[ SECRET POST #6411 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #6411 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 11 secrets from Secret Submission Post #916.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 1 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

“Genre where sexism doesn’t exist”

Uhhhh. That’s impossible. Sexism exists in every genre because sexism exists in the world and people who write. Now, you could say some magical girl anime PRETEND sexism doesn’t exist, but they can never fully succeed. And you could say PMMM saying outright that sexism exists and condemning it is less sexist than glossing over it.* In fact, many Japanese feminists themselves believe magical girl anime is sexist because they believe it teaches girls they must only be strong if it’s in a socially acceptably feminine package and often prioritizes the love of a man as the ultimate end to all the asskicking. Not all feminists of course: trying to boil down what Japanese feminists think of magical girls is as useful as trying to boil down what western feminists think of the Barbie franchise. But the magical girl genre has never been an unambiguous sexism-free zone is what I’m saying.

*And PMMM does attempt to condemn the sexism. Anyone who thinks the narrative punishes the girls for their wishes is confusing the in-text magical girl to witch pipeline system with the narrative. The system is cruel to the girls, so Madoka becomes a god and says stop. I don’t think condemning sexism explicitly was Urobuchi’s goal in writing PMMM, just like I know perpetuating it isn’t the goal of writers making nonsubversive magical girl stories. But the texts are what they are.

[(Anonymous)]

Eh... I think you're interpreting my words in a much more expansive sense than I meant them (and which my argument is built on). When I say "sexism doesn't exist" in the magical girls genre, I'm not making a broad statement on whether sexist attitudes exist in society, or in the minds of the authors, or in the worlds or plots depicted in magical girl anime. What I meant was specifically that sexism is built INTO the very rules of PMMM's world in a way that ties the magical powers into a curse upon women specifically, which is an uncommon treatment of how powers work in magical girls anime. The *world* itself is metaphysically sexist that goes beyond the attitudes of any one person within the world, and the world itself treats women differently (and worse) than how it treats men. By building a world this way, it makes it so that magical girl powers are not a simple power fantasy for women but rather at worst a curse and at best a devil's bargain, which cuts right to the heart of the power fantasy that is at the core of magical girls anime, which makes it a subversion (or at least, not clearcut example) of the magical girls genre.

I'm not saying that PMMM is more or less sexist than other magical girl anime, or it is less interesting to feminists. I'm not even saying that that embedded-in-the-world-itself sexism I'm referring to isn't challenged within the anime itself. I'm just saying that PMMM subverts a lot of the core implicit "rules" of magical girl anime by making it impossible for the magical girl powers to function as a power fantasy, which is why PMMM tends to come off as more "bleak" than other magical girl anime without actually being any darker. Female suffering is not actually what distinguishes PMMM from other magical girls anime; it's the way that suffering is framed in relation to the powers granted and the meaning of the suffering.