Took the words right out of my mouth, my brother/sister （￣へ￣）
I know what you mean, it's as if they think the women need to be annoying, evil, and/or ugly to explain why two men end up together.
Yuck!
Luckily, there are some exceptions...
Have you read anything by Scarlet Beriko?
She includes some awesome women in her stories, which really enhances the stories.
lol
I've only really noticed the sister in Jackass! I can't remember there being women in Minori no Te+sequel.
Oh-definitely agree. Even some of the more "positive" sterotypes, are pretty shallow and not very flattering. The typical shoujo MC is big-eyed, teary, innocent, naive, with all the backbone of a wet noodle. And the typical "stronger" female usually means her being either just cold and unemotional, or worse, over emotional as in hitting and taking offense over the least little thing.
When women are just bit characters they're either just portayed as mindlessly flocking around popular males, and saying cruel and judgemental things about who is worthy of being with whom.
One of the manga I really like that has strong female characters is 10 Dance (which just updated today on myreadingmanga.info btw)!
Papa's Assassin also has some great characters in it, but for some reason, even though they have great personalities, they are kind of unattractive.
It's a weird phenomenon that some artists, for example Tom of Finland, consistently draw one sex far better than the other.
In most cases I don't think it's intentional; it just seems to be the way they work.
Even though I love BL to death, the portrayal of females/women in BL is overwhelmingly annoying and horrible. I don't know why the (mostly) female artists would consistently depict women as being trashy, shallow playthings of men and gossipy jerks. Yes, some people like that are out there, but A LOT MORE PEOPLE AREN'T LIKE THAT! In my life, I haven't met a single girl/woman who is like how women are in BL.
However, I feel like this isn't only limited to BL (which is focused on MEN anyways...), but I haveseen a lot of this superficial image of women in shoujo, shonen, seinen, and josei. Yes, all genres. I think this is wy I won't read shoujo anymore. Too many girls and too many bitches.
Not saying that all portrayals of women are like this, just that the overwhelming majority things this is how women in manga/anime should be.