Gender in anime: The unloved, or, how I learned to trust fandom and love tsundere.

Though I actually planned on participating on time with everyone else, I’m ending up posting much later all by myself. >.> It’s enough to make a girl sing Celine Dion (not really).

I should probably also mention that I’ve joined Owen’s blogging experiment crew, mostly because automatic blogging fodder + intelligent and occasionally humorous discussion = awesome. Yeah yeah, tail between my legs for ranting about the first try a few posts ago yadda yadda whatever it seemed like a good idea at the time. Foot, I’d like you to meet mouth. Oh, I’m sorry, you’ve already met? Well, saves me the introduction, anyway.

Moving right along, thanks to some accidental linkage/reccing I felt compelled to actually put some of my own thoughts up here on the newest ABC topic — gender in anime. Other posters on this topic are here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

I have an issue with talking about gender, so, although I had plenty of ideas when it was mentioned as an effort to come up with the new group topic, I had an issue with actually picking something to write about. I think what best illustrates my stance on gender (though not without explaining) is that when my Literary Analysis professor asked the class whether anyone in the class was a feminist, I was the only one who didn’t raise their hand.

Let’s clear something up real quick here, I am all for women having the same rights as men, yadda yadda. I am NOT, however, for the concept of “feminism”, persay. I don’t believe that the concept of femaleness or maleness, outside of a purely procreational/physical basis, should be considered relevant to a person’s worthiness for a certain task. When looking for a person who is good at baseball, and presented with a skinny pale dude and a sporty girl, I will likely pick the girl because she knows the damn sport. All things devided on an idividual personal basis. Gender is irrelevant unless the topic at hand involves sex organs (and even then half the time it shouldn’t matter). Terms like feminism piss me off, because I’m not for women any more than I am for men, pardoning the fact that women are just plain nicer to look at. Gender, in my opinion, should be irrelevant. And I refuse to call myself a feminist because, to me, even acknowledging that term as acceptable for the movement is self-defeating.

Of course, gender is not irrelevant, and probably never will be, unless everyone in the world acknowledges that they are at least a little bisexual. But enough about my personal idea of Utopia.

The problem, when I was considering a topic, was that gender is something I consider to be largely irrelevant, and therefore no matter how interesting the topic I thought of, the more I just kept thinking — so what? However, upon reading my fellow bloggers posts I found myself a bit inspired. Though I may find gender itself largely irrelevant, I do find porn to be relevant. I mean, wait, start over. I do find personal tastes in character love relevant.

I was sort of inspired by the last and first of that link orgy up there. DS‘s post on the idea of “safe” women and their appeal in anime sort of tied in with Mike‘s closing ideas regarding the appeal of helplessness or a soft side being preferential in a female character got me thinking about the less loved female characters, at least in terms of fanart that may or may not be (but most likely will be on the sites I frequent) porn.

Ahem.

One thing that seemed consistent among the entries that mentioned it, is that tsundere characters get a lot of flack for being all soft in the end, despite putting up a hard front (which, duh, they wouldn’t be tsundere if they didn’t). The entire appeal of the fetish is that a resilient woman can still be won over — but it made me think about what exactly is so appealing about that. It’s a balance of two opposing but complementary types that each make the other better. It’s the peanut butter and chocolate of personality types! We love badass babes — we love soft, winnable babes that love us. But both of those on thier own? Pure and undiluted?

Hell no. They get next to no love.

Take for example, Cornelia of Code Geass — as compared to any of the other Code Geass girls, it’s more than slightly challenging to find much fanart of her. It exists, for certain, but proportionally the ratio is way out of whack. And, hell, the woman has a fucking awesome character design. She’s not lacking in sex appeal in a physical sense at all. But a mental sense? Apparently. Because a powerful woman is a threatening woman, if not immediately considered unattainable. And Cornelia definitely is a powerful woman. Despite being a woman in what is apparently a patriarchal government, she attained not only the position of Governor, but a Governor General, and on top of that, is a highly accomplished pilot. This is, of course, disregarding Euphemia’s obviously ineffectual “position” (figurehead much?). In contrast to Orange-kun’s immediate diss and dismiss from Kallen’s far superior mech, Cornelia not only survives Kallen’s initial attack as well as Lelouche’s surprise attack (in the process losing both mech arms) but continues to fight. And then there’s the fact that she is fighting in battle at all.

All other male government officials shown, are highly inactive. Cornelia puts herself into the battlefield with her men, and not only leads them, but enters the very center of battle herself, knowing that she is thier most valuable asset on the combat field. This personal risk says two things, in my opinion. She is a government official — government officials are never placed in harm’s way, much less do they seek it out themselves. And yet, Cornelia is. The answer, to me, is obvious. She’s allowed to do that because, to the higher ups, she’s expendable, because she’s a woman. The the further down’s, she’s admired because she defies her expected role, and not only that, fights along them, at once an equal and a superior. She commands a respect that according to typical patriarchal monarchical systems, by virtue of her gender, she shouldn’t deserve.

Despite being such a symbol of a strong, in my eyes, desirable, admirable woman… there is pretty much no porn of her. Other strong female characters, Balsa from Seirei no Moribito, Balalaika from Black Lagoon (though her character design deters sexual thought), much of the cast of Claymore, Tatsuki from Bleach, others that are probably better examples that I’ve missed. What does this say about the audiences desire for a strong, independent, driven woman? I’d say the general consensus is “No thanks — she doesn’t need us, we don’t need her.”

Flip side of the tsundere coin we have a woman who is soft, inviting. Kirche from Zero no Tsukaima is certainly… “soft.” And she certainly doesn’t hide how “inviting” she is. Contrary, perhaps, to logic when one is considering a totally hot character that would be the easiest thing in the world to bone were she a real human — there’s relatively no fanart of her, especially in comparison to Louise. Though Louise may be the main character in a technical sense, this hasn’t exactly stopped hentai from porning the hell out of hot side characters. And yet even Tabatha gets more love than Kirche. Apparently, pop culture lies. No one likes a slut, or as Mike put it, pure lust breeds an instinctive hate in the audience. Though I haven’t exactly sensed a hate for Kirche, I’ve certainly noticed a general indifference.

Alone these aspects do little to excite someone. The unattainable and the easily attainable have an obvious lack of appeal in comparison to tsunderes, though the easily attainable has the edge over unattainable (it’s good for one pop, anyway). Tsunderes, in contrast, are a happy medium. They put up a fight, are their own person (the well done ones, at least), and still have a vulnerable side that makes them appealing and attainable. Out of all the fetishes in anime fandom, I’d say this is the most exemplary of the dual desires of the romantic ego — conflict and resolution. There’s no intrigue without a fight, but if there’s no resolution, no one wants to finish the story. And a resulotion without build up is unsatisfying. Funny how many things parallel literary necessities.

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I waxed a bit poetical about Cornelia didn’t I? o.olll Pardon, I didn’t mean to babble.