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I don't know much about anime, but why are so many anime women depicted in an overly sexualised manner? Didn't we want to leave this kind of sexism behind as a

I don't know much about anime, but why are so many anime women depicted in an overly sexualised manner? Didn't we want to leave this kind of sexism behind as a society? It's like watching a sexist ad from the 1950s, but worse.

bawolff 6y ago
I dont know much about anime, but isn't at least a portion of anime market basically porn? Women are definitely still portrayed in a sexualized manner in the porn industry, generally speaking.
- UShouldBWorking 6y ago
  Go to the gym sometime, women portray themselves in a sexualized manner, it's not some patriarchy telling them to sexualize themselves.
UShouldBWorking 6y ago
Not sure what you mean about "wanting to leave it behind." If you've been out in public recently, or on instagram or Facebook this is what women are posting and dressing like more than ever. At the gym yesterday a woman was doing squats in a thong with built in leggings. People may say one thing but they have sexualized themselves more than ever, and certainly men don't seem to be complaining about the new looks.
mst 6y ago
"overly" is a matter of opinion. Anime is far from a male-only thing in japan and honestly most of the time if I see anime/CGI boobs on my twitter timeline it's women retweeting them. Best to just let people like what they like, and if you don't like it, let the people who do enjoy it in peace.
Blikkentrekker 6y ago
Mostly because that's what one encounters and instantly recognizes as “anime”. Most Japanese animation is entertainment targeting young teenagers and younger. Japan does however have a considerable adult animation market. The a.i. is not trained with any “anime”, however, but with still promotional art which is of far higher quality and clearly trained with the adult market where sexualization is, as one might expect, more common. The paradox is that the unrealistically cute “moe” designs are typically targeted at adults and adolescents and most of the children's antertainment does not look like that. Often in Japan, one speaks of four principal demographics: young males, young females, older males, and older females. — the a.i. is quite clearly entirely trained with the “older males” demographic, which should be undertood to target around 18-30 years of age, and even within that demographic it is trained almost exclusively with moe art. Most “anime” would not even be instantly recognized as such, which is why I think the term is fairly useless. — it seems when people speak of “anime” more often than not what they mean is “moe art” whether it be animated or not. This is what the average “anime” looks like: https://assets.moomin.com/uploads/2016/02/Moomin-animation-series-1969.jpg https://assets.moomin.com/uploads/2016/02/Moomin-animation-s...
- astrange 6y ago
  It's trained on fanart, mostly from pixiv via another site, which is tagged safe/sort-of-nsfw/nsfw but many things are tagged safer than they actually are.
- numpad0 6y ago
  No one knows why but it’s often said(with anecdatas) that >50% of creators for these content are biological female. So girls draw sexualized girls, some men do as well. Some says the high composition of female artists comes from the fact that moe arts are extension of Shoujo Manga market where predominantly female characters are portrayed by predominantly female artists for predominantly younger female audiences. Whatever the actual reason might be, it’s probably more complicated than “person with polar opposite sexuality of the subject consume porn”.
subjectsigma 6y ago
Neither condoning nor condemning, but: Japan is the same country where shows featuring brother-sister incest are aired on television, albeit late at night. [0] I'm not Japanese, just an anime fan, but from my understanding they (Japanese anime fans) could not give less of a shit about Western taboos and sensibilities. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Oreimo_episodes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Oreimo_episodes
- astrange 6y ago
  It's not like Japan does a lot of incest in real life, they just seem to think romances are boring without violating taboos. Japanese people are so against incest they won't have sex after marriage 'cause you're related now.
- claudiawerner 6y ago
  >Japan is the same country where shows featuring brother-sister incest are aired on television I think it's a bit of a stretch to say that's what Oreimo is about, even though the theme and idea underlies the series :-)
  - Blikkentrekker 6y ago
    The t.v. version of Ore.Imo. was highly censored compared to the book whereupon it was based to downplay the incestuous themes. There have been far more explicit works. — Aki-Sora and Yosugano Sora feature explicit sibling sex scenes that show everything but the genitals.
- Blikkentrekker 6y ago
  Why is the term “western” so often used whenever Japan be mentioned to mean either “Anglo-Saxon culture” or even more specifically “U.S.A. culture”? I do not believe that many of these “western taboos”, invariably dealing with sexual themes, would be so taboo in most of continental Europe. — it is mostly the Anglo-Saxon who is known for his staunch moral control on sexuality, swearwords, and nudity.
  - 6y ago
autarch 6y ago
As others have noted, this was clearly trained on a small subset of anime imagery. This sort of thing is definitely a thing in anime, but there is also a huge amount of content that does not feature highly sexualized female character designs.
brazzy 6y ago
> I don't know much about anime Well, this is not representative of all anime, but admittedly of a large subsegment. > but why are so many anime women depicted in an overly sexualised manner? Because it sells very well to young males, especially the stereotypical basement-dwelling sexually frustrated nerd population. And Japan is the land of the Hikkikomori, after all. But it's not like this kind of thing doesn't exist in the USA either. Just take a look at some superhero comics.
bserge 6y ago
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- Blikkentrekker 6y ago
  > If it makes you feel better, anime men get the exact same treatment. I find this to be a big difference that sets the U.S.A. apart from the other two media giants: India and Japan. India and Japan are far better it seems at tapping the market of male sexualization and U.S.A. media has never quite done that. I would in fact argue that this non-sexualization of males seems to be a very Anglo-Saxon cultural property, but many other cultures do not have the large media market to show it. I've seen quite a few comments coming from the Anglo-Saxon world about the Internationally released Swedish series Love & Anarchy, about how surprisingly attractive and sexualized the males were.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- kuroguro 6y ago
  > Watch some porn on xvideos.com and lose all hope in humanity. There's a difference between sexism and sexualization in entertainment. Say one could enjoy some kinky porn and at the same time not treat all women as objects in day to day life. The same way you could enjoy a violent movie and not go on a killing spree afterwards. There's clearly a demand for this kind of stuff and I don't see any point in trying to shame it out of view - it won't change the fact that people enjoy it (they'll just enjoy it in secret). _edit_ Not sure why op deleted the above comment, he did have some valid (altho a bit dramatic) points. Looking back the line that I quoted might have been sarcasm.

bawolff 6y ago

I dont know much about anime, but isn't at least a portion of anime market basically porn? Women are definitely still portrayed in a sexualized manner in the porn industry, generally speaking.

UShouldBWorking 6y ago
Go to the gym sometime, women portray themselves in a sexualized manner, it's not some patriarchy telling them to sexualize themselves.

UShouldBWorking 6y ago

Not sure what you mean about "wanting to leave it behind." If you've been out in public recently, or on instagram or Facebook this is what women are posting and dressing like more than ever. At the gym yesterday a woman was doing squats in a thong with built in leggings. People may say one thing but they have sexualized themselves more than ever, and certainly men don't seem to be complaining about the new looks.

mst 6y ago

"overly" is a matter of opinion. Anime is far from a male-only thing in japan and honestly most of the time if I see anime/CGI boobs on my twitter timeline it's women retweeting them. Best to just let people like what they like, and if you don't like it, let the people who do enjoy it in peace.

Blikkentrekker 6y ago

Mostly because that's what one encounters and instantly recognizes as “anime”. Most Japanese animation is entertainment targeting young teenagers and younger. Japan does however have a considerable adult animation market. The a.i. is not trained with any “anime”, however, but with still promotional art which is of far higher quality and clearly trained with the adult market where sexualization is, as one might expect, more common. The paradox is that the unrealistically cute “moe” designs are typically targeted at adults and adolescents and most of the children's antertainment does not look like that. Often in Japan, one speaks of four principal demographics: young males, young females, older males, and older females. — the a.i. is quite clearly entirely trained with the “older males” demographic, which should be undertood to target around 18-30 years of age, and even within that demographic it is trained almost exclusively with moe art. Most “anime” would not even be instantly recognized as such, which is why I think the term is fairly useless. — it seems when people speak of “anime” more often than not what they mean is “moe art” whether it be animated or not. This is what the average “anime” looks like: https://assets.moomin.com/uploads/2016/02/Moomin-animation-series-1969.jpg https://assets.moomin.com/uploads/2016/02/Moomin-animation-s...

astrange 6y ago
It's trained on fanart, mostly from pixiv via another site, which is tagged safe/sort-of-nsfw/nsfw but many things are tagged safer than they actually are.
numpad0 6y ago
No one knows why but it’s often said(with anecdatas) that >50% of creators for these content are biological female. So girls draw sexualized girls, some men do as well. Some says the high composition of female artists comes from the fact that moe arts are extension of Shoujo Manga market where predominantly female characters are portrayed by predominantly female artists for predominantly younger female audiences. Whatever the actual reason might be, it’s probably more complicated than “person with polar opposite sexuality of the subject consume porn”.

subjectsigma 6y ago

Neither condoning nor condemning, but: Japan is the same country where shows featuring brother-sister incest are aired on television, albeit late at night. [0] I'm not Japanese, just an anime fan, but from my understanding they (Japanese anime fans) could not give less of a shit about Western taboos and sensibilities. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Oreimo_episodes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Oreimo_episodes

astrange 6y ago
It's not like Japan does a lot of incest in real life, they just seem to think romances are boring without violating taboos. Japanese people are so against incest they won't have sex after marriage 'cause you're related now.
claudiawerner 6y ago
>Japan is the same country where shows featuring brother-sister incest are aired on television I think it's a bit of a stretch to say that's what Oreimo is about, even though the theme and idea underlies the series :-)
- Blikkentrekker 6y ago
  The t.v. version of Ore.Imo. was highly censored compared to the book whereupon it was based to downplay the incestuous themes. There have been far more explicit works. — Aki-Sora and Yosugano Sora feature explicit sibling sex scenes that show everything but the genitals.
Blikkentrekker 6y ago
Why is the term “western” so often used whenever Japan be mentioned to mean either “Anglo-Saxon culture” or even more specifically “U.S.A. culture”? I do not believe that many of these “western taboos”, invariably dealing with sexual themes, would be so taboo in most of continental Europe. — it is mostly the Anglo-Saxon who is known for his staunch moral control on sexuality, swearwords, and nudity.
- 6y ago

autarch 6y ago

As others have noted, this was clearly trained on a small subset of anime imagery. This sort of thing is definitely a thing in anime, but there is also a huge amount of content that does not feature highly sexualized female character designs.

brazzy 6y ago

> I don't know much about anime Well, this is not representative of all anime, but admittedly of a large subsegment. > but why are so many anime women depicted in an overly sexualised manner? Because it sells very well to young males, especially the stereotypical basement-dwelling sexually frustrated nerd population. And Japan is the land of the Hikkikomori, after all. But it's not like this kind of thing doesn't exist in the USA either. Just take a look at some superhero comics.

bserge 6y ago

Blikkentrekker 6y ago
> If it makes you feel better, anime men get the exact same treatment. I find this to be a big difference that sets the U.S.A. apart from the other two media giants: India and Japan. India and Japan are far better it seems at tapping the market of male sexualization and U.S.A. media has never quite done that. I would in fact argue that this non-sexualization of males seems to be a very Anglo-Saxon cultural property, but many other cultures do not have the large media market to show it. I've seen quite a few comments coming from the Anglo-Saxon world about the Internationally released Swedish series Love & Anarchy, about how surprisingly attractive and sexualized the males were.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
kuroguro 6y ago
> Watch some porn on xvideos.com and lose all hope in humanity. There's a difference between sexism and sexualization in entertainment. Say one could enjoy some kinky porn and at the same time not treat all women as objects in day to day life. The same way you could enjoy a violent movie and not go on a killing spree afterwards. There's clearly a demand for this kind of stuff and I don't see any point in trying to shame it out of view - it won't change the fact that people enjoy it (they'll just enjoy it in secret). _edit_ Not sure why op deleted the above comment, he did have some valid (altho a bit dramatic) points. Looking back the line that I quoted might have been sarcasm.