Analysis of trauma representation in anime and manga
One of the most peculiar aspects of the anime world is its immense diversity. There are different genres, and it is possible to find absolutely opposite titles within the same world. Among these countless genres, two of the most talked-about and loved are the ones called shounen and shoujo — and, in a peculiar way, they are also two of the most polarized, as they apparently have no similarity between them. This is observed in the names themselves: shounen (少年) meaning boy, shoujo (少女) meaning girl. Essentially speaking, however, the biggest difference present when comparing the animes and manga of each of these genres is found in the way each one portrays emotions.
I admit that I am guilty of not being extremely knowledgeable about shoujo — my interest has always been focused on shounen and seinen, and the greatest experience I had until last year in the genre was limited to the classic and brilliant Kimi no na wa. However, I recently recommended the 2019 anime adaptation of the Fruits Basket manga, originally published in 1999 by the manga artist Natsuki Takaya — and what caught my attention in this work was, in addition to its deep and charismatic characters, the way in which the author portrays trauma and traumatic experiences.
Shoujo is, above all, a genre about human emotions and how people interact with each other, both its bad and good aspects. In Fruits Basket, due to its complex and profound storyline, there is a constant representation of disturbing situations, but not only that — there is also, and most notably, the representation of how these situations interfere in the lives of the characters afterward. In a small but striking picture, the character Yuki Sohma is shown immobile and shaking after being forced to confront the person responsible for his childhood trauma.
Every single character in the story has a dark backstory — even Akito Sohma, the head of the family, the God of the Zodiac and the apparent antagonist of the series, sickly and psychotic and prone to intense and violent mood swings, the one responsible for Yuki's trauma and Hatori's blind eye, and known for being merciless to those who do not obey his orders, even he has a heartbreaking story himself; detested and abused by his obsessed mother, manipulated by those older than him, constantly strangled by the deep fear of being abandoned when he had been taught all his life that all those of the Zodiac were born to adore him and be with him forever. The first bond he feels as it severs is the one with Kureno, the boy possessed by the spirit of the bird — and so Akito shatters, as soon as he senses their connection being broken, and begs Kureno to stay with him.
It's definitely a heartbreaking scene to witness, even after all of our knowledge of what Akito did and continues to do to others. We know he's the one responsible for Kisa's selective mutism, for Hatori's blind eye, for Yuki's paranoia; and yet, it is shocking, and saddening, to see this character we have known as all-powerful and all-consuming, the darkness in Yuki's life, the sharp cut of the happiness everyone only ever achieves when not under his unnerving control, break down completely, terrified of being abandoned.
There's much violence in what happens in Akito's character, around him, to him — at the end of the story, he's forced to go back to living as the woman his mother forsake from the moment of his birth, and there is transphobia there, a sort of disturbing fix-it tool, so that Akito can be with Shigure and their relationship be classified as heterosexual — so that his mother's abusive, greedy desire of not having any other woman steal away the attention of Akira, the previous God of the Zodiac and her husband and Akito's father, is fulfilled. By the end of it all, Akito suffers and he is traumatized, even he, who created so much suffering for those around him.
Admittedly, Fruits Basket is a particular work in the world of the shoujo genre, since it does not stick to a typical romantic school plot and due to the number of stressful situations faced by its characters.
So, what happens if we analyze the representation of trauma in a genre essentially centered on stressful situations?
The truth is that shounen anime and manga, for the most part, miss the target when it comes to emotions. Despite this, there are works that maintain both their intensity and their striking and vivid plots (as is characteristic of the genre) and manage, at the same time, to give their characters the proper space to feel and react to obviously traumatic situations. These works, not coincidentally, tend to be the most praised and loved works by fans of Japanese culture in general — and I believe this to be due to the fact that we, as human beings, are captivated by brilliant representations of emotions and feelings. In particular, I would like to comment on some specific works.
One Piece is the greatest shounen of all time and, I would say, one of the greatest works in human history, being on the same level as monsters in literature like Fyodor Dostoevsky and Gabriel García Marquez. This is due to a number of reasons, from the artistic genius of Eiichiro Oda to the fact that the plot attracts us in one of the most inherent things in human nature: the deep desire to explore the unknown. One of these reasons, however, is Oda’s ability to give emotional weight to traumatic situations. It is possible to mention several, but in this analysis, I will focus on one of the most commented and remarkable among the 971 chapters.
The death of Portgas D. Ace.
The entire arc of the Battle of Marineford is epic in itself — and yet the most remembered and most impactful scene of all is the death of Ace, in Luffy’s arms, after his last words: “Thank you for loving me”. Not only do we have an extremely emotional and sentimental statement — his last words being purely of affection and love —, but we also have Luffy’s reaction right afterward. Contrary to what happens in the vast majority of anime and shounen manga, in One Piece, Luffy does not experience an explosion of fury and power when he loses his brother. He does not become stronger.
He collapses completely.
The situation of Ace’s death, after the entire arc of the escape from Impel Down, after discovering the whole story that connects the brothers and the secret about Ace’s childhood, is so traumatic for Luffy that he finds himself unable to even move — he needs to be carried across the Marineford battlefield and delivered, catatonic and on the verge of death himself, into the arms of Trafalgar Law. Unable to defend himself, to fight, or to react, he is portrayed completely devastated by the loss of one of the most important people in the world to him.
Eiichiro Oda is brilliant when it comes to representations of emotion, and that extends to all of her characters — Nami crying and asking Luffy for help when she finds herself helpless, Sanji smoking by himself under the rain after seeing his love denied and mocked.
One Piece is, indeed, a masterpiece; and an example of what it is like to tell a story, what it is to allow characters to suffer and react humanly to traumatic experiences. Luffy is in pain, and we are in pain with him as well — the reader’s reaction is immediately correlated to that of the character's with whom they identify, and we were also traumatized by Ace’s death.
But there are more subtle ways of portraying traumas and triggers, and now, let’s turn our focus to Berserk.
Berserk is considered one of the best manga of all time, and for good reason. Kentaro Miura is an absolutely brilliant narrator, and his art and portraits are phenomenal. It is impossible to go through the Eclipse experience and not carry that with you for the rest of your life — it is an epic, a truly astounding work. But I am not going to talk about the Eclipse. Let’s look at a much smaller scene.
In this scene, Guts is returning from his trip — and Erica talks about a visitor who has arrived, and who says he knows Guts. Her description is peculiar: “so beautiful that I could barely see that he was a man” — and, more peculiar than that, is this small picture of Guts’ reaction to her speech.
In just one frame, we can feel the panic, the trigger, the way Guts is immediately transported back to all the trauma he lived through with just a single sentence. His reaction is not one of immediate anger, as would be expected considering his entire journey in search of revenge against the man who robbed him of everything; it’s fear. Fear because he is traumatized, fear because he went through unimaginable things and they stayed in his mind. The human instinct for trauma. He remembers Griffith, and is bombarded with emotions, and they are all depicted in this little drawing by Miura.
Other works have this ability to be imbued with feeling along with the intensity and the battles and competitions and strong arcs characteristic of the shounen or seinen genres.
Neon Genesis Evangelion does this in an unforgettable way due to Megumi Ogata’s incredible voice acting in the role of Ikari Shinji, in such a way that his traumatized screams remain in the mind of the person who watches all the situations that the character is forced to face.
Most notably, the scene in which Gendou uses the EVA-01 unit to kill his son’s friend while he is helpless and forced to watch, having his own hands used to commit murder.
There is, also, the death scene of Kaworu Nagisa — often criticized and considered the fruit of low budget and creativity, but which I consider to be genius in an almost unexpected way, because it extends into one of the longest and most disturbing silences in the history of anime, while we are forced to imagine what must be going on in Shinji’s head when he is forced to kill the only person who has ever truly loved him.
Many other scenes in other works can be commented on. I saw comments from Kimetsu no Yaiba fans precisely because of the author’s failure to portray the way Kamado Tanjiro should have reacted to the death of his family, since the character is not given time to express any kind of mourning (as is observed, for example, in One Piece, when Luffy wakes up from his coma and goes through an intense outbreak when he realizes that Ace is really dead) — yet, Gotouge repairs her mistake by showing extremely striking scenes of characters dealing with traumatic emotions throughout the manga, especially when the casualties in the pillar fight against Kibutsuji Muzan and the demonic moons begin to reach devastating proportions.
Particularly, I have an appreciation for the way she portrays Iguro Obanai's character — in a small, but fascinating detail, she establishes his deep, intense self-hatred, a product of his heartbreaking childhood and his ingrained loathing for his own existence as a mechanism he utilizes to react to what happened to him.
Iguro has lived through what is, possibly, the most heartbreaking situation portrayed in the entirety of Kimetsu no Yaiba; we are introduced to his character as someone cold and mean, who deliberately seems to take pleasure in hurting other people, and with whom Tanjiro never quite manages to be on good terms. However, we are shown his backstory, and, in a peculiar panel, Gotouge establishes a deep-seated paranoia in his personality, brought upon by his trauma. And not only that, but his self-hatred, and his impossibility to ever truly free himself from his past, from the people who abused him and hurt him and kept him in a cage.
Suddenly, everything about Iguro makes more sense; his distaste for demons, his cold personality, his demeanor.
Kimetsu no Yaiba, as a whole, has a fantastic portrayal of traumatic backstories and the way they shape people's reactions to situations: Tsugikuni Michikatsu, the strongest of Muzan's Upper Moons, and his deep-seated jealousy and envy towards his twin brother Yoriichi, described by Michikatsu himself as "someone loved by the gods"; Shinazugawa Sanemi's relationship with Genya and how that is strained by their inability to communicate and their intense desire to protect each other, among others.
Hunter x Hunter, by Yoshihiro Togashi, is perhaps the work that best demonstrates the way your characters react to traumatic situations. As an excellent narrative strategy, we have Kurapika’s eyes turning scarlet whenever a mention is made of what happened to his clan or the existence of the Phantom Troupe — a striking scene being the one where he is forced to control himself when he sees the eyes of a murdered Kurta being put up for auction.
A pattern can be observed here: the best works, the most striking works in the history of the shounen genre, are also those in which the artist is able to portray human emotions in a vivid and genuine way.
The scene in which the Straw Hat crew needs to say goodbye to the Going Merry only becomes touching because the characters react to it, and, in parallel, the reader also reacts. We are empathetic human beings, and our empathy extends to these characters who, throughout chapters and episodes, have come to mean a lot to us.
The person who recommended Fruits Basket to me said, “The thing about shoujo works is that they are about emotions, so everything hits us more deeply.”
The conclusion I reached is that the shounen genre must be allowed to feel. To truly feel, to allow emotions to be absorbed and expressed. It is necessary that Luffy’s pain at losing his brother is felt. It is necessary that we feel Killua’s suffering when he says “There is nothing more I can do!” as he realizes that Gon is out of his reach in the Chimera Ant arc.
Shounen is so important to so many people because it is intense, because it is fun, but also because it allows us to observe what human beings are capable of doing in moments that change their lives. And the best works are those that understand this, and that portray this, and that pass it on to the reader, in the most subtle or most striking ways.
That is why works like this are important.
