#in lieu of writing long threads on my poor twitter circle who're probably tired of me LOL

[regalia-of-wisdom]

The ecchi food show writes better than Naruto

Currently on twitter there’s been a discussion going around regarding fandom spaces and the original media and how often fans are either willing to defend female characters or to ignore them, specially when compared to male characters, etc. So I was going to write a thread but I ended up writing, like, a big ass essay on Food Wars and Naruto, of all mangas. Needless to say it got too big to be uploaded to twitter, so to tumblr it goes! Let’s get to it!

So when I was watching Shokugeki no Soma (I know I know, epitome of feminism, ultimate media for activism, Nobel peace prize worthy etc.) I remember being comfortable enough in the writing to actively dislike a female character. This isn’t true anymore btw, upon rewatches + future plot I think she’s wonderful now. But something I focused on, often, back then was the particular way in which I tended to phrase that to myself: “feeling comfortable to dislike a girl”. This wasn’t something I tended to do. Even when I found certain tropes or characteristics annoying, I always felt like I needed to like and defend the girl characters, bc if I didn’t then no one else in the fandom spaces I went to would have.

So what did it mean to “be comfortable”? I think it meant feeling like the author wasn’t making their female character fight uphill battles in terms of likeability and relatability. Everyone knows that Kishimoto doesn’t know how to write women, and the one or two chances where he does it feels like luck. That means that it’s E A S Y to ignore anything he writes when it comes to his female characters and their flaws, because these wouldn’t be applied to the guys. They were fighting uphill battles, it was unfair. If all the girls are shallow and boy crazy and incapable of fighting for themselves, then that wasn’t a flaw that I had to personally assess, that was a set of comfortable tropes that Kishimoto didn’t care to fix or explore and therefore the character as it was written was not complete. To judge them as I would with Kishi’s male characters would have been unfair.

In Food Wars, I never had this vibe (do wanna point out that I never finished the manga or the anime, so if the writing in terms of the girls’ arcs specifically goes downhill, I’m not talking about that LMAO). It was incredibly refreshing to see girls with a variety of personalities AND flaws, in a way that made it clear that I could just honestly Judge them based on their own merits. What about their personalities worked for me, personally? How do they handle obstacles? How do they react to the plot??? The answer wasn’t the same for every single girl. They all had different priorities! It was mind blowing, and this came from a fucking. Ecchi manga where everyone keeps getting naked everytime they eat food. The artist literally drew hentai sjdkdkdlld.

They even made me change my mind on the character I disliked, by the way, after she went through her character arc. Her role in the story changed, and I had a new view of her. All was right with the world. I loved them all again! And this time it was because the authors knew what they were doing, and not out of spite! What the fuck!? THE ECCHI FOOD MANGA??

How can THESE people make me feel like I knew how to read characters, while others didn’t? Rather, why did I feel like I NEEDED to force my brain to see the way characters are treated differently in other media? There’s something so gross about the way that other fans close their eyes away from the faults of their favorite authors. I can’t stand Naruto fans that don’t want to admit Kishimoto’s fatal flaw. I don’t assign misogyny to authors because I don’t fucking know them, but Kishi’s writing was misogynist. Food Wars might be objectifying (and I do think that people downplay how often girls, specifically, tend to get naked more often. I know guys get naked too and it’s a whole “equality” thing but I know what I’m talking about when I say that. The ratio isn’t actually equal and ALSO It’s Shonen jump, many of the girls are teenagers and yet their boobs are huge. This is something else tho, I’m actually praising the character writing lmao.) but it’s purpose wasn’t to demean the impact of girls as both an audience and a subject matter, at least in terms of story telling. Naruto was way too toxic for its girls, despite having minimal fanservice when compared to the foodgasm manga.

But, like, more importantly, the fandom footprint of Food Wars just doesn’t compare to Naruto. Food Wars was big for like 3 seasons and then I never heard from it again, but Naruto is known by every fucker on the market. Everyone knows who Sakura is, and everyone feels comfortable insulting her and shitting on her character choices, as if she was a real human being and not the product of some dude’s head. It is IMPERATIVE that I understand what Sakura COULD be and focus on that, because otherwise endorsing the kind of environment that feels comfortable insulting girls that don’t act correctly just ends up causing trouble all around, when the shitty ass male characters get so much nuanced writing thrown at them by comparison.

I refuse to accept understanding men as being more “natural” than understanding women, that just isn’t fucking true, and allowing it to continue could lead to genuine misogyny towards REAL people. I actually do know people in real life that refuse to understand why women would stay in abusive relationships, or why they apologize so often, etc. And these opinions are equally reflected in how they view certain characters in media. More often than not, understanding why men would damage themselves became more second nature than understanding why women would act “foolishly”.

I don’t think media consumption and literacy are actually, like, the be all end all in terms of the betterment of society or whatever, but at the very least I think endorsing an environment where we can stop accidentally insulting one another by no longer putting in some fucking filter over whether or not we care about certain characters is worthwhile. Sakura isn’t real but other girls are, and treating her like ass because she couldn’t finish her power up arc isn’t a hot take that does anything for anyone.