Otaku Hot Girl
loving shonen when it doesn't love you back
In 2018, the editor-in-chief of Weekly Shōnen Jump, Kōhei Ōnishi, compared the magazine to a “Boys-only High School”, while admitting that the magazine has never had a female editor in 50 years. Women simply don’t understand the hearts of boys1.
Nevermind that one of the most popular Shōnen titles of all times, Fullmetal Alchemist, was created by a woman, Hiromu Arakawa, and its anime adaptation has been at the top of My Anime List’s ranking for years. It must be a fluke.
Before I continue, I think it’s important to explain what Shōnen is. Manga series are often published in magazines, which are categorized not by genre but by their target demographic. Shōnen means “Young Boys”, so while a Shōnen magazine like Jump can have romance, action and comedy inside it, all these series will be aimed at a young male audience. On the other hand, there’s Shōjo, which is aimed at young girls; Seinen, which targets adult men, and Josei, for adult women. Demographic =/= genre. Nevertheless, readers do tend to conflate certain genres with one kind of magazine, so a lot of the time you will see people refer to action/adventure series as “Shōnen” even when they aren’t, and call any romance a “Shōjo”. They will also be surprised whenever a story they like, regardless of genre, turns out to be a Shōjo, because it’s generally assumed that Shōnen is inherently better. This is just another example of gender prejudice that we don’t have time to talk about.
The thing about target demographics is that, even when you make it clear that you are catering to a certain group of people, they are not the only ones that will interact with whatever you are putting out there. Girls and women also read Shōnen, and some even create Shōnen series. Unfortunately, Shōnen (as a creative space, as a product) is aggressively anti-women, and there’s little sign that this will ever change.
So, you may understand why I, not a man, have a hard time reading and watching Shōnen series, despite how much I love these stories.
It is not for you.
I grew up watching Naruto with my dad, it was my first introduction to anime, and it means a lot to me despite its many flaws. Naruto, created by Masashi Kishimoto, is a story about an orphan boy who wants to become the greatest ninja of his village, despite being looked down upon by everyone around him. It’s a story that deals with complex themes like the cycle of hatred, the psychological consequences of social isolation, and the meaning of friendship in a world built around violence and conflict. This series is one of the “Big Three” (Naruto, Bleach and One Piece), which makes it one of the most popular and influential Shōnen series of all time.
Unfortunately, Masashi Kishimoto is really conservative and sexist. While the women in Naruto aren’t as sexualized as in other series, the way they are written reveals a lot of biases on the author’s part. The main female character, Sakura Haruno, is defined by her relationship with the two main boys. During her introduction scene, instead of telling us anything about who she is and what she wants in life, we are told that she likes Sasuke and doesn’t like Naruto, and her dream is implied to be marrying Sasuke. Sakura’s “uselessness” has become a meme, and female characters are often compared to her either to put them down (“Oh she’s just another Sakura”) or to praise them (“She’s so much better than Sakura”). Aside from her, the female characters in Naruto are rarely developed further than being a romantic interest for a boy, they are universally weaker than their male companions, they are relegated to medical roles (women = nurses), and even the ones that we are told are strong (Tsunade, Kurenai, Konan, etc.) lose to men over and over again. By the end, most of the women have become happy housewives and mothers.
For a series that is all about achieving your dreams, a message that appeals to everyone, it seems that girls in Naruto can only dream of settling down with a man.
On the opposite end of Shōnen sexism we have One Piece, another member of the Big Three, by Eiichiro Oda. To say that One Piece is popular is an understatement—it’s the highest selling manga of all time, there’s a national One Piece holiday in Japan, and the series is massively popular overseas, even more after the Netflix adaptation.
Just like Naruto, One Piece revolves around dreams and doing everything to achieve them. The main character, Monkey D. Luffy, dreams of becoming the pirate king, and everyone in his crew has a dream of their own. Including the women! The two main female characters, Nami and Robin, both have their own ambitions that have nothing to do with men. Nami dreams of drawing a map of the world, Robin dreams of uncovering the mysteries of history. Oda explicitly forbids romance within the crew, which means that these women are not burdened with forced romantic plot lines. Even outside the members of Luffy’s crew, most female characters in the series have their own ambitions and their own stories. The women in One Piece are really well written… but they look awful.
Oda has a Q&A segment where he answers letters from his fans, called the SBS. On the SBS of Volume 78, a reader asks why the women in One Piece such big breasts, to which Oda replies:
I keep saying this, but I'm just bringing the young boys' dreams to life! All of humanity on earth! I command your breasts to grow~!
Then, on volume 79, a reader asks how to draw women like him, which prompts this drawing:
Yes. Hello. It's drawing time at the SBS segment. I would suggest that you think of a woman's proportions as "three circles, one X". Now if you'll excuse me, I'll be leaving.
(I only draw this kind of body, so I get a lot of complaint postcards from my female audience. Let's all stay strong and keep on living life.)
Now, it could be argued that the SBS is a comedic segment. Many SBS are riddled with silly answers, and these fan letters are sent (mostly) by children and teenagers, so they shouldn’t be taken too seriously. Still, Oda’s answers perfectly capture the way these men see their female readers. Which is to say, they don’t see them at all. Shōnen is for boys, and Shōnen Jump is a place where only men (who act like High School boys) work, so these authors have no obligation, in their eyes, to cater to women or care about their opinions.
If you are bothered by any of this, it’s because it isn’t for you. Girls can enjoy these stories about dreams and underdogs persevering against all odds, but that’s accidental.
A common argument for all of these issues is that Japanese men are somehow inherently more sexist than any other group of men. That is simply racism. Sexism is a world-wide issue that affects women everywhere, the men at Shōnen Jump are not particularly more misogynistic than the men who boycott any Star Wars release that doesn’t center a white man.
There’s this attitude that things that are for men are the default, they can be enjoyed by everyone, but only until someone who is not a man tries to criticize these things. Once you complain about how the women are treated in these properties, men love to pull out the argument that “this wasn’t made for you, you don’t get it, so shut up”.
There’s nothing unique about Kishimoto and Oda’s sexism. What is (somewhat) unique is the way in which the manga industry operates. It’s well-known that mangaka are terribly exploited and overworked by their publishers, leading to grueling schedules and health issues. All this is caused by a relative lack of worker protection in Japan. This facilitates gender discrimination at work, which leads to Shōnen magazines admitting they have never had female editors, at the same time that Shōjo magazines are full of male editors, even though their content is aimed at girls2. It’s no surprise that the same companies that push their creators to the brink of death don’t care about creating welcoming and diverse work environments, which in turn creates male-only spaces where their sexism, which by itself is not especial, can run rampant.
Don’t get your hopes up.
A fascinating response to all this sexism is the constant search for “the feminist Shōnen series”. When a new title shows up with decent female characters, fans scramble to proclaim it as “feminist” and so much more “progressive” than older series.
A funny example of that is Demon Slayer, whose author, Koyoharu Gotouge, was speculated to be a woman due to how secretive they are about their identity. This speculation went hand in hand with the fans' defending the female characters in the series, despite all the sexism and fan service.
Demon Slayer is a story about a boy named Tanjiro whose entire family was killed by demons, except for his little sister, Nezuko, who was turned into a demon herself. Tanjiro’s goal is to find a cure for his sister, whom he carries around on a basket. Nezuko can’t speak after being turned, and she’s often infantilized. She is able to change her size, so she spends most of the time looking like a literal baby. This doesn’t stop her from being frequently sexualized, even more so after she unlocks special powers that manifest in her getting a grown-woman’s body. Of course, this means her clothes don’t fit her well and half her breasts are out. So, the main female character can’t speak for most of the story, she looks like a baby, and when she doesn’t look like a baby, she is drawn in a sexualized manner. There’s another female character that doesn’t speak a lot, Kanao, and she’s only able to overcome her mental barriers after Tanjiro helped her.
The strongest female characters in the series are Mitsuri and Shinobu, who are part of the elite Hashira warriors. Mitsuri has a uniform which shows her breasts, her power is based on “love” and her goal in life is to find a husband. She’s insecure because she’s too strong and eats too much, which turns off men, but in reality she’s drawn as a petite and slightly toned woman that makes all the men around her swoon. She’s also silly and unserious, a classic bimbo. Shinobu, on the other hand, has a story that does not revolve around men and is treated with more dignity both in how she’s designed and how she’s written, but we are also told that she’s the weakest of the Hashira, so she has to rely on poison (a traditionally feminine weapon associated with deceit and cowardice).
I could go on, there are plenty of examples of how the female characters in Demon Slayer are mistreated by the author. Somehow, despite all this, people really want to believe that Gotouge is a woman. As if they being a woman would excuse all of this, when in reality, it would only prove that Gotouge cares more about catering to the male readers of Shōnen Jump than empowering women.
That is why there’s never going to be a feminist Shōnen series. Ultimately, even if the authors wanted to write stories that treat women with respect (which they don’t want to do), they always have to prioritize their male target audience. Even if boys could enjoy stories with less sexism, as proved by the success of Fullmetal Alchemist, it’s far easier to keep feeding young boys the same misogynistic beliefs that the authors grew up with. Instead of writing a good story that teaches respect and equality, you can put girls in revealing outfits and know that boys going through puberty will be fine with it.
Let’s look at another series that was initially praised for its female characters, Jujutsu Kaisen by Gege Akutami. The series ended a few weeks ago, so we can finally talk about it as a whole and see how the women in JJK were treated. The over-abundance of YouTube videos titled something like “How Jujutsu Kaisen wasted its female cast” says all that you need to know. I will have to get into spoilers, so if you prefer not to get spoiled, please skip the next three paragraphs.
Jujutsu Kaisen is about a boy, Itadori, who eats a cursed finger and becomes a sorcerer. He joins a school for sorcerers and over the course of the series we are introduced to a wide and diverse array of characters The main female character is Nobara, one of Itadori’s classmates, and one of the two girls in his school. Nobara is crazy, in a good way, and she’s strong. She has a powerful ability, she’s not a romantic interest, she has a distinct personality and her character arc is not centered around a man. There were tons of videos and essays about how Nobara was “What Sakura should have been” (remember, every female character has to be compared to Sakura). Unfortunately, Nobara “died”. She was taken out of the story in a scene that traumatized the main male character and pushed him to despair (a classic example of a fridged girlfriend, even if Nobara wasn’t Itadori’s romantic interest). Right after that, we are told her status is unclear, keeping up hope that she may come back. Then we spend over half the series without her, with little updates on her status that slowly convinced everyone she was indeed dead. When everyone had given up on her, the author brought her back as a last minute twist, right as he announced there were only going to be 5 more chapters. So, the main female character gets taken out of the story for over a hundred chapters, we don’t get enough time with her to develop her own arc, and she ends up being more of a plot device than a character of her own.
The one female teacher in the series is constantly derided as weak, and we don’t get to know what her power is until the last arc, when it’s revealed that her power is…powering up other people. Momo accomplishes nothing, and her only important scene was fighting Nobara and talking about how difficult it was to be a woman in the sorcery world. Every time Miwa shows up, she gets defeated, and then she loses her powers. Yuki, the strongest female character in the series and supposedly one of the 4 more powerful people in the world, dies fighting the bad guy without dealing any significant damage to her opponent (who was taken out later thanks to a guy whose power was making jokes). Mei, a woman that was already introduced as morally gray due to her greediness, is shown to also be a pedophile that abuses her little brother, making it so it’s impossible to like her even if she is strong and has an interesting role in the story. There are more examples that I won’t get into. Maki is the only female character that has a proper arc and who is shown time and time again to be on par with the men, if not stronger than the majority of the cast, but one good female character doesn’t compensate for the rest.
It’s depressing to see Jujutsu Kaisen end the way it did. There was a lot of hope for the women in the series, and I was part of the crowd that defended it and thought that Nobara would eventually come back. I was right about Nobara, but the fact she came back so late into the story, and the way that every female character besides Maki was handled, make it impossible to argue that the author of JJK cared about them.
Over time, I have learned that I should wait until a series ends to cast judgement, and I try not to get my hopes up whenever I see a new cool female character that seems oh so well written. It’s important not to praise an author too soon, and to recognize when they are only giving you crumbs.
The dangers of male solidarity.
Shōnen Jump is a boys-only club, and they have each other’s backs.
Nobuhiro Watsuki, the author of Rurouni Kenshin (Samurai X) was convicted in 2018 for possession of child pornography. The man owned so much CP that the police thought he was a distributor. Despite that, Shōnen Jump has publicly sided with him and honored his work, and they recently announced a special event to celebrate the 30th anniversary of his series. The event will feature art from dozens of Shōnen Jump mangaka, including: Kishimoto (Naruto), Oda (One Piece), Togashi (Hunter x Hunter), Horikoshi (My Hero Academia), Obata (Death Note), Gege (Jujutsu Kaisen), Matsumoto (Kaiju Nº 8), Araki (Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure), Matsui (Assassination Classroom), Tabata (Black Clover), and many more. While you could argue that the smaller, less well-known authors are participating out of obligation, the same can not be said of the big names on that list, whose series are so popular that the magazine could hardly antagonize them. The truth is, many of these men are participating because they too support Watsuki. Oda, for example, was Watsuki’s assistant during the beginning of his career, and he’s gone out of his way to praise Watsuki time and time again after his conviction.
Once more, people will use this as proof that Japanese men are more disgusting than the rest. But is this so different from the Hollywood celebrities that signed the letter defending Roman Polanski?3
These men are not particularly evil, and they aren’t a monolith. I do want to highlight one important name that is not participating on Watsuki’s homage: Tite Kubo, the author of Bleach4. Bleach is the other member of the Big Three alongside Naruto and One Piece, and even though I haven’t read or watched Bleach, I can see its influence in many other series, and the series was undeniably popular during its peak. For Kubo not to participate is a big deal, and he also didn’t take part on a previous homage to Watsuki, which makes it harder to argue this is a coincidence. I will not speculate on his motives, perhaps it wasn’t his choice, but I will take it as a win.
Conclusion.
The truth is that the same systems that allow for sexism and misogyny to be so prevalent at Shōnen Jump are not unique to Shōnen or to Japan. At the same time, knowing that doesn’t make it easier to reckon with the sheer disdain that these men have towards their female audience and women in general, and it certainly hurts to know these men will always protect each other regardless of how heinous their colleagues’ actions are.
Great stories will resonate with people of all backgrounds and identities. I love Naruto, because seeing a poor, lonely boy make bonds with others inspired me when I was growing up. I love One Piece, because it captures a sense of whimsy and adventure that makes the world a brighter place. This post was originally going to be about my relationship with these series, how they impacted me, and how I have been affected by their authors’ sexism. I was inspired, as you can tell in the title, by Megan Thee Stallion’s love song to anime, and this was supposed to be more lighthearted. In the end, it got out of hand.
Loving Shōnen is hard, and it’s hard to talk about all these problems without being shut down. Often, women are told that if they have such an issue with how Shōnen portrays them, they should just go read Shōjo or Josei. While I do encourage people to explore manga outside of Shōnen and to support female artists, it’s insulting to be told that you are the issue and not these male authors. I am a Shōnen fan, and I will continue to read and watch Shōnen series, even though it can sometimes be a miserable experience.
Finally, let’s circle back to Fullmetal Alchemist, a Shōnen series written by a woman and universally acclaimed. I don’t think it’s a feminist masterpiece, but it’s a good starting point. We need to have higher standards, and demand more from male authors. A story that doesn’t rely on fan service, that has a diverse and well-developed female cast, even if it doesn’t center around women, was successful both commercially and critically. We should consider that the bare minimum, not an exception, and we should hold male authors accountable for not doing even that much.
Further Reading:
Male and Female Interactions: A Multimodal Analysis of Shonen Manga by Alexandria Perez, 2022.
Straddling the Line: How Female Authors are Pushing the Boundaries of Gender Representation in Japanese Shonen Manga by Daniel Flis, 2018.
Thanks for reading! This started out as something very different, but once I started writing I realized that I had too much to say, and it got longer and admittedly more depressing than I intended. I don’t want this to be some sort of “anti-Shōnen Jump” rant, as I said, I’m a fan of many of their series. I simply think it’s important to reckon with these issues, instead of just ignoring them and enjoying the series blindly.
Another thing! Yesterday was the 1 year anniversary of this newsletter, and I can’t express how amazing that is. This has been a really fun experience, thank you to everyone who has supported me this far! I’m still figuring this out, but I have learned a lot in the past year and I’m very excited for the future of this newsletter. I hope you are excited too.
PROUGH, Jennifer S. Straight from the Heart: Gender, Intimacy, and the Cultural Production of Shojo Manga. 2010. Chapter 4 — Affective Labor / Gender, Generation, and Consumption in the Production of Shōjo Manga: “Since then, within the industry, classic gender relations have played out through the predominance of older male editors and young women artists.”
Hollywood Celebrities who signed the Polanski Petition Roman Polanski is a Polish filmmaker who has been a fugitive from the U.S. criminal justice system, since 1978, after pledging guilty to statutory rape of a 13-year-old girl. He fled the country to France before he could be properly sentenced. Directors, actors and other Hollywood figures signed a petition in 2009 asking for his release after he was arrested in Zurich.
I rly like One Piece's women characters like Nami and Robin. Like you said, while they can be overly sexualized just like any character on that series readlly, they have dreams of their own and are not defined by romantic interests.
Great post! I really love shonen manga, which is why I hate how most of them write women. When a story spends its time on a character, the focus should be on making them interesting rather than using them for fanservice or having their love for another character be their entire personality. I loved how Fullmetal Alchemist wrote its female characters, but Arakawa didn’t really do anything revolutionary – she just wrote them like she would any other character, rather than relegating them to female stereotypes. That should be the norm, not the exception. JJK had a lot of interesting female characters that I had high hopes for, but in the end I didn’t really feel like any of them had a massive impact on the plot, which was disappointing.