Female characters in action scene= fan service?

[CABAL49]

One of my favorite manga, Berserk, has a not of nudity. I mean A LOT! But most of it isn't very sexual, or at least it doesn't do much for me (not a fan of rape.) The women fighters in the story are generally more than capable than handling their own. True the main guy can beast pretty much anything, but the women aren't useless.

[greed]

Originally Posted by krogothwolf

It's just that there are more and more shows being made that draw attention to the fan service then tasteful ones.

Really I'd say the trends downward. More and more series are getting decent fights with women. Though that's more that more artists and directors are willing to depict women in violent fights rather than keep them passive or in cat fights and not that less people are making the fights fanservicey I suppose.

[Smarty McBarrelpants]

The problem is that clothes are ripped but the body underneath isn't all bashed up and bruised in the vast majority of cases. If your clothing is being ripped you are probably going to take damage as well. And beaten up bodies aren't pretty but they never draw the beaten up bodies.

[Krylo]

Originally Posted by synkr0nized

So the alternatives are hack-n-slash clothing such to make it a strip show or hide/censor the damage or have a guy step in?


What?

Originally Posted by CelesJessa

Everyone knows that women can only get attacked in ways that result in clothing being ripped off in provocative areas. Didn't you know that Synk?

I THINK what Kyanbu is talking about is how in like, say, Bleach or DBZ or wtfever Ichigo or Goku or wtfever will end up fighting and getting blasted and beaten and bloodied, and part of that is that their clothes don't generally survive the incident intact. They get sliced apart along with their flesh, or blasted away (along with their flesh) etc. etc.

Female characters, however, to avoid this--never actually get hit in the center body mass in many of these shows. Or, if they do, it's a stab wound, and never a slash.

This results in what Kyanbu (correct me if I'm wrong), perhaps rightly, sees as sexist, as it shows female characters being necessarily 'softer' or 'less tough' than male characters. It may even make it seem like the enemies are going soft on them if it's the same enemies the male heroes are fighting. They can't be 'that much better', after all, because the males are the heroes of the cast and are always doing things the females can't (which is also sexist).

His conundrum then, is how do you show a female getting hurt by a slash across the chest without it being sexualized.

I'm also not quite sure I agree with SO that it's some kind of hang up that we have with female flesh, as that a lot of the time the images which get the most fangirl attention for shows like this are the ones where the male character just got done getting his shirt carved off (never mind the nice gashes on his chest and stomach, too, ladies).

Which I think just leads me to the conclusion the problem isn't a hang-up that we have with naked flesh having to be sexual (I mean, that's there, it's something our culture does--but I'd also call it pretty much natural), but rather a hang-up we have with seeing the naked female body as somehow dirty and NOTHING BUT sexual.

Let's face it, the fangirls are getting their jollies from Kurama getting his shirt cut off by whatever random demon, just as much as the fanboys are getting their jollies from whatever random cleavage shot.

There's really no reason our society treats one as 'omgporn' and the other as perfectly normal.

[Bells]

Originally Posted by greed

Really I'd say the trends downward. More and more series are getting decent fights with women. Though that's more that more artists and directors are willing to depict women in violent fights rather than keep them passive or in cat fights and not that less people are making the fights fanservicey I suppose.

Queen's Blade, Ikkitousen and Tenjou tenge would like a word with you.

Maybe Claymore too buy i haven't watched that one.

[Marc v1.0]

I think the obvious answer to the problem is not make clothing get blasted off in the first place at the first sign of attack. I doubt highly that layers of clothing would just fall apart into one inch strips with a glancing slash at the chest.

[greed]

Originally Posted by Bells

Queen's Blade, Ikkitousen and Tenjou tenge would like a word with you.

Maybe Claymore too buy i haven't watched that one.

Well as I amended, I did say I don't think it's going down. But anime and manga like that have been around for a long long time. See Cutey Honey all the way back in 1973. I was objecting to Krogothwolf saying it was increasing, I think we're pretty much par for the course. Also can't speak for the anime, but the Claymore manga doesn't come off as fanservicey.

And back to the topic, if Krylo's interpretation is correct, then yeah Kyanbu has a bit of a point. I read Kyanbu's posts as women in fights who end up losing any of their clothing make the fight nothing but fanservice, and countered with it doesn't inherently mean that, and you can have serious non-exploitative fights with clothing damage and nudity.
If Kyanbu's point was that the fact that the limitations on how much female nudity you can show due to people sexualising it and thus becoming either titillated(leading to not taking the fight seriously) and/or indignant(leading to censorship) mean the fights come off as less serious, and that we should stop losing our shit over nipples so much and just deal with a fight involving a topless woman the same way as a fight with a topless man, that's a point.

[Kyanbu The Legend]

Originally Posted by greed

Well as I amended, I did say I don't think it's going down. But anime and manga like that have been around for a long long time. See Cutey Honey all the way back in 1973. I was objecting to Krogothwolf saying it was increasing, I think we're pretty much par for the course. Also can't speak for the anime, but the Claymore manga doesn't come off as fanservicey.

And back to the topic, if Krylo's interpretation is correct, then yeah Kyanbu has a bit of a point. I read Kyanbu's posts as women in fights who end up losing any of their clothing make the fight nothing but fanservice, and countered with it doesn't inherently mean that, and you can have serious non-exploitative fights with clothing damage and nudity.
If Kyanbu's point was that the fact that the limitations on how much female nudity you can show due to people sexualising it and thus becoming either titillated(leading to not taking the fight seriously) and/or indignant(leading to censorship) mean the fights come off as less serious, and that we should stop losing our shit over nipples so much and just deal with a fight involving a topless woman the same way as a fight with a topless man, that's a point.

Yeah that was the point I was trying to get across. I really need to work on explaining things a little better.

[synkr0nized]

OK, I can get behind that.