WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Season 1 of Shaman King (2021), now streaming on Netflix.
As interesting as it is, the Shaman King reboot does repeat problematic traits from the 2001 original anime and manga. One of them is the regressive death regarding a female warrior in the Seminoa tribe in America, right when the character was revealed to be a repository of intel that would redefine the Shaman Fight tournament. It's tone-deaf in such a male-dominated story; sadly, there's an even bigger error made in terms of respecting women as the series fails to scrap Ryu's most disturbing trait: his misogyny.
Now, Ryu's not the most likable or virtuous character at first. He's rolling with thugs as a gang leader in Japan, but honestly, these men are a bunch of bullies with child-like mentalities. It's why Yoh and co. pummel them to teach them a lesson, but what's most disturbing is how Ryu creeps on a 13 year-old Anna. He catcalls and legit stalks her, not caring that she's Yoh's significant other and professing love in yet another aspect of anime's biggest failure.
Over-sexualizing young girls and having toxic males objectify them is something the genre just doesn't seem interested in stamping out. And sadly, it doesn't stop there as Ryu ogles and makes lewd comments about the leaf fairy, Kororo, who belongs to Korokoro. At this point it seems like once a person is female, they're going to fall into Ryu's gaze and become prey.
Even when he redeems himself and wants to be a hero, Ryu still maintains this thirsty attitude. One would think he'd scrub the immaturity that could have been affiliated with him being a criminal, but he persists, which is off-putting as these are underage girls being propositioned by what's clearly an adult male.
Again, it perpetuates bad stereotypes and could have easily been cut. The fact he also mentions loving girls with dresses and their legs showing through the slits, referring to Tao Jun, sums up that Shaman King's Ryu isn't someone you want around women. He just has no boundaries, not even if the ladies are related to or with his comrades.
It's perverted and continues when he meets Tamao at Yoh's Asakura estate. Ryu has no honor or moral compass, with all this lusting making it hard to root for him even as he becomes a better spirit-minder. He stands out a lot as none of the other guys are like that -- they're focused on a code, being a family and trying to win the Shaman fight tournament against deadly competition.
Sure, Ryu's interested in victory with his spirit Tokageroh, but he's easily distracted by females and truly rubs Shaman King viewers the wrong way by being an overzealous, unfettered sexual predator. It's a sad approach because he's so intriguing, you do want to root for a fiend who's found the light -- but any atonement is walked back by this consistently disgusting behavior.
