Set in 16th-century Florence, Italy, it’s not easy for the titular Arte to follow her dreams. Especially since her dream involves being a painter and apprenticing at a workshop in the city. Arte is based on a real Italian woman by the name of Artemisia Gentileschi who also pursued an artistic career and stood her ground to achieve her goal in 16th-century Italy. A high-class courtesan named Veronica in Arte is also based on a real woman who lived life her own way and succeeded at it even in misogynistic renaissance society. She was, in fact, very educated and wrote many books! And as Veronica says to Arte, she “worked very hard to attain her status, as women without a man to care for them usually do.” A powerful statement that rings true still today.

Arte is laughed out of most workshops she applies to for being a woman, she’s looked at weird for even trying, and judged for wanting to do art in general and not being “ladylike”—rolling up her skirt to do heavy work and so forth. She’s basically humiliated for following her dreams until she finds Leo and then, still, carries clay sacks all by herself to earn a temporary spot at a workshop she wanted to work at. It has nothing to do with art, they just wanted to stop her but they couldn’t. Arte stands her ground and works harder than any of the men because she had to just to be treated—almost—equally. This is less to paint the patriarchal society as evil and more to showcase the strength of will it takes to follow your dreams in a world that rejects them outright, or at least that’s how we see it!

This historical comedy anime version of The Cannonball Run is set at the end of the 19th century and mostly focuses on the two main male characters and their antics when they decide to participate in a cross-country race across the USA. But we have already gotten to meet a talented, driven lady who loves to race but is stifled by the “no girls allowed” rule of racing. Xia Lian Jing still goes off on her own and races when nobody can see her, but after Appare supports her and basically tells her “who cares what they say or what the rules are, if you want to race, you should!” Again, we see a young woman who starts to question and defy the patriarchal rules of her time.

And then we have Katarina from My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! Who is alive in our time but is isekai’d to a society that expects her to follow certain rules—that will eventually cause her demise—and she refuses to follow them, simply sticking to being herself by farming, climbing trees, making a ton of friends, and inadvertently making said friends fall in love with her regardless of sex or gender because she just wants true friends and not to die. Katarina doesn’t care about societal expectations like , she sticks to her guns, which happen to be farming, reading, and chatting with friends.