I think feminism is the reason for the overpowered female characters

[buutenks]

overpowered females? RoFL. Seriously OP, it is a potara fusion from a God Tier(Fem Broly) + one that is comparable to ssj2 Goku. Did u forget how vegetto was trashing Buuhan of all people in ssj1? While ssj1 Goku or Vegeta would have gotten finger flicked to a next dimension.

And ribrianne is fat because Toriyama loves trolling concepts.

[Kinokima]

Well I wasn't happy when I read this thread this morning but have to say a lot of replies not agreeing with OP points really cheered me up.

I am not saying the handling of Kale, Caulifla, or Ribirianne have been perfect but there is nothing wrong with female saiyans or writing a character with a different body type. If having positive role models for girls is an "agenda" than its an agenda I fully support and acting like this is a negative thing is ridiculous. These characters are not going to replace the Goku and the rest.

Although I don't think a feminist agenda was the reason these characters were created there is nothing wrong with feminism in itself.

[Zillamon51]

1. Is to sell more merchendise

. 2 to intreduce the politicly correct sjw/diversety agenda into dragonball. Just like marvel and star wars did

1. Well duh. It's well known that a big factor in the success of a show like this, is its ability to move merchandise. The introduction of prominent female fighters is to hopefully get girls interested in the show, and buying stuff. Strong female characters are also being embraced more by male viewers. Look at the success of Wonder Woman, Black Widow, and Rey. It isn't all girls supporting them, a lot of guys do to. It's a natural progression for the DB franchise.

2. Is there even a vocal feminist / SJW movement in Japan? I don't know. But the complaint seems to be how the characters are being handled. I get the Mary Sue complaints, and kind of agree. But the thing is this: They don't want the U7 Saiyans lagging behind U6's. The show isn't going to devote a lot of time to supporting characters, who live in a different universe from the main cast, going on long and arduous adventures to earn their power. They have to be brought up to speed quickly, for story purposes.

As for Ribrianne, as has already been pointed out, she's just an inversion of the Magical Girl trope of characters like Sailor Moon getting more glamorous when they transform. But look at U2 in general: They have the only female GoD (out of twelve), and even she's always going on about love and beauty. Hardly progressive overall.

[MajinMan]

This has to be a joke, right? How do you HATE a couple of characters so much to the point where you start making up stuff to justify their existence for yourself? You don't like them, then you don't like them. They have nothing to do with "sjw agendas" or "fat pride." That's not how Toriyama does things.

Kale and Caulifla are simply female Saiyans that are strong. Them fusing doesn't make them a "mary sue" for fucks sake. Might as well call everyone who has ever fused a "mary sue." And Ribrianne is a goddamn parody character. She's meant to be fat and annoying because it's parodying the whole magical girl genre. It baffles me that people who come to Kanzenshuu and participate in multiple discussions STILL don't understand this. Just shoot me already.

[Torturephile]

I don't think Japan is on a wave of feminazis like the U.S. is.

[JulieYBM]

I imagine Toriyama is not aware of what a feminist is and simply applied his usual reversing techniques to create his own parody of a magical girl character. Caulifla seems to mostly just be Toriyama's usual tough female, except a battle-loving Saiyan, while Kale appears to be more so a creation of Nagamine Tatsuya and the others leading the animated series. Even then, Nagamine and gang seem to have molded Caulifla and Kale into matching their own tastes as Otaku that feel moe for fictional characters and gone from there.

I wouldn't worry about anything. Nobody's going to use Dragon Ball in an official capacity to make you feel bad about yourself.

[Lord Beerus]

When Toriyama wants strong female characters in Dragon Ball, he creates them. And then it's up to Toei and Toyotaro to introduce them, in this particular scenario with Dragon Ball Super.

I think we're looking too deeply into something that quite simple on paper.

[VegettoEX]

I don't think Japan is on a wave of feminazis like the U.S. is.

This kind of specific drive-by commentary is eyeroll-inducing and not particularly welcome. Please add actual substance to your posts.

[Timetraveller]

What i think toei is doing with kale and cauliflia and also with ribrianne is to gain the female audience. Dragon ball was allwayes a male dominent franchise. I think toei wants the dragonball fandom go expend into the female territory for servel reasons

1. Is to sell more merchendise

. 2 to intreduce the politicly correct sjw/diversety agenda into dragonball. Just like marvel and star wars did

I think the later is more dominent. Thats why kefla is so OP. They dont care about how it looks. They want a marry sue and they want it badly.

This isnt just about the Saiyan girls but about ribrianne as well. Look at the design of ribrianne. Transformation from a skinny model looking into an overwhight middle aged looking woman. The sjw agenda is clear here. Sjw's and feminist despise good looking woman and promote obesity non stop. In the name of "diversety".

Thats why ribrianne is being shoved in out throats over and over. I believe its in the name of feminism.

Agree with you 100%. Although I don't know why they're trying to do this. DBZ has and always will be a shounen anime. That's who buys most of their merchandise. Introducing half-assed female characters for the sake of political correctness just feels wrong to me. If you're going to do it, do it properly. A character like Rey from Star Wars would be well received by fans and would be a fresh addition to the franchise.

[Timetraveller]

This has to be a joke, right? How do you HATE a couple of characters so much to the point where you start making up stuff to justify their existence for yourself? You don't like them, then you don't like them. They have nothing to do with "sjw agendas" or "fat pride." That's not how Toriyama does things.

Kale and Caulifla are simply female Saiyans that are strong. Them fusing doesn't make them a "mary sue" for fucks sake. Might as well call everyone who has ever fused a "mary sue." And Ribrianne is a goddamn parody character. She's meant to be fat and annoying because it's parodying the whole magical girl genre. It baffles me that people who come to Kanzenshuu and participate in multiple discussions STILL don't understand this. Just shoot me already.

They've done more than just fuse. Mary Sue's the perfect way to describe them.

Ribrianne's like the Para Para brothers from GT. Annoying parodies of genres that were popular back in the day that no one asked for. They might still be funny in small doses but Ribrianne's been forced into the show for multiple episodes now. It's gotten old and irritating.

[VegettoEX]

DBZ has and always will be a shounen anime. That's who buys most of their merchandise.

Dragon Ball was one of the many series at the time that invigorated an entirely new audience for shonen in Japan (something Daryl Surat calls "neo-shonen", which I had him write about for our 30th anniversary magazine), driving Weekly Shonen Jump to its golden age and highest circulation ever, with readership being roughly 50% male and 50% female.

Yes, Toriyama specifically mentions that he's writing for young Japanese boys, and yes the marketing demographic's name (not genre) is still grandfathered in from ye' olden days, but to discount an entire movement that defined the storytelling, characterizations, marketing, etc. for decades to come? To hand-wave an entire audience?

I'm curious if anyone making any of this commentary, in this thread and elsewhere, has any kind of even cursory knowledge about... well... anything.

[Saturnine]

Some people just notice patterns where there are none, not much you can do about it.

Most conspiracy theorists, in fact.

[Baggie_Saiyan]

So were the reason Toei propped Trunks up last arc because of manism?

I don't understand why people think there is a hidden agenda behind these things, maybe things are created because that's what the creators envisioned?

Much less the fact that none of the characters OP mentioned has even shown any signs of "feminism", Ribrianne is just obssessed with love in general and Kale wants to useful to Cauli and Cauli wants to reach as higher state as she can.

This is the problem of over analysing a f**king children's cartoon show. It's. Not. That. Serious.

[Timetraveller]

DBZ has and always will be a shounen anime. That's who buys most of their merchandise.

Dragon Ball was one of the many series at the time that invigorated an entirely new audience for shonen in Japan (something Daryl Surat calls "neo-shonen", which I had him write about for our 30th anniversary magazine), driving Weekly Shonen Jump to its silver age and highest circulation ever, with readership being roughly 50% male and 50% female.

I'm curious if anyone making any of this commentary, in this thread and elsewhere, has any kind of even cursory knowledge about... well... anything.

I speak from experience and from someone who grew up watching Toonami in the west. I'd say 90% of the DBZ fans at school were male and most of the people I know watching Super are also male. Do you have any current stats that say the DBS readership/viewership is split 50/50 between both genders?

[Timetraveller]

Some people just notice patterns where there are none, not much you can do about it.

Most conspiracy theorists, in fact.

Feminism here just means introducing female characters to appease the female audience and to capture a wider demographic for their merchandise. It's "marketing feminism" if that's even a term

[MajinMan]

Some people just notice patterns where there are none, not much you can do about it.

Most conspiracy theorists, in fact.

Feminism here just means introducing female characters to appease the female audience and to capture a wider demographic for their merchandise. It's "marketing feminism" if that's even a term

No random girl is going to start watching Super and become an avid Dragon Ball fan just because a few female characters were introduced halfway into an ongoing arc. There might be the rare few exceptions that do, but I highly, highly doubt Toei is doing this to attract female fans.

[Nero<>Akira]

The reason they're strong is cause AT created the saiyans in U6 who are just better than Goku & Vegeta. I don't think anyone really wants to admit this lol Caulifla, Cabba, & Kale (to some extent) are naturally better than Goku & Vegeta will ever be if continuing to push themselves and found themselves in the same circumstances as them with their training. That's just a fact. The only reason they won't be is because they aren't the main characters aka plot. Goku & Vegeta are. Oh the irony.

And can people admit and accept that these female characters, particularly Caulifla, achieved forms in the same ways the other characters did like ANGER or from real life martial arts concepts. Yes, "tingly back" is real and also a very simplified way of putting it considering its the feeling the Saiyans get when they transform or where they need to concentrate their ki to achieve that form. "In martial arts, there are three Dan Tian/Tanden (energy centers) that ki/chi goes through. The middle one, where the tingly feeling is on a Saiyan, is specifically the EMOTIONAL CENTER of ki flow. Super Saiyan is a transformation related to very intense emotions (such as rage)." - Kendamu @ KendamuZ. This is not a cooincidence. Plus these guys cannot be judged by real life standards and would curb stomp boo era saiyans except maybe ultimate gohan, ssj3 gotenks or goku and even that's debatable considering the scaling in Super now.

[CJStriker_CBR]

This has to be a joke, right? How do you HATE a couple of characters so much to the point where you start making up stuff to justify their existence for yourself? You don't like them, then you don't like them. They have nothing to do with "sjw agendas" or "fat pride." That's not how Toriyama does things.

Kale and Caulifla are simply female Saiyans that are strong. Them fusing doesn't make them a "mary sue" for fucks sake. Might as well call everyone who has ever fused a "mary sue." And Ribrianne is a goddamn parody character. She's meant to be fat and annoying because it's parodying the whole magical girl genre. It baffles me that people who come to Kanzenshuu and participate in multiple discussions STILL don't understand this. Just shoot me already.

^^^^^^Well Said!

This kind of thread is why I usually remind myself why the net is not always the best representation of fandom as a whole, just a select group that talks allot.

Political ideals like Feminism and Social Justice are wholly western concepts both built greater-up in society for several decades for many reasonable reasons and have gains prominence on the Net allot more over the last decade. But like anything Political it sparks debate and controversy, but it still a whole Western thing. While I say it to some degrees might exist in other countries like Japan I hardly believe it is as much of a major concept as in the west.

Their is not evidence this is the Case in why Toei and the Writers made more females and sadly is a shot in the dark to give excuses why someone does not like them, adding politics to them. They exist cause the writers wanted and that this is always how Toriyama made characters, most any dragon ball fans who cared to know Toriyama knows this about him.

Again this over thinking on why a character exist someone does not fully like is starting to get over the top, starting to become strange on the dislikers side.

So it is best to separate politics of the unreal from this show and remember the reality on why characters become characters in this show like they always have. It is seriously not hard to realize, we have seen it since the show was created, it is what Toriyama does.

[VegettoEX]

I speak from experience and from someone who grew up watching Toonami in the west. I'd say 90% of the DBZ fans at school were male and most of the people I know watching Super are also male. Do you have any current stats that say the DBS readership/viewership is split 50/50 between both genders?

I'll see your experience and raise you one super-fan wife.

The head-in-the-sand viewpoint that this is an exclusive boys' club is ridonkulous. Girls have been a huge part of this fandom both in the east and the west since forever. I've already outlined the entire readership gender shift in Japan partially spearheaded by Dragon Ball (alongside specifically Saint Seiya). This demographic split remains to this day, being one of the reasons for One Piece's massive, continued success (it appears to all genders of all ages). The most basic search for statistics gets you this one from 2005 referenced in various Wikipedia articles on the subject. Here's another more recent analysis with stats from 2012.

Dragon Ball Super is par for the course, doing all the same things it did before, and then some with regard to its viewership/readership/audience.

[Kinokima]

I speak from experience and from someone who grew up watching Toonami in the west. I'd say 90% of the DBZ fans at school were male and most of the people I know watching Super are also male. Do you have any current stats that say the DBS readership/viewership is split 50/50 between both genders?

I'll see your experience and raise you one super-fan wife.

The head-in-the-sand viewpoint that this is an exclusive boys' club is ridonkulous. Girls have been a huge part of this fandom both in the east and the west since forever. I've already outlined the entire readership gender shift in Japan partially spearheaded by Dragon Ball (alongside specifically Saint Seiya). This demographic split remains to this day, being one of the reasons for One Piece's massive, continued success (it appears to all genders of all ages). The most basic search for statistics gets you this one from 2005 referenced in various Wikipedia articles on the subject. Here's another more recent analysis with stats from 2012.

Dragon Ball Super is par for the course, doing all the same things it did before, and then some with regard to its viewership/readership/audience.

Thanks Vegetto I don't think most Dragon Ball fans are men at all. I am a woman and I know a lot of other female fans. In fact my friend and her sisters were who got me into the show back in the day. Also just look at tumblr and you will see in the West at least there is a very large female fan base. Are there more female fans I am not saying that but to discount the female fanbase completely is also silly. And Shounen comics in general have a very large female readership in Japan so it would be weird to completely ignore that demographic