Single Girl Only Sentais - Problem or No?

[Berty]

It's also a location issue. Up where I live, one of the daycares I work at is pretty much always at full capacity. The other one I work at had a problem with the principal getting arrested for vote-buying a few years ago, with the result that several families pulled their kids out. Then management had trouble and several teachers left, and since teachers left, more parents pulled out... so now enrollment is very low. Once we had parents' day, and the parents who came all seemed to be of lower income families. They were surprised the daycare had a real live native English speaker. Guess they thought that was a lie, but couldn't afford a daycare with a better reputation.

Several of the kids have at least one sibling. Some of the families I meet have at least three children. I think, perhaps what's really going on is that some people who are living in crowded cities are uncomfortable and unhappy, and they don't want to live like that.

Heck, I thought that Gogofive and Magiranger were all about "Gosh, yes, you should have at least five kids!" And, as my mother was the only daughter and 5th of five children, I can accept these family dynamics. I don't like it. I keep shouting at the TV "WHERE'S the NEXT generation going to come from, idjits?!"

Nobu being an uncle and his sister a single mother is a step in a good direction. I noticed that Soji seems envious of the small family. What I don't like is that Nobu looks... unkempt. As though being 29 and working for a living means he doesn't get to look the best he can.

 

[lazycoconut]

Big cities are expensive to live in, and from everything I've heard/read, more women in Japan don't want to have children now (or put it off till an age where it's harder to get pregnant) because they want to continue working/the couple needs dual income and there is little support for working mothers. A friend of mine who's lived in Japan for a pretty long time and has kids says it would help the population crisis if it were easier for people outside of the cities to find work, but I don't know about that.

This is also why I don't think that Sentai/Rider should actively promote the idea to their child audience that they should want to get married and have lots of kids. It's uncomfortably close to social engineering for me and it's already established in the Japanese consciousness that the "right" life for a woman is to stay at home having babies. The current generation of 20 and 30 something women would have grown up with that message but if they don't think it financially/practically reasonable to have children or get married, they won't

Nobuharu is supposed to be 32 (his actor is 29) and I assumed he was untidy because he's a manual worker, blue collar, etc. who works different jobs to support his family and is a bit frazzled. Yes, it's a stereotype, but it's one kids understand and makes it clear that he is in a difficult situation; he isn't the Japanese ideal of a smart salaryman in a nice office.

 

[kuroihikari]

Big cities are expensive to live in, and from everything I've heard/read, more women in Japan don't want to have children now (or put it off till an age where it's harder to get pregnant) because they want to continue working/the couple needs dual income and there is little support for working mothers. A friend of mine who's lived in Japan for a pretty long time and has kids says it would help the population crisis if it were easier for people outside of the cities to find work, but I don't know about that.

I think that's it, too.

This is also why I don't think that Sentai/Rider should actively promote the idea to their child audience that they should want to get married and have lots of kids. It's uncomfortably close to social engineering for me and it's already established in the Japanese consciousness that the "right" life for a woman is to stay at home having babies. The current generation of 20 and 30 something women would have grown up with that message but if they don't think it financially/practically reasonable to have children or get married, they won't.

The government already does things in order to increase the birth rate. There's nothing wrong if a private company decides to help in their own way. Especially if it's the future of their country at stake.

As long as rights are not taken away it's fine.

 

[Black Fang]

Nobody is quite sure what the cause of this is, but the general belief is that people are delaying or giving up on having families because it's just too difficult and expensive to have kids. Women are still expected to give up their jobs for their children. Daycare is all but impossible to find (and damned expensive if you do). And most young families can not take care of both young children and aging parents (Another social expectation) at the same time on a single person's income.

Nobu being an uncle and his sister a single mother is a step in a good direction. I noticed that Soji seems envious of the small family. What I don't like is that Nobu looks... unkempt. As though being 29 and working for a living means he doesn't get to look the best he can.

Whenever I hear this I somehow always feel there is some implication (though maybe I'm wrong) that the opposite would be better. I get the difficulties of having those expectations in Japan's current state, but at the same time I don't think drastically relaxing or reversing them would be that much better in the long run culturally.

In America for the last 50 years attitudes toward sex, marriage and familes have become more lax to the point where cohabitating and/or having children out of wedlock is now tolerated. While birthrates aren't plummeting as far as certain European countries, a large reason is the number of immigrants having more kids than the "native" population (which incidentally is also the case in said European countries). But the effects on Western culture from this change in attitudes haven't been great, and certainly hasn't engendered its reputation in the more "traditional" East.

A friend of mine who's lived in Japan for a pretty long time and has kids says it would help the population crisis if it were easier for people outside of the cities to find work, but I don't know about that.

Apparently so much of the population has migrated to urban areas that the more rural or less "globalized" towns and villages have fewer and fewer people living in them, and fewwer people to do agricultural work.

This is also why I don't think that Sentai/Rider should actively promote the idea to their child audience that they should want to get married and have lots of kids. It's uncomfortably close to social engineering for me and it's already established in the Japanese consciousness that the "right" life for a woman is to stay at home having babies. The current generation of 20 and 30something women would have grown up with that message but if they don't think it financially/practically reasonable to have children or get married, they won't.

Social engineering isn't inherently good or bad. It depends on who is doing the engineering, what the goal is and what the means are of obtaining that goal. Encouraging people to get married and have children, especially in a society with such dismal birthrates, should be done just for the sake of the society's survival. But with that said, the question is how to reconcile it with Japan's economic conditions.

Japan escaped Western colonization by copying the West, long before the rest of the Asian countries. Now ironically it's plauged with some of the same dilemmas as Western Europe.

 

[Jack-Q]

For example, Gobusters. I feel like Yoko got the least episodes focused on her out of all the three main Gobusters. She also didn't actually have anything resembling a personal story arc. Hiromu had the thing with his sister, Ryuji had his dream of being an engineer. Yoko's only thing that didn't have anything that wasn't directly related to the rest of team was when she pretended to be a bride for her old teacher. Also during Super Hero Taisen, Yoko was LITERALLY kicked out of the mecha and replaced by Fourze, even though it makes no sense she would just suddenly fall out like that. But she was "the girl" and obviously the least important member, and someone had to make room for Fourze.

Yoko did have a personal arc, in her episodes she was always whining about something. :laugh:
However i agree that she is a good example of a token girl. Many shows managed to do its solo girl look very good and badass though, while many other shows had two poorly and terribly written girls, like Goseiger. It's a matter of writing, not amount of girls.

 

[lazycoconut]

The government already does things in order to increase the birth rate. There's nothing wrong if a private company decides to help in their own way. Especially if it's the future of their country at stake.

As long as rights are not taken away it's fine.

It's one thing to encourage people but are they going to get the support they want/need in order to have kids? I guess if there were an easy answer there wouldn't be a problem

Social engineering isn't inherently good or bad. It depends on who is doing the engineering, what the goal is and what the means are of obtaining that goal. Encouraging people to get married and have children, especially in a society with such dismal birthrates, should be done just for the sake of the society's survival. But with that said, the question is how to reconcile it with Japan's economic conditions.

Japan escaped Western colonization by copying the West, long before the rest of the Asian countries. Now ironically it's plauged with some of the same dilemmas as Western Europe.

The west also has more immigration, which at least means there are kids/younger workers around, whereas Japan doesn't have very much. I remember reading about a scheme to encourage Japanese-Brazilians to live in Japan some time ago, which didn't work out and resulted in a number of them being paid to go back to Brazil ...

Yoko did have a personal arc, in her episodes she was always whining about something. :laugh:
However i agree that she is a good example of a token girl. Many shows managed to do its solo girl look very good and badass though, while many other shows had two poorly and terribly written girls, like Goseiger. It's a matter of writing, not amount of girls.

I agree, although my preference is still for two.

In what way do you think Yoko was a typical token girl? I'd say the worst one of recent years is Nanami, yes a lot of people like her but she wasn't a great character and seems to be popular mostly because of Nao Nagasawa

 

[Black Fang]

The west also has more immigration, which at least means there are kids/younger workers around, whereas Japan doesn't have very much.

As I said, the birthrate among immigrants to the West is overall higher than those of the "native" populations. Japan has been adverse to increased immigration, I have heard, for among other things cultural homogenity. Whether or not they can afford that policy is up for debate, but I'm sure at least some people in the Japanese government have seen the demographic shifts in countries with high/unfettered immigration and aren't keen on adopting it.

 

[Fox-Chan]

Nobu being an uncle and his sister a single mother is a step in a good direction. I noticed that Soji seems envious of the small family. What I don't like is that Nobu looks... unkempt. As though being 29 and working for a living means he doesn't get to look the best he can.

Sometimes, that's EXACTLY what it means.

I had a classmate in one of my college math courses that came in every day in paint splattered clothing because they didn't have any time to change in-between work and class.

Nobuharu looks far more presentable by comparison.

 

[live jetabare]

According to an interview Deca End quoted, Sanjo wrote Pink as an "action" girl that does a lot of high kicks because he knew Mr. Pervy Sakamoto would love it. He also wanted more than one female ranger, and apologizes that there's only one in the end.

Fanservice aside, the fact that Sanjo wanted more than one female ranger is great news, because that means he's likely gonna write his only female ranger as a well done character to make up for that, and I hope he's gonna do the same with female supporting character.

Other than that, I'm not that bothered by single female ranger sentai, and here's why: in most "two girls" sentai, especially recent ones, you have one of the two girls who is the idiot/ ditzy one of the team (like Pink Racer, Megapink, Dekapink, Magipink, Boukenyellow) and even sometimes, both girls are like this (like in Go-onger and Goseiger)

If a team must have an idiot/ Ditzy character, I feel it's more feminist friendly to have that character be a guy, even with only one girl in the team (but said girl must be a great character), than that character be a second girl.

In Kyoryuger, I guess that the "idiot one" spot is gonna be shared by Black and Blue.

 

[lazycoconut]

The problem for me with "ditzy" female Rangers is that it's usually done to make them look cute/sexy, as if that's their only function in the show - she may not be useful but hey, she's hot and that's what matters! I am not suggesting that every female character should be Einstein. I think heroines like Yellow Buster (who is less "smart" than Ryuji or Hiromu, but the show still treats her with respect) and MegaPink (intelligent but "book dumb" and can't be bothered to study) can be done well.

It's also not so bad if the whole team is pretty dim i.e. the Go-ongers, Goseigers, the main three Hurricanegers