Polyphase Avatron wrote: ↑Sat Sep 04, 2021 10:19 amThe complaint is that he never suffers any serious consequences that would discourage him from doing it again. It's always played for laughs, and all he gets is the equivalent of a slap on the wrist.Alkiser wrote: ↑Sat Sep 04, 2021 10:03 amThat was my answerShaddy wrote: ↑Sat Sep 04, 2021 9:56 am Alkiser you seem to be quoting posts and I'm not sure if you're trying to respond to them or not, but there's nothing showing up on your posts.
So long as that's true though, listen to me;
The bottom line is this: Roshi's creepy groping shit is fucking nasty and does not need to be in the show. It's not only not funny, it casts sexual assault as at-best the harmless actions of a guy who just doesn't know better. That is not a thing that should be in a show for impressionable kids (or most people, to be honest), and sadly, it's all-over popular anime and manga (and plenty of stuff outside that, but let's keep our scope where it is).
When you have stuff like advisors to the Japanese prime minister saying they should have the right to molest women on public transport, it should be pretty clear that the media portrayal of sexual harassment and assault cannot be so cavalier as for your children's TV cartoon to depict an old man groping young women as just a funny joke that happens sometimes.
Now, is it maybe a bit excessive to pull the entire show until you've gone over the thing? Sure. But complaining about Roshi is entirely justified, and getting sweaty about "political correctness" and "cancel culture" over some women being justifiably upset about the glorified portrayal of a borderline rapist is something only suited for indoctrinated neoreactionary fools or predators wanting to see their own behavior normalized.
There is really nothing about this shit from Roshi that we needed in the 80s and 90s, and there is even less reason to keep it around now. It bears no real influence on the plot, and the effort it would take on either Toei's or Toriyama's part to tone it down from "actively assaulting his female acquaintances on a regular basis" to just "is horny and gross" is extremely minimal. The guy gets off to exercise videos, he leaves porn magazines lying around, says racy things. You can build an old pervert out of that perfectly fine, and what would we lose? The worst excuses for fanservice in the universe? Yeah, I'm not going to treat that as some big loss. It's not even a real win for the "cancel culture". Not molesting people should be the default, Dragon Ball isn't gonna suddenly be some feminist masterpiece now.
Nobody's saying this, and it is incredibly disingenuous of you to suggest that anyone has said this. Everyone knows art does not directly create the behavior it depicts in the consumer. What it does do is reinforce preexisting biases and normalize the culture it depicts. A person is not likely to beat a hooker with a baseball bat no matter how much GTA they play. If they hear about it, though, if they maybe even see it, they will react differently depending on how the culture they've consumed has taught them to perceive such acts. And if their treatment of that situation is "eh that's just a thing that happens", that can be incredibly damaging if they're placed in a position of power. Don't believe me? Look at how any cop treats a domestic abuse situation. Hell, look up how many cops are self-admitted domestic abusers. That didn't come from nowhere. It probably didn't come from GTA either, but the media those guys consumed throughout their lives absolutely played a part in how their mindset developed.
Dragon Ball is first and foremost a lightener, which is supposed to give fun in reading and getting to know the characters and their stories. I'm tired of finding problems everywhere in order to find something in the name of cancel culture.
Dragon Ball wasn't even originally intended for western youth, but for Japanese youth, where jokes with old perverts are the norm (hello Jirayie from Naruto and Sanjie from One Piece, although he's not an old man) in Japanese comics. Funnily enough millions of kids grew up on DB and somehow they don't molest the first woman they meet on the street, yes molestation is bad, humiliating women is bad, rape is bad, these are obvious things everyone knows about.
How is no one paying attention to Roshi's behavior? Every now and then he gets a pat or a slap from Bulma, Chichi or Eighteen, even Yuri slapped him for being a thug. In DB, it was never the case that Roshi was macing someone with impunity, he almost always got punched in the face or any other part of the body.
I once suggested that maybe there should be a scene where he tries to grope a powerful female villain, and she seriously hurts or even kills him for it, and after he's inevitably brought back to life, even his friends agree that he kind of brought it on himself, as something like that was bound to happen sooner or later if he kept up his behavior.
He never suffers major consequences for his actions because it's never an important part of the plot and a single gag to be forgotten once every 30 episodes. From what I remember now, such an episode wouldn't make sense anyway because from what I remember Roshi managed to control his instincts before TOP.
