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Underground > Art, Fashion & Design >

Are representations of women and girls in Anime/Manga sexist?

  
 
All Acting Regiment
19:39 / 14.06.05
This stems from a few years ago when an Art tutor of mine was not exactly banned from, but severely warned against, setting her class a topic on Japanese Anime. The objection raised was that these products contained sexist images of women and (this being the main objection) girls.

Whether or not that was worth censorship is probably for another thread. This thread asks: is the Anime/Manga Girl is a sexist representation; if so, do you beleive it is harmful?

Things to think about: cartoon characters have always been deformed, Japanese people given western style eyes, limitations of traditional quest/feudal romance storylines, schoolgirls.
 
 
skolld
20:21 / 14.06.05
A great deal of Anime is sexist, Twin Dolls and other anime have a lot of rape oriented scenes. Even Ninja Scroll, which i think is a great anime flick, has some of that in it. I could see that as potentially harmful. But i think the harmfulness from that takes a back seat to the ultraviolence that's seen in most anime, or maybe we could see them as part of the same issue?
there are other anime though, Ghost in the Shell and Bubble Gum Crisis, that have some strong female characters. So maybe we have to narrow it down a bit and talk more specifically about certain types of anime.
 
 
lekvar
22:15 / 14.06.05
I'd have to say that manga/anime is not innately sexist, but some of the subgenres are. In the "definitely sexist/dangerously anti-female" catagory we have The Overfiend series and its brethren. In the "empowering" catagory we have Miyazaki's movies, Fushigi Yugi, Crest/Bannner of the Stars and countless others. The ultraviolence tends to get the most attention because of its very nature.

There are also a lot of examples of anime and manga that fall between the two catagories listed above, where sexuality and attraction is is addressed but not explicitly, where women are as strong, feminine, catty, intellegent or creative as the story needs them to be. The first example to come to mind is Trigun. The women are supporting characters, but they don't need defending, their bosoms don't heave in feminine distress, they fail to have their bodices ripped. (to be honest, I haven't seen the whole series, so I may have missed the "demon rape" episode.)

So, no, I don't think that, as genres, anime or manga are sexist. They swing to wider extremes than we tend to see in western comics or animation.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
22:47 / 14.06.05
As a genre anime is quite evenly balanced between sexist and empowering representations but it tends towards extremes so women tend to be very empowered, gun toting and powerful or simpering girls with no power or guts. Stylistically that's a pretty important thread running through the genre and it often appears inescapable when you're engaged with it. I don't think it's necessarily harmful to anyone except the person who chooses to pen a female as useless because the people who are avid about watching anime tend to watch all types of anime as Lekvar has shown us.

Mainstream children's shows worry me a little more- Dragonball Z, Gundam Wing, Pokemon generally present the female characters as quite insipid and useless and even without the sexualisation and perhaps because of that it's a negative thing. It also explains why so many of those shows are more attractive to boys than girls. Look at Supermario- poor old Peach is always getting kidnapped and the other, male characters (who are dominant anyway) have to save her again and again. It's a relief when something like Spirited Away becomes popular and presents a young girl as the protagonist.

Nudity in mainstream anime probably is an issue that needs to be noted. Men are rarely unclothed, women are naked quite often and that speaks to me about Japanese culture but on the flipside there's Yaoi, which can be very explicit in representations of nude male characters. Again though it's focused on men, there are no women involved at all.

Ultraviolence for me is a separate issue and not one that I really frown on because I quite like that edge of Japanese culture, it's interesting to me that it runs across so many artforms- literature, film, the variety of forms of anime and that it's dealt with as fact rather than as an 'issue' intrigues me.

The focus on male power and male presence suggest to me that this is a genre that is getting better in its representation of females but still retains sexism because male power, male participation dominates it. Of course a discussion on geeky men in anime would turn up a very interesting picture as well. The focus really seems to be on power and primarily masculine power.
 
 
This Sunday
03:07 / 15.06.05
Which anime? Which manga?
Every medium has (the potential for) sexist representations. All of them.
But I mean, was 'A, A'' (A, A Prime, but a prime mark looks wrong in inverted commas and all) sexist or just exploratory? What about 'My Neighbor Totoro', 'In the Cockpit', or 'Revolutionary Girl Utena'?
And what's sexist, anyhow? Sexist is not sexy is not sexual, but they all can be the others, certainly. John Waters comment about hardcore porn reminding him of openheart surgery, comes to mind.
To be fair, I think the Utena movie 'Adolescence Apocalypse' is just about the greatest film of all time... and I actually blanked out the numerous panty-shots in 'Najica' because my attention was on the music and plot (seriously, and that's sad all on its own)... found the rape/near rape bits of 'Ninja Scroll' to be revolting and violent rather than arousing... but is 'You're Under Arrest', 'Fake', or Kazuya Minekura's 'Saiyuki' sexist? Possessing sexist traits, elements, or moments? More or less so than random American product X?
Aside from which, the most harmful idea in the world is that there are harmful ideas.
 
 
This Sunday
03:47 / 15.06.05
Just thought I'd add a couple things Kunihiko Ikuhara (Sailor Moon, Revolutionary Girl Utena, History of S&M, and other stuff) is fond of reiterating:
That he dislikes the heroic male who gets the girl, because in his works *he* wants the girl and has to keep trying to kill said heroic male.
That there should be no men working in anime or manga aimed at a female audience... except for him.
That there should be no men working in anime and manga for an experimental period of indeterminate length... except for him.

To enhance those comments: He pushed the lesbian angle (and indeed, the romance/passion/sex angle, period) in Sailor Moon, to levels the creator was a bit uncomfortable with. Particularly his insistence to the voice actresses for Uranus and Neptune, that they respond to each other as a married couple, while the concept/comics creator difused that as best she could.
He managed to do something called 'History of S&M' that was less about sex and more about, well, power and submission.
He's got great legs and he's not afraid to show them off in a skirt or tight leather.
He's also one of genuinely and insistently flirtiest people I can think of.

(I tend, on the Sailor Moon thing, to agree with Ikuni and call BS on any 'they live together, love each other, hold each other in awfully suggestive ways, get obsessive and snarky with each other regularly, but they are not having sex, sexual thoughts about each other, or even considering that the other might be sexy/sexual.' But I think, when you're bi and/or sexually relaxed/ambivalent, there's a reflexive tendency to call 'hypocrite' or 'bullshit' on people who got very specific angles and options about these things.)
 
 
TeN
01:03 / 19.06.05
"there are other anime though, Ghost in the Shell and Bubble Gum Crisis, that have some strong female characters."
I find it interesting that you'd mention Ghost in the Shell. It's always been hard for me to assess whether Masmune Shirow is a sexist, or in fact, a feminist. On one hand, almost all of his manga (Appleseed, Dominion: Tank Police, and the afforementioned Ghost in the Shell) have, as you said, strong female heroines as protagonists. Much of his comics gleefully illustrate strong women kicking the asses of men. At the same time, however, he seems to be obsessed with the sexuality of his female characters - in an objectifying rather than sex-positive feminist light. In GiTS, for example, he makes it so that Kusanagi must undress completely in order for her to utilize her optical camoflage. There are multiple situations in both the manga and the film in which she is forced to do this (very casually and unabashedly removing whatever garments she is wearing), which in addition to the opening scene of the film in where she is being built, results in her spending a fair portion of the story arc in the buff. Not only that, but nearly all of his female characters - from his protagonists down to those that only appear in a single frame - are well built and scantily clad.
So I'm not really sure. I think in the end, it's safe to say that although he does support feminism, he's also as hentai-obsessed as a perverted 13 year old otaku.
 
 
This Sunday
03:39 / 19.06.05
Actually, Shirow does no so such thing, with the nudity-necessity. That's the movie, which he had very little to actually do with. If you read GitS, there's actually a surprising lack of nudity, considering the film's requirement that its protagonist get naked as often and regularly as possible.
Also interesting to note that in the comic, she smiles, oggles the naked android beefcake hanging in a factory, and generally has something of a personality. In the movie, she's very serious, very naked, and and generally less emotional or personable.
GitS 2, makes an interesting sidenote of the sexualization as an 'eye pull' both in story (used by to distract people, while on missions) as well as by the artist, to distract people from the philosophy they're being pumped full of. It's a weak argument (which he admits), but it is an argument, demonstrating he's a little more cognizant than other comics-creators (see 'Catwoman: Guardian of Gotham' with is annoyingly sexist but in ways the creators seem unaware of).
I'm not defending Shirow, necessarily, but do want to reiterate that sexy, sexist, sexual are not necessarily synonymous. Masamune Shirow just sexes things up severely, and whether that's sexist in and of itself, I'm not quite prepared to go into.
I think his 'Batou on the beach with a keg' is pretty sexy, too, so...
 
 
diz
03:26 / 23.06.05
I'd have to say that manga/anime is not innately sexist, but some of the subgenres are. In the "definitely sexist/dangerously anti-female" catagory we have The Overfiend series and its brethren.

i would have to say that Overfiend has to be the most blatantly misogynist film i've ever seen. it's like a Peter Sotos level of sexual sadism there.

however, i would question the idea that it's "dangerously" anti-female. it's an exploration of an extremely nasty corner of the psyche, and all the more frightening because it rejects the usual normalizing conventions of horror, but i think it's much less dangerous to have that sort of stuff out on the table, personally.

As a genre anime is quite evenly balanced between sexist and empowering representations but it tends towards extremes so women tend to be very empowered, gun toting and powerful or simpering girls with no power or guts.

i tend to be more than a little wary of any equation of the gun-toting action chick with any sort of feminism, personally. the Linda-Hamilton-in-T2-as-feminist-icon argument is pretty weak from where i sit, seeing as how the most patriarchal aspect of the action genre is the story structure itself. problems being solved by ejaculatory bursts of violence in ways that disrupt or overturn the stifling passivity of the domestic sphere, but at the same time are necessary to protect that same domestic sphere from the horrible, violent outside world. it doesn't help one bit to have the same structure with the same built-in oppositions and so forth if all you're doing is changing the gender (and presumably sex) of the ass-kicker, which is ultimately a pretty superficial and irrelevent detail.

what makes Spirited Away more exciting from a feminist perspective is that things are structured in such a way that the "soft," civilian traits of compassion and diligence in everyday domestic work are valued above the usual patriarchal traits like, oh, say, the willingness and ability to engage in combat.
 
 
Jack_Rackem
03:18 / 01.07.05
Well you have to consider that first of all, Japan isn't really considered progressive when it comes to gender relations. Second of all, most of the Anime we see in the west is marketed towards nerds and needs to include it's share of T&A.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
04:19 / 01.07.05
it doesn't help one bit to have the same structure with the same built-in oppositions and so forth if all you're doing is changing the gender (and presumably sex) of the ass-kicker, which is ultimately a pretty superficial and irrelevent detail.

Well I'm really more interested in what the work says about Japan than feminism in general. If it is an empowering comment from that culture or not? In the 1980's a gun toting female was a step in the right direction for cultures that didn't allow women into their front line military forces. Feminism began in force with an exchange of binary perceptions- purposefully adopted masculinity. I'm interested in the perception of female power in Japan and wherever anime can enlighten me in anyway as to that.

And if the gender of a gun toting hero is so exchangeable then why do so few Hollywood films feature super-violent female protagonists? I really think that the exchangeable binary needs to be addressed, not because that's the way I perceive reality but rather that the film world so often addresses masculinity and femininity in that way.
 
 
This Sunday
08:53 / 01.07.05
About to go to a long awaited sleep and probably should wait to post, but:
(a) There have been few to no super-violent Hollywood films for at least ten years. I mean that in both the 'Terminator 2' gore sense and the mean/vicious 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf' sense. Nobody can fuck with anybody in a Hollywood film, anymore, or something.
Regardless of gender. You can't do 'Ichi' and you can't do 'Audition'... basically no Miike in Hollywood, no.
(b) T&A isn't, on its own, sexist. It can be annoying, but it isn't inherently sexist. Why it's used, how it's used, but just the presence of, does not make it sexist in the way that, oh, Superman always making fifties Lois Lane look like an idiot and then smirking to himself was/is sexist, or that NASCAR guy's comment a bit ago, about how women should come in white like all other household utensils or whatever. Mary Harron film's have a fair bit of the exposed and thrust-forth flesh, but I don't think them particularly sexist.
(c) Maybe I don't watch enough porn - actually, people've chided me on that before - but, seriously, it's not like most of our english-language porn is all that nicer about its portrayal of women than the average hentai video. Someone tried to foist off 'Bible Black' onto me, recently, on and on about how cool/funny/fucked-up it was et cetera et cetera... and the first question out of my mouth is, 'is she going to explode post-sex?' But at the same time, if it were American, live action porn, I'm gonna want to know if I'm going to be sitting through 'choke on it, bitch', 'hurt her', lots of 'no stop' followed by the eventual bit where she comes around has some teary orgasm and can be left on the side of the road without anyone feeling guilty 'cause she was obviously into it anyway and deserved it for putting up a defensiveness. Or, whatever.
I've got too many friends who work in 'adult' industries to be too critical, but really, there's the dopey pseudo-hard-bastard who not-so-secretly-hates-women by has lots of sex with them anyhow angle somewhere in every country's sex-outlets/entertainments, I'm sure.
I wouldn't judge the whole of a medium (be that film, comics, stage...) on the porn angle. I mean, I choreographed girls dressing each other in schoolgirl outfits and blue Ayanami wigs to the tune of 'We're All Clones', years ago for a laugh and a check, but I doubt it exemplified some angle of modern American sociopolitical artistry in practice.
(d)Does it seem odd to anyone else that gender-exploration in manga and anime seems to've locked into one angle and maintained only it? The angle, being the standard transgendering all the way over to the opposing side. The cliche of 'one takes on the male role, the other the female.'
There's an excellent quote, I think from Leslie Feinberg, but maybe not... about, this [strap-on] phallus is better than one you grow yourself, because it's swappable in sizes, textures, shapes, colors, and between people. Which sounds like an advert to be cyborged, but... my point is, is Japanese pop-culture, a explicated by manga and anime, stuck on that gender binarism gig? Is all that much of America stuck on that saw, anymore?
 
 
krylonuser
02:42 / 28.07.05
i would have to say that Overfiend has to be the most blatantly misogynist film i've ever seen. it's like a Peter Sotos level of sexual sadism there.

I heard somewhere the majority of the animators on Overfiend were female?

Maybe that explains the excessive tentacle shots lol..
 
 
Triplets
05:09 / 28.07.05
Are you saying that the reason tons of penii appear in LotO* is because women, y'know, just love the cock?

Have you somehow missed the entire point of this thread? Are you, infact, Frank Mackey?


* Do I even need to point out that animators just produce the cels that have already been pre-approved by the (presumably male) director, producers, scriptwriters, editors and storyboard artists? Do I?
 
 
All Acting Regiment
20:35 / 28.07.05
Everyone at the top creative level of Overfiend was male. I second the fact that animators have no creative control, they are simmilar to factory workers. They carry out a given process (which is) defined by their superiors in the organisation's heirarchy.

Maybe that explains the excessive tentacle shots lol..

We can all see that you're trying to make a joke here; it's not funny in this serious context, nor is it welcome in this part of the board.
 
 
This Sunday
23:23 / 28.07.05
I'm reminded of watching 'Golden Boy' with a girl (and I say girl, 'cause she was, oh, fifteen) who, watching a woman get off on the vibrations of a motorcycle, announced straight-faced that she needed to get a bike as soon as possible.
I make no judgements about people's kinks ('cept snarky ones and cheap shots), and sometimes you have to joke. Somebody has to say it, just to get it out of the way.
 
 
Triplets
01:45 / 30.07.05
Yeah but, here we have a fairly long thread re: sexism and rape in anime when krylon comes in with "hurrr-hurr there's loads of cocks because loads of women animated it" which - taken to it's logical extreme - is saying: because there's loads of rape in it, and women animated it, women must love rape.

So, it's not a case of "well someone had to say it". No one had to say it but they did, and it was really fucking stupid and inappropriate.

krylonuser really needs to raise hir game.
 
 
This Sunday
02:19 / 30.07.05
Didn't mean to imply I agreed, or thought it particularly funny/insightful, but, then, I am sense-of-humor impaired, so I angle myself towards presuming things are meant to be funny when they aren't rational/insightful. Like pretending someone was trying to be very witty - and failing - when they say really stupid things.
Anyhow, while trying to convince someone, the other day, to watch 'Victorian Romance Emma' (which I suggest to everyone under the sun, 'cause it's sweet and cute the second ep made me cry), they rejected it based on "Maids are sexy but she's not a sexy maid." To be fair, this wasn't someone I knew all that well, I just knew they were somewhat into anime, but still, that took me aback more than it should have.
Such a silly thing - if sexy was one quality among many that made something worth watching, I could understand, maybe, but the only and killing qualification? And is my immediate reaction of putting emotion and cuteness above well, absurdly short frilly skirts and nothing to dust that doesn't require doubling over... and thereby politicizing that, making it a social and sexual matter rather than one of just entertainment, speak more harshly of my mind than his? I can comfortably say sexy is not sexist, and so the absence of sexy - disappointment at that absence - should follow easily enough as a normal, reasonable response from someone who was just looking for that - like someone watching porn and finding out nobody ever gets it on, or watching a Clint Eastwood western where nobody dies, might reasonably disappoint. Instead, I'm disappointed in the voiced disappointment, but why? Why did I immediately associate the comment about sexy maids as sexist, and was that a reasonable response?
What's become more interesting to me is not 'is this genre/medium sexist' but 'is the mass of the audience digesting this genre/medium sexist?' Unfortunately, that just leads outward and inward to become: Are we?
 
 
All Acting Regiment
14:42 / 30.07.05
...with a girl (and I say girl, 'cause she was, oh, fifteen) who, watching a woman get off on the vibrations of a motorcycle, announced straight-faced that she needed to get a bike as soon as possible.

Yes, but you weren't engaged in a serious discussion about sexism, were you? You were relaxing and joking around, which is fine, but that's not what this thread is for.

Could it be said that in the act of creating a representation of a women, by designing a fictional character who looks/talks/acts etc in a certain way, a man is comitting the same act as if he was telling a woman in the real world how to look/talk/act etc?
 
 
This Sunday
15:29 / 30.07.05
I think people do copy, often unconsciously and as a whole society, what is characterized in fictional people, but I also think that, once one is aware that this is a societal/conformist sort of reflex, the behaviour blamed on fictions is entirely an excuse. Or can I read/watch 'American Psycho' and go torture-kill-torture-buy-kill? If everyone in the States read 'Dhalgren' would we collectively swallow ourselves up in a repetitious ouroborous-style fragmentary reiteration?
Is it possible that Jane Austen, say, significantly or measurably influenced the cultural reflexes that have spread from then to now in a Eurocentric (and anglophilic) classist-that-would-pretend-not-to-be society? Do we live the comedy of manners, in some strange reflexive way?

Whether I agree with an example or disagree with another... it's all too 'the devil made me,' for my taste.
 
 
macrophage
04:02 / 31.07.05
Yes and No!!! You get strong comics and other stronger comics - look at DC and Marvel are they not just as sexist??? Sailor Moon I think is quite cool have you ever read "Hardcore?" "Hell Baby" is a sicko - you can pick up worser shit on the net. Last nite surfing I stumbled on hentai sites about like incest and rape - mucho sicko!! But I remember reading "Big Black Kiss" (I always preferred the Mature and Indie Comics) and that's an aesthetic megaton blaster or what!! In the context that comics seems to portay sexism well yes they hold a skewey mirror upto society, look at Red Sonia and then look at the Erotic Comics and Transgressive Markets! Women make better characters than the males do, I think She Hulk was one of my favourites of all time!! It's a mostly male dominated market isn't it I liked stuff like Peter Bagge from "Hate" comic and I liked the slacker comics about White Trash Culture (hats off to the Freak Brothers). Woman are not given a good time in society at all!!! Woman written comics are quite cool!!! There are harmfull ideas in everywhere look at Pop Music and its sexuality and lifestylism and logos culture for the younger ones, and this has caused alot of parents alot of shite in the head!! Kids don't read Manga Comics they would not reach the shelves for them in a comic shop!!! I think Manga is a big tree with alot of branches - it is upto the consumner!!!
 
 
Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero
01:46 / 02.08.05
I, for one, object to any idea of macrophage's expulsion from the board. His post provided a nice, empty thought bubble for me to relax in and contemplate some ideas in this thread.

Could it be said that in the act of creating a representation of a woman, by designing a fictional character who looks/talks/acts etc in a certain way, a man is comitting the same act as if he was telling a woman in the real world how to look/talk/act etc?

God, I hope not. Surely, in creating a female character (let's assume the character has to be female for whatever reason, or at least have "female attributes") one would have to look to the women around you to provide a base for the character? I mean, if you hope to make her realistic and believable, anyway.

Unless, of course, one was creating this character with wishes that she were "real", or to fulfill some fantasy of the creator. Uh, maybe that was your point. Crap. My bad.

How does lesbian hentai fit into all this? There are dominant female roles and degrading, subservient female roles. Do we say "Those characters are good and those characters are bad" or do we toss out the whole thing?
 
 
All Acting Regiment
09:23 / 03.08.05
How does lesbian hentai fit into all this? There are dominant female roles and degrading, subservient female roles.

Would this be the Lesbian Hentai made by men? Where no matter how dominant one of the partners is, her actions and appearance are still controlled exclusively and inevitably by a male? Where the fact that they exist in a "Lesbian Hentai" context vastly reduces the possibility of different events happening and narrows the whole point of their existence down to sexual activity?

Sounds pretty, uh, sexist.

You can possibly refute this if you find me a female creator of Lesbian Hentai who's work gets equal attention from men and women. I think she'll be hard to find though.
 
 
This Sunday
10:50 / 03.08.05
Some horrible part of my backbrain wants to type 'Lea Hernandez' here for reasons probably be left unexplored. However, Asagiri Yuu ('Midnight Panthers') comes to mind quick enough. The manga at least had something passing for character development and some sort of plot, which is almost always a step in the right direction.
I don't know that I like the idea that as soon as there is a male creator of X with female characters it becomes sexist just because a man is in charge (as author). By that token, men can only write men and women only, well, women. Unless female artists and storytellers are somehow exempt or beyond, which is also a bit suspect.
I know that a twelve year old got in trouble a few years ago for doing a school book report on Moto Hagio's 'A, A Prime' because the teacher found it pornographic.
A lot depends on how you define or border 'hentai' or porn, too, though. Was CLAMP's 'Miyuki-chan in...' stuff porn? A bit more than a little pervy? Or...? Or to take it to an American frame, is 'The Soft Machine' pornographic in the same was as 'A Feast Unknown' and is that porn in the same sense as Anne Rice's 'Beauty' novels or 'Deep Throat'?
And then there was 'Rapeman'.
 
 
Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero
19:12 / 03.08.05
What's become more interesting to me is not 'is this genre/medium sexist' but 'is the mass of the audience digesting this genre/medium sexist?' Unfortunately, that just leads outward and inward to become: Are we?

I think this is a direction we need to look in, especially if we are asking if sexist ideas are harmful to the audience.

Let's use Full Metal Panic! as an examle. The "hero" is a teenage soldier, Sosuke, all guns and violence, who is on a mission to protect Chittori, a high school girl (complete with schoolgirl outfit, which occasionally becomes ripped or torn in revealing ways) who usually needs to be rescued for some reason or other. Naturally, they fall in love, but refuse to admit it to each other. Sounds pretty standard, right?

But there's a running joke about how very bad Sosuke is at being anything but a soldier. His mission involves blending in with other students, which he fails spectacularly at. His solution to everything is violence in some form or other. Chittori, who is certainly not simpering or cowardly but in fact is in possesion of a very strong character, is trying to teach him to fit in (Sosuke's punishment for resorting to violence in social situations often includes her beating the shit out of him).

So at first I thought, "well, it's kinda sexist, but hell, there's a strong female lead there. She kicks ass, even if she does get rescued occasionally, and she's certainly a lot brighter than the male lead when it comes to anything but soldierly things."

Then there's an episode where they all go to the beach, and Chittori is upset because Sosuke, in typical fashion, is busy failing at being normal and doesn't notice Chittori's new bathing suit, and so she runs off, in order to make him notice her and get jealous. That may raise a few eyebrows, right? But are we going to pretend that this doesn't happen in normal, everyday relationships? Petty little ploys to get someone you like to notice you? Sure, men do it as much as women, and maybe the fact that it's Chittori, normally such a strong, independent character makes it sexist, but can we chalk it up to the story? Or are we sexist for accepting that Chittori is more likely to do this than Sosuke, who is busy shooting watermelons with a shotgun?

So, yeah, male soldier, all guns an' ammo, rescuing schoolgirl. Sexist. Inept soldier trying to learn to be normal, being taught by a woman, who has strong, forceful character? Still slightly sexist? Yeah, maybe. What if it's written by a woman rather than a man? It's more than likely directed towards a male audience, so if it's written by a woman, is it still sexist?

And, finally, are we sexist for accepting these as "standard" anime rules (male hero rescuing female)? Is the audience? And are we really harmed by the ideas present in the show anyway?
 
  
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