[04] I started watching Naruto and find it extremely sexist

For those who are unaware of the anime world, Naruto is a popular Japanese anime and manga series.

It tells Naruto’s story who is a teenage ninja warrior. There are three other recurring characters — his two friends/members of squad — Sakura (a girl whom Naruto has a crush on) and Sasuke (the last of a line of powerful ninja warriors and whom Sakura has a crush on) and their sensei(teacher) — Kakashi.

The squad guided by their sensei goes on missions (like other ninja teams). It has a good story line.

I will tell you what leaves a bad taste in my mouth after watching the first 15 episodes.

The only important female character(until now), Sakura, is useless to the plot. Seriously, I can take her out and still watch the exact same story with exact same messages.

The entire existence of Sakura so far has been around impressing Sasuke. I now know about Naruto’s past and know that Sasuke is out to get a revenge because of something that was done to his clan.

But I only know that Sakura crushes on Sasuke, can memorise stuff and has a good control over her spiritual energy(chakra). No background except that she used to mug a lot of things in school.

She hasn’t participated in any fight so far.

The squad was once learning to control and target chakra(spiritual energy). Sakura did exceptionally well and outdid the boys in the first try. I was so excited about her finally having something to contribute.

But at this moment, their sensei has to say “Good, Sakura seems to control her chakra well. But once the boys learn how to do it, they will far outperform her as they have more chakra.”

After discussing with my well-meaning friends and reading very enlightening reddit posts, I have to put these arguments against the defence for Naruto :

1. Target Audience

This show was targeted towards teenage boys. Hence, the lack of strong female characters. In fact, I want to share a seemingly innocent reddit post I found

“Being sexist in an anime that targets teenage boys mainly is okay. Because, well… Boobs.”

Do we mean to say that it’s okay to present to our boys a world full with men sprinkled around with a few sexualised females? I don’t think that has no effect on the very impressionable mind of a teen.

As much as we need to tell our girls how they can be whoever they wish to be, we need to educate our boys on how to view girls as fellow humans instead of only objects of desire.

2. Men are also objectified.

In other anime targeted towards teenage girls.

I have two things to say :

a. Two wrongs don’t make a right.

b. Men/boys are “objectified” by making them strong, kind, funny, good looking and ambitious. Women are objectified by making them sexually attractive. I would like to see women being “objectified” by their character.

3. Men are physically stronger

So the representation is right.

Wrong. Sakura is not just a physically weaker character. She has no personality. There is no character development at all. All her existence is about liking a boy and being liked by another.

4. I haven’t seen the entire series

So I cannot make such assumptions.

I have seen 15 episodes. There is one recurring female character. She has no storyline or motives other than impressing a boy. 90% of her dialogues are “Oh Sasuke beat that guy. You are so awesome”. These are not assumptions.

5. Naruto is better than a lot of other popular anime and cartoon series

So Naruto shouldn’t be blamed.

Seriously?

My mom gave this example in my childhood — “If your friends jump in the well, are you going to follow them?”

6. That was a different time

We have strong female characters in our cartoon movies and series now.

Naruto anime aired from 2002 to 2007. Not so far ago. The spinoff movies, comics and series still come out today.

And of course Disney and Pixar are now coming up with movies with very strong female characters (I am so excited about Ballerina!). But those are the movies majorly targeted towards girls. We are still showing a different, unrealistic world to our boys through our games, comics and cartoons. (I know all of them ARE supposed to be unrealistic..but you know what I mean.)

It is sad to see so many of educated men being okay, and, in fact, fighting in defence of this kind of representation of women. Naruto matters more because this is a series that caught the fancy of an entire generation.

And while the girls of that generation have been taught(or at least so was the agenda) to be independent and strong, the boys, on a subconscious level, continue to see the girls as objects of desire and creatures that need protection.

P.S. — I have missed three days of writing. This was the first weekend in the 100 days writing and I missed both the days. I had such expectations of writing a very well-written article on some complex topic. I didn’t find a topic good enough to write. So I wrote nothing at all! Lesson learnt — write anything instead of waiting to write something mind-boggling.