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Originally Posted by 0utf0xZer0
Yeah, as good as anime is about giving female characters a variety of personalities and roles (some positive, some not so much), the fact that there's not a lot of shoujo or josei anime made these days means its kind of weak on portraying women's perspectives.
Just because they're both about NEETs, I actually find it kind of interesting to compare Welcome to the NHK and Kuragehime. The former is, as you say, about an existential crisis, while the latter felt more like it was about being able to take control of how you present yourself. Kind of reflects where demands lie, don't you think?
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Indeed. I really liked Kuragehime, as a story I'd put it more in terms of "coming of age", and it pulled the whole "makeover" story in a way that wasn't obnoxious, which is pretty hard to pull off (and she doesn't actually "get confident" when madeup!)
But I must admit, there's a severe lack of any kind of existentialism in shoujo manga. Now I'm not saying the value of any work is based on how deep it is, I like my light reading as much as the next person. But I do think that it's a major gap between the two.
In Seinen and Shounen we see male characters questioning themselves and their purpose, where they stand in the world. Heck the "wangsty kid" is an anime cliché. I haven't ever seen a female lead in shoujo or Josei suffer from anything like that, over anything more deep then "does he like me? How can I be more confident". Certainly some go getting attitude, but nothing really deep.
And I think it's unfortunate, as I'm pretty sure that both genders suffer from different types of existential crisis, and it would be interesting to see how women at their lowest ebb act, and not have it be entirely about dating and men?