Post
by Fizzer » Mon Nov 19, 2012 6:34 am
I know the stuff about Bulma isn't directly on topic, but there is a point there. The use of female characters in the early parts of the series in general is quite bad.
Bulma is promiscuous, her first attempt at bribing Goku out of his Dragon Ball was letting him feel her butt, then she's peeing herself, then she's getting her underwear removed in her sleep, then she's showing Kame-Sen'nin her underwear (and accidentally, much more, which is humorous as always), then she's getting sexually harrassed by Oolong, then Kame-Sen'nin is asking to feel her up, then she's having her breasts felt by Yamucha, and by the time we get to Pilaf saying "I'll do something dirty to you", I'm thinking "Oh, this again".
Chichi got felt up by Goku and then decided to marry him because of it. Launch didn't get away without being used to plenty of sex gags, especially in the anime. When Luanfan turned up, it was sort of cool to see a strong female fighter who got into the finals, but then it turned out she was only there so Toriyama could use her for a sex joke.
Men in this part of the series, with obvious exceptions, are overly-sexual or perverse in a steriotypical sort of way. This is mostly Kame-Sen'nin and Oolong of course. It's enough that, later on during the Dr Brief's capsule incident, you know what Toriyama will put in the capsule, just because Dr Brief is male. This doesn't really stand up to the female characters going through one dignity-stripping experience after another though.
I can't complain, this is just how the characters are, it may not represent how Toriyama thinks of people, and this is actually the other way around to most shows, which encourage the audience to laugh at men being undignified, getting kicked in the balls and whatnot, but never anything similar for female characters.
The characters we see who are clearly of different races to the main cast, on the other hand, are all generally smart, powerful characters with good roles. There's Namu, Black, I think Blue was intended to be German or something like that, and they aren't really abused for any sort of racial comedy. At least until later on, the material comes across as quite sexist, and not at all racist.