Kamen Rider Gaim - News/Rumors Thread 2: Suffering Incoming

[CannibalS]

It's easy to play the misogyny card. While I don't Gaim is misogynistic I do think it could have handled the female characters better. However I think complaining about Mai not using the Fruit of Knowledge for herself is bullshit. While it was never stated she couldn't do it it was also never stated it could. Granted I'm not the best person to talk about this however I'll be showing Gaim to a friend when SHE comes down for a visit and I'll see if she thinks Gaim's portrayal of women is misogynistic.

Let me make this simpler. I know and talk to a lot of women within the toku fandom, whom yes, basically all agree that Gaim is undoubtedly, misogynistic.

And when your major narratives involving said women are about supporting men even when its absolutely nonsensical to do so, then yes, that card is that easy to play here with Gaim.

The Black manga suggests that in the end Black might have become the Demon King in the future that Kotaro sees, rather than Shadowmoon, but it's left ambiguous and it's portrayed as a tragedy, not something good. Gaim attempts to sell the idea that Kouta broke the system and created his own path, resulting in a good ending, but it just fails to do that to many people, since it only does that by overlooking many of Sagara's actions throughout the show and attempting to paint him as a neutral force out of nowhere.

I wrote an entire thing about that one if anyone's curious
http://cannibal-sarracenian.tumblr....redemptive-reading-of-gaims-ending-what-if-it

 

[Black Fang]

Let me make this simpler. I know and talk to a lot of women within the toku fandom, whom yes, basically all agree that Gaim is undoubtedly, misogynistic.

And that makes it so just because some people think it is? What makes them the authority on what is and what isn't?

 

[kuroihikari]

Someone else played the "I'm gonna ask my female friend if's misogynistic card" first, so he's playing it as well.

 

[Japaneseseriesfan]

The only thing that is misogynistic about Gaim is the fact the female characters end up serving as a secondary role that leads to a male character's development and rise in power, being the woman behind the man. Even then, it's not totally misogynistic. Yoko is pretty much Lady Macbeth to Kaito, or anyone who she deems worthy of taking the Golden Fruit.

The only thing misogynistic about it the way it's portrayed, how the girls like Mai make it seem like she only ends up as a supporting pole for Kouta, Kaito or Mitchy, and even then it's not panned out to where she's completely useless.

Maybe some people are just taking a jab at Gaim purely on the train of thought that Urobutchi is a male and that he doesn't understand females as well as a female writer should, and even that is a shallow argument, considering Kobayashi pretty much made Yui this helpless girl that needed the protection of Kanzaki Shiro only.

I say drop the whole it's "misogynistic" thing, because it clearly isn't. The Riders are mostly male, and the core four are who the story's ultimately about. Despite how dark it gets at times, it still is just a normal Toku show for kids in the morning. It's only natural that if any misogynistic element were to come up, it's only because they were trying to pander it to the boys more... and occasionally, the bored housewife who sits at home with their kids watching these pretty boys do their thing.

 

[DemiGomoramon]

Let me make this simpler. I know and talk to a lot of women within the toku fandom, whom yes, basically all agree that Gaim is undoubtedly, misogynistic.

And when your major narratives involving said women are about supporting men even when its absolutely nonsensical to do so, then yes, that card is that easy to play here with Gaim.




I wrote an entire thing about that one if anyone's curious
http://cannibal-sarracenian.tumblr....redemptive-reading-of-gaims-ending-what-if-it

You don't even like Gaim you are not reliable in this case.

The only thing that is misogynistic about Gaim is the fact the female characters end up serving as a secondary role that leads to a male character's development and rise in power, being the woman behind the man. Even then, it's not totally misogynistic. Yoko is pretty much Lady Macbeth to Kaito, or anyone who she deems worthy of taking the Golden Fruit.

The only thing misogynistic about it the way it's portrayed, how the girls like Mai make it seem like she only ends up as a supporting pole for Kouta, Kaito or Mitchy, and even then it's not panned out to where she's completely useless.

Maybe some people are just taking a jab at Gaim purely on the train of thought that Urobutchi is a male and that he doesn't understand females as well as a female writer should, and even that is a shallow argument, considering Kobayashi pretty much made Yui this helpless girl that needed the protection of Kanzaki Shiro only.

I say drop the whole it's "misogynistic" thing, because it clearly isn't. The Riders are mostly male, and the core four are who the story's ultimately about. Despite how dark it gets at times, it still is just a normal Toku show for kids in the morning. It's only natural that if any misogynistic element were to come up, it's only because they were trying to pander it to the boys more... and occasionally, the bored housewife who sits at home with their kids watching these pretty boys do their thing.

Better then I could have put it.

Someone else played the "I'm gonna ask my female friend if's misogynistic card" first, so he's playing it as well.

Its all I got. I already said I'm not the best person to talk about this subject.

 

[lazycoconut]

The only thing that is misogynistic about Gaim is the fact the female characters end up serving as a secondary role that leads to a male character's development and rise in power, being the woman behind the man. Even then, it's not totally misogynistic. Yoko is pretty much Lady Macbeth to Kaito, or anyone who she deems worthy of taking the Golden Fruit.

Minato isn't even that. At best, she's a wannabe Lady Macbeth. She thinks she's clever and manipulative enough to get what she wants, but she's not. The first man she sets her eye on sells her out, and then with the second one everything goes wrong: Kaito's injured by Redyue, becomes an Overlord, Mai becomes the Woman of the Beginning meaning she is now the one Kaito wants, then Zack steps in and Minato dies defending him. All of these were things she didn't foresee and was not prepared for. She's right to say "I've failed" at the end, because she does fail at everything she sets out to do. She's right up there with Micchy, the one who loses everything but Takatora (and even that is only because Kouta stepped in) in his efforts not to have to sacrifice anything that was important to him.

I say drop the whole it's "misogynistic" thing, because it clearly isn't.

"Clearly"

 

[Black Fang]

If Minato had done everything she did, but with a female character, you wouldn't be saying anything at all.

 

[lazycoconut]

If Minato had done everything she did, but with a female character, you wouldn't be saying anything at all.

I'd find it an improvement, certainly, because that would mean there was a female character as active and important in the plot as Kaito was. But it still wouldn't change the outcome of Minato's character: she can't outwit fate. She does not understand who really "chooses" the champion and how, which is why she fails.

Although of all the criticisms listed I still find the worst one to be "Zack should have been the protagonist."

 

[Kamen Rider IXA]

Gaim isn't misogynistic. Both Mai and Minato just happened to be left out of plot and pretty much didn't have any role until the very end. Same with Sid, Oren, Junoichi, Peco and Zack. All of them were really unimportant.
It's just (let's admit it) bad writing regarding "side" characters.

 

[lazycoconut]

While I certainly don't agree that Zack should have been the protagonist/would have made a better one than Kouta, he's arguably the only side character that delivered as much as or more than promised. Pretty much all the rest had something they never really lived up to, or that was brought up early on and died out. Whereas Zack was never really promoted as anything other than Kaito's lackey, yet he showed possibly the most progression of all the supporting characters (albeit he initially just goes from snide bully to nice guy after Kaito becomes loosely allied with Kouta)