I've already made my point in the past about how I feel when it comes to Dragon Ball and their handling of female characters so I'll just repeat what I've said before:
Dragon Ball in general is pretty bad at writing female characters. Every major female character introduced in the main story either goes from martial artist to housewife (Chi Chi, #18 and Videl), is already a housewife (Mrs Brief) or is tacked with a sexist gimmick that undermines them as a martial artist (Ranfan).
The worst-written female character in all of Dragon Ball though has to be Gine. Primarily due to how there are several unfortunate implications to unpack in her scenario. She's the only female Saiyan character that Toriyama has ever directly created
and personally written for and it really shows. I mean, for crying out loud, she quits fighting altogether to become a lunch lady. And just to make matters worse, it's heavily implied she embodied the "damsel in distress" trope even as a space pirate. I mean... jeez.
The only female character that is written with any kind of depth or consistency in all of Dragon Ball is Bulma, and even she ends up embracing several outdated stereotypes about women and is usually the butt of the joke when it comes to Dragon Ball's grosser and sexually charged "humour".
Have things gotten better for female characters in Dragon Ball since the 90s? Kind of. Kale and Caulifla were a step in the right direction, despite some creative misgivings such as giving Caulifla SSJ2 so anticlimactically and having Kale (initially) as a walking promotional tool for Broly. And Ribrianne -- despite being widely inconsistent in terms of power scaling -- provided enough charm and whimsy in a gag gimmick... until it was stretched out for far too long and became annoying to watch. But bad habits still creep in with Android #21 being nothing more than "waifu" bait. I think the best female character we've gotten out of modern Dragon Ball is Cheelai. She has a wide range of characterisation, good chemistry with everyone she interacts with, has her own agency and doesn't have to rely on brute force or strength to get her own way.
If you want to find the root of the problem as to why female characters are sometimes written the way they are Dragon Ball, you really have to look at how sexist a country like Japan is. I don't like making sweeping generalisations like that, but when you have
stories like this,
laws like this,
and progressive movements like this, I think it fair to say that there are some very misogynistic mentalities that are very much deep baked into Japan's already very conservative society. And that conservative mentality is adopted by many people in Japan and can potentially bleed into the kind of work we see Japan whether it's in manga, anime or novels.
Hell, this comment Toriyama made a few years ago is packed with unfortunate implications:
"To all boys, adult [men] with the hearts of boys, and the perhaps-few-in-number women who understand the hearts of boys, by all means please see [the movie] and get fired up." -
Source.
This kind of antiquated viewpoint is how characters like Gine are created in the way they are. And at worst, how misogynistic abominations like
Lady Red (
NSFW) are created.
And don't think for a second this is exclusive to Dragon Ball, because it's an industry-wide problem. It's how the concept of "Moe" was born; with the concept being based on the delusion subtext that women (usually specifically teenagers) exist solely to act defenceless and look cute for the purposes of fulfilling a pseudo-protector and sexual dominance fantasy for a man (usually teenage boy or young adult). That concept is not just
INSANELY sexist, but also quite dehumanizing. And this kind of subtext has seen
SO MUCH in anime and manga in the last 30 - 40 years, with it being especially prevalent in light novels. And the fact that the concept has morphed into a subculture that has become very profitable to use and exploit for mangaka, writers and animation studios tells you everything you need to know about how much of an accepted concept they think it is.
I know some people will say, "It's just art. There's no need to worry about it." But at the end of the day, manga and anime are a part of a medium that is considered works of art. And art is not just there for decoration. It's a part of the culture. It moulds significant parts of culture. And culture matters. Artists and writers can and should do, much better.
