transitioning is what its like to go EVEN FURTHER BEYOND
this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2025
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Even just reading that pops King Kai's voice in my head. 
No! Stop it Goku! If you do this now it's going to drain away all the HRT you have left in the cupboard!
Well Goku did have a deadname (Kakarot).
My phone originally autocorrected "dead" to "drag", and now I'm disappointed that Goku didn't also have a drag name.
going super saiyan is a type of drag
I recently took a quick look at the dragonball wiki and as someone who hasn't seen anything dragonball related after Z there is some really funny stuff on there
dragonball wiki images
apparently the dragonball economy has been wrecked by severe Goku inflation
Nooo Vegeta, don't use that as your gamer name!
orange piccolo
The Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan Evolved is completely bullshit, they started giving names to every little fucking thing. They don't even name that much stuff in the anime. Now every powerup has a name, an incomplete powerup get a name and the mastered powerup also get a name.
Bleach and its consquences have been a disaster for the human race/shounen genre 
At least Tite Kubo is one of the few mangakas to not accept paedophiles in shounen jump
Are you referring to anything specific? Because the manga starts off with the continuous explicit objectification of a ~15 year old schoolgirl.
Probably fucking Watsuki lol
Isn't he also a massive misogynist though, or am I thinking of another guy who can't write?
It is very difficult to find a big shounen/seinen mangaka who isn't a massive misogynist as far as their work goes, but yes, Bleach is pretty male-gazy and tends to deny women agency, though I think compared to other big manga it's mostly below average in the former and above average in the latter.
Edit: To head off rebuttals, in a pretty large cast, Rukia is the closest we get in the main cast to a female character with consistent agency, ignoring that the inciting event is about saving her and one of the first main arcs has her as a captive to be rescued, and she spends a lot of time being peripheral or just existing in relation to her genius older brother and her inferiority complex around him, which is resolved after several hundred chapters with him acknowledging her. Sidelined love interest Orihime technically does get offensive magic pretty quickly (that is suggested to be pretty strong, even) but then is relegated to a healing role for basically the entire series and doesn't have basically any plot agency, because her motivation is "marry the MC at the end of the series". All the other female characters are like third tier at the highest in terms of plot centrality. There ends up being a real Bechdel problem when you look at it, with two of the other go-to strong female characters mostly existing in relation to a man as well, one romantically and one, to at least give it some credit, martially, but her entire character and life is thrown away to give him a power-up that was just undoing a nerf that she inadvertently caused him to put on himself. The only real exception to these patterns is the rivalry between Soi Fon and Yoruichi, and Yoruichi's depiction in particular gets much more gross in the last arc, really worse than anything that I mentioned except Orihime.
Compared to the other mangas of the time Bleach had female character in position of power during the entire series. Soi fon and Unohana as captains, Rangiku, Nanao, Momo, Isane, Nemu, Yachiru and Rukia as lieutnants
Compare to HxH, you have Biscuit the gon master, 3 phantom troupe, Neferpitou and Zazan of the chimera ants.
Naruto is basically Tsunade, Konan in the Akatsuki, Kurenai became a mother early in the story, Anko doesn't do much either.
One Piece is just Big Mom and Boa Hancock, Kalifa on the CP-9, every other female character is not in a big position of power, they are in the same level or below the main cast.
Jojo barely have any female character of big importance, took part 6 to have Jolyne and Ermes.
Fairy Tail is Erza, Mirajane, Ultear and later in the story they add the guild master girl and some other female characters in other guilds.
Soul Eater is probably the one with most female characters because the enemy witches are all female I don't remember all of them.
I can't remember one female character from Katekyo Hitman Reborn.
Shaman King I can only think of Sati in position of power, the other characters are in the same level of Yoh,
Full Metal Alchemist have Lust, Edward Master and Olivier.
I can't remember more shounens of the early 2000, Bleach of course have a pretty big cast so they have more chances to have female character in positions of power, later in the story they add more female characters in position of power like Halibel and the 2 royal guards. The other long mangas also add new female character like Kaguya in Naruto as the final enemy, but they really lack that kind of thing in the early days. I can't see Kubo been more misogynist than their peers, his biggest flaw is the sexualization of Yoruichi, Rangiku and Orihime, flaw that other mangas have, like Fairy Tail and Soul Eater.
I don't see why you bother talking about formal rank so much compared to agency in the actual plot, especially with Bleach, where Lieutenants are nominally a big deal and sometimes are, but multiple are plainly just women who are accessories to their male Captain and Unohana is just a background character with some subtext until she steps to the foreground to be a tool to develop a male Captain's character and promptly die. Soi Fon is basically unimpeachable, but many of the other names you listed are closer to being the opposite.
I'll go through your other examples but it's basically just because I'm autistic:
Naruto is extremely sexist, and I'd say more so than Bleach.
One Piece is extremely male gazy, but aside from Sanji the sexism strangely doesn't carry over to the story's writing, because lots of women are given at least as much dignity as the men. There is the issue of Nami and Robin needing saving, but even then they still have agency and aren't damsels in towers like Rukia, and it's not like Zoro, #2 to Luffy, wasn't introduced awaiting execution, tied to a post. There's also a lot of writing where women are put in various respectable roles that don't center on being strictly matronly or something, such as Kokoro (whose role as a foster mother was significant to the plot but is doing other things by the time the crew meets her).
Jojo barely had female characters at all early on, but it had Lisa Lisa all the way back in Part 2, and she's not stellar by these metrics but she's pretty good. I honestly think that it kind of gets more rancid over time, with maybe the exception of part 6.
Fairy Tale is trash and I don't want to think about it, but that definitely includes a cartoon level of sexism.
Soul Eater is just kind of a weird show and I don't remember it that well. Isn't Maka's father like a "comical" pedo or something? I remember Fire Force better and the author goes on an unhinged, fourth-wall-breaking rant defending his objectification near the end. I admit Maka is still more of a real character than you usually get for women, though.
I don't know anything about KHR or Shaman King
FMA I do think is alright. For some reason you're leaving out Winry, and both her and the three you mentioned are all very cool (least of all Lust, but she's still alright). May Chang is also solid and even the designated female sidekicks Hawkeye and Lan Fan are written pretty respectfully. It probably makes a difference that this is one of the very few manga listed that was written by a woman, so even if she had va-va-voom ideas about how to depict women (and men!), she still managed a basic level of empathy that a lot of male authors don't bother with.
You might find this backwards, but I tend to think that if an author can't be bothered to write women well, it's probably just better for them to write a story centered as completely on men as they can manage (though it shouldn't be too difficult to write women well since they are humans too, and you don't need to get deep into specifically feminine issues to have a well-written woman, because you can write it just from the perspective of her being a human if you make the setting allow it!). That's why I don't think Dragon Ball Z is that sexist, for instance, since it just avoids involving women other than Bulma altogether for the most part.
I find the formal rank of character in Bleach to be relevant because it was a outlier at the time, in universe the captain/lieutenants are the elite above all other shinigamis and having 35% of the elite been womans are very uncommon in shounens.
I left Winry out because she is a civilian not a Alchemist/Military, she is a good character and relevant to the plot but she is not in a position of power.
But I was never talking about rank in the first place and it just isn't that important to understanding the writing of a piece of fiction most of the time, and even when it is, typically not just a "more girls in power = more girlpower" one-dimensional scale. A female character can be high ranking and still have a repugnantly sexist depiction on every level, as is true of several Bleach characters.
Like yeah, the second-highest rank in the Hero Association in One Punch Man is a woman, but her depiction is awful and she still manages to subordinate a big part of her motivation (beyond being a tsundere to the male MC) and backstory to the #1 ranked guy. Rank is not inherently tied to dignity, and Tatsumaki's depiction is extremely undignified.
Or, like -- and I know I'm using a more recent and obscure example but I am making a point about art criticism here -- look at "Let This Grieving Soul Retire": The party full of geniuses at the top of the world is mostly women, and their most competent allies (on the field) are mostly women, but it's really, really not because the author has any respect for women or interest in them as people, if you understand my meaning. And this isn't a categorical outlier, just the most extreme case for I know of for an anime that has any male "good guys" on the hero side besides the MC.
If you want a better example, maybe look at the Fate series, which literally came from hentai and still treats its female characters like it did, whether they are the former King of England with legendary power, or a sorceress who can single-handedly hijack the Holy Grail War, any of several goddesses, or a schoolgirl.
I don't think this is your intention, but your argument is only good for setting up basically the only criteria by which women do especially well in Bleach rather than serious addressing the question of how it handles women characters. It is, surely by accident, basically a sleight-of-hand.
My argument is not that Kubo is good in writing woman, my argument at in the poor state that is shounens Kubo is not worse than his peers. The OPM has a vast cast and has only one strong female character and is a loli tsundere, Kubo is definitely not worse than that.
But you need to invoke silly things like this hyper-fixation on rank to make that argument, or it's obvious that One Piece is much better, and even DBZ is (not necessarily Super), putting it at #3 among the big 4, only beating Naruto. Honestly I think even early Naruto is arguably better because the original cast, including characters like Temari, was still respectable then and the author didn't start doing his stupid brood mare thing until Kurenai. Naruto does get absolutely disgusting in this respect later though, far worse than Bleach.
Because it's something that Bleach made different from the others and mangas that came after who was inspired by Bleach has a lot female characters in the cast like Jujutsu and Black Clover so is a credit that I give to kubo to at least try to write female characters, you said you prefer when they don't try if they can't write it but I prefer when they at least try.
Edit: And I don't know If I put Dragon Ball above Bleach in this regard, do you remember the absurd number of gags with Bulma boobs and Master Roshi? Or Lunch? The weird shit that Kubo does with Orihime is heavily inspired by that.
It's a completely superficial detail only being emphasized by motivated reasoning. Sincerely and without exaggeration, you're taking this little symbolic thing that the manga itself completely trivializes before too long and using it as a stand in for actual analysis of the manga as literature, because looking at the manga as literature reveals that it does not represent a relatively progressive view of women even remotely. Also, to act like Lieutenant is an accolade for all of these women when for several it made them secretaries is patently absurd. Also, Black Clover is arguably not as bad as a Fairy Tail or something, but it still has a really gross depiction of women that subordinates their personalities to pining after male characters who have no such obsessions. I think JJK is just sort of neutral, but I guess that makes it above-average in this conversation and clearly superior to something like Bleach.
I probably should have been clearer, but I said they shouldn't write women if they can't be bothered to write women as humans. If they are just bad at internalizing or expressing that women are humans but believe it and try to reflect that in their writing, that's fine. Kubo only seems to believe it when he's writing Soi Fon (especially lately with Yoruichi being treated like an animal), because genuinely every single other character who the average fan could be bothered to remember the name of is either subordinated to a man like Black Clover does but maybe even worse, a secretary, or both. You need to look far and wide to find women with respectable personalities, though I also fully acknowledge Harribel, despite her visual design, is written alright. I just don't find it that compelling to point to them to say that Kubo is an Ally^tm when, if you go by percentage of female characters, they are overwhelmingly debasing.
I said Dragon Ball Z. Obviously Dragon Ball is pretty lame in this regard (though I haven't seen much of it, so I couldn't say if it's equal or worse). I specifically mean Radditz -> Buu, where there were basically only three female characters (Bulma, Chi Chi, and Android 18), but they were all good depictions, with Bulma being about as smart as Goku is strong and only limited by the lower level of tech on Earth than some other planets, Chi Chi being played as an annoying housewife but still being overwhelmingly motivated by a reasonable concern for people's safety and long-term prosperity (and Gohan ultimately takes her side over Goku!), and Android 18 being a villain who is equivalent to her brother and stomps the shit out of Vegeta before reforming to be a good guy kind of, all with none of the gross "gag manga" stuff that original DB had as far as I can remember.
I'm not saying that you're bad or a misogynist or whatever for being a big fan of Bleach -- I like it too, and the TYBW adaptation is probably the thing that I'm looking forward to the most in terms of upcoming anime, or probably actually third after Chainsaw Man and JJK, but still that's pretty high! -- I'm just saying it doesn't hold up here. And I'm not saying this to hide behind relativism either, I hate Fairy Tail, Black Clover, and Fire Force, and their depictions of women are significant factors in that, and I'm legitimately slightly sus of people who don't have such misgivings. Once Fire Force is fully adapted (because it gets worse right at the end), anime-only fans will be demoted to maybe a step above Shield Hero fans in my view. I tried for a second to think about how Sword Art Online figures into this power ranking, but then I remembered that it would entail thinking about Sword Art Online, so I stopped.
I don't remember him been misogynist
The franchise really should have just stopped after Cell. Everything since is embarrassing.
DB Super Hero (where Orange Piccolo is from) is unironically some of the best stuff since the Cell saga.
They got away from big number power scaling bullshit and just made a fun story where Piccolo and Gohan got to be the main characters for once
I will never forgive them for the senzu bean thing, where Gohan gets tossed a bean, fumbles it, drops it in some crack in the ground, and it's just lost. They fight at incomprehensible speed but he couldn't catch a falling bean?
maybe so but I will never watch it because I hate the animation style
DB Super Hero
Thats the 3d cgi movie right? I thought it was alright for a 3d anime movie, though I do think the Lupin the 3rd 3d movie looked a lot better than this DBZ movie.
IIRC, Frieza was "supposed" to be the end according to the creator, but I agree: Cell was pretty cool, aside from the tournament thing.
The tournament thing was stupid, but it was also one of the best parts and a great expression of both Perfect Cell's personality and the busted logic of Dragon Ball in general.
as someone who hasn't seen anything dragonball related after Z
Dragon Ball GT had a banger intro and outro, some really bad and boring arcs (they literally don't know how to use Trunks or Pan besides as cheerleaders for Goku), but I still like the Baby and Shadow Dragon arcs those were good.
Isn't efery character in all of Dragon Ball basically a cheerleader for Goku? Or cannon fodder to buy goku time to come beat up a guy?
at least Gohan, Vegeta, Piccolo, 18, 17, Krillin, even fucking Yamcha, all get character arcs. Trunks and Pan do literally nothing but get beaten or just cheer Goku.
spoiler
Trunks gets humilated multiple times and even gets possessed by Baby, the only good scene with him is when he kills General Blue with Goten. Meanwhile, Pan was literally designed to be a damsel in distress character in this, and she gets some unfunny sexual harassment jokes with a literal creepy otaku turning her into a doll.
Must be an old post because I just looked and the article doesn't exist?
:1984:
THEY were FAST