Nerdology 101: The Sexualization of Anime Characters
Hello, my readers. Welcome to this weeks segment of Nerdology 101. This week I’m going to be talking about the sexualization of anime characters (yes, this does mean I just went on a week long ecchi binge). Let’s get into some nerdology!
Since the beginning, anime has had a habit of making some pretty hypersexualized characters, but especially female characters. Let me make one thing clear now: I’m not against it. I think sexualized characters can be great. If you’ve been reading my blog, books, or really anything I make, you probably know I consider sex needlessly tabboo and fully support the use of it in media of all forms. My point here pertains to how it’s done, not the fact that it happens at all.
From Rias and the girls in High School DxD to Monster Musume’s band of sexy fiends, there are some pretty iconic female characters that happen to be highly sexualized. I love many of them. However, these harem anime consider hypersexualization a convention of their genre. Let’s think about Kamigami no Asobi or Meiji Tokyo Renka for a moment though. These are reverse harem anime. I love them both just as much as I do the first two I mentioned. The concept of a reverse harem anime is that it’s the same genre with the same conventions, but just reverses the roles by making the story about one woman and multiple men. Yet, we don’t see sexualization happen quite as clearly. Instead, reverse harem anime tend to experience hyperromanticism. This reinforces some gender stereotypes I’m not too fond of. Why is it assumed that women and other male-attracted people don’t also want to see the ecchi portrayals of characters they’re attracted to? There seems to be an understanding that women can want sex because in harem anime the women are often the aggressors, but when the roles get reversed suddenly a strange form of purity culture seems to be implemented.
Don’t get me wrong here, we’ve certainly seen some anime that sexualize both male and female characters with ease. Fairy Tail is actually a great example of that. It was slightly more subtle with the male characters (Grey being the exception, there was nothing subtle about that) than it was with the female ones, but characters like Laxus, Freed, and Jellal all underwent some form of sexualization too, but anything even close to what Mira, Erza, and Lucy did. Still, I think this is one of the better examples of what it looks like to spread the fan service out a little across genders.
In the end, I love my ecchi anime. I just wish, in a way, the distribution of what ecchi entails was a little more even. I think it’d be good to see, especially in harem and reverse harem anime which fall under the wider romance umbrella, both hypersexualization and hyperromanticism being evenly distributed regardless of which audiences are being targeted. My solution is to keep the Mimi Marquez’s (Rent) of anime, but also add a few more Magic Mike’s (Magic Mike).
Another point worth exploring is that we also see a similar phenomenon across forms of media. My focus is just on anime right now because I was binging it. While I did just point out two highly sexualized characters of different genders, I think we can all name a plethora of female characters like this but most likely, far less male ones. It has a lot to do with why smut is far more important than people give it credit for. In good literature, you make the reader think about things they may not have otherwise thought about. I think the way men are portrayed in smut is the only time we see men get sexualized in a genre the same way women do no matter the genre or medium. Contrary to what many would argue, that’s cultural commentary in and of itself.
Sex will always be political as long as the world continues to reinforce this stupid idea that men want it and women are it whether they want to be or not. It is already weird enough that people want to decide who other people are and aren’t allowed to have sex with, what gender they are and how they’re supposed to act according to it, but trying to dictate who’s allowed to want sex and who’s allowed to be sexualized based on their gender only makes it all weirder.
Glad we covered that. I hope it makes you think a little more about how characters are sexualized in any sort of media you choose to consume. While you think on it, why don’t you head on over to my STORE and order yourself a copy of the special edition of The Fate of Angels and Demons. Or, if you prefer, you can also order the paperback and ebook. Click HERE for links to multiple retailers. It’s my new book and, let me assure you, both my FMC and MMC are very sexy switches who do lots of kinky stuff together. See you back next week for a new segment of Nerdology 101. Until then, have a nerdy week!
