>>25
I watch a hell of a lot of anime, both old and new, and definitely try to watch stuff that's well liked and complimented. And the examples I gave are certainly not complete--there's a lot of characters I didn't mention. But still most of the female characters seem less richly characterized and interesting than male characters, and less often stand on their own rather than being an extension of a male character or object rather than subject of the action. *shrug*
If you could recommend to me something I've yet to see, I'd love that. I'm always on the lookout for new shows, especially if the female characters won't make me want to shoot them.
The physical strength issue is definitely awkward, because there is a general physical disparity between men and women. Yet as you said, anime tends not to be about the average.
>>26
That's interesting to hear. I've heard of the cases of women being molested on trains, but I haven't heard as much about false reports of such. Not that I don't believe it happens, but is it a really widespread thing?
As to thinking Japan is sexist, a lot of it has to do with real life news reports and talking to both foreigners who've visited/lived in Japan and Japanese natives. The news reports I see come both from foreign papers and Japan (English NHK World broadcasts or English language versions of newspaper articles online--I'm learning Japanese, but I can't follow Japanese language news yet). I try not to judge Japanese society based on anime, since that's not really a good resource.
As to Sailor Moon, that and many other shows are somewhat problematic from a feminist perspective. On the one hand, there are women and girls who have super powers and fight evil...on the other hand they're often simultaneously ditzy/dumb, more concerned with landing a boyfriend and going shopping than their mission/job/school/whatever, dolled up generally in cutesy or sexpot clothing regardless of personality, and often still constantly need to be saved or told what to do by men.
Now, that's being rather harsh on Sailor Moon because you pointed it out, and a lot of other shows have similar tropes/characterizations. I personally like Sailor Moon (*looks over at DVD box sets on shelf*), and feel that it had a lot going for it because of the size of the female cast and the variety--yes, Usagi was clumsy and a crybaby, but it's okay for characters to not be perfect, and she did mature over the course of the show, and other inner Senshi were capable and fierce (Mars and Jupiter) and smart (Ami, though often the limited writing reduced her to stating the obvious); and in comparison to the fairly young and immature inner Senshi, we had the outer Senshi--Uranus and Neptune were a joy: focused on their duty, mature, tough, selfless, realistic.
What becomes unfortunate is not those elements in an individual show like Sailor Moon. It's when other shows have these things without a lot of the variety or balancing characters that Sailor Moon had, or when problematic characterizations dominate the large number of shows.
For possibly a clearer example: it's not sexist when there's a female character, or a bunch of female characters, that dress sexy and are treated as eye candy. The female body is a beautiful thing. The problem is when almost all female characters are sex objects--when female characters, unlike a lot of male characters, are not allowed to *not* be eye candy; when the character's personality/job/hobbies (for example, a fighter, like many female video game characters and anime characters) aren't taken into consideration and they're just indiscriminately poured into cutesy or sexpot outfits; and when the character's personality and skills take a back seat to boobs and pantyshots.
Male characters are often created and written with no thought to their eye candy potential. Why shouldn't they be? That's fine. But how many female characters are allowed to not be cute or sexy? It's not even just creators either, it's also in the audience/fan reaction--I've seen a hell of a lot more people insulting or bitching about unattractive female characters than unattractive male ones, and I don't see nearly as many comments about a given female character's smarts/capability/badassness as I do about her ass or tits. And when it comes down to it, the most popular female characters with fans seem to be the most passive/subservient characters. (Of course, this is based on my interaction with other fans online and at conventions, and observations by other people--I don't know of any statistical breakdowns being done on this, and it's not like I can talk to every single fan on the planet.)
I struggle somewhat with how much of the clothing issue has to do with sexism and how much to do with the apparent Japanese aesthetic for 'cute.' I don't think it's one or the other, rather kind of a complicated mixture of both.
I don't want it to seem like I'm accusing only Japan, or saying that America is superior. American television and movies still have a lot of characters/plots/designs that are problematic from a female perspective, and don't even get me started on the gender/sexuality issues in American comics. And that's just art and entertainment--real life here in the US has plenty of sexist asshattery too.
I hope I'm managing to get anything across at all.