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Fronzel
Joined: 11 Sep 2003
Posts: 1906
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 Posted: Fri Aug 14, 2009 11:19 pm
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| Generic #757858 wrote: |
| Casey wrote: | | But lest you think that the Kimaerans are just retrograde barbarians, it must be noted that, although they are about 70/30 male/female, they treat women with the highest level of respect. Women choose their mates—and no one is allowed to question their choice…or refuse it—and a man doing physical harm to a woman is simply unheard of. It seems so improbable in the real world, but there is something undeniably hopeful about the formulation. |
Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but wasn't she just referring to the fact that women are held in high regard in the series? |
Then she's made an awfully selective reading...even while mentioning the part she's ignoring.
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mufurc
Joined: 09 Jun 2003
Posts: 612
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Posted: Sat Aug 15, 2009 4:09 am
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| Fronzel wrote: | | Then she's made an awfully selective reading...even while mentioning the part she's ignoring. |
It's been a while since I read the manga, but I don't see why this is a proof of selective reading. It's said somewhere around when Tiz shows up that men are not permitted to hurt a woman. Women choose their partners and men are expected to obey. And so on, it's spelled out pretty clearly that women are in a special position.
Nevertheless, this is not intended to be some sort of a female chauvinist message (especially as the three main female characters are definitely not treated in the traditional way by the three main male characters), women are in a special position simply because there's so few of them and losing even one of them, or refusing her offer for sex lessens the chance for the survival of the species. And similar to many wild species, the woman chooses the partner she sees the most appropriate to father her child. I don't remember if this is a fully conscious thing or not, but IIRC it's made pretty clear that this is the ultimate reason.
As for the anime and the manga, the anime managed to adapt the bare bones of the story - without the tons of background info, backstory, little details. And what's worst, they pretty much left out the entire point of the story (that is, that "regular" humans are going extinct and the people of Juuousei are a new, separate subspecies.) I think this revelation and the ending was one of the best parts of the manga, and it was even set up pretty well - I don't know why Casey regarded it as hooky. The part with the plants may not be scientifically completely sound, especially by today's standards, but it's mostly meant to be symbolic, anyway.
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dtm42
Joined: 05 Feb 2008
Posts: 14084
Location: currently stalking my waifu
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Posted: Wed Aug 19, 2009 3:45 am
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| Casey wrote: | | But lest you think that the Kimaerans are just retrograde barbarians, it must be noted that, although they are about 70/30 male/female, they treat women with the highest level of respect. Women choose their mates—and no one is allowed to question their choice…or refuse it—and a man doing physical harm to a woman is simply unheard of. It seems so improbable in the real world, but there is something undeniably hopeful about the formulation. |
Ah no, a stable society is not just improbable but virtually impossible with those rules alone. Not only is it against the nature of human males to willingly go without sex (unless they are all bisexual), forcing men to accept woman's choices in mates leads to major problems. The big one being that though woman can be choosy (given that they are outnumbered two-to-one), there will be conflict between them whenever a highly desirable male is "on the market" so to speak. On a planet where survival is paramount, all the woman are going to want only the best mates, and when you have something rare it is going to be desirable.
And although the males who get chosen to be mates are probably going to be very happy, forcing them to be mates is little different than if there were woman in their position.
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