Text © 2001, 2002 Nina Wilhelmina

Well, so you were expecting something else [^..^]

Manga females could, should, and have been objects of studies in themselves. The overall impression, for which utter cluelessness is the main culprit, that the word 'manga' is the identical twin of 'dirty pix', although never true, might have been thought of as affirmed by the fact that so many of the pictures feature women and girls and idiots in general -- which is another way to see female entities in manga and anime, whether I like it or not. But everything else aside, it is interesting to see how the Japanese manga and anime revolutionized the prototypes of women. Like the doll Barbie in the Northern part of the globe, manga females given the roles of heroines (in both meanings of this word) embody the physical and mental structures of the ideal female in the post-WW II Japanese newer generations' minds. The creators's minds, mind you, represent the average or collective minds; sales jump indicates the tightest embrace of the ideas. Gender debates around this theme are still raging out there somewhere (like, at Ms. Suzie Langer's front porch, Staten Island, USA) -- but I'm not going to get there and neither would you, because this isn't the right time and place for that, not to mention Ms. Langer's horrific idea of cappucino that she never fails to serve during such debates. It is enough that we recognize the existence of condemnable chunks of manga and anime. Maybe they don't punch our sense of morality, but they certainly upset our artistic-o-meter.

Growing up, mangawise, is never imperative. Any 10 year-old could transform herself into some voluptuous, albeit sexually an imbecile, full-grown woman in less than a blink, if she is given supernatural roles (just for example, Sorcerer Hunters). Adults, too, have often been given some sort of evil curse that put their piling-up years into the blissful bodies of girls who don't even know what income tax is (for instance, UFO Princess Walküre). Gender too is never fixed, come to think of it. Ambiguous characters always appear here and there (examples might include Hunter x Hunter's Kurapica, Kaikan Phrase's Towa, and so on, actually countless of them); cross-dressing too is common enough (like Oscar de Jarjayes in Rose of Versailles); and of course actual change of sexual identity via magic regularly (see Ranma 1/2 and Maze). And surely there are loads of she-monsters, that transform themselves from mere human forms into whatever else, whether for good or bad cinematic aim (such as tons of 'adult manga' characters, and an example from the 'clean' ones might include Devilman Lady).

Basic storylines that involve female leading characters have been just a few [click here to see another page], so few that what is typical is very recognizable even for my godson. Half-cyborgs, hybrid specieses, monsteresses, magical enchantresses, frail goddesses and other such fantasies that commonly inhabit the mind of sedentary cubicled male worker in his thirties aside, the typical female in manga and anime are elementary school kids, high-school girls, teachers and maids -- whether they are human or not. The plot itself could get narrowed down into this stale formula: the spineless loafer with glasses perching on his nose always gets the girl, and in typical cases the noun 'girl' is plural. It will take a whole day to name examples. For the sake of clarity I have to cite a few still: Tenchi Muyo, Love Hina, Happy Lesson, Sister Princess.

The sort of pix shown at this page is somewhat different from the other manga & anime snatches; for one thing, they include the ones crafted by unknown phantomy individuals who probably did it under their tables at lunch breaks in some breakneck animation studios -- they were so in a hurry before the boss noticed anything that the works came out unsigned. Different cases could also have happened, since a chunk of the tax-paying members of the perfectly legal Japanese manga & anime industry took the 18+ stuff up when they had nothing to do on some late Saturday, and used pseudonyms as the fingerprints all over the outcome. The larger part of such 'adult content' that roams around these days was of course made by kinky fans who would need to endure 6 years of art school to produce anything better than what my 3 year-old godson yields -- but the fresh demand of even that quality rises daily, so they never got the chance to get rounded up and forced to enroll to art classes with a restricting order with regards to drawing materials. Yet miraculously a few pictures that unmistakably belong to amateurish artists come close to visual triumphs, as you'd see, even though sometimes when the character is drawn quite beautifully then the background testifies of the artist's total exhaustion, or a truly atmospheric surrounding is forced to host a barbary figure that looks like my godson's idea to visualise his most hated auntie by. Or they could draw hair exquisitely enough but completely clueless as to how human hands normally look like and what kind of wrinkly surface is likely to get recognised as fabric. Or they have given us meticulous rendering of an inhabited room, forgetting to install the mandatory human likeness at the, alas, center of the pic, until the last minute. Probably all these differentiate these socially nocturnal creators from their daylight-counterparts. But, like I said, once in a blue moon a picture was done as it should have been.

The 'should have been' here only means that the final outcome resembles much of the better kind of manga drawings; the sort manufactured when sunshine poured in (it did, as a matter of fact, not; manga artists are often not just indoors but kind of underground) and the tasteless takeouts and threat-mails and Tax People were also streaming in (as a matter of course they really did). The Japanese style has always been entangling itself with the anatomically incorrect -- this could be trekked back to the glory days of swordsmanship -- when samurai has not yet been embalmed into a myth (see another page). Female characters must endure this tendency inherited by manga artists to Dolly-Partonize as many of them as possible, with an absolute inconsideration towards logic -- most wanting when the characters happen to be fighters (how the heck do they move, at all?). The presence of underage kids in strictly adult situations cannot be avoided either; this has always been. You know the Japanese censorship works according to their own standards -- which has made some anime and manga titles unexportable while others must get through transformations to conform with the local self-righteousness of the export target, like, all high schools become colleges. However, while stacks of rules bind the 'clean' manga and anime artists, those who do hentai (i.e. 'adult' stuff) only adhere to one: anything goes. That it is a very fine climate to breed slimy monsters and super-ugly beings is never unforeseen.

My attitute towards the genre could be sugared into something like this: a good picture is a good picture, regardless. More or less the same with the way your mind sums itself up upon bumping into some cool melodies overheard in a fraction of a sec in an elevator (assuming there is such a thing). I hope you dig this, because I can't explain it in any other way.

I guess I might have let some of you down again, then. Like the rest of this section, this page, too, is assembled to celebrate images -- I mean images, not really the unseen and the stuff left out of the actual bytes. See how they draw water, sunlight, heat-pestered early postmeridian hours, contours of stuff like wood and metal and cloth, atmosphere-depicting and ambience-reconstructing, and so forth. As people who had undergone the ordeal of studying fine art for 6 years would have known, it is not easy to reach something like these paraded sachets of instant visual feast. If you can't draw, you can't draw; digitalization wouldn't materialize what you haven't got. Then we might be able to appreciate the fact that they, though perenially orphaned, exist at all.

• Meanings of Japanese Names, Nicknames & Titles
• Origins, Formation & Mistakes About Japanese Names
• History of Japanese Clothes & the 3 Fashion Dictators of the Nation
• Kimono Culture
• Structure of Japanese Feudal Society & the Surprising Bottom of the Pit
• Emperors, Empresses, Regents, Chancellor, Shoguns, and all sorts of Rulers of Japan since 660 B.C. until today
• Shoguns for Dummies: Who Were Shoguns & Who Were Not & Why
• The Japanese Greatest Warrior Clans: Minamoto & Taira
• Cities of Japanese Warlords
• Samurai is identical with swords, right? WRONG.
• Japanese Swords, Swordsmanship, Swordsmaking & Swordsplay
• Japanese Interior Design
• Japanese Warlords' Money
• What You'd Need To Be a Warlord & How To Do War In Medieval Japan
• Management of a Warlord's Household
• Japanese Samurai Wars
• Origins of Samurai Habits
• Maps of All Japanese Provinces, Warlords & Battles
• Premodern Japan: Real-Life in Emperor Meiji's World
• Weird snapshots, strange truths, odd realities & wacky info about Japan: Superstitions, Foxes, 'Voodoo', Shamans, Shogunal Food, etc.
• Origins of Japanese Music, Songs, Dramas & Dance
• The things that are oh-so-Japanese are actually imported from China: kanji, Buddhism, ikebana, bonsai, tea ceremony, and so on, even sushi and Shinto. No kidding.
• The Blind Samurai Most Beloved By the Japanese
• Why Did the Rest of Japanese People Accept the Domination of the Samurai Class?

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2002, 2003, 2004, 2005 Nina Wilhelmina