33blackbirds:

laughingdaredevil:

gamerisms:

Soul Caliber Japanese advertising.

[image description: two posters with Japanese writing advertising Soul Caliber V. One shows a woman exhibiting a lot of cleavage, the other shows a back picture of a woman wearing a thong. Neither of the pictures show the women’s face]

This is a common type of sexist advertising widely seen, exhibiting different body parts of women in an overly-sexual manner, but not showing their faces, reducing them to only sexual objects.

And yet they’re are people who think Japan is the land of milk and honey for ladies of fandom while western comics are nothing but misogynistic filth.

This is why I just laugh every time I hear that.  Japan and their manga, anime, and video games are just as bad if not worse with their treatment of ladies (and 90% of the time minorities).  The reason they’re read/watching/enjoyed by ladies not into comics isn’t because comics are too sexist for their tastes.  It’s because they’ve become immune or don’t notice a lot, a lot of the sexism presented in this media type.

Sailor Moon is called fat and told to lose weight several times in the manga (More in the anime if I recall right), while looking the same weight as the other girls (All of whom are thin as hell.  She’s also insulted for her intelligence all the time.

What’s the only thing Orihime is known for in canon?  Being the dumb girl with the huge rack.  Hell, there’s a whole song in the musicals devoted to insulting girls with smaller breasts and saying they’re not worth much.  That in itself is a common Japanese trope.

Even the most badass of female characters are often weaker than the men.  Falling prey to the damsel in distress and emotional female bullshit.

Casca, a woman of color and the only woman in a platoon of men in Berserk and one who was equal to if not better than 90% of the men she fought beside, is raped half-way through Beserk and turned into some crazy, weak waif who needs to be protected.

All High School of the Dead is is zombies and panty/bra shots that degenerates into psuedo-porn.  The fact there’s whole subgenre of shows devoted to sleezy men who want this type of thing should tell you something.

Soul Calibur itself is notoriously horrible with this type of thing.  Ivy’s outfits get smaller and smaller until she was wearing practically just a string.  Taki’s boobs were probably the best animated part of her whole character.

And yet comics are worse than this somehow?  It never fails to crack me up and just shows some people don’t know what they’re talking about.  Girls into anime/manga aren’t reading comics because of sexism.  They’re not reading comics for a variety of other reasons.  (Including but not limited to “Anime/manga is better”, “I hate cape comics”, “I love the moe slice of life only”, or “comics are for losers”.)

Now imagine if this was a western ad.

I hate these ads.

At least back in Soulcalibur 1 and 2 Ivy’s Player 2 outfits gave people polite fiction that there was more to her character than the fanservice angle. Like the whole “English noblewoman alchemist trying to clean up the shit that her evil zombie pirate biological dad did” thing (Well, okay, this is more of SC2-flavor Ivy. SC1 Ivy was more of the Baroness for Nightmare’s Evil Council.). Or the “character with an interesting weapon and badass command throws” thing. (No discussion of tiers, please.)

Another thing that pisses me off is that women are not allowed to age past mid-thirties in this series. (Ivy’s physically 32. More on this later.) Once the time jump was announced the neckbeard reaction was “Oh, noes, Ivy and Taki are going to be old.” Well, thanks to the plot I knew that Ivy was “safe”. (Exposure to the Soul Edge halts your aging.) And Taki, instead of being a cool old master like Mitsurugi, was replaced with Natsu.

More cool old master ladies for this series, Namco.

(Source: gamefreaksnz, via jukeboxhound)

Yet another Tumblr made for watching and reposting fun. Please see my LiveJournal for fanfiction posts and complaints musings about RL.

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