Ballroom e Youkoso Episode 24 Discussion

smoledman said:


All the news stories said is the mangaka is taking time off for health issues, nothing about dying.

magical-penguin said:
Although it was expected, they totally didn't deserved the first place

Mormegil said:
ANN recently said this show is "sexist" and "heteronormative" in their own words. I don't know. I don't particularly see it as sexist, but I also don't know too much about actual ballroom dancing. Does the man always lead the woman?

RealityRush said:

Traditionally, yes. ANN writers have a bit too much of a bias in this matter to look at the issue in what I consider a balanced way though. It's super complicated and hard to unpack though, but I'll try. Heteronormative in a purely academic sense is just the concept of complementary and opposite gender roles being considered natural or normal in a given activity, or intentionally controlled as such. In ballroom dancing, this would surely apply as Ballroom dancing is normally set up for a male and a female, and is codified as such in competition rules for the World Dance Sport Federation. I believe this is also true of the WDC. In this sense it is certainly "heteronormative".

The way I've seen a lot of ANN writers use the term though carries the added pop-culture baggage along with it that seems to also suggest it puts straight males specifically in a place of superiority over women in their respective roles. This aspect I can certainly understand the impression of, but I don't believe this is accurate to modern ballroom dancing anymore, despite the foundations of the sport most certainly being built on a sexist lean initially. It used to be with ballroom that a lot of movement was essentially the Lead (male) dragging around the Follow (female) through moves. I do ballroom dance myself now, and I asked this question of my teacher and she physically demonstrated this older style for me, and it is annoying, to say the least. The modern style of ballroom dancing is much more equally involved with both parties, the lead and the follow. The easiest example I can think to give is that it use to be for a Natural Top (a spin essentially) that the Lead wouldn't move that much and that the Follow would be going around the Lead. Nowadays, you tend to spin around a point rather than one around the other. You end up using each other to propel yourselves into moves a bit, rather than one person just dragging the other person around. The Waltz is one that really shows this equality in movement in my opinion. Going into a Natural turn, the lead takes the outside and bigger steps with the Follow moving out of the way on the inside with smaller steps, but heading out of the Natural turn those roles are reversed. There's a lot more ying-yang now to the dances essentially.

That all being said, it normally is the Male as the Lead and the Female as the Follow, and while this rule certainly does get bent with younger kids to let the more populous women dance together for practice, as soon as you get older and start hitting up competitions or social dancing, you will fall into that heteronormative regiment. I would argue that competitions are much more equitable, as honestly you are both memorizing a routine, not just winging it, and you both know and execute your roles equitably. The Lead still has to control the dance to some extent to make sure they don't slam into other couples on the floor, but the Follow certainly returns feedback as well to react to in case there's someone in the Lead's blind spot or maybe he just needs to be subtlety reminded of a move. It is a much more dynamic back and forth, and while on paper the Lead is in control of it all, it really does become a rather equal power dynamic, and most female ballroom dances I've met would be pissed at you if you even implied Following was somehow a lesser involved skill. Social dancing with strangers tends to fall back into traditional roles, because if you are complete strangers you have to figure out what the skill levels involved are, come up with moves on the fly, etc. That's where the Lead is really truly leading because someone has to, or it wouldn't be ballroom dancing, which generally means the male as that is what most are trained as. Again though, this doesn't mean being a Follow is somehow easier or less involved or an inferior skill. In fact, personally it seems like it is way harder as the Follow has a split second to figure out what the hell move is coming her way and then execute. The Follow is constantly playing catchup. I really don't think there's much of a meaningful difference in power dynamic here beyond a purely ceremonial and procedural one of someone having to initiate. This show actually did point out multiple times though that you can have a Follow that can "lead" in a sense, as Chinatsu frequently tried to do, she's just doing it from a different body position.

So, to summarize a bit, I would say at this point that I don't think it is fair to call modern Ballroom dancing sexist. I can absolutely appreciate saying that it was built on a foundation of sexism and originally functioned that way in a mechanical sense with the Lead Male literally puppeting the Female Follow, but that isn't how it really works anymore. The sport has changed and now power dynamics are pretty much equal in terms of how the dance actually plays out between the Lead and the Follow. There's a lot of trust and cooperation between the two and it isn't one person just dominating the other, because if so they are dancing wrong. I could see an argument for changing competition rules to allow same-sex competitive partners to modernize it further, but I imagine you'd get a lot of pushback over that one. I don't see the big deal personally as long as each person falls into their role proper, body position and all, and is judged as any other couple would be. Let two guys dance together if they want. Let two girls dance together, one can throw on the dress and one can throw on a suit. Or let them both wear suits even, I dunno, I don't see the big deal. It might be a harder sell for a male follow at social dances, as a lot of heterosexual male leads wouldn't be comfortable dancing with them, especially not in Latin, but babysteps I guess.

This article is a great read to help understand the issues at play here: https://theconversation.com/un-doing-the-traditional-ballroom-lead-and-follow-27286

Edit: I forgot to add that in terms of ANN calling the show itself sexist, I would tend to disagree. I think it does walk a bit of a line, and may at times cross it and become momentarily distasteful (Sengoku yanking off Chizuru's top), but overall I don't think it is a fair judgement call as I saw them constantly take certain scenes/lines completely out of context and frame it as something putting down the female when that wasn't at all was implied by the scene. Ballroom can certainly be crass and childish at times and accentuate the female form, it's marketing to teen males after all, but at no point do I think it actively tried to put the females in a position of the "lesser". It always framed conflicts as differences in artistic opinions or lack of personal understanding, but never as a male/female power dynamic. Hell, it even addressed the traditional gender role thing a couple times. Maybe not satisfactorily, but it acknowledged it. I will say though that I thought Chizuru was incredibly underdeveloped which made her seem like a bit of a vapid poster girl for the show when you even had the underwear trope. The other women I think were handled competently though.

Mormegil said:
I was actually kind of curious as to how it was in actual ballroom dancing, so again, the reply is much appreciated. Makes sense that it was founded that way, so of course the long-established tradition would carry on for a very long time. But it's cool to hear that the power dynamics have changed somewhat. Your point about the Follow's job being called "inferior" or "lesser involved" ties in to ANN's blanket statements here, as it almost sounded like they were implying that, as if the Follow's job is nothing compared to the Lead's. And how dare a woman have to be in that position! The ANN article(more like a conversation between two people meant as a blog post, actually) mentions how Chinatsu was "tamed." Which I wholly disagree with. Chinatsu may not have been my favorite character, but I never saw her as being dominated by Tatara.

You're definitely right about how ANN gets too biased, or perhaps is a little too over-the-top when it comes to stuff like this. There's usually never any subtlety. Personally, I like to read up on all kinds of opinions on the shows I watch from multiple sources. And ANN is one of them, even if I find myself disagreeing with them more often than not. They're obviously one of the biggest anime sites on the internet, and their word gets out there to a wide audience, so it'd be a shame if people looked at Welcome to the Ballroom as a "sexist" anime before even giving it a watch, thanks to ANN. When, in actuality, based on your entire post, the reality of the situation is it's a lot more complicated. Of course, Welcome to the Ballroom being an anime made for the shonen demographic can sometimes paint in broad strokes, even if Chinatsu did change up the power dynamic, so it's not like it didn't try to talk about things like that. And yeah, the usual Sengoku antics, which never sat too well with me. But again, ANIME! That's probably why I liked Chizuru so much, even if she wasn't around too often. She gave Sengoku's shit back to him. :D
Speaking of which, I think you might have meant Shizuku when you talked about Sengoku yanking off her top. I can't remember when Sengoku did that to Chizuru, unless I'm mistaken. Shizuku was definitely vapid. I never really liked her much.

the show has to tell Tatara to "take the reins" and break this "wild mare" in maybe the grossest metaphor for partnership I've ever encountered.

rafi160 said:
season 2 in 5 years maybe?

ChowCwow said:


I've waited for D. Gray-man second season and I'll be witing for this one :'D

KitoraList said:
Can we please get Sesuji wo Pin! to next?