damsel in transition

[kaigou]

[ ETA: to clarify a term I frequently use (but may be unfamiliar to some), "animanga" is a portmanteau of "anime" and "manga", meant as a shorthand for "the Japanese illustrated-story publishing/production industries, including manga (graphic novels), illustrated 'light' novels, four-panel comics, animated television shows, animated miniseries/OVA (Original Animation Videos), and animated theatrical releases". Because there's often a great deal of cross-pollination between the two types (printed vs. moving), I tend to use "animanga" to refer to the entire ball of wax in one easy word. ]

We all know (and likely loathe, at least given the posts I see go past from most of you) the damsel in distress: she does something stupid, gets captured/hurt, has to be saved by the hero, and usually ends up clinging to him. I've been browsing some of the manga that readers have classified (on reader-tagging database sites) as "strong female lead" or "strong female character", and I think we need an intermediary.

Something like, "female character damselfied by the author", or "damsel with fighter tendencies," for a less anti-author spin on it.

The so-called "strong female characters" usually go like this: she's relatively outspoken, strong-willed, and ostensibly very good at whatever she does (even if in some stories we never see her do anything, we're at least told she's good). She's independent, and a common expression or thought among the transistional damsel is that she wants to 'stand on her own two feet'. She'll often explicitly state that she intends to fight [the big bad], alongside the hero, as his team-mate or equal. She doesn't see the hero as her rescuer, but as her mentor or her role model (and sometimes as the person she aspires to equal).

Cases in point: Tokine in Kekkaishi, Sakura, Hinato, hell just about any of the female characters in Naruto, Rukia in Bleach, Lenalee in D.Gray-Man, Marie/Soma in Gundam 00, Hilde in Gundam Wing, Kallen in Code Geass. Yet to be determined if Yura (from Nurarihyon no Mago) will fall into this category, as the fight's not done, so there's still chance for her to fall in line.

These are all combatants, btw; I don't think this transitional category applies to civilians, like Winry (of Fullmetal Alchemist) -- as a non-fighter, her most likely means of expression (in a sense, "her way of fighting") is not going to be head-on battle-mode, so it doesn't seem right to measure her by the same standards.

For each of the cases in point (and plenty others but I'm midway through drawer-building and waiting for glue to dry, so keeping this short) -- the introductory pattern, as combatant, is usually as above. Somewhere mid-battle, however, the damselfied combatant is tripped up. One of three things will happen. Either she doesn't have enough spiritual oomph, eg Tokine, Lenalee, and just about every female character in Bleach. Or she doesn't have the will-power/dedication (or alternately, can't overcome her doubt in herself), eg Kallen, Marie/Soma, and Yura (in her earliest fight-scenes). Or the author simply sets her up against fighters who just happen to out-rank her -- Hilde, and nearly every female in Naruto.

Which ultimately amounts to: she still needs to be rescued, but with a twist: she gets mad at herself for ending up in a place that requires the hero rescue her. You can see the differentiation most clearly in Nurarihyon no Mago, actually: Kana is a true damsel in distress, captured, helpless, and waiting anxiously for someone to come save her, and it doesn't even occur to her that she might've, or could've, done anything on her own behalf. Yura, in contrast, is annoyed at needing to be rescued, and determined to do her best to prevent it from happening again.

So what we get is the apparent warrior-woman, trapped in the position of damsel-in-distress (injured, incapacitated, or just plain outranked and unable to contribute to the overall fight), but also consumed by frustration at her position. She invariably rails helplessly against her, well, helplessness, and we're supposed to see this as a fighting spirit, and ignore that basically she was set up to fail. Again and again these transitional damsels throw themselves against someone far stronger, but digging into that observation means realizing that even these so-called warrior-damsels are always set up as weaker in some way, from the get-go. The story's premise either presumes the female character to be weaker (ie Tokine) or undermines the female character enough to destroy her original potential (Sakura, Lenalee).

We're supposed to see the warrior-damsel's determination to fight "against the odds" as bravery... but I can't help but note that in nearly every bloomin' instance, the fight doesn't cause the warrior-damsel to power-up like it does for her fellow (male) character. It just beats her down, and puts her back into the box of needing to be rescued. The only real difference is that we got teased with the possibility that this time, it wouldn't be so, and we got a lot of words from the heroine about how she wants to fight and/or be acknowledged by the hero and/or be equal to the hero in strength -- but the bottom line is that the message in the actual text is that this will never happen. But that's okay! As long as she wishes it might, that makes her strong female, because at least she's not helplessly accepting her damsel position.

Or maybe it just makes her kinda stupid, for entering battles with fighters who out-rank and out-flank her. Or maybe what makes her stupid is signing up for a story with an author who give plenty of lip service among the fan service, but has no intention of actually following through.

ETA: there's another way some authors will handle the "what do I do with the extra chick in the party" question, which is to justify the sabotage as meaningful sacrifice. (The women in Naruto, and Lenalee, get set up for this repeatedly.) The method is this: by some means, the warrior-damsel does take on (and frequently then proceeds to kick serious ass of) a pretty scary big bad -- but in the course of doing so, is either: pushed past her limits and burnt out (Sakura, Tokine), if she's not injured to the point of comatose (thus rendering her not just injured but pretty much a NPC for the rest of the fight, cf Lenalee).

The storyteller's rationalization, as I see it, is thus: every fight must have both a physical climax and an emotional one. The physical, of course, is obvious; the emotional may differ each time. The latter will show up as "what are you fighting for?" or "is this really important enough reason to fight?" or even "do you really have it in you to kill someone?"

A favorite trope of Japanese animanga is the "I fight to protect those precious to me" (well, actually, this is probably a pretty common fight-justification in stories the world over, now that I think about it). If your character is going into a fight and you want emotional conflict along with physical, the lowest-hanging fruit is definitely the "why would you fight this hard?" The character, naturally, will doubt himself suddenly, but hey, look, there! His female teammate fought and gave it her all -- whether now she's injured and rooting for him, or injured and needing his protection (since the author has now rendered her not just badly hurt but also suddenly stupid in terms of any remaining self-defense skills), or just plain out cold. In short, her sacrifice inspires him while at the same time providing an object lesson in "the reason why he fights so hard" -- to protect girls his friends from going through such pain.

Which I think can have its place in stories, and is certainly a valid point in any action-based bildungsroman, but it gets tiresome when you realize that the sacrifice-and-example is pretty much always played by the action-girl, and frequently it's the only role the action-girl can even play. For all the homoerotic subtext some fans want to see, it's actually not very common to see a male character throw himself head-first against overwhelming odds for the sake of an injured or comatose male team-mate or friend. (The various Gundam series and Naruto are major exceptions, though, which might be why they also subtextually hit a lot of buttons, too, because they capitalize on tropes that are more often male-female in other stories.)

As a footnote to all of the above, one thing I've noticed increasing is the number of mangaka who seem to try and balance "lesser physical power" with "greater ruthlessness". Tokine in Kekkaishi is an absolutely stellar example of this, with absolutely no mercy while her male counterpart is really a softie. Sakura shows major signs of ruthlessness, too, but she's not without some modicum of compassion.

The animanga I recall from the 90s and early aughts, the girl's more likely to be a blowhard about having no sympathy for the enemy, but at the last minute! she can't bring herself to fire! and the hero thus must step in. The updated version is that the girl has no qualms about going for the jugular... if only the author hadn't set up the premise or circumstances to make sure she wouldn't actually have enough muscle/power behind her punch. It's like, well, now she's given the opportunity and guts to shoot -- except the author took all her ammunition away.

All these are just more reasons on the list of why I love Balsa and Gen. Oliva Armstrong so much.

Comments

[ravenbell]

A couple of thoughts from an old school otaku.

The exact same trope exists, gender reversed, in most shojo series like "Cardcaptor Sakura," "Sailor Moon," and "Princess Tutu." The trouble is that shojo have all but disappeared in recent years, subsumed by the moe/cute girl and josei/young woman genres. Most of the fantasy and action shows popular in the West just aren't aimed at girls of this age group. The only recent shonen I can think of that has a true female lead is "Soul Hunter," which has Maka, who still has to share the role with a lot of others.

If you look back at the 80s and early 90s, the action girls were everywhere - "Bubblegum Crisis," "Dirty Pair," "Patlabor," "Armitage," "Iria," and "Slayers" - but they were mostly seinen and comedy heroines. I think their disappearance in favor of moe girls has a lot to do with the changing demographics of anime - the industry is now pandering to the hardcore otaku base a lot harder than they used to, and shojo never sold very well in the West.

When you get away from the typical cookie-cutter Shonen Jump-style titles, you do get some stronger supporting girls like Yoko from "Gurren Lagaan" and Re-L from "Ergo Proxy," but you really have to look for them.

[kaigou]

I was looking up some of the recent shoujo titles I'd found mentioned in recommendations, and came across a forum conversation about how fansub groups just don't tend (for whatever reason, it wasn't gone into) to take on shoujo titles, and when you combine that with the disinterest from distributors like Cartoon Network, the result is that a lot of the good shoujo -- that does show strong, if non-combatant, heroines -- just doesn't get exposure in the West. I have no idea how I'd go about assessing who's doing fansubs -- who makes the choices to fansub this show, versus that show -- and the demographics of the fansubbers, so I'm sort of at loose ends as to why, at least among the amateur fanbase, there isn't more translation going on. I mean, I have suspicions, but that's about it.

I find it intriguing you mention the 80s and 90s as highpoints for strong female-led shows in anime, seeing how the same was going on here in the West -- it was in the 90s that we got the Alien trilogy, T2, Thelma & Louise, Buffy, and similar strong action female-action hero-type movies... but somewhere in the last part of the 90s, that ground to a halt. The reasons for such a shift -- from more feminist-influenced stories, to more conservatively gendered stories -- may be different between West and East, but it's still interesting that they're paralleling each other so closely, time-wise. I'm not sure either can really be attributed to the demographics, because it's a given that Hollywood and its counterparts don't have a freaking clue about the true nature of its demographics (or at least, has a clue but then disregards it in favor of the assumption that, basically, male audiences are the only ones that "matter") -- so I wouldn't be surprised if the Japanese business equivalent operates on the same assumptions.

I think in part, it's the idea that if you want a big audience, you write to the default, and since the default is white male (even, looking at the biggest shonen series, white male with blond hair and blue eyes) -- then the business decision-makers presume that this common denominator of white hetero male will therefore appeal to everyone. Sort of like the way using "him" in English is supposed to denote "everyone", or using "man" to mean "humanity". Perhaps with the downturn in the world economies, and the slow tightening of the belts when it comes to entertainment budgets, such businesses (hollywood, japananimanga) get more conservative because they can afford fewer risks/losses, and the result is that stories get "safer", with leads that are supposedly "proven" to appeal to as many people as possible.

Actually, it's a subset of anime, but there's a similar -- if highly disturbing -- trend visible when you look at a series that's been reworked as a theater-released movie: Eureka Seven, Rahxephon, Escaflowne. (Eureka Seven, however, is absolutely the most egregious of such basatardization, so unless you're feeling really masochistic, skip the movie redux.) When the series is "retold" as an OVA, it seems as though the creators say, "what is absolutely necessary for the sake of the plot, that we must retain, and what can be discarded because we don't have the time?" Without exception, what is considered of less priority -- or, at least, I deduce that from the fact that it's consistently discarded -- are the strong female leads. They're all relegated to damsels, simplified into evil bitches, or just shoved into the background (if they're not just plain written out of the story altogether). The first time, I was surprised; by the third example, I'm thinking no longer a coincidence, y'know? Clearly, there's rationalization going on that female characters are not a priority, and in the compressed time of an OVA/movie, this lower priority really shines through.

I have not watched the OVA for Gurren Lagaan, for what are now probably pretty obvious reasons. I don't even want to think about what would be done to Re-L, if Geneon decided they wanted the entire philosophical mindscrew distilled into 90 minutes. Hell, she'd probably end up hopelessly in love with Ergo Proxy from the beginning, and every action would be prefaced by, "what would Vincent think?"

*sigh*

[ravenbell]

Fansubbers are largely tech-savvy youngsters who jump on the popular stuff. You'll find a dozen versions of the latest shonen within hours of broadcast, but good luck with the comedy and kids' shows. I've been out of the loop so I haven't seen the state of shojo lately, but the pickings were very slim two-three years ago, especially if you weren't into the mellower slice-of-life shows. There are still some fansubber troopers out there who are working on ancient, obscure stuff like "Goldfish Warning!" that will never be licensed here in a million years - the shows that actually *need* fansubs - but you don't hear much about them in the wider fandom.

I don't know what happened in the late 90s that took us from Utena and Faye Valentine to the moeblob invasion, but I strongly suspect the "Lost Decade" recession has something to do with it. I think the culture always gets more conservative and reactionary when a country feels economically threatened. Also, the demographics have changed. Anime watchers in the 80s were college-age kids, especially in the West. You seriously had to network just to get access to nth-generation VHS fansubs. Now the audience is typically teens or younger.

[kaigou]

You'll find a dozen versions of the latest shonen within hours of broadcast, but good luck with the comedy and kids' shows.

I'd go farther and say, good luck with just about anything that isn't shonen, really. That's probably for another post, but it's something that I see as having the potential to bring down the entire fansubbing system, because those popular shonen shows are huge money-makers, and the Japanese anime business is not in good enough shape currently to afford to let that cash slip out of its fingers. There have already been rumblings, and I suspect it'll only get louder as those companies find ways to shut down the fansub groups who're infringing on currently-showing, currently-popular, shonen-distribution. Frankly, some of those fansub distributions particularly piss me off, because they're nothing more than straight-up rips off the already-licensed online showing (cf Crunchyroll and Funimation).

I have actually found myself willing to wait the extra few days for a genuine fansub -- done with attention and care -- over the groups that are doing nothing more than simply stealing and repackaging someone else's hard work in translation, timing, and encoding. One of my biggest joys in fansubs, after all (and this may just be me) is the way a solid fansub group will have translations that pay a great deal more attention to quality, implications, connotations -- including adding cultural or historical notes either in-play or as a footnote after the show. With the exception of early MediaBlasters releases, I've not found any for-pay distribution that takes that kind of time.

(Rurouni Kenshin and Saiyuki were two releases for whom "extras" did not just consist of badly-dubbed trailers, but cultural and historical notes from the translators. The licensed version of Ergo Proxy, for instance, has nothing other than "clean opening" and "trailers", while the AnimeKeep version has several minutes at the end of each episode, detailing the mythological, scientific, and philosophical references made in the episode. Why, I wail, did I bother paying for the licensed when it meant losing all that hard work and useful information?)

Ah, though I guess that's for another post -- but my curiosity about the demographic constitution of fansubbers remains the same, and what might be motivating them to focus almost exclusively on highly-popular shonen series. Not counting, of course, the niche groups dedicated to only fansubbing boys' love, girls' love, mid-80s children's shows, late 70s science fiction, and other (somewhat) obscure genres or titles. The big groups, though... who are they, and why do they choose what they do? It is because of their own interests (with no regard for popularity among anyone else) or are they influenced by the thought of being the most downloaded or most visited?

Heh... no one can derail me half so well as I do myself.

[lady_ganesh]

Total side note, but Gravitation of all things also had a pretty nice set of notes in their release about the translation choices, some of the Japanese-centric jokes, etc.

[tamerterra.livejournal.com]

I think that Yoko is probably a really good example of this trope (Though I'm only a couple of episodes past the anti-spirals turning up, so that might change.) Right at the beginning she's on par with the boys, then they get their gunmen and do the epic while she shoots minions, and then when she pilots Gurran, she gets injured and Simon has to protect her.

[kaigou]

Trying to avoid spoilers but... yeah, Yoko is an example of the trope, I'd say, though a subtler one since she does continue to get agency -- and she doesn't exactly break down and holler at herself for being unable to fight. She gets injured, but (as I recall) doesn't regress completely to a helpless damsel, so much as simply an injured fighter-damsel. So a little of "almost there" and a bit of "still not breaking the mold." I guess you could say Yoko flexes the mold, but that's about it.

[ingvild]

Psst - it's "Soul Eater", not "Soul Hunter".

Interesting point. I wanted to say something about shows that fuse the moe with the action girl, and then I realised that I can't think of any besides Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha.

[waterfall8484]

Hey, I was going to mention Nanoha! *grins*

I can't think of anything else either, especially not anything recent, since I can never manage to stay up to date on animanga stuff.

[kaigou]

I can't think of anything else either, especially not anything recent

I'd say the trope has been around for awhile -- definitely since the late 80s, though you can see glimmers of it in earlier stories -- so even those of us quoting *cough* older series have something to add.

[waterfall8484]

True. :~D I think it's sad that there seems to be more old series that try to avoid this trope, as it is only another sign of the dwindling of good female roles in large parts of Western (and apparently also Eastern?) media.

Btw, I love your icon. Is it from anywhere in particular? It rings a very vague bell.

[kaigou]

The icon is a Willow quote from BtVS.

As for the age of the trope, I think there's another sub-thread that gets into that... hrm, I think in the comments with Ravenbell. There was a trend growing in Hollywood in the 90s to show more truly strong female characters -- from the Alien trilogy to T2 to Buffy, and so on -- and then suddenly we hit the aughts and there's freaking nothing. Japanese anime seems to have taken a parallel route, and my theory (purely speculation and of no scientific basis at all) is that this is tied to the economic hits both countries took in the early part of the new millennium: when things get tough, financially, companies get conservative, and that means scaling back on the transgressive stories and falling back on the old stand-bys of sexism and racism and all that jazz. There are outliers -- there always are -- but in general, the mid to late 90s were positively bastions of feminist storytelling compared to what's out there today.

[kaigou]

Moe with action... I'm drawing a blank. Granted, I tend to watch shonen more than shoujo (though I'm not sure Escaflowne counts, since the best description of Escaflowne's genre -- as a friend once put it -- is "about half shonen and half shoujo and maybe a quarter seinen and a little bit of josei with a big helping of mecha but with the twisted symbiotic relationships of mecha that you'd normally see in shojo and then a fair dollop of pseudo-political stuff with some major genderwhack in the background and we don't care that this adds up to a lot more than one") -- so I can't say I'm really any kind of authority on what sort of moe characters are out there. Ironically, my partner watches a helluva lot more moe/shojo than I do, so it's pretty common for him to know the female-led-stories better than me.

What I'd really like is a long and involved seinen-style politically-dense series... about Hojo Masako.

[hymnia]

Interesting point. I wanted to say something about shows that fuse the moe with the action girl, and then I realised that I can't think of any besides Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha.

Yeah, I feel like I've seen this a few times, but the only example I can think of off the top of my head is Gakuen Alice.