Why am I ranting about this
Sep. 10th, 2011 03:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
spottoAs the only girl who wore pants to her graduation in seventh grade, you'll be surprised to know I watch such "girly" cartoons as Powerpuff Girls, Sailor Moon, and My Little Pony. Except I don't see any of those shows as girly whatsoever, since every single one of them somehow has a large male demographic anyway! I too do not see stuff like Negima or Touhou as girly either, with its demographic being mostly male, so...
So what is this post supposed to be? Well, I am now going to discuss a show I actually regard as girly...under this lovely cut!
Totally Spies.
Yes, you can stop laughing now. No really.
The main characters are obsessed with boys and shopping, and every episode seems to be some sort of fetish fuel for the audience. The plots tend to be inane and progressively stupider as time goes on, and one of the biggest complaints at the time was how it imitated Anime for some reason. So why like a show like this? Well I ask you how this show even got five seasons!? I watched it when I was younger along with Digimon Frontier of sorts, sometimes with my friend too. She now regards the show as stupid (but she's a bit of an elitist believing everything to be stupid nowadays...) but really, why like it?
WELL I DO.
And while the main characters ARE obsessed with boys and shopping, they're not one-dimensional. Only one character is REALLY crazy and obsessed with shopping anyway. I think the whole subversion of females acting like females is getting pretty overdone as well. There are times where the gender or sex of the character doesn't even matter, and other times when stereotypes are thrown on to clearly differentiate. To me, Totally Spies is simply a fun show you really don't need to take seriously despite some really nasty plots I'm surprised makes it through the G Rating.
Case in point, I think I've heard the word "suck' and not in its literal meaning, but as an insult. I think I've heard the word "crap" too. Another thing is that the bad guys always have these, though sometimes outrageous, sinister plots and every single episode they try to kill the girls. Sure they capture them first and throw them into an unnecessarily elaborate traps to kill them but they are trying to kill them. They tend to be nasty ways as well, like sitting on a conveyor belt about to be sliced in half, or being roasted to death, or drowning, or being strangled, or being crushed to death, or being stabbed into swiss cheese, or...well you get the point. Though I guess it gets the G-Rating because none of the plots ever succeed, still. The criminals truly are horrible insane people and not...Team Rocket-esque types, though if you're an international spy I suppose it makes sense to deal with dangerous and deadly people.
Anyway the show doesn't feel like a horribly childish show where the word 'die' and 'kill' are verboten, but also not some heavy overly-dramatized show either. It's just a bunch of...well, not really normal high school girls fight crime and save the world. I've seen this redhead, blonde, and brunette archetype-trio before too! In one of my most loved childhood cartoons, the Powerpuff Girls!
The thing with PPG is that the personalities of these girls are a lot more pronounced, or extreme. Not necessarily bad but I've seen a lot of cartoons and Live-Action shows where the personality simply has to stand-out to be interesting, and it has to be a character with only one area of interest. This person is a skateboarder who talks like an idiot, for example. This other person is a goth who has no friends and cuts himself. I strongly believe in the real world people are not merely a trope of some kind, but an actual three-dimensional character. Not to say that PPG has one-dimensional characters at all, but I find the main three characters rely very heavily on their extremes. One girl who might as well be a boy, one girl who might as well be the president of the world, and one girl who might as well be, uh, a little girl. Isn't it funny how a group of little girls the one who acts the most like a little girl seems like the oddball? P: I can say the same for MLP:FiM too which also relies a bit on extremes but I suppose since the culture and world is completely different from ours that it can work.
Here although we eventually learn that one is more athletic and one is smarter they aren't suddenly total opposites who wouldn't make sense getting along with another even if you chain them together with handcuffs. The one exception might be Clover, who really does rely on her extreme interpretation of being a stereotypical high school girl from California. That's probably why she's my least favourite of the three (though I don't hate her at all, since she's highly entertaining) but I find the other two to be more interesting is all. Of course it baffles me as to why she's the most popular of the three (I think) considering she's pretty much a stereotype. Well sure she's entertaining and she's still nicer than the character whose role is to make them look nice (Mandy) but still. (I find the audience hating Mandy to be utterly hilarious. Hating a character with obvious traits to make her hated seems...I dunno, redundant. If the main characters already dislike her and she loses to them about 90% of the time I find it rather ridiculous to hate her further. I mean she's already getting what she deserves in the end and has such an obviously annoying voice it makes you not want to hate her since they try so hard getting you to hate her...if you know what I mean.)
Sam on the other hand seems kind of perfect in my eyes. In a really lowkey kind of way. She's pretty, she's smart, and she can fight too! I sometimes wonder if the missions could be done by only Sam herself, and then I realize she gets brainwashed half-the-time so she probably needs allies to counteract her anyway, lol. Yet at the same time I do not see her as a Mary-Sue, it's kind of like how I see Byakuren if we go back to Touhou for a second. There are flaws there, but they're not inherently obvious (like anyone else, really) and the writing is done well enough that she geniunely seems like a likable, realistic character. I can't exactly explain it, but I suppose being the de-facto leader kind of helps. (Well, either her or Clover. Sadly Alex will always fall into the follower role :C) A lot of people like Sam over Clover because she's like...the opposite of Clover.
But here is where complaints start raining down! For some absurd reason that I cannot figure out, Alex is not the most popular character! In fact she isn't even the second! In fact maybe people like supporting characters like Britney or Mandy over her too! I can only find one explanation for this! Some jealous fan realized the utter popularity Alex could achieve and brainwashed everyone into liking everyone else better! I am only exempt because I watched the show through a projection television that absolutely no one owns anymore at all! IT ALL MAKES SENSE. /TS logic
Well while I think up of more conspiracy theories of the injustice of Alex's popularity, I'll explain why I like her. I suppose her design isn't all that grand, more people like the colour green, blue, and red over yellow. She also has bobbed hair which isn't pretty long flowing hair or at least not quite as short as that hair. I almost went as far as saying everyone is a dumb shallow racist bastard because she's a mix of something not White or Asian, but yeah. (On the other hand I feel the demographic of this show isn't particularly bright or mature, but maybe I just insulted myself) Have I mentioned I love aderpable characters? I think I did. I feel Alex is an aderpable character. Her oldest and dearest friend is a stuffed turtle. She believes in the Easter Bunny. She's also the butt monkey (well along with Clover) and while Clover is very entertaining so is Alex, who doesn't have that shallow stereotypical personality. So why not?
Also the genre blindness of the villains is always amusing. Sometimes they do stay and watch, but get thwarted anyway, or do get their gadgets taken away, but they get around that anyway. (Usually by small things like still having something in their pocket, or being really retarded guards) I mean sure you can always ask "Why don't ya just shoot 'em?" but I feel with the amount of times they get captured they'd be long dead by now, and then we'd have no show.
Anyway, that was my little blurb/discussion/rant on a show I'm sure NO ONE ELSE I KNOW watches, but I think I'm used to that.
That is all.
So what is this post supposed to be? Well, I am now going to discuss a show I actually regard as girly...under this lovely cut!
Totally Spies.
Yes, you can stop laughing now. No really.
The main characters are obsessed with boys and shopping, and every episode seems to be some sort of fetish fuel for the audience. The plots tend to be inane and progressively stupider as time goes on, and one of the biggest complaints at the time was how it imitated Anime for some reason. So why like a show like this? Well I ask you how this show even got five seasons!? I watched it when I was younger along with Digimon Frontier of sorts, sometimes with my friend too. She now regards the show as stupid (but she's a bit of an elitist believing everything to be stupid nowadays...) but really, why like it?
WELL I DO.
And while the main characters ARE obsessed with boys and shopping, they're not one-dimensional. Only one character is REALLY crazy and obsessed with shopping anyway. I think the whole subversion of females acting like females is getting pretty overdone as well. There are times where the gender or sex of the character doesn't even matter, and other times when stereotypes are thrown on to clearly differentiate. To me, Totally Spies is simply a fun show you really don't need to take seriously despite some really nasty plots I'm surprised makes it through the G Rating.
Case in point, I think I've heard the word "suck' and not in its literal meaning, but as an insult. I think I've heard the word "crap" too. Another thing is that the bad guys always have these, though sometimes outrageous, sinister plots and every single episode they try to kill the girls. Sure they capture them first and throw them into an unnecessarily elaborate traps to kill them but they are trying to kill them. They tend to be nasty ways as well, like sitting on a conveyor belt about to be sliced in half, or being roasted to death, or drowning, or being strangled, or being crushed to death, or being stabbed into swiss cheese, or...well you get the point. Though I guess it gets the G-Rating because none of the plots ever succeed, still. The criminals truly are horrible insane people and not...Team Rocket-esque types, though if you're an international spy I suppose it makes sense to deal with dangerous and deadly people.
Anyway the show doesn't feel like a horribly childish show where the word 'die' and 'kill' are verboten, but also not some heavy overly-dramatized show either. It's just a bunch of...well, not really normal high school girls fight crime and save the world. I've seen this redhead, blonde, and brunette archetype-trio before too! In one of my most loved childhood cartoons, the Powerpuff Girls!
The thing with PPG is that the personalities of these girls are a lot more pronounced, or extreme. Not necessarily bad but I've seen a lot of cartoons and Live-Action shows where the personality simply has to stand-out to be interesting, and it has to be a character with only one area of interest. This person is a skateboarder who talks like an idiot, for example. This other person is a goth who has no friends and cuts himself. I strongly believe in the real world people are not merely a trope of some kind, but an actual three-dimensional character. Not to say that PPG has one-dimensional characters at all, but I find the main three characters rely very heavily on their extremes. One girl who might as well be a boy, one girl who might as well be the president of the world, and one girl who might as well be, uh, a little girl. Isn't it funny how a group of little girls the one who acts the most like a little girl seems like the oddball? P: I can say the same for MLP:FiM too which also relies a bit on extremes but I suppose since the culture and world is completely different from ours that it can work.
Here although we eventually learn that one is more athletic and one is smarter they aren't suddenly total opposites who wouldn't make sense getting along with another even if you chain them together with handcuffs. The one exception might be Clover, who really does rely on her extreme interpretation of being a stereotypical high school girl from California. That's probably why she's my least favourite of the three (though I don't hate her at all, since she's highly entertaining) but I find the other two to be more interesting is all. Of course it baffles me as to why she's the most popular of the three (I think) considering she's pretty much a stereotype. Well sure she's entertaining and she's still nicer than the character whose role is to make them look nice (Mandy) but still. (I find the audience hating Mandy to be utterly hilarious. Hating a character with obvious traits to make her hated seems...I dunno, redundant. If the main characters already dislike her and she loses to them about 90% of the time I find it rather ridiculous to hate her further. I mean she's already getting what she deserves in the end and has such an obviously annoying voice it makes you not want to hate her since they try so hard getting you to hate her...if you know what I mean.)
Sam on the other hand seems kind of perfect in my eyes. In a really lowkey kind of way. She's pretty, she's smart, and she can fight too! I sometimes wonder if the missions could be done by only Sam herself, and then I realize she gets brainwashed half-the-time so she probably needs allies to counteract her anyway, lol. Yet at the same time I do not see her as a Mary-Sue, it's kind of like how I see Byakuren if we go back to Touhou for a second. There are flaws there, but they're not inherently obvious (like anyone else, really) and the writing is done well enough that she geniunely seems like a likable, realistic character. I can't exactly explain it, but I suppose being the de-facto leader kind of helps. (Well, either her or Clover. Sadly Alex will always fall into the follower role :C) A lot of people like Sam over Clover because she's like...the opposite of Clover.
But here is where complaints start raining down! For some absurd reason that I cannot figure out, Alex is not the most popular character! In fact she isn't even the second! In fact maybe people like supporting characters like Britney or Mandy over her too! I can only find one explanation for this! Some jealous fan realized the utter popularity Alex could achieve and brainwashed everyone into liking everyone else better! I am only exempt because I watched the show through a projection television that absolutely no one owns anymore at all! IT ALL MAKES SENSE. /TS logic
Well while I think up of more conspiracy theories of the injustice of Alex's popularity, I'll explain why I like her. I suppose her design isn't all that grand, more people like the colour green, blue, and red over yellow. She also has bobbed hair which isn't pretty long flowing hair or at least not quite as short as that hair. I almost went as far as saying everyone is a dumb shallow racist bastard because she's a mix of something not White or Asian, but yeah. (On the other hand I feel the demographic of this show isn't particularly bright or mature, but maybe I just insulted myself) Have I mentioned I love aderpable characters? I think I did. I feel Alex is an aderpable character. Her oldest and dearest friend is a stuffed turtle. She believes in the Easter Bunny. She's also the butt monkey (well along with Clover) and while Clover is very entertaining so is Alex, who doesn't have that shallow stereotypical personality. So why not?
Also the genre blindness of the villains is always amusing. Sometimes they do stay and watch, but get thwarted anyway, or do get their gadgets taken away, but they get around that anyway. (Usually by small things like still having something in their pocket, or being really retarded guards) I mean sure you can always ask "Why don't ya just shoot 'em?" but I feel with the amount of times they get captured they'd be long dead by now, and then we'd have no show.
Anyway, that was my little blurb/discussion/rant on a show I'm sure NO ONE ELSE I KNOW watches, but I think I'm used to that.
That is all.
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Date: 2011-09-10 03:22 pm (UTC)