| Not a troll sexism thread. I like female leads more but why is it? I can understand games since mostly dudes play it but in movies, shitty reality shows, dramas, kids cartoons etc, it is a guy like 80%(fact check this for me). There is actually a few this season. I don't know if there a chart showing how many and if the # is going up over the years for anime. Edit: good lord, these forums are worse than usual. I was complaining about the QUANTITY not QUALITY. |
Kayle_x_MorganaMay 13, 2021 1:03 AM
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| I don't know if there is a distinguishable answer for why this is the case, but I know that it isn't woke to say that there aren't that many female leads. Maybe it's because genres targeted towards male teens are always the rage. Maybe male writers don't know how to write good female leads without falling into cliches, so they delegate them to supporting roles. Sometimes female characters are so good that they can feel like main characters, like Emilia from Re:Zero. There are definitely loads of good female leads, but it always feels like I never see them at all. Maybe I just watch too much shonen. |
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| There are many, look at how many all female shows there are compared to all male for example. |
| at least from my what I've seen, Shounen seems to be the most popular genre (and seinen is probably the closest second), and because of its traditionally male demographic, i assume a male protagonist is generally the safer and perhaps more relatable option. The issue may be less about there not being enough series with female protagonists, but that the most popular and most publicized series are shonen and seinen, so that's often what you'll find with a quick glance. |
   "~and he loved to play the piano!"  |
| mainly because most industries mostly focus on the male fanbases, anime has separate demographics though, even though i certainly don't care about josei or shoujos because they mostly tend to be romance. |
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Conceptualhero said: Female MC usually sucks. That's that Tbh, it can be a funny thing like Maoujou de Oyasumi, Kobayashi-san or K-on... Or it can be the same drama bullshit of "oh that 11/10 handsome dude looked at me, i'm in love with him" and then POW, the anime isn't even Romance or RomCom but it will be the focus. |
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 ☆☆☆ "There's a huge difference between one and infinity. However, compared to the difference between existence and non-existence, one and infinite are nearly the same. I am the child destined to become the best witch... no... The greatest Creator in the world...!" -Maria Ushiromiya ☆☆☆ |
Rudolfpikel said: I mean, it's still generally true that there are probably more male leads overall in anime, but I feel like anime has a decent amount of female leads; it's just some genres predominately have leads of a specific gender. For instance, Shounen has predominately male leads, but there are entire genres centered around female leads like CGDCT or Mahou Shoujo. Conceptualhero said: Female MC usually sucks. That's that Also this is just wrong. 99% sure that what you quoted was a joke |
| I think you've been watching too much shounen and not enough shoujou, give those anime a try |
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| If I don't have alzheimers, I'm sure that there's actually an abundance of female lead anime and manga out there. Whether it would be a CGDCT like K-On and Yuru Camp, a mahou shoujo like Sailor Moon and Cardcaptor Sakura, or even some shounenshit like Soul Eater. Hayao Miyazaki works are also rife with females protaganists and there are even many weird, experimental anime like Serial Experiments Lain and Utena. I don't get it when people complain about this type of stuff. |
snuzerMay 12, 2021 9:39 PM
    beep boop bop pow |
| That doesn't hold true in my experience, like, at all. The complete opposite, actually. Most of my highest rated anime features a female in the lead role. It's not as if I go out of my way to only watch CGDCT anime either... I just don't like shounen. |
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| Female leads often fit into the category as waifubait in most anime as it is a easy merchandising method, and it appeals to the male viewers. Male leads often are more relatable to most dudes as males generally encounter more struggles in life. to elaborate on this point -guys bullying chics would be pretty gay -most female conflict to be believable is often a lot more passive like gossip -Simps and fan clubs Shoujo can often be enjoyed by both sexes as the femC is usually still waifubait, but the female can be viewed a self insert to females. As a final reason I would say because males generally fork over more money to their hobby than females generally. This causes more anime to cater to males. |
rohan121May 12, 2021 9:47 PM
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| Maybe because it has something to do with females being oppressed in the past? I heard that Kill la kill is one of the most influential anime that has female lead.Vivy and Promised neverland has one too.Also every Cute girls doing cute things anime have a female lead too. |
 Scordolo's Recent Reviews To your eternity Vanitas no Karte |
T1mma said: Rudolfpikel said: I mean, it's still generally true that there are probably more male leads overall in anime, but I feel like anime has a decent amount of female leads; it's just some genres predominately have leads of a specific gender. For instance, Shounen has predominately male leads, but there are entire genres centered around female leads like CGDCT or Mahou Shoujo. Also this is just wrong. 99% sure that what you quoted was a joke Great joke, very funny, got me laughing 😐 |
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| People misunderstand my post or something. I never said quality, I said quantity. Cladocera said: You forgot every CGDT, MG, shoujo in existence? Not to mention those occasionally anime with female leads that does not fall into the previous categories. As for games: Most established franchises were created when video game is still a niche, only dudes making them for other dudes to play. Nowaday many let you customize your character to your liking, however the sentiment still holds. And it's not like there's little female leads games. There're just MORE male leads games. There's a difference. For movies, tv shows, etc... Are you sure? There're plenty. They're just so bad no one's watching. Not to mention the anti-consumer attitude many of these "creators" holds, bombing their works even more. It makes no sense to continue producing them. You just need to look outside of the US and/or into less popular stuff. And how many is that? Shoujos etc are a small % compared to all the other genres where are all male dominanted. Compared to men leads. There is like I think I counted 6 female lead anime this season. I don't watch anything else but last time I was watching cartoons there was no female lead shows at allq. Goes for 90% of stuff on TV. And I mentioned dramas as outside the usa. So then there should be more then ever. Especially on the woke ass cartoon network and nick channels here. |
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| Your focus determines your reality. I hardly watch any shounen shows, and that's already sufficient to balance the MC gender towards the female category. Thus your sweeping generalization doesn't hold, you only describe your subjective taste in anime and confuse it with general reality. |
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| Considering this and how he wants to hoist up ecchi manga made by women because they're made by women, beginning to suspect OP is a closet feminist ngl he's like the trope of homophobes who are secretly gay, just with feminism instead |
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Manaban said: Considering this and how he wants to hoist up ecchi manga made by women because they're made by women, beginning to suspect OP is a closet feminist ngl he's like the trope of homophobes who are secretly gay, just with feminism instead What the holy shit does that first part mean? inim said: Your focus determines your reality. I hardly watch any shounen shows, and that's already sufficient to balance the MC gender towards the female category. Thus your sweeping generalization doesn't hold, you only describe your subjective taste in anime and confuse it with general reality. Focus? OK then count all the male leads and female leads of all anime. Would be 70% 30% I would guess. I am talking as a whole not genre or quality Also I'm not the biggest shouen fan either. Tendo_GM said: 1st off, you’re wrong cause there are a fuck ton of female leads 2nd, the reason why they are not present in video games and real movies/tv shows is because female leads are terrible, there are a few good ones but a quality and seriousness of the movie can not be high if the lead is female because even in real world, for a long time, there were no women in some movie-favorite environments. Like war, prison, mafia, police, medieval times, sports and cowboy westerns. And most of fantasy works of fiction have male leads because they are also based on medieval times. |
Kayle_x_MorganaMay 13, 2021 12:03 AM
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Kayle_x_Morgana said: Tendo_GM said: 1st off, you’re wrong cause there are a fuck ton of female leads 2nd, the reason why they are not present in video games and real movies/tv shows is because female leads are terrible, there are a few good ones but a quality and seriousness of the movie can not be high if the lead is female because even in real world, for a long time, there were no women in some movie-favorite environments. Like war, prison, mafia, police, medieval times, sports and cowboy westerns. And most of fantasy works of fiction have male leads because they are also based on medieval times. You shouldn’t just ping and not say anything, it’s annoying when I receive a notification |
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Tendo_GM said: You shouldn’t just ping and not say anything, it’s annoying when I receive a notification My reply to him was suppose to be implied to you as well. There is way more male leads. Again, as a whole no specific genre or quality of anime. |
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Kayle_x_Morgana said: Do your own homework. You came up with the claim and no source. Now you pull random numbers out of your lower abdomen without a source. That's no improvement over your OP, just guts feelings and subjectivity. It's not my job to bring verifiable claims into discussions, but that of OP.inim said: Focus? OK then count all the male leads and female leads of all anime. Would be 70% 30% I would guess. I am talking as a whole not genre or quality Your focus determines your reality. I hardly watch any shounen shows, and that's already sufficient to balance the MC gender towards the female category. Thus your sweeping generalization doesn't hold, you only describe your subjective taste in anime and confuse it with general reality. |
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Kayle_x_Morgana said: Tendo_GM said: You shouldn’t just ping and not say anything, it’s annoying when I receive a notification My reply to him was suppose to be implied to you as well. There is way more male leads. Again, as a whole no specific genre or quality of anime. Still not true, the ratio is probably around 3-2 The reason why you don’t see that many female lead shows is because they are just lower quality so no one is talking about them and no ones watching the. They exist, quite a lot of them, but male lead shows have high standard so they are talked about a lot more. And I am counting shows like Edens Zero and Your Lie in April where there are female main character next to a male character, cause they both fit a leading role. |
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inim said: Kayle_x_Morgana said: Do your own homework. You came up with the claim and no source. Now you pull random numbers out of your lower abdomen without a source. That's no improvement over your OP, just guts feelings and subjectivity. It's not my job to bring verifiable claims into discussions, but that of OP.Focus? OK then count all the male leads and female leads of all anime. Would be 70% 30% I would guess. I am talking as a whole not genre or quality inim said: Kayle_x_Morgana said: Do your own homework. You came up with the claim and no source. Now you pull random numbers out of your lower abdomen without a source. That's no improvement over your OP, just guts feelings and subjectivity. It's not my job to bring verifiable claims into discussions, but that of OP.Focus? OK then count all the male leads and female leads of all anime. Would be 70% 30% I would guess. I am talking as a whole not genre or quality Uh what? I mean most of the replies here also say the same thing. Out of all the movies you have seen, what are the % that are guys? They have "female protag" tags for a reason. And lists for "top female leads in anime" etc. And not male ones. Stop trolling. I knew I shouldn't have unblocked you. Back on the list. Tendo_GM said: Kayle_x_Morgana said: My reply to him was suppose to be implied to you as well. There is way more male leads. Again, as a whole no specific genre or quality of anime. And I am counting shows like Edens Zero and Your Lie in April where there are female main character next to a male character, cause they both fit a leading role. So literally every single anime that has a female "main" character then. Lol.... ofc Those don't count. Shows like 86 and vivy and kill slimes for 300 years is what I mean which is all this season... Good god. People |
Kayle_x_MorganaMay 13, 2021 12:54 AM
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Tendo_GM said: Congratulations now you have the most absurd take in the thread.but male lead shows have high standard so they are talked about a lot more. |
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| @Kayle_x_Morgana In my reality, the majority of protagonists in the 1502 anime I've completed so far were female by count, and male by time watched. This is far cry from your 70-30 ass pull. I repeat: Your focus (and taste) determines your reality. Unfortunately anilist.co doesn't make the total count of tags they applied public, so there isn't a way to generalize this. Fun fact, 100% of the 5 anime I currently watch have a female protagonist.  |
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| idk but I've seen a lot of anime that has a female leads but they're not popular because they have female lead... I think that's the reason |
Kayle_x_Morgana said: Tendo_GM said: And I am counting shows like Edens Zero and Your Lie in April where there are female main character next to a male character, cause they both fit a leading role. So literally every single anime that has a female "main" character then. Lol.... ofc Those don't count. Shows like 86 and vivy and kill slimes for 300 years is what I mean which is all this season... Good god. People Lmao, they do count Even in 86 cause Lena and Shin are both the main characters, Shin is probably even more important than Lena if we’re being realistic... but they are both main characters and leads in the show. Lena may be a protagonist, but she’s not the only leading character. Shows like Edens Zero do count, they factually have female leading main characters |
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Tendo_GM said: 1st off, you’re wrong cause there are a fuck ton of female leads 2nd, the reason why they are not present in video games and real movies/tv shows is because female leads are terrible, there are a few good ones but a quality and seriousness of the movie can not be high if the lead is female because even in real world, for a long time, there were no women in some movie-favorite environments. Like war, prison, mafia, police, medieval times, sports and cowboy westerns. And most of fantasy works of fiction have male leads because they are also based on medieval times. A bit of a strong confirmation bias on your part, don't you think? You mention traditionally masculine environments/genres and then talk about how female leads in the whole medium are scarce and low quality. Of course you don't have many movies and shows about female law enforcers or gangsters in conservative Hollywood productions. But move towards romance, drama, horror, slice-of-life... and you find plenty. Even in genres as traditionally coded as masculine as noir and action you don't have to reach far to find acclaimed female leads. Your post here honestly sounds like repeating The Godfather a hundred times and then wondering why nobody ever dared to film at least a Jeanne Dielman. Also, opinions and all, but I'm calling subjective bullshit on the idea that female lead anime are worse. It just doesn't fit my experience. |
jal90 said: Tendo_GM said: 1st off, you’re wrong cause there are a fuck ton of female leads 2nd, the reason why they are not present in video games and real movies/tv shows is because female leads are terrible, there are a few good ones but a quality and seriousness of the movie can not be high if the lead is female because even in real world, for a long time, there were no women in some movie-favorite environments. Like war, prison, mafia, police, medieval times, sports and cowboy westerns. And most of fantasy works of fiction have male leads because they are also based on medieval times. A bit of a strong confirmation bias on your part, don't you think? You mention traditionally masculine environments/genres and then talk about how female leads in the whole medium are scarce and low quality. Of course you don't have many movies and shows about female law enforcers or gangsters in conservative Hollywood productions. But move towards romance, drama, horror, slice-of-life... and you find plenty. Even in genres as traditionally coded as masculine as noir and action you don't have to reach far to find acclaimed female leads. Your post here honestly sounds like repeating The Godfather a hundred times and then wondering why nobody ever dared to film at least a Jeanne Dielman. Also, opinions and all, but I'm calling subjective bullshit on the idea that female lead anime are worse. It just doesn't fit my experience. They are not worse, there’s just a bigger number of great male lead shows than there are female lead ones, that’s why I was trying to say. And yes, female leads are present in real movies written as romance, drama or horror, but there are only a handful of those that are actually good and can be considered art because most of the other stuff is just entertainment. Horrors and romances don’t balance that line really well so most of them aren’t really worth mentioning because they are just entertainment and not real cinema. |
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Tendo_GM said: jal90 said: A bit of a strong confirmation bias on your part, don't you think? You mention traditionally masculine environments/genres and then talk about how female leads in the whole medium are scarce and low quality. Of course you don't have many movies and shows about female law enforcers or gangsters in conservative Hollywood productions. But move towards romance, drama, horror, slice-of-life... and you find plenty. Even in genres as traditionally coded as masculine as noir and action you don't have to reach far to find acclaimed female leads. Your post here honestly sounds like repeating The Godfather a hundred times and then wondering why nobody ever dared to film at least a Jeanne Dielman. Also, opinions and all, but I'm calling subjective bullshit on the idea that female lead anime are worse. It just doesn't fit my experience. They are not worse, there’s just a bigger number of great male lead shows than there are female lead ones, that’s why I was trying to say. And yes, female leads are present in real movies written as romance, drama or horror, but there are only a handful of those that are actually good and can be considered art because most of the other stuff is just entertainment. Horrors and romances don’t balance that line really well so most of them aren’t really worth mentioning because they are just entertainment and not real cinema. Same can be said about the genres you mention. For every high-profile mafia film you have dozens of gangster exploits that won't appear in lists, same with westerns, and etc. Of course the ones that get famous and reach lists are few, but that happens with every genre. If we looked at the numbers in depth we would probably extract more accurate conclusions (which is almost impossible because it's difficult to trace the stuff that was just forgotten over time, like lurking through Letterboxd I found a guy who made like 100 westerns and none of them has transcended xD; it's hard to track stuff like that), but we can't really approximate to make generalizations that claim there is a difference in success or acclaim for any genre in particular. |
| Because historically, societies all over the world have been male-dominated and we've let that fact influence our entertainment mediums |
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| The female lead shows are in double digits like every season though? |
jal90 said: Confirmation bias and sweeping generalization from a random sample of media is the thing this whole thread is about. Let me put it into a hyperbole form: OP only watches gay porn and then starts a rant about how little women are featured in the movies he watches. Well, he's right, regarding his slice of reality. He's wrong about movies in general, of course - and that's the fallacy.Tendo_GM said: A bit of a strong confirmation bias on your part, don't you think? You mention traditionally masculine environments/genres and then talk about how female leads in the whole medium are scarce and low qualitythere were no women in some movie-favorite environments. Like war, prison, mafia, police, medieval times, sports and cowboy westerns. |
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| Cute girls doing cute things anime Idol anime Magical Girls anime Shoujo anime There's plenty anime with female leads. |
 cunnysseur |
| Oh just why? Female leads is not at all something missing from anime. Everywhere I look there is a main female character, if it's not a 100% female cast. |
| I think it's because it's easier and just a better option overall to try and write a good male character than a good female counterpart. As dear science has already demonstrated, females tend to have a lot more fluctuations as far as their emotions go, so it's not as easy to write them well as males. They usually have a more steady, logical way of thinking.(Not saying females don't use logic, it's just that they are more emotional, okay?) |
| To be honest yes there are a lot more male leads over female. That being said most male protagonist are crap and most of time they are used to flush out the side characters. There are some very good male main characters but most of the male leads are boring and done to death like shounen MCs which most just want to do something and they get strong and go on an adventure and School Rom-Com MCs that are not popular and whine about it. This season has a lot of female leads like Vivy, 86, Fruits Basket, and that new isekai I Have Been Killing Slimes for 300 years (I think that's the name) they are all pretty good so far I'm loving Vivy and Fruits Basket. |
| It's probably just many factors coming together, How decades ago we had way less female MCs, Many female characters are used as waifu material, So having a male MC to self insert to and a female love interest is more common than female MC and a male love interest, I think similar to video games, In the 90s and 2000s, More males watched anime, I'm not THAT sure about it, But that's what I heard, Especially when you look at how many shonens, sports and mecha shows were coming out. I guess it's just a culmination of small yet many factors that make writers think of a male first when they think "MC" or maybe most people who write anime are males, So it's easier for them to write a male than a female. Just my thoughts and speculations. |
| I don't speak English that much, so please cut me some slack |
| Don't take my word for it, but I feel like female artists much more like to create male leads than guys create female leads. I mean, I'm just trying to think of any book/anime/manga/cartoon where a guy wrote a female lead, and I feel like there are much less situations like this compared to the opposite situation. While it's normal and popular for female writers to create male leads. No idea why, tho |
karemi_May 13, 2021 6:27 AM
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| I mean, pretty much everything I watch has a female lead. Maybe you should try watching more CGDCT and shoujo, OP. Battle shounen don't usually have female MCs. |
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| People working on Anime only know how to over sexualized female character it's really very rear to find anime with strong female lead who is not sexualised and act normally Usually they are portrayed as dumm character as if they can't do anything without the help of the male MC , it's fucking annoying as hell |
ZXEANMay 13, 2021 6:34 AM
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