Mainstream Misogyny: Why EVERYONE Needs to Watch Anime About Girls

[divider type=”thin”] Almost from the moment I became an anime fan back in elementary school I encountered The Conversation. In the beginning it was mostly from boys, but then slowly the older I got it started happening with people from all genders. It went something like this: I would quickly bond with another fan over your typical mainstream shows like Pokemon or Naruto, but the instant I brought up one starring a magical girl or, God forbid, an anime that passes the Bechdel-Wallace test? There aren’t enough nope gifs in existence to articulate how fast they would shut down. Now as nerds, being rejected or ridiculed by our peers simply for loving something is a familiar pain. Some might even argue that it just comes with the territory. But I’ve had this frustration recounted with other shoujo fans too many times to ignore it anymore, because when you take that rejection and apply it to an entire genre centered around one gender consistently? That, my friends, is entrenched misogyny and it’s not a good enough excuse anymore.

One of the major reasons I’ve heard protests about watching shoujo anime tends to be about a lack of relatable characters (although I find it hard to believe a preteen girl is harder to relate to than, say, an orphan ninja boy who can transform into a naked teenage girl and possesses a magical fox demon, but I digress).  Fine. [quote_right]a full decade before Wonder Woman even touched a page, shoujo manga was displaying girls in heroic roles through co…