What makes something be considered a feminist anime?

This may interest you:
https://www.animefeminist.com/anifem-recommends/

This may interest you:
https://www.animefeminist.com/anifem-recommends/

Feminist art is a massive field of thought and study that can't just be summed up aphoristically in a forum post, but it's nearly lunchtime and nobody would read an essay if I wrote it anyway, so I'll resort to that anyway. The essential quality a work requires to be feminist, I think, is to truthfully reflect the experiences of women in society, and not treating women as existing for the satisfaction of men, or reinforcing stereotypical gender roles as right or superior, or otherwise centring perspectives of women that emphasise or serve male interests. The last point is a particular complicating factor when evaluating the feminist-ness of anime and manga, especially because of moe.

Take K-On! for example. Men do not really figure in K-On!'s story. It's all about the joy of the girls in the band. Barring a few scenes here and there, they aren't overtly sexualised much. K-On! is also, however, principally made for the enjoyment of men. Cute anime girls are cute and series like K-On! trade on the affection men feel towards safe, unchallenging depictions of happy young women. This doesn't make K-On! misogynist in and of itself, and I personally think it's a lovely, joyous series, and I'm sure it has a good share of female fans for its lovely comforting look at female friendship, but it also doesn't do anything that might upset anyone but the most actively sexist male viewer.


Bait wasn't actually better in the good old days but you're sure not raising the standard.

@Deago LMFAO Flip Flappers listed as a "femmisist" anime?? Flip Flappers that shows bare crotch shots of 12-13yo girls???

This is why modern femminism is seen as a joke

Honestly, feminism has way more pressing concerns than anime, such as women in Japan constantly needing to fear sexual assaults on trains and an anti-feminist government that gets mired in controversy every other week. But I'd say a good litmus test for feminist anime is whether the female characters have complete character arcs independent of any men. Though that measure isn't perfect because a lot of all girl shows are deliberately designed to pander to the male gaze. So I guess I could expand that to saying whether they are independent in their own right rather than waifu bait for the male viewer.

Hmm let's see...

A femminist anime would be one that

- Is set in end 1800s beginning 1900s
- Depicts how the women at the time fought for the rights women have today

There you go, a femmisist anime

I don't consider any animanga to be specifically femminist, not even those by Year 24, because they didn't write manga to be femminist, they wrote manga to make good and interesting stories

What is so femminist in Versailles no Bara about Oscar being forced by her dad to play the role of his son because he couldn't accept the fact he had 5 daughters??

Versailles no Bara is not femminist, what it is is a brilliantly written historical/psychological/romance story that follows the life of a woman in the 1700s living in unusual circumstances for the times and how that affects her life and that of those around her

Feminist art is a massive field of thought and study that can't just be summed up aphoristically in a forum post, but it's nearly lunchtime and nobody would read an essay if I wrote it anyway, so I'll resort to that anyway. The essential quality a work requires to be feminist, I think, is to truthfully reflect the experiences of women in society, and not treating women as existing for the satisfaction of men, or reinforcing stereotypical gender roles as right or superior, or otherwise centring perspectives of women that emphasise or serve male interests. The last point is a particular complicating factor when evaluating the feminist-ness of anime and manga, especially because of moe.

Take K-On! for example. Men do not really figure in K-On!'s story. It's all about the joy of the girls in the band. Barring a few scenes here and there, they aren't overtly sexualised much. K-On! is also, however, principally made for the enjoyment of men. Cute anime girls are cute and series like K-On! trade on the affection men feel towards safe, unchallenging depictions of happy young women. This doesn't make K-On! misogynist in and of itself, and I personally think it's a lovely, joyous series, and I'm sure it has a good share of female fans for its lovely comforting look at female friendship, but it also doesn't do anything that might upset anyone but the most actively sexist male viewer.


Bait wasn't actually better in the good old days but you're sure not raising the standard.

Hmm let's see...

A femminist anime would be one that

- Is set in end 1800s beginning 1900s
- Depicts how the women at the time fought for the rights women have today

There you go, a femmisist anime

I don't consider any animanga to be specifically femminist, not even those by Year 24, because they didn't write manga to be femminist, they wrote manga to make good and interesting stories

What is so femminist in Versailles no Bara about Oscar being forced by her dad to play the role of his son because he couldn't accept the fact he had 5 daughters??

Versailles no Bara is not femminist, what it is is a brilliantly written historical/psychological/romance story that follows the life of a woman in the 1700s living in unusual circumstances for the times and how that affects her life and that of those around her

Smart, strong-willed and independent female protagonist who isn't designed to pander to the "male gaze"

That's probably all it takes, I guess.

This is feminist anime: link
No man, gay or straight has intentionally watched that, ever (probably)

@Zarutaku being born a female automatically panders to the male gaze. Checkmate

@DigiCat

Congratulations for failing to write feminist right for six times in a row.

Nanoha is a shounen anime with loli protagonists, literally the anime version of an eroge visual novel. Looking at our 237 shared anime watches: you haven't watched a single TV show targeted at females, yet.

@BirdyTheMighty That would imply all females are attractive and sexualized enough to satisfy the average male gaze.

You do know that all there with the exception of Triangle Heart 3 are fanworks, right?
Besides, it isn't the anime version of it either, it has a completely different story and is set on a different universe with new characters, the ones that appear in both being there more for fanservice than anything.

I know, hence why the question was a "provocation".
That whole thread was discussing whether or nor a work being progressive or not was defined by it's results or by it's intentions (We eventually came to the conclusion that it is by it's intentions).
Then again, I also mentioned in the thread that people argue unironically that 1973's Cutie Honey is feminist, so in that case I might've been "right by accident" if that definition was correct.

It's not like I was purposefully avoiding them.
Maybe the ways that I end up discovering most anime that I watch are naturally biased against those (Video-essays, public discourse on SNS, quick glances at seasonals, etc).

The point is: I'm not interested in troll bait, social media echo chamber parrots, and musings about 3rd party opinions and google results. Most of your threads are a combination of those. But chatGPT can do it better. Try starting threads about material you genuinely have a clue about, based on first hand knowledge.

Gilmon1 brings up a great point as to how shows can implement feminist values while it not being the central theme by simply just treating its characters equitably regardless of gender. Simply making your female characters more active instead of relegating them to solely be in the sidelines or as love interests can help to better align with feminist values as you are treating your characters equally regardless of gender. With this you can easily argue that shows like Pokémon, Beyblade from the Metal series onwards, and Digimon uphold these values as people are on a level playing field regardless of gender, with female characters given room to be successful just like their male counterparts .This may in fact be an area that children's anime does better than popular shonen and seinen titles aimed at teens and adults since those often tend to be more likely to diminish roles of female characters over long periods of time.

If you want to get into feminist critique of media, the Bechdel test, created by and named after cartoonist Alison Bechdel can be a good way to start as said test is made to see if women are treated as more than just a plot device in film and more like actual fully fledged characters. However this can really be applied to any work of fiction as its more about the content of the work rather than the medium. A piece of media passes the test if:

• There are at least two women in it,
  
• Said women talk with another woman
  
• about a topic that isn't about a man
  

The Bechdel Test isn't the be-all end-all of feminist critique by far but its a good starting point to look into and start discussions and analysis of how women are portrayed in media

Then by this definition, are you saying there are a ton of feminist anime out there already? Even entire subgenres, like CGDCT? Someone mentioned K-On! not being particularly feminist, and I agree with that view.

I think this criteria is way too general when it comes to anime and is effectively useless, even as a starting point...

Feminist art is a massive field of thought and study that can't just be summed up aphoristically in a forum post, but it's nearly lunchtime and nobody would read an essay if I wrote it anyway, so I'll resort to that anyway. The essential quality a work requires to be feminist, I think, is to truthfully reflect the experiences of women in society, and not treating women as existing for the satisfaction of men, or reinforcing stereotypical gender roles as right or superior, or otherwise centring perspectives of women that emphasise or serve male interests. The last point is a particular complicating factor when evaluating the feminist-ness of anime and manga, especially because of moe.

Take K-On! for example. Men do not really figure in K-On!'s story. It's all about the joy of the girls in the band. Barring a few scenes here and there, they aren't overtly sexualised much. K-On! is also, however, principally made for the enjoyment of men. Cute anime girls are cute and series like K-On! trade on the affection men feel towards safe, unchallenging depictions of happy young women. This doesn't make K-On! misogynist in and of itself, and I personally think it's a lovely, joyous series, and I'm sure it has a good share of female fans for its lovely comforting look at female friendship, but it also doesn't do anything that might upset anyone but the most actively sexist male viewer.


Bait wasn't actually better in the good old days but you're sure not raising the standard.

Reading the links and the recommendations in this thread, it's quite sad and telling that any anime that simply has a female character who isn't a poorly-written bimbo is being pushed and recommended as "feminist".

Anime ain't political. So terms like feminism don't apply to Anime.

Here's in a nutshell why you are boring. All but two half sentences are about you. The two half sentences are quoted statements by somebody else. The content of the posting by 90% is your convoluted, meandering thought process. Start writing about anime for a change.

Let me shorten this word salad for you: "Do you agree Nanoha and Cutie Honey are feminist anime?"
Answer: No.

@thewiru That's a sad story and I'm trying to help you because I have my own communication problems. There are therapies to calm down your impulsive train of thought, in both training and medicamentation form. And as for writing, just follow the golden rules.

1. Say it. Just the result, nobody cares how you got there. And if so, they can ask for more detail any time.
2. Do not explain why you ask. Just ask.
3. Talk about anime you watched, I can use Google myself and am not interested in details of your thought process. Just into anime.
4. Shorten your texts rigidly for 15 minutes before posting them. No impulse replies allowed. If you are not sure something is relevant, it isn't - remove it completely.

I hope this doesn't come over too patronizing. And the "no friends", "excessive talking", and "lack of focus" are a self-propelling spiral. I once was in a therapy situation where I basically talked more than the other 20 people in the group combined. The therapist told me I will be removed if I couldn't restrict myself to at most two statements per hour. I followed orders and learnt how interesting listening can be. Give it a shot, it changed my life.

See:
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/
https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/37134