Just look at animemes banning the use of tr*p. Of course not every anime is misogynist but… there’s kinda a lot. And I think there’s a lot of blatant misogyny that is definitely noticed, and people who watch those scenes know it’s bad, but if you keep watching that shit over and over, even if you know it’s bad, it just get burned into your brain. But more importantly, a lot of anime just treats women as a whole differently than the male characters. Their drawn slightly differently, they act slightly differently, and they continue to be treated as objects, albeit in more subtle ways. On their own or in a bubble these grievances wouldn’t be a big deal, but it does add up. Idk, shit just sucks and it makes it hard to get into shows I would really like otherwise…
Alright OP, we need some HISTORICAL MATERIALISM up in here in order to discover exactly why anime, as a niche nerd culture, has inculcated such reactionary viewpoints. Maybe along the way we can discover why this breed of reactionary keeps recurring in other niche nerd communities like Star Wars and comic books, etc and maybe together we can think about some way to combat this. Or not. I’m not your mom. Also if you’re expecting citations I’m drunk AF right now so you’re on your own fam. Hell I could be talking out my ass for all you know, so don’t just trust the word of some weirdo on the internet in some weirdo internet forum and do your own reading.
K so in the before times, anime as a medium isn’t exactly the horny pre-pubescent power fantasy realm you know now. We start with Astroboy in the 50’s, which was a local comic book creator figuring out a way to industrialize and mass-produce for-TV animation on a budget 1/10 of his competitors at Disney (which basically involved a lot of cost cutting, but also severely mistreating labour. We can get into that another time.) Animation in Japan is seen exactly the same as it is everywhere else in the world- whimsical entertainment for children. No pantyshots, no jiggle physics, just a cute robot boy saving the world cos a dad built a robot to replace his dead son. Astroboy makes money and more or less the modern anime industry as we know it is born. You get World Masterpiece Theatre, which gives you Studio Ghibli and Miyazaki, and God saw that it was good.
Fast forward to the 70’s, and anime has been puttering along as children’s entertainment. Magical girl, Super robot, Super Sentai, Ashita no Joe… anyway, stuff for kids. Then STAR WARS. Pop culture is upended. Now everything has to be mature and cool and scifi and sexy. READY FOR SOME PTSD? Mobile Suit Gundam coming in hot with that shit. All the kids who grew up watching Astroboy all want to make the next Star Wars but they have no film infrastructure that rivals Hollywood so they end up becoming animators, and since they were the children of the people who survived the atom bomb it’s all BASH THE SPACE FASH all the time. (Coincidentally, corresponding with the rise of the New Left in Japan.) But now anime is no longer for kids, but for real thinking adults who comprehend the moral complexity of war and understand the dangers of fascism and please buy our model kits.
It’s the 80’s, and Japan is going to take over the world. The Asian Economic Miracle (spoilers, it wasn’t) has Japan flush with cash and on the cutting edge of technology. Neoliberalism works, and it’s harbinger is Sony. Thanks to localisation efforts, anime has found a niche elsewhere in the world as the Big Boy Animation for Big Thonking Boys, and VHS rental places everywhere like Blockbuster are scrambling to stock their shelves. What’s a Blockbuster? Think Netflix but in real life. Anyway, the World is hungry for Japan, and with all this foreign cash studios are willing to give that money to just about anyone. So now animators are pushing the envelope, doing the most edgy and absurd shit you can imagine. Nothing is taboo, nothing is sacred, hide yo children and your wives cause they raping everybody out there. This financial freedom is a land of contrasts. You get Akira, and you get Wicked City. Course, in Japan no self respecting adult citizen of the world would be caught dead watching cartoons, so only basement dwelling weirdos with VHS decks actually buy and watch these movies.
It’s the End of
EvangelionHistory, except History ends early for Japan. The Asian Financial Crisis of the 90’s plunges Japan into a recession it STILL hasn’t recovered from to this day. As the bubbles burst, the animation studios are scrambling to make rent and pay their employees… as is the rest of Japan. Doesn’t take a genius to tell you that consumers without jobs can’t spend, and they sure as hell aren’t going to buy cartoons. Except… some people do still buy cartoons. All those basement dwelling weirdos with VHS decks and gasp computers? They’d rather spend money on their hobbies, cause they saw their peers save and scrimp and toil at their Sarariman day jobs just to lose everything and throw themselves off the 90th floor. Better the Otaku Way of Life- can’t plan an expensive future with a house and children which society has basically told you all your life is the definition of success when no such future is possible cause you can’t save shit. Can’t socialize and function highly enough to build the relationships needed to form a successful mating pair-bond in a dysfunctional society. Better to sleep in the warm glow of the TV screen. To sleep, perchance to dream. And in those dreams that may come, big ol’ Anime Tiddies. Enter the Waifu: the ultimate expression of male fantasy; simultaneously submissive and spontaneous, sexy and chaste, rebellious and conservative, impossibly young yet surprisingly mature… a real ideal, but not constrained by reality. Madonna, Whore, Maiden, Mother, Crone. Whatever you want her to be… (Flip the gender for husbandos. Sorry, ladies. Patriarchy oppresses men too.) Because after all, ideals can’t let you down the way reality has.So of course, the animation companies do the only sensible thing they can do- they cater exclusively to these people. After all, the bills need to get paid.
Have a cool idea for a show about a gay ice skater? Nah man, can’t risk it in this economic climate. What if all those nerds who buy our stuff start flipping their shit? That show about the all male swim team already had nasty comments on 2chan, although we did mysteriously make money from that. It’s almost like as if we take the time on some passion projects as a studio we’re not adapting the latest pandering bullshit the production committee is trying to get us to do, and those internet assholes who just want to jack off to underage girls in some bizarre attempt to relive their highschool days know it. Fuckers also pay our bills when they buy that $200 half-naked statue. Maybe with this new-fangled internet thingy we can make some dosh on the side selling whatever we have on hand to those baka-gaijin overseas.
Oh shit motherfucker the Twin Towers just crashed. Here, have some K-On!.
