@Darklord
Yeah Bismarck was a one crafty statesman, though I hope that Lulu while a lesser man will have a greater fall than poor old Otto.

Genius is very democratic it strikes without reagard to gender. However success is quite another thing genius failures ar often dubbed as “mad.”

Still I have to say that shoujo do exhibit very Prussian values when working tireless for love. For is it not true that in love and war that all is fair, despite not all being right? I would argue that like war in love there is no room for second place, or is there a substitute for victory. It is also true that in love she who hesitates is lost. In the rough and tumble of daytos love is indeed a matter of expedients.

Courtship does involve many of the same principles that apply in conducting of a campaign. In love each individual date requires tactics to ensure that things go smoothly, Operational Art is required to ensure that the logistical means for making the date possible are in place, and finally grand strategy is required to ensure that a string of successful dates do not get wasted and that every failed date is somehow mitigated. Is it not also true that in love like war that the ultimate goal is to compel the boyfriend to fulfill an otome’s will?

Sure the goals maybe simpler but they are nonetheless not won by the timid. Besides shoujo goals are much more realistically attainable. Anime males tend to aim for the stars and then promptly fail to get beyond their doorsteps. After all how many one year wars have been fought since 0079? Besides how much more warlike can you get when shoujos besiege their objects of affection forcing them to either surrender, sally, or wait fruitlessly for relief. It also helps that they bombard their targets with affection…

Also, I have to say that compared to a strategist like Bismarck, Lelouch seems like nothing more than a high-school honors student (which he actually is).

However, on the issue of anime males in general I have to strongly disagree. I can see where you are coming from, since there have been some really bad ones lately (I don’t need to mention names), but it is just those few that give anime men a bad name. In general I watch shows which have strong anime male leads who exhibit many of the qualities the Germans/Prussians possess. Your arguments why characters like Kamina/Archer are not manly seem pretty general at best, so I can’t take them to heart.

On the issue of the “manliness” of shoujo heroines…I’m sorry, I also disagree. It is true that there are some select few who possess some pretty manly qualities, but most of them are pretty vain and obsessed with “love” (or should I say – high-school crushes) and other trivial matters instead of concentrating on their goals. Most characters who live to follow a dream and work towards it are men, there is no doubt about that. It’s not that women cannot do that, it’s just that there are very few in anime that seem to exist.

See, like you grew up reading about German military leaders, I grew up reading Greek and Scandinavian mythology and later – fantasy literature and listening to power metal bands and all of those deal with brave honorable heroes who live and fight for the glory of their name. I see the same qualities they possess in many anime male leads nowadays, so that’s why I cannot agree with you that manliness is dead in anime.

Also, on the subject of who is smarter, I agree that men generally are more obsessed with their egos, but women are often ruled by their emotions instead of by reason, so I cannot agree that they are smarter than men for this very reason. I don’t think you can claim that one gender is smarter than the other, but from what I know the smartest people, the greatest minds in the world are mostly men, but also the stupidest people are also men.

Finally, on the issue of fanservice, I agree that excess of it is pretty stupid and I also tend to avoid shows that center on it. However, when it is used in moderation and done tastefully, I think it can make a show more attractive.

@Impz
Intelligence is manly, stupidity is not.

@Calawain
Understood, but I have to say, “Sweat saves blood, blood saves lives, brains save both.” It is the latter that most anime males seem to be thoroughly lacking.

@Linya
To borrow a bit of Rommel wisdom, “Avoid excessive use of fanservice or clumsiness, for this usually indicates that the director has shortcomings of his own to hide.”

I agree animeland seems to be most lacking in men and women of wisdom these days.

To put it simply, it’s not about whether you accept your orders or not (and in Kyosuke’s opinion, you have to do the former), but it’s how you intepret and execute your orders that matters.

Unfortunately, in the army, not following orders is an infraction punishable by court-martial. You have to follow orders, no matter what you do. HOW you interpret those orders and HOW

Sheer fanservice has put me off several series; it weakens characters and shows complete lack of respect to all involved. Nothing wrong with a beach scene or something of the sort, but when it has to be rampant in every episode it gets annoying.

Another is the stupidity of characters. It’s all very nice if trying to portray an innocent character, or to show that they’re lazy. But characters getting extrememly low scores on tests happens in nearly every manga and anime I see. Also, there are very few people in the world dense enough to NOT catch the tricks people get away with in anime– piteous disguises, being forgiven even when they’ve been a complete bastard just because they said they were sorry, etc. I’m not asking for realism, but a little effort wouldn’t hurt.

I can’t remember where I heard it last, but it comes up every once in a while that Japan lags the US by about 20 years in just about everything except engineering/technology. That’s a bit over-broad, but it carries a small kernel of truth in some areas. The rampant pedophilia and harrasment problem is particularly worrisome.

This is starting to range far afield of the original topic. Politics is for other places.

And I would dispute that. While we have made significant gains since the start of the feminist/women’s rights movement here in the US, it is still far from equal. Various studies still show significant pay disparities for the same job between men and women. High level management in just about every field is still dominated by men. In the fields I’m the most familiar with–politics, academia, and the legal profession–males vastly outnumber females in both pure numbers, power, and importance. So we still have awhile to go before we can say the returns no longer outweigh the costs of pushing equality.

By the way Japan is leagues behind the US in gender equality, if you want a brief overview of one area of the problem you can read it here.

While I agree that Japan does need a lot more work in regards to women’s status in society, I’m also of the opinion that in other parts of the 1st world, we’re near if not past the point of diminishing returns for proactive feminine empowerment, and that further proactive efforts could be counter-productive and function as little more than piling-on.