Women and Dragon Ball (and You)

[Cipher]

I'm sure this has come up at some point, but I haven't seen it get its own topic since I've been a member.

Anyway, I just finished watching the 25th Tenkaichi Budokai with my fiancee, and it struck me how much it bothers me that Videl is sidelined. As is #18. As is Pan, despite being promoted as a main character in GT.

I'm kind of torn on the series' approach to female characters. On the one hand, I understand it's a 1980s Japanese boy manga rife with stereotypes only acceptable in ... well, 1980s Japan, so I don't expect anything particularly progressive. On the other hand, I feel it's actually fairly good with introducing strong, capable female characters, which makes it especially bothersome that so few of them stay in their roles for long.

How do you feel about Dragon Ball's treatment of women? Does it do a good job? Is it only acceptable in terms of its time and audience? Does it bother you? Is it something you ever think about?

Have at it, male-dominated Internet message board.

[Insertclevername]

I wouldn't say it totally bothers me since I don't really feel like Toriyama ever sidelined the females based off preference but more on the basis that he had to many characters to begin with and it's hard to give all of them spot light or even purpose. This goes double for a fighting manga where power is the most deciding factor for any character.

However, I do find it disappointing that the females don't see enough action or have much importance other than, well, making babies. I mean take Videl, she is a strong, assertive, young women with a shonen spirit that can rival the other humans....but once Boo comes, she's basically a pedestrian at that point. Now I know she couldn't fight Boo or anything, but she could have at least stuck around longer than she did, perhaps using her cunning to get by?

The only thing that could have held back the females is Dragon Ball's audience. Now I don't know much about the Japanese fans but I know for a fact that a lot of fans here in America, especially the young, prepubescent ones, would definitely not care for the females taking up bigger roles, especially the ones that were once taken by males. Which is a shame, since it would make Dragon Ball look less chauvinist, in some respects.

[Michsi]

While it would have been nice to have at least on female fighter in the main cast, I can't say it was absolutely needed. While I appreciate the fact that Toriyama didn't build his female characters based on the image of the "ideal girlfriend" , virtuos, kind-hearted, dainty, bubbly, etc.etc. as I have seen with to so many other female main characters from other shounen, I can't say I'm entirely happy with the few examples I have in DB. Now I know a lot of people are up in arms when it comes to Toriyama's treatment of his female characters in Dragon Ball, that they are given degrading roles or character features , but I also think people tend to forget that he more or less treats everyone of his characters like this, giving them at least one less than admirable character trait. It's just happens to stand out more with the female cast because they are not given enough screentime or importance in the story.

Also, I think DB just might be the prime example of the chickification trope?

LoL, I just now saw what quote they started the article with

So, in conlcusion, yeah, it could have been done better, but it's not as bad as some make it out to be and it could have been made a lot worse.

[Eire]

As a woman I have no problem with Dragon ball focusing on male characters, because if I had, I would have a very little choice of series to choose from. All pop-culture, except the products for little girls and "slice of life" series thatnobody takes seriously- focus on the males following the lame excuse that men and boys aren't capable of identifying with female protagonists - even now creators of "Brave" and "Legend of Korra" had to face lots of doubts if it will catch on.

And now we are speaking about shouen series targeting the younger teenagers, means: the age when woman are mysterious enemies. Made in 80s Japan, by men who doesn't seem to care about anything than writing what seems awesome to him.
Surprisingly, Dragon Ball doesn't seem bad- Bulma was one of my children idols, along with Pipi Longstocking and Little My. As the series progressed woman were overshadowed by Goku, but to be fair- who wasn't. Dragon Ball often play dirty jokes (in a veeery better way than any modern shouen) and shallow stereotypes, but there aren't things that bother watcher or try to influence him on any way.

[DBZAOTA482]

I never viewed Dragon Ball as being a sexist series and whenever I think of people that do, I often think of them as being overly sensitive feminists. I mean, it is indeed a shonen action anime/manga from the 80's-90's and the female characters aren't treated any worse than the other human characters, just look at Yamcha and tell me that Toriyama is just indifferent towards his female characters. Secondly, most of the Z-Senshi ended up quitting fighting so they can settle down and raise a family or focus on any other aspect of their personal lives. The only people kept on training by the end of the series were Goku, Vegeta, and Tenshinhan.

[Piccolo Daimao]

Well, I personally don’t care that #18 specifically was sidelined, since pretty much everyone but the Super Saiyans were sidelined due to not being strong enough (although Piccolo’s absence in a fighting role was kind of made up for when he acted as mentor to Goten and Trunks), but I don’t think she should’ve stayed in the main cast post-Cell anyway. I’ve already made my thoughts clear about Kuririn and #18 getting together, so I think she should’ve slinked off into the shadows, along with #17.

But yes, I believe that Videl has a lot of potential as a sexy but strong female character who wasn’t a complete dope for Mr. Satan’s lies like the rest of the Earthling population. I mean, yeah, at first she believed that Satan was the strongest in the world and killed Cell, but she resented her father because of that and his arrogance by using his status to get girls and prevent her from having any boyfriend if he wasn’t stronger than him. But she eventually had her eyes opened by Gohan and co. Also, she broke Spopovich’s neck. That’s a pretty good feat against a guy who’s been magically suped-up by a warlock who almost destroyed the entire universe.

Anyway, Yamcha was treated way worse than any of the female characters. He’s literally Toriyama’s butt-monkey punchbag to big-up other, stronger characters. That’s his entire role in the series. I mean, Chaozu doesn’t do shit either, but at least the series basically comes out and says, “Yeah, he’s a weakling, not even worthy of being mentioned in the same breath as the others, and he doesn’t even appear for more than, like, five minutes in the Cell arc.” Yamcha is kept on from the beginning to the end, and is meant to be really strong, but he continuously gets his ass kicked by 99% of the characters that he fights, excluding minor tournament participants.

[kei17]

I've got almost no problem with Dragon Ball gender-wise. It's a series made specifically for Japanese boys in the '80s and the '90s. If you have any problems, that's because you're not a boy living in Japan at the time. It is not Toriyama's fault. In addition, considering that it was a time when extremely homosocial and sexist manga series like Hokuto no Ken were very popular, I guess Dragon Ball rather was sort of progressive as a shonen series focused on fighting. At least it never had very sexist lines like "Women should stand back and just look".

Of course, things have changed a lot in recent years, so if Toriyama or Toei make a new DB series, it must be more politically correct.

[Piccolo Daimao]

Yeah, I think Blooma was pretty empowering as a main female character, as well as being the main motivator for the entire series (if she'd never met Gokuu, then he wouldn't accompany her on her quest to find the DBs). There's nothing wrong with a sexualized character (which Blooma was, with numerous fanservice moments including Kame-sennin sexually harassing her) if that's not all she has, and she has more than enough story-moving power to make up for it.

[penguintruth]

By the Buu arc, anyone who isn't a Saiyan is irrelevant.

Are there any female Saiyans at that point? Nope!

GT is GT. You can't expect anything to be good in GT.

[Ketchup_Revenge]

I am also female and not really offended by the way Toriyama portrays women in the series, even if they were portrayed as rather generic and innocuous.

Simply for the fact that he is not a woman himself, he can't really write female characters as well as he writes male characters. This also sometimes seems to happen with female writers writing male characters.

[Eire]

My bookshelf proves that you are wrong.

[TripleRach]

Well, I'm female. But the issue with the women in Dragon Ball doesn't bother me personally. I actually care more about the decline of Gokuu and Tenshinhan than most of the female characters. From an objective standpoint, I do recognize there are problems, but beyond that, I just shrug it off. It's a product of its time and target audience, and so are plenty of other things I enjoy. But I hope no one gets their attitudes about women solely from Dragon Ball.

I do have a problem with all the dismissive statements in this thread, though. "It's okay that all the women were sidelined or poorly portrayed, because some of the men were too." I mean, how does that make it fair? There are still no females on par with Gokuu, Vegeta, Gohan, Piccolo, Trunks, etc.

[Cipher]

Yeah, I think Blooma was pretty empowering as a main female character, as well as being the main motivator for the entire series (if she'd never met Gokuu, then he wouldn't accompany her on her quest to find the DBs). There's nothing wrong with a sexualized character (which Blooma was, with numerous fanservice moments including Kame-sennin sexually harassing her) if that's not all she has, and she has more than enough story-moving power to make up for it.

I actually agree with this, which is why I'm so torn.

Like others here, I think Dragon Ball actually does handle women fairly well for its age and audience. But that just makes its failure to follow through more glaring. Bulma is a strong character; she's a bad-ass genius, and while she does use sex appeal to her advantage, as you pointed out, it results in pretty harmless gags that are either on her or someone else, and it's hardly the driving aspect of her character. #18 is a strong character as well, and gets the distinction of being the only female fighter on par with the boys (for a time). Chi-Chi is a fighter and nutin' to fuck with (in theory). Videl is just a great female character all around; strong, smart, and with every indication when she shows up that she's going to play a major role in the series. Ditto for Pan.

And they just ... don't really do anything. Even Bulma, who's excellent at staying in the action, is pushed aside throughout the series. I suppose you can point out that no one gets the limelight if they're not strong enough, and that's fair. But that doesn't really excuse it.

It's certainly shrug-off-able. No one needs to be outraged by it. (Plenty of the series' female fans aren't, and they know more than I do.) Toriyama's second biggest series featured a female protagonist, and it's better than its contemporaries, and even plenty of modern manga (from what I've seen). It's just disappointing and kind of glaring now.

I do have a problem with all the dismissive statements in this thread, though. "It's okay that all the women were sidelined or poorly portrayed, because some of the men were too." I mean, how does that make it fair? There are still no females on par with Gokuu, Vegeta, Gohan, Piccolo, Trunks, etc.

And there's this.

By the Buu arc, anyone who isn't a Saiyan is irrelevant.

Are there any female Saiyans at that point? Nope!

GT is GT. You can't expect anything to be good in GT.

What an intelligent and original three lines of contribution.

[Gaffer Tape]

I can't say that it's normally bothered me, despite the fact that I recognize there are few strong female characters, and even fewer well-utilized female characters, but it does bother me on occasion. I really only find it cause for concern towards the later end of the series. With the shift from action adventure to straight up action, the types of relevant characters are diminished mostly to the effect of, "If you can't fight, you have no place here," which while it bothers me on that principle alone, it doesn't bother me as much on the gender perspective simply because, for example, Blooma comes out the other side much better for wear than, say, Oolong and Pu'erh do. And while I do find it annoying that the female character with the largest role in the series is often self-absorbed, vain, and petty, she does have her useful traits (when the series chooses to make use of them) and more human side.

What bothers me more than simply diminishing roles is what those roles are evolved into: breeding stock. To be fair, it doesn't bother me with Chichi because she was never a prominent character up to that point. Her transition into supermama provided her more of a means into the plot and made sense in regards to what we already knew of her character. But in contrast, I've always found it odd that the series most popular and overly-shipped couple only came about as an extremely convoluted, barely established plot device designed to bring Trunks into the series.

But what really bothered me in this regard was the Boo arc. Now, I'm not saying it's intentional. I'm sure it's a side effect caused by all the sudden shifts in storytelling that arc went through. But despite the fact that it wasn't intentional, it does call attention to itself and comes across as quite a letdown because it could have been a major breakthrough for female characters in this series. At the beginning of the Boo arc we are introduced to two things: that #18 has become a permanent part of the group, and the character of Videl forces her way into Gohan's life. Now, in my opinion, these two characters had the potential to be two of the strongest characters in the series. Not just two of the strongest female characters, but two of the strongest characters, period. And in terms of just physical strength and fighting ability, surely the strongest female characters, with the former being stronger than several of the males.

Now, #18 didn't have to be part of the Boo arc. #17 sure wasn't. She could have just been a one-off badguy who has nothing but a cameo appearance later on. But they have this super-powerful cyborg on their side, who, honestly, didn't even have that much to do in her opening arc besides beat up Vegeta and sit around. But this is someone who could very easily have been made to be involved in the fight against Boo, and all she does is sit on ass and get eaten. I mean, what was the point of even putting her back in the story in the first place?

And while it wouldn't have been terribly believable for Videl to get involved with Boo, the story spent so much time building up her character, perhaps more than anyone else, and it never pays off for anything. Again, she just sits on ass and gets eaten.

So perhaps it's more of a gripe of storytelling that just happened to strongly affect female characters than a specific handling of female characters, but the ball felt so sorely dropped there. Just such wasted potential.

[funrush]

However, I do find it disappointing that the females don't see enough action or have much importance other than, well, making babies. I mean take Videl, she is a strong, assertive, young women with a shonen spirit that can rival the other humans....but once Boo comes, she's basically a pedestrian at that point. Now I know she couldn't fight Boo or anything, but she could have at least stuck around longer than she did, perhaps using her cunning to get by?

Yeah, I like the idea of Videl defeating enemies with intelligence, especially since it was established early on in the arc that she was smart. I still stick to my theory that if the series were to continue from Boo, and if the creators wanted a strong female character that could fight the baddies with the guys, they'd have to make her an alien, or an android like 18, because a human would take years to catch up, if possible at all.

[Insertclevername]

I do have a problem with all the dismissive statements in this thread, though. "It's okay that all the women were sidelined or poorly portrayed, because some of the men were too." I mean, how does that make it fair? There are still no females on par with Gokuu, Vegeta, Gohan, Piccolo, Trunks, etc.

If my first paragraph came off this way, then I apologize. I really wasn't trying to act dismissive, but to address how this manga has so many characters, its hard to keep them all in a concise story.

What bothers me more than simply diminishing roles is what those roles are evolved into: breeding stock.....

But what really bothered me in this regard was the Boo arc. Now, I'm not saying it's intentional. I'm sure it's a side effect caused by all the sudden shifts in storytelling that arc went through. But despite the fact that it wasn't intentional, it does call attention to itself and comes across as quite a letdown because it could have been a major breakthrough for female characters in this series. At the beginning of the Boo arc we are introduced to two things: that #18 has become a permanent part of the group, and the character of Videl forces her way into Gohan's life. Now, in my opinion, these two characters had the potential to be two of the strongest characters in the series. Not just two of the strongest female characters, but two of the strongest characters, period. And in terms of just physical strength and fighting ability, surely the strongest female characters, with the former being stronger than several of the males.

Now, #18 didn't have to be part of the Boo arc. #17 sure wasn't. She could have just been a one-off badguy who has nothing but a cameo appearance later on. But they have this super-powerful cyborg on their side, who, honestly, didn't even have that much to do in her opening arc besides beat up Vegeta and sit around. But this is someone who could very easily have been made to be involved in the fight against Boo, and all she does is sit on ass and get eaten. I mean, what was the point of even putting her back in the story in the first place?

And while it wouldn't have been terribly believable for Videl to get involved with Boo, the story spent so much time building up her character, perhaps more than anyone else, and it never pays off for anything. Again, she just sits on ass and gets eaten.

So perhaps it's more of a gripe of storytelling that just happened to strongly affect female characters than a specific handling of female characters, but the ball felt so sorely dropped there. Just such wasted potential.

I couldn't have said it better myself. I always found that odd how #18 became so useless in the Boo arc despite being fairly strong herself. I mean, take the part where Kuririn goes off with Gokuu and the others to fight Boo, it would've been such a nice opportunity (and a more practical decision) for #18 to go instead. I guess you can argue that #18 doesn't really care about but with a series where almost every hero is a past villain, I don't think I can really buy that.

[Rocketman]

While I totally understand the objections to 18 in the Buu arc, I really can't grasp the same about Videl.

She's human. Not even Krillin-human, regular ol' power-level-5 would-get-wrecked-by-kid-goku human. Saying that intelligence could let her be a player alongside Super Saiyan 2 Gohan...I don't buy it at all. You'd have to rewrite so much it wouldn't even connect with the rest of Dragonball.

[TripleRach]

While I totally understand the objections to 18 in the Buu arc, I really can't grasp the same about Videl.

She's human. Not even Krillin-human, regular ol' power-level-5 would-get-wrecked-by-kid-goku human. Saying that intelligence could let her be a player alongside Super Saiyan 2 Gohan...I don't buy it at all. You'd have to rewrite so much it wouldn't even connect with the rest of Dragonball.

Well, her father was even weaker than she was, and he managed to stay a major player. He was arguably even more important than Gohan, too.

[Rocketman]

Actually, I realized I misread there and thought he meant "strongest characters" as in physically strong, not strong characterization.

In which case I can agree more readily.

[BlazingFiddlesticks]

Simply for the fact that he is not a woman himself, he can't really write female characters as well as he writes male characters. This also sometimes seems to happen with female writers writing male characters.

My bookshelf proves that you are wrong.

And now I want to see this meander off somewhere, as my reading tends to side with Ketchup. Though to ends no more offensive that Dragon Ball.

I do have a problem with all the dismissive statements in this thread, though. "It's okay that all the women were sidelined or poorly portrayed, because some of the men were too." I mean, how does that make it fair? There are still no females on par with Gokuu, Vegeta, Gohan, Piccolo, Trunks, etc.

Because it ties into a greater unisex problem of Toriyama having no clue as to what to do with most of his characters. In a sense the female characters becoming what they do doesn't have everything to do with the fact that they're women and some to do with the author.