Debunking: “Anime women are poorly written”

Hi everyone! I mainly use this blog for anime recommendations/reviews, but I wanted to address an attitude I’ve seen a lot online lately. I am constantly seeing people (usually men) claim that most women in anime are poorly written and that’s why people tend to dislike those characters. And while there is some merit to that statement, the conversation is a lot more nuanced than you’d think.

Firstly, I would have to agree that in many shonen works, because much of the emphasis is on a male main character’s development and his interactions with other male counterparts, the women in those shows usually end up being delegated to either love interest, plot device, or fanservice. This definitely happens and I’m not going to deny it; Sakura in Naruto is a good example, and I’m sure it’s not difficult to think of others.

However, my two biggest gripes with this attitude is 1. it’s less often a criticism of misogyny in the industry and more used as an excuse to hate on female characters, and 2. it completely ignores the fact that there are a wide variety of genres outside of shonen where women are written perfectly fine.

There is much to criticize about the anime industry, I completely agree and I always encourage it. And I understand that this conversation is very binary when it comes to gender, so that’s something else to consider. That being said, 99% of the time I hear someone say “well anime women are just poorly written”, it follows them saying something about how much they hate Ochako Uraraka from MHA, or Misa Amane from Death Note, or how they don’t have any favorite female anime characters because ‘they’re all bad’.

I’m not gonna lie, Misa really grated on my nerves when I watched that show, and I’m obviously not claiming that disliking a female character makes you a misogynist. But if that is the only time you want to bring up how the women in anime are written, maybe check yourself. Or, expand your horizons!

Something I desperately need people to realize is that other genres such as slice of life, josei, romance, even seinen sometimes are much more likely than shonen to have female characters in the lead. Anime such as Chihayafuru, Love is War, Toradora, and Violet Evergarden to name a few all have complexly written female characters. Even Madoka Magica (which is technically thriller) is very well written and almost the entire cast is made up of young girls.

A lot of this might come from the fact that romance and slice of life are much more likely to have female mangaka/creators behind them, and that is certainly a factor, but it is not the only factor at hand. The majority of Hayao Miyazaki’s Ghibli films feature a strong female lead, and he is a man. A few of the above titles I mentioned are written by men as well. While it is always a benefit to have gender diversity in the writing room, I don’t think manga authors being male is an excuse for them to write female characters poorly.

(This isn’t to say that shonen always has poorly written female characters, either; one of my favorite anime of all time is Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood which is categorized as shonen yet is consistently praised for its complex female characters... though it is, you know, written by a woman)

In conclusion, if your statement that ‘female characters are poorly written’ isn’t being used to criticize misogyny in the anime industry, then you really need to do some introspection. Or you know, watch a rom com once in a while.

Anyway, I always encourage civil discussion on my posts, so if you have anything to say feel free to comment or reblog, but please don’t be mean or rude bc I will block you :)

Thanks for reading!

-threecheersforinking