Welcome back to Cartoon Conversations! The semi-regular written essay series where I break down cartoons, their influence, importance, and purpose because, goddammit, I just want my life to be a little bit more exciting, okay? I’m very lonely and cartoons help to fill the hole in my heart. And this time, I think I’m ready, at long last, to talk about one of my favorite cartoon styles ever. So lets
Talk
About
Anime.
Anime is one of two things. First and more factually, it is a style of animation born in Japan defined by vibrant colors, an emphasis on far-eastern culture and mythology, and are often but not always based on the similar, book-based Japanese art medium of manga. Second, it’s the coolest goddamn thing under the goddamn sun. How awesome is anime? It’s so awesome that it’s caused international incidents. One of the most famous anime franchises of all time, ‘Dragon Ball’ is so popular in Mexico that the government sponsored mass viewing parties for an important finale episode. The Japanese government sent them a cease and desist letter that was ignored without ceremony. That’s right, Mexico opened itself up to an international lawsuit because it wanted its people to be able to enjoy anime. That’s how freaking cool this stuff is.
Part of anime’s enduring popularity as an artform is its insane versatility. For example, my personal favorite anime is ‘Naruto,’ though my opinion on this is heavily influenced by nostalgia. Based on the manga of the same name by Masashi Kishimoto, it’s about a world where ninjas fight each other and also giant animal demons with spiritual magic, over-the-top explosions, and pure determination.
But at the same time, it’s also an uplifting tale about overcoming your obstacles through perseverance, not letting your past define you, and how the best legacies are the ones that live on through people rather than materials. We came for the strategically choreographed action sequences but stayed for the resonant, relatable character drama that helped us work through our own problems, just like we did with Goku,
Edward,
Luffy,
and countless others before and after them.
So yeah, anime is as awesome as it is wildly diverse and creative. You want an anime about school drama like it was a CW show? There’s an anime for that.
You want an anime that serves as both a subversive analysis and loving sendup of the superhero genre? There’s an anime for that.
You want a brilliantly paced detective drama that boils down to a game of cat and mouse between two amoral strategic geniuses on opposing sides of the law? There’s an anime for that.
You want a dramedy about Jesus and Buddha living together in Tokyo and having humorous misadventures juxtaposing two different pathologies of humble, pious living with the complexities of the modern world? Uh…sure, why not. There’s an anime for that.
You want an anime about giant robots fighting? Oh, boy, howdy sister, there
Are
So
Many.
And almost every anime has an insane opening title sequence that sometimes threatens to be better than the show it introduces. Hell, even people who’ve never watched ‘Pokemon’ know its iconic theme song.
While Anime only gained mainstream popularity in the west when ‘Dragon Ball Z’ was dubbed over and premiered in syndication in 1996, the medium has been a staple of Japanese art since the early 1900s. Since its humble origins as short, Disney-esque cartoons before movies, anime has morphed into a field so diverse and distinct that it has more or less transcended the label of cartoon. Most media providers categorize anime and cartoons separate from one another, despite the fact that they’re ostensibly the same medium.
Today, the word anime conjures up images of some of the highest and most inspirational artworks of the last century, including the astounding beauty of Studio Ghibli productions,
the fantastic and breath-taking scope of the Shohen Jump lineup,
and untold independent or original projects that have used the full potential of the genre to explore the limits of human imagination.
Unfortunately, it also conjures up another image.
Yeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh…
For those of you with a healthy sex life and better things to do with your time, anime is also known for housing a number of sexually-oriented subgenres, ranging from generally suggestive ecchi shows
to straight up pornographic hentai.
There is a perverse logic to it. Fictional girls can have unreal and, therefore, uber attractive body proportions. It’s also cheaper to pay a struggling and desperate artist to animate naked women than it is to hire a real woman to get naked on camera, and it’s easier to hide one’s involvement in the industry to avoid the social stigma. But that doesn’t mean it’s harmless fun, far from it. Because it doesn’t have the hassle of dealing with actual people, hentai has been an outlet for lots of dangerous deviancies, like rape and underage porn. The debate of whether or not hentai constitutes child pornography has been brought up in court but is ultimately besides the point because either way it is emblematic of a larger systemic problem of oversexualizing females of all ages and types in media. And anime is a huge offender.
See, anime might be a major representation of Japan’s global and cultural soft power and it has garnered a large and diverse audience, the most vocal members of the anime community tend to be those who have completely devoted themselves to the medium to a worrying degree. And these people tend to be very...opinionated.
As a result, it is very resistant to turning an analytical lens back on itself in relation to the morality of its preferred medium. This is a really apologist way of saying that sexism, at least at first glance, is built into anime at a fundamental level. Sometimes it’s very apparent, like when the female lead is forced to wear as little covering as possible to fight thirty-story mechas.
Hell, it’s even a plot point in shows like ‘Kill La Kill’ and ‘Sailor Moon’ that the characters need to be underdressed.
Sometimes, it takes a more subtle approach, like having the female characters be less interesting or weaker than their male counterparts. While this is a general issue that plagues the science-fiction and fantasy genres across all mediums, it’s especially prevalent in anime. Case in point: Male character
Female character on same show.
Male protagonist.
Female protagonist.
To use a more direct example of this phenomenon, of the three main protagonists of ‘Naruto,’ two of them are compelling, powerful characters whose reactions to world events and narrative revelations drive the overall plot. The third is so useless that it’s become an in-universe running joke how unimportant they are to the story. Go ahead and guess which characters are which gender. I’ll give you a hint:
Her name is Sakura and, while she has her moments, one of her biggest character beats is her realization of how lacking and weak she is compared to her teammates. This is supposedly “resolved” at the end of the main plot when her powers evolve to their ultimate form, but her central purpose to her team is as a healer, i.e. support. When one of your teammates can control unquenchable black fire and the other can transform into a giant demon fox avatar, being able to make them even stronger feels like an afterthought. And that’s what almost every female character in ‘Naruto’ is like. I still love it, but I’ll be the first to admit that its female characters aren’t handled with any sense of nuance. Let’s go down the list, shall we?
Hinata is one of the show’s romantic leads and she’s shy. And that’s it. She does have an interesting backstory about her clan being particularly archaic and her not living up to her father’s expectations, but it’s never resolved. At the height of her strength, she masters her clan’s ultimate fighting technique…the same technique her male cousin had mastered and surpassed when he was a teenager.
This is Tenten. She’s never given a last name, gave up on her dreams when she found out she didn’t have the natural aptitude for it, and is easily the weakest character of the entire show, both in terms of combat prowess and narrative depth.
Ino is supposed to be Sakura’s friend and rival but they share maybe five or six scenes together over the entirety of the main canon. While she is superior to most female characters on ‘Naruto’ by virtue of having an actual personality, her ranking is marred by the fact that she’s an appearance-obsessed airhead whose powers are only useful in conjunction with her teammates’.
Temari isn’t as poorly handled as some of the other women on the show. In fact, she’s a compelling, badass character with a defined, snarky attitude throughout the majority of the series. She’s a minor character whose appearances are few and far between, but she always makes an impact when she shows up. She’s even so powerful that she’s never lost a fight in the central story. But her ball is fumbled right at the third yard line when she ends the series by becoming a house-wife and mother, despite never indicating she’d ever want that to be her future and all evidence to the contrary. She goes from being a commander in a global army and the second most powerful wind-style user on the entire show to being one half of a basic, C-level breeder couple.
This is Shizune. She’s a walking, talking exposition machine, has no unique or signature techniques, has a personality because the writers said she did, and is only a part of the narrative because she’s related to a male character who is tangentially relevant to a secondary character but is also irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. She might as well be named Unneeded. Her main role in the show is as a secretary.
Tsunade…okay, Tsunade is kind of the exception that proves the rule. She’s a layered character, has wicked powers, and her presence in the story doesn’t depend on any outside influence, male or otherwise. She commands unwavering respect from her subordinates and never compromises her core personality just to appease anyone else. She’s every bit as strong as her male counterparts, both as a fighter and as a character. But her persona is undercut by her own lore. See, in canon, Tsunade is quite old, but her mastery of medical techniques has allowed her to heal her own aging, retaining her youthful appearance in spite of time itself. Not only does this betray an innate vanity and obsession with her physical appearance, but it allows for a running joke where male characters ogle and comment on her impossible bust. And remember, this was a show meant for a younger audience. There’s also the matter that she wasn’t the first choice for her role as Hokage, the head of her village. She only got the job because a male character turned it down.
So in a show with numerous female characters, the vast majority of whom were some degree of useless, flat, detrimental, or boring, there is only one prominent exception and even then they are sometimes used as a prop for the internal misogyny of the series. And this, unfortunately, is a very common through-line in many of the most popular anime shows. Even when there are multiple strong female characters, they are either forced into unnecessary fan-service outfits or are outshone by their more prominent and powerful male counterparts. Take, for example, ‘Fairy Tail.’
Though the anime community has mixed feelings about the show as a whole, it undoubtedly gave us one of the strongest female protagonists in years: Erza Scarlet.
Erza is a very solid character, and not just because of her physical strength and combat abilities. After a torturous upbringing as a mining slave, she has completely devoted herself to her chosen family in the Fairy Tail Guild. She is noble, honorable, no-nonsense, and doesn’t let her past traumas define the woman she becomes. Instead, she is motivated by self-improvement and her desire to protect her friends. Even without her powers, she is resilient, sardonic, a master of the “are you kidding me” glare, and an unmitigated badass
So it’s a real shame that her character is regularly forced into sets of ‘armor” that bare more skin than necessary, turning her from what should be a fierce and intimidating warrior into a pinup model.
Then there are shows like ‘Attack on Titan.’ Arguably the most prominent female character on this show is Mikasa Ackerman.
Quiet, logical, and thick-skinned, Mikasa is also the most skilled fighter of her generation. And in a world where the human race is besieged by giant titans who hunt and eat them, being a powerful warrior makes you a pretty hot commodity. Thankfully, she is never oversexualized or exploited and her badassery is never compromised. But the series instead focuses more on her adopted brother, Eren, despite him being a much flatter, less interesting character. But because he can transform into a giant titan himself, he gets to be the central protagonist.
I could go on even further with dozens of more examples of the many, many ways in which anime has a seemingly inherent streak of exploitation and misogyny. To be clear, I understand that I am painting with very broad strokes here and I haven’t mentioned a number of anime shows with strong, rounded, and unexploited female characters. But those aren’t the character featured in banner ads for anime-based games.
And if you need more proof that anime has a sexism issue, let me introduce you to this guy:
This right here is Hayao Miyazaki, often praised as one of, if not THE, greatest anime directors of all time. He created the famed Studio Ghibli and is responsible for some of the undisputed masterpieces of the genre, including these utter works of art:
And this guy, the veritable anime god, believes that the rising number of women interested in his chosen medium of art and corresponding increase in female anime directors will be the death of the genre, claiming in a tweet: “They say it’s over for animation in Japan. When we look for new hires only women respond, and I get the feeling that we’re done for.” And while I understand that a lot of people are probably upset that I’m all but accusing the Japanese Walt Disney of sexism, please understand two things. One, Walt Disney was a noted sexist, racist, and anti-Semite, so don’t even start. And two, consider the fact that the most interesting character and central protagonist in ‘Princess Mononoke,’ his arguable masterwork, was NOT Princess Mononoke.
This overall analysis has led me to these basic questions: how did anime become so synonymous with animated porn and sexism and what can be done to rectify this issue in the public eye?
And this is kind of where I have to be careful because I might be stepping on some toes.
Anime is a fundamentally Japanese artform. Its cultural significance is so pervasive and understood that any foreign cartoon that mimics its style is subject to fierce debate as to whether or not it can be considered a ‘real’ anime. And Japan, for good or for ill, doesn’t have the same cultural minutia of other modern countries. Take, for example, ‘Sailor Moon,’ one of the most beloved anime of all time and a heavy inspiration for the “magical girl” sub-genre. At least once per episode, viewers would be treated to the repeated animation of the show’s famous transformation sequence.
Watch that clip, see the short, billowy skirts, the focus on the characters' lithe, long legs, and appreciate the bright colors and sparkling animation subliminally suggesting that what you’re watching is a positive metamorphosis. Now get ready to cringe when I tell you that the girl you just watched get pseudo-stripped and changed into a candy stripe outfit is only 14 years old.
So how did what is disturbingly close to child pornography weasel its way into a mainstream cartoon? Well, Japan has very different sex laws and their age of consent is 13. That doesn’t justify portraying very young girls this way, but it does speak to the cultural clashes that have occurred between their media and western audiences. And it wasn’t always Japan that could be considered behind the times. In the original Japanese show, the characters of Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune were gay lovers, out, proud, and depicted a very positive and loving same-sex relationship.
When it came time to dub the show for American audiences, however, censors freaked out at the idea of lesbians being shown to kids and changed them to cousins instead, not taking into consideration how that would alter the text of some of their more intimate scenes.
I point this out because I don’t want to come across like I’m criticizing Japanese culture. I’m very much not and there are many elements of it that I wish were mimicked in western nations for professional and personal reasons. But just like any other country, Japan’s institutions have oppressive flaws that are built to suppress minority groups. Recently, Japan has been introduced to the #KuToo movement, an offshoot of the #MeToo revolution in Hollywood. Through the hashtag, Japanese women in business and administrative industries have been sharing stories of supervisors and managers forcing them to adhere to strict and restrictive dress codes, including being required to wear heels of a certain length, when their male coworkers are not bound by comparable or even similar rules. When confronted by the wave of united and pissed-off female workers, a Japanese Labor Ministry official confessed he never even considered that high heels would be uncomfortable for women to wear. This condescending patriarchal attitude is by no means unique to Japan, sexism exists in many cultures and it is almost always deeply embedded. But like other nations with systemic oppression, this has bled into their media, including anime.
Another reason why mainstream audiences consider anime and hentai interchangeable is for the same reason why female objectification occurs in most common media: sex sells. Anime, like just about everything else, is a business first and foremost and the bottom line is that it needs to sell in order to be successful. Historically, one of the easiest ways to sell a serial product is by exploiting any and all sex appeal that can be mined from it. That’s why those aforementioned banner ads are so racy, just to use one example.
So that brings us to the matter of trying to fix a generationally imprinted problem of sexism and exploitation in an entire medium. A question that I, a cisgendered male, am not qualified to answer but, at the same time, I feel is pretty simple and universal. First and foremost, hire more female anime directors and animators. There are already dozens of talented women out there working on popular shows, but giving them more prominence and adapting more works from female mangaka artists would give women a greater voice in media and could at least begin to address some of the systemic issues plaguing the industry. To be fair, there have been some pretty big strides made in the last few years. Famous and prodigious studio Kyoto Animation has made a point of hiring female animators and directors to run their female-centric shows, making them a beacon of progressive feminism in the anime world. And this, I’m sad to say, is where we need to address a tragedy that occurred in the recent past.
In the morning hours of July 18th, 2019, a man with a history of crime and mental illness executed an arson attack against Kyoto Animation’s main studio. While the terrorist was caught, thirty-six people, mostly women under the studio’s employ, were killed either in the blaze itself or later in the hospital from residual injuries. It was the deadliest massacre in Japan since World War II. Further investigation revealed that the man responsible had accused the studio of plagiarizing his work, though his claim has been debunked after further inquiry. However, there’s no denying that this attack has been a considerable setback in getting women in the anime industry. As a direct consequence, many female voice actors and animators who had been working on shows produced by Kyoto Animation were out of work for months as the studio began the recovery process. Though there haven’t been any studies on the subject in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy, it wouldn’t surprise me if women were more hesitant to enter the business if they can be subject to such an atrocity.
That’s not to say that getting women working in all tiers of the anime trade will be impossible, but it would also be beneficial to start producing anime with non-exploited, strong female characters regardless of women’s presence in the industry. And, fortunately, there ARE examples of that. ‘Claymore’ is a high fantasy epic about female knights who get to wear practical armor as opposed to the strips of metal that most women in similar shows are forced into.
‘Kiki’s Delivery Service’ is a Studio Ghibli film about a young witch moving to a new town and learning to believe in and pick herself up to overcome the opposition of her new neighbors.
‘Yona of the Dawn’ follows a young princess who has to undergo a drastic character arc to come to terms with the horrors of the world around her in a thinly-veiled metaphor for women coming of age in a patriarchal society.
‘A Place Further Than the Universe’ is about a quartet of girls who travel from Japan to Antarctica more or less on a whim just to prove to each other and themselves that they can do it and that their individual dreams are worth pursuing.
And ‘RWBY’…
…’RWBY’ is just really fucking awesome and everyone should see at least the first three seasons.
SHE HAS GAUNTLETS THAT ARE ALSO SHOTGUNS AND THAT IS AWESOME AND SHE IS ALSO A COMPLEX CHARACTER WITH A VERY REAL PERSONALITY AND ISSUES TO WORK THROUGH. Yeah, I know it's not a Japanese original and therefore not a "real" anime, but to those who would actually care about such things, I once again point out SHOTGUN GAUNTLETS. YOUR ARGUMENT IS INVALID.
But that in and of itself might not be enough. The anime community is overwhelmingly male and can be very vocal when it comes to things it doesn’t like, including widespread change. So there’s no doubt that trying to remove the sexist elements from anime would be a long, uphill battle fought against an insular subculture that resists outside stimuli like a snail in its shell. But, like all progressive movements, it would be a net positive that would improve the overall quality of the product, the discourse surrounding it, and the community involved in it. And god knows the image of the average anime fan could use some rehabilitating.
Now to be fair, there’s not much that the every-day anime fan can do. Sure a write-in campaign asking to see better female representation would be nice, but I think all I can realistically ask from the anime community is to do a bit more self-reflection and try considering the implications of watching some of the shows they like. And that’s not an easy thing to do by any means. Just in writing this essay, I’ve had to come to terms with how a lot of the shows I loved growing up and love to this day both for their quality and nostalgia value might have helped inform some of my worst attitudes and behaviors. But just because ‘Naruto’ doesn’t have a lot of well-rounded female characters doesn’t invalidate the lessons it taught or the emotional resonance it carried with me, it just means I need to consider those lessons and emotions in a different context. And I definitely don’t want anyone to feel like they can’t enjoy ‘Naruto,’ or any anime for that matter, just because of their gender.
Enjoying anime should be a universal experience, both for the beauty of its artistry and the philosophies it can impart on viewers. It really is a shame that at this point in time, the discourse of the anime community is limited to its most vocal and suppressive audience members. But that is very much subject to change. The industry has shown a willingness to incorporate female voices, female characters, and female audiences in a very positive fashion.
This is an initiative that any and every anime fan should support and the best way to do that would be to watch and experience the shows made for and by women. If you like those shows and can afford to buy some merch to show off how much you like that show, I would recommend you do so. If for no other reason than it would let anime studios know that shows run and centered on women can be just as profitable as those meant for and arranged by men. And if you can’t afford to support a show financially, then the best way to keep this movement progessing would be to discuss these shows with other fans, either in person or online. Adding diversity to the discourse surrounding anime, introducing new perspectives, and sharing different opinions can help to counteract the anime community’s more vitriolic members. Yes, the internet can be a toxic place, but it isn’t going to get better by ignoring it.
Or you can just watch more ‘RWBY.’
It might not solve everything, but it seems to me like that would be a good place to start.
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