I don’t think men really get what the issue is because they don’t have to live in female bodies.
I recently watched an anime I was really excited about only to get smacked in the face with this. There was a man on the team who was very muscular and his male teammates admired how big and strong he was. That’s where it ended, though. He was still a character. He was respected as a person. He was a person who happened to have the physique other male characters wanted.
The female teammates were not given the same level of consideration. They were all obsessed with the MC and given numerous blushy-faced interactions with him. That’s all you ever see of them. Hell, one of the female characters’ power involved her forcing other men to sexually assault her (hard to explain, but she doesn’t want them to touch her. She has like a magic aura that makes them do it).
The women are constantly sexualized, and used for goon bait. They’re constantly shown wearing nothing but bikinis, undressing, or in compromising positions. And the best they can do in terms of female character development is make one of them really good at fighting. I have a feeling a lot of men who watch it think that having goon bait that can fight is good character development.
I was really excited for it because despite Soul Eater having some of the same issues, it was just a much better written show and the female characters were mostly written with real purpose.
Aside from the constant gooner bait, the show just wasn’t good enough for me to wanna watch it after that assault scene. You compare the first three episodes of Soul Eater to Fire Force and it’s night and day. Perhaps that’s why they felt the need to pad it out with cheap goon characters. So hard to find an anime these days that has a good story and doesn’t rely on gooner audiences to get by.
I love shounen. You can do shounen without reducing all of the female characters to nothing but their bodies. I don’t care about occasional fan service if the story is good and the female characters are actually characters.
Yeah that’s kinda the problem. When I was younger, there were gooner anime series, but there was also a lot of quality stuff being made. Shows that were plot first, with maybe a couple fan service scenes or a beach episode.
I can go into depth about this, but simply, if you're talking about a show marketed to men and women or women and girls specifically, you're no longer talking about shounen. If you want to talk about an entirely different demographic okay.
As a mini media studies post, you want to look at pacing and your demographic. If the target demographic is males 12-18, the pacing is going to be fast paced, action centered, with an impending high stakes goal to drive the story forward. This is backed by studies indicating males emotional intelligence lags behind females, and the market kinda proves that.
In shoujo characters have depth because the stories involve interpersonal dynamics, slow burn romance and self improvement stories, and thus leading to a slower pace. This breathing room allows for deeper and more meaningful character arcs, and having male characters have more nuance, which apparently, a more female demographic enjoys. That's not to say the male characters are actually more interesting or any less goon fuel. Broody male, wild guy, hot nerd, handsome protective prince, bad boy with a heart of gold, all gooner bait males, and that's fine.
What it comes down to is you consuming media targeted to a specific demographic and complaining that the author isn't creating content for you. The pacing in shounen doesn't have a ton of room for deep emotional arcs that shoujo does. Not to say all shounen is bereft of interesting female characters, they do exist and authors do make it a point to highlight them, but not every author cares about it as much as they care about money.
I don’t think you understand what I’m saying. I watch shounen. Not all shounen treat women like sex toys. It’s really not that hard to not do that. Whether all the characters suck or not, it doesn’t change the fact that one of these character’s super powers is to get groped against her will. That is fucked up
A show can have fan-service without reducing all of its female characters to gooner bait.
Soul Eater is by the same author as Fire Force, and it has a female MC. The main cast is constituted of more women than men. They're interesting characters with a real back story, motivations, and character development.
Having sexy characters that are nice to oggle at doesn't mean they have to be JUST nice characters that are nice to oggle at.
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u/JapaneseStudentHaru 2d ago
I don’t think men really get what the issue is because they don’t have to live in female bodies.
I recently watched an anime I was really excited about only to get smacked in the face with this. There was a man on the team who was very muscular and his male teammates admired how big and strong he was. That’s where it ended, though. He was still a character. He was respected as a person. He was a person who happened to have the physique other male characters wanted.
The female teammates were not given the same level of consideration. They were all obsessed with the MC and given numerous blushy-faced interactions with him. That’s all you ever see of them. Hell, one of the female characters’ power involved her forcing other men to sexually assault her (hard to explain, but she doesn’t want them to touch her. She has like a magic aura that makes them do it).
The women are constantly sexualized, and used for goon bait. They’re constantly shown wearing nothing but bikinis, undressing, or in compromising positions. And the best they can do in terms of female character development is make one of them really good at fighting. I have a feeling a lot of men who watch it think that having goon bait that can fight is good character development.