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[Zangi]

Aye, I don't expect female characters to need to "prove" anything. If it's just taken as fact that women are equal to men in-show, and not questioned, then it's far more progressive than what you described.

What I want is a show that would make a sexist raise their eyebrow and say "this is unrealistic" when a woman (or a man, for the misandrists out there) performs equally competently to their gender counterparts. I don't want the show to draw attention to it; quite the opposite.

Totally agree with this.  Where men and woman do the job(or fighting) without anyone expecting that there is a difference in 'quality' or 'wrongness' based on their gender.

[Reelya]

Ultimately I'm thinking about sexism as it is perpetrated by authors and expected by audiences; some shows put women in support roles who can't do any fighting or whatever "because they're women," and some audiences agree with that bullshit and expect it. I love it when shows give such people the middle finger and show women as equally competent to men. Not superior, not inferior.

Mind you equally aggrivating though is the "Woman who must prove she is competent because she is a woman and thus is expected to be incompetent" archtype. Who is so focused on "proving women are just as good" that they somehow do the opposite and instead make themselves be the "Exception".

Which is why what you said tends not to happen. Unless there is a reason to a female character shouldn't "have" to prove herself so to speak.

It could be argued that that's actually a feminist trope. "Woman proving herself in a man's domain". It's common for feminists to portray the world as unfairly biased in the favor of men, and against women, so it's not sexist against women to portray a world which is biased against women, if you show women proving the in-world stereotypes wrong.

Naysayers in the show itself are the Devil's Advocate, and not actually Author's Voice.

[Reelya]

Though given that "Anime hates women"

The majority of anime's i've seen had female protagonists, or at the very least only one lead male character who's invariably depicted as much less intelligent, strong and decisive than the female characters. Maybe I'm watching different shows to you.

[Chaoswizkid]

The fiance, her brother, and I were discussing gender balance in anime, and were having trouble finding anime that A) had a balanced cast between male and female (not strictly 50/50 but close enough), and B) the men and women were both roughly equally important and effective.

Seems most anime have huge gender discrepancies. Few qualify for A and even fewer qualify for B.


Any good examples from y'all?

I'm going to suggest Code Geass. This is a bit complicated, though.
The cast is ginormous, and there are a lot opposites between male and female characters, so it gets close enough to A. For B, most of the power is shifted to the males, but there are some incredibly prominent females, especially those who may not have physical strength but have the strength of character to bend to their will those who have complete resolve. It sort of qualifies, in that regard.

Maybe... Naruto? The story strongly favors Sasuke and Naruto, both males, but there are also large casts and nowhere is it implied that women are weaker than men in general (at least not that I've seen, and I did skip over a giant chunk). It could be implied that females only fawn over males, though, and aren't as effective as males because of it.

Neon Genesis Evangelion? Old men are kind of pulling the strings, but a good deal are faceless or just not seen often. Gendo and Fuyutsuki are technically in the lead but don't appear to do a lot, while Misato basically carries Earth on her back using whatever Ritsuko can give her. While Shinji is the lead protagonist, he's almost never as effective as Asuka and Rei. In fact, several times that he receives the credit, he doesn't actually do anything (people familiar with the series will know what I mean).
Does being symbolically more important yet largely ineffective level with being more practically important and more effective?

Fate/stay Night (the game)?

Maou Maoyuu Yuusha (did I get that right?)?

Familiar of Zero? This is kind of complicated, because I've only read a chunk of the manga (as much as I had to so I could read a x-over fanfic), so I don't know how much it counts.

I keep wanting to say Ghost in the Shell, but the cast is so male-dominant and the only female that is effective is the Major (who is more effective than everyone else in basically anything, which makes me keep wanting to say it).

Ooooh, Black Lagoon? It can almost be argued that there are more prominent females and it kind of cheats, but I don't know, the males aren't any less effective and there are a good number of them.


MAHOU SENSEI NEGIMA!? *insert Zoidberg outtro*

[Reelya]

The fiance, her brother, and I were discussing gender balance in anime, and were having trouble finding anime that A) had a balanced cast between male and female (not strictly 50/50 but close enough), and B) the men and women were both roughly equally important and effective.

Seems most anime have huge gender discrepancies. Few qualify for A and even fewer qualify for B.

Any good examples from y'all?

What are good examples of that from western media?

I really can't think of many things that qualify (and half of those are by Josh Whedon), since you invariably have a protagonist who has to be one gender or the other. Anyway i'll try and come up with a list of things that may qualify, at least for A or B if not both. My criteria will be at least 2 characters of each gender who aren't complete comic relief, and actually have some plot importance (e.g. discounting villains or mentor / commanding officer characters).

I can only really comment on the small subset of anime's i've actually seen:-

The series related to Robotech first:

Macross 7 (the band is 50/50 male/female, and u got Max/Miriya as the colony leaders who are both crack pilots themselves). Although the leads have always been male, every Macross except Macross Plus (which was centered on 2 guys and 1 girl as the leads, and the girl was an expert in her own field) has at least 1 highly competent female pilot (Macross Frontier had a total of 4 named female fighter pilots who's competence was shown as a given thing, and never undermined plot-wise). Plus, Misa Hayase in SDF Macross became an Admiral after the first series.

SDC Southern Cross: female lead officer, plenty of males and females shown as competent and important to the plot. The plot sucked unfortunately.

Genesis Climber Mospeada: Houquet (Rook in robotech) is almost like an 80's version of Kallen from Code Geass, fully competent and probably only second to Stig in her combat skills / saving ppl's asses, which nobody ever takes for especially noteworthy that she's a girl. The antagonists also have 50/50 male/female ratio in their humanoid pilots. All up, there are 3 females in the hero group, 3 guys, and one indeterminate.

Ano Natsu de Matteru (and the "Please teacher" franchise always have at least a few non-useless males which makes them more balanced than harem series, too cheesy to recommend though)

Neon Genesis Evangelion (main male is the most useless pilot)
AnoHana
Excel Saga
Nana (plenty of characters of both genders, excellently fleshed-out personalities).
Spice and Wolf (can't really have the show without the M/F leads, and the side characters are both genders).
Angel Beats!
Arakawa Under the Bridge (M/F leads and plenty of M and F side characters)
Inu x Boku SS (female lead, male 2nd char, lots of side chars)
Steins;Gate (2 fairly important males, more females though)
Witch Hunter Robin
Higurashi no Naku Koro ni (wins on male/female importance if not balance)
Bokurano
Dennou Coil
Kimi ni Todoke
Toradora!
Hotarubi no Mori e
Mawaru Penguindrum
Bakuman (it's really about the 2 main guys, other characters of mixed genders)
Haruhi Suzimuya
Hyōka (2 guys, 2 girls in the club)
Kimi ga Nozomu Eien (cheesy romance/drama but 2 main guys and girls)
Usagi Drop
Escaflowne (been a while, but female protagonist, 2 male side chars, and plenty of other female/male characters)
Toaru Majutsu no Index (you have a few kickass guys in this series, but overall more kickass females).

[Neonivek]

Though given that "Anime hates women"

The majority of anime's i've seen had female protagonists, or at the very least only one lead male character who's invariably depicted as much less intelligent, strong and decisive than the female characters. Maybe I'm watching different shows to you.

Yes I think you are watching much different animes then I am. Though it is hardly difficult to guess on the animes you watched.

so it's not sexist against women to portray a world which is biased against women, if you show women proving the in-world stereotypes wrong.

Not sexist in it of itself. Just hamfist that and it becomes sexist.

There is always a way to do just about anything "right". Heck big breasted woman who dresses in as little clothing as possible and constantly attempts to saduce the male AND female cast can be done unsexistly.

Maybe... Naruto? The story strongly favors Sasuke and Naruto, both males, but there are also large casts and nowhere is it implied that women are weaker than men in general

I would certainly disqualify it on the grounds that the female characters are often thrust in and out of incompetency and irrelevance. Sakura being the best example becoming completely superfluous, then picking up again in a HUGE way, then becoming completely superfluous again... though she is hardly the only one who is seriously hurt by this.

What are good examples of that from western media?

A and B
Hmmm let me see. Rugrats not only has a balanced male-female cast it actually starts to have more female main characters then male ones.

Dear goodness I could easily get a ton of Bs, women arn't really thrown out of competence in western cartoons a lot.

While Anime has a huge problem with B... Western cartoons has no problem with it. Heck even in Kim Possible had Ron who was a wimp and clearly not a fighter but even before he got some moves he shown he was clearly skilled at avoiding blows.

[Reelya]

You don't need to guess the shows i watch because i listed over 30 shows in my last post (about 20% of all the anime i've seen). you can critique those shows if you like, no need to guess. And plenty of the ones it didn't list purely because they have some techincal gender imbalance (Sakamichi no Apollon, Aria, Mushishi, Paranoia Agent, Kino's Journey, Hanasaku Iroha etc), wouldn't fall under the "sexist" banner.

What do you watch mainly shonen battle series or something? those are the only thing i categorically do not watch anime-wise (which I "may" have considered when i was 12 if I hadn't had the bar set higher by seeing Macross).

Can you provide some examples where this "thrown out of competence" thing comes from since i've completed over 160 anime tv seasons and never encountered it. Pretty much in my experience if a female character kicks ass, she continues to be able to kick ass for the whole series.

Anyway for the record here's my log of shows I watched, in the order i ranked them.

[Kadzar]

I never really thought about it before, but the women in Outlaw Star for the most part seem just as competent as the men. I mean, sure, Melfina is pretty weak and helpless, but that seems to be more a matter of who her character is rather than because she's female; the rest of the women in the show who are actually fighters demonstrate that sex has no bearing on whether or not a person can be badass. In one episode, Gene enters a women's fighting tournament in disguise, and he gets his ass handed to him in his first match.

That's not to say that the show was at all progressive: the plot was for the most part male-centric, the leading lady is pretty much your basic damsel in distress, and even with three out of the five crewmembers of the Outlaw Star being women, I'm pretty sure it doesn't pass the Bechdel Test. Still, an interesting thing to consider.

[Leafsnail]

The fiance, her brother, and I were discussing gender balance in anime, and were having trouble finding anime that A) had a balanced cast between male and female (not strictly 50/50 but close enough), and B) the men and women were both roughly equally important and effective.

That's pretty tough!  I think one issue is that anime tends to be fairly heavily targeted towards one gender or the other (excepting creepy peripheral audience stuff)

Higurashi no Naku Koro ni (wins on male/female importance if not balance)

It's still kindof a take on dating sims so it's never going to balance.

[aenri]

@kaijyuu

Look at Twelve Kingdoms, it fulfils your conditions. The main character is a girl, and it has many other interesting characters (both male and females). As for B the sexes are viewed as equals in their world.

[Vector]

Oh yeah.  I'll add Last Exile and Neon Genesis Evangelion.  Uh. . . and probably both Saikano and Hellsing, maybe Kare Kano. >_> <_<  Paranoia Agent I thought was okay with its roughly equal numbers of female and male supporting cast, and I thought of the anime artist and police inspector as deuteragonists.  Another vote for Excel Saga, too.

Naruto, though. . . No, I really, really have to vote against Naruto.  The thing were pretty much every team is formed of two guys and a girl means there really isn't equal cast numbers overall, plus most of the female characters have very little personality compared with the male characters (compare Hinata, Ino, Tenten against Neji, Rock Lee, Shiki, etc.--though of course Hinata is the least offensive of these), plus Sakura has been so ill-used that Kishimoto's had to put out public apologies for it.

[Neonivek]

Don't forget that Hinata's storyline is completely unresolved.

You know how "All the female characters kick butt"? Yeah that is only in the Naruto Anime. Hinata didn't even get her awsome defensive gentle fists.

Pretty much in my experience if a female character kicks ass, she continues to be able to kick ass for the whole series.

Hey Sakura how well did you do against that rope? What another character had to tell you, the SMARTEST and strongest willed person on the team, how to cut rope with a knife, something that Sakura would have?

That pretty much sums it up right there. Sakura becomes so stupid in the anime that she forgets how to cut things.

[Zangi]

I wanted to say Last Exile too... but the mechanic girl not having the stomach for fighting thing may be a negative point against it...  and there are really no other female vaanship pilots other then the 2 out of many you see from...  the ghost ship thing(totally forgot the name).  Exceptions to the rule and all that.

There is the sequel to Last Exile, with a female only pilot nation/group...  But that just doesn't fix things...

[Vector]

Eh, I feel like it's even because Alex/Sophia balance each other out, Mullin/Dunya balance, Klaus/Lavie balance, Dio+Luciola/Tatiana+Alister, and then there's Alvis and Delphine, and the mechanic group.  We focus very little on the side Vanship pilots in general, and of the two from Norkia that are given personalities/coverage--Hurricane Hawk and Fat Chicken--they're balanced out.

Having no stomach for fighting is, I think, fine.  Klaus may be the main character, but in general the balance is actually pretty good!  All of the female characters have personalities, too, which is frankly unusual.

[Lord Shonus]

Might be sword fighting and exotic weaponry is more popular and shiny.  Even though spears are a bit more prevalent in military history.  Actually, it might be cause of that, spear type weapons are for the unwashed mooks and unskilled commoners who work as statues and serve to die.

Not quite it, I think. When spears show up, they're almost always used in a very basic stabbing, usually in a line. It was the artistic and graceful methods she used that intrigued me, and it's that which I've never quite seen before.

I seriously would need to watch the episode again to get an idea of what you mean.... and of the head of the spear too...  It may well be a halberd and not a spear.  My memory is made of carp though...

Quick search finds me this:

Spoiler: Spear wielded by Kiriko Miyamoto (click to show/hide)

Alright, so it is a spear that can slash and poke.  I had in mind a poking spear type thing when you were talking about it.  So yea, I can see there being more fanciness to it.
Unless you are talking about some other spear....  then...

In the anime (to the point that I've seen), she doesn't have an actual spear, but one she improvised from a broom handle and something else. At least one wiki suggests that the style she uses is called "Sōjutsu".