• Skye [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.net
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    14 days ago

    I recently took a quick look at the dragonball wiki and as someone who hasn’t seen anything dragonball related after Z there is some really funny stuff on there

    dragonball wiki images

    apparently the dragonball economy has been wrecked by severe Goku inflation

    Nooo Vegeta, don’t use that as your gamer name!

    orange piccolo

    • ZeroHora@lemmy.ml
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      14 days ago

      The Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan Evolved is completely bullshit, they started giving names to every little fucking thing. They don’t even name that much stuff in the anime. Now every powerup has a name, an incomplete powerup get a name and the mastered powerup also get a name.

        • ZeroHora@lemmy.ml
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          14 days ago

          At least Tite Kubo is one of the few mangakas to not accept paedophiles in shounen jump

          • ShinkanTrain@lemmy.ml
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            14 days ago

            Isn’t he also a massive misogynist though, or am I thinking of another guy who can’t write?

            • purpleworm [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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              14 days ago

              It is very difficult to find a big shounen/seinen mangaka who isn’t a massive misogynist as far as their work goes, but yes, Bleach is pretty male-gazy and tends to deny women agency, though I think compared to other big manga it’s mostly below average in the former and above average in the latter.

              Edit: To head off rebuttals, in a pretty large cast, Rukia is the closest we get in the main cast to a female character with consistent agency, ignoring that the inciting event is about saving her and one of the first main arcs has her as a captive to be rescued, and she spends a lot of time being peripheral or just existing in relation to her genius older brother and her inferiority complex around him, which is resolved after several hundred chapters with him acknowledging her. Sidelined love interest Orihime technically does get offensive magic pretty quickly (that is suggested to be pretty strong, even) but then is relegated to a healing role for basically the entire series and doesn’t have basically any plot agency, because her motivation is “marry the MC at the end of the series”. All the other female characters are like third tier at the highest in terms of plot centrality. There ends up being a real Bechdel problem when you look at it, with two of the other go-to strong female characters mostly existing in relation to a man as well, one romantically and one, to at least give it some credit, martially, but her entire character and life is thrown away to give him a power-up that was just undoing a nerf that she inadvertently caused him to put on himself. The only real exception to these patterns is the rivalry between Soi Fon and Yoruichi, and Yoruichi’s depiction in particular gets much more gross in the last arc, really worse than anything that I mentioned except Orihime.

              • ZeroHora@lemmy.ml
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                14 days ago

                Compared to the other mangas of the time Bleach had female character in position of power during the entire series. Soi fon and Unohana as captains, Rangiku, Nanao, Momo, Isane, Nemu, Yachiru and Rukia as lieutnants

                Compare to HxH, you have Biscuit the gon master, 3 phantom troupe, Neferpitou and Zazan of the chimera ants.

                Naruto is basically Tsunade, Konan in the Akatsuki, Kurenai became a mother early in the story, Anko doesn’t do much either.

                One Piece is just Big Mom and Boa Hancock, Kalifa on the CP-9, every other female character is not in a big position of power, they are in the same level or below the main cast.

                Jojo barely have any female character of big importance, took part 6 to have Jolyne and Ermes.

                Fairy Tail is Erza, Mirajane, Ultear and later in the story they add the guild master girl and some other female characters in other guilds.

                Soul Eater is probably the one with most female characters because the enemy witches are all female I don’t remember all of them.

                I can’t remember one female character from Katekyo Hitman Reborn.

                Shaman King I can only think of Sati in position of power, the other characters are in the same level of Yoh,

                Full Metal Alchemist have Lust, Edward Master and Olivier.

                I can’t remember more shounens of the early 2000, Bleach of course have a pretty big cast so they have more chances to have female character in positions of power, later in the story they add more female characters in position of power like Halibel and the 2 royal guards. The other long mangas also add new female character like Kaguya in Naruto as the final enemy, but they really lack that kind of thing in the early days. I can’t see Kubo been more misogynist than their peers, his biggest flaw is the sexualization of Yoruichi, Rangiku and Orihime, flaw that other mangas have, like Fairy Tail and Soul Eater.

                • purpleworm [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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                  14 days ago

                  I don’t see why you bother talking about formal rank so much compared to agency in the actual plot, especially with Bleach, where Lieutenants are nominally a big deal and sometimes are, but multiple are plainly just women who are accessories to their male Captain and Unohana is just a background character with some subtext until she steps to the foreground to be a tool to develop a male Captain’s character and promptly die. Soi Fon is basically unimpeachable, but many of the other names you listed are closer to being the opposite.

                  I’ll go through your other examples but it’s basically just because I’m autistic:

                  Naruto is extremely sexist, and I’d say more so than Bleach.

                  One Piece is extremely male gazy, but aside from Sanji the sexism strangely doesn’t carry over to the story’s writing, because lots of women are given at least as much dignity as the men. There is the issue of Nami and Robin needing saving, but even then they still have agency and aren’t damsels in towers like Rukia, and it’s not like Zoro, #2 to Luffy, wasn’t introduced awaiting execution, tied to a post. There’s also a lot of writing where women are put in various respectable roles that don’t center on being strictly matronly or something, such as Kokoro (whose role as a foster mother was significant to the plot but is doing other things by the time the crew meets her).

                  Jojo barely had female characters at all early on, but it had Lisa Lisa all the way back in Part 2, and she’s not stellar by these metrics but she’s pretty good. I honestly think that it kind of gets more rancid over time, with maybe the exception of part 6.

                  Fairy Tale is trash and I don’t want to think about it, but that definitely includes a cartoon level of sexism.

                  Soul Eater is just kind of a weird show and I don’t remember it that well. Isn’t Maka’s father like a “comical” pedo or something? I remember Fire Force better and the author goes on an unhinged, fourth-wall-breaking rant defending his objectification near the end. I admit Maka is still more of a real character than you usually get for women, though.

                  I don’t know anything about KHR or Shaman King

                  FMA I do think is alright. For some reason you’re leaving out Winry, and both her and the three you mentioned are all very cool (least of all Lust, but she’s still alright). May Chang is also solid and even the designated female sidekicks Hawkeye and Lan Fan are written pretty respectfully. It probably makes a difference that this is one of the very few manga listed that was written by a woman, so even if she had va-va-voom ideas about how to depict women (and men!), she still managed a basic level of empathy that a lot of male authors don’t bother with.

                  You might find this backwards, but I tend to think that if an author can’t be bothered to write women well, it’s probably just better for them to write a story centered as completely on men as they can manage (though it shouldn’t be too difficult to write women well since they are humans too, and you don’t need to get deep into specifically feminine issues to have a well-written woman, because you can write it just from the perspective of her being a human if you make the setting allow it!). That’s why I don’t think Dragon Ball Z is that sexist, for instance, since it just avoids involving women other than Bulma altogether for the most part.

      • Frivolous_Beatnik [comrade/them, any]@hexbear.net
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        14 days ago

        DB Super Hero (where Orange Piccolo is from) is unironically some of the best stuff since the Cell saga.

        They got away from big number power scaling bullshit and just made a fun story where Piccolo and Gohan got to be the main characters for once

        • purpleworm [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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          14 days ago

          I will never forgive them for the senzu bean thing, where Gohan gets tossed a bean, fumbles it, drops it in some crack in the ground, and it’s just lost. They fight at incomprehensible speed but he couldn’t catch a falling bean?

        • Redcuban1959 [any]@hexbear.net
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          14 days ago

          DB Super Hero

          Thats the 3d cgi movie right? I thought it was alright for a 3d anime movie, though I do think the Lupin the 3rd 3d movie looked a lot better than this DBZ movie.

        • purpleworm [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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          14 days ago

          The tournament thing was stupid, but it was also one of the best parts and a great expression of both Perfect Cell’s personality and the busted logic of Dragon Ball in general.

    • Redcuban1959 [any]@hexbear.net
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      14 days ago

      as someone who hasn’t seen anything dragonball related after Z

      Dragon Ball GT had a banger intro and outro, some really bad and boring arcs (they literally don’t know how to use Trunks or Pan besides as cheerleaders for Goku), but I still like the Baby and Shadow Dragon arcs those were good.

        • Redcuban1959 [any]@hexbear.net
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          14 days ago

          at least Gohan, Vegeta, Piccolo, 18, 17, Krillin, even fucking Yamcha, all get character arcs. Trunks and Pan do literally nothing but get beaten or just cheer Goku.

          spoiler

          Trunks gets humilated multiple times and even gets possessed by Baby, the only good scene with him is when he kills General Blue with Goten. Meanwhile, Pan was literally designed to be a damsel in distress character in this, and she gets some unfunny sexual harassment jokes with a literal creepy otaku turning her into a doll.