Anime consumption is pretty ubiquitous at this point. It’s really become in the same vein as video games, a formally niche hobby who’s hardcore fans were viewed as bizarre, but is now popular enough that almost everyone under 30 has moderate exposure to it. It’s not really even a white guy thing anymore, a lot of people seem totally unaware how popular anime is among African Americans, and while not 50/50 female anime fans aren’t exactly rare.

As such I think taking about “unique” effect anime has over other media is, well about as stupid as doing the same for video games. Video games tend to be more violent and anime more openly horny than most media, but yeah I don’t really think you can isolate any affects they have over any other media.

I think you’re right that there is a reinforcing/normalizing relationship going on there. Most Anime isn’t made with western audiences in mind - a lot of it is made basically as an advertisement for the toys that are marketed to the super fans, who are essentially addicts (see also: alcohol, where 50% of the sales go to 10% of the drinkers). Even if you get into the business with reasonable female characters, there is a massive market pressure to turn them into hyper-sexualized stereotypes because that’s what sells plastic figures and body pillow covers, and if you choose to stick to your guns and buck that trend your IP will be drowned out by those that don’t.

It’s an artistic medium whose mainstream content is primarily driven by the desires of disaffected men - so naturally it reinforces their worst tendencies.

Alright OP, we need some HISTORICAL MATERIALISM up in here in order to discover exactly why anime, as a niche nerd culture, has inculcated such reactionary viewpoints. Maybe along the way we can discover why this breed of reactionary keeps recurring in other niche nerd communities like Star Wars and comic books, etc and maybe together we can think about some way to combat this. Or not. I’m not your mom. Also if you’re expecting citations I’m drunk AF right now so you’re on your own fam. Hell I could be talking out my ass for all you know, so don’t just trust the word of some weirdo on the internet in some weirdo internet forum and do your own reading.

K so in the before times, anime as a medium isn’t exactly the horny pre-pubescent power fantasy realm you know now. We start with Astroboy in the 50’s, which was a local comic book creator figuring out a way to industrialize and mass-produce for-TV animation on a budget 1/10 of his competitors at Disney (which basically involved a lot of cost cutting, but also severely mistreating labour. We can get into that another time.) Animation in Japan is seen exactly the same as it is everywhere else in the world- whimsical entertainment for children. No pantyshots, no jiggle physics, just a cute robot boy saving the world cos a dad built a robot to replace his dead son. Astroboy makes money and more or less the modern anime industry as we know it is born. You get World Masterpiece Theatre, which gives you Studio Ghibli and Miyazaki, and God saw that it was good.

Fast forward to the 70’s, and anime has been puttering along as children’s entertainment. Magical girl, Super robot, Super Sentai, Ashita no Joe… anyway, stuff for kids. Then STAR WARS. Pop culture is upended. Now everything has to be mature and cool and scifi and sexy. READY FOR SOME PTSD? Mobile Suit Gundam coming in hot with that shit. All the kids who grew up watching Astroboy all want to make the next Star Wars but they have no film infrastructure that rivals Hollywood so they end up becoming animators, and since they were the children of the people who survived the atom bomb it’s all BASH THE SPACE FASH all the time. (Coincidentally, corresponding with the rise of the New Left in Japan.) But now anime is no longer for kids, but for real thinking adults who comprehend the moral complexity of war and understand the dangers of fascism and please buy our model kits.

It’s the 80’s, and Japan is going to take over the world. The Asian Economic Miracle (spoilers, it wasn’t) has Japan flush with cash and on the cutting edge of technology. Neoliberalism works, and it’s harbinger is Sony. Thanks to localisation efforts, anime has found a niche elsewhere in the world as the Big Boy Animation for Big Thonking Boys, and VHS rental places everywhere like Blockbuster are scrambling to stock their shelves. What’s a Blockbuster? Think Netflix but in real life. Anyway, the World is hungry for Japan, and with all this foreign cash studios are willing to give that money to just about anyone. So now animators are pushing the envelope, doing the most edgy and absurd shit you can imagine. Nothing is taboo, nothing is sacred, hide yo children and your wives cause they raping everybody out there. This financial freedom is a land of contrasts. You get Akira, and you get Wicked City. Course, in Japan no self respecting adult citizen of the world would be caught dead watching cartoons, so only basement dwelling weirdos with VHS decks actually buy and watch these movies.

It’s the End of Evangelion History, except History ends early for Japan. The Asian Financial Crisis of the 90’s plunges Japan into a recession it STILL hasn’t recovered from to this day. As the bubbles burst, the animation studios are scrambling to make rent and pay their employees… as is the rest of Japan. Doesn’t take a genius to tell you that consumers without jobs can’t spend, and they sure as hell aren’t going to buy cartoons. Except… some people do still buy cartoons. All those basement dwelling weirdos with VHS decks and gasp computers? They’d rather spend money on their hobbies, cause they saw their peers save and scrimp and toil at their Sarariman day jobs just to lose everything and throw themselves off the 90th floor. Better the Otaku Way of Life- can’t plan an expensive future with a house and children which society has basically told you all your life is the definition of success when no such future is possible cause you can’t save shit. Can’t socialize and function highly enough to build the relationships needed to form a successful mating pair-bond in a dysfunctional society. Better to sleep in the warm glow of the TV screen. To sleep, perchance to dream. And in those dreams that may come, big ol’ Anime Tiddies. Enter the Waifu: the ultimate expression of male fantasy; simultaneously submissive and spontaneous, sexy and chaste, rebellious and conservative, impossibly young yet surprisingly mature… a real ideal, but not constrained by reality. Madonna, Whore, Maiden, Mother, Crone. Whatever you want her to be… (Flip the gender for husbandos. Sorry, ladies. Patriarchy oppresses men too.) Because after all, ideals can’t let you down the way reality has.

So of course, the animation companies do the only sensible thing they can do- they cater exclusively to these people. After all, the bills need to get paid.

Have a cool idea for a show about a gay ice skater? Nah man, can’t risk it in this economic climate. What if all those nerds who buy our stuff start flipping their shit? That show about the all male swim team already had nasty comments on 2chan, although we did mysteriously make money from that. It’s almost like as if we take the time on some passion projects as a studio we’re not adapting the latest pandering bullshit the production committee is trying to get us to do, and those internet assholes who just want to jack off to underage girls in some bizarre attempt to relive their highschool days know it. Fuckers also pay our bills when they buy that $200 half-naked statue. Maybe with this new-fangled internet thingy we can make some dosh on the side selling whatever we have on hand to those baka-gaijin overseas.

Oh shit motherfucker the Twin Towers just crashed. Here, have some K-On!.

I think Kill La Kill is alright, and Gurren Lagann, they both kinda flip the script with the most badass characters being women. That’s about all the Anime I’ve watched outside of Miazaki and Akira.

Attack on Titan and One Punch Man are two of the most wildly successful anime of the previous decade and imo what has been animated of them (I haven’t read the manga) is pretty good on terms of gender equality. It kinda gives me hope that in the future all the dumb sexualizing trends will die out. That said, the classics will always exist, and people are always gonna be watching Evangelion showing nude 14 year olds and wanting more

I recently started watching anime and I haven’t really found one yet that has good female characters (although I really haven’t watched many yet).

The ones that don’t sexualize the characters like FMA and Deathnote still don’t give the women a lot of agency and they’re always serving the men.

Code Geass had at least one female character I liked but sexualized her and the others a lot.

Puella Magi Madoka Magica is a satire of magical girl anime so it does trod in some of the tropes, but by the end I think the female characters have agency and real relationships with each other. But it still ultimately feels like men writing women.

I think Erased was also okay about this. It was a male-centered story but there were significant female characters and I don’t remember any of them being sexualized. Not sure if it passes the Bechedel test though.

Overlord was the worst one for me that I’ve seen and I couldn’t finish it.