Monday, May 11, 2015
Something I learned from anime. Part 1
I'm about to show you all my age with this one. I was just a teenager when japanese anime slowly just starting to imprint itself into american culture. Shows like Dragon Ball Z, Gundam Wing and Ghost In The Shell just to name few. One thing that I caught from japanese anime as I grew older was that even though it's mostly fictional, the female characters arc evolved and progressed light years ahead of what we had here, women became more of butt kicking bad asses and less of the helpless princess waiting to be saved. In many cases some the stories were centered around a strong female lead with a male sidekick. Take the movie Ghost In The Shell the lead is a female cyborg detective who is trying to break an international espionage base conspiracy. Even though she is a highly sexualized character in this movie, it plays a mere after thought to her persona, which is shows off her problem solving, combat and conversational abilities. The Major as she is called comes across more as Sylvester Stallone from the movie Cobra without the predictable love interest, which something that we rarely saw in the 90's let along anything coming out of Hollywood today. Keep in mind that this is something coming a country that has been long considered a male dominated society and long way away from being a gender progressive society that America claims to have been at the time. This movie would help a young teenage boy dispatch a few female trophs and later begin to teach him better to respect women and the role they can, will and are playing in the world around him. The question that I should be asking now is, if japanese anime can expand and progress in the 90's, then what's keeping Hollywood?
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Not an anime guy ... so I'll have to defer on this one
ReplyDeleteReading your article made me think of Angelina Jolie in Lara Croft, Salt and Wanted. I believe she would totally agree with you because most of her movies she plays are strong, independent and challenging. Then you have Resident Evil and Underworld, but two of my favorites are Columbiana and Point of No Return. Although they have made some action packed female "superhero" movies, they were not all that successful. Do you think the reason it hasn't been successful is due to some females just want to be saved by Superman or Batman? Or could it be some men refuse to acknowledge the power of a woman? Most men still believe a woman's place is in the home. Lol
ReplyDeleteI think it's because in Hollywood the female lead must always have a love interest. Look at what it did to the Movie Supergirl, most female superheroine films lack a good story line.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you to a point while there are a lot of strong female leads and even sidekicks in anime almost all of them are greatly sexualized from the skimpy clothes, the unrealistic body proportions, the gratuitous panty shots, and the unnecessary nudity. To me its more of a one step forward two step back deal. The only anime I can think of with a strong female that was not overly sexualized was Appleseed. The probably only reason why there are strong female leads is because this is a male dominated world and while its good to have a strong female lead she has be hot, dress skimpy and be naked half the time. I'm not defending Disney and their helpless princess archetype but anime is certainly not much better with its over sexualization.
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