On Chivalry in Anime
Chivalry is a recurring theme in a lot of anime.
In one of my favorite series, Re:Zero, the main character Subaru is motivated to improve by his love for Emilia. Toyko Revengers features Takemichi Hanagaki, who goes back in time to try to save Hinata, the only girlfriend he ever had. Many isekai start with the male character teleported to another world after dying while trying to save a female character, whether it is a longtime crush or a random woman crossing the street.
Though chivalry is often thought about the romantic context, it doesn’t necessarily need to be. Tanjiro is trying to figure out a way to change his demon sister Nezuko back into a human. Sometimes it reaches the level of motif, like in Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? where Bell frequently saves female characters; other times it’s more episodic, like Luffy and his pirate gang fighting the seaman Arlong to free Nami from bondage.
Whether it is the knight saving a princess from a dragon, Clark Kent saving Lois Lane, or Peter Parker saving Mary Jane, chivalry is often synonymous with gendered heroism; to put more simply, a form of heroism where typically the men are saviors and women are saved.
There’s a level of chivalry that appeals to people’s sense of naturalism (men are physically stronger than women) and traditional gender roles (men are suppose to be the protectors, in the broad sense of the word). When shown through Bell, chivalry is framed in a benevolent way—Bell is a genuine, compassionate guy who tries hard to do the right thing. Though Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? can be viewed as a harem anime, Bell draws women (friends, foes, love interests, etc.) to him because he is morally upright. In other anime, chivalry can be a toxic expectation, diminishing the thoughts and feelings of men and boys. In Neon Genesis Evangelion, the character Asuka often berates Shinji with “Be A Man!” diatribes, projecting her own insecurities and emotional baggage on to him. Heroism and masculinity are conflated throughout the NGE tv series and films.
A feminist and queer theory critique of chivalry is that it essentializes gender roles. The woman is always the one being saved, and in turn becomes more of an object in men’s stories than a subject in her own. The damsel-in-distress are usually beautiful, and, within anime, are typically either very cute and innocent like a little sister, or drawn with stylized bodies. She is passive, waiting for the man to save her. Chivalry is more often than not situated in narratives where the saving is from physical threats (a monster, a villain, a trap, etc.). Since men are generally more physically stronger, chivalry implies that men inherently, by nature, have a greater capacity for heroism. Yet what’s interesting about anime is that the heroic protagonists are often women (arguably more often than any other genre).
In some ways, the presence of beautiful fighting girls is a product of the commercialization of anime. To put bluntly, they sell; they are ubiquitous, fungible and well-tested tropes in commercially successful anime. However, I would argue that, on a psycho-analytical level, part of the reason beautiful fighting girls are so popular to many male otaku is that they alleviate men’s anxiety about chivalry.
Society links things like providing for a family, the ability to commit violence (whether as self-defense or to assert dominance, which, within chivalry, is both) and sexual prowess (particularly to heterosexual men) to manhood. Men internalize the message, both subliminally and explicitly, that they aren’t “real” men (or are still boys) until they can successfully fulfill a rigid set of gendered expectations.
But in anime, powerful women and magical girls save men and boys, and both male characters (diegetically) and male otaku (vicariously) are recognized for things other than their strength or mastery of violence. This is why it is interesting to consider that many of the most beloved anime are essentially reverse chivalry narratives.
One could argue that the problem here would be that within beautiful fighting girls trope, the gendered social expectations embedded in chivalry aren’t eliminated, but merely passed on. The male anxiety about chivalry is sublimated into and ameliorated by the female heroine. Male otaku are only freed in the way that one is freed from debt if another person takes it on. So it’s hard to say whether or not the heroine subverts or challenges the underlying gendered logic of chivalry.
But dissecting the concept of chivalry and how it is used in anime is a good way to understand how gender roles are constructed and operate in both art and real life.
