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EP. REVIEW: Maria the Virgin Witch

I dunno about you, but I think a lot of the appeal that anime still has is in "potentially offensive stereotypes" of the kind that don't really fly on American TV any more!

Why are people already assuming that Maria will be overlooked and underwatched? We're only at the second episode, people! Give word-of-mouth (and Funi marketing) some time to work its magic. A good show will find its audience.

First of all: U G H. You see the stereotype Gabriella is referring to in tons of popular media in the U.S., constantly. It's not edgy to put a "queen" character in a show and there's certainly no point in defending it like it's daring.

Secondly, the portrayals of this stereotype you do see in a ton of lazy American comedies and Japanese anime are usually much worse than it was in Maria the Virgin Witch. The show isn't really making fun of the character for being gay because, well, he isn't. The real joke is that he's a pedophile and Priapus has a baby face. But he likes girls and boys, so the joke is mostly that he's just an aggressive pervert and not a good first challenge for an incubus with a handicap. It's a nasty joke, but it's still a much better one than "queen character cameo."

More importantly, I'm pretty sure a lot of the appeal of anime is the exact opposite of this thing you described, actually. At least it's the one you hear stated more often. When you shrink the size of population responsible for pop culture, (Japan's home-grown entertainment is produced and consumed by fewer people total than America's,) the standard deviation allowed from homogeneous ideas tends to grow in both directions. In simpler words, anime has greater potential to be both better and worse in novelty than American television, and more progressive and regressive in thought, more shallow and more deep in complexity. More diversity in ideas slips through.

Usually, people point out this trend in anime for its allowance of more nuanced and unique concepts in place of lazy cliches, and not because they miss the crappy and offensive stereotypes that get phased out of larger population-appeal works because they're crappy and offensive, though. That's a new one. I mean I'm sure it's not a unique sentiment in the hearts of many otaku, but you usually don't see it straight-up stated like that.

"Gay panic" jokes are a lot less common, but they're still common enough that saying "oh I'm glad anime gives us something that Western media doesn't!" is ridiculous. All you have to do is put on an Adam Sandler movie or watch Family Guy and you'll find plenty of that kind of stuff. Those are both pretty "mainstream" forms of entertainment.

Even a "pure comedy that makes fun of everyone and anyone" still has lines they wouldn't be able to cross without getting booted off the air. Family Guy wouldn't be able to have a minstrel episode, for instance. That's something you would actually be hard-pressed to find in mainstream American entertainment made in the last 50-or-so years, even that supposedly "no boundaries!" stuff. The fact that gay panic jokes haven't gone the way of minstrelsy shows that they still have some level of acceptability in American culture, even if it's a marginal one.

Also, you're moving the goalposts a little here. What these posters suggested is that this stuff is impossible to find in American media today, and is only found in anime. So suggesting multiple mainstream, popular American TV shows and movies that are, in fact, full of that stuff, disproves their point regardless of what it is.

However, there is clearly not a mainstream American media that consistently inserts offensive caricatures of gay people into ALL genres in order to pander to people who enjoy making fun of gay people. That still exists in Anime. It sucks to say it, but it does.

I didn't get the gay stereotype part...

Valhern wrote:

I didn't get the gay stereotype part...

So the part where Priapus fearfully declares "This man is a homosexual!?" before trying to escape completely went over your head?