Pretty Soldier
Gendering Manga, Anime, and JRPGs in the West
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Now that I’m in my 20’s, most of my early childhood memories have gone away. Sure, I can still remember reading Charlotte’s Web in 1st grade, playing Math Blaster in 2nd, and getting bullied in 3rd. But everything around elementary school feels dreamlike as an adult. I have no idea how I got here, why I made it this far, or how I’m holding down a career as a freelance writer. Being a 10 year old boy feels a world away from being a 22 year old trans girl.
But there’s certain parts of my childhood that are hard to forget. They come back to me in waves — sometimes light, sometimes heavy. And there’s one particular memory I’ve been thinking about for awhile now, about a girl I knew in 3rd grade. Her name was Sandy.
No one ever said it to her face, but Sandy was a bit of a “tomboy.” She moved to our town in the middle of the school year, and rarely hung out with other girls. Instead, Sandy was a geek. She played video games, and challenged boys to Yu-Gi-Oh! card matches during lunch.
Early on, I got the impression that Sandy wasn’t very well accepted among the boys. True, they played with her, but they didn’t talk to her about her deck with the same enthusiasm as they did the other boys. No, she was a girl encroaching on “boy” territory — which included video games, trading card matches, and Pokémon.
I think my brain got a very sinister message from watching the way Sandy was treated. I thought girls weren’t really supposed to play Yu-Gi-Oh!, because Yu-Gi-Oh! was for boys only. So if you were a girl, and you brought your own Yu-Gi-Oh! deck, well, you weren’t normal. You were weird. Nobody wanted anything to do with you, and both boys and girls would only put up with you for so long.
My case was a little different, of course. I wasn’t like Sandy. I grew up being told that I was a boy, when I was actually a girl. So while Sandy had mixed experiences with our school’s Yu-Gi-Oh! players, I spent lunch time watching matches with the boys and chatting about Pokémon on the playground. It was pretty inconspicuous. I looked like I was just another boy, talking about boy things. No one expected anything different about me, because it was just natural to assume that I was one. So I didn’t face the same kind of scrutiny that Sandy did.
But my pre-teen years were pretty stressful in another way. The truth was, I had a lot of trouble connecting with boys as a kid, and I spent most of my childhood with no close friends. Without anyone for support, I turned to cartoons and video games to deal with the depression I felt every day — and, for the most part, it worked. But while I could freely enjoy playing Pokémon on my living room couch, I felt a need to conform over and over again. And that pressure was only mounting every day.
You see, I grew up right after the ’90s anime boom in the West. Sure, Pokémon, Digimon, and Yu-Gi-Oh! were all taking American boys by storm, but there was also another trend coming to the States — shojo anime. Sailor Moon captured the hearts of young American viewers in those early years, and series like Cardcaptor Sakura were eager to compete. Spirited Away had just come to the States, too, and reintroduced an entire generation to Hayao Miyazaki’s powerful women leads. The ’90s gave way to a flurry of Western imports, and it was hard to ignore. I grew up right in the middle of it.
So while I had my Yu-Gi-Oh! deck and Pokémon cartridges, I secretly wanted something else — I wanted to watch Cardcaptor Sakura and Sailor Moon. But I shied away. Shojo anime was strictly off-limits for a boy, and, well, a young trans girl still in the closet was no exception.
So I not just turned away from Sailor Moon, I sneered at it. I hid my interest in it, because I was afraid of enjoying something that was “feminine,” something that featured women characters. I didn’t want to end up like Sandy. So I clung onto an image of myself as a masculine boy, and hid myself from the outside world — not out of comfort, but out of fear.
Growing Pains
Gender is slippery when we’re young. Most of us become aware of it at a very early age, but we might not necessarily know what it means. That changes once we get a little older, when we feel pressured to conform to masculinity or femininity. It’s hard to break loose, once gender roles take control. We feel the need to fit in, so we play along with the expectations around us.
I think I first became aware of gender right around the same time I met Sandy. Back then, I really wanted to get a Tamagotchi keychain. They looked so adorable, in their little egg shell cases and pixel worlds. I saw some of the girls bring their own Tamagotchi to school, and I knew from the start that I wanted to raise my own digital pet.
But I was careful not to tell the other boys that I wanted a Tamagotchi. You see, Tamagotchi was one of many “girly” things that boys did not play. Instead, boys were supposed to have Digimon keychains — little digital monsters, bent on fighting and attacking one another for sport. Raising a cute little Japanese pet wasn’t a thing that “boys” did, so I was scared to tell the other boys what I wanted to play with at school. I knew they’d look down at me or bully me if I told them that I was interested in Tamagotchi and Sailor Moon.
But it wasn’t just the playground that shaped my relationship with femininity. Family played a big role, too, because my parents literally controlled what came in and out of the house. Tamagotchi is a really good example, actually. How was I supposed to tell my mom and dad that I wanted to take care of a cute little pocket monster? They’d tell me no, because Tamagotchi was a “girly” toy. Boys didn’t raise their own little cartoon pets — that’s what girls did. I quickly became anxious about what my parents had to say if I broke those unspoken rules, if they saw me enjoying television shows that were deemed too “feminine.”
I tried it once, of course. I watched an episode of Cardcaptor Sakura on our living room Magnavox. But I was so embarrassed by it. There were way too many girls in this, I thought. Where were all the boys? Are you telling me the girls were the ones that were supposed to save the day? Oh God, what if Mom saw me watching this? I was so scared she would say something, I didn’t watch another episode again.
My paranoia about femininity really heightened around 9th grade, when I stopped playing Japanese video games altogether. JRPGs like Disgaea, Okage: Shadow King, and Kingdom Hearts were the first to go. After all, Okage had a player character with soft facial features and wide hips, whereas Kingdom Hearts’s Sora barely sported an inch of muscle on his body. Something about JRPGs attracted androgynous characters, and I knew my parents wouldn’t approve. Like Cardcaptora Sakura, I was worried they would tease me for playing games that weren’t very “masculine.”
It turned out my fears were true, too. Back when I was 14, I picked up a copy of Metal Gear Solid 2 and played through the entire game on our living room TV. The moment that Raiden showed up on screen, I knew that he would be the butt of every joke in our household. With his tight black suit, long blonde hair, sleek arms, hairless chest, and wide hips, he was a perfect target — a beautiful, feminine man.
And it was that beautiful body that did me in. While hanging onto a walkway on Big Shell, Mom caught a glimpse of Raiden’s round figure and soft thighs. She started watching over my shoulder, saying that Raiden looked too feminine because of his “girly” hips. I tried to explain to her what “bishounen” was — literally “beautiful boy” in Japanese — and how Raiden was playing into that trope. But she only found him weirder for that very reason, and thought a man in a video game shouldn’t have that kind of feminine body.
I was so embarrassed by what my mother said. Not just was Mom criticizing one of my favorite video games, she was also judging me for playing a game with a feminine man. I hated the way she made me feel. I never went through MGS2 in front of her again. And one by one, I slowly gave up on playing any other Japanese games on our television set.
Pretty Sailor
When I was growing up, I felt that any inkling of femininity in a main character was a sign that a series was intended “for girls only.” To some extent, that’s what my family and classmates thought, too. So imagine my surprise when I found out that Sailor Moon was enjoyed by both men and women in Japan during the 1990s. Huh. I thought Japanese men only watched Yu-Gi-Oh! and Pokémon.
But it’s true — Japanese culture has a very different approach to masculinity and femininity in manga, anime, and JRPGs than Americans do. In fact, shonen and shojo series often end up appealing to both men and women. Don’t believe me? Just take a look at Professor CarrieLynn Reinhard’s essay, “Representations of Women in Japanese and American Pop Culture.”
As Reinhard points out, women in shonen were originally cast as scantily-clad eye candy for male viewers in the 1970s. But things began to change during the ’80s and ’90s. Suddenly, women began fighting alongside the men — not just as lovers and girlfriends, but as heroines, too.
The anime series Inuyasha is a perfect example. As Reinhard says, the main character Inuyasha and his sidekick, Kagome, had a relationship between one another that was considered ideal:
This relationship matches what Iwao (1993) describes as the Japanese ideal of gender equality; a balance of power between the sexes, each with their own job but neither more important than the other. While sometimes the damsel-in-distress, she is just as likely to save the day with her magic-enhanced archery or by encouraging Inu-Yasha, whom she loves.
Reinhard goes on to say that Sailor Moon’s protagonist, Usagi Tsukino, also appealed to Japanese audiences due to her “hybrid” personality, “displaying both feminine and masculine traits as her ideals are love, friendship and saving the world.” In fact, she suggests that Sailor Moon “served as a means for bridging the masculine and feminine” in Japanese popular culture, hence why the series became a runaway hit with both men and women.
True, Reinhard’s research may seem obvious to any manga or anime fan familiar with shonen. But Usagi and Kagome’s relationship with gender roles are often lost in translation between Japanese and Western culture. Case in point: while Usagi was welcomed with open arms in Japan for her mixture of masculine and feminine character traits, Reinhard notes that American boys saw the series as explicitly feminine, and turned away. Hence why Sailor Moon struggled during its early years in the States — and why I felt the series was only “for girls.”
So, what does this mean? Well, fundamentally speaking, anime is created in one culture, imported into another, and reinterpreted by the new culture’s norms. Sometimes, cultural meaning is lost along the way. Or new interpretations are imposed upon the original work by its new audience. Either way, no two cultures enjoy the exact same work, because we walk into anime, manga, and JRPGs with our own cultural values.
Granted, that’s not to dismiss the relationship that Western fans have with Sailor Moon, Inuyasha, or any other series. But it does mean that Japanese works are “coded” into the West — and, particularly, into the States — in a way that doesn’t necessarily reflect their original gendering in Japan. So, when I thought that a series was “feminine” or “female-oriented,” that didn’t necessarily mean a manga, anime, or JRPG was originally designed as a “feminine” or “female-oriented” work in Japan. As an American, that was simply how I thought about Japanese media when I was looking at a store shelf, or flipping through the TV dial.
The 33% Ceiling
Back in elementary school, I had this notion stuck in my head that Sailor Moon and Cardcaptor Sakura were too feminine for me to enjoy. I shied away from both of them, even though I secretly liked them. But I don’t think I was necessarily alone.
You see, there’s an ongoing worry online that Japanese manga, anime, and JRPGs are a “shameful” interest. We’re told that Japanese media is something to hide away in the privacy of one’s home, or otherwise refrain from speaking about in public. This can cause a lot of anxiety for fans that are already self-conscious of the ways in which Western culture genders anime as a feminine interest.
Take one post on Reddit’s anime subreddit, titled “Is anybody embarrassed by their anime habits?”. Like myself, many posters were ashamed of their interest in manga and anime during their teenage years. Others refused to discuss anime with their co-workers and family members well into adulthood, or refrained from window browsing manga in their local bookstores:
It doesn’t help that I work in a profession where liking anime is at best an oddity. I know how you feel. I always get tremendously embarrassed if I spend time in the manga or anime section of a shop. I tend to buy things online instead.
It’s easy to tell someone to the [sic] open about their hobbies, but don’t feel like you have to be, especially if you have good practical reasons not to.
Perhaps misery begs company, but it’s depressing to know that so many Westerners are afraid to express their interest in Japanese manga, anime, and JRPGs. They feel judgment from friends, family, even total strangers. So, what gives? Why is this happening?
Let’s go back to Reinhard. As she points out, America has significantly lagged behind in providing the means for women writers and artists to share their own stories as creators:
Social feminism, taking its cue from Marxism, believes the reason for the oppressive stereotypes of women in the media is due to the lack of women in control of the production of those portrayals (van Zoonen, 1991). As indicated by the presence of shojo manga, women artists have had a commanding presence in Japan since the late 1960s, whereas their presence in American pop culture has been limited (Robbins, 1996; Burrows, 2004). This could possibly be due to the perception in the United States that only social rejects (aka “nerds”) read superhero stories, and for a girl, being labeled a nerd is typically twice as debilitating for her social standing than it is for a boy.
Reinhard suggests that the stigma behind being labeled a “social [reject]” is so strong that women avoid reading graphic narratives. This is true. But there’s also an underlying feminist concern behind Reinhard’s argument. Women’s presence in American mass media is so rare, that their prominence in Japanese manga and anime is seen as subversive to our culture’s male-dominated standards. In other words, anime is uncomfortable for Americans because women experience far greater screen time in Japanese media.
Upsetting, no? Well, just look at American actress Geena Davis’s 2013 interview with NPR. Davis, who formed the highly influential Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media research organization, found “that if there’s 17 percent women [in a given group], the men in the group think it’s 50–50. And if there’s 33 percent women, the men perceive that as there being more women in the room than men.” Davis argues that the 17 percent rule is so standard across American mass media, that viewers naturally believe women should possess no more than 17 percent of all positions in a given field. Anything over 33 percent is considered way too much. Naturally, the same could be said for anime, manga, and JRPGs that feature robust casts of women characters — any series with over 33 percent women characters, or less than 66 percent men, are seen as overtly feminine.
Of course, Davis’s ideas aren’t new to Geek criticism. In February 2014, games critic Cara Ellison related her 17% rule back to L.A. Noir for Paste Magazine. “[T]he media I consume trains me not to notice that I’m being marginalised,” she notes. “Imagine if all our media represented women and men equally, and then for some strange reason it flipped to be as it is now, the 17%? We’d all be extremely uncomfortable with it. It would be noticeable.”
I think Ellison is correct — Western media trains readers, writers, viewers, and players to see 17% as the golden standard. But what happens when media outside the West breaks through the 17% standard, and challenges our expectations? What does it mean when Sailor Moon primarily features women characters, or Kill La Kill focuses on women’s sexual relationships with their bodies? What does it say when a series like School-Live! looks at a group of four schoolgirls managing their School Living Club, all without a single man in sight? When Japanese media shatters the 33% ceiling, Americans label these works as “feminine” or “girly.” But in reality, these shows are enjoyed across genders in Japan.
I think this is one of the reasons why so many anime fans are self-conscious about Japanese manga, anime, and JRPGs in the West. In both shonen and shojo, women feature prominently, and interact with each other independently of the men around them. The sheer fact that women star in more than 33% of a given series is shocking to the average Westerner. But for manga and anime fans in Japan, that’s not just a standard. It’s perfectly normal.
On Reflection
Back in the early 2000’s, I didn’t have the vocabulary to understand why I was gendering manga, anime, and JRPGs as “feminine.” I hardly understood what gender was, and how family and peer pressure dictated my everyday life. It literally took me two decades to realize that I was a woman, and it’s been an ongoing struggle for a place at the table since.
For better or for worse, I don’t think my relationship with gender is particularly unique. Like many transgender women in childhood, I treated my gender as something to be hidden away from public view, and pushed my real self back into the subconscious regresses of my mind. For the very same reason, anything that could be coded as “feminine” had to be put aside. That meant no Spirited Away, no Sailor Moon, and no Cardcaptor Sakura. But it also meant no Kingdom Hearts, no Okage, no Final Fantasy, and no Disgaea. Because I feared femininity, and because I fed that fear into a raging anxiety, I refused to engage in anything that showed even a hint of androgyny. In other words, I turned my back on manga, anime, and JRPGs because I thought they were too “girly” for me to enjoy.
But that’s simply not true. There was no reason for me to hide from anime when I was a kid, whether it was “too girly” or not. You see, I was just being a coward. I was sacrificing my personal happiness because I was more concerned with “reputation” and “respect” than enjoying something I truly loved. So instead of facing reality, I ran away from a serious passion of mine. All because I was afraid of being judged.
It was pointless to hide, really. In the end, it was only a matter of time before my fragile sense of security came crumbling down. And once I came to terms with my gender identity, I also began to accept myself as a person, and embrace my old interests again. I said goodbye to my old life, and the childish fears that came along with it.
True, accepting yourself takes time. It takes self-awareness, and humility. I’ve had to slowly coax myself into watching anime again, after putting it aside for all these years.
But now that I’ve started, I just can’t stop. I’m starting to remember why I wanted to watch Sailor Moon and Cardcaptor Sakura all those years ago. And it’s never been a better time to begin again.
