Understanding the Misrepresentation and Sexualization of Women in Anime

ANIME

Over the past decade anime, short for Japanese animation, has grown extremely popular in western culture. With the addition of social media apps like Tiktok and Instagram, the integration of anime into American culture was extremely simple- to the point of becoming a trend. Due to this popularity, it’s important to understand the type of media that is starting to take over many sources of entertainment. Analyzing female representation in any media of any kind isn’t a new topic by any means, but when it comes to anime- the limited number of sources raises questions: what is the representation of women in anime? Is it positive or negative? The negative representation and sexualization of female characters in anime expedite the behavior in real life. 

SHOUJO

Shoujo is the title given to anime that has a direct demographic for girls. The genre hold’s some of the most iconic anime in history. It’s easy to believe that the genre that specialized in catering to young girls will accurately represent its core audience,  the genre struggles with having a completely positive representation of its female protagonist and often has underlying male attractions. 

One of the most popular types of sub-genre in the shoujo genre are magical girl animes, called mahou shoujo and majokko anime in Japan. These animes target a younger female audience and usually take a more innocent approach when it comes to serious topics. In that sense, they are more similar to children’s shows broadcasted in the United States (My Little Pony, Winx Club, Fairly Odd Parents, Arthur, Teen Titans Go, etc). The standards of the genre have changed over the years but its basic foundation has stayed the same: a girl transforming into a superhero. Along with these changes are the representation of the main female characters in the show- from its use of common stereotypes to changing the very foundation of the way people view gender today. To explain the representation of women in shoujo anime, the source of this representation has to be defined. There are various arguments when it comes to the origins of this power. Only one of these arguments brings a “positive outlook” on femininity. According to an article written for The Journal of Asian Studies by Kumiko Saito, “power relies on feminine implements like frills and long hair, it is becoming increasingly difficult to equate representations of the magical girl’s gender with biological sex.” (Saito, 160-161). Even though this outwardly declares a positive representation of femininity in magical girl anime, the link isn’t directly there. Only recently has the focus on femininity when it comes to magical girl anime has been changing to focus more on the themes of childhood and adulthood instead. Even though this shift isn’t extremely damaging in its core elements, it still takes away from expressing femininity. Although this isn’t the most optimal representation of feminity in anime, it’s an improvement from the extremely negative depiction that the feminist wave has experienced in other forms of media. One of these ways is sexualizing its characters to capture a male audience. 

Shows in the magical girl and romance genres tend to not explicitly sexualize their characters in the way that shonen, the genre’s male equivalent does, there are some instances where the show makes attempts to. The iconic magical girl series, Sailor Moon, written by Naoko Takeuchi is one of the most groundbreaking and influential shoujo anime since its release in 1992. The series follows Usagi Tsukino and her friends as they transform (into glorified Japanese middle-school uniforms) to fight off the weekly scheduled villains. “The female heroines [in Sailor moon are described] as simultaneously sexy, fashionable, and strong, observing that the show reflects dual desires: for girls and some boys and men to identify with the girl/heroine, but also, for both female and male fans, “lust for the Sailor Scouts as sex objects,” (Grace En-Yi Ting). While the female representation in Sailor Moon reaches beyond expectations by empowering feminine traits instead of belittling them, this representation is immediately taken away once you realize that the young female protagonists are being exploited sexually. This demonstrates that even when a show has an extremely powerful example of female representation it still has some underlying tones of satisfying its limited male audience. It’s extremely hard to find this balance between a perfect representation of women that checks all the boxes and when a genre that is specifically made to target girls fails to achieve this it begins to raise some serious concerns.

SHONEN

Shonen anime (anime directed towards the male audience), on the other hand, is a severe offender of poorly representing and sexualizing its female characters. The genre tends to push aside its female cast of characters to bring a focus on more significant main characters (which tend to be male) or the more intricate storyline. In some cases, the obvious sexualization of female characters (minors included), represents the author’s own biases towards women or objectification of the female body. Why are these authorial biases problematic? When representation of young girls in Naruto and the sexualization of girls in BNHA inevitably start to influence the author’s audience (fandoms). According to sociologist, Jenny Stuber, “in a sense, a fandom allows participants to transform themselves from consumers of a culture to creatures of a culture,” (Stuber, 222). The author’s beliefs and biases influence an entire audience of people, who then create a standard for this representation and sexualization. 

Naruto, written by Masashi Kishimoto, was first released on September 1999 (and is still ongoing today) is a story following ninja, Naruto Uzumaki, as he trains to become the leader of his village. Sakura Haruno was first introduced into the series as Naruto’s one-sided love interest. Beginning as the only girl on her team and one of the main three protagonists in the series, Sakura’s character centers around her male counterparts. Even without her introduction, Sakura’s character is only created to have a crush on her other teammate, Sasuke Uchiha. Described as useless by the fandom, Sakura brings little to no development to both the story and her character, instead, the story ignores Sakura’s character to bring more attention to the two main male protagonists. It wasn’t until episode 141 “Sakura’s Determination!” of the original Naruto anime that her character becomes one of the main focuses of the series. In the past interview with Kobayashi, Masashi Kishimoto has replied to the controversy about Sakura’s character and he’s expressed not only confusion but has stated that “he tried to write her more realistically [than other characters], and tried to show a girl’s ‘real’ self/ feelings [through inner Sakura” (Narutopedia). As a character that falls victim to being on the sideline and focuses on a male protagonist, Sakura Haruno is an extremely poor representation of women in anime- but when the creator himself doesn’t realize this: a problem of negligence emerges and a sense of biases becomes overwhelming. 

Boku No Hero Academia (BNHA) or My Hero Academia follows Izuku Miydoira “Deku” on his journey to becoming the number one hero. In a world where 80% of the population is born with a superpower, a society that revolves around heroes is built. The story actively revolves around training and developing its characters at the #1 hero school in Japan: UA.. One of these attributes that are focused on during the show is the costumes designed by the heroes themselves along with the help of a support team. When the character’s costumes are first revealed, it’s mentioned by Ochaco Uraka (one of Deku’s classmates), that her costume is tighter than what she originally wanted. This change to her costume makes her extremely uncomfortable but despite that, is never changed to be looser. While a statement like this one is something that is easily brushed off, it becomes a concern when you realize that the creator of BNHA endows the extreme sexualization of its female characters. Mineta Minoru, another one of Deku’s classmates, is usually seen harassing all of the female students at UA- to the point where the fandom has grown an extreme dislike for the character. However, in one of the character analysis pages, the author, Kohei Horikoshi,  has stated that not only is Mineta a reflection of himself but the character’s backlash is due to the dislike of perverted characters. Kohei’s biases can be further cemented when designing consumes for female characters. From descriptions such as “due to the author’s…Uhh.. The window around her naval got larger” or “All in All, it’s all in the sexy stuff.” It becomes extremely uncomfortable to watch the obvious sexualization of female characters in BNHA, and the problem becomes even worse when you realize that these characters are minors. While the audience has grown to hate Mineta, it hasn’t realized that it’s built an entire fandom around sexualizing the female characters in BNHA due to the author’s portrayal. 

CONSEQUENCES

In the documentary “Miss-Representation” by director Jennifer Siebel Newsome, the blame for the lack of women in power was on the constant harassment and sexualization of women in the media. Women are unwilling to put themselves in positions with obvious abuse, and because of that, the number of women in politics has stayed stagnant despite the new feminist agenda. This implication only further worsens for individuals who have experienced the normalization of sexualizing women in anime. The world around these women has begun to become even more normalized and this idea of an unchanging sense of media begins to belittle their already nonexistent desire to become an influential part of politics. Women are becoming unwilling to be in positions of power and this becomes extremely problematic when leaders of the entire country are only chosen from one percent of the population. The various women around the country can’t be represented by old, high-class, white men. That’s why It’s so important to learn just how detrimental this sexualization and lack of female representation is to people who have either grown up watching anime or those who have grown an extreme interest in the anime to adulthood.

While the hypersexualization of women in anime isn’t a new normalization, the culture that surrounds the growing form of media is a constantly changing field. With the addition of extremely prominent social media apps, such as TikTok, fashion trends that surround the anime aesthetic have become increasingly popular. Clothing items such as sailor uniforms, thigh highs, and cat ears have become a staple in the style, along with impossible body standards have become qualities to strive for. Regardless of other controversies, it becomes harder and harder to distinguish a person’s online identity from the anime aesthetic or character that they are trying to portray, making this popular anime-style an easy target of sexualization among outsiders and followers. This revelation is not a direct effect of anime and the aesthetics that originate from it; instead, the extremely influential (male) audience. When researching the effects of media on the real world, constructivist theorists believe that humans are creative during their consumption of media; they don’t just take the world around them and directly replicate it. In 19921, sociologist William Corsaro advocated that children “creatively appropriate information from the adult world [and use it] to produce their own unique cultures,” (Stuber, 221). This means that the extreme sexualization of anime characters, to the point of becoming a trope, can become the direct cause of the sexualization of women in real life but certain individuals can restrict this due to their conclusions on the real world. This restrained behavior, however, can escalate those who have this belief even further when the barrier between the screen and the real world begins to blur. 

In conclusion, the representation and sexualization of female characters in anime expedite the behavior in real life by creating a culture (fandom) that influences social media apps such as Tiktok, which then escalates this behavior onto its naive audience members.

A NEW WAVE OF SHONEN ANIME 

Juitsu Kaisen (JJK) or Sorcery Fight, created by the pen name mangaka Gege Akutami, is one of the most popular shonen anime, recently. Gaining popularity that rivals the original wave of shonen anime- it brings one of the most iconic female characters to breach anime history: Nobura Kugisaki. From her introduction to her final scene in the season’s finale, Nobura has demonstrated multiple times that she deserves to stand on the same level as her male classmates, Megumi Fushiguro and Yuji Ichadori. Nobura Kugisaki was everything Sakura Haruno was supposed to be: extremely violent, expressive with her emotions, and effectively demonstrates how a girl can be both powerful and beautiful. The audience first gets introduced to Nobura during a scene where a talent agent is looking for possible models in a crowded street in Tokyo. When he completely skips over her, she begins to denier him on his choices and eventually scares him off completely. Compared to Sakura’s Nobura introduction doesn’t rely on a male character instead, it effectively shows off her dominating personality. Female characters need to stand their own ground in media, especially when the representation of women in media is already so diminished. 

One of the scenes that stood out the most in JJK, regarding feminism is when Nobura fights a third-year, Momo Nishimiya during her school event. When you first get introduced to Momo, it’s hard to ignore her stereotypical beliefs. When Momo first meets Nobura she is immediately disgusted by Nobura’s crass behavior, to the point of projecting her idea of being “cute” onto Nobura’s expression of power. During this fight, Momo takes a moment to tell Nobara that “female sorcerers are discriminated against because they’re expected to be perfect in a world that’s supposed to be based on skill.” In response to this Nobura yells at her, “Boys versus Girls?! Give me a break! Keep your mouth shut! I love the me that dresses up and looks beautiful! I love the me that’s strong! I’m Nobura Kugisaki!” Nomura continues to win the battle afterward, but it was in that moment that made me realize that this was one of the first women I could call a role model. Nobura’s way of keeping her femininity while demonstrating how capable she was in a fight against her older classmate set an example to the audience that women don’t need to adopt masculine traits to be treated seriously. That idealogy alone is something that is so rarely seen in any type of media, let alone anime. While this was originally a 2016 analysis of screenplays, Hanah Anderson and Matt Daniel’s data can loosely be applied to the representation that’s currently being demonstrated: they found that in 82% of the films, men had two of the top three speaking roles, while a woman had the most dialogue in only 22% of films (Swanson). Even when compared to other forms of media, Nobura’s character holds the most potential when it comes to changing a women’s role being a “protagonist” of a show. 

CALL TO ACTION

After reading “A NEW WAVE OF FEMINISM,” I hope you realized the power that a strong female lead in anime- in any type of media holds. Women need to take a stance in not only putting their creativity but representing women correctly in the pieces we end up producing. Ending the reign of sexualization and reliance on male characters. It’s easy to make a role model over characters like Nobura, and it becomes even easier when there are even more characters on the market for people to be exposed to. A start to activism, or even creating anything starts to form a small step forward- only if you are willing to take it. 

Akutami, G., & Koza, S. 2021. Jujutsu Kaisen. VIZ Media, LLC. 

Girls Club Entertainment presents a Jennifer Siebel Newsom & Regina Kulik Scully production; edited & co-written by Jessica Congdon. Written, directed & produced by Jennifer Siebel Newsom. Miss Representation. Ro*co Films Educational. Girls Club Entertainment, 2011.

Kobayashi interview with Kishimoto: Extensive summary: Fandom. Narutopedia. (n.d.). Retrieved April 25, 2022, from https://naruto.fandom.com/f/p/2421257698017422741 

Stuber, Jenny Marie. 2021. Exploring Inequality: A sociological approach. Sage Publications. 

Saito, Kumiko. “Magic, ShÅjo, and Metamorphosis: Magical Girl Anime and the Challenges of Changing Gender Identities in Japanese Society.” The Journal of Asian Studies (2014): 143-64. April 2022.

Swanson, Ana. “The problem with almost all movies”. The Washington Post. Archived from the original on June 2, 2016. With reference to: Anderson, Hanah; Daniels, Matt. “The Largest Analysis of Film Dialogue by Gender, Ever”. April 2016. Ting, G. E. Gender, manga, and Anime. The Routledge Companion to Gender and Japanese Culture. https://www.academia.edu/42442785/Gender_Manga_and_Anime, March 2020.