Movie study about female roles

[RickmanX]

I don't think Hollywood has the brains to right

Ironic, innit.

Indeed, thank you for pointing that out, its a bad habit of mine in typing to screw up homonyms, fixed now though.

[archer9234]

It probably will change as time goes on. It really falls under what is going to make the money. Very few exceptions where a female lead actually resonated with everyone (She-ra, Buffy, Wonder Woman, Kathryn Janeway) to keep it alive. Even if say: you hired women on the Sentai writing staff, wrote the best lady you can think of, made her Red Ranger for the entire year, and the other 5 where men. It would fail. Because of the demographics not watching, nor accepting it. So writers always have to run that line: "How can I not go into the stereotype, but not make every boy out there stop watching".

[psychogoatee]

I'd like to see a Kamen Rider show starring a woman as the main character and hero sometime.

[takenoko]

Well, I'm not exactly calling for a revolution. It's not a broken system, just one that could use some tweaking and refinement.

Like after Femme appeared, we've had a few female Kamen Rider. And while Sentai has had female leaders even though they weren't reds, like TimePink or GekiYellow, if you watched the end of Shinkenger

Spoiler

a female ShinkenRed is important, at least in a symbolic sense.

Maybe not have a female Kamen Rider lead, but what about a secondary character that's female?

[Lunagel]

If you think about it, we've already had a secondary female in Ryuki. Maybe Yui wasn't the most charismatic of characters, but she appeared in pretty much every Ryuki episode and it was her backstory that drove the whole plot.

[takenoko]

Yeah, but I want one to transform. Yui would probably just get in the way of the fighting by running in front of a guy with her arms stretched out. Girls are dumb

[kokowaks]

so far the best female toku portrayal to me is siren of KRDR... while i don't really mind those girls being a supporting(literally) characters, a secondary rider girl who's character that's written like those of birth, accel, knight, and zeronos that could stand side-by-side with the main rider would be very empowering... and i don't really mind if it develops to a romance plot with the main guy....

[Joe_Mello]

Let's ignore the centuries of patriarchal culture that makes this more pandemic than endemic, because reality sucks, and I can only be a cynical arsehole for so long.

While we know Luka is out for revenge against Zangyack, Ahim seems rather ambivalent about striking back against those who've wronged her. I know she's a princess, but shouldn't she express emotions of hatred or anger against Zangyack for what they've taken from her?

I say no, because I imagine that would totally be out of character. Granted, she's had a couple overt displays of emotion, including basically flipping out on her teammates, so she's capable of acting out when she wants, but she plays things close to the vest because she was likely raised that way. I'd love to see a future episode address this inner conflict, but alas, being a children's show, I highly doubt this will come to fruition.

[psychogoatee]

Maybe not have a female Kamen Rider lead, but what about a secondary character that's female?

Sure I'd like to see that too, but a female lead in Kamen Rider would be great. I wouldn't be surprised if we see it on some season eventually, it seems like they like to experiment with the formula from time to time.

[EndlessWaltz24]

Maybe not have a female Kamen Rider lead, but what about a secondary character that's female?

Spoiler

I thought IXA being used by females in Kiva was a nice step up?

I too would definitely love to see a female play the role of the secondary rider for the season instead of being an occasional thing.

Spoiler

Idk 'bout Sentai though since I feel the next big move would have to be giving the role of red to a female for a season because that's the only thing I think can be a level up to giving the role of red to a female for more than a couple of episodes.

[yumenotenshi07]

Yeah, but I want one to transform. Yui would probably just get in the way of the fighting by running in front of a guy with her arms stretched out. Girls are dumb

This made me laugh out loud. At my desk at work.

[Blackcondorguy]

Reading the title of the topic, I instantly think of Yuri (Timepink).

Since Bioman had a second female character, there have been 2 types of female roles : the tomboy and the girly girl. It's put very simply, but it's like most female characters from then on has been a variation on one of the 2.

Yuri was very interesting because she was the leader of the group but not in a dull tomboy way, she also had a deep background story. Her relationship with Tatsuya (Timered) developped throughout the series with great subtlety.
Mako from Shinkenger was also a clever take on the tomboy persona as she was supposed to be the one with character but was much deeper than that.
I think the fact a female writer wrote both characters has a lot to do with it.

Besides that, I think Rin from Dairanger was one of the first females in sentai to have that much importance, as Dairanger wanted to focus on each character instead of the usual Red. In that aspect, she arguably had more responsibility that any previous character (notably in her relationship with Kou) and her time on the air rarely felt like 'panty time' (as it could in previous series). Kujaku was also a great character, though henshinless...

[Zetman]

Writing compelling characters is ALWAYS hard, regardless of gender and personality type; An argument could be made that most of the characters in Toku have fairly stock personalities, male or female.

Most of this argument, therefore, is that stock characters tend to favor strong males and more passive females; This is a cultural thing. Even in America, how many female CEOs and Military Leaders are there?

It's at least in part how people raise their children... Girls are raised to be feminine, boys are raised to be manly. How many cultures honestly raise their kids the same way regardless of gender? Not a single one I know of.

A well-written strong female character in that kind of culture wouldn't look like a strong male character; In this sort of culture, a "Strong" female is more stoic than hot-blooded, but just as unshakable and certain.

Nobody really wants to see their culture deconstructed in a kids show. (Try telling that to Gainex, though.)

[takenoko]

Thanks Zetman, I enjoyed reading your post. It is kind of hard to talk about this issue with kid's shows, but I think it's still applicable to some extent. I do agree that most the character are pretty stereotypical regardless of gender.

That's why I was careful to not say that this was a major problem or something that required immediate change. It's just more like "wouldn't it be better if it was this way" sort of thing. Like KR or Sentai don't necessarily need complicated stories or interesting character arcs, but they're better when they do have them, usually.

[dancercotillion]

I think there is a progressive thread in these shows, though. They keep experimenting with how to give women a bigger role, masculinizing them within the framework of the franchise, while also subtly feminizing the men. We do have female Riders now, and they are getting better about it. They seemed pretty self-conscious about the whole thing in Decade, when they dragged Denpa Ningen Tackle out and made fun of it in those netmovies or whatever they were. I don't think we'll get a female lead before a woman becomes the second Rider, but that one will probably be very capable and strong, like Misaki in Kabuto, before they really try and have goofballs like Akiko seriously become Riders.

Look at older Kamen Rider. Those guys had a tendancy to be extremely manly, taken to utterly ridiculous heights with BLACK and RX, where deep-voiced screaming was just how he talked normally. "I'LL HAVE A BIG MAC *clenches fists* AND A DIET COKE *fwip-crash*" The new era Riders have been a lot more subtle people, some of whom are down-right feminine in a lot of ways. And now we have a lot of very soft men leading the shows. Ryotaro, Eiji, Kagami, Shinji, Shotaro, Kenzaki... regardless of how hard they become, they all start off soft, which isn't very traditionally manly.

Sentai's going the same way. They're testing things to see how audiences react. I think a large part of these shows inviting people to write in is to find out what kids want to see, so they don't find themselves stuck making Leave it to Beaver-kun year after year. Eventually, we will have a sentai led by a woman in red. Go-Onger was downright progressive with Go-On Silver being a woman, even if she wasn't the only extra member.