Things I Don’t Like About Television

Introduction

Just so you know, these complaints are primarily focused on American television.

When I started this list, I honestly had no idea that it would be this long. I started working on this list in 2012, and I posted this in three LAP’s on NF. After re-reading my list of complaints, I realized they needed to be revised.

These gripes were not originally enumerated, but I tried to list them in a way that one would make a smooth transition to the next. I did not address every point about each gripe, as this list was already long enough — and I of course had to deal with the dreaded 10,000 character limit. In 2014, I took the opportunity to expand on my thoughts by breaking down each gripe within its own post. Now, I have added more categories to the list. Additionally, the old posts have been revised to reflect the passage in time.

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Sexism in Naruto: It’s Not about Feminism

As you can see, there pretty much are some sexist undertones in this story. It’s not malicious on Kishimoto’s part, but the undertones are still there. While there is somewhat of an understanding that there are no specific policies ruling the Narutoverse based on gender — and females are generally treated with respect by their peers and subordinates — they are not always treated as equal to a man by virtue of the dialogue and  by their perceptions of women. This is ultimately a reflection on the mangaka.

This is not to say that anyone and everyone complaining wanted the girls/women to overpower ALL the males, let alone surpass Naruto and Sasuke. That is a strawman. It was always understood that Naruto, at the very least, would be among the strongest characters in the end. As Naruto’s rival, the same was true for Sasuke. That was not the issue.

Sexism in Naruto: Weighing the Differences in Treatment

Before I dig into this part, I would just like to make the following points. This issue is complicated.

To be quite honest, I am comforted when readers have nice things to say about Kishimoto’s female characters. It shows he did something right in their creation and development in order for a number of people to be interested in them in the first place — and it is often their characterization that sticks out the most. Kishimoto in particular did enough for people to build interest in characters like Hinata, Temari, and Tsunade, for example. Personally speaking, I was already hooked to Naruto’s story by episodes of the Land of Waves Arc in the anime, but Tsunade’s introductory arc sealed the deal for me. Kishimoto made a number of his females sympathetic, and for that he deserves a tremendous amount of credit.

Another positive thing to say is how he largely shied away from using females as fanservice. Tsunade may be the outlier here, as she had abnormally large breasts and there was in-manga commentary on them by male characters. And while she and some other ladies in Naruto can be described by their beauty, I don’t believe it was the mangaka’s intention to reduce all the females to their sexuality.