Does the sexualization of Bulma at the start of the series bother anyone?

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Re: Does the sexualization of Bulma at the start of the series bother anyone?

Post by ABED » Sun May 27, 2018 8:28 pm

You can just chalk that up to her getting more familiar with Goku, not some big change in personality. And I don't recall exactly, but didn't she say she designed the Dragon Radar?
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Re: Does the sexualization of Bulma at the start of the series bother anyone?

Post by Shaddy » Sun May 27, 2018 8:37 pm

KBABZ wrote:This may be true but I disagree in one particular area: her attitude towards Goku. Over the course of the Pilaf Arc, she goes from using Goku as a cheap bodyguard with freakish levels of strength and disgusting habits to really growing quite fond of him, and one of my favourite moments in the series is when the two reunite early in the Red Ribbon arc and she's genuinely happy to see him again. (and on a more minor note, Red Ribbon is where we're introduced to Bulma's gadgeteering skills, where before she just possessed cool tech but didn't explicitly make any of it)
What I'm talking about is the timeskip between Baba and the 22nd World Martial Arts tournament. I mistakenly said "the end of Red Ribbon" when when what I really meant was Bora being revived (AKA the last major event before the timeskip).

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Re: Does the sexualization of Bulma at the start of the series bother anyone?

Post by KBABZ » Mon May 28, 2018 6:16 am

ABED wrote:You can just chalk that up to her getting more familiar with Goku, not some big change in personality. And I don't recall exactly, but didn't she say she designed the Dragon Radar?
Ooh that's a good point! Clean forgot about that bit. In that case the connection to Capsule Corp gives a great deal of context as to why she's such a genius.

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Re: Does the sexualization of Bulma at the start of the series bother anyone?

Post by ABED » Mon May 28, 2018 8:02 am

KBABZ wrote:
ABED wrote:You can just chalk that up to her getting more familiar with Goku, not some big change in personality. And I don't recall exactly, but didn't she say she designed the Dragon Radar?
Ooh that's a good point! Clean forgot about that bit. In that case the connection to Capsule Corp gives a great deal of context as to why she's such a genius.
Great point about context. I still wonder why Toriyama made her 16 and still in high school, granted I know nothing about Japanese schooling.
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Re: Does the sexualization of Bulma at the start of the series bother anyone?

Post by KBABZ » Mon May 28, 2018 9:47 am

ABED wrote:
KBABZ wrote:
ABED wrote:You can just chalk that up to her getting more familiar with Goku, not some big change in personality. And I don't recall exactly, but didn't she say she designed the Dragon Radar?
Ooh that's a good point! Clean forgot about that bit. In that case the connection to Capsule Corp gives a great deal of context as to why she's such a genius.
Great point about context. I still wonder why Toriyama made her 16 and still in high school, granted I know nothing about Japanese schooling.
It probably was more excusable in the Pilaf arc when we didn't get to know all that much about her normal lifestyle, and saying she did the adventure during school break worked well enough at the time. At the start of the Pilaf arc, Bulma is almost cut from the same cloth as Plamo from The Adventures of Tongpoo (ie, a near-oneshot character who we might not know the backstory of), but then the world and characters of Dragon Ball gradually got more lore and depth through the Tournament and Red Ribbon arcs than the proto-Dragon Ball manga like Tongpoo and Dragon Boy (IMO this is one of the reasons why Goku's age was internally retconned from 14 to 12 years old in the Tournament arc). Because of that it doesn't become an issue until we learn more about Bulma's normal lifestyle later on. There, I imagine Toriyama felt that having Bulma drop out wouldn't have fit her character, and so decided on making her more of an overachieving delinquent type who is way too clever to be in high school at her age, which fits both her smarts and her rebellious nature. Certainly by the time of the Daimao arc high school is no longer a concern of hers at all, so she probably left of her own accord by that point.

(also now that I think of it, the Capsule Corp. context also explains where she gets the resources for all the stuff she makes as well, and why she's so well-versed with Capsules overall)

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Re: Does the sexualization of Bulma at the start of the series bother anyone?

Post by Kunzait_83 » Mon May 28, 2018 4:43 pm

Zephyr wrote:For some, aging from 16 to 18 wouldn't see much internal change. For others, it could see a great deal. So I don't think it's as black and white, in either direction, as you guys are treating it. I don't think there's any indication one way or the other if Bulma is still undergoing puberty at the start of the series, leaving it open to interpretation. So I think the age thing is ultimately less of an issue than the normalization of sexual assault in general. I guess your interpretation of Bulma's completion of puberty, or lack-thereof, comes down to how poor of taste you prefer your Roshi gags to be in.
Shaddy wrote: As for the old guy, I don't really see a point in calling it "worse" to sexually assault her at one age or another, because you shouldn't have any sort of tolerance for this sort of stuff, period. It's not as if the nature of the gags (well, "gags") changes with her age nor does either of their reactions to it, so if he's being fucking shitty I don't see any reason to look at an eighteen year-old Bulma and say "well that's not as bad", it's all the worst.

So yeah basically what zephyr said but I attached a stupid meme to it.
All of this is basically what the vast bulk of my (enormous, even for me) posts in this thread were driving at.

The issue is less with Bulma's age in and of itself (there's a genuine argument to be made and debate to be had as to exactly WHERE in one's teens a person reaches sexual maturity and where precisely that line ought to be drawn legally) and more so with the fundamental nature of most (not ALL 100%, there's nuance there too from one individual joke to the next, but a great deal many) of Muten Roshi's "perv" humor and how its just one mere example of a MASSIVE problem that anime/Otaku culture (and really, broader Japanese culture in general) has long, LONG had with the normalization/minimization of male on female sexual assault: specifically on VERY young girls, at both ages who's level of maturity is fuzzy at best (as with Bulma here) or not so fuzzy at all (a disturbing amount of Moe/ecchi material in general, where its not at all outside the norm to depict many of the girls as fairly pre-pubescent or just about BARELY pubescent).

Once again, this isn't AT ALL to insinuate that sexual content (humorous or otherwise) should not be present in even Shonen/Shojo material for small kids (as I firmly believe that kids are plenty capable of "handling" this stuff, and the idea that they somehow will break like China glass at the sight of pee pee parts and frank sexual talk is absurd on its face) up to and including even depicting sexual violence: the issue is in HOW and under what CONTEXT that depictions of something as serious sexual assault is portrayed.

I mentioned earlier the manga Violence Jack as an example of depicting rape and sexual assault in "the correct" way: Violence Jack, for almost its entire first half of its manga run, was aimed at a SHONEN demographic. So small boys at elementary school age were given an eyeful of disturbingly violent sexual imagery at a pretty young age. The STARK difference though being in the specific manner in which that sexual violence in the book was portrayed: as harrowing and horrifying in the extreme from the perspective of the female victims as well as some male characters who are ALSO sexually victimized in the story: there's a subplot of one male character in particular that stands out who in his backstory (that we're shown in flashback) was the victim of predatory sexual abuse as a young boy from one of his grade school teachers, and its handled as no less disturbing, traumatizing, and grotesque in its nature than it is for the female characters throughout the book who are sexually abused.

So long as the CONTEXT is clear and well handled, I think that virtually ANYTHING should go for kids as well as adult audiences (since I also think that generally speaking we GREATLY underestimate overall what kinds of material kids are able to digest). The issue with Muten Roshi's sexual humor isn't that its just general sexual humor in a kids' manga/anime (which I think is, in itself, perfectly fine and harmless), or even that its humor surrounding the topic of sexual assault (since once again, I think that even the DARKEST of subject matter can be successfully mined for bleak, dark comedy, again provided the context is right)... the issue is that its humor surrounding sexual assault coming from the contextual framework that sexual assault is somehow no big deal really and something that can be casually dismissed as "an out of touch old man simply exhibiting bad manners" at worst.

And the bigger problem is that this is an issue that plagues not just Dragon Ball but a FUCKTON of other anime and manga out there going back DECADES now. It was always an issue back in the day, but its one that's only gotten SUBSTANTIALLY worse, and markedly so, from the 2000s onward.

Whether the context be serious drama (as in Violence Jack) or even in dark humor, sexual assault of ANY kind should NEVER be treated in a manner that (however intentionally or unintentionally) "normalizes", trivializes, or minimizes the very real damage that it does to people. Taken to an extreme across a wide enough spectrum of media, COMBINED with faulty and backwards social norms in real life, this stuff then DOES have a tangible effect on the broader mindset of a large group of people on a cultural level. It may not "create" the fundamental social/cultural problem: but it damn sure certainly does support and reinforce it, thereby making it much harder to correct.

I feel much the same way frankly about something like gun violence: I have MASSIVE fucking problems with the manner in which gun violence and gun death is handled in things like PG-13 summer blockbuster-types of films and the like, where the human bodily harm caused by guns are "sanitized" into a gunshot victim simply bloodlessly falling over, quick and clean, without hardly any visible damage. I find this manner of depicting gun violence to be the absolute worst of both worlds in splitting the difference between showing people getting shot and avoiding the matter entirely. If your'e gonna show someone get shot, that's perfectly fine: but fucking show what happens when a flesh and blood human being gets shot.

I don't care HOW old or young your target audience is. Be honest and up front about what guns do to people. Its messy, gory, and horrific. Unless its Superman, or a similarly superpowered fantasy character (in which the context is OBVIOUSLY different and far removed from normal humans; this also applies to a lot of characters in Dragon Ball and other Wuxia material, who are supernatural fantasy characters consistently depicted as more superhumanly "durable" than normal people) then I think that the mass sanitizing of what guns do to the human body throughout our (largely Western) mass media is but ONE of a much LARGER variety of cultural components that helps contribute to the whole problem in America with "gun culture, via helping to normalize and minimize the nature and reality of what guns are and what they're made to do within the back of people's subconscious.

Whereas the gun thing is more of an American issue, I find the sexual assault thing to be a MASSIVE problem with Japanese culture and media as a whole. And Dragon Ball, in terms of a bunch of the Muten Roshi-related humor, is hardly an exception.
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Re: Does the sexualization of Bulma at the start of the series bother anyone?

Post by Android 50 » Sat Jun 02, 2018 6:27 am

It was all pretty tame compared to the stuff I've seen in a lot of other anime/manga so it never bothered me one bit. Some of the funniest scenes for me in classic DB are Bulma thirsting over Blue and Krillin's strategy to use her titties and Roshi's nosebleeding over them to find the invisible man.
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Re: Does the sexualization of Bulma at the start of the series bother anyone?

Post by TheUltimateVegito » Sun Jun 03, 2018 3:35 pm

I didn't mind it until that one scene with the red ribbon soldiers. I'm sure you guys know what I'm talking about.
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Re: Does the sexualization of Bulma at the start of the series bother anyone?

Post by Bardo117 » Sun Jun 10, 2018 7:39 pm

No, and I was really disappointed as an adolescent that this sexualization did not continue
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Re: Does the sexualization of Bulma at the start of the series bother anyone?

Post by TheGreatness25 » Mon Jun 11, 2018 8:58 am

I never appreciated it. As a kid, I always found it weird and uncomfortable. It had nothing to do with her age or anything, as I never paid attention to it, and it's not like I was a sheltered kid who found all sex-related things to be weird (I did appreciate those things in movies). But I think that it always felt cheap, overly-used, and like it was out of place in Dragon Ball. If it was incidental or every now and then, I could get a laugh out of it. But instead, it felt like a mission to cram a bunch of weird, perverted humor into the story.

Now, as an adult, my opinion is no different. Besides not being able to shake the feeling that Toriyama might have some creepy Roshi tendencies, I still feel like it's out of place. I know it's a weird thing to say considering that DB kicked off with that, but that's how I feel. I guess I'll never get it because I don't know why fan service exists in anime. "Ohh my goddd! That drawn cartoon girl is sooooo hotttt! *GASP!* Whaaaat?! They just showed her boobs! Mmmmmm!" was never me. I have a physical inability to be attracted to a cartoon. Now, I've heard that "You just use your imagination and imagine she's real... It's like the perfect girl!" but that never worked for me, as my perfect girl doesn't have a big head, giant bugged-out eyes, a pointy chin, and (usually with most of these cases) giant, exaggerated chests. So with that said, an incidental comedic moment that happens to contain sexualization might get a chuckle out of me, but if the series goes fishing for laughs by continuously going to that well, it gets really annoying really fast and I find myself asking, "When is the next scene coming?"

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Re: Does the sexualization of Bulma at the start of the series bother anyone?

Post by DragonBallKing » Mon Jun 11, 2018 1:26 pm

Its pretty tame compared to toriyama's other work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaqepnU-Ft8
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Re: Does the sexualization of Bulma at the start of the series bother anyone?

Post by Shaddy » Mon Jun 11, 2018 3:04 pm

I'm not sure "what about the comic he drew about a woman who got raped and decided being a prostitute was easier than being a superhero" is really a justification in a thread about whether he portrays sexual situations well.

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Re: Does the sexualization of Bulma at the start of the series bother anyone?

Post by ABED » Mon Jun 11, 2018 4:09 pm

TheGreatness, how is the sexual humor out of place in DB? Is it certain jokes or all sexual humor?
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Re: Does the sexualization of Bulma at the start of the series bother anyone?

Post by TheGreatness25 » Mon Jun 11, 2018 4:57 pm

To me it's out of place because I didn't watch Dragon Ball for it. To me, the story was about adventure, fantasy, martial arts, overcoming insurmountable odds, friendship. So, to me, when I thought of Dragon Ball, nudity and sexualization never came to mind. As I said, it's one thing if it's sprinkled in every now and then incidentally, but a lot of times it seemed forced to get a perverted chuckle out of someone. "Let's pause this adventure and have Goku remove Bulma's panties for no reason at all and then let's have her flash Roshi because... well, because he's a giant perv and wants nothing more than to see her panties. Ha! Comedy gold!" I guess because it was never my thing, it just feels dumb to me and I can't wait for the story to continue past that point. Besides, if they showed that on Toonami (or I guess on the old Kid Mark VHS tapes that I had) when I was a kid, it would make for some serious awkwardness when I was watching with someone else -- not because they'd be like "Oh no!" but because I don't want to watch that stuff with others around. It's uncomfortable to me. If I know what I'm getting into, it's different. I know what I'm in for when I sit down to watch Shameless with my girlfriend. I don't mind it. But if I'm innocently sitting around watching a cartoon and suddenly there's a super random brush with nudity or perversion, it doesn't do it for me. Again, if it is something that is incidental and doesn't really require an entire set-up (like Bulma being really upset at something and Roshi giving her a hug and his hand slips down a little too low so he gets hit for it), it could be funny. But pulling away from the story to set up some crappy perverted joke? Eh, not my style.

Again, this is all preference. I don't need to be told about how I'm not in-touch with something-or-other or whatever. I'm fully in-touch with sexuality (no pun intended). I just personally don't understand it in cartoons when it's meant to be sexy. I think that's what I'm driving at. If it's meant as a mockery, I think I'm okay with it. But if it tries to be sexy, I can't get behind it because I don't find cartoons sexy. Nor do I find creepy-ass perversion to be sexy either, so I can't relate. If Buggs Bunny dresses up in drag and flashes his leg to Yosemite Sam to draw Sam in, that's one thing. Trying to hand out fan service in hopes that someone would find it sexy, is another. I don't find cartoons sexy, so I'm not into it. I am okay with perverted humor, but if it's creepy, I have serious reservations about that. In Dragon Ball, all of the sex humor comes off as creepy and I don't like it. Roshi, for example, acts like a total creep. He doesn't act like like a suave ladies' man, even if in his own mind -- no, he acts like the guy who would cut out a hole in a bathroom and stay there all day just to see a girl nude without her consent. Now that's the kind of stuff I can't stand because I have zero tolerance for that in real life, so I guess it translates to my preferred entertainment.

Anyway, I'm not a fan. But can't change it or rewrite it, so surely someone must have liked it. If so, there you go, you have it forever. If I were writing it, it would never even enter my mind to have humor like that.

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Re: Does the sexualization of Bulma at the start of the series bother anyone?

Post by ABED » Mon Jun 11, 2018 5:29 pm

This might just me being pedantic again, but that doesn't mean it's out of place. It's not inconsistent with the world being created. It started off as a gag manga and while it grows more earnest over time, those roots are still apparent. You not liking those types of jokes is fine, but it feels very consistent with a world where characters are named after instruments, foods, and articles of clothing. Don't forget that there are characters named Chichi, Bulma, and Bra.

Toriyama didn't pause the story have Bulma accidentally flash Roshi. It was a long way to go for a joke, but that joke was all in character. It shows how naïve Goku is, how perverted Muten Roshi is, and the lengths Bulma will go to get the Dragon Ball. I think you need to dissociate your preferences from what the story actually is.
But if I'm innocently sitting around watching a cartoon and suddenly there's a super random brush with nudity or perversion, it doesn't do it for me.
That's on you and a little on FUNi for not knowing what you were in for. You thought you were in for a show aimed at American children of a certain age when it was actually aimed at Japanese children of a certain age. No one tried to get anything over on you.

For the sake of clarification, I am in no way claiming you have to like this sort of humor (all though not all the sexual jokes in DB are the same) or that I like them, just that it is not out of place.
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Re: Does the sexualization of Bulma at the start of the series bother anyone?

Post by Vegeta_Sama » Tue Jun 12, 2018 12:39 pm

Bardo117 wrote:No, and I was really disappointed as an adolescent that this sexualization did not continue
I'm 100 % with you :D
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Re: Does the sexualization of Bulma at the start of the series bother anyone?

Post by John Pannozzi » Mon Jun 18, 2018 9:16 pm

Kunzait_83 wrote:Yes, there are an increasing number of exceptions now, and have been for some time (as we have indeed come a LONG way over the years): but even with the ever-increasing progress that's been and still being made, the overall broader spectrum is STILL tilted in many ways to where there's SO. IMPOSSIBLY. MANY. Female characters across ALL forms of media for ALL ages that are are principally there to cater to the sexual fantasies (both conscious and subconscious) of young guys; and not just in raw physical appearance, but again in their demeanor, their personality traits and their interests, etc. Most of the female cast of Scott Pilgrim for example is basically just raw “the perfect nerd girlfriend material” fantasy for geeky, lonely young men who grew up on NES video games with little else to define them (“She's pretty and likes all the same things I like! One of them's even a cute Japanese schoolgirl!”).
I like most of what you said, but I couldn't disagree more with the part I bolded.

I wonder if you've actually even read the Scott Pilgrim books? Maybe you watched the SP movie, which admittedly did water down pretty much everyone's personalities. But I thought the Scott Pilgrim graphic novels had wonderfully-written female characters, and was a story of empathy that if anything was a wake up call to male geeks about how to treat women (and people in general). And if this Tumblr post from the books' creator is anything to go by, he has a pretty damned nuanced view of women and relationships.
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Re: Does the sexualization of Bulma at the start of the series bother anyone?

Post by floofychan333 » Wed Jun 20, 2018 7:51 pm

John Pannozzi wrote:
Kunzait_83 wrote:Yes, there are an increasing number of exceptions now, and have been for some time (as we have indeed come a LONG way over the years): but even with the ever-increasing progress that's been and still being made, the overall broader spectrum is STILL tilted in many ways to where there's SO. IMPOSSIBLY. MANY. Female characters across ALL forms of media for ALL ages that are are principally there to cater to the sexual fantasies (both conscious and subconscious) of young guys; and not just in raw physical appearance, but again in their demeanor, their personality traits and their interests, etc. Most of the female cast of Scott Pilgrim for example is basically just raw “the perfect nerd girlfriend material” fantasy for geeky, lonely young men who grew up on NES video games with little else to define them (“She's pretty and likes all the same things I like! One of them's even a cute Japanese schoolgirl!”).
I like most of what you said, but I couldn't disagree more with the part I bolded.

I wonder if you've actually even read the Scott Pilgrim books? Maybe you watched the SP movie, which admittedly did water down pretty much everyone's personalities. But I thought the Scott Pilgrim graphic novels had wonderfully-written female characters, and was a story of empathy that if anything was a wake up call to male geeks about how to treat women (and people in general). And if this Tumblr post from the books' creator is anything to go by, he has a pretty damned nuanced view of women and relationships.
I push back on the Scott Pilgrim thing as well, but I think there's also some truth to it. The female characters are deliberately attractive and in some cases aren't developed enough, but for the most part I think they're extremely well-written. Plus, Knives Chau is Chinese, not Japanese, and there's not much in the books that supports the idea that all the female characters are into video games and nerd things. Music, absolutely, but the implication that the female characters are video games nerds is extremely subtle. Gaming is a huge motif in the series but it's mostly reflected through Scott and occasionally group scenes in flashbacks.

In all, I couldn't agree more with what Kunzait posted on this thread, but this is one thing I'll push back on a bit. Any thoughts?
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Re: Does the sexualization of Bulma at the start of the series bother anyone?

Post by DarkPrince_92 » Wed Jun 20, 2018 9:12 pm

Vegeta_Sama wrote:
Bardo117 wrote:No, and I was really disappointed as an adolescent that this sexualization did not continue
I'm 100 % with you :D
I'm joining in. :lol:

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