WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Season 1 of Record of Ragnarok, now streaming on Netflix.
It's safe to say that there's a strong degree of sexism embedded in the 12 episodes that comprise Netflix's Record of Ragnarok. It's male-dominated, especially on the fighting side, with women who hold major roles being relegated in the tournament between gods and humans to organizers and enablers, as per Brunhilde's Valkyrie squad. The latter leader is the one who gets Zeus and his council to agree to the death matches that pit mystically-powered humans from various eras in history against deities, with her job now being to spectate as her sisters then become literal objects the warriors use as weapons.
Unfortunately, this sexism is made even worse by who Brunhilde chooses next to defend mankind, as Season 1 ends by setting up the next big fight.
This incoming fighter is none other than Jack the Ripper, the infamous serial killer from the 1800s, who's going to be the slasher extraordinaire against Hercules in Record of Ragnarok Season 2. It's hard to understand why Brunhilde is celebrating him as a liberator given his toxic past murdering women in England. While many properties similarly treat him as a novelty item and non-offensive 'celebrity,' (most recently, the anime series Moriarty the Patriot), Ragnarok's lack of women in action makes its propping up of a misogynistic killer like him leave a bitter taste.
Brunhilde, meanwhile, isn't as feminist as she could be, with her Valkyries just being reduced to mere tools without a real say. This could have been easily course-corrected with a deviation from the source material to include more women in battle. On the goddess' side, Kali, the Hindu destroyer, comes to mind, while there's also Sif or Hera from Norse and Greek mythology respectively. On the human side, Jack could have been swapped out for Joan of Arc, Mulan, the Celtic badass known as Boudica, or even a Black Amazon.
This would have helped the inclusivity of the show. Instead, it wastes the opportunity for someone like Jack, who's definitely not a hero -- he's the antithesis to all that: a predator who preyed on innocent women; not someone of honor per Kojiro, Adam, or the other soldiers Brunhilde has on her roster.
Then there's the fact that Aphrodite is just used as eye candy. Even for an anime, her bust is very exaggerated. Göll being used to critique Brunhilde's choices makes it even worse, while Zeus ogling and making derogatory comments doesn't help the cause, either. Any way you slice it, despite being fairly prominent in Ragnarok, Jack's inclusion only adds insult to injury: the female characters simply don't have active roles that matter in the show, merely being used as set decoration or deployed as objects of lust or violence.
Had they been given more agency or used more in combat, then we could understand Jack being slipped in as an odd footnote. But as it stands, putting one of the most sadistic, women-hating men in history on a pedestal when the show's already very deficient in terms of authoritative female representation sucks a lot of the fun from proceedings.
