Just look at animemes banning the use of tr*p. Of course not every anime is misogynist but… there’s kinda a lot. And I think there’s a lot of blatant misogyny that is definitely noticed, and people who watch those scenes know it’s bad, but if you keep watching that shit over and over, even if you know it’s bad, it just get burned into your brain. But more importantly, a lot of anime just treats women as a whole differently than the male characters. Their drawn slightly differently, they act slightly differently, and they continue to be treated as objects, albeit in more subtle ways. On their own or in a bubble these grievances wouldn’t be a big deal, but it does add up. Idk, shit just sucks and it makes it hard to get into shows I would really like otherwise…
I recently started watching anime and I haven’t really found one yet that has good female characters (although I really haven’t watched many yet).
The ones that don’t sexualize the characters like FMA and Deathnote still don’t give the women a lot of agency and they’re always serving the men.
Code Geass had at least one female character I liked but sexualized her and the others a lot.
Puella Magi Madoka Magica is a satire of magical girl anime so it does trod in some of the tropes, but by the end I think the female characters have agency and real relationships with each other. But it still ultimately feels like men writing women.
I think Erased was also okay about this. It was a male-centered story but there were significant female characters and I don’t remember any of them being sexualized. Not sure if it passes the Bechedel test though.
Overlord was the worst one for me that I’ve seen and I couldn’t finish it.
I have watched many anime with great female characters, but like western media, there is likely to be something that could be improved to portray the women better. Still, I think I can recommend something worth watching if there’s a genre or specific kind of show/movie you want to watch?
I did like most of the anime I watched, just sometimes need to take breaks from male-focused media.
My favorites of the things I watched were FMA (both original and Brotherhood) and Code Geass.
Death Note is one of the worst anime out there when it comes to the representation of women imo. The main antagonist/protagonist constantly remarks on how easily fooled and overly emotional women are. And the show does it’s darndest to try and prove him right, even the female god of death gets done in because of it. The sexism gets a lot more obvious when it comes to their follow up work, Bakuman, though. Death Note just keeps getting worse whenever I return to it.
Ugh, I love the conflict between Light and L, but I can’t stand Misa’s terrible characterization (or lack thereof, I should say). Her entire role in the story is to be Light’s goth slave gf and give him access to a second death note. I wasn’t even radicalized when I first watched it and it bothered me even back then.