Women and Dragon Ball (and You)

Kiyza · Post by **Kiyza** » Sun Sep 09, 2012 10:41 pm

I do think that Dragon Ball doesn't give enough long-lasting attention to its female characters. There are a lot of really good, creative women in the series. I love how during the very first arc, Bulma is devious and manipulative -- it seems a far cry from a stereotypical woman. Lunch for instance may have also been more of a gag character, but she was a solid, entertaining one. I think they kind of got sidelined when the series started focusing less on adventure and more and more on fighting, with the exception of #18 anyway.

It's something I've given thought to a few other times, usually because of discussions on this message board, but it's never really bothered me while actually watching the series. I suppose it's something that irks me in hindsight, but not too much. There are dozens of other series I enjoy that either star women or have a cast with capable ones as main characters. Some people complain a lot about the role of women in the media, but I think it's mainly because they're paying too much attention to the more sexualized (and sexist) portrayals of them instead of praising positive interpretations. They're looking too much at Megan Fox fixing up cars in revealing clothing and not at Samus killing off hoards of alien parasites in awesome battle armor. But you know what they say, the squeaky wheel gets the grease.

Just for clarification, this is all coming from a girl.

Cipher · Post by **Cipher** » Sun Sep 09, 2012 10:43 pm

Rocketman wrote: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.

Oh, I mean, it's all part of it, but I specifically meant "strong" as in well-developed, capable characters. I guess I kind of made that kind of unclear by only mentioning female characters who also fought in the opening post.

But yeah, there were plenty of ways to keep Videl (for example) relevant that wouldn't involve her beating up super villains.

Post by **TripleRach** » Sun Sep 09, 2012 11:55 pm

BlazingFiddlesticks wrote: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.

In Toriyama's case, I'm sure it was just an innocent coincidence.

But I mean that in general, that kind of mindset bothers me. There are people out there who apply dismissive logic to more important situations, and it's kind of depressing. "Who cares if (socially inferior group) has problems? Everyone has problems."

BlazingFiddlesticks · Post by **BlazingFiddlesticks** » Mon Sep 10, 2012 12:44 am

TripleRach wrote:
BlazingFiddlesticks wrote: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.
In Toriyama's case, I'm sure it was just an innocent coincidence.

But I mean that in general, that kind of mindset bothers me. There are people out there who apply dismissive logic to more important situations, and it's kind of depressing. "Who cares if (socially inferior group) has problems? Everyone has problems."

And likewise, you can drop "First World Problems" and become morally superior. It is indeed very counterproductive and "If you have nothing nice to say, say nothing at all" in most any situation.

Eire · Post by **Eire** » Mon Sep 10, 2012 11:21 am

TripleRach wrote:
BlazingFiddlesticks wrote: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.
In Toriyama's case, I'm sure it was just an innocent coincidence.

But I mean that in general, that kind of mindset bothers me. There are people out there who apply dismissive logic to more important situations, and it's kind of depressing. "Who cares if (socially inferior group) has problems? Everyone has problems."

Who cares that woman in DB have problems? Every character has a problem.
Don't talk about real-life situation, not even about a series written by author claiming to make any sensible comment to reality. We are talking about adventure series suffering from author's inability to manage characters in own story that slowly turns into one-man theatre.

Someone speak that Mr. Satan become more useful than Videl- well, can you image woman being made a popularity obsessed liar and imposter?

Post by **TripleRach** » Mon Sep 10, 2012 1:45 pm

Eire wrote:Who cares that woman in DB have problems? Every character has a problem.
Don't talk about real-life situation, not even about a series written by author claiming to make any sensible comment to reality. We are talking about adventure series suffering from author's inability to manage characters in own story that slowly turns into one-man theatre.

I'm just saying that, from an objective standpoint on gender equality, it's extremely dismissive and defeatist to say, "So what if all the women are bad characters? Some of the men are too." It's a terrible mindset in general.

soulnova · Post by **soulnova** » Mon Sep 10, 2012 3:36 pm

Yes, sometimes it bothered me, specially since he forgot about Launch at all, the only other girl with "fighting spirit". There were only 3 females during the first two arcs of the story: Chichi, Bulma and Bunny. Then we have 18 which I liked her character a lot. With the Buu Saga he added Videl, Marron and Erasa... which two of them are irrelevant to the story.

I would have liked Bulma to stay involved more with her inventions and intellect, just as in the Plan to Eradicate the Super Saiyans. And for Chichi... well, any fighting power she had just vanished as soon as Gohan was born. That was a let down for me.

I would have liked Videl to keep on fighting crime, but so far as we saw on the last Tenkaichi, she doesn't seem to be working at all. :S

I just wanted for them to be relevant to the story in other ways than giving birth the "next generation". :/ Pan and Bra, but specially Pan had so much potential, but we simply didn't get so see it. I guess that Toriyama couldn't get the story to work that way.

Michsi · Post by **Michsi** » Mon Sep 10, 2012 3:56 pm

TripleRach wrote: I'm just saying that, from an objective standpoint on gender equality, it's extremely dismissive and defeatist to say, "So what if all the women are bad characters? Some of the men are too." It's a terrible mindset in general.

While I do not mean to adress the problems of this type of mindset in a general sense, I think it's a valid argument in regards to DB. Meaning he didn't deliberatley seek to make the females look worse than his male characters and gave pretty much everyone some negative traits. The problem lies mostly with the roles they were give, I think. They were just never treated as important characters.

Post by **TripleRach** » Mon Sep 10, 2012 4:23 pm

Michsi wrote:While I do not mean to adress the problems of this type of mindset in a general sense, I think it's a valid argument in regards to DB. Meaning he didn't deliberatley seek to make the females look worse than his male characters and gave pretty much everyone some negative traits. The problem lies mostly with the roles they were give, I think. They were just never treated as important characters.

Well, as I've said, I don't think it was an intentional slight on Toriyama's part. Nor do I expect Dragon Ball to be a shining beacon of civil rights and social progress anyway.

But I guess the dismissive mindset particularly bothers me because it reminds me of video game communities, where attempts to seriously discuss gender issues are met with vehement backlash. "Who cares if the girls are just eye candy? A lot of male characters look like Vin Diesel or Final Fantasy pretty boys! Quit whining!"

Cipher · Post by **Cipher** » Mon Sep 10, 2012 5:55 pm

In defense of TripleRach, the mindset of "So what if (x underpriveliged group) has a problem? (X dominant group) has that problem too," does show up a lot. And it shows up a lot paritcularly in regards to gender issues, and even gender in ficiton. (The video-game thing is gaining a lot of attention right now, and that kind of ugly attitude is all over the place.) It's completely relevant to point out here.

In even more defense of TripleRach, it's completely fair to point out that, while weaker male characters also receive less attention throughout the series, there are male characters who receive limelight and/or battles throughout the whole series. The same isn't true the women. It's not about which group has the most ill-treated individual character; it's about overall treatment and which even has a chance.

But yeah, by and large I suppose Dragon Ball does fairly well for its time and genre.

Gaffer Tape · Post by **Gaffer Tape** » Mon Sep 10, 2012 6:57 pm

I wholeheartedly agree with Rach's mindset...

TripleRach wrote:I'm just saying that, from an objective standpoint on gender equality, it's extremely dismissive and defeatist to say, "So what if all the women are bad characters? Some of the men are too." It's a terrible mindset in general.

...and the above quote in a general sense. The only problem I have with it is that I've found it tends to encourage the propagation of the other extreme side (put into a hypothetical Dragon Ball scenario for the purposes of keeping this discussion on track): "You have no right to complain about the way Yamucha and Tenshinhan are treated in the series because female characters have it much worse." Now, I'm in no way saying that you are insinuating that, Rach. I just often find that the former ends up resulting in someone bringing up the latter, which I find an equally terrible mindset to have when attempting to have an objective standpoint on gender equality.

***

However, to bring it really back around to topic, I can't really fault Dragon Ball other than what I've mentioned before about it underutilizing characters that seemed to have great potential. Because, when you get right down to it, some stories are going to just happen to have characters skewed in one direction for whatever reason, due to nature of the story, intended demographics, or abilities or interests of the writer, and there's nothing inherently sexist about that. Not saying that it CAN'T be (I could go on and on, for example, about marketability of female characters in media for young boys or inclusion of a token *insert gender here* character in a work), but I feel I can't fault The Expendables for focusing on a predominantly male cast any more than I can fault The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants for focusing on a predominantly female cast.

Kid Buu · Post by **Kid Buu** » Mon Sep 10, 2012 10:35 pm

Out of the 5 big ones (Bulma, Lunch, Chichi, #18, Videl), I think their roles are hit and miss.

The Good

Bulma - Omnipresent until about the Freeza arc, but at least in the Cell arc she has the credit of saving the entire planet by creating the time machine

#18 -I liked her role in the Buu arc actually, Toryiama could have made her join Krillin and turn into stone, but the battle with Mighty Mask was really entertaining. I'll also admit I'm probably the only one on the forum who likes the Bio Broly film

Videl - I really enjoyed the Saiyaman arc, and I don't think she was totally useless in the long run. She is what convinces Gohan to enter the tournament, which is where the Z Senshi reunite and the Buu Saga kicks off.

The Bad

Chichi - Before Rocketman kills me, I do enjoy Chichi as a character. I just wish she got to do more, at the 23rd Budokai I'm sure she wasn't too behind Tenshinan, Yamcha, and Krillin. Oh well, at least she helped out by helping Goten achieve SSj.

Lunch - Toryiama even forgot about her.

dbgtFO · Post by **dbgtFO** » Tue Sep 11, 2012 7:34 am

Kid Buu wrote:I'll also admit I'm probably the only one on the forum who likes the Bio Broly film

You are not alone

soulnova wrote:I would have liked Bulma to stay involved more with her inventions and intellect, just as in the Plan to Eradicate the Super Saiyans.

Yes in the Freeza Arc and especially the Buu Arc she mostly sat on the sidelines watching the plot unfold. In the Cell Arc however she made the battle armor, the remote control to disable #17 & #18(never used though), repaired #16 and the most important one, her alternate self build the time machine.

Post by **TripleRach** » Tue Sep 11, 2012 2:42 pm

Gaffer Tape wrote:The only problem I have with it is that I've found it tends to encourage the propagation of the other extreme side (put into a hypothetical Dragon Ball scenario for the purposes of keeping this discussion on track): "You have no right to complain about the way Yamucha and Tenshinhan are treated in the series because female characters have it much worse." Now, I'm in no way saying that you are insinuating that, Rach. I just often find that the former ends up resulting in someone bringing up the latter, which I find an equally terrible mindset to have when attempting to have an objective standpoint on gender equality.

Well no, I certainly don't want to encourage any of that. The whole idea was not to sweep one issue under the rug in favor of another, and to complain about female representation in a discussion about Yamcha would be exactly that.

Michsi · Post by **Michsi** » Wed Sep 12, 2012 6:12 am

I think it really does depend on the situation or how you chose to look at the problem. It's not unusual for some people to be selective and pick out a certain group of characters based on their opinions, so pointing out that it's not a case of discrimination might be helpful?

Fin · Post by **Fin** » Wed Sep 12, 2012 9:57 pm

I'm not sure how it isn't a case of discrimination though, so long as we're counting unconscious biases. That the majority of characters who stayed most prominent throughout the series are male does show an unconscious bias on Toriyama's part. Most often when introducing a new character Toriyama will default to male, so we wind up with all these male characters introduced for plot purposes and some of them stick around long enough to become major characters. Toriyama mostly only seems to make a character female when he wants to give one of the main characters a girlfriend.

SparkyPantsMcGee · Post by **SparkyPantsMcGee** » Thu Sep 13, 2012 7:38 pm

I always felt like there was an underlining importance to the female characters in Dragonball, even if most of it was implied. You can really see that(regardless of the family) the women were the head of the household. No matter how strong Goku and Vegeta got Chi-chi and Bulma always the ones "keeping them in line;" and I don't even need to speak about 18/Krillin. There was definitely a lot of objectification of women in the series, but I feel most of it came from the early Dragonball years. As Z rolled around, they became stronger and more independent(except for Maron in the Garlic Jr. saga).

In the case of Videl and 18, my opinions are mixed. I think Videl played a big enough role, or at least as much as she could. She was only human and it would be weird if she was able to keep up with Goku and the others during the Buu saga. 18, on the other hand, should have played a bigger role. She was someone that could keep up with Goku and the others and it would have been great to see her duking it out next to Gotenks and so on. On the plus side she did win the tournament. So that's something...I guess. As for Pan...I'm sorry but she was annoying in GT. I thought she was adorable in Z, but I don't think they handled her right with GT. Then again it's GT and I didn't agree with a lot of things in that since.

Gaffer Tape · Post by **Gaffer Tape** » Thu Sep 13, 2012 9:25 pm

Hmm. Don't know if I agree that putting them in the head of household roles made them any more independent or integral than they were in the earlier stories. It's really just switching from one stereotype to another. When they're young, they're fanservice. When they're older, they fall into "wifey" roles. And that's a pretty common idea for Japan, for the women to stay at home and run the households while the men run off and earn money.

That said, I don't even know if I would consider that counting all that much. Only Chichi really falls into that role, which, again, is a natural extension of her character already and makes a humorous counterpoint foil to Goku's lack of understanding/interest in traditional households. True that the end of the series has Blooma make a few annoyed comments about that, but, again, that really just plays more into Vegeta's character and obvious lack of interest in household activities. But Blooma herself doesn't really seem like a "wifey" character. I mean, from what little we see, Capsule Corp. is run by robot servants. Not to mention that it's really her father's house that she never moves out of, and that she's really mostly seen working on gadgets and stuff than housework. That I suppose is independent and integral, but that's really no different from her early roles, just with fanservice toned down because such elements were turned down in general as the series went on.

MCDaveG · Post by **MCDaveG** » Fri Sep 14, 2012 9:54 am

Ah, political correctness atacked even in this series. Someone didn't got enough with Popo missing his lips and wanna watch the world burn....
Just joking

I don't have any problem with it, it's shonen series for young boys! When we were at school, girls were poking fun of us watching stupid series like this and they were watching their own genres.

PS: We got the girls' revenge with Dan Dan Kokoro Hikareteku opening. For me it had bigger impact than forcily write the main cast in GT going trough transgender surgery.......

soulnova · Post by **soulnova** » Fri Sep 14, 2012 10:13 am

MCDaveG wrote:Ah, political correctness atacked even in this series. Someone didn't got enough with Popo missing his lips and wanna watch the world burn....
Just joking
I don't have any problem with it, it's shonen series for young boys! When we were at school, girls were poking fun of us watching stupid series like this and they were watching their own genres.

PS: We got the girls' revenge with Dan Dan Kokoro Hikareteku opening. For me it had bigger impact than forcily write the main cast in GT going trough transgender surgery.......

Not the general rule. I held a "party" at my house to watch the first appearance of Adult Goku. We were squealing like Justin Beiber fans.

Kanzenshuu

Women and Dragon Ball (and You)

Re: Women and Dragon Ball (and You)

Re: Women and Dragon Ball (and You)

Re: Women and Dragon Ball (and You)

Re: Women and Dragon Ball (and You)

Re: Women and Dragon Ball (and You)

Re: Women and Dragon Ball (and You)

Re: Women and Dragon Ball (and You)

Re: Women and Dragon Ball (and You)

Re: Women and Dragon Ball (and You)

Re: Women and Dragon Ball (and You)

Re: Women and Dragon Ball (and You)

Re: Women and Dragon Ball (and You)

Re: Women and Dragon Ball (and You)

Re: Women and Dragon Ball (and You)

Re: Women and Dragon Ball (and You)

Re: Women and Dragon Ball (and You)

Re: Women and Dragon Ball (and You)

Re: Women and Dragon Ball (and You)

Re: Women and Dragon Ball (and You)

Re: Women and Dragon Ball (and You)

Who is online