pikabot | (no subject)

So, a while back I had a debate with some people re: misogyny in Naruto. When I complained about Tsunade not getting to do anything in an arc where, you know, the village she is responsible for came under attack and was destroyed and at no point did she get to fight the people responsible, they posited that that was fine, because she'd saved the people of the village a moment before!

Now I'm not going to say that saving thousands of lives in one go is unimportant, because...obviously, it is! However, it's not at all the same thing and the presentation of Tsunade's village-saving act was wholly unsatisfying. The end result felt a lot more like an excuse to get her out of the way.

Of course they were having none of that (oh

chuunin why do I ever go to you, all you do is cause me pain) and I wound up feeling extraordinarily frustrated after arguing with them for a while.

Now I realize that there was a comparison I could draw, to similar events in another shonen manga. A better manga! A manga called...Fairy Tail.

Since many of you are probably less than familiar with Fairy Tail, here's the relevant details. Fairy Tail is a mage guild. One full of hot-blooded shonen types. Aside from the guild's Master, Makarov, there are four members who are contenders for the title of Strongest In Fairy Tail: The Master's jerkass grandson Luxus, the reclusive Mistgun, Gildartz (who has never even been shown on screen), and Erza, who basically acts as the guild's second in command because the other three are incredibly anti-social. Erza is Tsunade's counterpart in our comparison.

So, Luxus decides that he's done waiting for grandpa to pop his clogs, and is taking control of Fairy Tail NOW. To do that he forces a conflict between him and his three followers and the rest of the guild by taking hostages. If they can't find and defeat the four of them within three or so hours, the hostages will be terminated. They use magic to trap Master Makarov in the guild hall, and then fight it out...

Anyways a bunch of stuff happens that I'm not going to describe here because I'm lazy and it's not relevant, but here's the situation at the relevant point in canon: The majority of Fairy Tail, and all of Luxus' followers have been eliminated (unconscious, not dead). Only Luxus, Erza, and Natsu and Gazille (two members of the guild who are on the tier right below Erza and Luxus in terms of power) are currently able to fight. Oh, and there are 300 magical crystals floating in the sky above the town. In about two minutes they're going to rain lightning down and kill everybody. If they're destroyed, the damage will also reflect onto the person who destroyed them (which happened twice so I guess there were actually 298 crystals).

To this point, Erza did not know about the Hall of Thunder, which is what the crystals are called. When she finds out, she tells Natsu to take care of it. But he can't, because once he takes one of them out, it'll fry him good and he won't be able to get the next 297.

I think you can see where this is going.

So, Erza leaves Luxus to Natsu, and runs out to destroy the Hall of Thunder herself. Much like how Tsunade saved the villagers and then left Naruto to fight Pain. Except not shitty, and now let's examine why.

The first big difference is that at no point do we actually see Tsunade do anything. Pain's massive Shinra Tensei hits, and then we see people still alive, and some ANBU dick comments that it was because of her...but she never does anything. In fact, she seems as confused as anybody else. In fact, reading the aforementioned ANBU dick's internal monologue, it doesn't seem like she did anything at all! Her slug did all the work, she just provided it was chakra. She wasn't an active participant, she was a battery.

By comparison.

This difference is important! If we don't see the character making a choice, don't see them put their plan into action, if we don't even see them acknowledging that they did it on purpose (and in fact have dialogue suggesting that she didn't), the action seems less like something they did, and more like something that happened to them. One is empowering, if nothing else than in that it affirms her decision-making skills, and the other is disempowering (is that a word?). That difference is critical to how we read the scenes, and how it affects the reader's impressions of the characters.

The second major difference is that Erza's village-saving accomplishment is easier to measure in terms of power. It is no doubt, from an in-universe perspective, an impressive feat to be able to provide enough chakra to the slug to have him protect all the villagers. However, for the readers, that's difficult to quantify, especially since so little time was spent on it. The amounts of chakra have always been kept vague; which is fine by me, the last thing this manga needs is more numbers being thrown around. But in the absence of such information, all we have to go by is the visual punch of the two...and Tsunade's accomplishments leave much to be desired there. In fact, they leave everything to be desired, since we never see her DO any of it!

The third major difference is that while both Tsunade and Erza have brief altercations with the arc's villain, Tsunade's hurts her credibility as a combatant while Erza's does not. Tsunade just stands there blankly while Robopain bears down on her, requiring Naruto to save her ass. Erza, not so much. She doesn't fight Luxus for very long, but as soon as she wades into the fray, Luxus' attention is entirely on her. Natsu is an annoyance to him; Erza is a threat.

It's certainly understandable that Kishimoto may not have wanted Tsunade to be the one to fight and defeat pain. He clearly wanted to give that job to Naruto, and fair enough. But there's ways of doing these things, and Kishimoto chose the wrong one.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

First, been a lurker for a little while - hope you don't mind (but will stop if you do)

Second, thank you for this! I've actually been in Fairy Tail longer than Naruto but had to stop after power-reading the first 10 books for a number of thematic... differences I have with the creator. But I'm still curious, curse me. BUT! When I tried to explain why most of the female characters bother me to someone on IM, I got back a lot of static because I couldn't really explain it very well. But this sort of sums up a lot of it. About ownership of their actions and about the manga owning that its female characters have power and motivation in their own right.

Or something. Sorry if I was rambly... needs more caffiene

Why would I mind? I leave my posts public for a reason.

Ack, I'm new to Fairy Tail and am avoiding spoilers, but having read only the first volume, I think I can say that regarding genderfail/win, between Fairy Tail and Naruto THERE IS NO COMPARISON.

Well yes but I THINK THIS GOES WITHOUT SAYING.

I came sniffing here for more material on my own little essay about how Kishimoto can't write a female decent character to save his ass and how he needs to go take lessons from Kubo Tite about characterization.

I'd love to know your opinions on both Hinata's attempts to save Naruto from Pain and Sakura's recent emotional breakdown infront of Killerbee's friends. I think that Kishimoto's been reading golden age DC comics too much, honestly - and here's why.

Hinata. I've never wanted to like a character more but still find myself unable to. Kishimoto created a fantastic starting point for her. She was a genuinely smart and talented girl, but had so many outwardly-induced self-esteem issues to over come. Years ago, I honestly anticipated her eventual growth and watch her bloom into a very strong and capable fighter. And she did...sometimes. In that filler with the bugs. It was a huge let down after such events like her fight against Neji in the Chuunin exams. It wasnt that she lost, it was that we saw her, for the first time, show determination and strength. It was a huge moment of self-revelation for her...and nothing came of it. Her heroic struggle and moment of triumph was only to set her up to fall again. To fall and serve as determination for Naruto to kick Neji's ass in retaliation.

A lot of people are holding up her recent defense of Naruto against Pain as a similar moment. This was not a moment of character development because we see the exact thing happen all over again. Moment of courage that should've been a defining moment in her growth was nothing more than a plot point to make Naruto get pissed off and power up again.

Yet people still say that her confession is what counts in that scene. I call bullshit. Confessions to crimes made under duress don't count and neither do love confessions. Hinata thought she was going to die, she was essentially throwing her life away to, yet again, fuel Naruto's anger. That is not character growth. Character growth should always occur strictly for the sake of the evolution of that character, not as a motivator for another.

Now Sakura. I really did not like her pre-Shippuden, but I could also see a character that was trying to be written a certain way, but was being done so wrong. Because Kishimoto writes his shounen stereotypes to the letter, Sakura's growth was inevitable. She came under Tsunade's wing and blossomed not only as a medic ninja, but as a capable melee fighter with tremendous capacity for destruction on top of genjutsu talents (which, BTW, Kishimoto has seemingly forgotten completely).

Yet, it all falls stale. Naruto regularly incorporates his kagebushin into his regular fighting style. Its one of his most basic maneuvers. Yet, we rarely see Sakura actively use her strength unless its directly called upon by others. Aside from greater proficiency with basic combat, we have not seen a growth in her fighting style to this date.

At least I was comforted with the fact that she seemed to have gained some sense of maturity in her feelings towards Sasuke. She seemed a lot more rational, or at least calm in dealing with it. Then we had one of our most recent chapters, where teammates of Killerbee ask Team Seven what Sasuke means to them... and Sakura breaks down. For no reason. Its utterly baffling to witness, and it seems like nothing more than a reason for Naruto to go take a heroic beating for his friend. Ugh.

Well, I don't think Kubo is entirely innocent, either. Especially of late, with all the gore porn. But he's nowhere near the same level of IN YOUR FACE HORRIFYING MISOGYNY.

On Hinata: If she had actually died, I would have been mad enough to spit blood. As-is, it's just pretty standard Kishimoto stuff. You hit the nail pretty hard on the head that it isn't really character development. You could, at most, charitably call it the result of off-screen character development. But off-screen it is, because Kishimoto can't be bothered to pay any attention to his female characters.

It's also pretty disgraceful that she gets casually one-shotted while even freaking Konohamaru managed to do something. I know you can argue that Konohamaru was fighting a weaker Pain etc, but it still reeks of bullshit.

As for Sakura...basically what you said. There was absolutely no reason for her to break down and cry, and it really undid a lot of her character development in part two. Seeing as how she's the only female character to get and character development, that's a fucking travesty.

No reason, of course, except to undermine her as a character and a fighter. Not that Kishimoto really treats her like one. She hasn't gotten a single fight scene since the Gaara rescue arc, and even there it mostly wasn't her fight anyways (Read this for more details on my thoughts on that)

Incidentally, I'm curious about how you knew to come sniffing here. I don't usually post my meta anywhere public.

Ahh, I assume you speak of Orihime when talking about Kubo's fem!failings, I take it?

A real-life friend of mine described Naruto v. Bleach in this manner: Kubo excels at characterization and detail, Kishimoto is a master at worldbuilding. Both have a fair hand at politics.

Would you believe I found this by typing "Kishimoto misogyny" in google?

Well, Orihime's certainly part of it. To really get into details would require an entire essay of its own, but basically in Bleach victoies by females are more rare than by males, and less significant (more likely to happen offscreen or absurdly easily). And they're more likely to be on the receiving end of gore porn and wind upo with body parts missing.

That's...not at all how I'd describe their failings and strong points, personally, but again, that would require a whole other essay.

...pffft. THat's funny.

Oh please, you saw my first entry. I love essays! And Bleach is my fandom and my OTP. I love hearing other people's interpretations of events and such, especially since I'm such a Rukia fan.