Are you sure you want to compare this to Goblin Slayer of all things? I don’t think that’s a very good comparison, because only in one of these properties are women turned into baby factories byremoved.
Do the aliens threaten this in Dandadan? Yes. Is it depicted? No. Is it made clear that this happens allover the place to many people, like it must in Goblin slayer? Also no. I don’t see how it’s anywhere near the same level.
As for why they depict it: it makes the threat more effective. Obviously this is also true for Goblin slayer but let me finish: Why does the Alien stop to regard Ripley and sniff her and make that second mouth come out to hiss at her? It makes no sense for it to do so. But it’s a horror movie and you gotta do horror right. Doing a story about aliens abducting people without pointing at the pile of interviews and accounts of people saying they do sexual things to you would devalue this and make the whole thing not work. And, of course, they are the bad guys. If the bad guys aren’t allowed to do bad things in your story at all, then what threat is there to them? The difference of course is that in Dandadan, they woulda done it had they not been stopped and the threat of them is taken very seriously, while Goblin slayer will repeatedly and gleefully show thisremoved, but at the same time act like the whole world does not give a fuck and only this one guy is there opposing this clear and present threat.
That’s the difference between them really, how goblin slayer is like ‘well sucks you gotremovedd hundreds of times over the curse of months, let’s show you being rescued and then never speak of it again’, while in Dandadan, the aliens get fought tooth and nail and, thanks to that, don’t get what they want. But while Goblin Slayer will zoom in gleefully on the actualremoved, Dandadan shows our characters struggle successfully against the attempt.
It’s also very equal opportunity in it’s depictions of ‘the gaze’. Good-looking guys get stripped a fair bit in Dandadan and the whole things plot revolves around getting someone’s sex bits back because a ghost whose first words are about sucking dicks stole them. Meanwhile in Goblin slayer our protag isn’t even taking his helmet off, while every female runs around in the skimpiest of clothing.
As for how the show comments on it all: For one, it never shows it’s ladies as helpless in the face of these aliens. Yea they have to fight them, but they do win by doing that. But far more importantly, it shows the characters actually developing healthy relationships. By showing what love and affection should look like. The show does an amazing job of this and of making every character actually a character that is about more then ‘oh no a ghost/alien let’s fight it’. Over the course of the story, these characters actually feel like people, like we know them and like there is a lot to them. The manga/show depicts good relationships and makes them seem desirable.
Sexualizing teenage girls is not negated by also sexualizing teenage boys, though you really misunderstand what the concept of sexualization even is if you think the balls thing is relevant here. Sex gags are often used as an excuse for sexualization, but the balls plot and associated jokes are clearly not.
You are furthermore making up bizarre criteria to excuse the base facts of the depiction. Whether the women are helpless for the entire scene is completely immaterial, there are countless smut manga that are just as if not more disgusting where the woman does (eventually) escape of her own power.
She didn’t need to lose her shirt to “make the threat more real”, that was done purely for the viewer’s pleasure.
More centrally to your comment, I’m not saying that Dandadan and Goblin Slayer are the same thing, I’m saying you are engaging in the same fallacy that Goblin Slayer apologists are, acting like something cannot simultaneously be eroticized and narratively “bad.” In many cases, those two things can be closely interlinked, because something being narratively “bad” does not mean that you do not, on a meta level, want the viewer to not enjoy it. That’s not how stories work. The Alien is meant to be scary, but it is simultaneously meant to be cool, made more obvious in the way it basically became a mascot in later enstallments. At the end of Rogue One, Darth Vader slaughtering the rebels is narratively a grim event, but it’s very clearly fanservice in the broader sense because it’s simultaneously meant to be enjoyed as a power fantasy of an action scene watching him carve up and force choke a big group of nameless opponents. This idea that every scene means only its explicit narrative depiction from the protagonist’s perspective is like hearing the words someone says and assuming each word is exactly what it denotatively means with no nuance of connotation or innuendo.
If UT was still with us, I have faith he would say: “The curtains are blue”.
Are you sure you want to compare this to Goblin Slayer of all things? I don’t think that’s a very good comparison, because only in one of these properties are women turned into baby factories byremoved.
Do the aliens threaten this in Dandadan? Yes. Is it depicted? No. Is it made clear that this happens allover the place to many people, like it must in Goblin slayer? Also no. I don’t see how it’s anywhere near the same level.
As for why they depict it: it makes the threat more effective. Obviously this is also true for Goblin slayer but let me finish: Why does the Alien stop to regard Ripley and sniff her and make that second mouth come out to hiss at her? It makes no sense for it to do so. But it’s a horror movie and you gotta do horror right. Doing a story about aliens abducting people without pointing at the pile of interviews and accounts of people saying they do sexual things to you would devalue this and make the whole thing not work. And, of course, they are the bad guys. If the bad guys aren’t allowed to do bad things in your story at all, then what threat is there to them? The difference of course is that in Dandadan, they woulda done it had they not been stopped and the threat of them is taken very seriously, while Goblin slayer will repeatedly and gleefully show thisremoved, but at the same time act like the whole world does not give a fuck and only this one guy is there opposing this clear and present threat.
That’s the difference between them really, how goblin slayer is like ‘well sucks you gotremovedd hundreds of times over the curse of months, let’s show you being rescued and then never speak of it again’, while in Dandadan, the aliens get fought tooth and nail and, thanks to that, don’t get what they want. But while Goblin Slayer will zoom in gleefully on the actualremoved, Dandadan shows our characters struggle successfully against the attempt.
It’s also very equal opportunity in it’s depictions of ‘the gaze’. Good-looking guys get stripped a fair bit in Dandadan and the whole things plot revolves around getting someone’s sex bits back because a ghost whose first words are about sucking dicks stole them. Meanwhile in Goblin slayer our protag isn’t even taking his helmet off, while every female runs around in the skimpiest of clothing.
As for how the show comments on it all: For one, it never shows it’s ladies as helpless in the face of these aliens. Yea they have to fight them, but they do win by doing that. But far more importantly, it shows the characters actually developing healthy relationships. By showing what love and affection should look like. The show does an amazing job of this and of making every character actually a character that is about more then ‘oh no a ghost/alien let’s fight it’. Over the course of the story, these characters actually feel like people, like we know them and like there is a lot to them. The manga/show depicts good relationships and makes them seem desirable.
Sexualizing teenage girls is not negated by also sexualizing teenage boys, though you really misunderstand what the concept of sexualization even is if you think the balls thing is relevant here. Sex gags are often used as an excuse for sexualization, but the balls plot and associated jokes are clearly not.
You are furthermore making up bizarre criteria to excuse the base facts of the depiction. Whether the women are helpless for the entire scene is completely immaterial, there are countless smut manga that are just as if not more disgusting where the woman does (eventually) escape of her own power.
She didn’t need to lose her shirt to “make the threat more real”, that was done purely for the viewer’s pleasure.
More centrally to your comment, I’m not saying that Dandadan and Goblin Slayer are the same thing, I’m saying you are engaging in the same fallacy that Goblin Slayer apologists are, acting like something cannot simultaneously be eroticized and narratively “bad.” In many cases, those two things can be closely interlinked, because something being narratively “bad” does not mean that you do not, on a meta level, want the viewer to not enjoy it. That’s not how stories work. The Alien is meant to be scary, but it is simultaneously meant to be cool, made more obvious in the way it basically became a mascot in later enstallments. At the end of Rogue One, Darth Vader slaughtering the rebels is narratively a grim event, but it’s very clearly fanservice in the broader sense because it’s simultaneously meant to be enjoyed as a power fantasy of an action scene watching him carve up and force choke a big group of nameless opponents. This idea that every scene means only its explicit narrative depiction from the protagonist’s perspective is like hearing the words someone says and assuming each word is exactly what it denotatively means with no nuance of connotation or innuendo.
If UT was still with us, I have faith he would say: “The curtains are blue”.