Hayao Miyazaki, the director and storyteller behind several beloved Studio Ghibli films, has always had a preference for female protagonists and treated them with care. He realistically portrays them for who they are and doesn’t necessarily prioritize their appearance for the male gaze. He gives them a nuanced personality with well-written and natural character development. Miyazaki keeps to his word and consistently writes them with a human touch. However, in modern anime, female characters are overly sexualized and the Big Three might be the worst offenders.
One Piece, Naruto and Bleach might be the top-rated anime for decades now but there is one aspect they have in common. The female characters are mostly there for eye candy or don’t serve a purpose anymore, mostly due to the mangaka either not being able to write women properly or using them as fan service for escapism. They don’t include them as a character worthy of being their own person but to exist for their appearance. Miyazaki breaks that stereotype.
The Big Three Should’ve Learned From Miyazaki
Studio Ghibli films made by Hayao Miyazaki feature some of the strongest and well-written female anime characters. From Princess Mononoke to Kiki’s Delivery Service, these characters are only a few of his protagonists that demonstrate how strong girls can be. The director treats them as humans, someone deserving of their heroic status and accurate portrayal of how capable women are. Miyazaki has also criticized the anime industry’s treatment of women, with his famous statement “Anime was a mistake” a direct callout to mangaka who reduce women into eye candy.
The mangaka notorious for this are the Big Three: Eiichiro Oda, Masashi Kishimoto, and Tite Kubo. While they are genius storytellers in their own right, it’s undeniably that their female characters are overly sexualized and have incredibly unrealistic bodies. Moreover, some of them, notoriously Kishimoto, don’t even bother giving them a personality as seen with Haruno Sakura. At least Eiichiro Oda bothers with giving his female characters character depth and backstories, despite their exaggerated proportions.
These unrealistic bodies are very much responsible for how some anime fans have become toxic towards women, like being overly sexual and saying disgusting stuff about them or hating on the female characters for having zero purpose. It’s effectively become a form of escapism for many fans, including the mangaka themselves. It’s a degenerate way of thinking about women, something that Miyazaki warned us about the anime industry.
The Purpose Behind Fan Service and Why It Should Stop
Fan service is quite literal in that it is designed to please fans. However, there are also ways to do fan service while giving these characters a purpose and personality. A great example is Nico Robin, who is undeniably attractive but she is also the only person who can decipher Poneglyphs. Her role is crucial in One Piece. On the other hand, characters with great potential like Yoruichi from Bleach or Hinata from Naruto are often reduced to eye candy for the viewers or the obsessed love interest. It conditions fans into believing women are not nuanced people or that in reality, they need to solely be objects of desire.
Miyazaki, on the other hand, doesn’t perpuate any of these tropes. He sees women for who they really are and it’s quite simple: they are human beings. Everyone has a purpose in a story and Miyazaki knows that which is why he’s an undisputed master of storytelling. Unlike other mangaka, he knows how to write women as a whole person, not as a toy.
