In reading this post about representation and Lucky Star, I ended up thinking about how I feel about creative works versus the people behind the creative works.
With music, I largely separate the two because I find that combining them often dampens my enjoyment of the piece – it’s not a certain rule, but it happens enough that I actively avoid finding out too much about the people behind the bands I like. The problem lies mainly the fact that song x makes me feel y and if creator z turns out to be a total jerk then I will forever associate song x with z being a jerk.
However sometimes when the person is going out of their way to be a top level jackass (I’m looking at you, Amanda Palmer) you can’t continue to support them just because you like their music because that music pays their bills and if you support it, then you are perpetuating them being a jackass and they will not learn any lessons.
But sometimes this just happens because I discover the people are someone I can’t personally respect. They aren’t really doing anything horrible, I just wouldn’t be able to handle being friends with them. Or, y’know, hang out in the same room with them, most likely. Music is music, and while there’s something to be said about music conveying a particular message written in by the creator, I’m more on the side of music making you feel what it makes you feel and the way you interpret it is correct for you and there is no “wrong” way to enjoy it. Mostly.
But music is a more personal subject for me than, say, anime series.
I don’t typically look up who writes what. I tend to not know if x was written by a boy or a girl unless I’ve been told for some reason, although I’m aware that a lot of the stuff I’ve come to love falls into the 青年 (seinen) category – series targeted at males 18-30 or so, and as you might imagine, a lot of those authors are males.
Do I particularly care? Not really. If I like the series and can relate to the characters, why should it matter who wrote it?
But I can see the unease in having an all-female cast scripted by someone who isn’t female – I’d actually feel a similar unease being pointedly introduced to a series full of males written by a non-male. Equal opportunity weirdness.
It’s not as though people who are one sex/gender cannot understand people who are the opposite sex/gender well enough to write them – certainly the guys who wrote Lucky★Star and K-ON! were good enough to hook me – but, as a writer, I do think it’s more difficult. Both of those series are pretty fluffy, which means that stereotypes are A-OK and they’re what the story plays off of… the little story that there is, anyway. When a plot begins to delve really deeply into the interpersonal relationships and conflicts of one sex/gender, a lot more experience and knowledge is required – and that’s something I think many people don’t have. I’d even be hard pressed to say I have comprehensive experience in all-female relationships, even though I’m possibly adequately qualified to write about such things, being a girl, identifying as a girl and having friends who are girls.
But subject matter takes over here. Thinking about other all-female casts brings me to series like Azumanga Daioh and Kanamemo. Both cute, both seinen, but while Azumanga is written by a non-female, Kanamemo is actually written by Iwami Shouko, who is female. (Japanese wiki page confirms)
I did like both series… to a point.
Azumanga is a series about nothing, same as Lucky Star, but with one important, creepy addition: this guy. Kimura-sensei. A rather sketchy teacher who admits to wanting to be specifically employed at a high school because he likes high school girls. He develops a creepy attachment to Kaorin who is understandably horrified, and although he doesn’t commit any serious atrocities in the context of the story, his creepy factor is way up there. He actually requests a a glass of pool water that the swimming club has been in at their cultural festival booth. Yeah. That kind of creepy.
The problem with Kimura is, well, he’s supposed to be funny. Like, “ha ha oh you pervert. Welp, nothin’ we can do about him.” No one outright condones his behavior, or praises him for it, in fact, everyone that encounters it sports at least moderately horrified expressions, but it’s allowed to continue. No one reports him to a superior, and he’s not likely to get fired for questionable morals and motives. (He also inexplicably has a pretty, air-headed wife.) He never crosses into the category of even vaguely attractive, and you know he’s creepy from his first appearance, but I’m really uncomfortable with his existence in an otherwise pretty relaxed and fluffy world.
Kanamemo has a similar problem – Haruka, a university student who lives and works at the newspaper delivery office, has a suspicious fondness for pre-pubescent girls. She follows the general drunken salaryman stereotype in this manner, harassing Saki, the elementary school aged assistant chief of the company. In the swimsuit/musical episode, it becomes painfully clear that her interest in them goes beyond “oh little girls are cute” as she sings about how, not having much to hold them in place, young girls’ swimsuits are apt to slip and expose something.
Haruka is “reprimanded” in the typical fashion of disapproving looks and maybe a smack or two, but she’s allowed to continue to live there and her behavior to continue. Again, Haruka’s actions are meant to be comical – Kanamemo is a light-hearted series – but such a lenient environment for pedophilia made my stomach turn so much that I couldn’t continue watching it (even though Kana and Mika were so cute, too). The fact that Haruka is female doesn’t make it any less disturbing, nor does the fact that Kanamemo was written by a female. Creepy is creepy regardless of sex or gender.
Now, neither Azumanga nor Kanamemo are at all blatantly sexual (okay, minus the obvious yuri relationship in Kanamemo, but that’s at least consensual and of age) – but they’re clearly aimed at adults who will recognize the thought processes that Kimura and Haruka are likely having off screen.
Basically, what I’m trying to say is this: I’m far less bothered by who wrote a series than what the series contains. Anime series in general seem to contain a lot of fan service of one kind or another, and manga/4koma tend not to get picked up without a healthy dose of it (hell, even Umineko’s full of scantily clad characters and someone in charge of the anime STILL felt it was necessary to amp up the service). I’m okay with fan service to a point – the obligatory comparison of breast sizes and the working in of a swimsuit episode, even if it doesn’t make sense canonically, for example – but the inclusion of creepy characters in a setting where they will never encounter consequences is a dangerous path to walk, in my mind.
As a side note, I’m divided on the no-underage-chara bill that’s being delayed in Japan. I’m not positive that it would prevent those creepy characters from existing, just from the girls themselves from being blatantly sexualized. So does that really solve anything? Additionally, in the proper setting, such themes can make a powerful statement, but defining exactly which settings are truly appropriate gets a bit fuzzy. I don’t want to get too much further into that topic right here, though.