Naruto/shounen pondering

[meganbmoore]

So,octopedingenueis kicking offreread_no_jutsu, a community whose description reads "It's like Fight Club, only more Book Group. Because the only thing better than reading ten years' and 400+ chapters' worth of babyninja punching each other is figuring out why we'd do it all over again."

I'm not participating because until I whittle down the backlog and catch up with various series, I'm not allowed to reread Basara Blade of the Immortal Fullmetal Alchemist Claymore Cantarella xxxHolic/Tsubasa Skip-Beat manga I really really like, much less a series that I dropped a good while back. I'll be following the discussions, though. That does create the threat of my being swallowed up in a deep dark hole of moral shame and guilt that I read about 15 volumes further in scanslations than what I bought of the licensed volumes, but I shall attempt to be strong.

As a frame of reference for how far I got/how long it's been, when I stopped it was somewhere around or just past Vol 30 in Japan, and Viz was about a month into "Let's spam the US market by releasing for volumes a month AND ALL FOUR VOLUMES THE SAME DAY!" (I have no idea if they're still doing that, or doing it again.) The last thing I remember happening was (assume this could be as far into the series as about Vol 35...and I could be thinking I read further than I did) Sakura, Naruto, Sai and their teacher had run into Sasuke. About a dozen or so chapters after that. Sai, IIRC, had played some sort of fanservice to slash fans.

 

Now, here's the thing. All shounen has some serious problems going on regarding gender. Even Claymore and Fullmetal Alchemist, the two series that seem to have largely ruined me for any shounen that I wasn't already attached to, have problems. But I am, in general, more lenient with shounen than I am shoujo. The target audience for most shounen is 13-15 year old boys. Their main interest in plopping down their allowance every week for Shounen Jump is reading about a couple guys going "And now...I will show you my TRUE power/SECRET move/etc!!" "Writing for the target audience" doesn't absolve a series of any problems it has, but it is an important consideration, and it's why I can get past things that would normally (and sometimes still do) irritate me in Samurai Deeper Kyo, Kekkaishi, Black Cat, Bleach (sometimes) and various other shounen I read/have read but aren't jumping to the front of my head at the moment. And though the line between them can be difficult to see, there is a difference between focusing on your main character and sidelining a character, and when you pick up a shounen action series, you're most likely getting a series where most of the attention will be on variations of certain, primarily male, character sets. It's pretty much an inherent part of the genre, and one that, if it doesn't work for you, largely guarantees that the series will just irritate you.


 

 

Naruto, though, always bugged me more than other series when it came to female characters, and I think it's because of this: Is there something in the DNA of every ninja tribe in that world that results EXACTLY one girl for every two boys born every year, stretching back at least 50-60 years? Is there some sort of law in every tribe that says each and every team (though there might have been teams introduced later, or that weren't around long enough for me to remember them that upset the formula) must have exactly 2 boys and 1 girl? Why are there no teams with 2 girls and 1 boy? All boy teams? All girl teams?

In theory, the numbers themselves should put Naruto a step ahead of other shounen simply because having 1/3 of your cast be female in the typical "cast of thousands" makes you female character outnumber those in other series about 5:1, proportionately. And yet, it's so exact, so deliberate, that "one girl for every two boys" can't be anything but a conscious decision. And when it's so conscious, it makes the treatment of gender stand out all the more. And then there's the fact that, in this world, almost every character the same age has near identical levels of training and experience. There's no variety. In personality and individual specialty, yes. But as presented, every character of the same age (with the exception of characters like Sasuke and Gaara) should be on equal footing, with some allowances made for personal strengths and weaknesses. In another shounen, you'll have a character with little or no training or powers, one who is new but who has enormous training, and two who are experienced fighters. That the only girl of the four is the one with no powers or training is a problem, and not one that should be dismissed, but it is a textual reason for the girl to not be in the middle of the fight with that arc Big Boss. With Naruto, however, that isn't there. The girl in question has as much training and experience as the three boys. Yet she's still the one sitting it out or fighting a lesser opponent while the boys are fighting the arc's Big Boss. So while I get grumpy that Yuya/Okuni/Mahiro/Orihime/Tatsuki/Tokine/etc. isn't on a par with the boys in terms of getting to fight and win fights, and can at least follow along with the why of it as presented by the manga. But with Sakura/Hinata/Ino/etc., I'm left with the feeling that Kishimoto is standing there going "look, I gave you exactly one girl for every two boys...do you really expect me to actually give them something to do in addition to existing?" (Plus, other shounen tends to at least let them have goals and motivations and backgrounds and lives separate from the guys, and the only female character I can think of in Naruto that that applies to is Tsunade.) 
 
And so I have made my yearly or so post on Naruto. (You know, when I was reading the series, I knew about 3 people who read it. Now I see at least 1 post a day on it, usually more. And that was before the idea of the community started to be tossed around.)

Please use the spoiler code for any spoilers. I know at least one person on the f-list is currently reading Naruto for the first time, and others are are playing catchup forreread_no_jutsu . Spoiler code:

<span style="color: #333333;background-color: #333333">Spoilers here.</span>

P.S.: You almost got a huge rant because LJ ate this!  But then LJ gave it back, so it's ok.

P.P.S.:  I swear I used to have a Naruto tag, but it seems to be gone.  *makes new one*

 

Comments

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

PM me around then!

Naruto post?

[octopedingenue]

Consider yourself PMed. Unless you want an actual PM? Hmm.

Re: Naruto post?

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

DONE!