Its amazing how many things in anime I have overlooked that this forum has pointed out. Some of it I dont even remember.
Like the series Ai Yori Aoshi. I love it to death. One of my favorites ever. I'm sure GAF would tear it to shreds.
I've said it before, but Ai Yori Aoshi is a horrible, horrible series, and Aoi has got to be one of the worst, most sexist Yamato Nadeshikos ever.
Bamboo blade really is a great series and i recommend it to pretty much everyone.
Unless you completely hate moe, in which case you are dead to me anyway.
This, however, is true. Watch Bamboo Blade, it's a great anime.
This has been the first I have seen some of these episodes myself, well most of them really. I had seen bits and pieces of the show and after having now watched it in it's entirity over the past week or so, and my god that's a lot of viewing, I can safely say I had never have seen any of the second or third seasons before. Honestly, while the first and second seasons were alright the third was really lacking, it was just off. Well, like most animes it makes ranking shit easy as it's in a simple order, YUA Ova, YUA season 1, YUA season 2 and YUA season 3, imagine that!
I will say this though, Full Throttle may suck ass as a season but that ED is a glorious display of Yuri, if Miyuki ever tires of waiting on Nakajima and decides to just hook up with Natsumi I approve 110%.
I haven't rewatched it yet, but I don't remember Full Throttle being bad at all... it was nice to finally see a new actual season of the show, and it seemed to basically be the same thing the first two seasons were.
Of course, that meant that there still was no real plot development, I'm pretty sure, but ... well, it was YUA-like, certainly.
LOLOLOLOLOL. Everything is sexist to you! Ah, well, the show is kinda sexist but there are males in their division if you actually pay attention and the motorcycle cops are also in the same division, hence why they share the office, they're just on bikes instead of cars. I figured you'd have come up with something more damning like the shitty heels they make the girls wear despite being on patrol or something and instead it's the male to female ratio but I digress, it wouldn't be a A Black Falcon post if it were totally on the mark.
Truthfully I'd be disappointed too.
No, it's most certainly sexist, you're just either in denial or are trying hard to not see it. It's pretty obvious stuff.
As for the heels and dresses -- yes, their uniforms are stupid. I do think it'd make a lot more sense if they had normal police uniforms, not those. They are in cars most of the time though, not on foot, so it isn't quite as bad as it otherwise would be.
But anyway, sure there are men in their division, on motorcycles at least, but seriously, most of their division is female, while almost everyone we see in the criminal or science divisions are male. Also, all of the higher officers I can think of, including their boss, etc, are male. Maybe that's a realistic depiction of Japan today (or in the '90s) -- female police officers are shunted into the lower-profile traffic division -- I don't know, but whether it's based on reality or made up for the series, it is sexist as depicted.
As for ability, the entire Traffic Department is goofballs, it's not just the women that aren't in Criminal Affairs but none of the men in the Traffic Department would handle it anyways, they're all the lovable goofballs of the show dealing with lighthearted shit, it'd be a total tonal shift of the show if Miyuki and Natsumi had to fight some drug dealers on their first patrol and then after finding a rape victim during their night patrol try and amateurishly lure the rapist onto one of them but failing because Natsumi drank to much culminating in someone having to shoot the rapist leaving Miyuki emotionally scarred. It just... wouldn't work. I mean, sure, maybe part of the reason the author didn't put them their was for sexist reasons but you know it's just as possible, if not more actually, if the author just didn't want to tell that fucking story. He had his good natured characters that just wanted to help the community and he didn't want to darken them with the shit that really goes on in the police world. The author was already bending the truth well enough with mere traffic and petty crime offenders but the show would seriously lose everything if it'd tried to throw these well meaning lovable characters against Yakuza, drug dealers, pimps, rapists and murderers. I mean, seriously, everything about the show would not work. The characters are good natured and lovable, you'd be hard pressed to find me a character that'd do what needed to be done because it had to be done, Miyuki and Natsumi load their guns up with paint rounds for fuck's sake. And then there's the theme of the show, that they can overcome injustice by just trying hard no matter their ability. It's one thing to let a car thief slip by for a few nights or a serial mugger but a murderer? A Rapist? In the actual show you can shrug it off, so some cars got damaged and the civilians are mad, it's just a car, you have insurance, the tone would be drastically different if now instead of having your character deal with the near non-threatening blow to their pride at having heard of a joyrider driving yet again and damaging something you had to have the characters show up at a morgue to examine a body because they had had an argument and in a moment of lapsed judgement let a murderer escape, it just wouldn't be the same show.
On that note, it's kind of funny that there aren't any anime crime dramas that I can think of, they're one of the most popular TV show genres in the US at least. Are they not popular in Japan, or are they just not popular with anime audiences? It's probably because everything has to star high school students. That also rules out lawyer shows, obviously.
That is, something like that show you describe there would indeed be something quite different, but who knows, it could be good.
[Edit]And Natsumi and Miyuki are constantly recognized as the best of their department by getting almost every single big case. They're not giving it to the men in the station! Sexists![/edit]
So the characters are not being held back for sexist reasons but for story reasons. And of course the author's built those reasons into the story itself, they just want to help people and they can do that where they are, they like their place and that's that. You even see that Natsumi has chances to move along to bigger and better things but comes back, the characters like each other and their job. It's that simple and it's because of the story.
In summary STOP LOOKING TOO HARD. Sometimes things that seem sexist aren't sexist it's just not the story they wanted to tell.
I'm not looking too hard, not in the least. It's thrown in your face in almost every episode, it'd be almost impossible to miss it.
As for the rest of this... yes, Natsumi and Miyuki are clearly the best in their division by far, and yeah they have been recognized for it. Are they stuck in their current position anyway for story reasons or for sexist ones? Well, I'll agree that it's mostly for storyline reasons -- as has been said, YUA does not allow actual plot development, ever -- but sexism probably plays a part in it too, sure. Why did they end up in that division to begin with, for example? I'm sure they were good in the academy too... I know, the answer is "so that the plot would work as is, with them as competent members of a lovably incompetent division. Still, it does stick out sometimes. Like, how they seem to solve the detective guy's cases for him most of the times he appears in the series with one, whether they were supposed to or not... the only exception I can think of is that time early in S2 that the new girl solved one of those by accident. Apart from that they do it, but it doesn't seem to get them much.
Of course, I know that this is probably one side effect of the show's entirely progress-free nature, the other major one being that none of the relationships ever actually become anything, but still, it is worth mentioning.
