JulieYBM wrote: ↑Mon Sep 04, 2023 3:27 pm
'Big-Muscled Stereotypical Gay Guy Character winks at age-gap teenager twink, twink has negative reaction' is code for telling your audience to find the gay guy icky.
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Sakura didn't overreact because a girl getting creeped out by some strange guy that she doesn't know blowing air kisses at her is an appropriate response. It's creepy as shit and
not appropriate.
Apologies for the really late reply, I just saw this thread and thought I'd add my two cents.
I know it's partly because the whole leather BDSM thing was seen as the (negative) stereotype for gay men in the '80s and '90s (something South Park parodied with Mr. Slave, in stark contrast to DBZ playing it straight, no pun intended lol), but somehow I feel it makes it even worse that Otokosuki is clearly modeled on the biker from the Village People. Like, c'mon... I know they're cheesy af, but they don't deserve THAT lol
In my opinion, Naruto as a series was ALWAYS pretty goddamn terrible for the most in its depiction of female characters. The female characters in Naruto, with VERY little exception, fell entirely into one of two categories: "I'm a pathetically milquetoast girl who has absolutely nothing in the way of any sort of real personality whatsoever and am defined solely by the fact that I'm super duper sweet to everyone all the time" a la Hinata, Rin, Kurenai, etc., and, sadly the MUCH more prevalent of the two... "I am a horribly violent, mean, angry, bitchy, physically and emotionally abusive asshole who exemplifies the ancient stereotype of women on their periods that not only is just plain false but is also severely damaging to women", like Sakura, Ino, Tsunade, Kushina, Karin, Mei Terumī, Karui, Shikamaru's mom, Kiba's mom, etc.
Again, there were a few exceptions like Konan, Anko, Samui, etc. who were actually somewhat interesting characters who don't go too far in either direction, but they're unfortunately all such minor characters who have such little screentime that it hardly makes any difference. And it just kinda sucks to think that so many young men in Japan and America (and I'm sure many other countries as well, those two are just the ones I have the most experience with), especially the current generation in America considering how recent it really was when Naruto first started getting popular here, grew up with a series that really doesn't exactly respect women very much. Not exactly good lessons to teach kids, ESPECIALLY boys, if you ask me.
That's just one of the many, MANY things about Naruto as a series that made it so I could never really get into it, along with the HORRIBLY sluggish pacing (it's bad in the manga to begin with, and it's downright UNBEARABLE in the anime), the mostly badly-written and unfunny humor that tended to be miss much more than hit (it wasn't great in the manga, but I feel that Studio Pierrot's writers in particular tend to have a problem with that, as evidenced with their godawful additions to Yū Yū Hakusho that were incredibly unfunny and cringe in comparison to Togashi's mostly genuinely hilarious gags), the ridiculous Sharingan wank later in the series that just went way, WAY too fucking far to be believable anymore, the EXTREME overuse of "You thought this guy was the big bad? Turns out there's another guy controlling him!! Oh, you thought HE was the big bad? Well, guess what...?" that also ruined immersion, the fact that the entire final arc was just ATROOOOCIOUSLY written (IMO it's on par with the Tournament of Power in Dragon Ball Super for worst final arc in a battle shōnen ever. Yecch), and, most importantly of all... I really just don't like the three main characters (Naruto, Sakura, and Sasuke) all that much.
There are things I do like about the series; the gorgeous art in the manga, the worldbuilding, the music in the anime, some of the characters (though most of the ones I genuinely like and find interesting are either dead long before the series starts like Minato, Hashirama, and Tobirama, are supporting characters who die partway through like Itachi, Jiraiya, Hiruzen, and Asuma, or are extremely minor characters... really, Kakashi, Gai, and Shikamaru are the only exceptions to that I can think of offhand...), but those things just are NOT enough to cover all those other issues.
Toriyama/Tōei certainly have/had their issues with the way they write women (and obviously they had SEVERE issues with their gay characters, but that discussion's already been put to bed here), but I feel like it's nowhere near the level that it got to with Kishimoto/Pierrot. One thing I can say for Toriyama as opposed to Kishimoto is that I feel that Toriyama was much more aware of his strengths and weaknesses than Kishimoto was. Toriyama was not great at writing female characters and romance, so he shied away from it as much as he could. Kishimoto was even worse at that kind of thing IMO... and yet he depicted it very frequently and the series absolutely suffered for it.
