literarymerritt:

What she says: I hate Mineta.

What she means: I hate how a show as robust and compelling and fascinating as Boku No Hero Academia gleefully includes invasive, aggressive, unapologetic sexual perversion and dresses it up in a weak and unmasculine hat so that it seems harmless and forgivable. By making Mineta small and easy to shut-down, his non-consensual harassment of his classmates is allowed to be presented as funny, harmless, and almost charming since it is so apparent Mineta stands no chance of wooing them. All these scenes do is give the audience reason–and worse permission–to sexually objectify the young girls through Mineta’s eyes in a way that’s presented as innocuous. The narrative is happy to lampshade the fact that Mineta’s harassment is bad, and yet chooses to include it anyway, for no other reason than as a wink and a nudge to the audience saying “hey arent these 15 year old girls sexy?” So long as the audience understands Mineta is being “gross” and enjoys seeing him shut-down, then they are free to enjoy his constant invasive harassment with a clear conscience. This tactic is insidious, because it attempts to make itself clownish, harmless, and therefore inoffensive, while perpetuating sexism far more harmful than it’s willing to acknowledge. And I hate the purple grape fucker as a person too.