Josh the Aspie’s Blog

I’ve recently been watching a fair amount of Anime and other Saturday morning/weekday afternoon cartoon shows, and I’ve detected some patterns when it comes to shows that are designed for guys, vs shows that are designed for girls, and I find the patterns rather interesting.

Typically a show made for girls has a sweet, somewhat good looking (but conservative) girl becoming adored, and the old, mean, popular “queen” of the school loosing in favor, and being the enemy.

Sometimes they’ll swap this around, so that the girl is unpopular and fights an outside force (sailor moon) or the boy is good looking and the old guy is the one put out, but these setups, especially the last setup of the four seems to be the rarest.

There’s a fifth kind for guys where the boy is surrounded by good looking girls who all want him. Said guy is usually awkward, but not downright ugly, and has a good heart.

Often if there is a show meant to appeal to both, it will combine the awkward guy with the good heart, and the conservative girl as dual heros. Often other women (and the occasional guy or two) will try to pull them apart, occasionally there is an outside force to tackle.

But the extent to which the given elements are focused on reveals the core of the target audience.

These patterns even hold true for shows with “teams” as there is typically one member of the team who is skilled or virtuous above all the others, and the other members of the team are there to support that member of the cast, and also to expand the target audience a bit (Billy, the original blue power ranger in America comes to mind, giving the ‘nerdy’ kids someone to root for on the action packed team).

Ah! My goddess! is definitely a show made mostly for girls. The woman (Belldandy) has all the power, and is always helping out an awkward but good hearted guy (Morrisato) whom she loves for his good heart. She’s beautiful, but not ‘hawt’ and there’s a good looking rich guy that wants her, but Morrisato never has to do anything because Beldandy is so faithful.

Any time an outside force opposes them, the Belldady is the one that saves the day with her powers, while the guy, at best, resists the powers of evil with his willpower and pure heart until he’s saved.

It’s like he’s the damsel in distress, but a guy.

Most of these shows are designed to appeal to the ‘average’ person. Saying that even if you’re not the best looking, or the most popular, if you are virtuous and have a good heart, -you- are the hero of the story. This is often held even more true as the siblings of the main hero or heroin are often both adversaries and allies.

Urd, the overwhelmingly sensuous elder sister commands all sorts of attention, but despite being the better looking of the sisters, looses a beauty contest to the heroin, who wins based on her apparent purity and good heart complementing her beauty. Despite being a chaotic rabble rouser who is able to get away with a lot more, she tries to lend aid to her younger sister, truely wanting her to be happy. Of course… her methods are ones that would work for her, rather than being ones designed to work for Beldandy.

Skuld, meanwhile, is the epitome of a talented younger sibling, one who is a genius that can do things the older sibling can’t. She is however, so loving (in an immature way) that she tries to hog her sister all to herself… except for one episode where she magically grows up prematurely, and tries to hog Morrisato all to herself.

So both of her sisters have their own talents and are heroins, making the show appeal to a wider audience. But they are also adversaries for the heroin, who has to either put up with their misbehavior, or rescue them from it (to give examples might spoil some plot).

Belldandy, meanwhile, has only two main flaws. One of which is her naivete. The other is that she puts others before herself -so- much that she wears herself down, trying to keep others from worrying, until suddenly there is a chrisis where others realize how much she’s been pushing herself, and have to care for her. Both of these are flaws that are somewhat becoming in a person.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 8th, 2007 at 6:45 pm and is filed under Entertainment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.