Anime A Rather Humorous Anime Tourist Moment

[Scotty Scotty]

Let's cut right to the chase: Recently, a clip of this female anime fan was going viral over on Twitter (X). In it, she claims that there is a surprising lack of anime with female leads. Then afterwards, it cuts to Joey (also known as "TheAnimeMan" and not to be confused with the similarly named trio called "TheAnimeMen") listing a treasure trove of anime with female leads at the top of his head.

https://twitter.com/x/status/2080591759143321914

Now, I hate to be that guy; I'm sure that woman means well and must have gotten into anime recently and is living under a rock. But her statement just has so many definitions of "wrong" to it that I can't help but rip into it.

First off, anime with female protagonists aren't new by any stretch of the imagination. They've been around for as long as the medium itself has. In addition to well-known examples like Sailor Moon, Cardcaptor Sakura and Apothecary Diaries, there's hundreds of lesser known anime with female leads — some of which barely have any male characters in them – even as background characters. Some of the earliest magical girl anime, like Minky Momo, Hana no Ko Lunlun, Persia, Sally the Witch, etc, basically pioneered the magical girl genre and served as inspirations for several modern anime.

Second, we literally have two popular sub-genres of anime which prominently feature female characters: CGDCT (Cute Girls Doing Cute Things) and Yuri – anime that revolve around homosexual relationships between two or more female characters. Hell, some like Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid, WataTabe, Kiniro Mosaic, and Girls Band Cry have yuri themes in them. These have been around long before people coined the terms "Yuri" and "CGDCT."

Lastly, even if we were to relegate the history of anime to just the last two decades, even if we were to keep it to JUST this year, most anime fans would still be able to list plenty of anime featuring a female protagonist since there's usually a handful that air within each season. To say that there's a lack of female led anime is simply not true at all. The world of anime is vast. If you look hard enough, there's a show that will best suit your needs: fast-paced action, something story-driven, romance, comedy, or even shows that feature characters and themes that the viewer can relate to on some level.

Originally, I was going to post my thoughts on this viral video on my profile, but... I had SO MUCH to say and I don't think it would have been possible for me to accurately condense it all within a 1,000 character limit – which is why I ultimately took this route. I hope you all can understand. Thank you for attending my anime TED Talk.

 

[Nebulon_Galaxy]

Don't tell her the first video game with original vocal lyrics was Psycho Soldier, that has a female lead.

 

[SpcDaicon SpcDaicon]

I'm gonna give her the benefit of the doubt and pretend she is refering to popular shonen anime like JJK and Demon Slayer.
Yeah, kinda hard to have shonen anime/manga with a female lead but we do have some exemples like Ruri Dragon, Akane-banashi and Soul Eater. They may not be as popular as shonen with male leads but dissimissing them is just wrong.

Turns out the answer to "There isn't enough X anime" is always "Watch more anime"

Watch more anime

 

[X y b e r - S k u ll]

I'm gonna give her the benefit of the doubt and pretend she is refering to popular shonen anime like JJK and Demon Slayer.
Yeah, kinda hard to have shonen anime/manga with a female lead but we do have some exemples like Ruri Dragon, Akane-banashi and Soul Eater. They may not be as popular as shonen with male leads but dissimissing them is just wrong.

Turns out the answer to "There isn't enough X anime" is always "Watch more anime"

Watch more anime

Was just about to say something similar to this. No offense to her, but she does give me the impression (based on her statement anyway lol) that she got into anime during covid and through a service like Netflix. Battle Shonen series obviously being the biggest and most well known series outside of Japan, I can understand, as much as I hate this kind of ignorance, why some people get in their heads that these are what anime is all about.

Perhaps this should be more of an indictment on the lack of encouragement to show any kind of intellectual curiosity and delving deeper, doing your own research rather than just making do with what's presented to you. Hell, if she wants female-lead stuff with the "cool/badass" factors found in Shonen and Seinen series; Air Master and Shojo Fight are right there, just requires a little bit of digging and an actual willingness to at least try and find something you might like.

 

[Haizujard Haizujard]

Normie bullshit attack again
Don't waste your time with idiots, especially on Reddit and Twitter.

 

[Tortuga]

Don't tell her that majority of mangakas are women

 

[dkpopman]

Most people won't watch something unless it's modern and simple. That's all there is to it.

 

[afureru]

Your first mistake was listening to a Twitter post. No matter who posted what.

Also, I'm less inclined to listen to a person who called Bocchi the Rock a bad anime because of "unrealism".

 

[BrawlMan]

Who gives a fuck? There are more than enough women and female fans of anime that know she is either ignorant, full of shit, or both. You will all forget about her within the next few days, and some dumbass, regardless of race or gender, will do the same shit or something worse.

BTW, a majority of twitter is made up of bots, so most comments and responses are not even real.

Twitter Spam Bots: How They Hurt Users

Twitter spam bots are automated accounts designed to behave like real users on X. They can like, reply, post, follow, and even slide into your DMs.

www.clickguard.com

Is it really worth making a thread over something so meaningless and inconsequential?

 

[SamanthaSamantha's icon]

Eh, she definitely didn't know her stuff (to a shocking degree) but I don't think she deserved to go viral over that — it's just a dumb take, but it wasn't malicious or anything.

I really hate this tendency of people being on the prowl and with a phone ready to record whatever they happen to see as "content".

 

[afureru]

Who gives a fuck? There are more than enough women and female fans of anime that know she is either ignorant, full of shit, or both. You will all forget about her within the next few days, and some dumbass, regardless of race or gender, will do the same shit or something worse.

BTW, a majority of twitter is made up of bots, so most comments and responses are not even real.

Twitter Spam Bots: How They Hurt Users

Twitter spam bots are automated accounts designed to behave like real users on X. They can like, reply, post, follow, and even slide into your DMs.

www.clickguard.com

Is it really worth making a thread over something so meaningless and inconsequential?

Sony and the Crunchyroll algorithm (as well as the animanga market and executives as well) exist to do just that, spread ignorance.

 

[Stingy Perry Stingy Perry]

 

[Scotty Scotty]

Your first mistake was listening to a Twitter post. No matter who posted what.

I rarely take Twitter posts seriously these days. It's usually mentally ill people saying something stupid and then playing victim. However, this one was just too difficult for me to ignore.

Post automatically merged: Today at 3:17 AM

Is it really worth making a thread over something so meaningless and inconsequential?

Dude, there's a million threads on here about trivial subjects. If anything, I just added one more onto the ever-growing pile.

 

[afureru]

Surely fervent tribalism of anime which will inevitably reduce the urge to engage with the medium will fix the "problem" at hand.

My father always said, "everyone is a tourist and a larger in their own special way".

 

[Devilish_Jester]

It's a combination of factors really. Like yeah she is just wrong and probably just speaking from experience of seeing only Shonen with male leads (or mishandled female ones) get attention. On the other hand, the need to do stuff like this also feels silly. Like come on, just recommend her some stuff, don't have to make it a whole 'newbie gets owned' moment. It also speaks to a different issue with modern marketing and algorithms. Normies/newbies aren't given the opportunity to look back on decades of old stuff, at most they hear about long term franchises that seem intimidating. They need help, even if they are dumb. its a lot of nonsense surrounding a real issue on how people learn and grow their pallet beyond seasonal stuff.

 

[Sumer_Singh_3]

Let's cut right to the chase: Recently, a clip of this female anime fan was going viral over on Twitter (X). In it, she claims that there is a surprising lack of anime with female leads. Then afterwards, it cuts to Joey (also known as "TheAnimeMan" and not to be confused with the similarly named trio called "TheAnimeMen") listing a treasure trove of anime with female leads at the top of his head.

https://twitter.com/x/status/2080591759143321914

Now, I hate to be that guy; I'm sure that woman means well and must have gotten into anime recently and is living under a rock. But her statement just has so many definitions of "wrong" to it that I can't help but rip into it.

First off, anime with female protagonists aren't new by any stretch of the imagination. They've been around for as long as the medium itself has. In addition to well-known examples like Sailor Moon, Cardcaptor Sakura and Apothecary Diaries, there's hundreds of lesser known anime with female leads — some of which barely have any male characters in them – even as background characters. Some of the earliest magical girl anime, like Minky Momo, Hana no Ko Lunlun, Persia, Sally the Witch, etc, basically pioneered the magical girl genre and served as inspirations for several modern anime.

Second, we literally have two popular sub-genres of anime which prominently feature female characters: CGDCT (Cute Girls Doing Cute Things) and Yuri – anime that revolve around homosexual relationships between two or more female characters. Hell, some like Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid, WataTabe, Kiniro Mosaic, and Girls Band Cry have yuri themes in them. These have been around long before people coined the terms "Yuri" and "CGDCT."

Lastly, even if we were to relegate the history of anime to just the last two decades, even if we were to keep it to JUST this year, most anime fans would still be able to list plenty of anime featuring a female protagonist since there's usually a handful that air within each season. To say that there's a lack of female led anime is simply not true at all. The world of anime is vast. If you look hard enough, there's a show that will best suit your needs: fast-paced action, something story-driven, romance, comedy, or even shows that feature characters and themes that the viewer can relate to on some level.

Originally, I was going to post my thoughts on this viral video on my profile, but... I had SO MUCH to say and I don't think it would have been possible for me to accurately condense it all within a 1,000 character limit – which is why I ultimately took this route. I hope you all can understand. Thank you for attending my anime TED Talk.

Reminds me of the time that Smosh tried making a joke that anime doesn't have enough gay characters when like yaoi and yuri are an entire genre lol.
I sometimes feel like some of them try to apply same western hollywood logical arguments to every industry when circumstances to each one of them is unique given a country's condition and evolution of an industry and its niches.

 

[Devilish_Jester]

Reminds me of the time that Smosh tried making a joke that anime doesn't have enough gay characters when like yaoi and yuri are an entire genre lol.
I sometimes feel like some of them try to apply same western hollywood logical arguments to every industry when circumstances to each one of them is unique given a country's condition and evolution of an industry and its niches.

Western consumers seem in general to have massive issues with approaching media from different countries. Not just in the 'what is socially acceptable' way but also in how their industries and fan communities are structured. I'd imagine most teens getting into anime via power scaling don't know what Comiket is. I hope one day there can be a better method of learning stuff like this, stuff like the fanlore website don't cut it in my book.

 

[dizzypixel]

I am not going to be giving the benefit of the doubt at all as complacency like that is exactly how we got such a disasterous hellstorm online line the first place because we give these people an inch they always take a mile and whats next even shojo is bad and male gaze like? we really have a serious mental health crisis in this contienent that needs to be adressed and tourists always have it.

 

[Jeff]

Never get info from Twitter/Facebook/Instagram/TikTok from a Tourist who are bots and use either AI or Photoshop of going to Japan because they would send false tips and spoiling the whole experience.


Also, here's a list of anime with female protagonists.
Sailor Moon of course
K-ON!
Azumanga Daioh
Lucky Star
Yuru Camp
Cardcaptor Sakura
Magic Knight Rayearth
Dirty Pair
Cutie Honey
Project A-KO
Ghost Sweeper Mikami
Panty & Stocking
You're Under Arrest
Minky Momo
Nausica
Kiki's Delivery Service

 

[Devilish_Jester]

I am not going to be giving the benefit of the doubt at all as complacency like that is exactly how we got such a disasterous hellstorm online line the first place because we give these people an inch they always take a mile and whats next even shojo is bad and male gaze like? we really have a serious mental health crisis in this contienent that needs to be adressed and tourists always have it.

I do see what you mean. Online fandom enables a certain form of performative, attention seeking behavior and while i wish them the best, incuriosity is often far reaching in how one engages with art. Though mental health doesn't have too much to do with it. Normies just have bad artistic sensibilities.

 

[Scotty Scotty]

Ghost Sweeper Mikami

Unfortunately BASED. Such an fun series.
The SNES game is great, too. If only someone who translate it, tho.

 

[Zerpina]

I'm gonna give her the benefit of the doubt

I'm not (looks at terabytes of anime on her NAS, mostly with female protagonists)

 

[Roy U. OmOm]

ITT: Tourists on tourist violence

 

[BrawlMan]

However, this one was just too difficult for me to ignore.

Easy as pie for me.

 

[ShinnAsukaYESTaylorSwiftNO]

Sony and the Crunchyroll algorithm (as well as the animanga market and executives as well) exist to do just that, spread ignorance.

One of the things that would improve the internet is to make algorithms at least free and open source to prevent BS like that and shadow banning from ever happening.