Inclusivity towards women in Dragon Ball?

[Soppa Saia People]

I think there's a decent amount of anime where characters races are pretty non descriptive, and a lot of people default too white, imo is kinda stupid, but with something like Dragon Ball, it being a east asian story is pretty woven into it's DNA (not to mention Toriyama's tendency to draw all the Son family as really tan). I can't imagine many here share that opinion for most Dragon Ball characters, if any.

[Kunzait_83]

I'm sorry, I thought it was a general consensus here that most anime characters has a problem with "white characteristics"? There have been a lot of articles written about how anime favors "fair skin". But yes, you are right. Most of the leading characters in Dragon Ball are...Chinese? Non-descript Asian? I'll edit it to look less bad.

Dragon Ball is so aggressively Chinese - in its style, influences, tone, and aesthetics - most of the time, its almost absurd.

The idea that most of these characters were at any stage of their creation envisioned as white/Caucasian is beyond laughable, and to me tends to say way, way more about the perspective of those who most often tend to make that sort of claim (that is to say, too many Westerners seem to easily lapse into viewing and perceiving Dragon Ball as this somehow American thing: gee, I wonder where THAT perception could have initially come from?) than it does anything in the actual series itself.

[JulieYBM]

I took so long to write this post that a bunch of people replied before me with much better posts.

A note on the idea of "forced diversity":

Nowadays I think a lot of people tend to think of art in terms of it being a product to be bought and sold. When you look at it in that way, you think of it less individually, and moreso how it contributes to the collective consciousness of the public. And in that regard, I understand how frustrating it is when stories don't tend to include LGBT or female characters in leading roles, because in a way it feels like authors are introducing the idea to the public consciousness that those people are lesser, don't exist, or don't matter. Because when you pay for art, you inherently are investing your own expectations into it and are going to think of it more in terms of how it affects you than how it affects the person who made it.

However, it's important to remember that art is the expression of one's self. Their history, their personality, their experiences, and their beliefs. Writers tend to write what they know. Akira Toriyama, a 29-year-old Japanese man in 1984, probably didn't grow up knowing a lot of strong independent women in his life or seeing a lot of them in fiction. When he was imagining the heroes of the story, he probably envisioned them as cool strong white guys, because the contrary simply isn't something he was familiar with and didn't feel right for him to write at the time.

Likewise, if I was writing a story, what happens if I envision the leading protagonist as a straight white male? Or if three out of four of the hero group in the story are straight white males, with the last one being gay?

That's simply how the story and its characters feels to me, in my head, but that's somehow treated as problematic in the modern age. Why DON'T I envision the protagonist as being a trans black woman? I don't know, I just don't. Am I supposed to feel bad about it? Going back to the "public consciousness" I mentioned earlier, such a decision is somehow treated as a statement that non-straight white males don't belong in leading roles, or that I don't want those groups in my story, or even that I don't like or support those groups in general. Even though I'm bi leaning towards men, my fiancé is bi leaning towards women, my best friend is black and nonbinary, and women make up 90% of every friendship I've ever had. (Yeah, I know, the "some of my best friends are X" excuse, but what else am I supposed to say?)

Therefore I'm pressured, both internally and externally, to include characteristics that don't align with how I see the character in my head. If I don't, people start to wonder if I'm a TERF, or an incel, or some other ridiculous label. That's what "forced diversity" means to me: the thought that I might be called a bigot just because I might not feel like being all that inclusive or that it might compromise my vision, so I comply because that's what society wants me to do.

Now, you might say "why would it hurt your story? Just include a trans character, it's not hard" but it's not that simple. If I were to include a woman, or an LGBT character, I would want their gender, their identity, or their queerness, to be important and to matter, and to contribute to the story. Yes, trans people exist, but the only way you're going to gain acceptance and understanding from the public (which I assume is the goal) is by educating people, and the only way to educate people is if you go farther than simply letting them know you're there. It bothers me when people are "inclusive" yet it feels like their character is just "one of the guys" and if that character WERE a straight white male, then it would be like nothing changed about them. So if I were to make one of the heroes or villains a woman, for example, then that might radically alter the character's behavior, beliefs, and actions, which might radically alter how the story plays out as a whole. It isn't as simple as flicking a switch in Photoshop to give them boobs.

You might also say "well, you should be more cultured and more experienced with other kinds of people before deciding to write anything" but that honestly seems selfish and unfair. Not everyone can be the next great author, nor do they want to. We're all just trying to make it in this world, which gets harder and harder every year, and we'd prefer to do that by making art about stuff we'd just like to make by default.

I find it funny that you're using Yuu Yuu Hakusho as an example here, considering it's a case of an author including a trans woman, having her sexually assaulted by a 14 year old boy, and then having said 14 year old boy tell her that she's not a real woman because she still has her penis. And then said author went on to create a decidedly more respectful trans feminine character years later in Hunter x Hunter.

Heck, this isn't even getting into the subtextual queerness of Kurama and Hiei, either.

Authors are going to use us no matter what, so it's important that we demand proper representation. That being said, again, commercial artists like Togashi aren't exactly being bullied into including diverse characters in their work. They're either choosing to, or in the case of the US, doing so as an appeal to get the money of diverse people. We no longer live in a world where pop media revolves entirely around white cishet people.

And, for the ten billionth time, I really don't understand where people are getting this persecution complex from over not including diverse characters. Who (?) is coming for you (any creator?) because you (any creator?) didn't include a trans woman in your (any creator's?) story?

Like, okay, I am kind loathed to use my own novel as an example in my own post, but I guess I'll do it for the sake of easily explaining my point: I'm writing a novel about two trans girls who discover that they're trans (gasp) and bisexual, while also exploring their feelings about their lives, their internal hang-ups, and their recontextualizing of their lifelong friendship. One of them is dealing with a strained relationship with their father and the masculinity that they felt expected to perform, and the other is dealing with a lifetime of being bullied for being visibly queer and neurodivergent. The former is an Asian American woman, mostly because I was tired of seeing nothing but white love interests, and I am quite obviously (to anyone who knows me, at least), not Asian American (specifically in this case, Korean-Japanese). Now, because I don't want to write something insensitive, I put a great deal of effort into making sure I didn't accidentally include some dumb shit.

Obviously, writers are going to do whatever the fuck they want, but at the end of the day, they've still got a responsibility to create depictions that don't propagate bad stereotypes about minorities, lest they then be criticized for their work.

Y'know, criticized like how so many people have been criticizing Dragon Ball for its depictions of women, queer people and people of color.

[DefinitiveDubs]

And, for the ten billionth time, I really don't understand where people are getting this persecution complex from over not including diverse characters. Who (?) is coming for you (any creator?) because you (any creator?) didn't include a trans woman in your (any creator's?) story?

Because when films aren't diverse, they tend to be criticized and told they're perpetuating white supremacy and patriarchy. When articles like these are written year after year, what are people supposed to think? Believe what you want over whether the criticism is valid or deserved, but don't act like the fear comes from nowhere.

[AliTheZombie13]

Kind of off-topic, but I wonder how long until getting a female main villain. Like a final boss lady.

Daima is apparently having a female Kaioshin as a second villain? Hopefully, it goes somewhere.

[JulieYBM]

And, for the ten billionth time, I really don't understand where people are getting this persecution complex from over not including diverse characters. Who (?) is coming for you (any creator?) because you (any creator?) didn't include a trans woman in your (any creator's?) story?

Because when films aren't diverse, they tend to be criticized and told they're perpetuating white supremacy and patriarchy. When articles like these are written year after year, what are people supposed to think? Believe what you want over whether the criticism is valid or deserved, but don't act like the fear comes from nowhere.

Corporations are not people. Criticizing corporations for not giving marginalized creators the platform to tell more diverse stories is hardly telling some random smalltime author creating an entire book by themselves what to do.

The issue that we have is a systemic issue—grievances are being brought against that system, of which individuals with power might be called out by name, but are still nevertheless representing a system that has historically put out images of diverse people that intentionally frame them terribly.

[Kunzait_83]

Corporations are not people.

Literally the very center-most core of a VAST chunk of our political problems is the societal and legalized perception of corporations as people.

And yeah: they're not people. At all.

And yeah, there is a VAST gulf of a difference between an individual, independent artist, and a corporate conglomerate. The former has nowhere NEAR the reach, impact, and power of the latter, and the latter is more than fair game for deeper criticism on an institutional level for its broader impact on society as a whole.

Conflating criticism of corporate art/product with criticism for random, small time artists eking out a living on their own is where a LOT of the misperceptions about this shit tends to stem from (and you see it in the political realm too, where too many people confuse and conflate criticism of a political party and its leadership writ large with criticism of the party's individual average voters and vice versa): and the reality is, they're NOT the same thing and never have been.

Not to say that individual, independent, small-scale creators are beyond criticism themselves of course: they certainly are not. But most of these broad, larger societal critiques of art and media's portrayals of minorities (or lack thereof) are generally and largely speaking about "art" in the sense of mass produced corporate product from heavily mass market corporate entities rather than random indie comic artist or what have you. Most of the time at least.

In other words, your random fanfic or indie webcomic or whatever is going to have nowhere NEAR the same outsized societal impact as the next Marvel/Disney monstrosity and the like: the latter is usually where the real meat of these sorts of fights lies.

[Adamant]

This thread sure went places.

But um, whether you want to call it "forced diversity" or something else, there's absolutely something to be said about how "diversity" way too often just gets interpreted as "more black people", which is extremely noticable here in Europe where creators making a point of producing "diverse shows" just make a chunk of the cast black... in countries with relatively few black people and much much larger amounts of people from middle eastern and other muslim countries - relevant minorities that don't get much screentime because the creators tend to get their opinions from Americanized Twitter rather than their actual audience. This is clearly not what the actual audience wants, nor is it representative of the kind of diverse community THEY actually live in.

See also non-Japanese people complaining about the lack of black people in Japanese cartoons while not caring particularly about the kind of diverse demographics Japan actually HAS and which would be relevant representation over THERE.

Yeah it's a bit of a departure from the actual title, but the thread was touching upon this anyway.

[Hellspawn28]

And, for the ten billionth time, I really don't understand where people are getting this persecution complex from over not including diverse characters. Who (?) is coming for you (any creator?) because you (any creator?) didn't include a trans woman in your (any creator's?) story?

Because when films aren't diverse, they tend to be criticized and told they're perpetuating white supremacy and patriarchy. When articles like these are written year after year, what are people supposed to think? Believe what you want over whether the criticism is valid or deserved, but don't act like the fear comes from nowhere.

If you read what they wrote, they make good points. Diversity is important because other people do exist besides white straight cis gender men and white women. According to LA Times, the percentage of white actors starring in the top films released in theaters recently as 2022 was 78%, an increase from 72.4%. Of course, you will probably be like "Good art matters by the end of the day" and my answer is "No duh!". Representation is still important because it gives people something to relate or look up too. White cis hetero people are always widely represented in everything for ages. Look at the movies and TV shows that get release. It's always usually a white cis hetero person. When any POC, LGBTQ+, or even a non Christian/Catholic person is shown, they are usually a side character, a background character, or a plot device to help the white person (Bruce Almighty comes to mind).

People are just sick of getting put in second or third place. The fucking idiots that love to yell about "WOKE" need to shut up and deal with the changing time. They are no different than the people who got mad over movies like Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967) in the 1960s because it has interracial love because they hate seeing times changing.

[Jord]

None of this characters are real people, they have no more free will than chesspieces. The choice of her not fighting isn't something she made, but something the writer did, and the only reason the writer does it is because 18 is a woman. Kuririn was a father, and he sure didn't choose not to fight the bad guys, so I don't get your point with 18. Why are men allowed to have kids and still be themselves, while the women have to give up on everything that is not directly related to being a mother?

She helping against Super 17 is nice, but it's only a small drop of water for an entire day of walking in a desert

Why do you base 18's/Kuririn' choice for him to fight/ be himself on his gender and subsequently stretch it out towards all men? I find that kind of sexist, actually.

18 May be stronger but what she has in power, she lacks in experience. How many battles against formidable opponents has she been in? She was way overpowered against Trunks/Gohan and the Z-warriors, then she quickly lost against Cell. She had no formal training. Even though she is pretty strong, her lack of battle experience could jeopardize the whole mission.

Kuririn meanwhile has a ton of battle experience, has previously fought alongside Gohan, Vegeta and Goku. They know each other's techniques and can utilize them in a team effort. Based on experience, not gender, it seems like Kuririn is the obvious choice.

Yeah Krillin had a lot of experience being killed and blown up, where would the cast be without him?

This isn't a One Piece topic so please refrain from using strawman arguments. It doesn't help your case at all.

[NeoZ Duwang]

Why do you base 18's/Kuririn' choice for him to fight/ be himself on his gender and subsequently stretch it out towards all men? I find that kind of sexist, actually.

18 May be stronger but what she has in power, she lacks in experience. How many battles against formidable opponents has she been in? She was way overpowered against Trunks/Gohan and the Z-warriors, then she quickly lost against Cell. She had no formal training. Even though she is pretty strong, her lack of battle experience could jeopardize the whole mission.

Kuririn meanwhile has a ton of battle experience, has previously fought alongside Gohan, Vegeta and Goku. They know each other's techniques and can utilize them in a team effort. Based on experience, not gender, it seems like Kuririn is the obvious choice.

I think you missed the point

They are not real people, they are fictional characters. If 18 has less experience than Kuririn... than why not give her some? A character doesn't write themselves, the writer is the one making all choices

I also don't buy the excuse of her being less experienced for two reasons: A) That's not what they go with in the series. She stays home because she is the one who has to take care of Maron because... mother I guess? In fact, she lasts longer than Kuririn in the T.O.P, not because of power, but because Kuririn got carried away. Doesn't seem like he's particularly more experienced than her at that point in the story anymore. & B) Characters with no experience are everywhere in Dragon Ball. Goten and Trunks certainly had zero experience with serious fighting when being set up as potential destroyers of Majin Boo

You could say that I am stretching things, but that's because there's societal context for these things. The idea of one parent staying to take care of the child is... not absurd, makes perfect sense. But is that really what's happening here? Because it NEVER stops any of the male parents from fighting. Goku and Vegeta have two children both and still fight, Gohan has a daughter and still fights (yes, he doesn't train as much, but that's because of who HE is, as an individual, not because he's a father), Kuririn is the only character that is a man that I can think of that stopped fighting after getting a family... and he still participates in battles just as much as he did before that happened. Meanwhile, the only female characters that ever showed any interest in combat in the original series, had chileren and became housewives, with 18 being the only one who still has any participation in fighting at all... and it's still treated weirdly

[sebubibinman]

I'm not really a fan of this sort of topic, (DEI, more like "DE why?" amirite) but I would like to point out that Toriyama subverts the feminine very well with Ma Junior. See in Dr. Slump, Toriyama had already exploited/parodied the most feminine exercise of all, child birth, with Midori's pregnancy and the birth of Turbo. It was a novel way to introduce a new character and so by the time of King Piccolo the stage was set to twist this concept a little by taking what seemed to be a male character whose species details were indetermined (we later find out he's alien but at first viewers would have thought he was some Japanese mythological creature like a yokai or oni) and having him give birth to the next villain. It's suitable then, that his offspring Piccolo would also have a maternal instinct that would be out of character allowing Toriyama to subvert expectations again by putting this gruff character in charge of raising his enemy's son, and then allowing him to be arguably the best parent in the series. Nothing more feminine that child bearing and raising.

[JulieYBM]

I'm not really a fan of this sort of topic, (DEI, more like "DE why?" amirite) but I would like to point out that Toriyama subverts the feminine very well with Ma Junior. See in Dr. Slump, Toriyama had already exploited/parodied the most feminine exercise of all, child birth, with Midori's pregnancy and the birth of Turbo. It was a novel way to introduce a new character and so by the time of King Piccolo the stage was set to twist this concept a little by taking what seemed to be a male character whose species details were indetermined (we later find out he's alien but at first viewers would have thought he was some Japanese mythological creature like a yokai or oni) and having him give birth to the next villain. It's suitable then, that his offspring Piccolo would also have a maternal instinct that would be out of character allowing Toriyama to subvert expectations again by putting this gruff character in charge of raising his enemy's son, and then allowing him to be arguably the best parent in the series. Nothing more feminine that child bearing and raising.

This is not the diversity win that you think it is, given the number of women who do not want to give birth, the number of women and people who are not women who do want to give birth but cannot, and the number of people who are not women who do want to give birth and do so.

Giving birth is not a thing that is feminine unless the person that is doing it considers it such for them as an individual.

[MasenkoHA]

Why do you base 18's/Kuririn' choice for him to fight/ be himself on his gender and subsequently stretch it out towards all men? I find that kind of sexist, actually.

18 May be stronger but what she has in power, she lacks in experience. How many battles against formidable opponents has she been in? She was way overpowered against Trunks/Gohan and the Z-warriors, then she quickly lost against Cell. She had no formal training. Even though she is pretty strong, her lack of battle experience could jeopardize the whole mission.

Kuririn meanwhile has a ton of battle experience, has previously fought alongside Gohan, Vegeta and Goku. They know each other's techniques and can utilize them in a team effort. Based on experience, not gender, it seems like Kuririn is the obvious choice.

Yeah Krillin had a lot of experience being killed and blown up, where would the cast be without him?

This isn't a One Piece topic so please refrain from using strawman arguments. It doesn't help your case at all.

Pot meet kettle

[sebubibinman]

@julieybm
From a human perspective, because I know bugs and junk can reproduce asexually and that's obviously not what we're taking about here, but in the case of humans, birth is always feminine. It cannot be unfeminine. Life bursts forth from the matrix, ie mother's womb, ie female womb. Whether the woman who owns it wants it to be that way or not, is irrelevant.

[VegettoEX]

So let’s just get it out in the open:

Your first post mocks DEI and then your second (seems to?) say(s) “I’m a TERF.” Is this where this is heading? Should we just call it now while we’re ahead? I don’t really see the point of wasting each other’s time, right? Or is there a crazy misunderstanding that’s just not being communicated effectively here?

[MasenkoHA]

I'm not really a fan of this sort of topic, (DEI, more like "DE why?" amirite) but I would like to point out that Toriyama subverts the feminine very well with Ma Junior. See in Dr. Slump, Toriyama had already exploited/parodied the most feminine exercise of all, child birth, with Midori's pregnancy and the birth of Turbo. It was a novel way to introduce a new character and so by the time of King Piccolo the stage was set to twist this concept a little by taking what seemed to be a male character whose species details were indetermined (we later find out he's alien but at first viewers would have thought he was some Japanese mythological creature like a yokai or oni) and having him give birth to the next villain. It's suitable then, that his offspring Piccolo would also have a maternal instinct that would be out of character allowing Toriyama to subvert expectations again by putting this gruff character in charge of raising his enemy's son, and then allowing him to be arguably the best parent in the series. Nothing more feminine that child bearing and raising.

We know what Daimao is, he's a Mazoku. He didn't stop being one just because we later learn the being he split from was from abother world. His reincarnation wasn't one but that seemed to have something to do with the reincarnation process

Also maternal instincts? Nothing about Piccolo jr was maternal, he was very much stereotypically paternal towards Gohan (and that isn't a bad thing)

Also see Julie's point about male giving childbirth isn't some progressive win

[sebubibinman]

So let’s just get it out in the open:

Your first post mocks DEI and then your second (seems to?) say(s) “I’m a TERF.” Is this where this is heading? Should we just call it now while we’re ahead? I don’t really see the point of wasting each other’s time, right? Or is there a crazy misunderstanding that’s just not being communicated effectively here?

Is this some kind of danger zone I'm in? Cause how are we to talk about what is inclusive to women this way if we can't define the topic, women? I mean I'll leave it at that. No harm meant. I'll even delete my previous comments if you'd like.

[JulieYBM]

@julieybm
From a human perspective, because I know bugs and junk can reproduce asexually and that's obviously not what we're taking about here, but in the case of humans, birth is always feminine. It cannot be unfeminine. Life bursts forth from the matrix, ie mother's womb, ie female womb. Whether the woman who owns it wants it to be that way or not, is irrelevant.

Speaking as a woman here, I can confirm that this is wrong. And weird TERF shit that is transmisogynistic and infantilizing as all get out.

[MasenkoHA]

So let’s just get it out in the open:

Your first post mocks DEI and then your second (seems to?) say(s) “I’m a TERF.” Is this where this is heading? Should we just call it now while we’re ahead? I don’t really see the point of wasting each other’s time, right? Or is there a crazy misunderstanding that’s just not being communicated effectively here?

Is this some kind of danger zone I'm in? Cause how are we to talk about what is inclusive to women this way if we can't define the topic, women? I mean I'll leave it at that. No harm meant. I'll even delete my previous comments if you'd like.

I mean nobody on here seemed to have any trouble defining what a woman was before your terf shit post? Your weird need to define women by their ability to give birth is pretty fucking gross.