I am a long time anime fan. I started seriously watching anime when USA network first began airing Sailor Moon and Dragonball Z, (thats certainly more than ten years ago)

I have noticed a fairly consistant lack of female development in the animes that I have seen. They seem to be almost static characters at times or else their development as people is a very slow almost stunted. They are often drawn with big bouncy chests or just plain airheads.

For instance Usagi/Serena is the title character of Sailor Moon but how does her personality evolve during five or six seasons of the show? She was a blond, boy crazy, airhead in the first a episode and she remained so throughout the series. She never lost that cry baby aspect she had in the beginning either.

Case 2: Relena Peacecraft of Gundam Wing. She is obsessed with Heero almost from the moment that she meets him but she makes no great leaps in understand who he is and why he is doing what he is doing. She just chases him around daring him to kill her and preaching about total pacifism. What is that?

Case : Misato Kasuragi of Neon Genesis Evangelion. We know that Misato has a haunted dark past but we only catch glimpes of her pain and regret. The anime (in regards to her) mostly seems focused on fanservice for the male viewers even though the anime in general is very dark and haunting. She is just some sexual element, and occasionally some comic relief with just hints of how complex and tragic she really is as a character.

Anyway I was just curious on how others saw this issue. Please feel free to leave you views and agree or disagree with me. I'm always interested in learning something new!

Well you're right in that the female characters in many series don't have much of a personality beyond being the typical adorable character with large eyes and a naive personality or they're simply obsessed with some male character. Still there are a few series where the time is actually taken to develop the characters personality. It can get overbearing though especially when the females are portrayed as these helpless moe characters. What can I say, being a female myself that really annoys me that so many female characters don't get any significant development beyond the typical portrayals.

There's plenty of stoic, 1-dimentional characters (female AND male) in anime. I could even go one step further and include most other mediums of literature and film too. It's just the will of the cosmos that some anime series/ova/movies are just not character-driven in general. Or, they follow the typical trap of many shounen/shoujo series that portrays the hero/heroine as a 1-dimentional 'thing' meant to symbolize some basic human ideal (Goku anyone?).

The three cases that were mentioned- yeah, you pretty much hit the nail on the coffin there. Those three people were much more under-developed then I would have wanted. But to argue for Evangelion (which featured a fairly large female cast), I felt characters like Asuka had adequate amounts of development, especially with the whole secret inferiority complex she's suffering (constantly proving herself).

To name a few anime that does give females time and room to develop- Ai Yazawa's Nana and Paradise Kiss come to mind. Dramas in general would be an obvious place to look. Miyazaki and Satoshi Kon (Perfect Blue, Tokyo Godfathers, Millennium Actress) films are another no-brainer.

I could probably name a few more if I watched more of those genres/mold. But alas, I'm a guy. One who enjoys watching male-oriented animes that more often-than-not involves the paper-thin characters you mentioned.

Yeah the female characters in animes usually seem very 2-dimensional to me. A good majority are stereotypical "willing to please" girls. They are given a back-story, a motive, maybe some inner conflict but development seems to be out of reach. The fairly popular animes are the first that come to mind for this problem. Sailor Moon and Neon Genesis Evangelion (like you said) and Inuyasha are really good examples. It just seems like the girls are used more as eye candy and are given that minor backstory to make them compelling and less 1 dimensional. Nyaa is right though, there are plenty of animes with dynamic female characters so I guess I agree and disagree.

Well I felt that Misato wasn't really fan service (Maybe back when Evangelion was new?) when I watched Evangelion...
She was just there. No real point of having her as a character or to exist at all, she could have been replaced by anyone. You're right about her being nearly nonexistent.

Although I do feel that they did a great job with Asuka and especially Rei...
They actually were real characters.

I guess Kaworu would have been a good female character, instead of being a gay male character.

It's true that female characters in anime(especially TV wise) don't really manifest

into important characters. But in the books i've read there've been many females

playing important roles.. also females in anime seem to be used for "visual"

and "attracting" reasons. The women also play an important role in Damsal in

Distress ect... but definately men get more credit in anime for numurous reasons.

Perhaps more guys watch anime shows??

Depending on which anime is it?

You watched too many old animes i guess.

It's true that some female characters don't have development. But i think it's just her characteristic. But when i read about it, i remember about Nodoka in Negima (the manga).

At first time, you'll see that Nodoka is a shy girl, and she's unable to express her feeling. But in the middle of the manga, you'll see the climax of her development in her date with Negi. Furthermore, she have triangle love relationship with her own best friend.

I'll say at this scenario, Nodoka really develop well.

About that Usagi you're talking about, i guess it's just like the chracteristics that can't be separated from the characters.

Some female characters always keep their "tsundere" until the end of the anime, like Shana and Louise.

Well..i'll agreee with the Usagi from sailormoon case..haha~~but there are a few feamle characters that i can name out which i think they have a fairly good development.i can say Cagalli from gundam seed had development,she changed her views and the way she thinks throughout the series.the other one,i would say is Lenalee from d.gray-man (i'm reffering to d.gray-man manga).Lenalee is still having nightmares but i believe she is growing stronger and we,as readers,get to learn more things about her.TO ME,Lenalee is an interesting character to me.in AIR,they are around five-six girls introduced to us.i actually think the side-characters(girls) did show some development..in fact ,the guy was only some-kind-of narrator in the anime.thats what i think..
of course there are a number of female characters who are just simply there as a character more than a character who helps to create the storyline.but i think,anime did put effort in making the female characters more interesting.it's just the matter of how much they develop throughout the whole series..

well,this is what i think..http://static.animepaper.net/images/emo/wooi2.gif

I'm afraid I'm going to have to disagree on your evaluation of Misato. Yeah, she doesn't evolve much, but that's not because she's a flat character - did that bastard Gendo evolve? Kaji? Yes, they did: they evolved about as much as the major Katsuragi. We knew more about Kaji, true, but the thing is, these were people with their personality already made. They're not going to change that easily.

Yet, if you pay attention, you'll notice subtle changes. Katsuragi losing her happy-go-lucky attitude bit by bit (compare chapter 2 Misato with chapter 16-18 Misato for noticing the huge shift) due to the continuous reversals and horrible pressure. Kaji getting more carefree, yet philosophic, as the series advanced, knowing full well his life expectancy was pretty bad anyway. Gendo starting to get more and more reckless as the moment of truth approaches and SEELE starts to close in on him.

I guess what I want to say is, not all characters need to change completely to be more developed. When a character is already developed, the only path is to stay true to it.

Though it is indeed true that there are a hell of a lot of shallow characters (both male and female). You need to look no further than your nearest Shonen anime to find a lot of examples. But that's a fairly common problem in a lot of narrative, aggravated in the case of anime female chars because of the "eye candy factor". That is, a series requires to have a lot of females in the cast just to keep the skewed perception (yes, it is skewed. Hell, I'm a guy, and I think I know what I like, thank you very much!) they have of the masculine viewer happy. Haruhi parodied that line of thought when recruiting Mikuru "because of the moe factor". " She's a tiny loli with huge breasts [...] You still don't get it? Moe! Moe! We need some cute mascot if we are going to start attracting people!". Says a lot, and it seems a lot of the animation studios follow the same line of reasoning. A pity, really. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm all for cute girls (remember, guy ;P ), but they lose all the interest if they're shallow and 1-dimensional, IMHO.

I main reason you could say the female characters are what they are because they are from a genre what you would call "shounen" (of course not always but most of time time it is, trust me)

Cuz guys like me prefer girls the way i like them to be. So in otherwords...why bother changing em when the fans are already cool with it.

actually...i dont have any idea why i posted what i said but anyway...

I'd disagree somewhat on Misato. There was a fair bit that changed in her over the course of the series. The main issue, though, is that the story isn't about her, it's about the three pilots. Thus she gets relatively little screentime. Watching Eva, you *know* there's a hell of a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes with all the adults, but we're only given brief glimpses into that. Misato developed, we just didn't get to see as much about her as we might have liked.

However, for the overall gripe about lack of development, I agree wholeheartedly. That aggravates me about so many series. So often it's nothing but the helpless, 'moe' (generically speaking; very rarely are they moe to me), wanna-be-a-housewife main female character that we know we're going to be stuck with for the entire series, and who almost never really changes. The only shift is in getting her to be 'confident' about herself, and for everyone else to realize that she's actually, and has always been, the perfect female all along.

To be honest, there are very, very few anime that really deal well with actually developing characters, especially in relationships. I think Shuffle! did a great job of it with character relationships, and Twelve Kingdoms was fantastic with just general character development and growth, and most of the main characters there were female. Most of the time, characters never actually change. You start the show with a basic stereotype, and if you're lucky you get to add one new emotion to that (usually: "I'm in love with X!" or "I've overcome my stereotypical flaw!") which the director can point to and say, "Look! Development!". Add a little angsty, can't-get-what-you-want drama, then resolve it and everyone (well, everyone important, which is just the two lead characters) is happy at the end.

That might help explain why the little slice-of-life shows about nothing like Azumanga Daioh and Lucky Star are enjoyed so much; there's no expectation of character development, so there's no disappointment involved either; just random goofy entertainment. But so much of everything else fails because they're falling into the same trap as Hollywood: stick to the formulas we know will attract the viewers; don't do anything risky.

It's rather difficult to get real development for more than a few characters in the course of just 26 episodes, which may put off some of the audience ("we must have enough females designed around known fetishes to cover 90% of the viewer market"). For a longer series they may prefer to stick to what's working already (ie: cash cow; eg: Sailor Moon) rather than try to make changes to the characters.

Ultimately, though, we just keep watching in the hopes of finding those precious gems among all the dross. Just wish it wasn't quite so hard.

Female characters nowadays have three roles in life.
1) to be cute always
2) to fall in love with the main character
3) to be otherwise useless.

it\'s sick. You\'d think every other girl lived in a soap, or every other guy was this lame king-of-the-world nut(good or bad- still a nut).

meh, have you seen a lead female character who\'s ugly? nah? never? well maybe not ugly- just more emphasis on personality than looks? not perfect? no? never?..... me too. never.

the #3 rule can be skipped, but the other two never drop out of sight.

personally they should put more women in the scriptwriting part of the anime process. tasukete tasukete tasukete is completely annoying and never happens in real life.

Well I understand the various view points but what I\'m getting at is even in drama heavy animes like Gundam Wing where virtually every character goes through major changes or evolutions the female characters are usually left in the dust. I mean all the five gundam pilots go through major upsets and changes to thoughts and emotional development as do Zechs and even our perception of Treys changes but not many of the female cast experience such development. The only one I can really think of is Lady Un and we don\'t see too much of her. IMHO the proportions are that there are far more dynamic male characters than female and far more static female characters than male. I would really like it to balance out more in the future.

You\'re analyzing Gundam Wing, a show geared for a young, male audience. So it\'s not surprising the main focal point is geared toward the male characters. But why not look at some other animes likes Haibane Renmei, KareKano, or Monster? They are all drama heavy animes that either feature an all-female cast, explore boy-girl relations, or geared for a female audience. No-where did I see blatant portrayals of eye-candy or 1-trick-pony stereotyped roles. The thing is, none of those are popular in the US.

I realized (like \'sonicver2) that many of the animes mentioned here are either extremely old, or heavily popular in the US. I\'d like to point out that mainstream animes shown in US television are almost all geared towards the male audience. That is the predominant culture here, and the mindset of what anime should be. Hence, anime in the states is heavily misrepresented, and only a limited amount of genres manage to leak through. So its not surprising that some people will develop that image of anime. It also doesn\'t help that at the start of the anime explosion here, almost all were sci-fi, male-oriented (DBZ, Gundam Wing, Ronin Warriors, Cowboy Bebop, Trigun, Outlaw Star, Evangelion). Female writers/developers like the massively popular group CLAMP (92 million copies or works sold) get almost no publicity.

It\'s not like there aren\'t animes with heavy female character development. There are. A alot. Many (which have already been mentioned) are quite great and highly rated. You just have to look at other places.

On many counts, I'd have to agree. Many Asian cultures, especially Japan, is male-centric. They are only now, gradually starting to break away from more traditional cultural views.

I actually can't stomach watching most anime due to how gender roles are portrayed. For example, I tried watching Fruits Basket, but by the third episode, I had to stop or I'd vomit all over my computer. The main character's goal in life was to become a wife - give me a break. She was bubbly, kind, hard working, etc. Basically, she was every other female character, or even certain male characters in anime. She was the same overly nice individual who will somehow make everyone fall in love with them due to their nice-ness despite all the mean-ness around them. 'Been there, seen that.

If you'd like to watch an anime that has some very good female character development, I highly recommend Revolutionary Girl Utena. It takes the themes from traditional shoujo anime (the heroine who is kind, caring, naive, etc) and gives it a nice hard/dark twist. It starts off rather vacuous (albeit strange), but goes on a progressively dark and twisted journey and ends in a rather existential way. It's actually directed by the guy who directed Sailor Moon. He left Sailor Moon feeling rather bitter since he wasn't allowed to excercise his creative views. Utena is surprisingly feministic and progressive for anime. It's been the long standing favourite series of mine for quite some time.