chapotraphouse

It's a completely superficial detail only being emphasized by motivated reasoning. Sincerely and without exaggeration, you're taking this little symbolic thing that the manga itself completely trivializes before too long and using it as a stand in for actual analysis of the manga as literature, because looking at the manga as literature reveals that it does not represent a relatively progressive view of women even remotely. Also, to act like Lieutenant is an accolade for all of these women when for several it made them secretaries is patently absurd. Also, Black Clover is arguably not as bad as a Fairy Tail or something, but it still has a really gross depiction of women that subordinates their personalities to pining after male characters who have no such obsessions. I think JJK is just sort of neutral, but I guess that makes it above-average in this conversation and clearly superior to something like Bleach.

I probably should have been clearer, but I said they shouldn't write women if they can't be bothered to write women as humans. If they are just bad at internalizing or expressing that women are humans but believe it and try to reflect that in their writing, that's fine. Kubo only seems to believe it when he's writing Soi Fon (especially lately with Yoruichi being treated like an animal), because genuinely every single other character who the average fan could be bothered to remember the name of is either subordinated to a man like Black Clover does but maybe even worse, a secretary, or both. You need to look far and wide to find women with respectable personalities, though I also fully acknowledge Harribel, despite her visual design, is written alright. I just don't find it that compelling to point to them to say that Kubo is an Ally^tm when, if you go by percentage of female characters, they are overwhelmingly debasing.

I said Dragon Ball Z. Obviously Dragon Ball is pretty lame in this regard (though I haven't seen much of it, so I couldn't say if it's equal or worse). I specifically mean Radditz -> Buu, where there were basically only three female characters (Bulma, Chi Chi, and Android 18), but they were all good depictions, with Bulma being about as smart as Goku is strong and only limited by the lower level of tech on Earth than some other planets, Chi Chi being played as an annoying housewife but still being overwhelmingly motivated by a reasonable concern for people's safety and long-term prosperity (and Gohan ultimately takes her side over Goku!), and Android 18 being a villain who is equivalent to her brother and stomps the shit out of Vegeta before reforming to be a good guy kind of, all with none of the gross "gag manga" stuff that original DB had as far as I can remember.

I'm not saying that you're bad or a misogynist or whatever for being a big fan of Bleach -- I like it too, and the TYBW adaptation is probably the thing that I'm looking forward to the most in terms of upcoming anime, or probably actually third after Chainsaw Man and JJK, but still that's pretty high! -- I'm just saying it doesn't hold up here. And I'm not saying this to hide behind relativism either, I hate Fairy Tail, Black Clover, and Fire Force, and their depictions of women are significant factors in that, and I'm legitimately slightly sus of people who don't have such misgivings. Once Fire Force is fully adapted (because it gets worse right at the end), anime-only fans will be demoted to maybe a step above Shield Hero fans in my view. I tried for a second to think about how Sword Art Online figures into this power ranking, but then I remembered that it would entail thinking about Sword Art Online, so I stopped.