The Problem with Anime Feminist (And Navel Gazing Fandom as Whole)

I often admit that I no longer keep up with trends. I do have some vague idea of what is hot or not in the otaku world, but often ignore it or find I have wildly differing tastes and opinions from the mainstream. It’s only in the last couple of weeks I have discovered a fairly new trend in the western world of anime fandom; the anime fan’s feminist critique. In particular a new website called Anime Feminist created by British citizen Amelia Cook. Here’s the major problem I have with it; essentially it offers nothing new when compared with other anime blogs. The subjects on the blog are rather curious; “Scorching Ping Pong Girls”, “Keijo”, “School Days” and “Shin Godzilla” for example. It’s not that I don’t think that women wouldn’t be interested in this stuff, it’s the fact it’s being presented as “feminist” when the writing is no more insightful (or better) than your average anime blog.

The other problem I have with the site is that they have the hide to ask for cash donations (via Patreon) yet offer no better analysis than any other writer that doesn't identify as a feminist. Reading through the site, Amelia’s previous writings on the feminist geek blog site The Mary Sue and her interview at Kaoaku in regards to the Anime Feminist site, I am utterly baffled at what she hopes to achieve. For example from the Kaoaku interview;

“It’s not censorship, because we’re not asking animators in Japan to stop making anything. We’re not asking people to ban anything. We’re not asking for any rules to be put in place. What we’d like to see is more anime being created to give more options to people.”

This is just absurd. In 2016 there are nearly 170 anime TV series, over thirty anime films and dozens of OVAs released this year. If you can’t find anything you like in that amount of content, you aren’t looking very hard or maybe anime just isn’t for you. There’s also the absurdity of the Japanese anime industry, already being stretched thin due to the amount of product they are pumping out, pandering to an utterly niche pocket of fandom in the west. Economically it makes no sense and why should a product made for and targeted to a Japanese audience be tailored to a tiny subset of western fans?

Cook also states that she couldn’t find any female characters that weren’t sexualised or objectified. Not sure where she was looking, but this statement is patently untrue. Interesting female characters have existed in anime for decades. Way before the Bechdel test was invented, a lot of manga and anime were passing it with flying colours. There has been anime specifically made and targeted towards girls since the late 1960’s. How many western productions would have a character like Motoko Kusanagi (“Ghost in the Shell”)? Let’s not forget the early 1990’s where Animage’s character poll where Nausicaä and the dark skinned, short tempered vegetarian Nadia (“Nadia of the Mysterious Seas”) battled for a number of years over the number one spot.

Cook’s articles for The Mary Sue expose the fact she has little understanding of the history of anime, fandom or the business behind it. In her first article in regards to fanservice in anime, (Hey Anime Fans: Stop Making Excuses for Fanservice) she states the following in regard to why anime doesn’t get much of a write up in mainstream publications;

“Here’s a thought: maybe critics would be more enthusiastic if the face of anime weren’t pro-Gamergate, anti-Ghostbusters trolls. I wonder how many people who were once neutral towards anime have developed an instinctive aversion to it, associating anime girls with anonymous entitlement?”.

Uh, what now? Well if Cook wanted to get fandom’s back up immediately, mission accomplished. There isn’t much I can really say in reply to this except that none of the people I know or follow on social media are pro-Gamergate, anti-Ghostbusters trolls. Absolutely none of them. In fact the majority are most definitely anti-gamer gate. She then justifies that paragraph by writing this;

“Here’s another thought: maybe that’s not unfair. Maybe becoming the visual of choice for misogynistic harassers is the unsurprising result of a fandom that has spent years normalizing the objectification of women”.

Uh huh. So Cook is saying that the way anime portrays women caused people to become “misogynistic harassers”. Well that’s fucking bullshit. Just straight up bullshit. Guess what Amelia? The Media Effects model is broken. There’s no evidence to show any type of fictional media does this (apparently Cook believes that anime fans are special and that society and close family and friends have no effect on them) and your comment is an absolute insult to anime fandom as whole. In a latter Mary Sue article (Moé, Misogyny and Masculinity: Anime’s Cuteness Problem–and How to Fix It), Cook takes on moe with utterly predictable results. Taking five random quotes from the book “The Moé Manifesto”, she concludes that an “undercurrent of misogyny runs through The Moé Manifesto” which is a bizarre takeaway from the book. In fact the point all the interviewees she selectively quotes from is that the men who enjoy the moe sub culture are outright rejecting Japanese mainstream ideals of masculinity and to a large degree don’t meet the criteria a lot of women set for a partner (criteria that few men actually do meet). Frustratingly she does acknowledge this point, but then sidesteps it in the next sentence. And then Cook piles on more misinterpretation of why men enjoy this material;

“Then there is the fact that moé characters are designed to appeal to adult men with the income to afford DVDs and models, but the vast majority of moé anime have teenage protagonists”.

Admittedly, this is a common misinterpretation of what is going on in these shows. The life of a salaryman (and Office Lady) in Japan is shit. Japanese corporate and public service life is pretty awful. The reason why a lot of games and anime have protagonists around the age of 14 is because a lot of people actually believe this was the best time in their life. They want to return to a simpler time in their life. Like all entertainment it’s escapism and fantasy. While I don’t doubt that a small percentage of men do have paedophilic tendencies, to paint everyone who likes this kind of entertainment as paedophiles is myopic and deliberately misunderstands what is going on with these anime and games. I find it strange and hypocritical that adults who watch “Dawson’s Creek” or “Glee” aren’t branded the same way. And then Cook conflates anime aimed at children with that which is squarely aimed at otaku;

“However, adapting certain anime to better suit these adults while still appealing to its original audience means giving children messages about what women are and should be which are rooted in deliberate unreality. This leads to some uncomfortable promotional imagery and merchandise decisions for such children’s television. […] However, it is all framed to cater to the male gaze–even if this is through the characters’ behaviors rather than their physical attributes”.

This paragraph completely shows Cook’s ignorance of how the modern anime industry works. Moe shows are almost always aimed at the otaku set and are always broadcast in the early hours of the morning. Outside of advertisements in Akihabara and specialty anime magazines, when would children actually see any promotional material for these shows? Advertisements for late night anime aren’t even broadcast on TV during afternoon or prime time, even on the TV station broadcasting late night anime. There is no merchandise manufactured or marketed from these shows to children. None at all. It’s far more likely children would see “Crayon Shin-chan”, “Sazae-san”, “Detective Conan”, Toei’s Super Sentai series, “Kamen Rider” or the latest “Ultraman” series. Japan is also a highly patriarchal society. Children are far more likely to receive messages about women’s place in that society from their own extended family, school and society in general.

Cook also asserts that moe caters to the male gaze even if it’s not sexual. But moe is not really about the male gaze or necessarily sexual. For example “K-On!” not only has a sizable amount of female fans but has female staff in key roles of the show. Even if this were true, why the hell does it matter? Why are male fans not allowed media that deals with fantasy, even if it sexual? Cook also conveniently forgets moe shows are made and marketed towards female fans like “Hetielia”. But Cook’s problem is that the girls in these shows just aren’t like her;

“As a woman keen to see increased representation of female characters on screen, I find moé alienating. Moments of cutesy clumsiness or misunderstandings only believable from a five-year-old are so far away from anything I experienced as a teenage girl with female friends my age that it is impossible for me to relate to those characters. […] If we can acknowledge the genuinely positive aspects of moé while also criticizing the ways in which it contributes to a long-standing problem of female representation, perhaps we can build a more inclusive anime culture together.”

Because her experience as a teenager in the UK is exactly the same as a teenager in Japan. Seriously though, Cook can’t understand that perhaps high school culture and indeed wider society in the UK is totally different to Japan’s? Or young women in the UK may be different to young women in Japan? And again, even if the portrayals in these kinds of shows are unrealistic, what the hell does it matter? Fictional media isn’t allowed fantastical or unrealistic elements anymore? And the portrayals of boys and young men in anime and manga created for women don’t depict them in an unrealistic fashion? Cook also seems to be suggesting that outside of moe there are few representations of women, which is patently untrue.

A third article for the Mary Sue (Stop Pretending “Sexy” and “Sexualized” Mean the Same Thing) compares the portrayal of Revy in “Black Lagoon” and Yoko in “Gurren Lagann”, concluding that Yoko is heavily sexualised and Revy isn’t. This is all fine and dandy, except she omits the fact that the two shows are completely different. “Black Lagoon” is a hardboiled drama set firmly in reality and “Gurren Lagann” is an absurdly over the top and cartoonish fantasy. She concludes that because “Gurren Lagann” was broadcast on an early morning timeslot, it was aimed at children, however there isn’t a skerrick of proof to show this. No merchandise aimed at children or anything of the sort actually exists. Cook then tries to compare the US comic, video game and animation industries to the Japanese animation industry;

“Animation, video game and comic book artists don’t have to deal with this hassle […] As artists, they can create whatever they like, with no restrictions… so of course, artists draw women with essentially the same few body types, or even exactly the same body type. This has received some backlash in the video game, comic book and western animation communities, leading to increased diversity. In anime, it is practically industry standard and vigorously defended by its fans.”

As with most of Cook’s statements on anime, this is also untrue. There most certainly isn’t some “industry standard” on how girls and women are portrayed in manga or anime. You could suggest there is more diversity in anime than in western pop culture and has been for decades (again see Nadia, the women in “Utena”, Motoko Kusanagi etc). And you have to realise in Japan there’s really isn’t much diversity around. Foreigners account for just over 1.5% of the Japanese population. There really aren’t that many overweight people either. Most of the population are pretty slim (mostly due to the local diet). The only place I saw overweight people was in the Kansai region. Naturally a creator’s surroundings are going to influence the media they make. To suggest that a foreign country’s pop culture should conform to your own western ideals is really paternalistic. It also goes against the real reasons why so many people enjoy anime; the fact that it is so different to western entertainment.

Having said all that, I don’t like fanservice much at all. A lot of it is cheap and exploitative and serves no purpose. However it is pretty easy to find shows with little to no fanservice. As I said previously, there are nearly 200 anime TV series and movies released a year, plus a back catalogue of hundreds of thousands of anime dating back to the 1960’s and even earlier. If you can’t find anything you like in that vast amount of material or if it clashes with your ideals or ideology so much you can’t watch it, perhaps anime isn’t the hobby for you.

The Anime Feminist website focuses a lot on fanservice laden shows. I am really baffled why Cook would do this as I think it entrenches false idea that there are no decent portrayals of women or anime for women. Cook also fails to comprehend that Japanese culture is different and the evolution of Japan’s pop culture was vastly different to that of the west’s, and that certain elements within subcultures might have different meanings to those in mainstream western culture. It feels as if she is determined to start a culture war that will be pointless and decisive as that shity Gamergate nonsense and will do absolutely nothing to change the portrayals of women in Japanese media, mainly because the production committees behind modern anime shows will not pander to such a minuscule demographic. If any change is to occur, it will come from within the country, not from foreign feminists.

I think we do need a site like Anime Feminist, but it has just gone down the wrong path. Why isn’t there a focus on the shows women would like? While the site did interview a black woman working as a mangaka in Japan, why not do profiles on local women working in the industry such as Sayo Yamamoto (currently directing “Yuri!!! on Ice”) and Naoko Yamada (director of the recent “A Silent Voice” currently working on “Sound! Euphonium 2”). With “Miss Hokusai” currently in US cinemas and being released on home video in the UK this month, why not do a piece on the original manga’s author Hinako Sugiura? She’s a fascinating person who came from a feminist background and led an amazing life. Cook’s site encapsulates what I don’t like about fandom today; pointless navel gazing and calling aspects of Japanese pop culture “problematic” through the myopic lens of a westerner. Certainly Japanese pop culture and sub cultures should be criticised, but with an understanding of how those cultures sit within Japanese culture as a whole and an understanding that symbolism in western context may not be the same in a Japanese or sub culture context.

Recently one of the former writers broke away from the writing circle for the site. Or more correctly was ejected from the group. It does increasingly seem that the site was created for a small circle of friends to air their own views shared views to the exclusion of other feminist voices. Seeing as the site’s name implies a certain range of topics and writing, I am really disappointed at its content up to now. The fact that most of the people funding the site are men just goes to show that it has failed to draw in the demographic it was supposed to.