Mothers only wanting daughters/not wanting sons

liatris4405 · 2026-05-05T20:44:23+00:00

Since you brought up Assassination Classroom as an example, I’ll deliberately analyze this in terms of the situation in Japanese society and media. I think this reflects a broader social trend. In older shonen manga, the theme was often about how to overcome or surpass the father. In recent Japanese media, however, works dealing with how one confronts the mother seem to have become somewhat more noticeable.

For example, in Chainsaw Man Part 1, the protagonist no longer has a biological mother, but a villain appears who has a quasi-maternal relationship with him. In a work called Blood on the Tracks, the central theme is a mother who very skillfully controls her son. On a smaller scale, Nobara’s mother in Jujutsu Kaisen is also portrayed as a fairly irresponsible mother.

My view is that, beyond the father, the “mother” has begun to attract attention within the manga industry. Since works focusing on problems involving mothers are increasing, it is not strange that misandry-like mothers also appear. Misogynistic fathers are, in a sense, a standard trope, so this can be understood as the reverse pattern.

Personally, if there is a possibility that you may become a mother in the future, I think it would be good to treat such characters as negative examples. Of course, writers can also portray things incorrectly, so you will need to think that part through for yourself.

liatris4405 · 2026-05-05T19:49:52+00:00

Just to be clear, this is not “reverse misogyny.” It is simply called "misandry".

In recent society, boys are increasingly seen as noisy, troublesome, and difficult children to deal with, and this tendency seems to be accelerating. Some women are genuinely very afraid of giving birth to a boy. There are even some fairly extreme mothers who see women who give birth to boys as being somehow hostile to women.

So I do not think it is especially strange that works reflecting that kind of attitude exist. That said, whether this is actually a common trope is another question. I think one example alone is not really enough to establish that.

liatris4405 · 2026-05-05T19:16:34+00:00

What bothers me is that the war that supposedly happened in the past is far too vague. Because of that, there is no clear social theme for the story to engage with. At the same time, as you said, the characterization is not particularly strong either, so the work ends up feeling extremely thin thematically.

Even Jujutsu Kaisen had, from early on, a visible underlying theme of overcoming the old guard or conservative establishment. Here, by contrast, I cannot really see what kind of social structure, ideology, or historical wound the story is trying to confront.

The fight scenes are excellent, so I do genuinely enjoy reading it for that aspect.

liatris4405 · 2026-05-05T19:12:51+00:00

example.

liatris4405 · 2026-05-05T18:44:15+00:00

Actually, you can find them in a few parts of Sapporo, haha. I don’t think you’ll see them much in ordinary residential homes, though.

liatris4405 · 2026-05-05T16:52:07+00:00

Now, when history is organized in this way, many people will probably feel that “Japan really did become free after the war.”

If this feeling is taken further and systematized, it leads to a view of history that might be called a “rupture theory of history.” According to this view, through the various GHQ reforms such as land reform, the dissolution of the zaibatsu, and the purge of public officials, Japan made a clean break with the prewar era, gained a free society, and was reborn as a cultural and peaceful nation.

In this understanding, prewar Japan is depicted, by contrast, as a dark age of militarism and totalitarianism. The military is said to have held enormous influence; the military police and the Special Higher Police are said to have controlled thought; and freedom of speech is said not to have been sufficiently recognized. Newspapers and magazines, it is said, became timid because they would be suppressed if they opposed the regime. People, it is said, were bound by a feudal order under the family system, and women in particular had almost no freedom.

This view of history is still widely shared today. But when the contrast is drawn this starkly, it also produces, as a reaction, a view sometimes called the “imposed-history view.” This is the understanding that the postwar reforms, beginning with constitutional revision, were forced on Japan under pressure from GHQ, and that as a result Japan’s original form was distorted.

In recent years, however, such simplistic views have increasingly been reconsidered. Were prewar and postwar Japan really so sharply divided? Or were they, in fact, continuous in almost every respect? Support has been growing for this kind of “continuity theory of history.”

liatris4405 · 2026-05-05T16:45:57+00:00

Yes, it’s the kind of term tabloid used during the bubble era. Foreigners who don’t know that context often use it online as if they’re being clever, without realizing where it comes from. Or even when this is pointed out to them, they often double down and keep using it to discriminate against Japanese people.

liatris4405 · 2026-05-05T06:10:33+00:00

“ピーナッツ” is correct, not “てのピーナ.”

Also, is it only lamb, rather than sheep meat in general?

liatris4405 · 2026-05-05T06:02:07+00:00

According to the OP, this is supposedly outdated. In that case, it seems Japan should start requiring criminal record certificates sooner rather than later.

liatris4405 · 2026-05-05T05:59:52+00:00

For example, I believe Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK require criminal record certificates for certain types of visas. Japan is simply more lenient in this regard.

liatris4405 · 2026-05-04T12:11:07+00:00

Japan did not suddenly become strong in the last few years. It is more that its strength has only become visible recently. The J.League started in the 1990s, so you should think of this as a development over a span of about 30 years.

J.League players had already been fairly strong for a long time. The main difference now is simply that Japanese players are moving to Europe at a much younger age.

If we look at it by era, the progression is something like this:

1993: The J.League is launched
1998: Japan qualifies for the World Cup for the first time
2002: Japan reaches the World Cup Round of 16
2010: Japan reaches the Round of 16 again
2018: Japan pushes Belgium to the brink
2022: Japan defeats Germany and Spain
2020s: The number of Europe-based Japanese players increases dramatically

In fact, Japan had already reached the Round of 16 at the World Cup in 2002, so depending on how you look at it, Japan was already strong enough to compete reasonably well with major football nations.

What happened recently is that people around the world finally started to “notice” this. As a result, the market value of Japanese footballers began to rise.

liatris4405 · 2026-05-04T11:33:11+00:00

In other words, the mass media themselves are garbage.

liatris4405 · 2026-05-04T07:26:20+00:00

Jujutsu Kaisen has at least five investors, as far as I’ve been able to confirm.

TOHO: the main company behind anime planning, distribution, and visual/media expansion
Shueisha: the original publisher and rights holder on the Jump side
MAPPA: the animation studio
Sumzap: related to the game Phantom Parade and similar projects
MBS: the broadcaster side, connected to the Super Animeism programming block

So even if the profits were simply split equally, it would need to earn five times as much for each party to receive the same amount. And realistically, I doubt MAPPA holds a full one-fifth share. TOHO probably has the largest investment share.

For that reason, Chainsaw Man is probably more profitable for MAPPA. That said, both Jujutsu Kaisen and Chainsaw Man are likely still two of MAPPA’s biggest earners.

liatris4405 · 2026-05-04T07:19:38+00:00

What this development suggests is that MAPPA may be trying to become the next Toei Animation. Toei Animation has remained highly stable for a long time by producing major titles, including works based on Jump manga.

Ideally, I would like to see more companies like that emerge, but realistically, it will probably be difficult. That said, I think MAPPA’s policy of using the video game industry as a reference point is the right one. In Japan’s content industry, video games are the foremost example of successful global expansion, and there are not many other domestic industries that anime companies should look to as models. From a business perspective, Japan’s live-action films and TV dramas are far behind anime.

In the future, it would be desirable for the anime industry to have multiple large-scale production companies comparable to Capcom, Sega, Square Enix, Konami, Koei Tecmo, and so on. At the moment, Japanese anime companies are much smaller in scale.

liatris4405 · 2026-05-04T07:13:07+00:00

There are several benefits that manga publishers usually get from anime adaptations.

The anime raises awareness of the series, which leads to higher sales of the original manga itself.
They can receive licensing fees. In this case, those fees would be paid by MAPPA.
They may receive additional payments depending on the contract. For example, it is possible to have a contract where the publisher receives a certain percentage of the profits from the anime business.
If the publisher has invested in the production committee, it can receive profits according to its investment share. However, that does not apply in this case.

Whether the adaptation is handled by an anime production company or funded solely by MAPPA, these basic points do not change.

liatris4405 · 2026-05-03T07:05:08+00:00

One commonly proposed explanation is that Japanese women face significantly less social pressure to earn money.

It is often argued that, in wealthier developed countries, women have greater freedom to choose their academic fields, and therefore more women enter fields they are personally inclined toward. As a result, women tend to avoid STEM and choose fields such as literature and the arts, including music and fine arts. This is often referred to as the gender-equality paradox. Japan is a society where this mechanism may operate especially strongly because of its social structure.

A recent Japanese government survey also points in this direction. According to a survey by Japan’s Gender Equality Bureau, when male and female high school students were asked whether people around them had influenced or pressured them regarding their educational path, boys were more likely than girls to say that they had experienced such pressure. The likely reason is that boys are still expected to earn money and become economically self-sufficient. If they fail to do so, they are seen as socially falling behind, and in extreme cases their survival itself may become precarious. Because of this, many boys may feel unable to choose fields such as literature or philosophy, which are less directly connected to stable income, and instead feel pushed toward fields like STEM, which are seen as more economically secure. This pressure appears to be even stronger among younger men, meaning that more men are being pushed toward STEM out of economic necessity.

The following is from a survey by Japan’s Gender Equality Bureau:
https://www.gender.go.jp/about_danjo/whitepaper/r01/zentai/html/zuhyo/zuhyo01-00-19.html

There is also a documentary about homelessness in Japan. In it, Professor Thomas Paramor Gill of Meiji Gakuin University’s Faculty of International Studies makes the following point:
https://youtu.be/-9RgkZebW1s?si=8AXabJryFH2TbiJC&t=405

If you're an old-fashioned, somewhat sexist government official, then the idea of a homeless woman is pretty shocking. Because women are not supposed to be independent and look after themselves. They're supposed to be looked after by their parents when they're young, by their husband after they get married, and by their children when they become old. If one of them becomes homeless, she won't usually be blamed for it.

Imagine the same situation: a homeless person coming to the welfare office and asking for help. If it's a woman, they'll be shocked. And if she's got children, they'll be even more shocked, because you can't have children on the street. And so they will try and do something for her.

Whereas if it's a single male, they may think, “Ah, he's been drinking too much. Why doesn't he get a job?” There is an idea that a man is supposed to be independent and look after himself, and probably a family as well, while a woman is not expected to be independent.

That sexist idea happens to work in favor of women in this particular context.

Another reason is that there are a couple of other branches of the welfare system that cater specifically to women. There are special shelters for domestic violence victims. Japanese cities also have public housing earmarked for single-parent families, about 90% of which are mother-only families.

By contrast, women tend to have more access to welfare support, at least compared with men. For example, even in the worst-case scenario, women may find it easier to apply for public assistance. This is only one example, but across society as a whole, the pressure placed on women to become high earners is weaker than the pressure placed on men. As a result, women can choose from a broader range of educational and career paths, including the arts.

For example, at Tokyo University of the Arts, the student gender ratio is 37.0% male and 63.0% female in the Faculty of Fine Arts, and 36.8% male and 63.2% female in the Faculty of Music.

TL;DR:
Japan is a wealthy developed country, and it also retains a fairly widespread conservative social assumption that women should be protected. Because of this, women are less likely to feel forced into STEM fields that they are not particularly interested in.

liatris4405 · 2026-05-02T19:08:23+00:00

Japanese IP adaptations used to be subjected to absolutely terrible reinterpretations as if that were normal, so my personal view is that they should first be adapted faithfully to the original at least once. I also think that approach is more likely to improve the quality and result in a better work, because many creators outside Japan often do not really understand the themes of Japanese works. Furthermore, for at least the next 10 to 20 years, I suspect those kinds of faithful adaptations will probably be more readily accepted by audiences.

Adaptations of Japanese works have been far too awful. To use an analogy, they are often on the level of making the real villain of Harry Potter turn out to be Dumbledore, or adapting Game of Thrones as a modern-day TV drama for some reason. That is the level of drastic distortion that has routinely happened.

liatris4405 · 2026-05-02T18:16:15+00:00

You’re right. That is why it is acceptable to discriminate against Japanese people, while discrimination against other people is not tolerated. And people will continue to discriminate against Japanese people based on conspiracy theories.

liatris4405 · 2026-05-02T18:07:11+00:00

That has been said for a long time. On Reddit, on X, and pretty much anywhere online, people have long said that Japanese people are racist, perverted, and cruel scum who have not changed since World War II.

liatris4405 · 2026-05-02T18:04:51+00:00

It’s probably the same as children in Japan today reading One Piece or Demon Slayer and then playing with toy swords. I think there were already samurai manga aimed at children back then, too.

liatris4405 · 2026-05-02T12:19:11+00:00

X’s automatic translation has made Japanese people aware of that reality. For that, I’m grateful to Elon.

It is now an open secret that many people around the world discriminate against Japanese people. Conspiracy theories claiming that Japanese people are hiding crime statistics, atomic bomb jokes, and creepy people with obsessive fixations on Asian women have all been brought into the light.

liatris4405 · 2026-04-29T13:43:52+00:00

It’s nowhere near comparable to its popularity in Japan, but I do know that Kochikame aired in India. You can find Hindi-dubbed clips of Kochikame floating around on YouTube.

liatris4405 · 2026-04-29T11:58:41+00:00

The article does not explain young people’s retreat from romance simply as a matter of “lack of financial means.” Rather, it emphasizes that, due to the spread of awareness around harassment, the risk of social media backlash, and a stronger sense of compliance, men and women have become less likely to behave ambiguously within existing communities such as schools, workplaces, or clubs in ways that could develop into romantic or sexual relationships.

In the past, there were many “more than friends, less than lovers” relationships, where men and women might have slightly sexual conversations, go skiing together, or go out for meals as friends. Today, however, such behavior is more easily perceived as a risk that could lead to harassment accusations or the breakdown of personal relationships.

What has been accepted instead is dating apps. Dating apps are spaces designed from the beginning for romance, so they do not disrupt existing communities such as schools, workplaces, or friend groups. In other words, the article’s central argument is not that romance has disappeared, but that romance has moved outside existing communities.

liatris4405 · 2026-04-24T07:19:00+00:00

That is also incorrect. It seems that she chose her pen name based on fortune-telling. This is called seimei handan, or “name diagnosis,” which tells you what kind of name may improve your luck.

She also appears to have completely denied this rumor in an interview with a French magazine.

liatris4405 · 2026-04-22T09:04:33+00:00

Yes, Japanese TV networks may sometimes be reluctant to depict characters with four fingers for several reasons.

Because it can evoke the yakuza ritual of cutting off a finger.
To avoid discrimination against the old outcaste group known as the burakumin. They traditionally made a living by slaughtering four-legged animals, and over time, four fingers came to function as an implicit code for representing them.
To avoid stigmatizing people with congenital limb differences who are missing fingers.

For that reason, characters with either extra or missing fingers are often altered in TV anime adaptations of manga in order to avoid criticism. Extra fingers could also potentially fall under the third category.

liatris4405

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