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NEWS: Gundam: The Witch From Mercury Anime Reveals Franchise's 1st 'Female Hero' in Main Series


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AmpersandsUnited



Joined: 22 Mar 2012
Posts: 633
PostPosted: Thu Mar 31, 2022 7:01 am Reply with quote
TheBeastAR wrote:
Bringing it back to Gundam, I have never understood why people are against these types of shows having women as the leads. The response you'd get would be something like 'it's a show aimed for boys' and such, which is ridiculous. Just because popular shows like Gundam and Sentai are aimed towards boys, that doesn't mean nor is that any excuse for them to not try with their female characters. Women exist in society and these boys growing up with these shows will see women in many areas of life doing incredible things, so in even in shows designed to sell toys, it would be really nice to see that reflected. They have shows targeted for boys, and shows targeted for girls. But not have a series that is neutral and targets both?


Money, essentially. Shows aimed at young boys have a hard time marketing toys of girls to boys. Usually the only merchandise Toei capitalizes on for female Tokusatsu characters are character figures and some of their officially-sanctioned gravure idol DVDs. Kiramager dipped it's toes into marketing the females more through fanservice of the girls in the TV show and recently we got those net videos featuring Yodonna x Mizuki which they advertised as "sexy violence" spin offs so they do appear to be dipping their toes into female-oriented spin-offs at least a little bit. Zenkaiger and Donbrothers are pretty traditional in it's presentation, though.

Gundam usually keeps the fanservice to spin-offs like G, SEED, Build Fighters, and others. It doesn't really pop up in UC much aside from maybe a random nude scene here or there. Not sure how this series is going to go. But I imagine Gundam might be an easier series to take the risk in since it's fueled by Gunpla sales and the robots just need to be cool to sell compared to whoever is piloting them.

Beltane70 wrote:
It's silly isn't it, considering that the late 80ss had a few mecha anime titles that featured female leads. I don't recall anyone having issues with Patlabor, Bubblegum Crisis, or Gunbuster all having female leads piloting giant robots, or in the case of BGC power armor suits.


Bubblegum Crisis and Gunbuster were filled to the brim with fanservice, though. Female-led series aimed at guys are pretty safe to do as long as you're fine leaning into sex appeal.
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SpiritSmoocher



Joined: 06 Mar 2021
Posts: 182
PostPosted: Thu Mar 31, 2022 4:11 pm Reply with quote
TheBeastAR wrote:


Bringing it back to Gundam, I have never understood why people are against these types of shows having women as the leads. The response you'd get would be something like 'it's a show aimed for boys' and such, which is ridiculous. Just because popular shows like Gundam and Sentai are aimed towards boys, that doesn't mean nor is that any excuse for them to not try with their female characters. Women exist in society and these boys growing up with these shows will see women in many areas of life doing incredible things, so in even in shows designed to sell toys, it would be really nice to see that reflected. They have shows targeted for boys, and shows targeted for girls. But not have a series that is neutral and targets both?


Particularly for a change since gundam is so old, that young boy into a mobile suit is getting old. Love Live is also big there as is idol culture so there is cross marketing. But I think this show is guaranteed to get relatively ignored in the west. Every time a Gundam show remotely gets mainstream in the west like Seed and Destiny, people just find ways to hate on it. The west is dominated by toxic shonen fans. This is partly why 79, zeta, and Hathaway got review bombed in the 7's.
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