This article was originally published on 8/12/16 and has been republished.
The new anime Keijo!!!!!!!! is causing quite a stir online with its supposedly “sexist” premise. Young women are pitted against each other in an innovative new water sport, where contestants must knock each other off a floating raft using only their boobs and butt.
“What I don’t understand is why, despite cultural differences, a lot of American anime fans see Keijo!!!!!!!! and laugh it off, unmoved that, in this show, women are valued at the sum total of their body parts,” wrote Kotaku’s Cecilia D’Anastasio.
Sorry Cecilia, but feminist to feminist, I have to disagree. Keijo offers something that so many TV series and movies do not. A passing grade on the Bechdel test.
For those of you not woke enough to know, the Bechdel test judges whether a work of fiction includes a scene where two women talk about something other than a man. In my adult life, I have never seen a show ace the test with such flying colors.
First of all, almost none of the sharply written dialogue goes to men. And the women barely even mention those sexist pigs anyways.
The dialogue instead focuses on female empowerment, taking agency to excel at a highly competitive physical endeavor, and finding the best strategy to smash boobs and butts together in the aim of personal growth. A true master class in how to write women. Even Cecilia agrees the characters have “discernible personalities.”
I would be proud to tell my sisters, my daughters, my wife, I am a huge fan of Keijo…. if I had any. The show’s empowering message of self-reliance and sportsmanship has convinced me to renew my gym membership so that I one day can launch my opponent across a pool with only my ass muscles.
Don’t listen to the naysayers. Keijo finally subverts the sexism inherent in most anime, by giving women a voice to talk about something else beside men.
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