I feel like the reason anime has good female characters is because they are characters first, who just so happened to be female.
Once upon a time, Hollywood wrote characters like this too. Nowadays, if a character is female, their female-ness has to be their defining trait. they can't just be a badass secret agent, they have to be a badass WOMAN secret agent, and the audience has to be reminded of that every 3 seconds.
Its not even that they write characters that coincidentally are female. Casca is one of the most well known female characters in manga/anime ever, is designed bottom to top as female first with it defining every single aspect of her character, and is still one of the strongest characters around. It took the worst nightmares imaginable to break her, and she still eventually managed to be reformed.
The problem with Hollywood is they write them as a victim first, and then strong after. They are constantly defined by their oppression and victimhood, and their "strength" is made by fighting back against it.
the hilarious thing is that victim first characters are not even necessarily bad writing. but when it becomes the only thing that the industry can write, it becomes extremely stale.
I feel like the reason anime has good female characters is because they are characters first, who just so happened to be female.
Once upon a time, Hollywood wrote characters like this too. Nowadays, if a character is female, their female-ness has to be their defining trait. they can't just be a badass secret agent, they have to be a badass WOMAN secret agent, and the audience has to be reminded of that every 3 seconds.
Its not even that they write characters that coincidentally are female. Casca is one of the most well known female characters in manga/anime ever, is designed bottom to top as female first with it defining every single aspect of her character, and is still one of the strongest characters around. It took the worst nightmares imaginable to break her, and she still eventually managed to be reformed.
The problem with Hollywood is they write them as a victim first, and then strong after. They are constantly defined by their oppression and victimhood, and their "strength" is made by fighting back against it.
the hilarious thing is that victim first characters are not even necessarily bad writing. but when it becomes the only thing that the industry can write, it becomes extremely stale.