Hrmm... I was just browsing around one day, and I came upon a comment which someone said how series like Death Note and Bakuman seemed to portray women quite questionably with lines like:



and my god, don't even get me started on Death Note.

Note: I do NOT mean to nor am I 'dissing' Bakuman and DN. To be honest, I really do enjoy reading these two.

Just wondering what MU thinks...?

And, would like to know what other series contain sexist themes, regardless male or female, and how.

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I just laugh and continue reading.
A lot of manga I've read (as well as anime I've watched) is riddled with sexism anyways.

i try to ignore it mostly, cause it does pop up from time to time, and not just sexism but other questionable material arise in mangas too. but honestly i try not to take it to much to heart cause there's a pretty big difference in culture and understanding of certain matters such as this.

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It is annoying if the author degrades women but I'll stick with it as long as it doesn't become so overbearing that it pisses me off.

If the plot is good, then I would still read it. I have this curiosity that is hard to supress.

However, I would be disappointed at how women should be submissive, weak-willed, or physically not capable than men.

Some series I recalled having sexist themes are:
Tetsuwan Girl - A group of females attempt to break the barriers in the world of baseball, which is a "male sport", as they say.
Youhei Pierre - Men couldn't comprehend at the fact that a girl is capable of fighting at the battlefield; treats them like trash, I may add. I am tempted to dropped this manga, but since I like reading about history, I'd still continue it though...

I know I've read a few of manga that have that themes, but I can't remember right now.

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Whether we fall by ambition, blood, or lust,
Like diamonds, we are cut with our own dust.

Well I would say many manga are treating woman just as man.
Just look at the manga where woman and man are together going on a quest (e.g. a middle agy fantasy story) and the woman is carrying a broadsword but has the figure of a model
And to be honest I don't mind sexism, I like every method to create something which entertains me, if manga or anything else.
Besides I would rather stay at this level than advancing to the german book "Feuchtgebiete", I dont't really know if it is already translated into English but you better pray that it isn't!

when i read hentai, my mind says no, while something else says WHO CARES

Mangas that condone or glamorize violence against women and/or treat women as less than human are a real problem. The biggest perpetrators are seinen mangakas, many of whom seem to propagate the idea that it is natural for a man to want to rape women, and that women are weak, promiscuous, and enjoy degrading themselves. Although I still read these series because I enjoy seinen, I can't help wondering if the guys reading are reading them with the same grain of salt as I do. I hope they are.

Some examples:

Homunculus -- The middle-aged protagonist has violent sex with a teenage girl to "cure" her of her lack of personality.

Riman Gambler Mouse -- The protagonist visits the home of a rich man who keeps female slaves. A woman poses nude as a table, while men put coffee cups on her stomach and sit on other women who pose as chairs. When the woman tries to talk, the owner pours hot coffee over her breasts and genitals and tells her to shut up because she isn't human. The protagonist later saves the woman, but throws her into a trash bin on the side of the street, telling her that she belongs there because she is trash.

Shamo -- The protagonist basically uses women as sex machines. He also rapes a woman because she is the girlfriend of one of his opponents (and this isn't like date rape; he literally chases her, pushes her down to the ground, and forces himself on her outdoors in broad daylight). And his sister turns into a lustful prostitute.

Skyhigh -- Backstabbing slutty evil women abound.

Voyeurs -- The protagonist spies on his girlfriend who is cheating on him with a man built like a stallion.

And I'm not even going to go into ero-guro as a genre... I've read some decent ero-guro, but most of it just baffles me. Anyone who gets turned on by ripping out women's intestines or sawing off their legs needs to engage in some serious self-reflection.

Last edited by Odette at 2:23 am, Apr 4 2009

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Avatar by tassyn.livejournal.com

Reading: Kingdom, Sangokushi, Historie

I guess it depends.

Sometimes the sexism in a manga IS too much to take. To use a classic example: Hot Gimmick, a manga with such crappy attitudes towards women that it's been popularly dubbed "the manga of deep feminist shame."

The main female character had no backbone whatsoever and never developed one throughout the story. Many people view her relationship with the main male as being an abusive one, and it's somewhat hard to argue with that. He kept molesting her throughout the series, doing whatever he could to get her to have sex with him, and in a fit of jealousy, even slapped her at one point. In a truly cringe-worthy moment at the end of the series after proposing to her, the main female actually contemplates saying yes because she hopes he might treat her better if they were married...!

And the sexism isn't even limited to the main male either. For example, the main female is almost gang-raped by a former friend of hers and a bunch of thugs that he'd hired for that purpose, and throughout the whole incident, all the main female can do is cry and apologize for her friend's unhappy childhood--for HIS pain--that is causing him to want to take revenge on her family like this, nevermind what he was trying to do to HER. And of course there's the main character's little sister who is in junior high and who has sex with just about anyone because that's what the boys expect of her. (The series starts with the main character having to go buy her a pregnancy test while the sister rattles off 5 or so guys who could possibly be the ones who got her pregnant...!)

I mean, how can you keep reading a series like that, one where the women in the manga are pretty much treated like objects?

If it's a shonen series, one where the women are side-characters and don't appear that often, then fine, I can ignore the sexism. But if it's a shoujo series like Hot Gimmick, one where there's lots of women, or at least one in particular that we focus on, then it becomes impossible to ignore since we're constantly being confronted by it. It's rather appaling, for example, how the women get treated in most smutty shoujo mangas. Rape = love in Shinjo Mayu's world, I guess.

Yes, I agree. Even though I am a female myself, I enjoy manga which belong to the seinen category. I read almost all kinds of genre (except for the "deviant" ones), but most of my favorite manga are not even geared at my age nor gender. It's probably because the seinen genre contain a lot of stupendous manga. Take a look at Berserk: I would always, always facepalm my distraught self because Caska (sp?) would be a fine target for a rape victim in the story. I could not bring myself for marathoning this manga since it is literally and figuratively dark to read.

And how can I forget Riman Gambler Mouse? This manga is a fine example about how women are treated with such indecency.


It seems like some of Takahashi Tsutomu's manga have portrayed women as weak. He's my favorite artist though.


Wow, that's just outrageous...
Marriage doesn't necessarily mean that a relationship would be "fix".

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Whether we fall by ambition, blood, or lust,
Like diamonds, we are cut with our own dust.

majin tantei nougami neuro
neuro treats yako terribly
but then again, he treats everyone that way

If it's something like OP's sample then I normally wouldn't notice unless it was really obvious or someone points it out...

"What? Am I supposed to be offended or something?" Is my answer, normally, anyway.

Of course, I am annoyed sometimes, because sometimes its just ridiculous... (Say, in Smut, where the girl falls for the guy who like... rapes her, because it 'felt good' and that hes sweet inside. )
Although, its not like anyone reads smut for good, strong heroines, anyway.


As for Hot Gimmic, it was so sexist I laughed, and laughed, and read more because I like laughing. It was just so stupid.

Last edited by Dragonfiremule at 1:29 pm, Apr 4 2009

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What exactly are we talking about here? There is a difference between a manga that has sexist characters/deals with the topic of sexism, and a manga that is written by a sexist to promote sexism.

IS explores the roles of female and male, and the societal expectations for the genders. It's not sexist in itself, but some characters have sexist attitudes...

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Either or? Thats what I though, anyway..

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