eater we at least got to see the guys shirtless or less a fair amount but with Fire Force it just feels so one-sided that I struggle to believe it's the same creator at times. Funny enough Kill la Kill has one of the best balances I've seen given by the end pretty much everyone is naked XD but Studio Trigger, aside from Franxx, is usually better about balancing fanservice between genders and still making their female characters PEOPLE
@@joyc.e.7511 Men should not take responsebility for your lack of virtue, women should write better female charachters 🤷♂️
"I see these kids train and try to achieve their goals and I suddenly become a mother over night" is a very relatable sentiment
Me accumulating 40 children after watching Haikyuu
@@mikellyartisan1384 FR
I relate SO MUCH haha, my partner has to tell me "this is an anime, not an orphanage, babe. You cannot adopt them all."
Yeah that sentiment is a bit problematic, especially when it’s used as the quintessential happy ending for their character arc. There’s absolutely nothing wrong for a female character to want to become a mother, especially when it makes sense to their character like for Hinata in Naruto or Sango in Inuyasha but not every woman sees motherhood as their personal end goal and type of female character is almost nonexistent in anime.
Yare yare daze
As a girl myself, I'm sick of us girls getting objectified, fetishized, and sexualized in media.
@phantomxero1x447 **clutches body pillow**
@phantomxero1x447 Press X to doubt on that bud
I definitely get you.
"us girls"
No one's sexualizing you. Most anime fans would rather simp over cartoons girls than your overweight self. Stop making it about you since you're so insecure about yourself
@@coolchamp2902 wow, she's concerned over an actual issue, yet y'all replied by just insulting her, And accusing her of "Muh insecurity"? LMAO I thought yo weeb *ss could do better in giving an actual argument instead of resorting to pathetic insults. People like you are the reason why some people think that us casual animanga enjoyers as some pathetic perverts lmao
Also can we talk about how smart Sakura is, she got top grades in her classes and knew how to control her chakra way better than sasuke and naruto. Kakashi even made a comment about Sakura might become hokage before them. So 😅why make her useless and boy obsessed after that. It’s really disappointing.
Yes I was looking for this!!!!
Why make her shallow?
Naruto and Rock Lee actually cared about her and she blew them both off because Sasuke looks cool.
SAME, EVEN HER FIGHT WITH RED HAIR DUDE MADE ME LOVE HER SO MUCH, ONLY TO MAKE HER SO STEREOTYPICALLY FANGIRL AND USELESS
@@DC... Lad, to be honest, obsessing with Sasuke is a huge red flag. Not only Saukra doesn’t understand Sasuke at all, Sasuke is literally a red flag. Not to mention that Sasuke doesn’t even know much about her, while Naruto and Lee are close to her and understand her well. And the fact that she knows and understands Naruto way better than Sasuke. If you really gonna pick among them, Naruto and Lee are definitely should be priority instead of Sasuke. I can get why Naruto or Lee just keeps a friendship with Sakura, since… Sakura REALLY doesn’t need romance anymore.
Not to mention that Sasuke is so cold towards Sakura, who’s a cute and strong and self-dependent (theoretically), also a simp for him, if he has slight heterosexuality he would be softer towards her. But no, he just wanna kill her. Maybe Sasuke is just gay as hell
man i didn't care that they portrayed her as mean and weak in the beginning because i was hopping for so much development (more than naruto and sasuke since they had their own powers). Wish they made her as the rock lee type of character, not blessed with natural abilities but strong enough mentally to pave her own way and become a taijustsu expert. It would've made a beautiful contrast with naruto and sasuke and she would've earned their respect.
Has anyone else also noticed that whenever there is a girl in the main trio the two guys are always "special" and the token girl is just like, there? I noticed they did this with Nobura because people in Jujitsu Kaisen talk on and on about how special Yuji and Megumi are because of their innate techniques and Nobura is just nowhere near them?
oh my god yes. also applies to the top three students from mha. the two boys participate in a big mission and the girl just. participates in a beauty pageant?😭
@@rosalynnn yes!!
Also the other questionable thing is in the manga for jjk (mega spoilers btw) Nobara is just used as fodder for more development between yuji vs mahito by being killed. She doesn't get a cool domain or any other insane powers she just fights and then they're like "ooooooo she might still be alive oooooooooo who knows ooooooooo" but she hasn't reapeared in the manga despite a decent time skip happening already. At least they really give Maki a lot of development, like all of the development and power ups ever while still being true to her character and arc.
Nah, talking jjk we trust gege for his female character dev. He already proved he can handle his female characters and their backstories and we ve all seen Nobara going all out and fighting back to back with itadori in s1. As for manga, spoiler alert, her death isnt confirmed yet despite all the openings gege could’ve used to do so and if you look closely, you can see he had laid the groundwork for her development.
u slow
Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce to you: Jolyne Cujoh, the main character of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure part 6. She's strong, independent and iconic!
Also not watered down at all. She's violent, crass and lustful. Jojo girls are best girls in general but Jolyne is top tier.
Jolyne is the most amazing character for me
Giorno was supposed to be female but araki's editors convinced him to make it male. So, Girono best jo -girl
My favourite JoJo!!!
@@dafeels3085 I‘m glad that they went with a very elegant boy for Giorno tho, one of my favorite designs and also unusual
I’m a boy and even I would really just like a chance to watch a show with a good gender balance without feeling icky about all the near-naked teenage girls. A lot of the time I’ll find a show and think “hey, this would be fun to watch with my sister!”, and then the fan service happens and I have to mentally file it away under “never, under any circumstances, let anyone find out I watched this”.
Yes! I used to watch a lot more anime when I was younger. I did enjoy some ecchi stuff and tend not to be upset by female characters being sexualized. But there’s no balance, I couldn’t really avoid that if I wanted to in most cases, except to watch shows with hardly any women at all, or completely different genres that I had less interest in. It’s socially isolating because I can’t share so many things I love about anime without mixing in things that would turn a lot of people away, for good reason. At the very least I’d like to see more shows with equal fanservice between male and female characters. Then it wouldn’t undermine certain characters so much.
This!!
I personally like undead unluck it’s mid at first but gets pretty good
Frieren ! Give Sousou no Frieren, Dungeon Meshi and Dark Gathering a try if you haven't yet!
@@Void_Creature4 I love dungeon meshi got into it as a dnd player
I feel like everyone forgets about the amazing female charaters in FMAB. Literally each female was sooo well developed
Development doesn't make one great...also the thing with fmab is the girls are already kinda in their roles when we meet them...we don't meet winry before she became a mechanic or hawkeye pre war....she already a soldier with experience....mai is already a fighter and alchemist so there's little struggle or growth for her same for armstrong sister ..the other girls don't get that much focus but even their teacher already lost her child when we met her....we don't see when lust is created for example either and began life when it was hardest ..that's kinda an issue when you give the show so much credit for development of its females...it cheats because it skips all the struggle and just pushes the story to a point where their already established...that's less interesting to me...they skip the parts of their life where they aren't who they are already
@@razkable You're just nitpicking. Their roles as in their professions and skillset are already developed just like the male characters. The emotional struggles and sacrifices they have to make are the struggles that we get to see. Winry had to forgive her parent's murderer despite having the perfect opportunity to avenge their deaths, Hawkeye saves the other characters countless times with her defining moments being when she forces Mustang to give up his hatred towards Envy and also when her throat is slit and Mustang is thinking of saving her by human transmutation, Izumi has to struggle to find meaning in life after failing to resurrect her child and living with missing and damaged organs as a result. Mai comes back to save Ed and Al when she could have just left, LanFan has to cut off her arm to save herself and Ling. As for the minor female characters, Maria Ross comes back to assist Mustang's crew in the final fight, Major Olivier Armstrong is the one who takes out the corrupt military officials in Central HQ and is extremely essential in defeating Sloth the fastest homunculus which was a fight so dangerous that she had to take a fucking breather for a moment.
@@razkable I’m sorry, did we watch the same show. How are you going to look at the scene where Winry is on the verge of shooting Scar and tell me that doesn’t count as development? How are you going to tell me Olivier’s final words to Bradley after he killed her second in command wasn’t an exceptionally vulnerable moment for such a fierce character? How are you going to tell me that Hawkeye’s reaction when she thinks Mustang is dead and when she saves him from ring consumed by vengeance aren’t perfect representations of their relationship with each other?
We don’t always need to see these characters work up to the positions they’re in for them to be well-developed and interesting characters. FMAB cheats it’s audience out of absolutely nothing and stands as one of the best representations of female characters in all of fiction.
@@razkable I think none of what you said is about them being female. It has been a long time since I watched the show but from what I can remember, the most development and focus was on the brothers. The side characters usually were in roles which were already established. There is nothing wrong with that
@@razkable you're everywhere
I'm glad to see this brought up. Poorly written female characters within action animes have been a thing for far too long. I was pleasantly surprised when I watched Jujutsu Kaisen and found female characters that I can actually root for and appreciate just as much as the other great characters in the story, Attack on Titan is another new action anime that has very well written female characters; and you can expect more of this, I've read the chainsaw man manga and it was amazing, not only that but the female characters are also really good there, so I'm excited to see it animated.
in a story though like naruto everyone reflects naruto cause its not called ninja world...its called naruto and his character is the jesus of their world to follow in the footsteps of and believe in and copy his courage and ninja way so imo even though people hate on the women the whole show is based on that so its on overall flaw then cause many of the hyped guy characters are just different variants of naruto too in some way or in how they reflect off him so to me thats a dumb critique in that series...they have a fanbase for a reason
@@razkable this is a troll, right?
@@EvanLithium and not a very good one, lots of words, little meaning, Ive seen better trolls. . . trolling in one or two lines.
@@ayar2 bruh wtf you on about?
i love reze
Nezuko could have been cute without turning her into a pokemon. She knows how dangerous she is and that the demon slayers generally distrust her. Her cutesy baby act could have been a formulated move to defend herself.
It disarms hostile humans and makes her seem like less of a threat. When she trusts a demon slayer enough that they won't try and kill her, she starts revealing her normal personality. The characters get to react by being surprised or having seen through the charade the whole time. She gets to talk with Tanjiro, and later with the rest of the trio. She could even have voiced her own struggle with not falling into full demonhood.
She couldve been a great obstacle in Tanjiro's eventual goal, as well. Her main goal in the series is seemingly to protect her brother as he does with her, so when its time for her to be turned back into a human you would expect some resistance since becoming human would strip her of all her combat abilities. I get that she also wants to be turned back into a human, but a big fight with muzan is coming up and she knows first hand how terrifying he is and it wouldve been cool for her to actually fight in the final battle. Unfortunately, she was Tanjiro's lackey from beginning to end.
Zayne Isgett: What are you getting at?
@@MetaKnight964 a point
7
Nezuko is just one of the many things that make DS trash.
That's why i watch baki, 0% females means no missinterpretation
LMAO
😂
I'm sure a lot of women would watch Baki for all the ultra ripped guys 😎😎
@@hoangquanle3310 And we don't hear any males complaing about male fan service 🤔 Also you should watch Jojo's brother 😎
@drfrog4077 I'm guessing the way male and female oriented fan service are presented differently is the main reason why. Oh, and I'm looking forward to getting into Jojo's. I might have to wait a while because I am in the third year of university. 😅😅
“Shounen is targeted toward boys, so the way the women are written/conveyed is excused”
I never understood this argument, as strong male characters exist in Shojo. For example, the entire male cast of Fruits Basket, especially Kyo, Yuki, and Shigure.
Heck, even Tuxedo Mask from Sailor Moon goes through so much of his own development alongside the main heroine.
Genre and target demographic isn’t an excuse, and honestly doesn’t make sense.
Okay, I see your replies! I honestly love the conversation and the points you guys are pointing out. Long story short, just write well-developed, deep characters!
ok ? shounen is still for guys, they dont give a fuck if women watch/read their shows, its just their to fill out male fantasy not for women, u guys have your own genre, shounen does not need to what shojo does cause they simply dont give a fuck
No, she's correct. What you mentioned are popular series, but less popular series tend to make the male as side character, hence why they're not popular.
@@mitacestalia7532 or because the anime is just mid
@@mitacestalia7532 exactly. They aren't popular for a reason.....but the popular ones targeted towards males are....well...
Facts
God everything about Uraraka was so true!
At the start she seemed like she would be a fully fleshed out character. The thing about her motive being to make money for her family, in contrast to the grand aim of achieving justice - would have been so interesting if it was explored further! Just the fact that it’s a perfectly valid reason, and it doesn’t change how good of a hero she is. But no, as the show went on her whole personality was just liking Deku :/
Another problem is that she is underweight even though she is supposed to be very strong. You can say the same thing for the other female characters.
You’ve never read the manga, even in the anime she rejects most of her feelings for deku because she know it’s would get in the way, she’s fighting toga both in anime and manga, she’s saved deku a bunch of times without those feelings too she only had the impulse to save him like how deku does
mha just has a track record of wasting good female characters with potential. Mina had a memorable personality and design but is used as an accesory for Kirishima. Momo has one of the best quirks but is just there for the fanservice. Nejire who's one of the big 3 but while the other 2 fight in life or death situations and have fleshed iit backstories, she's religated to become prom queen.
momo has development just that a smooth brain wouldn’t notice it, Mina has had a bit of development. Please stop hating on the creator for not giving spotlight on characters when the creator is already giving spot light on so many other female, ochaco, toga, hado, la brava have gotten so much spotlight in the 2nd war arc
@@waffles3701 nah
Nezuko being a pokémon is the most hilarious and accurate thing I have heard in a while lol. Solid observation and thank you for making this video
Ne zo kuuu, I choose youuuuu
HOW DARE YOU!! SHE IS NOT!! SHE IS STRONG AND BRAVE AND THE ULTIMATE EXAMPLE OF SIBLING LOVE, FOR IT'S HER LOVE FOR HER BROTHER THAT PREVENTED HER FROM BECOMING FUILL DEMON!! THAT IS NOT TRASH!!! THAT IS BRAVE AND BEAUTIFUL AND NOT A POKEMON AT ALL!!
@@colleen4ever Dude, is everything okay?
@@colleen4ever bro chill her main purpose for all parts of the story is to be brought out of her box and fight demons, she doesn't have much of a character outside of her connection with tanjiro, and she doesn't even speak until the end of the manga. She's meant to be cute bait, the token loli waifu of the series. Storywise she's just a plot device for tanjiro to have enough motivation to kill demons and get a cure.
@@menschgebliebenergossenpar9213 LMAOO YOUR REPLY TO THIS COLLEEN IS HILARIOUS
the thing about Lucy from fairy tail is that the potential is absolutely unmatched. she is shown to be the single most kind, empathetic character in the show who can make friends out of just about anyone. it would have been so fucking great to have her be more than just a damsel in distress, because her character goes much deeper than the others’ “i love fighting bc i want to get stronger”. i love maki and nobara too, but it is undeniable that they aren’t super kind people, which is understandable, as they have their own motivations. but Lucy could have been the one instance of a powerful, capable character who is also kind, empathetic, and hopeful.
I wouldn’t say Lucy gets damsel in distress treatment, she’s show handling her own unless it’s some overpowered boss type enemy. She isn’t constantly helpless and unable to defend herself, even the final season has her being an integral part in protecting everyone and the final fight. She gets a lot of power ups and holds her own through a lot of the series
Would like to ooint while luv does get kidnapp she is always very useful and is completely replaceable from s2 onward
@ShurouInu I haven't finished fairy tail (currently in the middle of Tartourus arc), but from what I've seen, Lucy IS the damsel in distress. She is almost always the one in trouble and in need of Natsu's help. We've rarely seen a time where Lucy was in extreme trouble and was able to completely handle the situation by herself (and I mean, without the help of her celestial spirits)
@@bomberdawesome lucy is a damsel in the first season but become her own character the more the show continues nd while yes she relies on her celestial spirit for help she has to summoned them , her celestial spirit is her magic .in season two alone she saved the world three times and s3 her and natsu ( the pink haired dude )are the reason the main villain are defeated she's also the reason Natsu is still breathing along with other characters.
We all know Lucy rules, ladies~
It bothers me so much to know that most manga artists get “suggestions” from their editors to change their stories, especially the second that a female character is involved. It’s so bad to the point that manga creators like Araki, have to push harder than they should just to write the story that THEY made. The fight with Lisa Lisa and Kars was almost not included at all, Giorno was (apparently) meant to be a girl, And Araki was told to make another male protagonist who was similar to Jotaro instead of Jolyne.
Not only that. But I distinctly remember seeing somewhere; that the reason why shonen jump never seems to allow well written, is because they don’t want to deal with their manga/ anime being controversial or cancelled in other countries, and to also avoid going against another country’s culture (where women are seen as less than).
It really bothers me to know that authors are forced to write their stories differently just because of some bs reason. I’m willing to bet that a lot of other mangaka’s are told to change aspects of their stories just to appeal to their target audience. Having a strong secondary female character will not be the end of the shonen industry’s popularity. If a country complains about it, then ignore them. And if a country’s government or whatever else doesn’t allow the story to be sold there, then ignore them too, the world will move on without them (as harsh as it sounds).
If the manga’s creator wants to make all of their cast be powerful and stand-out for being individually unique, regardless gender, just let them. There really isn’t any point in censoring every small little detail that could be seen as “offensive”.
Someone who gets it! 👏 👏 👏 👏
Editorial mandate: it's a bitch and a half - especially to representation - across EVERY country's comic industry.
No, Giorno wasn't intended to be a woman. Stop making the shit up.
To the person who doesn't believe me just look up "was giorno supposed to be a girl" and you'll quickly find several sources stating such. And if you try to correct someone again, make sure to get off of your rear end and do some research before you open your big mouth.
@@mintymimics213 darling, the burden of proof is on you for making the claim. Now Send me those sources.
The thing i liked about Shinobu a lot is the fact that she is aware, that her pure physical combat abilities aren't on par with the others, and thus uses poison in addition to her blade.
Combined with her knowledge in human and demon physique i think she is the most capable person in Demon Slayer.
I feel the same about her and Mitsuri. They both were aware of their limits, but they still pushed themselves to fight Muzan, and when it came down to it they were both capable fighters and didn’t need to be saved when Tanjiro fought with them to defeat demons.
Demon Slayer just suffers in the female department because Nezuko, the main character after Tanjiro, is the least well written character period in Demon Slayer.
Yeah female characters in Kimetsu play a massive role in saving humanity, it isn’t a sideline thing like The Big 3 or My Hero. I would argue that without Tamayo or Shinobu they wouldn’t have won over Muzan at all.
I'd say Nezuko is the weakest major female character in Demon Slayer, mostly since we barely get to know her. But Shinobu, Mitsuri, Kanao, and Tamayo were all necessary to turning the tides in battle.
I mean, i think its a good time to point out that its not JUST writing either. We also want these women to break the gender stereotypes as well, like giving them physically tanky powers and abilities and general fighting styles. They should be allowed to be warriors, and most importantly they should be shown, with these powers, defeating male opponents.
If you haven’t seen Arcane, you HAVE TO!!! I am a huge anime fan and I completely understand your frustration as a female audience. While it is not a Japanese anime, Arcane does it so welllllll when it comes to female characters portrayal. This is the only animation I feel like female characters really get to shine just as much as their male counterparts without sexualizing them.
the discussion is on japanese culture. We can look also at BIrds of Prey if we want to find well written fighting girls (or even Wonder Woman, basically the strongest in the JL except maybe superman).
Arcane is written so well.
This is a discussion on Japanese culture but a lot of the points made in the video are also applicable to Western shows as well. Agreed, Arcane is probably the best show I've ever watched when it comes to writing female characters or characters in general!
Spoilers but this is such a great analysis video:
ua-cam.com/video/hML-FGHGEN4/v-deo.html&ab_channel=schnee
Castlevania is also really good in this way! It was SO satisfying seeing Sypha fight on equal footing to the two other mc. And actually get creative using her magical abilities in some of the most brutal ways possible.
@@joyc.e.7511 yet she always in teams when did she figth alone if that all it takes the Sakura is the same
This is why Nami is the best written woman in the big 3. She's the resson the ship can reach the correct locations. She might be not physically strong, but she makes up for it with her intelligence snd wit.
Also has a great backstory.
robin is better what the hell
I'm laughing
Cool Story. @@Lara-mo5oy
Just finished watching episodes 37- 40, and Nami's backstory actually made me cry; I don't cry very often (if at all), but those ones broke me.
One scene in One Piece I found interesting in regards to Nami is how when she requests Usopp to make an upgraded staff, he goes on to mention how the two of them are out of the depth in regards to battle compared to the rest of the crew, since they are just regular people in extraordinary circumstances, meaning that they need to fight smarter not harder. I love this cuz it means that One Piece gets to cover both bombastic duels and battles of wits, the ladder being commonly found in great Shounen (as well as in any story in general).
Usopp getting past his fear and still fighting despite shiting himself will always be epic.
Dunno If The Anime Covered That Already But There's Also The Fact That Robin Learned Fishmen Karate During The Timeskip
In the latest manga chaps robin was also regarded as one of the most formidable members of the crew. Even in the war her strenght and wits also shone.
@@Lenlon703 I absolutely loved how despite her apparent weakness to sea water she was stubborn enough to actually learn Fish Man Karate, it’s something so unique among devil fruits users that demonstrate she’s above the rest, and unfortunately her like other characters like Kid or Killer haven’t been given enough material to have fights, her being more involved would make her way more balanced since most of her runtime is surrounding her vocation, something I DO absolutely love for the lore yet I would enjoy Robin having more fights.
Oh and I can shine upon how Sanji, the man that holds up that “protect all woman” mentality actually asked Robin for help? He was her prince in distress and she came to save him like the absolute she is, that’s something that’s I think is so rare in shonen and a breathe of fresh air.
I might be a BIT biased, but one piece for me it’s one of the most inclusive shonen series there is, I loved Fish man island arc because of how nuanced it touched upon the themes of racism and blood feuds.
@@bonelesschickennuggets1868W
Sakura could have been one of the best characters in the entire series. She had so much potential. She’s incredibly intelligent as we saw how she took the written Chunin Exam so well without even cheating. She also was showing a lot of signs of being developed to handle things on her own. She could grown out of her love for Sasuke and finally start being her own person and have Sasuke have to work to be worthy of her love after all the shit he pulled.
But no. Sakura never is able to handle shit on her own. She always has to be rescued. She can’t do a fight on her own. And the fact that her main two impacts on the series is continuing to love Sasuke for NO REASON and that she lied to Naruto about it. Sakura’s pointless obsession with Sasuke having a bigger impact than her entire character is so terrible.
I can’t stand it.
Not to mention she learned healing ninjutsu basically just to add padding to the male character's plot-amour :(
Yeah you only watch 3 eps of naruto. She legit beat an akatsuki member, saved naruto and sasuke probably more than they saved her, developed proper feelings for sasuke after understanding him, and only said that to naruto in order to protect him, not to mention she hit kaguya at the end to help them seal her
@@RexPersonthing character healing is when bad, gotcha
@@tactly5060 Nope. I watched every single episode including the filler episodes (which was really hard at times because some of them were that bad.) And she wasn't allowed to beat the Akatsuki member on her own. She had to have help. And she got her ass handed to her more than she helped defeat him. Healing and being rescued are not the same thing. And more often than not she is saved and rescued from strong enemies rather than being allowed to fight it herself. Again not saying getting helped is that bad but more often than not, Sakura has to be helped and rescued more than she can handle beating an enemy on her own. When you compare her fights to Naruto, Sasuke and Kakashi's, it is very clear who gets the short end of the stick of showing battle prowess. Again understanding Sasuke is not a strong enough basis for a relationship or for love. It definitely could be, but it's not executed well at all. Her love doesn't feel like it's developed from anything more than what it was in her youth. It definitely again could have been but as it stands, it isn't. And yes, she did say that to protect Naruto but as a result, went on a stupid suicide mission that ranks as one of the dumbest things she has ever done. And again, her doing that has more weight and more reaction from the fanbase than the majority of the things she has done in the series. The point with Kaguya is fair but again, it doesn't change the fact that it took us WAY too long to give Sakura something substantial for her character.
Nothing the girl does has as much weight as the other characters. She is a main character and she gets absolutely nothing and it's a damn shame. Kishimoto did her so dirty.
Her hentai/doujin is very popular though. She basically owns the NTR tag.
I know it's not shounen, but I've always loved the female characters from Black Lagoon. Roberta, Balalaika, Eda and specially Revy are all absolute badasses.
I wish I could like this twice!
@@thurantpnh6687 Oh people praise the JJK females over MHA females, but in case you didn't know Miwa Kasumi's reason for joining Jujutsu Tech is the same as Ochako Uraraka's for becoming a pro hero! This girl in the video contradicts herself she excuses Bulma wearing revealing clothing, but complains about Erza who kicks more ass????????????? Hypocritical much? Why do females in battle shounen have to kick ass and compete with the males Keiko didn't???? And do these people forget that Inuyasha and Rurouni Kenshin exists? Why is Bulma's boobs popping out not an issue, but Erza's is? Heck Yuroichi is practically naked sometimes has her ass on one of the panels yet no complaints??????? This video is the same as every other video about this topic recycling the same talking points!
@@inakyu Oh people praise the JJK females over MHA females, but in case you didn't know Miwa Kasumi's reason for joining Jujutsu Tech is the same as Ochako Uraraka's for becoming a pro hero! This girl in the video contradicts herself she excuses Bulma wearing revealing clothing, but complains about Erza who kicks more ass????????????? Hypocritical much? Why do females in battle shounen have to kick ass and compete with the males Keiko didn't???? And do these people forget that Inuyasha and Rurouni Kenshin exists? Why is Bulma's boobs popping out not an issue, but Erza's is? Heck Yuroichi is practically naked sometimes has her ass on one of the panels yet no complaints??????? This video is the same as every other video about this topic recycling the same talking points!
@@inakyu I actually thank nezuko is pretty cool
@@inakyu and I know this isn't technically Shonen but if you want a cool female character checkout Elfen Lied Lucy is awesome
To reassure you about JJK, whilst Nobara doesn't get too much more development, Maki basically gets her own arc, she's practically as developed as if not more so than Yuji (as in rich backstory and actually being able to fend for herself, Yuji's backstory is still rather mysterious)👌
Ya but I found Nobara getting shafted on both the Kyoto Goodwill event and the Shibuya arc totally unfair. Everyone but her was getting good fights, but when she came in, she was dead on arrival, literally in Shibuya. She was practically missing throughout both arcs. She has been deemed the heroine of Jujutsu Kaisen and she is part of the trio, so to shaft her through out two big arcs and give everyone but her so much screen time, then kill her off is an absolute disservice to her.
@@ChainsawManDude97nobody cares about her in main trio
In popularity itself she barely comes in top 10
Yuji and Megumi are the important ones
And in the senior areas
Yuuta and gojo,
@@ChainsawManDude97that’s why I still have hope she’s alive, I don’t believe Gege would make this bad plot choice
@@ChainsawManDude97I mean, it’s technically unconfirmed if Nobara is dead or not so we just kinda have to wait and see
@@ChainsawManDude97 pls add spoiler warning at the end next time lol
I was waiting for Asuna being named. Can we just talk of how all female characters of SAO are super badass UNTIL Kirito arrives and suddenly they become damsels in distress. It's unbelievable.
I’ve heard that the girls are written a little more differently in the novels. So it might just be the way the anime portrays them.
Obviously you haven't watched Alicization or War Of The Underworld
@@Mr_Mistah I wrote this comment thinking on Alicization 😂
@@Mr_Mistah You're right, that time it wasn't Kirito the one that ruined the development, it was Asuna
@@Emiturbina You weebs really think you can write better stories so then just write your own stories instead of complaining
I really love Sango from Inuyasha. She is feminine and a warrior. She can stand on her own and can go to battles by herself with confidence that she can handle it. She likes Miroku, but that is in no way her character. She has a backstory, a family, and plenty of screentime. You could remove the romantic subplot from her character and she is still a fleshed out character.
Thank you I love Sango always loved her story with her brother loses her whole tribe in one night gets manipulated into fighting Inuyasha and becomes best friends with Kagome who does damage control and explains that Inuyasha is not a bad guy i wish more shonen had awesome girls like Kagome and Sango
I love sanggoooo ughhh I love her so much. I hate miroku. The dude basically sexually assaulted her from the get go (and literally every other female he comes across) but he still gets the girl. It's shown as "cute" and "comedy"...
@@pussydestroyer69285 he rub her butt that is wrong. But eh comedy and different country from our own.
Yeeees, I was looking for this comment. Sango is a representation of everything a female character can be. I love the way she doesn't need to be "masculine" to be an excellent warrior and a lovely friend and sister at the same time. She even wears make up, but can kick anyone's ass. The woman was buried alive after being hurt by her little brother and could stand up straight to take revenge. Like, how not admire her?
At first I read Sango as Sangwoo.
battle shonen female cast members that did not disappoint:
1. Historia (girl went from "oh she's cute" to "yes, my queen." she is a legend)
2. Emma (a bad bih saving the world, we love that)
3. Shinobu (oh I love this woman no explanation needed)
4. Nobara (she is peak confidence. Also watch JJK!)
edit: guys i'm also mad historia didn't get to shine after season 3 but i love her and i pretend her "pregnant era" doesn't exist plus she had a happy ending and didn't die so that's enough for me. also stop saying nobara is dead she's not and I'm still waiting for her to come back even if it's been a year💀
Rukia in manga must be here
the nexus Sheriff oh maybe I wouldn’t know since I only read two volumes of Bleach like 6 years ago but she was a pretty cool female character in those two I read
Rukia
Yoroichi
Nel
Bambietta
Soi Fon
Daki
Not shounen but I also like Morgiana from Magi. She's a well written strong female character, and tbh she is who Sakura should have been.
Integra fairbrook wingate's hellsing and Seras Victoria
I feel like One Piece surprised me on how Nami and Robin are considered and acted as actual people with powerful powers. How they look would make you think it’s just for the guys to crush on when both of them are very important to the plot. Nami may have needed Luffy’s help to save her village but so did most of the other straw hats! Robin, she is literally so important! She can actually defend herself with her power! In Wano (spoilers)
HER FIGHT AGAINST BLACK MARIA WAS CRAZY! SHE LITERALLY BECAME A DEMON! AND SHE SNAPPED HER IN HALF! INSANE!
Plus Nami’s added power with Zeus is amazing.
Are both of them possibly fan service? Probably.
Are both of them important to the plot and are capable of defending themselves without needing to be a damsel in distress? YES!
There’s a moment when Sanji is getting beat up by Black Maria and Black Maria tells him to call for help, what does Sanji, a womanizer, do? He calls for Robin’s help, fully knowing that she is capable of saving him and winning the battle.
One piece is surprisingly a good place to find strong and capable women. Even the girls who don't look like a human hourglass have amazing dignity, power and stature. Dadan deserves a whole award for taking care of 3 idiot brats when their shit parents wouldn't.
@@gilliantoh4658 And then there is Linlin.
@@pantheman2842 linlin is powerful in her own right, but she's at her core an unintentionally twisted monster by others' making. Still a pretty chilling character on the level of the men.
@@gilliantoh4658 Exactly, I pointed her out as standing out even among strong women.
Tru
I was ready to come here and trash this video as just some preachy bs about girls in shounen....but no lie, you actually changed my mind on a lot of things. The timeline breakdown of ladies in anime was a big help to see exactly how they are portrayed and yea, it actually does kinda suck that I can only think of a handful of anime women protags that can be considered as battle ready as the male counterparts. Balsa from Seirei no Moribito comes to mind as one. Either way, great video. I came to troll and left relating to pretty well to you.
Thanks
OMG I love Balsa so much she is my role model and I'm not even female!
@@pacoalvarezlojo855 Dude, that anime had the best spear fighting I've ever seen in any show. Balsa was such a beast. I can watch her go all day.
YES FINALLY SOMEONE ELSE mentions her!
@@pacoalvarezlojo855 she's amazing.
@@drpac9164 I agree and she's hardcore without being cold-hearted.
If you want to watch a shonen with very well-written female characters, check out Gintama. It has by far the best-written female cast in all of Shonen Jump. It has no fan service and if so only for jokes or to make fun of it. Every female character has a personality and good development character. Kagura the female lead is very well written. She has a story of her own, a goal that has nothing to do with love and often saves the mc and other characters. She is not sexualized and behaves according to her age. Throughout the show, she wasn't romantically interested in anything. Another show with a good female cast would be BC. Noelle in particular is well written. I hope I could help you
@@inakyu I'm glad to hear that because Gintama is so underrated. We even have LGBTQ + characters such as a non-binary girl, a group of trans-men who are working in a gay bar, the MC literally slept with a man in the series and we have a cute lesbian relationship. It even ended well and the final villain was understandably beaten. There is almost never any talk during the fight and you really get the impression that the characters are getting weaker and really take damage to the individual blows.
@@Habsburger4855 tbh the lgbt aspect of Gintama is mostly played up for laughs I agree with the females being gr8 though
gotta agree with this one, most notably with Tsukuyo, Otae, and Nobume
Edit: my favorite female character in the series is actually Sarutobi, perhaps she may not have the strongest characterization but her she’s pretty unique as a character, perhaps the description I’ll give her is she is kinda like a female Kuwabara(YYH) but a more perverted version since she’s an M
@Mikasa Ackerman I am sorry I really want to support your argument of aot having good female cast but that's really not the case in manga the literally every single women had their character butchered by the end . Pls don't bother propagating a anime without knowing how the character arcs ends in the Manga
@Mikasa Ackerman uh so it seems you haven't completed the Manga, yes they had their moments at the beginning and here and there but while judging a character the most important aspect objectively is how their character arc ends and if it turns out be something totally contradicting to the way they've been portrayed all this while then it's called butchering .
What we like about Nami:
She's allowed to be flawed and messed up as the male characters
And yes that's also because of her eyeing money and gold *24/7* like a stereotypical pirate/thief/robber
i liked nami and robin pre ts but post ts they were just used for fanservice
I really love Nami especially before the time skip now she has a cool weapon she uses but she’s really just there now she’s still great but I wish we get to see her fight again
@@Icysted She is the exact same character except she is sexy now. Thats hardly a character break situation. No way you read whole cake arc or Zoa and concluded she did nothing except being sexy....
And going through old stuff, Oda ALWAYS intended her to be sexy and a seductive, he was just failing. Old Nami wasnt hitting that arc not because it wasnt there but because the author was failing to showcase it. He got better at his vision and NOW its bad?
@@Icysted oda has been ignoring everyone but sanji, luffy and zoro
@@Dave_of_Mordor thats not true
Nami is more then you said, she considered as the main factor were the show start to be really great she is so well written she saved her crew multiple times, she’s the number one reason the crew still alive at sea, without her they will be so lost and it don’t stop at her navigation skills she is too smart and have multiple knowledge in different categories. she takes care of the financial matters she make deals to ensure they have enough money and food her whole personality and her backstory and how much she suffered to save her village in a young age and to fight alone without crying even she was a child it shows how much strong character she is well written female character She saves her captain multiple times in the show and she has really strong moments. It shows her develops her character and she considered as the internal captain in the ship so not everything about fighting because she prove that fighting not everything but she is also a fighter. She develops her own style in fighting, to not be burden to her friends, she’s steals yonko weapon so I think I have cleared what I meant.
Honestly Nami and Robin are both equally incredible. They dress kinda skimpy but it doesn't feel real sexualized to me. Though Nami weaponizes it on her own terms. Oda writes them just as well as the other Strawhats.
I completely agree. Another thing to note is, though Nami has become a great fighter overtime (she also has just as many fights as the others, excluding the big 3 ofc) & Robin's just always been a badass, their *roles* are not as fighters, and thus it would be unfair to judge their strength purely on that basis. However, their individual roles are so vital to the story that it would literally come to a screeching halt without them. Nami is of course everything you've stated above, & Robin is the ONLY person alive that is able to read the poneglyph. I just feel like One Piece is more than *just* a shounen about fighting, and those who fail to see that will never truly understand the complexities of its characters.
I stumbled upon this video that explains the women in OP extremely well, if you're interested. Just be warned, it's got spoilers up till the Wano Arc.
ua-cam.com/video/2ZIohfgDH78/v-deo.html&ab_channel=MelonTeee
@@madeehaghani9138 exactly I just the woman in one piece they are so well written
Hinata was criminally underused in the show, she had so much potential as a character, as the capable but shy person who learn to speak up and be listen to. Instead we can just imagine her develop (if any) happening offscreen, and her best glorious moment, saving Naruto, doesn't have a gratifying payoff. Nobody congratulates or even thanks her, she is immediately sidelined again and don't do anything until the very end, just to be part of the happy ending.
She was really wasted. She could have had her own arc. That would make their love in the end even more special. But for some reason, temporary bad guys get more screen time.
What gets me is the fact that Neji was killed to make Naruto and Hinata bond and fall in love, but the binding didn’t happen till a couple years after Neji’s death, and they only dated for a year before they got married, and Hinata is reduced to a house wife. Even Ten Ten, who has less screen time than Hinata, was more developed than this. Hinata’s character was Naruto’s cheerleader, and the pacing of their love story as so poorly written. Almost as poorly written as Hinata.
@@tiahnarodriguez3809 Indeed. Really this is my biggest gripe with love stories in most Anime. Instead of letting couples interact with each other in way that would let you figure out for yourself why they like each other, they would rather Just TELL you that they do like each other.
With Hinata, they did a great Job SHOWING why she likes Naruto. He stood up for her and protected her, even when he couldn't fight. That's an amazing first Impression.
But Naruto. They said that she always believed in him. I guess? But, like there's a whole village that also does that. It's like all he needs is someone who loves him. In a vacuum That's sweet and sad. But in context with their world, Hinata has a lot more to offer that they could have bond over, like eating freaking ramen. But apparently she wasn't important enough.
No you’re wrong, she had a lot of development on screen, and she was recognized for what she did in the pain arc which is far from her only good moment. And she was not sidelined in the war arc she did a lot of great things in the war arc that y’all are so blind to. She had some good writing
@@tacticstories7159 she pretty much did have her own arc which was the last, but even then she was very good and had a lot of development in arcs like the chunin exams, the pain invasion, and the 4th great ninja war arc
We also need to popularize shoujo and JOSEI manga to get it animated.
I also think a lot of these anime youtubers watch too much Shonen and shoujo. I'm almost 30 and it's honestly something I enjoy but josei and seinen are genres I relate to a lot more now. Stories and characters can be richer and more mature because of older target audience. Although I think it's fair to still scrutinize Shonen since so many young people are consuming these stereotypes but we can only expect so much depth when trying to sell to middle schoolers. The balance is difficult and when it feels forced now you get accused of pandering.
Yes!! We need more josei manga anime adaptation!!
@@maria-wu7us Nodame cantabile is a great josei anime
Yes yona needs another season
shoujosei manga is very popular in japan but sadly animation studios don't care enough, they know shounens are gonna sell more as anime..
You could also talk about Death Note...when Misa appeared she was stronger than Light, having the eyes and all but then as soon as she meets him she falls in love and basically becomes a lap dog. I understand she was obsessed with Kira even before how Light looks like but still... I think she literally mentions oh you're handsome now I will do everything you do 😮💨
I was definitely waiting for Death Note to explore Misa's themes in more depth, and that time never came. she started out as a celebrity, and that's really interesting when you consider how that compares to Light being Kira. they're both figures that the public interacts with, and you can definitely compare and contrast those roles. Misa became a public figure on purpose, using her own face and name as her brand... and that actually gave her a lot less of that buffer of anonymity. meanwhile Light has become a totally anonymous public figure, and the fight to maintain that anonymity is the entire premise of the series. granted, Light has done extreme and illegal things, but he's also gotten to display his ideology, and that's what his "fans" like about him. meanwhile, most of what Misa's hardcore fans like about her is superficial... they like her looks, and might actually prefer it if her personality remained vague and accommodating, so they could better imagine her in the way they'd prefer. and yet, none of Light's followers know him personally either... it's the nature of a parasocial relationship. and what must it feel like for Misa to go from being an idol, to being looked at, by Light, as one of the masses who has only managed to distinguish herself by chasing the coattails of what _he_ started. Misa actually knows both sides of this particular coin... she's been the adored center of attention, and now she is acting as Light's most adoring fan... but Misa knows how little her "biggest fans" actually knew about her. why would her relationship to Light be any different? Misa could've been so interesting in so many ways, but it's like the author was blind to that because she was a woman, and it basically disqualifies her from being important. or I mean... if she's going to be important, it's only as a plot mechanism, not because of the way she thinks. the most complex things she does are all problems that she causes Light by either being disobedient, or not as smart as him. and that's basically all she was allowed to be, because if you look at his other works... this author has issues with women.
@@kamuyking551 sir you get an a+ on your essay
@@bethanyhu1881 thank you! ^_^
@@kamuyking551 Quick question, how exactly did you rationalize the leap in logic of Misa being an underdeveloped character into "this author has issues with women"?
If anything her being a sycophant to light shows just how flawed their plan is due to the sheer amount of hypocrisy they hold. Light wanted to make a just world but ends up being one of the most unjust people in history while also the bloodiest serial killer. While Misa goes from being self aware and reserved in relation the the death note all the way to raving zealotry.
By your... logic, the writers of WH40K must have an issue with men over the treatment of the primarchs. Perturabo being the best one to point at.
I swear people need to learn that a) flawed characters exist, b) flawed writers exist and especially c) adaptations tend to be more flawed than the already flawed source material. That and not accrediting underlying malice in place of ignorance.
@@KopitioBozynski because it's not just about Misa, and I also saw the shit he pulled in Bakuman. granted, it's been forever since I read that, and I didn't read all of it, but that detail stuck out immediately, and I've remembered it ever since. it's like every once in a while the author would just make a character get up on a soapbox and profess that all women are stupid little minxes who have no value beyond their sex appeal or some shit, apropos of nothing. and it really doesn't go contested enough by any of the other characters for me not to side eye that. I understand that sometimes a character will be written in a way that services the narrative and just happens to align with sexist media tropes, and I'm telling you that I think this author is sexist anyway. don't be gullible.
also, thinking the author has a problem with women was not my primary or only reason for being dissatisfied with Misa. it was literally just one sentence tacked on to the end of a lot of other, much more specific reasons. I had hoped it would be clear that those things matter more to me, because they took up way more of what I wrote. guess you gotta hedge your bets around here.
I feel like leaving out One Piece and the character building of the women like Nami, Robin, and others was great. While they don't have the same battle strength, they all have their own skills and abilities that they have to use for the benefit of the whole team. They've all had great character building over the years and have shown their increase in strength and abilities over that time as well.
IMO Sakura and Hinata were done equally dirty, just in different ways. Both of them deserved worlds better.
Hinata is the worst written character. Sakura at least got development
@@shreksyq Exactly, Hinata was one of my favorite but my god she got no development,
Bruh exactly true; I don't even like Hinata that much but those two deserved world/leagues better than what they were given/stuck with.
Kishimoto had very little writing experience when he started Naruto, and he was terribly overworked during Shippuden. Looking back, I'm surprised the series ended as well as it did, given how much he was out of his depth.
Hinata married the man of her dreams and had two beautiful children with him.
What's better than that?
Thanks for mentioning Soul Eater! I think about Maka Albarn all the time, she’s such a rare treasure in the world of Shōnen and I feel like some people forget she exists. Although there is some pretty cringe fan service in Soul Eater the fact that all the female characters have personalities and arcs and importance really did mean so much to tiny middle school anime fan me. Maka is the girl ever …
yeah i like that too but she falls in another trope. The whole 'beat a male character for lieerally anything 'and its played off as laughs. i hate when a male char is beaten by a female char and its not seen as problematic
Kill La Kill was dope.
Honestly, it makes me wonder what happened to the author that he wrote such atrocious female characters in Fire Force, when Soul eater had such finely written characters both male and female.
@@colesteenkamp5133 Maka's problem was basically her mother;s fault. Her mother used her to punish her father for cheating on her by basically turning her against her dad, saying no man can be trusted, and then abandoning her to be raised by the dad she now hates. And Maka admires her mom so much she never realized that and poor Soul has to suffer for it if any female even looks at him.
She;s the only one with an excuse.
@@colleen4ever even then its not seen as problematic tho. like cheating is bad but turning your kid against their dad even tho he loves her and tries to raise her is shitty, but trauma or you parent teaching you bad habits is no excuse for physically assaulting a dude. Like the dad and Soul just takes the hits from her and the story kinda implies that Maka is right for shitting on them. Yuou cant tell me shes the only one with an excuse because there is no excuse for being that much of a shitty person,
One of the many, many reasons I love Gintama is that the author gives a personality to every character, no matter if it's a man, a woman, a kid or even a dog that will only appear for one episode.
This means that the girls of the main cast are given backstories, battles where they get to shine and a lot of the serious arcs are centered around women. They get to save the day as much as their male counterparts and I think that's beautiful - and even the ones who don't fight like Otose, Hinowa and Princess Soyo, they are smart, strong in their own ways and just as important.
And the manga began on 2003 so it's not even the author following the trend, just him creating human characters like the absolute Chad he is.
Gorilla sensei never dissapoints
Gintama legit has some of the best female characters in anime
Fr love the fact that Kaguya is shown as the physically strongest out of the main trio. She's feminine, playful, and would not hesitate to drop a boulder on you if you took some of her seaweed
@@raspberrycrowns9494 I took a double look at your comment, while it is not untrue and has repeatedly referenced in Gintama, it's Kagura, but she certainly would love being mistaken as Kaguyahime. Lmao.
@@FreyjaRKim ah I guess it's worth mentioning that I haven't watched Gintama in a while but yeah she absolutely would milk the shit out of being mistaken for a deity
I agree that in Fairy Tail the fan service is excessive and unnecessary but to say that the women (especially Erza) only ever needed saving lets me know you didn’t watch Fairy Tail. Everyone men and women, girls and boys has needed to be saved in that show and in all these people being saved there are always women also saving as well as men. Erza has needed to be saved yeah sure but so has Natsu and Gray and everyone else on the show. Also to look me in the eye and say Erza does nothing and was wasted potential is offensive and she does a lot of the saving and is one of the main fighting forces of the show. Uraraka was a massive disappointment because they didn’t do anything with her (or her female classmates) after the tournament and now she’s just a potential love interest for Izuku.
Yeah she definitely didn't finish FT.
I think you'd really appreciate how the girls in Gintama are portrayed, they're all flawed individuals who are in most cases way more useful than the guys ever could be. It's not done in a way where it ever feels forced and instead of it feeling like bad writing, it comes across as a really tried and true group of friends who are all equal in how they all interact with one another.
Omg!!! Yessss!!! Yes, Gintama!!! They are so diverse and so so powerful!!! Damn, Gintama is just the best!
When I clicked on this vid, I thought to myself “which Shounen female characters are actually well-written? Oh that’s right, Gintama!” 💙
Honestly Kagura is my best answer. The heroine literally puke on screen LOL
Kyubei is a character that pretty much everyone ignores in Gintama, ever since i've joined the Gintama fandom, i have never once saw a single person talk about Kyubei and the Yagyu arc. its like everyone all just collectively agrees to just ignore her existence. Kyubei after her arc didn't really do much other than serve as a gag character like Sachan, who just goes around trying to win over Otae, and even after that she eventually just gives up on trying to love Otae, making her LOSE her gag and basically just become a nothing burger in the end. I think her arc about moving on about Otae and accepting the fact that she would never have her would have been more suitable for Kondo to have. Let's be honest Kondo is a near 30 year old cop that basically just stalks an 18 year old who has shown over and over in time that she is not into him, compared to Kyubei who just hangs out with Otae and has tried to protect her life ever since their childhood, Kondo doesn't really have that much of a relationship with Otae other than some funny stalker gag, and even tho they did have a little moment in the Farewell Shinsengumi arc, it was only for a short amount of time. Idk maybe i'm just rambling about stuff lol
It is shown in the gender swap arc, that the women of Gintama are far more competent than the male characters
Yees! I'm glad you're tackling this topic. I adore the shounen genre, but some of the female characters are either slept on and underdeveloped, or just plain annoying.. which is such a shame!! Here's hoping that Jujutsu keeps on being amazing.
What do you mean 'some'?
@@bingo784 My bad, I misspoke haha. I didn't watch too many shows (yet) so I don't have a good overview of what all is out there. So far I haven't encountered a female character I particularly liked (besides Kugisaki), but I wanted to be respectful to anyone who did find some.. inspiring? Likable? Not sure what the proper word would be lol
Female characters are not slept on and underdeveloped that's just talking points you're expected to say. Like I don't see what the problem is with Orihime? Most of the arguments people have for Orihime can be used against Keiko from Yu Yu Hakusho. They complain about how creepy it is for Orihime attempting to kiss Ichigo in his sleep, but don't say the same about Keiko who did the exact same thing?????????????
Oh people praise the JJK females over MHA females, but in case you didn't know Miwa Kasumi's reason for joining Jujutsu Tech is the same as Ochako Uraraka's for becoming a pro hero! This girl in the video contradicts herself she excuses Bulma wearing revealing clothing, but complains about Erza who kicks more ass????????????? Hypocritical much? Why do females in battle shounen have to kick ass and compete with the males Keiko didn't???? And do these people forget that Inuyasha and Rurouni Kenshin exists? Why is Bulma's boobs popping out not an issue, but Erza's is? Heck Yuroichi is practically naked sometimes has her ass on one of the panels yet no complaints??????? This video is the same as every other video about this topic recycling the same talking points!
@@lichtwykkyd6103 I apologize. As someone who has seen neither, I can't express my opinion on those. But trust me when I say that nonconsent is creepy, in whatever shape or form. If I see a character do that, male or female, I will dislike them. I think the point is that as a girl myself, I find it difficult to see a girl in shounen and think of her as a role model. When I watch shounen, I adore the male characters and look up to those (which isn't bad at all!), just wish there were more instances where I can just instantly like a female character without her being annoying.
What I love about Attack on Titan is that there is almost as many female characters as males, and they're in important roles in the show such as commanding troops, being very skilled and even being royalty. Mikasa has unfortunately not been developed much beyond her initial setup, but I hope she can end the series strong.
What I love in attack of titan is the story , that' s what you must put your focus on when u watch an anime , movie etc.. not representation.
Focus on epresentation leads to the state of hollywood today, absolute void.
Mikasa is a static character, this doesn't mean she's badly written she just has a different role in the story which works wonderfully with Eren's character that constantly evolves throughout the story even if his fundamental goal is always the same.
@@gakutoigawa8177 You seem to be confused, a great story always needs to have representation. I agree that representation alone isn't enough to make up for a bad story but you can't have a good story where there is only 1 type of person or there is multiple but they're all written badly except the one.
@@anitaremenarova6662 Honestly, being away from Eren in this last season has given us more opportunities to see her interact with others.
@Anita Remenárová there's no point of answering me when you didn't take the time understand what I wrote .
If you did tough and still gave that answer, it would be an intellectual dishonesty.
I love Ochako a lot but she did get neglected in the story. I don’t think she's *just* a support character but she's great at a support role and is capable of saving a ton of people. She specifically focused on improving her combat ability too. Unfortunately she doesn't get many fights. After the tournament arc she's just developing in the background for the most part. But she is still developing.
Also Class 1-A in general, not just the girls, get better at using their quirks. They learn what their limits are and also increase their limits. Momo doesn’t really get exhausted later on. Ochako vomits less. Mineta doesn't bleed anymore. Kaminari doesn't go stupid as often. You could put Midoriya in this group too.
I enjoyed Nobara's character and her moments. I'd say more but it involves manga spoilers.
Maki is like one of my favorite jjk characters. Love her.
@closetgremlinnamedace Yeah it was great
Yona of the Dawn is one of my favorite anime with a strong female lead. She starts off as a bratty spoiled princess but grows into a very strong-willed heroine. I just wish it had gotten a season 2. As for MHA, I'm glad some of the later seasons have focused more on the female heroes with their own episodes and arcs, but Ururaka needs to be part of the main group.
It is a reverse harem anime… all the male characters revolve mainly around Yona. That is not a good comparison.
@@annaavertho4944 She’s still a strong female character, having men in her group doesn’t change that. She killed a man trafficking women, saving them all.
@@annaavertho4944 it's not really a reverse harem anime/manga. You might think that way if you don't really know Yona of the Dawn but there isn't a reverse harem plot developed in the series. Yona is a strong female character, with leadership skills, she evolves and matures to know about the hardships her people is suffering, she becomes a great leader who knows about politics and the cruelty of the world. Yes, she has a group of boys who protect her, but the reason is she was always a cared for and protected princess, she never learned to defend herself, so it is normal that at first she does not know how to defend herself (besides, she does not have extraordinary powers like the ones the dragons have) but still decides to learn to use the bow (and uses it on the enemy) and the sword so that she can protect those she cares about. In addition, there are other strong female characters like Lily's bodyguards who use weapons and martial arts and there are also two princesses who use weapons and are considered generals. Yona of the Dawn is a Shojo with well-written female characters.
@@annaavertho4944 Have you SEEN Yona of the Dawn? There is no Harem, it's just Yona and Hak and the rest of the boys tag along with no romantic interest towards Yona whatsoever.
@@BunnyandMoon nah she got kidnapped more times than I can count in the manga , she had an opening to kill the murderer of her dad but as a typical shounen sakura she doesn’t hate him or watever , yona is as strong as the plot wants her to be and for any good moment there is a kidnapping and zeno and the boys gotta save her
Lucy from fairytail is so funny because whenever she’s dominating, everyone else has passes out, and the second they wake up, she passes out 💀
At this point I feel like there needs to be a group for women (why not for guys too) who give solid anime recommendations that don't have kids or teenager being sexualized, harassment normalized or plain female characters as a norm😭
Yes!! I would love that kind of content. Sometimes I start a series bc the story is good. And as soon as the overly sexualized girl appears... I turn it off. I am really tired of this stuff, either that or the weird (kinda horny) little sister shows up. I'm out. :D
So yeah I am always thankful for recommendations where I don't have to ignore the nasty fan service female "lead". 😅
@@jkhaos1235 If you haven't already check out a certain magical index. The main character is not female but there was eventually a spin off series made for one of the main female characters in the show, called a certain scientific railgun. Both stories are centered around magic vs science and the female lead in the spin-off is really powerful and well written, aside from the fact that she's very important to the plot of both series. Many people (including myself) think the main series is quite good but regard the spin-off as better simply due to the female lead being expanded on really well in her own anime.
I agree 100%. Weather it's current anime shows or old anime shows. There should be a group for people that want the characters to be treated as actual people. Because, yes I'll admit I had my pervted phase, but Jesus christ, it's redundant, and just not funny anymore.
Now, I'm so desperate, I'm rewatching anime shows that are over a decade old, some almost twenty years old. Shows like Claymore, Wolf's Rain, Cowboy Bepop. They had maturity, the characters, both men and women were interesting, they had dreams, goals of there own. Cowboy Bepop, Faye Valentine was sexy, but she had spunk, attitude, could handle herself, she had her own back story, she was treated not just as a woman but as a human being.
Ghost in the shell, motoko was hot, sexy, but she kicked ass, was intelligent, was the leader and commander of her unit, she questioned her meaning of existing.
I'm honestly horrible when it comes to what is Shonen, and all the other categories of animes shows. So I apologize if I'm being rude.
Death note was an excellent show, but sadly with Misa she was put in the dumb blonde stereotype, even though she clearly wasn't a airhead all of the time.
Blood + was another great show of Saya who developed and grew throughout the series in her own way, and she kicked ass.
Besides Cyberpunk Edgerunners, I stopped trying to watch modern anime because of how bad it's gotten.
@@Butterflywings011 i agree. anime today is just poorly written near but not quite there hentai.
i had my hentai phase too. and i admit i will still read hentai sometimes but i dont want to see that stuff in regular shows that much. its distracting.
i hate that so many anime today focus on schoolgirls or weird sisters and all that weird stuff. also loli stuff is pretty scary.
todays anime feels like poorly written wish fullfillment mostly.
thats why i only watch older stuff. i mostly watch and read slice of life, science fiction or seinen. because there is next to none fanservice in these genres.
I remember hearing somewhere in a video that was comparing western media and anime that in anime there's a lot of stuff that's very different than western media (boys getting nosebleeds after seeing girls, women/children being sexualized, romance between siblings) she didnt mention these specific examples and she was saying anime watchers are usually fine with this stuff because they are used to it and this wouldn't be in western media because most people who dont watch anime THINK its weird (emphasize on think because she said that) and anime fans are used to it since its normal in anime
my problem with it is that it IS weird. not think. not normalized. it shouldn't happen. and she never addresses how it shouldn't happen she just says that people who dont watch anime are not used to it. I dont watch much anime but i dont think any amount of watching will change how i see the weird stuff going on
"lucy is making people do the work for her." in the first few seasons, yes. it has been told in the anime and manga multiple times that the celestial spirits are only as strong as their holder. lucy can also fight on her own with "Urano Metria" (yes she uses gemini with it but look at hibiki's reaction to her mastering it despite only knowing about it for a few months) girlie can summon multiple celestials at once and back to back. she uses a whip AND uses star dress which decreases the usage of celestials because she technically uses their powers.
she also summoned the celestial spirit king which no one is able to do (for what i can recall)
Thiiisssss!!!!
She’s also a very important character who’s helped with the development of her rivals
Yess!! Fairy Tail may have a lot of fan service but it's female characters are some of the best written in shounen! Both in power and personality and there's so many of them too! I freaking love Lucy and her development! She has many badass fights of her own I would never say she was sidelined
By that logic, she should bash every Naruto character who uses summons in their fights. The logic isn't logicing here. 🤣🤣
I would argue Fiona from Shrek is one of those Shounen girls that could've been great. They introduced the idea of a damsel in distress being more in the first one but make her kinda sidelined until Shrek Forever After where she starts kicking butt, though she's ultimately reliant on Shrek to save her again.
Okay but seriously, I think shounen anime and manga writers may want to look to other influences for inspiration as to how to write complex female heroes. Chris Clairmont was known as a a writer who created some badass and 3-dimentional female X-Men characters like Rogue, Shadowcat, Psylocke, and the fricken Dark Phoenix Saga!
Also, maybe hire some talented female writers? That might help...
SHREK
MY FAVORITE SHOUNEN ANIME AHAHA
Oh hell yes, amazing shounen to get behind A+
What about frozen? Best Anime of the year ngl elsa and anna's sister arc really was mesmerizing! and Good women empowerment
You think shrek was a good shounen anime?
Just wait till you hear about Dora the explorer
The best manga that a female mangaka has ever made is this one called "Domestic girlfriend". Please do read it, it openly spits on FMAB which has greatest female characters in anime.
Akatsuki no Yona is my absolute favorite example of character development of a female main character. Yona starts as a sheltered, spoiled, and helpless princess who endures countless traumatic experiences, but those experiences helped her develop into an inspiring and empathetic leader as well as a skilled archer. The way the writers paced that development was phenomenal. I really hope they make more anime seasons for Akatsuki no Yona cuz the manga is fantastic
I agree, its one of my favorite animes and it was so good!
wish they didnt end it on only one season tho ;;
Agreed!! It's my favorite manga for this reason - among others!
holy fuck I haven't heard Yona of the dawn since forever 😭✌️✨
The reason the character development of a female character is so good is because Yona of the Dawn is a shoujo series. ❤ ☺️
Honestly, I think people in general should give shoujo animes a try more often. They’re not only romance, there are action, fantasy and adventure ones too! And It’s SO RELIEVING to see well written characters for a change!
I think nami is written so well because she is a normal human who is capable of so much but she also give the audience someone to relate to because she DOES have limits due to not having a devil fruit power. She’s also the one to bring Luffy back to reality when he goes too far and really advocates for the rest of the crew
One of the great things about Arlong Park is that, even though the emotional high point is Nami asking Luffy for help, *no one* could watch it and think that Nami is anything but incredibly strong for fighting on her own for so long against impossible odds. I would be happy to see more women in One Piece getting serious set piece fights, but on a character level it works for me that Nami and Robin can hold their own when the chips are down, but mostly they want to focus on doing what they love.
One of the great things about Arlong Park is that, even though the emotional high point is Nami asking Luffy for help, *no one* could watch it and think that Nami is anything but incredibly strong for fighting on her own for so long against impossible odds. I would be happy to see more women in One Piece getting serious set piece fights, but on a character level it works for me that Nami and Robin can hold their own when the chips are down, but mostly they want to focus on doing what they love.
@@lyndonwesthaven6623 EXACTLY! Same for ussop and chopper! They don’t have to be the strongest to be meaningful
@@annoyingbookgirl That's one of the things One Piece did good. The gender, heck, even the species, does not matter. The main cast are capable in their own ways. Even underdogs has their time to shine.
@@meeeeehhhhhh yes dude it’s literally so uplifting no matter who you are you’ll feel good after watching it
I'm so glad I found this channel, the problem of women in anime has always been something I saw very clearly, but I couldn't find any content creator who spoke in depth about that topic. Now I realize how much I was missing before I started watching content in English
You summed it up perfectly: women in shounen anime are written as "basically a guy, a child that can't fend for themselves, or if they can fend for themselves they have to wear a bikini while doing it". Spot on!
Stories with that kind of characters doesn't last long anyway. In defense on popular stories for the sake of the argument and openness, those female characters are not the main protagonist or the center of the story. The spotlight is always on the main protagonist.
In Naruto, Sakura definitely has the stats to fend herself and she's equip for healing, but she's always "useless" because Naruto must always save the day. Everyone in their subconscious knows that Naruto is the centre of the story so it fits right that we always follow his journey. That's why that manga/anime sticks until the very end. But yes, if only Kishimoto knew what to do with her character then we wouldn't have this caricature problem of Sakura being useless.
I don't think you understand the contradictory nature of the criticisms...
"Women are basically written as guys."
>What does this even mean? Uh, sure, okay, let's write a female character that's obssessed with boys and looking pretty. And male MCs tend not to be completely incapable of fending for themselves so we'll make this female character-
"No. She can't be stereotypical obsessing over male characters and being pretty. She also has to be able to fend for herself!"
>Oh. Well, okay. Um. Sure. No stereotypical girl behavior. We'll make her smart, clever and-
"No, she has to be able to throw down with the boys."
>But... okay sure, fine. She can throw down with the boys. She's kinda samey though, so what kinda of clothes do we use that could fix that? Bikinis and skirts and-
"No, none of that stuff, just dress her normally like a guy."
>Um... sure. Okay.
"Oh my gosh, you're just writing women as guys."
>*Sigh*
The criticisms almost always lead to one of two outcomes. A female character that's basically a guy, or a Mary Sue that's perfect out the gate. When we get a balance of the two, we get a character like Sakura that get's ragged on for being that balance. You can't just swap her role with Naruto or Sasuke because then you're, "basically writing her as a guy". It's a Catch 22.
@@R.E.E.D. so writing a female character that uses modest dresses and pretty accessories, has equivalent power to her male counterparts and is a flawed but fleshed out character with her own goals and struggles is impossible?
@@abrilb.6969 If you go by the always shifting goalposts criticisms, then yes.
@@jankyyard5610 name one shonen where the female characters weren’t useful
I'm really confused about Erza? She really never acted like a damel in distress aside from in a fight with Jellal because he was her childhood friend. Other than she was was always a badass character which is why she is definitely one of my favorite female characters. She is very capable of saving herself and her friends and took down some very strong villains as well.
The only thing true is that she was sexualized in her costumes but that's basically every character in the anime since fairy tail does not shy away from fanservice.
I Agree!
I thought the exact same thing. Say what you will about any other character in Fairy Tail, but other than "fan service" there's no metric where Erza doesn't stand at least equal to every guy in the show (save obviously the main protag and villain).
While I agree with the videos overall point, it does feel like she takes like the first arc of a lot of the characters she looks at and judges from there, as many of the girls in Fairy Tail get lots of opportunity to be more then damsels in distress (like Lucy and Erza), but because they aren't strong or are vulnerable in early arcs they get labeled as damsels. This is the same for Nami who she mentions as being a damsel as well, which is somewhat true in her introduction to the crew, but she's way more then just a damsel/weak fighter in later arcs (or at least from what I've heard and seen as I haven't stayed up to date with OP).
@@nicholasjacobs6605 Yeah but Erza is one of the strongest characters in the anime since the very beginning. And her personality is almost always putting on tough act. She is far from being a damsel at any point in the anime except the end of the Tower of Heaven arc where she is saved from Jellal by Natsu.
yeah, almost everything is good about her except the way she dresses (especially in fights).I really hate her extremely revealing clothing. but other than that almost everything is good or at least ok.
I think the most tiring thing about Uraraka for me is that her screentime is about the same as it had been, they just treat her as less capable. Like we had the bit with her being helpful and thinking on her feet, we had her origin (and she's the first established working-class hero in the show), and now she's 100% only the love interest and cannot function if Deku is around or even mentioned. It's so disappointing.
I agree with half of this, I do think that the amount of time she’s thinks about deku is a lot but, she has said she need a stop her feelings for him because he is working very to be a hero and that’s she is doing now. Yea she probably still has some feelings for him but she cares so much about as a friend too and in the recent chapters we see uraraka being really strong and badass.
im not rly caught up too much with the manga but as far as im aware, shes pretty much no longer an love interest or at least, she still likes deku but put aside her feelings and put her full focus on the war
Most times I feel that mangka are just too lazy to incorporate more character over time for the female characters. L.A.Z.Y. Writing!!
i completely agree, and it’s so frustrating to see. The show tries to convince us that she’s a badass independent female character with things like the sports festival and her fighting toga, but it doesn’t have that ‘badass’ effect when her entire morale and goals are centred around Deku, and she is consistently sidelined (along with the rest of the female characters). It gets tiring to see shows constantly making women revolve around their crushes or love interests without any personal or independent thoughts. I love Uraraka but it’s sad to see how her potential was wasted.
I think Uraraka has enough screen time. I find her one of the most annoying female characters on MHA.
Ok I have multiple problems with your problem with Erza And Wendy.
“Characters like Erza and Wendy just fall into the background” not once have they done that.Erza has always been in the plot and important same with Wendy once she’s introduced.
“She doesn’t do much in the grand scheme” That’s just wrong.Are we talking bout the same Erza?The one who destroyed 100 monsters?The same one who was the mvp of one of the most important arcs of Fairy Tail?The same one who came in clutch at Tenrou Island And Alvarez?The same one who’s currently Laxus’s equal and is only growing stronger?The same one who was the strongest at the beginning of the series?Cant be the same one.
And Wendy?Shes the main healer for a first.And if you read 100yq that girl gets more development than Characters like Gray,Gajeel and Laxus hell arguably Natsu.Also Wendy Destroyed the Faces and was 1/3 of the reason they made it out of Edolas?You heavily downplayed their contribution to say that Mavis was better written than them when she really ain’t.
Yess!! Fairy Tail is one of my favourite shounens because of how good the female characters are! There are so amazing moments of the main girls! And most of the time they win their fights themselves! With an exception to Lucy, who also has few wins of her own and has protected her friends in desperate times. It is just wrong to say Erza and Wendy are sidelined because they are NOT they are literally part of the MAIN CAST and have amazing stories and development.
This video really is such a disappointment, because I was hoping to see Fairy Tail here for what it is - namely an exception to the rule, a shounen anime with a fantastically written cast of female characters.
Erza is one of the strongest characters throughout the whole show, has multiple character arcs, is pretty much never used as a damsel in distress, has many strong character traits and flaws and keeps being relevant in every single arc after her introduction. To call her a badly written character is absurd.
@@Lindbluete Fairy Tail isn't the exception! Although it DOES have among the best female characters in japanimation, the industry as a whole has great female characters all the time. I'd be curious to know that youtuber's opinion on Madoka Magica, because that show is almost exclusively female and the characters are all fuckin awesome.
@@Dante02d12 That's true, of course. I was strictly thinking about battle shounen, which has some blurry lines to begin with (AoT? FMA?).
Aside from the disrespect to FT's ladies, she doesn't give Bleach justice when she only mentioned the two main girls. What about the side cast? Yoruichi who is hella capable and is one of Ichigo's mentors? Unohana who is hella powerful and terrifying (TYBW reveals)?
I really like how Tome is written in MP100, while she doesn’t necessarily fight in the series, she’s just an unapologetic weird girl and she has legitimate plot relevance whenever she shows up
i love the mob psycho girls, they're all actually how normal middle schoolers are, especially tsubomi n tome
@@yes794 Yeah!!!! They remind me a lot of how my classmates and myself were like at that age, ONE is awesome at writing believable teenagers
Wish you had talked about Winrey and Hawkeye from FMA; it's been a hot minute since I read the manga (ok a few hot years 😅) but from what I remember middle school me was super hyped to see 2 strong, independent, and capable women as strong side characters (I'd argue there were times where they also felt like main characters). Since finishing that series I almost feel like we've been going backwards. From what I remember Hawkeye and Izumi-sensei never wore revealing clothing, were super strong, and both well-developed characters; while Winrey wore somewhat revealing clothing she also was incredibly capable and had her own motivations/character development. While I see the points you're making, I feel like no (mainstream) anime series has really come close to the proper female representation in anime as FMA did.
i agree, tho to add a point to think about the author of FMA is female. a lot of the big action/manga being talked about are often written by men. inuyasha for example, a fav of mine, also has these characteristics and was written by a female mangaka. in contrast when i used to read fairytail, i would often feel kind of objectified? or just straight up annoyed at how the female characters were being written?
if sexism/internalized misogyny has indeed gotten worse in manga and anime than before that probably has to do with it being seen more as a consumable good than an art form as it's become more capable of mainstream profit 😬✨
@@digifae I was about to say the same, the author of FMA being a woman has a lot to do with it.
True but I loved Olivier so freaking much. She’s amazing
Honorable mention is Noelle from Black Clover. She was literary introduced as weak character who cant even control her magic and she looked down to most people as noble. But she learned the basics,grew more than people expected,became more kind towards others and set goal to revenge her mother. Countless times fought Dark Triad's member and became strong enough to equally fight alonside with protagonist.
Asta is always stronger but yeah
I agree but she is very sexualized too. I would say someone more fitting is mereoleona. She’s straight up a badass.
@@Yoboielmo so sexualization is bad? Noelle is hardly done like that in the series, and I've read the Manga.
This kind of thing really annoys me.
@@Fatalis690 she us sexualized though. In her valykarie armor she is basically naked.
@@Yoboielmo unless you're talking about the mermaid form, no she isn't; the normal form doesn't show anything. I've read the Manga, and still there's still hardly any sexualization for any of the girls.
There are two reasons the criticism of Orihime is unwarranted. One, Bleach has pretty much a complete spectrum of female characters, as far as both roles and personalities go, so even though Orihime is (one of) the main female character(s), she's certainly not representative of the show's usage of women.
Two, even if she were the *only* woman on the show, she doesn't fit the role of "damsel in distress"; not a hundred percent, anyway. In the clip you showed, she actually started off by fighting the villain, but he proved too much for her. Then later, even after she was told she shouldn't be involved in battles, she still chose to train and become a better fighter so she wouldn't need to be rescued again. And while she does become a prisoner, it's not because she was captured; it was because she surrendered in order to save her friends' lives. She wasn't some kidnapped princess who needed to be rescued, even though that's the surface story that's being told. She intended to remain a prisoner until she could find a way to destroy the bad guy's MacGuffin. And even though she was abused during her time as a prisoner, her heart remained intact. We saw that in the compassion she showed her abusers, healing them after they'd been torn apart themselves.
Orihime is a much more complex character than she gets credit for being, and frankly, she's my favorite character in the show. She is absolutely not "trash".
W fam ❤❤
I also like her relation with Ulquiorra the fact he was MUCH stronger than her, she never bow down to him, or cry and always stood her ground against him and even slap him at one point, and while he never admitted it (partially cause he didn't understand these feelings that were new to him) Ulquiorra definitly developped some sentiment for her, at least some respect in his own twisted way (also shown by the fact he never physically hurt her, his threats were only verbal and he never actually execute them).
The fact that she doesn't mention Soi Fon, Yoruichi, Nel, Harribel, or Unohana is just criminal.
*13:15** the best line in this video* "either write them as they're basically a guy, they're basically a child that can't fend for themselves, or if they can fend themselves they have to wear a bikini while doing it" 😂😭😭 FACTS
well ironically, people have been arguing that the best female characters are characters that happen to be female for years now. so can we than all of a sudden complain when many of them are just written like guys.
@@MALICEM12 1. *complain that only male characters are well-written*
2. *female characters get written better*
3. *complain that they're written like guys*
@@revimfadli4666 Name one male anime character that is written like a girl in order for them to have a personality.
@@jellydoughnut9779 quote one sentence where anyone says that male characters must be written like females in order to have a personality
@@revimfadli4666 What are you talking about? Also nice dodge.
Hinata is not a well written character. She's powerful, but not only does she barely speak for herself, she also pushes the male view of what wonferful woman should be. She does what women love to do in their free time, knitting. Not that there's anything wrong with knitting. Oh, but of course she's a quiet, shy character who spends her time knitting stuff nobody wears instead of training or having cool fights.
I REALLY wished we saw her thoughts on the literal slavery happening in her clan...that was kinda a big thing but in shippuden she only think about naruto and the hyuuga's slavery are irrelevant
@@muhseh By the time she’s a teenager, the Hyuga has changed. The side branch and main branch are seen as equals.
@@shay4988 it was mentioned in passing so I'm not satisfied, not that that matters bc we still never once heard hinata's thoughts on slavery in her clan...writers never gave any time to a clan other than uchiha....
I'm not happy with how they developed her either but at the end of the day she has two kids and a husband to look after and she's retired plus the opponents are god tier aliens and now cybernetic robot androids things so yeah I would retired too if I was her.
You can't say she isn't a well-written character simply because you don't like the type of character she is.
I do feel like Fairy Tail deserves more credit in the more future episodes. I've watched all nine seasons and not once has Erza truly needed help from a guy. Sure, she has that infatuation with the one person, but she doesn't rely on his for physical strength whatsoever. There are tons of times people sat back and looked at Erza, amazed by her strength. And as for Lucy, she grew a lot and became way stronger. In the last season, even, she actually does fighting alongside her key whatchamacallits. If it wasn't for the sexual appeal they were constantly doing, putting the girls in disgusting outfits, they would be much more respected.
But yeah Juvia is a lost cause.
Personally I have no problem with the outfits since most of the time it’s just for fan service, non of the characters are too creepy to go to points where it’s making the actual characters uncomfortable so I don’t really mind it.
I think it mostly has to do with camera angles but still I think it’s pretty limited in what it shows, in the anime at least.
Yes I love fairy tail and I always think erza is a wonderful character and nezako too! The 100 year quest shows awesome character development.
For me it’s art and they also sexulize the guys with abs and the perfect hair
Juvia imo is a bit better in “The 100 Year Quest”, but in the anime… I have to agree with you 😅
I was thinking the same! Fairy tail has extremely sexualised characters, I will argue that both male and female are draw as quite sexy and seductive. But aside from the appearance, I think all the female character are quite well written. Erza is one of the strongest member of her guild, she actually become the master at the end if I remember correctly, and is shown time and time again as competent fighter. But she’s not one dimensional, I found the exploration of her past and her story with Jellal quite interesting. And I can say something similar for almost every character.
Maybe aside Juvia…
Not like her infatuation with Jellal is a bad thing, on the contrary, it adds to her character. She has proven multiple times how she doesn't let her feelings get in the way of doing what's right. I'd argue her relationship with him is one of the most interesting things about her.
We need to stop this “if they don’t get fights, they’re useless”. Nami and Robin are hella useful and important. But because they don’t fight as much as other characters (they’re not really combatants like that) they’re useless? The crew wouldn’t even still be around if it wasn’t for Nami.
Flawed ass logic.
No one said they’re useless and you clearly watched this with your ears plugged
@@joannugo3353 I clearly watched this with my ears alerted, you clearly watched it with your dirty ass.
@@joannugo3353agreed homie didn’t listen to a single thing she said.
To be fair she didn't say much. I was waiting for her to say something about Nami.
Right, saying she called her "useless" may be a stretch, but c'mon, she is just NOT talking about Nami clearly not being a physical fighter (but always holds her own) and yet still being one of the best written characters in the series.
I love both Nami and Robin and I don't think they are useless but the point of the video wasn't to hate on them. It was to showcase that in a piece of media like shonen, men get to be badass fighters so why can't women? Why do they always have to be the support? Why can't female characters be capable combatants?
A shounen female character can have a crush on the MC all she wants, but a least give her a life outside of the guy. That's the problem I have with the female characters from the Shounen.
Go watch One Piece, all the strawhats' girls are strong willed and doesn't crush on a guy
GINTAMA.
The women. The girls. They are everything in this show. Not only are they all different and unique in their own way, they're also super relatable in many aspects.
Kagura is the most adorable thing ever. Not only is she super funny and cute, she gets a rage scene (a girl rage scene in a shonen, how often does that happen??). She's hella strong (possibly one of the strongest from her show) but can also be affectionate and caring. She's a tomboy but loves doing typical "girl things" and gets to experience all the stuff girls went through in their life. She has a super interesting backstory involving her naturally violent genetic and her family. She is in no way wasted, and I mark my words, she is amazing. She isn't just standing there playing *the girl role*, she has a place among the cast as the cute daughter that has ambitions and preferences and would do anything to stay with Gintoki and Shinpachi. She's got her own little romance, friendships and family moments and the author didn't forget one thing about her.
And I'm not even talking about the other women.
I feel that Kagura is similar to Kaori in City Hunter.
is it too much to ask to have a strong female character without making her a fanservice object 😔 it makes me so uncomfortable and its hard to enjoy a show with it,, still though, im really glad I watched this video and i appreciate you talking about it!! I feel like the more we talk about it the more better female characters there will be!
Go play/watch yo-kai watch, boys and enbies in this franchise can be treated as fanservice objects ironically but female characters are treated with as much respect as you can get in a nonsensical incomprehensible parody of everything.
For a hideous generalization : female nudity can be teased and immediately denied in the funniest way possible and men being handsome or muscular is comedy material.
Even if they're not fanservice they're extremely sexualized by the fandom. And they're hella weak compared to male anime characters.
Claymore
There are u just don't look for them
@@fazingrses3029 not only to the main characters and vilians lol
The Shounen you are referring to is mostly those serialized in Weekly shonen Jump. Jump has a system where it's serialized weekly and those that have actually bought the publication have the right to vote on which manga to continue. It's this post card you send in with your top 3 favorite series that week. When your manga doesn't get enough votes it's called Uchikiri. That's why some manga end really abruptly. The shortest is 10 weeks.
The authors are tailoring the manga to those that buy the publication, mostly boys in japan. If they don't, they get the axe and lose their livelihood. Female chatacters have to appeal to young boys in japan. Of course boys want dream of saving the damsels in distress. Of course boys are going to relate more to girls they like liking someone else.
Btw female protagonist battle manga exist. Gunm is really cool. Kazeno tani no nausicaa, akame ga kill, claymore, stone ocean, medaka box, Tokyo esp, tepuu, yawara, Akatsuki no yona, shakyugan no shana
I agree with you , which pose a question , since the mangakas tries to write good female characters it's very possible that the editing team in shounen jump may not want strong female characters which we can clearly see in all of their works ,also it's stated that they let their writers do what they want but at the end they tell them to change everything which really impact the quality of the work it's been stated as an inside joke before in the Manga community that whatever you write the editor will just tell you to write something like Naruto at the end of the day , the Mangaka"Masashi Kishimoto" himself said that as an advice to not write all of you work before hand since it will be heavily changed ,
We see how the company policy makes a lot of difference in the quality of the work and they are not above bad decisions and corruption , honestly now the Mangas with some good writing are not part of shounen jump . Like FMAB, Hiromu Arakawa also didn't well with arslan senki with the shounen jump magazine and then she get back with square Enix magazine with her new work and it's doing great.
I think Chainsaw Man is an example of a good manga (and anime) with well written and important female characters. Yes, they are sexualized sometimes, but it never feels unnecessary or like it's just there to please fans. The female characters all have good designs, are strong and can fend for themselves, and each serve their own purpose outside of a character's love interest or as the token female character
Chainsaw Man is the only Shonen i know of in which its female characters are equally popular, if not more popular than their male counterparts. In the csm popularity poles the girl to boy ratio in the top 10 was 5:4 (1 being Kobeni's car). If its female characters are so well liked then csm must be doing something correct.
You people need to stop overusing terms where they don't belong, the women in Chainsaw man rarely get sexualized. The only instance I think of is Power on the beach in the opening but that one is very much a self-aware nod to the audience. Women simply being in sexual situations isn't sexualization, that would also need to include lack of purpose and objectification neither which happens in any of the raunchier scenes.
@@anitaremenarova6662true that and plus makima is meant to be sexually appealed cuz her whole character is manipulation by seduction and imo shes an excellent written character
@@anitaremenarova6662 If you're talking about sexualization, attack on titan has zero sex scene.
Yes but Chainsaw Man is really more of a seinen than a shounen. As is Attack on Titan.
Akane Tsunemori is a very strong lead in Psychopass. Not a shounen but she’s an inspiring, tenacious, and capable leader who exhibits many of the character traits common to shounen protagonists. 10/10 show and characters.
I was gonna say that. It's the only character that comes to my mind
Psychopass is so underrated! Season one's ending is perfection.
@@ryanstarlight8018
Fullmetal alchemist. Pretty much every female character in that is a total badass.
Fairy tail. Ignoring this video. Both Ezra and Lucy are immensely powerful and Ezra is even made guild leader at one point. Both have good story arcs and character growth until the entire series went to shit.
Bleach. Rukia once she has her powers back becomes a total badass again and eventually “spoilers ahead” gets made a captain.
Black Clover most the female characters there are immensely powerful and adapt. Storywise kinda eh but that’s pretty much all the characters as since the beginning it’s felt like the author is just of fast forward mode to boost through the manga as quickly as possible.
There’s honestly a lot. Most just seem to see tits and go “oh she’s fanservixe” which yes nearly every female character in a shonen manga and anime will have fanservice moments because the target audience is young boys. So while that’s it’s own thing. Fact is take that complaint out and the female characters in a lot of shonen are badasses in their own right and when they do come off kinda shit most times it’s because overall that’s how most the side characters are treated. Theirs just gets noticed more because you get the extra part of “oh they’re only here for fanservice”.
Couldn't agree more she's literally the only character that appeals to me and girls (real girls not the bishes) not sorry
No truer words have been spoken
Nami is one of the team members who not only isn't useless, but we see over and over again throughout the series how much the team needs her, and how much they screw up navigating and planning when she's not around to help them. Except that not only is it not a surprise when she helps, it's just that her fighting style is very characteristic of her. And when she fights, she just does it her way with weather science and cunning. Because she is not a man, she is not trying to be a substitute for a man. She's just Nami, which is wonderful.
And Robin of course - who simply has fighting strength, wisdom, knowledge and crazy abilities either with her powers or with her mind.
Robin is also super important, she's the only one who can read ponegliffs, the last survivor of Ohara. She used to be an assassin, Miss All Sunday, so she's not to be underestimated.
Actually, one piece women is absolutely amazing. Nami, Robin, hankok, Vivi, and many more!
Honestly I'm still frustred about robin I wish oda writer her way more combat focused. she is so strong with a great df but isn't used that much. In every other aspect she is great though. I'm saying this as authentic and respectfull robin onlyfan simps
@Azehlo yeah exactly
@@theflashgordon193 honestly she probably got my 5th favorite fight out of wano. Right behind luffy vs kaido, kid & law vs big mom, zoro vs king, and franky vs Sasaki. 5th may not sound like much but with how many amazing fights are in wano that's pretty impressive.
Lucy has been improved in the newer manga but it’s slow, it’s the type of improvement and characterization she should’ve had with natsu since at least season 2, definitely a lot better then when she was used as support or cannon-faddor or even if that.
When Madoka Magica exploded, the dark genre inversion idea broke through into other shows, but the fact that it was a hit of badass women fighting seemed to not really register. I'm a guy, and I love strong female characters. Give me more like Roberta from Black Lagoon!
the fact that out of all the examples, you picked Black Lagoon, is suspect.
I like Balalaika and Revy. They're pretty cool and interesting.
While I agree Madoka is great, I still feel like they're still fetishized.
@@makjohnson13 how do you feel that the characters in madoka are fetishized?
@@MALICEM12 Mami lol, she's 15 but has a very sexualized design and body type, Homura too, when she become a demon, her transformation seems to be very sexualized despite her being 14, Madoka, Sayaka and Kyoko's designs are fine tho for me
Maka from Soul Eater is a fantastic example of a well written female lead character
W
As a boy, I feel like the writers are just taking me for a fool, when they include useless female characters or immersion-breaking fanservice. Thank you for talking about this!
Aight she made great comments abt the naruto,bleach but the way she tried generalizing one piece in the same category as those two without doing any research is just disrespectful
@@onepiecefan9249 As a big One Piece fan, I actually dislike the way that women are portrayed in the story and animation, after around episode 600.
To give one spoilerfree example: Around episode 1000, an impactful fight between a woman and a man takes place. And instead of showing the fight in a deserving way, the camera literally ZOOMS into the women's armpit and tries to present her in a suggestive way, all around! I know that this is an extreme case, but I still think, that female character presentation in One Piece is not as good as it could be.
Feel free to disagree. I would love to hear more opinions on this topic!
@@lazylenni1017 TBH, I am quite annoyed by Nami and her underutilized power. She's supposed to be a badass, not sure what happened.
Yes an even when they get a moment to shine the writes put them back shelf.
@@lazylenni1017 dude it makes me so uncomfy wen they show the female characters in such a suggestive way like that 🙄
Completely disagree with the One Piece female cast being weak...
Fax
They're not weak but some of them, like Nami, r just trash in general.
Yeah Robin could have beated them all. Nami tries her best. And Big mom IS a girl lol.
@@MthaMenMonnot to mention my personal favorite girl, Yamato.
Honorable mentions to Nami, Robin, Carrot, Shirahoshi, Perona, and Hancock.
I've never understood One Piece being grouped into the weak female cast argument. Nami and Robin's character don't revolve around in love with Luffy; even Hancock who simps for Luffy pulled her weight as a character and provided Luffy with an environment to grow when he was at his lowest just before the primeskip.
Even the underwhelming female characters in One Piece are going to play a huge role in the future with Shirahoshi being a ancient weapon and it looks like Rebecca will be Viola's body guard one day when she becomes the queen of Dressrosa.
Most recently we've had great character writing for Bonney,Ginny and Stussy
Emma from the promised neverland was super good at the start of the manga and was one of the most likeable girl characters, since she could fight and never gave up. But as the manga progressed she got very dull as long with normal and ray
@@inakyu it really is!!! If your just ignore the second season 😂
Emma was actually the most capable fighter out of the three. Because she was athletic.
I would argue that Emma is the greatest fighter in the manga as well, she is the one who fights most times and while Ray is good, he isn't as good as her.
Just dont watch the anime... like at all. Unless you want dissapoinment
@@naganut9718 season 1 is good, season 2 not
I personally enjoyed Ezra as she gets plenty of cool moments like fighting her mom or when she’s like fighting the person who blinded her and amplified pain. And on over fanservice, which can be very annoying (that tournament) but I feel she maintains her agency when shit goes down and I think she’s never damseled
Erza most definitely is not damseled in any way. Lucy and Wendy started out lackluster and got much stronger as the series progressed, Mirajane (my personal favorite) has really good moments, Juvia does lose points for stalking gray for a decent chunk of the series but also liked her water magic and her relationship with gray did feel natural, and Mavis was a character I liked the second she showed onscreen with her heart of gold, her tragic past, and her relationship with Zeref was truly heartbreaking.
I agree with you for the most part but that fight with her mom was so disappointing, i mean Irene ended up killing herself like?? I get that she was like really strong so there's no way Erza couldve won but still, anyways besides that yeah sometimes the fanservice goes too far in my opinion but for the most part she can handle herself which i like
Fan service is one of those problems anime trains you to ignore until it hits ridiculous levels.
But as far as erza being damseled, i think it only happened once or twice which is an acceptable amount, even Batman gets damseled from time to time. Damseling isn't inherently bad, its when its overused that a character starts to feel like dead weight and only exists to be captured so the hero has motivation to save them.
@@Fatalis690 there is the tower of heaven arc's ending but that is practically the only instance I can remember
@@champ6959 that was my fault; I completely forgot about the tower of heaven arc.
the line "targeted towards young males" have become outdated, literally every age group/gender enjoy shonen.
Even shojo include character development in their male characters. instead we should point out HOW MUCH THESE AUTHORS KNOW ABOUT WOMEN AND THEIR EXPERIENCES GROWING UP they should research a bit and incorporate it in their story lines.
And yes there are shown progess too (JJK, AOT, TPN,DS)
bro have you not seen anything passed those titles it's like the anime men said once people's brains refresh after a year.
Let me crack my knuckles of older anime and manga People tend to forget or just don't pay attention to because it's not popular even though they were back in the day.
Claymore, Medaka Box, Strawberry panties which was made on shonen jump. Blood +, xxx Holic, Fruit basket, selti ray if I am say right, gunslinger girl, School rumble, Zach bell, mar, Tenchi moya, blood c, apple seed, sakura wars anime / movies, fate and everything connected too it and there's a lot And they are finally remaking their oldest stuff, hell who remembers garden of sinners,which is connected to fate, Zach bell, mar, witch blade,hell girl,de-gray man, Peach girl, black cat, hitman Reborn and many more I bet people can tell you more than I can if they want too. More than I can at the moment. And I can name 100 more.
There's something for everyone but not everything's is for everybody. Everybody should be allowed to write whatever they want Australia levels of censorship or China. Like if You don't like it don't read it. For every overlord There's a Prince of tennis. No one should write For accommodating for everybody that makes no sense. And Certainly not a way to write. If you believe that look what happened to comics and look how bland and disrespectful that has Become The disrespect to those common book characters can never be recovered that's how bad it became You wanted to become like that?
There's a Genre for everybody in anime and manga. You don't see people flying too the anime called free Telling them they should accommodate for How boys really should feel and be have and look. Like if you don't believe me look in the comments section of that anime or the the ending and or op comments section.
Also every time I have someone avogating for change and stuff in the modern day it never ends well you know it's true. Is never changes for the better it always gets worse. there are examples of this video games ,comics, Dungeon dragons, movies. I don't trust nobody that advocates that stuff nowadays. And then the media goes online and insults everybody and The director and everybody else and then people shell for those companies. It's a tiring wrench and repeat. If they don't like it they censor it really really badly. Stares at China in Australia and many other stuff in America. Also Change people want are Netflix Death note, db Evolution, he man robot, star wars and Currently cowboy bebot dmc devil may cry. I'm sorry but I don't trust no one in the advocates that kind of stuff And I'm of tired of it.
@@lonelywolf5659 Agreed that not everyone can be inclusive in one anime and author's have freedom to portray a character as to they like. But if you consistently make/design/write characters that are majorly female as weak and they are just there to show off their boobs and asses and are not add anything to the plot then what message does it convey. I for one believes that anime plays a huge impact on our views or give inspiration especially shonen which promotes that not to give up, chase your dreams, friendship is important, etc then why would they portray all girl character just for objectification, unhelpful , non- friendly ?
Is it so much to ask if for every dumb girl character you make there is smart one too (in the main cast) so that the balance is conserved?
There is nothing wrong with being weak ,fragile or dumb just as there is nothing wrong with being strong and smart. Only picking one characteristics using it again & again is a problem.
Moreover to your second comment, even I do not wish toh have Netflix"s Death Note or attacking the author, artists, production team. We all are anime lovers, we can see what impact did it make in our society, reflect on it, debate on it and then move forward on a new path. We dont have to revisit those animes and re-write the contents to suit to every Individual needs, we can only highlight it, in the hope that they will consider these points to make much better story in the future.
Because it is the true you fucking feminist bitch
So we should overwrite the likes of the artist now cause some are upset about few characters. Yes , yes. What is the main focus of anime fans, gender studies or good story? ,I think this is a rhetorical question.
What about the well developed ones no who cares , females in anime are trash manime fans are sexist . We also agree that it would be cool if some of the characters could have being given different creative direction or some might find that the developments and character arcs pointless , still I think the artist did a good job, they made a good story and likeable characters. Should one stop enjoying a well written story cause they feel like there are missed opportunities or will it make the anime "trash " . Its no wonder art is dying.
As a guy, my favorite shonen woman is probably Jolyne Cujoh, not only is she a very good female lead but she has many more badass moments than fanservice ones, probably my 2nd favorite Joestar behind Johnny
Nezuko has agency to save her brother. Its actually a beneficial relationship. Its not the boy saves girl trope. Its the nezuko saves tanjiro and tanjiro saves nezuko. Its perfectly balanced and I liked that
@panko off topic (kind of??) but i kinda feel like since Nezuko was basically in a coma for two years, thats the reason she doesn't talk (even when she bit the bamboo muzzle) like maybe since she hadn't talked or said a single word for two years straight it just kinda feels weird to her to talk or something
The girl that sleeps 90% of the time and wears a ballgag?
@@TheStephaneAdam It's bamboo... stop making it weirder than it already is
@@FreakyOverhaul Its still weird in a series where every demon talks (except the Spider demon dad be guy) but she doesn't. She wears that to prevent her biting people or for others to not see her fangs. Either way its a strange choice even though the manga was written by a woman. She acts almost child-like despite her being only a year younger than Tanjiro, and she has very little agency of what's going on around her.
She's damn near a plot device, a cute plot device, but still....to this day I think it was a bad idea making the Kamado household so large.
@@jamalhartley5863 I'm assuming you don't read manga so I can't spoil anything
All I can say is that I get rather anxious when people saying nezuko can't talk 😭😭
what gets me about sakura is that she was implied to be very intelligent book wise. she easily could have been the nami or at least the brains and trap person in the group her healing and super strength being a bonus
Every time sakura did something crazy stupid i sighed heavily. Cuz she is supposed to be one of the smartest characters 😭
She was hyped up as smart, and having great chakra control, and also had multiple moments where she resolved to become strong and even some arcs where she was good and got our hopes up. And then she went back to being useless and neglected by the story, litterally watching Naruto train and not training herself.
Sakura is the tragedy of lost/wasted potential.
Wasn't Sasuke said to be even better tho?
she should have made up the demon shuriken plan when they fought zabuza
@@hyunweewoo That never would have happened. Naruto is street smart and has a keen sense for battle, and Sasuke has a sense for battle too and isn't that much behind in academic intelligence either. Plus, that moment was meant to be written as a rare moment they got along
Girl, Dorohedoro is a great example of good written female characters (all of them really) I highly recommend at least watching the anime (: it’s also made by a woman, loved your take on the subject
Dorohedoro is written by a woman ????????? Really ???? Now it make sense 😊
Dorohedoro has one of my favourite casts in general! hope Dai Dark gets faster chapter releases. Magi is also written by a woman and has well written female characters but this starts to fall off in the final arc - still one of my favourites and very well worth a watch!
@@AyAReI00yes it is.
Yaaaaay this is my 2nd fav anime and I’ve seen a thousand (first is hxh)
Dorohedoro is Seinen XD
8:29 Tell me you haven’t watched Fairy Tail without telling me you haven’t watched Fairy Tail
Facts that take was soo bad especially erza like she isn’t one of the strongest mages in fairy tail
Bro I was gonna say that too. What was she cooking?!!
For real, calling Erza or Lucy one-dimensional is ridiculous. I agree with the criticism of oversexualization in Fairy Tail, that always bothered me as well. But calling the female characters bad is just stupid - they're often much more interestingly written than the male characters.
One thing I liked were the female characters in fairy tail like Lucy and Erza. Mind you, I watched this show years ago as a kid so I don't remember everything.
I remember a really powerful moment when Lucy's dad died and she said something like "does it make me a bad person that I'm not crying?" And I really resonated with that. A lot of the female characters had really powerful moments. I do know that the fanservice began to get in the way of the plot as things continued, but I do feel like it should be noted.
She got even stronger after that. Idk if you interested but check out fairy tail 100 year quest manga. Lucy slaps hard there. She has new power ups.
@Muhammad Agil Ramadhan HRP nah Lucy does have good fights.
Lucy is such a good, intelligent character. If only the author had the guts to not denigrate her through fan-service and treated her more like Erza.
@@RKNancy I honestly didn't mind the fan services, the boys just got it as much like look how many times Gray got naked and even natsu's clothes getting destroyed during a fight 😳
I hate how Lucy was always naked, and groped. She went flying naked during the fight with future rogue and I was like wtf is this when I watch it. Is that really necessary? Excessive fan service. It makes his readers a bunch of horny boys.
I need to rant about Lucy Heartfilia. Why does Lucy constantly get shit for summoning her spirits? like.. that’s her magic. and she’s really good at it, and it gets stronger over the course of the show. She literally says multiple times that she wants to fight alongside her spirits and not use them as shields. And she does! (Especially now that she has her star dresses) But she mostly helps the guild using her intelligence and kindness anyway. I don’t like this modern-feminist idea that good female character = FIGHT GOOD. Don’t get me wrong, It’s annoying that Mashima always puts her in perilous situations where she needs to get saved, and how much she’s used for fanservice but Lucy is a great female character otherwise. She has a spunk and confidence that other female MCs don’t have, and she’s relatable. Her character is the epitome of girls supporting girls as she has so many great female friendships. Her entire character doesn’t revolve around Natsu. When Natsu disappeared for a year she was sad about it yeah but she girlbossed her way through it. She pursued her writing career, she trained, and she kept tabs on all the members of FT so they could be a guild again. By the end of the series not only was she a much stronger mage, but she finally published the novel she was working tirelessly on since the beginning of the series and won an award for it! good for her.
also it’s always overlooked that she’s a NEWBIE mage. she didn’t grow up in a guild like everyone else. she’s meant to have humble beginnings, it’s not her fault everyone else on her team is ridiculously OP. Lucy is still stronger than the majority of Fairy tail wizards.
(also i disagree with what u said about erza. she consistently has major fights, and is still a leader. she became guild master briefly. she’s definitely more goofy now but that’s just apart of her development. she’s more comfortable being herself and not wearing that metaphorical armor anymore. again, good for her
also celestial spirit magic consistently has plot relevancy. its lucy’s ancestral magic and it’s. really important to her as it’s a connection to her mom. she can literally pull beings from another dimension to help her fight. plus, the spirits fight using HER magic power. ok i’m done
no i need to keep going. most girls in anime have really docile polite personalities. lucy is the exact opposite of that. she’s loud and confident and weird and i love that about her. she so aggressively independent. she was literally living life as a princess but liberated herself so she could live the life she wanted. she ran away from home at 16 and never looked back! she’s not a passive character at all. i think people mistake her kindness as weakness, when her kindness has helped the guild on multiple occasions. she has her own ambitions and dreams. i just love her so much. i hope she gets more time to shine in 100 years quest. she hasn’t gotten a solo fight yet.
That's the larger problem with videos like this. It's not that they don't have a good overall point, but they just assume not bothering with more than surface level analysis is enough to coast on. It seriously reduces the issues into something very easy to dismiss as lacking context to much of interest to talk about.
The Lucy sucks because she doesn't fight herself thing is the worst example of this trend because it chooses to take a persona disinterest in that type of magic and equates it to a more reasonably objective issue with Lucy having no agency in her sexualization. There's more room to analyze Celestial Magic and Lucy's use of it, but this person isn't interested in doing something as serious as that. Ironically, one of the biggest FT critics out there, Craftsdwarf, actually does this and it's a good video.
Orihime slapped Ulquiorra on the face. Orihime, Lucy and Erza are good characters.
@@verymelonman12 oh shit you're right that's like saying a necromancer/ summoner isn't a good class because they aren't fighting. When they litterally spawn armies or fucking dragons
I will... defend Lucy from Fairy Tail somewhat. The whole point of her power isn't that she relies on others to save her. It's that her bonds with her celestial spirits are her strength. So the stronger the bond, the stronger her spirits are. She fails at the beginning because she's starting out. But she does attempt to fight alongside them with her whip and gets better and even summons more than one spirit at a time as the series goes on.
After the second timeskip she does get a major upgrade with her stardresses which made her a more physical combatant and she really showed that she was on par.
She also does have a clearly defined goal, and that is that she wanted to be a published author as well as a wizard.
I think people look down on Lucy for two reasons. One is that her power primarily focuses on summoning spirits (sort of forgetting that she is meant to represent friendship as that is incredibly key to the series. Like Natsu treasures it as well, but I feel like Lucy embodies it and makes more of an effort to keep bonds with everyone). as a result it's not as flashy or cool as the other characters.
the second is that... yeah. She is done dirty in terms of nearly always being made into fanservice. And there were moments where Mashima did give her a cool moment but somehow felt the need to write Natsu or Gray as needing to be there. (Note when she rewrote E.N.D and Gray just sucked out the poison out of her. Like I feel that they could've used her ancestral power to kind of help in the end)
So, Lucy's issue was she got some potential. But she got nerfed like Sakura. The difference I'll give her is that she does have her own goals and isn't just SAID to be strong. She HAS proven it, and the plot to make the boys look better literally nerfed her. (like the fight in the magic games. everyone knew she was going to win. But someone cheated and canceled her magic. If she didn't have some potential. they wouldn't have done that)
I can't defend the fanservice. All I can say is that if you can look past the fanservice, the women of Fairy Tail can be decent fighters... sometimes...
Thank you so much for this Lucy can definitely be see as annoying and not as strong, as the other characters and disliked by other ppl because of this which is totally uncalled for, but I would disagree to the part where she is “nerfed” to just become fan service.
Yeah there’s a lot of her wearing revealing outfits and parts where she almost has nothing to cover herself but because she doesn’t let that stop her even in the worst circumstances really shows how strong she is.
Spoilers: I would recommend Fuuko Izumo from Undead + Unluck. Yes she is the supporting protagonist of the main male character and sort of a glorified power source/boost to his battle style; not to mention their early encounters are rife with problems. But throughout the first half of the series she was growing stronger emotionally to the point when the second half came about she became the super badass action main character where the lead guy is no where to be seen. I definitely love her arc.
I get mad when people say Nami is one of those useless female character that only exist to give fanserivce. Nami is so intelligent and have been useful throughout the whole show and she is badass without having to kick ass like the moster trio, she is perfect the way she is and she is really well written. Nami get alot of screen time and she can do more then just navigate, she have proven to be able fight too and have been winning her own battles. As a female character she is done right. She is also good at manipulating her enemies and is often outsmarting them. How is she a damsel in destress? Sure she have been saved time to time but she have saved the others in the crew many times too. We need to remember that she is just a normal human with no powers and still she managed to kick ass using her weapon.
I can't count how many times Nami has dispatched over 100 men simultaneously with her thunder tempo. She is a wicked witch of lightning and I'm sure nobody wants to get in her way.
Then they would give all female character realistic design, even if she is shown strong and smart, don't be stupid. In the end everyone knows she is only there to be the eye candy 🤦♂️🤮. She is just bulma on steroids, just there for fan service but gave movements for the sake of it. Don't be a fool
@@mmn7209 Both male and females characters in One Piece have weird designs and I am actually loving it! That is what makes One Piece One Piece. That's just it, the characters are never boring!
They do fanservice but I don't feel like it's getting in the way of the story at all. At the end of the day Nami for example is never useless, Nami is also the 3:d most popular character in the entire show and is even more popular then Luffy in some regions like in Europe, Latin America, Caribbean and in Oceania, she is the 2:d most popular character in Africa, North America and in the Middle East making her the 3:d most popular character globally. I can assure you that fanservice is not the reason for why she's popular. She is a popular character because she is simply amazing and nothing else.
@@lemonsunshines601 there is no difference those designs are commen in anime and just made for simp otakus like you. Of course you are loving it
I'm not far in the show but I appreciate that the addition of Usopp means that Nami isn't the only main character who DOESNT have insane fighting skills.
This is so relevant. I remember being 10 and watching Naruto and expecting Sakura to be the next Hermione. Boy was I wrong.
I never expected that because I knew she was irrelevant to the plot.
Wasn't Hermione treated just as bad? She was never really seen as part of the "gang" and Ron was terrible to her. Did you actually read or watch Harry Potter?
@@inakyu People actually talk like that? Lmfao
Remember how in the beginning of Naruto, Sakura supposedly had better chakra control and knowledge than both Naruto and Sasuke? She was setup to be the tactician and chakra control genius of Team 7, what the fuck happened?
@@WhoBlah21 EXACTLY!! I WAS SO DISSAPOINTED. Kishimoto got me fucked up
Sakura does some stuff in multiple arcs in shippuden...yes there's a huge chunk in shippuden where she is sidelined or makes things worse is useless and in part 1 she has 2 good episodes and even stalls to protect naruto and sasuke once but is useless the rest of the time sadly besides being used for manipulating the audience to emote and be a damsel or doormat for sasuke and abusive aka give some comedy to fans towards naruto....part 1 sakura was a joke but they used that to say she developed for shippuden...it's lazy but I get why kishi did it that way
I really like The Promised Neverland. Though it’s a shonen, Emma is the main character and is really well written. Throughout the books her development and characterization is very realistic and inspirational, and other female characters throughout the series are uplifted as well and play a vital role. Off the top of my head I can list Emma, Gilda, Isabella, Krone, Mujika, Violet, Barbara, and there’s more but I can’t remember all their names off of the top of my head. They are not any less intelligent and important than the male characters. Emma’s traits associated with femininity (sensitivity, kindness) are not seen as a weakness but make her stronger, and additionally male characters are encouraged to display those traits as it is healthy to and helps them heal from trauma. (Another thing, I LOVE the way this series approaches mental health. Very realistic and has some beautiful moments of healing.) Could not recommend the series enough.
But nobody likes femininity nowadays, they see it as bad writing... for some reason. They even changed Peach in the mario movie.
@@MisterHeromanspeak for yourself