Which author is better with their female characters? Akira T

[DBZAOTA482]

It's inevitable that a thread like this would pop up. Both are often accused by some of being sexist but I think "which one is the lesser evil?".

First, with Akira Toriyama.... there are not many female characters featured in Dragon World (much less ones with a recurring role) and aside from Bulma, the characters tend to be sidelined at best or at worst, reduced to stereotypical depictions.

#18 - She's the strongest female in the series and is far stronger than any human in the series yet serves no role other than to be a trophy wife for Krillin. Toriyama even admits that's the whole reason he introduced her.

Videl - She was introduced as an intelligent, tentative, and a quite strong (for a regular human) fighter but is reduced to a stereotypical Japanese housewife once she gets Gohan. The first episode of Super has her changing way too drastically for just 6 months.

Chi-Chi - She was one of the top fighters in Dragon Ball and a major turning point in Goku's life but went to being primarily referenced in accentuation of her seemingly negative qualities. She's even been underrated to the point of giving people false illusions to her abilities.

Lunch - She served primarily as comic relief and is completely ignored by DBZ

Makashi Kishimoto, on the hand... has introduced a decent number of female characters and almost all of which are ninjas yet they play second-fiddle to the males. Ten-Ten is bland and doesn't really do anything (even her first and only major fight only lasted a panel), Ino Yamamaka is floating on a similar boat, Karin is obsessed with Sasuke 24/7 just like Sakura only that's her whole character, and Sakura... Sakura is just a terrible character (though compared to how terribly Z-era treats Chi-Chi's character, which is easy to look past since the narrative enforced she was a shrew, makes it seriously up for debate). She's largely useless despite being on the main team of the series, she flips-flops all over the place, and obsesses over the "stick-up-his-ass" pretty boy 24/7. Not to mention she acts rather headbangingly stupid for someone who's supposedly intelligent (which she rarely shows outside academics).

Kishimoto admitted he's not great with writing females... but he keeps writing them in for some reason.

Who is the better at writing females for you?

 

[Captain Cadaver]

So, were Oda and Kubo added "just 'cause"?

My vote goes for Oda. Nami and Robin are both good examples of developed female characters who're integral to the plot. Kubo could be considered somewhat better than Toriyama/Kishimoto too, though purely due to him having more gender balance in his cast of powerful characters. With his extremely low story/character writing ability though, he still falls short.

Out of Toriyama and Kishimoto though, I'd say Toriyama is undoubtably the better of the two. Sure, the only female characters to be of any viable use were Bulma and #18, but at least they aren't dumb fangirls like half of the Narutoverse's women.

 

[SaiyanZ3]

Out of Dragon Ball's and Naruto's, undoubtedly Dragon Ball. Toriyama's women even in other series don't tend to be dramatic characters, #18 is the only one that comes to mind since she and 17 were made into Artificial Humans against their will.

Araki, Arakawa, Oda and Sorachi make better females from what I've seen though