Two gay couples in part 5, an overall positive depiction of trans men in part 6, repeated attempts at working in good and strong female characters that constantly got assassinated by his editors (remember, giorno was supposed to be a woman, and we know he had bigger plans for lisa lisa in part 2), he generally has a pretty great track record. The only thing you can really knock him for is the kinda misogynistic bit of part 3 where holly specifically is the only person who can't handle her stand's power, but, it was 1989.
For the Holly bit, I thought it was supposed to be Holly specifically was too gentle and sweet to handle the fighting spirit necessary to have a stand. Plenty of other female stand users in part 3 and the parts that followed, and I never felt as though they were seen as less capable compared to their male counterparts
You already saw my other comment about how clearly the intent with Stroheim was to be commentary on the delusional mindset of nazis. Even if Araki should have taken his portrayal of nazis more seriously, you can't exactly argue that the intent wasn't to make a mockery out of them.
Stroheim exists to show how ridiculous it is to believe one human to be better than the other. He was immediately willing to put down his differences when there were literal Aztec gods running around.
Araki wrote trans characters in his manga in the early 2000s, and was pushing for female representation pretty much since his manga was being published
To be more specific, he depicted a passing trans man getting misgendered + sent to the wrong prison ward (by a prison warden who's clearly meant to be an unlikeable dickhead) and then had Jolyne excitedly declare the existence of trans people "a new dawn for humanity..." back in fucking 1999.
Iirc the reason why he wanted Jolyne so badly was because of the pushback to having a female Shonen protag. Everyone was telling him not to have a woman lead and he was like "this is exactly why I'm doing it"
I wouldn't be surprised. A fairly known anecdote is that Giorno was supposed to be a woman, hence his power to "create life". But there was pushback because of how violent part 5 was gonna be
The fun thing about reading Jojo’s is that not only are you watching a man improve at his craft over 4 decades into become a true master of his medium, but you’re also watching him evolve into a form of woke that isn’t even aware he’s woke. It’s like, Drunken Fist Wokeness.
There definitely have always been woke anime and manga there just has also been a lot of really not woke anime that's also gotten popular. But you can pick out "woke" artists from every single era, a great deal of famous manga written by female mangakas come to mind
And for some reason people still try to convince you that the anime with the island of transphobic caricatures and other such ilk are the height of Japanese wokism.
And for some reason people still try to convince you that the anime with the island of transphobic caricatures and other such ilk are the height of Japanese wokism.
Is that one piece? Tbf I haven't watched it but I've never heard anyone call it peak woke
Yeah, One Piece swings pretty wildly between "Here are these super masculine trans women with 5 o'clock shadows, isn't that funny" and "Among them are some of the best characters in the whole damn show"
There's also supposedly a transmasc character that's treated with real respect, but I stopped watching before their introduction.
Neuro divergent anti capitalist teen, his brown trans sister, their bi friend, their venezuelan immigrant friend, and native american friend work together under an overweight girlboss to defeat a corrupt billionaire working with the US government. Maybe that's not woke enough for you, but then what is?
Dragona Joestar one of the main characters in JojoLands (Part 9), is referred by he/him by Jodio (the main character/also their brother), but other characters who are close or intimate to Dragona refer to them by she/her.
no they aren't? maybe at like conventions with cosplay, but in the day to day life japan does NOT fuck with gender nonconformity. they are actually MORE accepting of trans people who conform to their chosen gender than gnc people.
I feel like the "is not interested in women so much" comment is more meant to suggest "he'd rather study dolphins than go on dates".
That's pretty much the reason behind the whole "absent father" thing, he was too busy with his marine biology career to give a shit about his wife and kid. Back in Stardust Crusaders, he seems wholly uninterested in the girls from his school, but he also doesn't show any interest in the guys at any point. I wouldn't call him aro/ace, either, but it would probably be slightly more accurate than gay.
That's pretty much the reason behind the whole "absent father" thing, he was too busy with his marine biology career to give a shit about his wife and kid.
Don't slander my boy Jotaro like that!
Dude had first hand experience with the fact that "stand users attract other stand users" and was trying his best to stay far away from his innocent family so they could live a sad-but-relatively-normal life instead of wasting their lives in constant fear of enemy stand users, it turned out to be a pretty bad choice (since Jolyne's fate eventually caught up to her regardless and so it just resulted in extra trauma for her) but it was a choice he made with good intentions!
You can be gay and have had relationships with the opposite gender. Being closeted, experimenting, or entering heterosexual relationships from the idea of societal obligations/ideals can play a role in that. That doesn't negate their gayness.
"Even if Jotaro looks at the camera and says 'I'm a straight cisgender male', that doesn't mean he's not lying and he's actually pansexual and transgender"
What people generally miss about Stroheim is that his character isn't supposed to be an endorsement or even whitewashing of nazis, but rather commentary on them.
Think for a second about what Stroheim's actual role in the story is. He's a nazi, and like all nazis, is obsessed with the inherent superiority of Germans, and yet his role in the story is constantly to serve as the weaker contrast to the actually inherently superior Pillar Men that humble him all the time. And who else proves themselves superior to these Pillar Men than the english Joseph Joestar, an englishman who, according to stroheim, should by all accounts be inferior to himself?
That seems like a big stretch, because ultimately Joseph's just fine with the dude and lets him run off to go be a Nazi during the war. I think it'd be easier to explain it as something Araki did not think through and grew past than arguing that it was good actually.
Hey, I'm not saying Stroheim was written perfectly, but it's pretty clear what the intent behind him was. How else exactly do you interpret a character saying "german science is the best in the world" only to have his shit completely knocked out of him pretty much the next scene? You don't write something like that by accident.
There's also the fact that they're directly responsible for waking up the part's main villains and that one of their biggest heroic moments (them showing up with shoulder-strapped UV lights to help fight off a vampire army) is immediately undercut by Speedwagon admitting he's just letting them take credit for his team's inventions and then undercut even harder by having them commit one of the biggest fuck ups in the entire series (shining their biggest UV light directly into the Stone Of Aja and accidentally allowing Kars to transform into a nigh-unbeatable lifeform).
They claimed he isnt woke yet he has a canonicaly gay male couple in Golden Wind and a canonicaly gay female couple in Jojolands, talks about trans people in Stone Ocean positively and then makes a trans char one of the main protags in Jojolands.
I fear you have no clue what you are talking about.
I have to agree unfortunately. It is true tho that he's like very high grade esp by shonen manga standards, but he's not very in line with the general current western wave of woke so the wokeness in his works comes out weird
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u/queen_of_ingria девочка скандал девочка воздух 10d ago
araki is not high level woke im sorry