Quote:
Originally Posted by relentlessflame
It depends on the context, does it not? If someone were actually in any real danger, I don't see why they wouldn't have the right to defend themselves. In any sort of combat situation, it doesn't matter the gender of your opponent -- not defending yourself could get you killed. But just because a guy gets a slap in the face after he gropes a girl's breasts doesn't mean that he was "in danger" and his proper action is to "fight back".
The whole "guy does something perverted, girl slaps/punches him in response to restore the status quo" thing has been a well-known comedy routine for years, and it's not intended to be portrayed as any sort of serious danger or threat (the male character is almost always perfectly fine the next scene, or only has comedic "wounds"). I realize some people think this joke isn't funny because it seems to be glorifying violence against men, but by the same token it's almost always following a scene that glorifies the objectification of women. Given that there are no real lasting consequences, who (in the story) gets the better end of the deal? If not for the slap/kick/punch/whatever, what should be the consequence in the story for the sexual harassment or whatever that preceded? Should he be arrested? Thrown in jail? Taken to court? The story basically needs a way to show that there are consequences for improper actions that, by the same token, still allow the actions to continue anyway in some limited/controlled capacity. So this too (or something very similar) is necessary to make the harem anime story work, and to prevent the protagonist from having his way with all the women in the story without consequence.
(And if you want the sort of story where the protagonist just does go around and have his way with all the women in the story, well, that would probably be porn. Most harem anime are trying more to be romantic comedies with a heavy dose of sexual fanservice.)
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While I get what you're saying, I'm not sure if this frames the issue properly.
Most harem anime male leads are
not incorrigible lechs that will take every opportunity to "have their way with" women.
Most of the set-ups for tsundere abuse involves some sort of bizarre accident where the guy and the tsundere female somehow get tangled up in a compromising way, and/or the guy accidentally stumbles in on the tsundere female in a state of an undress.
But 9 times out of 10 it is, in fact, a genuine accident (i.e. it's
not a clever lech
pretending to stumble into the girl's washroom when he really was trying to sneak a peek
). In some of these cases, maybe you could say that the male lead is a horribly clumsy bungler who had it coming to him, but there's also a fair number of cases where it really is an obvious, understandable accident and the guy shouldn't be punched for it.
More than anything else, I think it's this slapstick comedy abuse that, if it's allowed to run for too long/too often, can make harem male leads look weak in the eyes of many viewers.
Indeed, I think that part of the aim with many modern wingmen is to have
them be the buttmonkey recipient of slapstick comedy abuse so that your male lead can sort of be spared the indignity of it and come out looking a little more respectable because of it.
I'm with you in that I have no great desire to see a guy "hit back". On the other hand, when they start taking constant abuse from a particular character without ever bothering to defend themselves at all (
Ben-To immediately comes to mind to me here), it really does start to look bad and frankly makes the guy look like a doormat for punishment (or a masochist
).
tl;dr If tsunderes are going to continue to be a prominent and frequently seen part of anime, I'd like them to be more Type B than Type A.