Like A Lady – Females in Anime Blogging
I have not watched anime in a few days due to life getting extremely busy; I feel like I’m going through withdrawal. So I’m going to take a breather, have some tea, and write about ladies in anime blogging.
I know they exist, I read a couple of their blogs, and I’m one if you haven’t figured that out already. Yet, when I scour the blogs that are tagged “anime”, I come across more male anime bloggers than females. Of course, I have not explored all the anime blogs on WordPress or the internet for that matter, but it seems that females are outnumbered. Is anime more of a male hobby? Are females more “in the closet” when it comes to watching anime? I remember being told by a guy I was dating that it was weird I wasn’t like all the other girls my age. It didn’t bother me that he felt that way but I had the feeling that it was intended to; suffice it to say I ended it with him. Not like that was the only reason but I digress.
If I am inaccurate in my assumption that there are less female anime bloggers than males, I am eager to be corrected. In fact, I would love to be provided with referrals to quality blogs written by females. I look at the leading anime blogs and the majority of their writers are males. Is it that male anime fans watch a more diverse selection of anime than females and can in a sense talk about more? Even when you watch anime, most otaku-ism is focused on males though there are exceptions such as Princess Jellyfish. I am not referring to myself as an otaku as I am not; just pondering about the relevance of female otakus or female fans of anime (not your rabid fangirl). Granted, females are highly featured in cosplay and the favored maid is always in appearance. I don’t want any of you dear readers to take this as me being unappreciative of male anime bloggers; I’m not. I enjoy your reading your blogs, at times I would like to read anime blogs from a more feminine perspective. Anime blogs without all the machismo and chest thumping (ok, I’m just kidding here). I will be honest, sometimes I do skip on reading some anime blogs due to the NSFW images staring at me from the screen. I’m not saying that females don’t do this but I have seen it more on male bloggers’ sites. I will say when I have braved the onslaught of these images, I have found that some of these blogs have nothing to do with the post. I guess they use them to attract attention from other hot-blooded males, haha.
With all that said, ladies where are you? Fellas, if you know any female anime bloggers, let me know!
- Posted in: Anime
- Tagged: Anime, anime fans, female bloggers, female fans, feminine perspective, machismo, otakus, Princess Jellyfish
THE LADY AND ANIME 
There are definitely more male anibloggers than females. However, I think it’s the other way around when it comes to manga bloggers – this may be reflective of the audience.
One interesting thing I’ve seen a few times (and with high quality blogs) is that the writer is ambiguous about his/her sex. I often get the vibe that the writer is male or female, but find myself to be wrong months (or years!) later – or else the author just never reveals his/her gender.
Anyway, here are some excellent blogs authored by female writers:
http://marinasauce.wordpress.com/
http://simpleek.wordpress.com/
http://goinginblindly.wordpress.com/ and http://paperchimes.wordpress.com/ (same author)
http://otakujournalist.com/
http://listlessink.wordpress.com/
http://annalynspot.blogspot.com/
http://otakulife-animereview.blogspot.com/
http://kluxorious.blogspot.com/
Also, almost all major episodic blogs have one or more female writers, like Hana at THAT Anime Blog. Some other teams have female bloggers, like the amazing AJtheFourth at Altair and Vega (http://altairandvega.wordpress.com/).
Thank you! I really appreciate the recommendations. That’s interesting that manga bloggers might be more female than anime bloggers. So far, the blogs I have read, the writers haven’t been ambiguous and have been pretty straightforward with their gender. But even then they could be pretending!
I second this notion. I’ve also noticed that there are lots more female manga bloggers than male and with anime it’s vice-versa. I’m not sure why that is the case, it could just be coincidence, but it’s definitely an interesting phenomena. For me, personally, it has to do with how you approach each medium. Manga feels less overwhelming since you deal with bulk volumes, rather than single chapters. In anime, it’s the reverse. Most anime bloggers tend to go episode-by-episode and I honestly do not have the time nor commitment to go so in-dept. When I watch anime, I like to marathon it. However, doing a post on a whole season or series is hard given how much information you have to cover in that post. So for me personally, I’ve mostly stuck with manga (and video games) because it’s less time intensive to write about them. I read a volume, I write my thoughts. I play a game and find something interesting about it, I write my thoughts. But again, this is just my personal reason for not blogging about anime (although I do from time to time) and sticking with manga. I’m still getting a feel for how I want to write my posts and what I want to cover. Eventually I may figure out a way to include anime in a way that satisfies me without changing how I watch it and how I blog. 🙂
That is a curious way to look at it, manga comes in bulk while anime comes in “single chapters”. I tend to not review each episode of a show as there are so many who are already doing that. If I do a review of a currently running show, I have tended to do it after a number of episodes when I have gathered more information. It takes a lot of time and commitment as you stated to review each episode of several series which I simply do not have. And I keep hearing that there are more female manga bloggers than there are male manga bloggers but it’s not carrying over to aniblogging. I’m seeing that a number of people are using blogging as a learning tool, learning about themselves and improving their writing skills. At first, I was concerned that blogging was a dying art with social media networks and truncated status posts but I have since learned that is not the case. I love when people such as yourself give me a lengthy response that is thought out and in turn makes me think more.
I generally like the posts that AJTheFourth make on Altair and Vega. There is a nice feminine tone to her writing, but I’d like to see more of her showcased individually, since a lot of the time, she’s coblogging with her other half, vucub_caquix.
Thank you!
Gar gar stegosaurus
Caraniel’s ramblings
Nineteen point zero four
Kitsunetoneko
Listless ink
Metanorn
THAT anime blog
Sea slugs
Snippettee
Not another anime blog
Batezi anime blog
Oishii
Koda’s blog (miasma cloud)
Reverse Thieves
Jphinano
Abandoned factory
Stray Girl in Her Lenses
Anime Yume
Major Arcana
Anime princess
And of course, The Untold Story of Altair and Vega
These are just off the top of my head. I’m at work so I can’t check thoroughly but there are dozens, if not hundreds, more.
Thank you so much for the recommendations. Nice list!
Bah, how could I forget Gar Gar Stegosaurus, Oishii, and Anime Yume, three of the major voices in the blogosphere. There are a lot of other good ones in there as well (a few of which I didn’t know were written by women).
Of note is Major Arcana…unless David knows something I don’t, that is one of those writers who keeps his/her gender a secret. I also assumed the writer was a girl, while another blogger always referred to the writer as a boy. The blogger has stated that he or she intends to keep gender a secret. Regardless, Major Arcana is MY FAVORITE BLOG; it hasn’t been updated in months, unfortunately.
Gar Gar Stegosauraus is a fantastic name for a blog.
I think its pretty cool keeping gender a secret. When I thought about doing this blog, I had planned on keeping it a secret but there are people who read the blog who know me personally so that wouldn’t work out too well.
Fascinating perspective! But I think perhaps if we zoom out and look at the fandom as a whole, with all the different subcultures, we’ll start seeing more gender parity. (There appear to be more females in cosplay and Pixiv, for example.)
My hypothesis: Anime blogging takes a certain misguided ego. Maybe that comes more easily to males. 😉
Anyway, recommendations! The most interesting female aniblogger i know is Yi, who runs the yuri/art/fashion-themed blog Listless Ink: http://listlessink.wordpress.com/
There’s also Marina, a sweet and thoughtful young woman who runs Anime B&B: http://marinasauce.wordpress.com/
Lauren Orsini is an excellent writer and a for-really-real journalist: http://otakujournalist.com/
Those are the people off the top of my head. I’ll let you know if I come up with any others!
Ha, I won’t get into if misguided egos come more easily to males. I don’t want to touch that one. 🙂 There are definitely more females in cosplay but I wonder if that’s partly due to enjoying dressing up and males not being too keen on dressing up.
I’m seeing some repeat recommendations so these ladies must be good! Thank you for your recommendations!
Hehe, I tend to lean heavily on the attract-hot-blooded-young-male-with-naughty-pics side though. ^ ^
Haha. Whatever floats your boat is how I see it. Are you saying that is your way of attracting readers? XD
I wonder~
🙂
Thanks for recommending me, Charles! I have a few recommendations of my own:
http://cassiesheepgirl.blogspot.com/ – Cassie’s also an Anime Planet moderator.
http://oishiianime.com/ – I saw Vuc already recommended Chii, but it’s worth linking.
Thank you very much!
Hi, just saying if you want to follow my blog, follow http://ramblingrainbows.wordpress.com instead of the vaettrtales one. That one is currently inactive. ^^
Ok. Thanks!
While it’s probably true that there are more male anime bloggers than female, I don’t think I’ve ever paid attention. I guess it’s true that reading other perspectives is interesting, but with so many guys pretending to be girls and vis versa, I’m never going to be able to tell. So I’ve really just stopped paying attention and read whatever was interesting. I don’t think I’ve ever opened a female-written blog and thought “Well, I should expect…” I don’t mean any offense, but I just don’t like the idea of searching for a blog written by a female. My own brother has very different views of anime than I do, so I’m gonna find an interesting perspective no matter where I look.
Honestly, when I read I blog, I don’t expect anything based off genders. You are right about the guys pretending to be girls and vice versa. But that’s fun, too (or creepy depending on your point of view)! And no offense taken, I appreciate different perspectives which is how I got the idea about female anime bloggers. I recalled when I want to an anime convention and though there were many female cosplayers, when it came to discussing anime at the panels, it was by far more males.
I think with cosplay, it’s more likely for females to make a costume, which makes them more likely to be cosplaying. Not saying sewing is girly or anything…that’s just the sad truth. Also, I think that with anime characters, male leads tend to be rather generic and boring, so maybe there are fewer options available. Harems probably give a lot of options to females. Not sure about the panels, though…Maybe that was just because there were more males in the room? Beats me…
Hm, I think you’re right. Fewer females have anime review sites, but I would say that more females write fanfiction and draw! If you look on LiveJournal you’ll see many females active in anime communities. Perhaps it’s just the content that they write about?
Personally though, I think anime culture in general favours males a bit more, but that’s really just looking at figurines and collectables. And one of reason I don’t read anime reviews by guys is because I just feel it’s different. As a girl, there are different aspects I appreciate? Might be the reason I started an anime review blog of my own. Haha.
Is your anime review blog on your livejournal account? I don’t read much fanfiction so I don’t know enough to make any conjectures about it. I wonder why more females would be more likely drawn to write fanfiction and draw? Do you have any ideas about that?
My anime review blog is on wordpress. 🙂 http://annoyingdragon.wordpress.com/ As someone who dabbles in fanfiction as well, I’m going to guess that females are more drawn to characters (esp bishies) and want to interact/put them in strange situations. haha. Who knows? Then again I only read fanfiction from anime that is decidedly more female orientated, rarely going into the more moe or harem genres. Perhaps that’s why I don’t see enough guys writing.
Interesting. I think I might actually follow more anime blogs by girls than by guys. Might. I haven’t counted. Glad to find your blog, thanks to Charles mentioning mine up in the first comment. ^_^
Haha. No need to count. It was just a thought that popped up in my head one day and I decided to look into. It worked as a great way to get recommendations.
I usually do not pay much attention to whether a writer is male or female, unless they point it out. As a girl though, it is nice to see other women be vocal about their hobby, on some level. I heard somewhere that women actually do tend to read more than guys so it would make sense for us to dominate Manga. Strange how that works out.
Thanks for commenting on my blog.
You’re welcome. I enjoyed reading it.
That’s an interesting thought that since females tend to read more, females are more likely to dominate manga blogs. I’m an avid reader but I don’t read manga that much so I generally don’t read manga blogs. That may be why I haven’t noticed that phenomenon.
Man, I have a feeling I would be reading way more actual literature if I didn’t have an addiction to manga. So there is a plus side to not getting into it. You have more time to read books without pictures.
Exactly. And I read loads of books without pictures. If I add manga in there, I would have no time to do anything.
I never really noticed the male to female ratio when it comes to being an anime fan. I guess I know female fans of anime and it balances out the guy friends I have who also love anime? I haven’t really started reading too many blogs until recently so I’ve never noticed that more bloggers for anime tend to be male. If I stumble across a good post, I just read it and I don’t think about the gender of the person who wrote it.
I have noticed that a lot of bloggers for manga tend to be female, which I found interesting. I have yet to encounter more male bloggers for the manga side of things.
I actually started my blog to just talk about the things I love and to have discussions with people who have the same interests. It’s definitely nice to find another fellow female fan. 🙂
The reason you started your blog is the same for me. I wanted to talk about anime and I hoped to find others who loved it like I did. So far I have. That seems to be the consensus that more manga bloggers tend to be female than males.
Anime is perhaps focussed more at males than females, in terms of fanservice and so on – or at least that is the impression I get from marketing, but that doesn’t mean female bloggers/fans dont exist. From my own studies of Japanese culture, and specifically the culture surrounding anime and manga, there is the suggestion that there may be as many female fans as male fans. The major difference perhaps is that girls and women can often be far harsher towards those that may be viewed as ‘geeks’ especially at a younger age, and this can feed into many women hiding or at least not advertising their hobby quite as openly as many men do.
There are a phenomenal number of manga, anime and even games that are directly aimed at a female market though, which is perhaps something people can miss. Although there are certainly more manga than anime out there aimed at women, which perhaps helps to explain the number of female manga bloggers. Maybe it is more a case of male fans being more open/vocal about their hobby than women, im not entirely sure really, but its a fascinating question.
Well thought out response. I had not thought about there being more manga targeting females as a reason that females seem to read more manga. There was an earlier response that since females tend to read more in general, females would be more interested in manga than anime. I would say mainstream anime is possibly more focused towards males than females due to the possibility of higher revenue. But there are tons of anime that don’t have high levels of fanservice and it has become my mission (well, that’s a pretty lofty statement) to find these shows.
The possibility of female fans being “in the closet” so to speak due to females being harsher toward female geekdom has some validity. Especially with younger girls who are highly concerned with image. This is not saying that males are not concerned with image but I’m not sure it is on the same level as females.
Yeah, I simply think that female peer pressure may be more intense than male peer pressure amongst certain age groups, although male peer pressure can still be very damaging. I think the imagery used in advertisements for clothes and so on play a significant part in producing this image of women (or girls) in a particular style, one that is often seen as chic and confident, but no where is there any mention of ‘geeky’ things.
There are plenty of anime series available, that while they include elements of fanservice, appear to have large elements that are targeted at both male and female audiences. But also I think its wrong to suggest that all fanservice is targeted at a male audience, since there is a considerable number of manga and anime series with fanservice that are clearly targeted towards a female audience. I will mention Yaoi here, but also Yuri manga can be attractive for women, and even many anime series with beach episodes and so on, since its the story, rather than the fanservice that happens to be the major draw.
I’d say over half the anime fans I know (in real life or via forums) are women, so I’m not convinced it’s more of a male hobby. However, when I stop to think about which of those people I know have (or at one point had) a blog about anime or any other subject, the balance shifts a lot more towards the guys. Intriguing.
I don’t have any new names to add to the already sizable lists of female anime bloggers, so I’ll just second Caraniel’s Ramblings, as she’s a fellow TSR member who puts a huge amount of effort into blogging despite suffering from very bad RSI; also Anime B&B, which is full of awesome posts. 🙂
That is fascinating that although you know a lot of female anime fans, you cannot think of one that has or had a blog about anime or even manga. People have given a number of theories to why males blog more. I don’t know which theory is correct but it’s all very curious.
I can think of two actually (Cara being one of them), but that’s versus at least 7 – 8 guys.
As a female anime blogger I’ve noticed too that more blogs are written by men, but I think that’s just one aspect of anime fandom to look at. I think it’s hard to determine exactly how anime fandom is split between the sexes because female anime fans often consume anime differently than males – for example, more females tend anime conventions than males do, not to mention more females read manga than males.
I just started up my blog, and I’d like to eventually write about some new anime 🙂 (Yes, I’m female!)
From what I’ve seen, manga is more popular to blog about in males, though I also know a lot of guys that just don’t like to read. (They still consider graphic novels reading) It seems more of the mainstream manga is geared towards males, such as Bleach, and Naruto, with those series being more shonen-based. Though don’t get me wrong, I also have tons of friends who are female and love those series as well! (Ha ha, I just contradicted my own post dodn’t I? XD)
Welcome to the world of blogging! If you’ve read any of the responses, some people seem to think females are more likely to blog about manga while males are most likely to blog about anime. Its all in fun to me, either way!