Author Perla Cobos’ personal manga collection
The Xavierite
I am a huge fan of anime and manga and have been since I was 12 years old. It’s one of the many interests I hold dear to my heart.
Just recently though, I was asked a question by my dear friend Grace: how do you as a female viewer deal with the sexualization of women in anime and manga?
I was a little taken aback since I’d never been asked anything like that before. As I thought about it, I told her the first thing that popped into my head.
“You just do.”
Growing up, I wasn’t a fan of anime. I thought it was weird and, coincidentally, despised how female characters were portrayed. I refused to engage with anime for years.
It wasn’t until middle school that I eventually came around. One of my friends had asked me to draw him something from an anime he watched.
The character I drew for him intrigued me, so I asked him who he was. His face lit up as he explained his character to me and the anime he was from.
He said it was called “Blue Exorcist” and insisted that I watch it. I went home and watched it, and ever since then I’ve been hooked.
Still, this didn’t change how I felt about how the women and girls were portrayed.
They always had ridiculously large chests that bounced every five seconds, wore extremely revealing clothing, and either spoke like a child or moaned with every sentence they said.
It seemed almost mandatory that there was at least one female character like this. I always felt embarrassed and awkward whenever they came on screen.
It took me out of the story almost every time and was exhausting to see, but the more I noticed it the more I began to wave it off.
By the time I got to college, I was so used to it all that it was more of a nuisance than anything to me. As time progressed, though, I began to realize a couple things.
I can acknowledge that an anime/manga has a fantastic story but also criticize it for its portrayal of women. Just because I enjoy the story doesn’t mean I have to stand for the way the women are treated.
Before, I had the mentality that if I enjoyed an anime that women were being sexualized in, it’d be hypocritical of me to criticize it.
This is obviously an extreme way to think and simply not true. I can enjoy something and still recognize its flaws.
By being able to recognize the flaws in something, I believe we can truly appreciate it more. In the case of anime, we have to acknowledge years of oversexualization.
A lot of my favorite anime/manga is from the 90s to early 2010s, a time where, quite frankly, no one cared about representing women correctly.
Despite its flaws, the anime/manga from this time was incredibly impactful and pushed the medium forward. Without them, anime wouldn’t be what it is today.
I believe that we can acknowledge that these anime are indeed amazing and truly made the medium special, but also realize that the way the women were written was terrible.
Another realization I had was that nobody has to consume or watch anime/manga that oversexualizes their female characters.
While I love going in blind when people personally recommend anime/manga to me, I’ve actually started researching beforehand.
Most of the anime I consumed throughout my teenage years was recommended to me by boys. While this doesn’t necessarily mean anything, it’s obvious they didn’t see it through the same lens.
I felt like I had to watch it and get over the oversexualization since no one else saw a problem with it.
Now that I’m old enough to finally understand that I don’t have to watch anything I don’t want to, I also realize that I can do more than that.
I can look into what other female consumers think about said anime/manga, who wrote it, what’s the plot and what the characters look like.
Since doing this, I’ve found so many interesting and cool stories written and created by women.
By researching, I can purposely avoid any anime/manga that purposely portrays women in a sexual manner. Why would I give something like that my time of day?
There are so many points I can make, and this is something that I can talk about forever.
The oversexualization of women in anime/manga goes so deep into Japanese cultural norms, anime/manga being a male dominated space, marketing, and so much more.
While I wasn’t happy about my answer that I gave Grace, her question challenged me and really made me think.
I’m still a fan of anime and manga, but can understand that like most media, we have to be aware of what we’re consuming.
If I am consuming something problematic, can the story still be good even if it has major problematic issues?
In this current era of anime/manga, I am hopeful that women will start to be written and portrayed with more dignity.
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