Social Justice · Society

Irreverent Sexual Humor and Depictions of Women in Anime and Manga

Over the years I have lost all interest in the output of Hollywood. The last two somewhat recent movies I enjoyed were Edge of Tomorrow and Battle Angel Alita. Perhaps it is no coincidence that they are both adaptations of Japanese source material. Japan is indeed where I get my entertainment from nowadays. A big problem with Western output is the seemingly constant need to berate or educate the viewer. We learn that whites are racists from movies like Hidden Figures or Suburbicon, or that men are inferior to women in travesties like the Ghostbusters remake, Captain Marvel, or the recent Star Wars movies. A particularly grating example is a retelling of the battle of the sexes — that’s also the title of that movie — between some aged tennis star and a young contender. I watch that stuff when I’m on a long-distance flight, too tired to read or write, but not tired enough to sleep.

In contrast to Hollywood drivel that I use as a substitute for barbiturate, I actively seek out Japanese animes and mangas. I am still quite selective. I prefer manga, but I reflexively discard anything that does not at least pique my curiosity at the end of the first installment and does not get me sufficiently invested in the story by the end of the fifth episode, at the latest. What I find so incredibly refreshing is that they often treat the conditio humana with great irreverence. Yup, they make fun of women, too. In Western media, women can do no wrong, while men are responsible for all evils, despite being complete idiots. Consistency clearly is a tool of the patriarchy because the narration just does not add up.

A very nice example is Ashita Dorobou. The story is pretty out there and I won’t spoil anything. However, one part of the story is about the male protagonist meeting his college sweetheart again after ten years and not recognizing her because she has turned ugly. Here is what she used to look like:

This is the young Ashita. She’s typical of what a cutie in a manga looks like.

This is her ten years later:

Ashita got frog-like features as she aged

What’s even better is that the old Ashita lacks all self-awareness, as the following panels illustrate. She thinks that she has only gotten more beautiful with age.

Female reasoning in action

The fact that women age, and often rather unfavorably, is one of those forbidden truths that the mainstream desperately tries to keep from you. That the wall exists is slowly sinking into the collective male conscience, however. Yet, mainstream media still vigorously pushes a narrative according to which 40 and 50 yearold women still look great. It is downright bizarre. Meanwhile, in a classic like Kazuo Koike’s Lady Snowblood, you’ll come across a photographer making money by telling young women that they can capture their beauty in pictures and remind themselves of it once they are old and ugly. Those are not the exact words in the manga, but that’s essentially the message.

Then there is the issue of female sex drive and promiscuity. While it is true that men have a higher sex drive than women, it is not the case that only men want it. Every woman you fuck is the last in a line of a good 10,000 generations of women who all liked cock. In Western media, only men are horndogs. On the other hand, in the artistic output of the Japanese master race, we find works lke KonoSuba (Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Shukufuku wo!) in which a horny female teenage magician casually rubs her pussy with her staff — in public!

Megumin #topwaifu

My most recent discovery is B Gata H Kei. It is about a high school girl whose goal it is to fuck 100 guys. Yes, you read that correctly! In that show, all the boys want it, and all the girls want it, too. The main protagonist, a slut-to-be called Yamada, wants it a bit more than most girls, though. She is obsessed with the thought of having sex. However, she is shy. The guys are shy, too, so there is hardly anything happening.

Yamada is very ambitious.

A relatively common motive in Japanese manga and anime is female rivalries. In real life, women viciously compete against each other based on their looks. This is nothing that finds any reflection in Hollywood movies. Yet, the Japanese remind us that women are insecure about their boob size and that they sometimes spitefully mock other women for being flat-chested. They may also want to steal another girl’s boyfriend or date some guy just so that her supposed bestie can’t. You should hear how women talk in real life about other women behind their back. Based on that I would say that the Japanese do get it right. (Men also get made fun of plenty in B Gata H Kei, by the way. Yamada, for instance, practices in front of the mirror what to say to a guy after ejactulating prematurely to assuage his ego.) Speaking of irreverent humor, this is a screencap from the anime, showing the sign at the door to the female bathroom:

The female bathroom sign in B Gata H Kei

It takes some creativity to come up with this. Through this series I also learned that “approach” found its way into the Japanese language as “approachu“, which gave me a good chuckle. There is no explicit sexual content in B Gata H Kei, just like in the other titles I mentioned. For rubbing one out, you’d have to find different material. I hear that the Korean manga “Sweet Guy” is pretty good for that. Alternatively, you could go back to Western media and get told that you’re a creep, an idiot, responsible for all the evil in the world, and that you should get killed (“cancelled“, as they phrase it). I think I’ll stick with the Japanese.


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9 thoughts on “Irreverent Sexual Humor and Depictions of Women in Anime and Manga

  1. I totally agree. I’ve watched more anime this year than in my entire life. Not only do the Japanese not drown us in gender politics and political correctness, they also generally have more fleshed out stories and characters. Just better writing all together. Whereas in the West it’s become a popular theme to subvert the audiences expectations (Game of Thrones failed miserably in the end, and so did Star Wars episode 8 completely), the Japanese have been pulling off this concept successfully and much more thoughtfully for quite a while.

  2. “The fact that women age, and often rather unfavorably, is one of those forbidden truths that the mainstream desperately tries to keep from you. That the wall exists is slowly sinking into the collective male conscience, however.”

    Most guys don’t appreciate how fast this comes though. I’m in my late twenties now and was wondering recently why all the pretty girls I meet seem to be university students. I realised that it’s because most women in their late twenties are already losing their looks. When I talk to girls my own age I’m usually shocked by how old they look. Sometimes they’re openly shocked when they learn my age, because they assumed I was a lot younger than them. They don’t seem to realise how much more slowly men visibly age than women, if we take reasonable care of ourselves and are lucky enough to not lose our hair.

    1. don’t seem to realise how much more slowly men visibly age than women, if we take reasonable care of ourselves and are lucky enough to not lose our hair.

      And keep a low enough bodyfat. I “hit the wall” myself and went from being a dude to “sir” and everyone guessing i’m older (rather than younger) real quick by gaining some weight.

    2. Alek,

      I wanna ask you this because I know you’ve struggled with weight a lot. How do you relate to yourself psychologically with respect to this issue?

      I recently gained a lot of weight and lost muscle due to illness and I am now trying to reverse it. I look at myself in the mirror and sometimes say mean things to myself about how I look. I started to realize that it’s not a great way to treat yourself regardless of how you look.

      Also every time the scale doesn’t budge (I weight myself every week) or the waist tape measure increases, I get down on myself. And I get pissed off every time someone brings delicious snacks around me, making it harder to stick to my diet. This is not a fun way to live.

      How do you balance accepting where you’re at with your body weight vs. your efforts to lose the excess weight.

    3. I think this is the main reason why women wrongly guess the age of older men, as their reference is to older women. I can tell when a guy is in his 40s or 50s. Many women, though, easily mistake a guy who has taken well care of themselves to be a good 10 to 15 years younger than they are. Heck, I’m nearing 40 and it still happens that store clerks tell me that they offer a student discount. It doesn’t seem to register to them that a healthy guy may have very few wrinkles at that age. On the other hand, a woman my age is completely done for.

    4. @Gmoney I can relate and definetely made a note to give you a longer response when I find the time. I’m in a big thing that has me working from the moment i wake up, till I go to bed. (i’m also at a record weight today as we speak), and don’t give a crap…

      And the two are related. I will explain when I get the chance, but basically, if you’re too busy achieving shit, you don’t have time to feel down. Like I’m doing something I’ve worked very hard on for years, and my “dreams” are starting to come through. Every day that goes by and I haven’t focused on weightloss I’m like that sucked. But i don’t feel crap about it like I used to. Because I’m getting so much stuff done/actual victories/accomplishments.

    5. @ Alek

      Thanks, man. I’ll be on the lookout for the longer answer whenever you get around to it.

  3. “Meanwhile, in a classic like Kazuo Koike’s Lady Snowblood, you’ll come across a photographer making money by telling young women that they can capture their beauty in pictures and remind themselves of it once they are old and ugly.”

    This reminds me of interviews with aged Playboy models (back in the pre-SJW era), in which those ex-playmates talked about how they wanted to “conserve” their beauty and hotness in those sexy posing photos, so that they could revel in it even when it had faded away completely.

  4. the aging is bad , it happens even faster then late twenties.
    i was totally on a 17 year old chick two years ago i got rejected but , fast forward she is 19 and works at a local store she lost some youth and doent look as good(she is still fuckable but the lose of value is visible). also doesnt help that she seems to be getting some dick experience lately.

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