Winter 2018 Anime and Wholesome Masculinity



























6 thoughts on “Winter 2018 Anime and Wholesome Masculinity”

  1. I dislike the idea of toxic masculinity in a general sense. Toxicity and masculinity are things they need to be addressed individually in any given context and so combining them in one term always seems like a setup for disaster. That said, I like the comparison you are making here with March Comes in Like A Lion. Rei has to apply his desires to protect in a different way from his immediate instinctual reaction. I think an appropriate term for it does already exist it just isn’t talked about much. Maturity.

    I think part of the reason masculinity in the raw, natural form it exists in doesn’t go away is because maturity needs to be communicated and acknowledged to have value. I haven’t watched March Comes in Like A Lion so I can’t comment on what it does(I really need to watch it, I know) but any idiot can pick up a stick and beat someone else with it to protect someone they care about. No or very little philosophy needs to be understood for an instinctual recognition of value. The opposite isn’t true. The more complex a reaction, the more nuance needs to be communicated for the same appeal. Basically, there is a lot more involved to get from point a to point b. The concern that it won’t be appreciated is always a risk where as the idiot with a stick is more obvious and easily addressed. Part of the problem with fictional stories is what the audience is going to understand. Everyone understands picking up a stick to beat up the enemy. The more nuance added the more people who get lost along the way.(this can also feed into why it’s so tempting to become elitist about a “stupid” audience.) It’s something special when a story is good at portraying nuance in ways most people understand.

    If stories are getting better at showing maturity in their character’s that awesome I think. It can be unrealistic sometimes, but character maturity is one of the big things I love about Japanese stories and something I never feel like I get out of Western stories. I’d argue it’s a concept Japanese storytellers have been better at for a long time, but I’ll admit I have a strong bias. I’m probably just not a big fan of what more western minded stories portray as mature, or more that they just often don’t. I expect characters in western stories to indulge in immaturity. Maybe that’s a part of what the term toxic masculinity is intended to address?

  2. I’m kind of on the fence about whether or not “toxic masculinity” has merit as a term, or whether toxicity should just be a separate thing. If we are going to use “toxic masculinity” though, we should also use toxic femininity, which we don’t.

    My thought for this post though was that IF we’re going to hear about toxic masculinity all the time (whether or not we should be hearing about it), THEN we should have some concept of what the opposite of toxic masculinity is, and recognize it when it happens. But yeah, another way of looking at this group of shows from this season is that they happen to feature male characters who are mature, or more mature than we usually see.

    As to whether or not we see characters properly mature in western media, hmm I’d really have to think about that. I think often, characters in western stuff just become more powerful so they can overcome their opposition and that power boost is sold to the audience as a form of maturity, but of course, there’s a ton of anime that does that too– hell, shonen is practically built on that. It’s something I’ll probably be watching for going forward though.

    1. Minor rant incoming about something that isn’t too important to me, but you might find interesting? I’m not trying to argue needlessly and I understand where you are coming from. On a certain level terms have value simple because they are used and not because they should or should not be used. You obviously aren’t responsible for making toxic masculinity a term and there is obvious value in addressing it… But lets talk about the should part anyway. 🙂

      I’m all for terms that add valuable nuance, but I don’t think “toxic masculinity” adds anything of value outside of feminist dogma. Which well, I have a hard time acknowledging in the first place for a mile long list of reasons. I’m willing to acknowledge toxicity in context. “Toxic masculinity” always seems to be used to define context. Like the idea that boys shouldn’t cry. It has obvious value for the boy who wants to cry, but once used it also implies that he should be crying in certain situations where he isn’t because of toxic masculinity. In a situation with a boy who isn’t crying using the term toxic masculinity overrides the personal context of said situation where you think he should cry. Why he is or isn’t crying is no longer relevant. The context has already been defined. He isn’t crying because he feels like he shouldn’t cry even though somewhere deep down he wants to cry. Any reasons more personal to an individual are immediately denied.

      The problem is with the boy who gets misunderstood for a new reason. Maybe he just isn’t all that sensitive and he will grow up thinking all the people who wanted him to cry more were a bunch of looney feminists.(and won’t be entirely wrong) That should be counter productive to feminist thinking for obvious reasons, but I never see it addressed. It’s always culture this or that. It’s like damn it all, that boy would be crying if he had better parenting and grew up in an ideal society!

      Side note, the idea of toxic femininity scares me even more than toxic masculinity. Imagine the things it would be used for… How dare that woman be happy cooking for her husband! She sets impossible goals for her daughters! How will they ever cope with needing to live in a modern society… etc etc. Of course the real toxic femininity would be the stuff coming from people whining about those things, but that goes over their head. It’s always the most immature people who scream the loudest about this stuff. It’s an irony they always seem to be oblivious of.

      Toxic masculinity is the champion of boys who struggle to mature because of stereotypes, but it’s also an antagonist of the mature man who is perfectly comfortable with gender norms. It can even be used to imply that being comfortable is part of the problem.(whatever that might mean, insert feminist dogma here) People using the term poorly? Or a poor term? I’d just like to see that addressed.

      1. I think my conception of it is a lot simpler than yours. For example, in romantic relationships, men are more likely to be overly possessive, controlling, etc., so including something like that under the heading of “toxic masculinity” makes some sense to me; it’s a counterproductive behavior that is associated with men. That’s not to say some women aren’t possessive and controlling, obviously, but it’s counterproductive behavior that’s more common from one gender than the other. I think avoiding conflict by becoming increasingly passive-aggressive could be filed under “toxic femininity” as a counterpart to that, but of course, no one actually uses the term toxic femininity. Except us, of course.

        Too simplistic? Maybe, but that’s the only way the use of the term makes sense to me. I will agree that a lot of things that get attributed to “toxic masculinity” just confuse the issue…like conflating all stoicism with repression and fear. It’s not stoicism that’s bad, it’s forcing yourself to be stoic when you really don’t want to be because you feel you have to for your pride, and people usually bulldoze all over those kinds of distinctions when they use the term.

  3. About the mangaka who said that March Comes In Like a Lion is the manliest series he’s ever read, it was Tetsuro Hara, the guy who did Fist of the North Star, not Miura. Well, that’s what I heard since I do know about that quote as well. 😛

    I also was reading something about the irony of toxic masculinity because some women want men to behave “badly” in a certain way sometimes. Women want traits in men that are still masculine, even if they are quote “bad.”

    1. Ah, thank you for the correction; I’ll amend the post. Although I can’t find a source for the quote online no matter who it’s attributed to, so I guess it’s kind of academic, lol. I know someone must have said it at some point!

      Yeah the whole toxic masculinity thing is just a quagmire, especially when you look at the fact that the fiction that’s most popular among women is filled with that kind of behavior. If you had to break down what kinds of masculine behavior really was toxic, and what is often labeled toxic but is secretly appreciated by many women, and what behavior COULD be toxic but only in large doses…it would be an impossible.

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