The other thing to realize is that the target audience is young boys and so the activities that boys and girls are seen training in are going to differ. Flower arranging is seen as a girl activity while doing ridiculous amounts of push-ups that would rip the muscles from a normal child’s bones is seen as male. I think Kishimoto is simply following the typical stereotypes and then playing off them when it works in the story.

Different cultures react in strange ways to violence. In the English dub they initially edited out a lot of the blood, changed the swears to “darn” and “shoot” and in some cases cut scenes. They stopped doing it after a while (or so I heard as I refuse to watch the English dub), but in the manga the swears were in the first two volumes and later edited. The most recent alteration was Rock Lee’s use of Drunken Fist, which was changed to Potion Punch in the manga and Loopy Fist in the anime.

I also don’t see the function of flower arranging as a spy. I mean, knowing or not about the flowers meaning, or what goes with what…I’m sure most people don’t know, or don’t care, and won’t ‘test’ someone on this topic (especially if they are clueless themselves).

As a recomfort, you should know that the cartoon network in Canada labels it as 18+ for violence, language and such. Funny that a mange/anime aimed at teenage boys would be restricted to adults (though no one checks).

I’m almost 26 too, and I know all 397 chapters and 274 episodes.

In the story, kunoichi need to learn flower arranging in case they are sent as a spy and need to pretend to be like an average woman. In other words, the mark would never suspect she was a ninja.

The difference between male and female ninjas is rarely brought up in the story itself though, the distinction seems to hold mostly in name since many of the female characters are pretty strong. They just rarely adopt a masculine attitude towards improving and competing.

By the way, Lee’s training is rather insane… 7000 push-ups on his thumbs in a row, while injured. He should be rippling with muscles lol.

Tsunade, Sakura, Anko, Kurenai, Tsunade’s assistant (her name is not said enough to remember), Hinata, Ino, Temari, Chiyo.

Male characters include:

Naruto, Sasuke, Jiraiya, Kabuto, Iruka, Orochimaru, Kakashi, The first 4 Hokages (5th being Tsunade), at least the 3rd and 4th Kazekages, Gaara (5th Kazekage), Kankurou, Kiba, Shino, Shikamaru, Choji, Lee, Gai (it sounds like ‘mighty guy’ for his full name – but is translated as Maito Gai), Ibiki, Neji, Yamato, Sai, Itachi, Pein, Madara…

(those are central characters more or less – or play an important role)

Though the value of friendship, the hardships of loneliness and rejection and mentor-student relationships are explored rather in depht.

It remains unclear why male-focused stories tend to be more popular than female-focused stories, but this trend seems to hold true regardless of what culture one looks at, particularly when it involves action adventure stories. If anyone wants to change that, the way to go about it is not by attacking male-focused stories or changing male characters into female characters, but by writing stories for a female audience, developing the audience and demonstrating that there is a desire for those kinds of stories. This probably will not attraction many boys or men, but it would create a new genre that would target a currently untargeted audience.

That seems like a more practical and fair way rather than barring or banning male-focused stories or forcing them to be politically correct.

Well, it seems the distinction (boy vs girl manga) holds strongest in Japan, where roles are clearly defined and any deviation is pretty much seen as a threat. Ironically they have no problem with transsexuals if they are conventional for the other role, because buddhism, unlike christianity, doesn’t condemn in the same way.

Many shojo anime and mangas have had a lot of success with boys, it depends on the title and genre (within shojo).

Escaflowne (the anime) is rather unique in that it combines shojo and shonen into one. It has a shojo drawing style (bishonen), and the story is told from Hitomi (a rather independant short-haired female student)’s point of view. The shonen side is with giant robot armors (well they seem to be entirely mechanical, and driven by dragon hearts) and combat.

In manga they have done a shojo version and a shonen version. It seems only the shonen version got to North America in the end. The manga is extremely different from the anime, with only key points remaining consistent.

To name a few very popular shonen anime:

Dragon Ball (Dragon Ball just like that, Dragon Ball Z, Dragon Ball GT – it’s all a continuation), which is insanely long.

Naruto (and Naruto Shippuuden, which is set 2.5 years later), which is also rather insanely long, having 397 chapters of manga currently, and 274 episodes (amongst which 85 fillers).

YuGiOh. Though they sort of censored many parts of the manga for the anime. The target audience of the manga seemed to be higher than that of the anime. It’s pretty common in the manga to have the protagonist and his friends under death threat, especially in the early story. The alter-ego of the protagonist (called Yami Yugi) is also more evil in the manga, making some people insane.

Ranma ½. It’s an old series, though younger than Dragon Ball. It seems to have a lesser audience. It’s a reference for many in the transgender community due to the main plot device (changing sex with contact with water, depending on the temp).

As for shojo that are also very popular, there is Sailor Moon and it’s plethora of sequels.

Those are the ones I know that made it to North America. I know many more Japanese anime that may never make it, or have never made it (not on TV anyway).

I was under the impression that there were about two main characters in each romance novel, one of each gender, and that this was related to heterosexism rather than misandry.

Romance and erotica stories are by and large told from the female perspective and generally feature rather archetypal/stereotypical male characters for her to fall for. In some instances the stories are sophisticated, but in most instances the stories maintain the stereotypes, though it has become more common for certain types of romances to add a modern twist, i.e. making the male interest a cheater and usually “bisexual.”

If you haven’t read the book, it is a little dishonest for you to judge whether or not the plot was followed closely.

Um, no it is not thanks to Wikipedia. And again, Audrey Geisel is very particular about what changes she allows and plot has never been one of them. Of all the films made, none of them have fundamentally altered Seuss’ original story, so it seems highly unlikely that Geisel would suddenly allow it.

The objection Sagal raised was not that the 96 daugthers were an obstacle, but that none of them got to save the day and that Ned was wasting time “thinking about anything else” than his clearly more important daughters. However, in no way have they even been presented as an obstacle. They do not prevent Jojo from speaking, they do not cause him to feel distressed, they do not make him think he is not good enough for his father and they do not prevent him from saving the day. They are a subplot ploy, but they serve a totally different function. By Ned having 96 daughters he has a ready-made excuse for not noticing his son’s obvious needs and therefore cannot be presented as a typical emotionless, uncaring father. They also highlight the loneliness and isolation Jojo feels by literally making him the odd one out.

Women are quite often used and abused as plot devices, and in ways that men are often not subjected to.

That is not even historically accurate. If one reads older sci-fi, fantasy and action adventure stories the male sidekicks were routinely kidnapped, knocked out, tortured, threatened with barely veiled rape and sometimes killed. This still continues in these genres, although now the sidekick no longer has any value beyond being the pitiful comic relief. He is saved only because the hero has to save everyone, not because he has any particular value. The characters are often so useless that even when killed their deaths do not effect the main protagonist (or the story) at all.

The difference is that this treatment of males is so common and so pervasive that it goes completely unnoticed, and when mentioned gets readily denied. This is how the same people who complained about Sue Dibny and the Spoiler conveniently forget about the Blue Beetle, Hawkeye, the Vision, Joseph, Jason Todd, Bukcy, Azrael and a host of other male characters randomly killed off to either serve as a plot point or because no one liked them (see Infinite Crisis, Avengers Disassembled). And then there are characters like Superboy and Kid Flash who were killed over money.

I don’t see how “target audience” is really a good excuse for any of this. DC and Marvel reps both have stated that they are trying to get girls to read more comics, and why wouldn’t they? It’s poor business sense to ignore half of your potential market.

Actually, it is not if by specifically targeting other groups DC and Marvel stand to lose their core audience, which happens to be the case. The fact is that female superheroes do not sell well. When marketed to a male audience the heroines are rarely popular on their own and usually cannot sustain solo titles. When targeted to a female audience male readers immediately notice it and figure that the stories are not meant for them and therefore do not read them. So the Big Two’s only decision would be to either risk losing their core audience by changing male characters to female characters–alienating fans of both the original character and of male characters–or they can create new female characters (or they can change male characters) targeted at an audience that generally shows a disinterest in comics–and again alienating their core audience.

Coincidentally, even when stories do target and are marketed heavily to females the books do not sell nearly as well as their male counterparts. This is best seen with US manga sales, in which shounen (boys) manga generally outsells shojo (girls) manga. Ironically, a large portion of the people buying shounen manga are female.

As a practical matter, it is seems rather odd and ultimately arrogant and narcissistic for any group of people generally disinterested in a given form of entertainment to demand that the creators change their stories and shift focus from their fan-base to appeal to another group. This would be akin to men demanding that day-time television shift its market from middle-age women to college-age males because some of them are at home during the day. No network would do it because they would risk losing their wider viewership.