as much as i like bn/ha seeing it be praised as this masterpiece gets my goat bc like, how good of a writer can you be if all your female characters exist almost solely for sexual gratification or advancing the narrative of the men? how? sorry its just another shonen series with an interesting premise and i will never understand why people think its so unique.
frog girl
#also pink girl#and knife girl#and pink girl who like isn’t actually pink she just wears pink
youd probably know more than i do considering i havent finished the anime but iirc arent there several scenes where asui is groped and put in sexual situations like with the “mouth slime” thing??
i was probably wrong to say EVERY female character is (i doubt deku’s mom is for instance) but just about almost all of the female characters are included in fanservice multiple times over if not primarily built around it which is probably the point that i should have articulated. it feels a little alienating.
and im by no means saying bnha is special for this, it’s pretty much the opposite. it’s just like almost every shonen anime in that specific regard.
as someone who is up to date on the manga, i have to disagree. in the early parts of the show you definitely have a point, but as the narrative goes on the female characters all get times in the spotlight as important, dynamic characters in the narrative and are definitely not only used as sexual objects/fanservice. the fact that they were used for this stuff at all is unfortunate in and of itself, and is a problematic aspect of the series, but i dont think its fair to say the characters are used for just that purpose. it is alienating af though and a really gross part of ‘shounen culture’ that is way too prevalent…
as someone who’s also up to date on the manga, i’d disagree– while bnha does a better job then other shounens at giving the female characters interesting personality traits and flavor, they’re still given FAR less spotlight, attention, and relevance then any of the male characters (compare momo, who had one spotlight miniarc, to todoroki, who’s had several spotlight chapters by this point).
tokoyami alone has had more attention paid to him then a solid half if not more of the “minor” (not ochako) girls combined. even ochako is beginning to get consumed by her romance arc with izuku– although hopefully that turns out not to be the case and attention swings back to her personal story and family soon, because i find her character and motivations very interesting and compelling.
anyway the point i’m making is bnha consistently shafts it’s female characters in favor of its male character, even putting aside the (still very prevalent!) sexualization of the majority of the female cast (even the teenaged girls).
you can take the big 3 as a microexample of this: the gender ratio is 2:1 off the top, but mirio and tamaki matter more. Mirio is the golden boy izuku-parallel, so that’s fair game, I suppose, but tamaki also gets his own spotlight as both fatgum’s protege and in his fight in the last arc- and even his flashbacks are childhood-friends-close-relationship centric.
nejire is… outside with ryuukyuu. she isn’t really mentioned by either of her two best friends, and doesnt get the chance to mention them because she isn’t relevant enough for a spotlight. if she didn’t exist, the story would be literally the same, which I think is a problem.
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