i've heard my fair share of tokutwt hot takes over the years but "gavv is the most feminist rider series because men do chores and eat sweets" is truly one for the history books. cool stuff going on over there as always 👍
I don't think this reading is in fair faith when 1. there was more to the thread than these two points and 2. these two points actually do matter in the context of (Japanese) society.
in general there's a standard that cleaning is for girls & that translates into boys growing up into men who still think that women should be the housekeeper + an imbalance of domestic labor. countering that from a young age is important, so positioning Sachika as not the only person doing things such as cooking, organizing, and cleaning is a rejection of that standard.
in Japan, there is stigma against men enjoying sweets that is internalized even if it's no longer socially explicit. Hanto represents that in some extent by emphasizing that he does not like sweets, but at the same time there's no shaming of Shouma or Lakia (who, like Hanto, is positioned as more masculine).
like, I get that not everyone has the full context to what was happening/being said if it floated down your twitter feed. but even if not everything in the thread is agreeable, this is reductive.
Sorry to butt in like this, since I dont usually do this and I hate to be that person but you're implying this is a Japan exclusive problem when it actively affects all women around the world, you're just describing the average experience in traditional households, specially the most religious ones, generally agree that is cool when kid's shows try to break social stigmas and this is generally something rider does a lot anyways! Hotaro and Spanner from just a season prior are shown to always help around their respective households, it is even mentioned multiple times in interviews and production blogs that Spanner does all of the housekeeping. Just be mindful when speaking about broader societal issues, because while yes, Japan does have a bigger sexism problem, this is also the reality of many girls and women everywhere else, it comes off as very "Thing, Japan" approach to what it's a very broad media criticism that applies in every cultural context.
the reason I specified Japan is because the target audience for the show is Japanese children/teenagers with an emphasis on boys.
I didn't specify location for the first point/said "in general" because I know it's an international problem, not just a Japanese one, but as an overseas fan I need to look at context for what happens in these shows - and that context is for the Japanese audience, there is X problem.
I'm not going to argue that Japan has a bigger or lesser sexism problem, to be honest, because I think the issues that feminists focus on are simply different depending on society & culture. so while yes, the issue of domestic work being left to women can be a broad social + media criticism, I highlighted a different cultural problem as well (stigma around sweets) because the people who are being taught differing view points based on what they're watching are young Japanese viewers.
and you're right, KR is pretty good about showing men being more active in domestic work! that still applies to the current argument even if other shows do the same (example: Agito).
Yeah! Sorry again the whole thing has had me very confused because the issues that were raised are again extremely broad!! On another hand we're forgetting the fact Bandai mustve conducted a market research and that the show is after all a toy commercial, if the candy theme handt done well with the test sample they wouldn't have chosen it, so the candy stigma argument in my opinion doesn't really apply? And back to the person who made the thread they held a very strange hatred for the gotchard female cast so their thread just felt like it wasn't in good faith + awfully male oriented for a franchise that would benefit from including more women with active roles in it's hero roster! Gavv feels like it had to pay for Gotchard having the first girl secondary and a pretty balanced men to women ratio in the cast with the worst pitfalls of kamen rider writting
I know the person who made the original thread, and her hatred of Gotchard only happened after the show ended + wasn't about all the women (she loved the sisters and was very angry about what happened to them). in general, the only male character she had positive feelings about was Hotaro, but that gets lost in the conversation. I get the apprehension, but she's also known to Heisei I fans as the person who defends Kiva women + she co-runs an account dedicated to toku women.
I don't agree with all of her Gotchard thoughts, and people who only know her wrt to Gotchard will easily make assumptions on her feminist thoughts overall. there's no way for people who don't follow her to have context on how she engages with Rider content in general, but I can promise that the argument wasn't made in bad faith.
candy selling well is true! but that doesn't mean that the rest of the cultural context doesn't matter. Hanto fits the masculine archetype and the show points out that because of that he's not into sweets, but the way he relates to others who do like treats is non judgmental/accepting.
a tricky thing about Twitter is it's harder to have conversations + go into depth about issues. she could have expanded on the tragedy of female characters that she mentioned in her argument. she could have expanded on how fighting patriarchy starts by changing the perspectives of boys/young men. and in the past she could have expressed an actual feminist reading of Gotchard - but we're left with what was given and there's nothing more to be done with that.
