Ask John: Are There Any Anime in Which Violence Against Women is Use for Comedy?

Question:
Why is female-on-male violence considered funny and harmless in anime but when males do the exact same thing, even if its for a legitimate reason, it’s treated as something serious and dramatic, and we’re supposed to feel compassion and sympathy for her? Isn’t that hypocritical? Also is there any anime where females getting hit is treated as comical?

Answer:
Sexism isn’t limited to appearing only in anime; it still occasionally surfaces in American entertainment media as well. Hitgirl beating up character Dave Lizewski then insulting him in the forthcoming American studio action film Kick-Ass 2 can be considered progressively feminist. It can also be viewed as an exploitation of sexist stereotype. The trope of females being weaker, less aggressive, and less prone to violence is a stereotype that’s been exploited particularly within anime for a very long time. For example, in the late 1980’s the City Hunter Ryo Saeba couldn’t harm women, but his female partner Kaori Makimura was famous for comically beating him with her “interdimensional hammer.” More recently, the Maken-ki franchise revolves around this same trope of comedy emerging out of girls beating up a weaker boy. The comedy, whether completely ethical or not, works because it plays to a ubiquitous assumption. The very foundation of humor lies in undermining and overturning expectation, and regardless of how progressive and fair viewers want to be, we are all still conscious of the convention that girls are weaker and less violent than boys. So seeing that stereotype reversed is startling, unexpected, and ironic, easily leading to humor.

Typical anime that victimize women do so at the hands of other women, or depict violence against women in a tragic or unfavorable light. In shounen anime like One Piece, Dragon Ball, Bleach, and St. Seiya, the girls take abuse equal to the boys without discrimination. Magical girl anime like Pretty Cure or Lyrical Nanoha that depict violence against girls can be called, in certain respects, shounen anime with gender-swapped characters. The Pretty Cures getting beaten up isn’t comical; it’s superhero action. Anime in which boys comically abuse girls seem very rare because the very concept of the “stronger” male abusing the “weaker” female is ingrained to be immoral and unfunny. The Haiyore! Nyaruko-san franchise gets away with depicting Mahiro Yasaka punishing Nyaruko by stabbing her with a fork because Nyaruko is technically a monster rather than a human girl. The Fight Ippatsu! Jyuden-chan television series was able to mine comedy out of a boy beating girls with a baseball bat because the girls turned out to be masochistic and enjoy the beating.

Perceived from a strictly objective perspective, the double-standard of girls abusing boys being ironic and funny yet boys beating girls being unethical and cruel is hypocritical. However, it’s also a practically inescapable aspect of reality that explains why sports are still typically segregated by player gender. In an environment without gender stereotypes, there wouldn’t be a difference in reaction to a scene depending on the gender of the aggressor. In some very rare instances, such as the 2010 Angel Beats series that consciously revolved around undermining established anime storytelling conventions, physical violence is equal and reciprocal between the genders.