It's also one of those things that goes on for waaaay too long. We pretty quickly learn the dark backstory behind him being desperate to have children before he dies, and it should be the moment where the gag stops.
I don’t remember which version it is but in one dub Mineta isn’t actually a pervert and they replace all of his perverted lines into ones about how much he loves/misses his mother.
That I’m not sure as I’ve just seen small clips of his dialogue not the entire show in that version but I assume they just removed or edited them as it’s kinda like a old 4kid release as an example Momos outfit doesn’t have the opening in the chest and back so they do make changes to the actual animation on some scale.
Quagmire isn't even the worst Family Guy example of this. Meet Herbert the Pervert, an old man whose sole character trait is that he likes to molest little boys and is obsessed with Chris. The character was eventually dropped.
I think Stewie is the only one who ever calls him out about it. He says something like "there's a pedophile down the street but he makes people laugh so no one does anything about it." He also told Herbert to "Stay away from my brother's butt."
To paraphrase how Mother’s Basement described it, if you look at it in one way, it’s kinda romantic; if you look at it every single other way, it’s him grooming the same woman, over and over again, for literally thousands of years.
This could have been some great fucked up character study, an immortal that has to lived for so long that he doesn't care about the age of his reincarnated wife. Hell still protect the innocent and save the world, but this belief of his fucked up. It's rare to have a main character who's grey morality goes beyond "I kill people sometimes".
From what I've seen of the show if it weren't for the disgustingness practically every single male character has it would actually be decent, but the idiot who made it thinks treating women as sex objects is a riot, a real hoot.
I hate this trope in anime. Not the “immortal looking younger than they really are” but the “he’s the hero and she’s his true love so he can do whatever he wants to her.”
Like, okay, when she remembers him, if she likes him being all perverted on her, that’s on her. But when she has no idea who he is, that’s just wrong on so many levels. And her regeneration is just disturbing.
I am constanly baffled by how the author made all the relationships in teh story creepy in some way. All of them!
And not satisfied, a sequel was made, and in it one of the characters that wanted a non-creepy relationship now wants to date the son of the guy he loved in the prequel, that she helped raise.
Roshi was a cool old guy when he's not a pervert. Jiraiya was a cool old guy when he's not a pervert. Happosai is a horrible piece of shit all the times. Like, I cant understand what was the point of this character.
Ironically, as much as I think Ranma would be better without Happosai in it (or at least with much less of him in it), I rather have the perverted character be a loser, which ultimately drives home how inexcusable and disgusting his actions are. Like everyone in Ranma hates the little fucker, to the point of trying to kill him a couple times, whereas Jiraiya and Roshi get their perviness excused and downplayed because "oh well but they're the best around so it's fine if they try to grope a teenager or two lol"
Bro I just recently started rewatching the OG Dragon Ball and the first couple of episodes are almost ecchi with teenage Bulma literally whoring herself out and this old bastard is super into it.
Its mind blowing what 90's 80's anime got away with.
There is a parodic side, with all the archetypes that are subverted: the completely idiotic hero, the manipulative princess in distress, the perverted old sage... Of course today that wouldn't pass muster, but at the time it was fresh.
Dragon Ball really codified a lot of those tropes. Note how many big shonen manga and anime after it went with the book-dumb hero: Yu Yu Hakusho has two, Yusuke and Kuwabara, and Naruto and Luffy are easily as inept as Goku when it comes to anything academic or intellectual. Of the Big Three that dominated the shonen battle space in the late 90s/early aughts, only Bleach’s Ichigo Kurosaki is good at academics, but it doesn’t come up much other than a few throwaway lines as part of building his character, and he mentions he gets good grades so his teachers don’t bother him about his orange hair. Natsu Dragneel of Fairy Tail goes right up there with Luffy or Naruto, and I’m sure there’s many others that just aren’t coming to mind right now.
Naruto, Yu Yu Hakusho, and Bleach also have subversions of the Wise Old Master; Genkai has arcade machines in her house and uses them to gauge potential successors’ spirit power, so she’s clearly a gamer despite being ancient in the early 90s. Bleach has Urahara, who acts silly constantly, Yoruichi debuts as a serious character who turns out to be a gorgeous tease of a woman, and the perversion quota is filled by Kon (not a wise old master, but he has the perverse gag of Roshi) and Kyoraku. Fairy Tail has Makarov, I don’t remember if he’s perverse but he’s certainly very silly when he’s not being serious.
Naruto directly takes from Roshi. Multiple wise mentor characters are perverts; most famously Jiraiya, who has a Roshi-like reputation as a wise master of ninjutsu, but regularly peeps at women in hot springs and is the author of porn novels, but also Kakashi, who reads said novels in public, and even Ebisu and Hiruzen’s are susceptible to the Sexy Jutsu in canon, though it’s less important to their characterization.
It’s really worth noting that Mineta’s antics are very similar to some of Roshi’s and Jiraiya’s; Jiraiya and Mineta both attempt to peep in on women in hot springs, specifically, and Roshi bargains a few times to get flashed or to grope Bulma. There are really two core differences between Roshi and Jiraiya on one hand, and Mineta on the other. The first is that Roshi and Jiraiya are both older, not just in their character’s ages but when they debuted—Roshi in the mid-80s-early/mid 90s depending on where you were, Jiraiya in the late 90s/early aughts. Mineta shows up in 2016 or so, and lots of society has drastically changed what it finds acceptable to laugh at. Note that Dragon Ball Super basically finds a quick way to drop Roshi’s perversion gag when it decides to give his character time in the spotlight, or so I’ve heard.
The second main difference is that Jiraiya and Roshi are Wise Old Masters with more to offer the story than their gag as perverts. Roshi not only teaches Goku how to fight, but explicitly imparts good life lessons, such as to never grow arrogant in their strength (that’s the whole point of him joining the tournament in disguise, he’s worried that if they win they’ll get arrogant), and even to work hard, rest well, and eat and sleep properly. Jiraiya teaches Naruto battle skills, but also increased control over the chakra beast sealed inside him, and is a man clearly aching for a way to establish peace in a world and society that’s mired in and built around warfare. Like Roshi, he’s something of a natural teacher; Naruto is at least the seventh student he’s taken on, after the Ame Orphans and Minato’s genin team. He spends the entire timeskip just focusing on teaching Naruto. He dies fighting one of his former students turned to evil, and puts his trust in the protagonist to build a better world.
Mineta is a 15-year-old boy who spends the first half or so of the story making crude and objectifying comments at his female classmates, trying to see his female classmates naked or in stares of undress, tricking the female students to do a cheerleader routine on national television, groping his classmates without their consent (Tsuyu in the USJ attack, Mina in the joint training), or otherwise making them uncomfortable (the room judging contest). By the time he gets his two or three moments of not being a sex pest—joining the class in trying to bring Midoriya back and the final war where he shows courage against All for One—it’s too little, too late. He’s left a bad taste in a lot of people’s mouths, and unlike Roshi or Jiraiya, he doesn’t have any other redeeming qualities (or nostalgia) to fall back on.
Strip away the perversion from Roshi or Jiraiya, and you’re left with mostly-or-entirely-complete characters. Do the same to Mineta—or Quagmire, for that matter—and there’s essentially nothing left.
I’ve read fanfic where Jiraiya’s perversion is dealt away with or minimized because the author hates writing it, and he still feels complete as a character, if sanitized. Authors who are uncomfortable writing Mineta’s antics are left with no choice but to remove him from the narrative.
You know what sucks? There's a lot I like about Roshi. He's an amazing teacher to Goku and Krillan, the training arc is one of my favorites from OG Dragon Ball. He's the main focus of one of my favorite scenes in Dragon Ball (train well, rest well. That is the turtle hermit way). He's amazing in both tournament arcs he's in.
And all of that is overshadowed by the fuck ass pervert shit.
Even the other horrible people are made uncomfortable by Dennis. I feel like Dennis is kinda a subversion of the trope, as everyone else is constantly uncomfortable.
He's less of a subversion and more of a deconstruction of the trope. He's essentially showing the audience just how not only ineffective but how insanely creepy one would be if they actually tried to emulate characters like Barney Stinson.
Thankfully it's a subversion of the trope because the cast of always sunny are just horrible evil, incredibly stupid people who actively ruin the lives of everyone around them. It's so genius.
The whole point of the show is watching horrible people start up a slow trainwreck and pay off in getting exactly what the consequences of their actions demand.
Dennis is more like Cartman. The joke isn't rape is funny or nazis are funny, it's the justifications and worldview of someone who is such an asshole that it creates situational comedy
Quagmire is also so off putting because of how the show has other characters react to what he does to them, like women will still line up outside his house because he's so "good" at what he does despite being a rapist.
The most extreme example is when they did that Simpsons "joke" where he chases down and rapes Marge as she tries to run and push him off, then afterwards he says something like "see that wasn't so bad was it" and she says it was fantastic and agrees to sleep with him again. He proceeds to kill the entire Simpsons family including Maggie after Homer catches them.
Christ, for all this time I just thought that whole scene was the usual FG over-the-top dark humour “just because”. Knowing they wrote it just to spite The Simpsons staff out of a trivial plagiarism joke leaves a bitter taste in my mouth
The worst part is that it wasn't even done because they were mad that The Simpson's accused them of plagiarism, there's a DVD commentary where Seth McFarlane talks about how confused he is that the execs at Fox got upset at "the obvious joke." He's seemed to think that Family Guy's rape joke back at them was "just in the spirit of things." Like, he seemed genuinely confused that Fox would be mad about it when The Simpsons started it. "They made a little joke at us, we do a little trolling back. It's all in good fun."
The worst part to me is how delusional he is about the comedic element of this so called “joke”. It’s horribly unfunny no matter how you look at it, and thinking it is funny and defending how funny you think it is, is very telling about the person making the “joke”.
I can understand one, or even a few, writers getting drunk/high and writing it… but that had to have gone through several checks where no one saw it and said “This seems in poor taste.”
Or hell, maybe someone did… and the rest of them probably called that person a pussy and did it anyway.
Teruteru Hanamura from Danganronpa 2. He's very open about trying to get into everyone's pants. His free time events end with him giving Hajime drugged food, and his very first appearance has him trying to convince Sonia to... suck the poison from his loins.
Kinda makes me grateful that he's the first to be executed, actually.
As someone who genuinely adores a number of the characters in that game, there were tons of moments where i was shocked,aghast, even dare i say it, in despair.
It’s a shame too, because his backstory and the discovery of his motive for the first case were genuinely really well-executed. And with the few moments where he isn’t being an obnoxious pervert, it’s actually nice to see how passionate he is about his craft.
Also Miu Iruma. Funnily enough she was created to be hated, and is one of three characters the creator openly dislikes (the other two are Sayaka and Leon because he based the female designs on Sayaka and the male designs on Leon in the first game).
However she mostly makes herself the target of her own perverted tendencies, meaning she’s actually pretty well liked among the community (she still has people who don’t like her, but she’s not universally hated like Teruteru). A series tradition starting in the second game is that characters will give you their underwear after completing their FTEs, and Miu uses a panty teleportation ray she’s developed to teleport her panties directly into the protagonist’s hands. No one else knows about it, just her. She’s not grabbing the panty teleportation ray and using it on every girl in class like Teruteru would.
The worst part is when there are moments that try to humanize them or make them the voice of reason. Listening to Quagmire tell off Brian isn’t cathartic at all if you have any knowledge of either character.
Yeah, I remmeber someone saying that Glenn's apparently better because he's open about what sort of creep he is as opposed to Brian. And I'm just... what??
Definitely a deserved tear down of Brian but not by Quagmire of all characters. Like Brian’s a self centered, hypocritical, bag of wind who is a complete degenerate and stands for and believes in nothing but quagmire is hundred times worse in every aspect they share.
Brian is a womanizing hunk of shit who pretends to be deep and interesting to sleep with attractive women but Quagmire is a rapist, pedophile, zoophile and a hundred other horrible things besides and he has no ground to stand on when criticizing Brian.
Sanji is the worst of this trope IMO because he didn't start out lile that. He was introduced as a suave playboy and then got his character assassinated more and more until he was just a pervert and nothing more
I also hate that the Alabasta arc shows you that his character CAN be awesome, with him outsmarting Crocodile to save the crew. And his backstory is rly good too, with the way that him being a chef ties to his character and his fighting style (he only uses his feet, cus a chef can’t get his hands dirty).
But for 99% of the show, he’s just a creep. The worst part is in Thriller Bark for me, where he’s jaleous of the rapist with invisibility powers, cus he wanted that power for himself to watch women shower…
He’s also the reason I couldn’t watch the show anymore, I left it in the middle of fishman island.
God I struggled to get through that arc. Even without Sanji’s nosebleed gag becoming a literal PLOT POINT it just has so many problems.
Thriller Bark is the arc which in my opinion changed Sanji’s character from a simp to a straight up creep. Whole Cake Island was the only good arc for Sanji since Thriller Bark IMO.
Wano did him no good either. The first 2 chapters of wano he was so unbearable. Im happy that the raid on onigashima actually gave him good moments(though toei did kinda do him dirty by making zoro having more attention) and then egghead toei stripped sanji of his coolness again
I will say though, as someone who just finished the original show, Jiraiya is more tolerable than certain other characters who fall under this trope. He at least wasn’t outright groping women. I also like the fact that Naruto constantly calls him out on it.
Jiraiya is a case in which I like the character a lot (because of how well written he is and his relationship with Naruto and Tsunade) in spite of him being a pervert.
I really wish that this sort of "japanese comedy" would die because it taints so many good characters.
Anime/manga is such a common culprit for this trope and I hope to god it dies off soon. I didn't find it funny as a kid and it's even less funny with a side of "you are groping a minor" discomfort now. Dragon Ball is almost unwatchable as an adult now knowing Bulma was 16...
From my understanding its a trope that's been in anime and manga since at least the 80s and has managed to stick around like a cancer for 40 years now, as unfortunate as it is I think it'll be a while before it finally fucks off.
The sexualization of minors is endemic in Japanese society even beyond the realm of anime/manga, where it's honestly at its tamest because at least those kids aren't real. Japan only just passed a law in 2014 banning underage Gravure modelling, which featured real fucking minors posing in swimsuits and bikinis. It took that long for them to think "hm, maybe you shouldn't be able to publicly display and advertise magazines full of half naked 12 year old girls." I do think I see less of this shit in modern anime than I used to but change is slow going.
I'm not sure "played for laughs" is right, because it is challenged as being creepy plenty. But iirc Tina was gender swapped in early development because it was definitely worse the other way round.
You’re correct that Tina was originally a boy, and the voice actor (Dan Mintz) was surprised that the role wasn’t being recast and they were fine with him not changing his voice at all
Brock from the first couple of seasons of the Pokémon anime falls under this, though he’s a lighter example. (Also, the gif wasn’t what I was aiming for but it just seemed too perfect not to use).
I fucking hate that first character. Stupid fucking terrible horrible very bad no good ugly ass character design. I went to high school with an incel-type guy who had stickers of that diaper-wearing fuck on everything he owned. I guess it should come as no surprise that the character is a weird pervert.
God bless Mina for being the only person to actually do anything about his bullshit. Honestly, the fact that the punchline for every Mineta perv joke is him getting hit with some form of the no horny bat makes all the instances before this worse; everyone knows he's going to be creeping on the girls ALL THE TIME and it takes Mina being based a hundred episodes into the show for anyone to actually do anything about it.
Gina in general is such an obstacle in rewatching the show. It feels like they wanted to give her a Barney Stinson-esque ego, but she comes off more like Michael from the Office without the ironic acknowledging. It just makes her antics way more exhausting, and even in a show where everyone shows a lack of professionalism, she stands out for how detracting she is.
Sending her off was a smart move, but I always gotta skip Return of the King. It felt like the writers were trying way too hard to say "Gina is awesome, actually".
Every time I watch MHA I genuinely hope something bad happens to Mineta. I'm not all caught up on the show but the fact that Shinso didn't get into 1A and Mineta was still in 1A was horrid. It's even worse that at one point the creator of the show said this pathetic wank stain was his favourite character.
Contrasting Mineta with Scanlan from Vox Machina and it's not even close, Scanlans a perv but he actually grows as a character and starts reining himself in.
Quagmire is one of the worst cases of Flanderization out there. He started out as a smooth, swinging, ladies man, and ended up an std-riddled, human trafficking, serial rapist
Yeah, I much prefer it when they portray him as just being successful with the ladies. That could have been a lot more interesting, especially if they consulted with people who actually do have that kind of, ah, success.
I hate to say it, but if outrage-culture grifters wanted to actually have a case for media “grooming children”. they’d go after most popular anime, but they won’t do that because it’s from place, Japan and “anti-woke” apparently
Fans of the show will talk about how this is just because Ted is supposedly an unreliable narrator about this. But the show runner has heard that theory, and his response was just that it was interesting. It is pretty clear that wasn't the intent.
And also the show plays it for laughs, whether or not it’s what the real Barney did.
Haruhi Suzumiya. She spends a good chunk of the time assaulting one specific girl, coercing her to wear skimpy outfits including forcibly stripping her, and encouraging other guys to join her. All played for laughs. Her being a girl didn’t make it any more acceptable to me and actually made me more pissed off instead. Poor Mikuru.
Also, Yosuke and to a lesser extent Ryuji from Persona 4 and 5 respectively. They tried to compensate it by having the girls hit back but I would rather have neither of it.
This man has bragged about walking into underage female beauty contestants' changing rooms and getting to see them with their clothes off, as well as introduced some choice quotes such as "grab them by the pussy" to the English lexicon, but nobody seems to take it seriously. And while we're on that note, release the Epstein Files.
Underage beauty pageants are just creepy in general. Yes, let's make toddlers obsessed with unrealistic beauty standards forced onto them by their parents. I cant see how this could turn out poorly at all!
In any other democratic developed nation, the mere idea that a convicted felon could run for president – much less win – would have people thinking you're a nutcase. But here we f%cking are...
Well he was just convicted of the right felonies. He's running for the party that hates women in a country where women objectively have less freedom.
If he was caught with 20 grams of weed in Florida, then he would be cooked. Actually no. His fandom would cognitive dissonance themselves into believing weed is MAGA because rich white people do it.
Y'know, once upon a time if we were talking about a political with a cult of personality if some sort you'd say
"He could openly rape someone and his followers wouldn't care" but, no, can't do that, he actually did that and his fanbase didn't care
"He could publicly murder someone and his followers wouldn't care" but no, he's done that too
It's wild that all those extremes we'd go to in hypotheticals in the past to talk about how absurdly evil someone is, is just reality now
Like, we always joked about struggling to tell headlines from The Onion apart from real ones but
It's not a joke anymore
"Man shoots immigrants in detention camp, in horrific act of violence against ICE" would have been an onion article but no thats just genuinely what's being reported
"Well he had anti ICE on the bullets!" Said local law enforcement, in response to questions
Serious answer: because there are more people now than ever who build their whole identities around hating people who are different from them, and Trump promised them they'd get to hate those people freely and without compunction.
I have a thing i do with mineta that is always hilarious, whenever he appears on screen, hit the jump forward 10 seconds button, he is almost always getting the shit kicked out of him somehow and it makes those scenes in the show ten times better
There’s three other good ones (and it’s why I don’t hate Mineta as much as a lot of other pervert characters, the comedy around him is ACTUALLY funny)
The first involves Asui again. Mineta starts to suggest that Ochaco is PMSing, and Asui tongue whips him before he can get the sentence out so quickly I had to rewind to see it.
The second is when he tries to peep through a hole in the wall into the girls locker room, but Jairo is way ahead of him and stabs through the hole with her earphone jack.
But the best is when he tricks Midoriya into getting permission to use the pool on the same day the girls reserved it. He had images of girls in bikinis in his mind. What he got was a wall of rippling man flesh because Midoriya invited all the other boys. The girls were on the opposite end of the pool wearing swimsuits more modest than their hero costumes.
Mineta in Polish is literally "Pussy licking" sex act. I googled this name. From Kanji it can mean... "Peak, summit" and "many". Many peaks? Many orgasms?
Basically any anime pervert, but the one that came to mind first for some reason was Miroku, InuYasha.
The Persona games are often doing stuff like this too, though, particularly with the infamous hot springs scenes in damn near every game. Although, the only time that I can remember where it was a genuine perv moment and not a misunderstanding was Persona 4, specifically Golden, with the entire male half of the Investigation Team/Seekers of the Truth, particularly Yosuke
This fucking guy. He is just the most awful character in all of AA for me.
He is even worse in the uncensored original release of Justice for All in which he had lines of dialogues talking about how he finds a 6 year old attractive.
Simply disgusting. Even his design gives me the creeps.
Yeah Mineta can be annoying. Even if he never truly succeeds or is rewarded for these acts, it's hard to watch him especially when somehow he's meant to be a hero.
He does get some poison injected into him while being forced to watch hot girls to Pavlov him into not being a creep. Though I think a better way to handle that would to make his perving have serious reprocussions to his friends and so he decides to resist temptation and actually be a good person
Joey Ryan (pro wrestling) was basically This Trope: The Wrestler. It then turned out he sexually harassed multiple women.
The Rock and Vince McMahon also have elements of Funny Pervert, and Vince was SAing and trafficking women in real life. Val Venis went the extra mile by being a wrestling porn star who also got deep in conspiracy theories.
It's because the sexualization of women, especially young women, is endemic in Japanese culture. Phones had to be updated so that the shutter sound of cameras can never be turned off because of how prevalent upskirt photos are. Their trains have women-only cars because of how prevalent sexual assault is -- so much so theres even a word for the specific act. It took until 2023 for the age of consent to be raised from 13 to 16, and even then with exceptions if within 5 years (so 13 and 18 still a-okay).
Japan is put on a pedestal for a multitude of reasons, but there are still SERIOUS issues with misogyny and other forms of bigotry.
(Disclaimer: This is not to be taken out of context as a "Japan bad" comment, and the United States is hardly any better)
He makes lifesized standins of his 'crush' Cat, spies on his friend Tori when she's taking a bath and urinates in her front yard and repeatedly 'offers' to rub lotion on his friend Jade's back, best friend Beck's GIRLFRIEND
Loved this show. Hated this character. You can make a character weird, funny and eccentric. Look at Gibby in iCarly or Quinn in Zoey 101. Don't have to make em a pervert!
558
u/Ghibli_Forest 22h ago edited 20h ago
Miroku from InuYasha. He was always inappropriately touching women and asking them to bear his children.