Where Men are Women:
The
minimization of men in shoujo manga
Jason
Research Paper
In
Keeping this in mind, I intend to examine one important cultural message that seems to be prominent in shoujo: a world of women. Going beyond simple gender empowerment, many of these make-believe worlds (be it fantasy, sci-fi, or even resembling the real world) have markedly few male characters, and those that are there are either physically or emotionally distant. To fill in the void, many typically “male” roles are assigned to other female characters, thus creating this world of women. I’ll be exploring the socio-cultural reasons behind this theme, why would women want to engross themselves in a fantasy world of one gender? While doing this, I’ll be using Takeuchi, Naoko’s popular “Bishoujo Senshi Sailormoon” (referred to hereafter as “Sailormoon”) manga series as a backdrop for explanation and examples.
First off, some background information: “Sailormoon” was a popular manga series that ran 5 years in the mid-90s. It inspired an anime that ran alongside the manga, 3 movies, many games, and untold amounts of merchandise. Recently, due to interest the manga has been re-released and a live-action television show was aired. Apparently, there’s something that touches close-to-home in this series. The story follows the main-character, a 14 year old girl named Usagi who fails at most everything she tries who eventually gains magical powers to fight evil and save the world. Fighting alongside her four friends, they take on various new challenges as each season/arch/year passes. These challenges range from new enemies and threats to the high school entrance exams, friends moving away, changing schools, first loves, parental conflict, and other issues that face the readers.
It’s here, in the beginning, that we find the first hints of male minimization. The story starts out with an introduction, where Usagi introduces her two friends: “This guy over here is the otaku Umino”[1], of her male friend and “This is my best friend Naruchan”[2] of her female friend. Her father rarely makes an appearance, and her younger brother serves as a source for comical conflict. Usagi’s mother, however, is a constant character who’s constantly pushing her to try harder and study more.
From beginning to end, all the friends and allies she gains are overwhelmingly female. The only one who doesn’t apply is her love interest, Mamoru, a man viewed almost as an antagonist in the first arch of the story, constantly bickering with Usagi. We later find out that in order to be “magical” (determined by having a special crystal, only given to those with pure heats), one must be female. Her love interest is a mistake in the system, and thus less powerful, stuck in a supplementary role.
After Usagi gains her powers and is joined by her four fellow heroines, we’re introduced to the main enemy: four male generals set upon ruling the Earth (though, interestingly, these men themselves are all led by a queen). Even the team’s sole male ally Tuxedo Kamen (Mamoru) eventually gets taken in by the enemy. As the story unfolds, we learn that in the past each sailor soldier was in love with a general, and they also wind up one by one killing their respective love-interest, including Usagi finally having to watch Mamoru die. In the end, the girls learn that they need to all come together and rely on each other in order to overcome all their troubles.
The lesson here is that men cannot be trusted, but your friends will always be there. While Usagi and Mamoru do begin dating shortly thereafter, he ceases to have interesting lines, they no longer argue, and he even mostly disappears from the plot. In fact, after they begin dating, the romantic tension is almost entirely gone. So, why is it, then, that having a boyfriend you’re indifferent to is better than a love interest?
Modern Japanese culture, for young girls in particular, is heavily dependent on consumerism. People are concerned with both owning the right things and giving off the right appearance, old Japanese traditions of “proper” no longer rely on customs but on what you own and how you act. To be in a relationship is considered popular and nearly expected. This leads to a fairly common situation of romance-less relationships, young Japanese girls looking for boyfriends to have in the same way they’d go out and buy a brand-name purse.
The ideal of romance is still strong, and these same girls are quick to mention that they still want to find love and to be married in the future, though they’ll say just as quickly that they don’t love their boyfriend. Romance is an ideal, relationships are practical. While this isn’t always the case, it’s rather widespread amongst today’s youth and seems to be even more common as time passes. It’s not abnormal for the two people to know little about each other, other than what they talk about, whatever social group (generally school) they share in common, and mutual friends. Home lives, hopes, dreams, and especially problems aren’t necessarily a part of the relationship.
For all the emotional support,
social interaction, and even affection, Japanese girls end up turning not to
their boyfriend, but to their female friends. Most things that we would
typically consider a “romantic date” often end up being done with their
friends, from picnics, to watching movies, to going out to restaurants. Men and
women are socialized so incredibly differently since birth that the two genders
seem almost incapable of sharing in their life experiences. Because of this,
young girls often get markedly close to their classmates and other girls, forming
relationships that are generally closer than most heterosexual relationships in
All of these elements show up in Usagi’s relationships with her friends. When she first encounters Rei (the second girl to join), Usagi goes so far as to follow her home from the bus, under the excuse that “…she really is pretty!”[3], and spends the next few panels talking of how beautiful this girl is. Rei is said to be exclusively anti-male (even declaring that she hates men), and is loved and admired by all her classmates at her all-girls Catholic school. Makoto, the third teammate, is seen as strong and boyish. She gets into several fist-fights, is known as a trouble-maker, and even smokes. She plays the role of the “boy” for the team, striking hard and fast, being protective and hotheaded, and saving people from danger. Makoto is, however, still tempered with feminine attributes. Despite being masculine, it’s never questioned that she’s a woman, and her relationship to the others is in that regard.
The fuzzy line between friendship and dating is even addressed in the fifth season, when the two younger sailor soldiers (ChibiUsa and Hotaru) are making plans for their day and going out to play together. Usagi appears and notes that the girls are holding hands as they walk, and it seems odd. Hotaru replies that “But you and Mamoru hold hands”[4]. The distinction between boyfriend/girlfriend and close friends is not made, and it’s seen as relatively equal to be close to your friend as to be close to a romantic partner.
As the series progressed, more characters were added and even new love interests for Usagi. All of the new recurring characters to be added to the series from this point on were all female. What’s even more significant is that even the new male characters added after this point were also female. That is to say that these characters that were treated, and acted, as a male character all ended up being female, though they still maintained that role within the series.
This started in the third season, when Haruka (a new sailor soldier) first shows up. She’s believed to be a man, and even performs the same role that Tuxedo Kamen (the one Usagi eventually fell in love with) did in the first season, and Usagi quickly develops a crush on her. Later in the season it’s learned that Haruka is indeed a woman (despite always wearing men’s attire and speaking in masculine terms with male pronouns), though this makes little difference. Even though Usagi understands this, the crush remains, though it also doesn’t change. Usagi’s crush is still the same as if it were a boy, regardless of the target’s actual gender.
This same theme occurs again in the fifth season, when a trio of girls pretends to be a boy band in order to attract female fans, so they can find their “princess”. Once again, there is a relationship building between Usagi and one of the members, and it continues unabated once the true gender comes to light. Like in the previous situation, it’s never seen as odd or unnatural that a girl would work under the guise of a male, just accepted as it is. In both of these cases, the characters are by all means “male”, but are ultimately female by gender.
The significance of this all is that ultimately it leads to creating a world of not only few males, but that many of the males that are there are ultimately female in reality. This is where shoujo manga takes a turn from representing reality to taking on the form of fantasy, in painting an ideal world over describing the one that truly exists.
Much as these young girls are satisfied in just having a boyfriend for show and to conform, the separation amongst the sexes is so great that they don’t understand each other. This leads the girls to prefer these fantasy worlds, where they can “… enter a self-sufficient world of feminine fantasy in which lesbianism and androgyny symbolically assure the complete exclusion of the male”[5].
For these reasons, shoujo manga’s elimination or minimization of male characters is not related to a sort of gender-empowerment, but rather to ease the worries of a young generation uncertain of how they’re to get along with people they don’t understand. It reinforces the distant concept of “romance” and that friendships can be just as valid of a relationship as anything else, if not more-so. In the end, these manga reinforce, it’s the strong bond amongst friends that will last, and it’s the source for finding your inner strength.