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This article will be revised and expanded in a few weeks, once finals are over. In the meantime, all links have been fixed and many have been added; see below for links to all sorts of outside agreements, arguments, and counter-arguments. This article has spurred debate all over the place.
Imagine you're a 14-year-old girl. Mike, that totally hot
tall guy in your homeroom, is king of the class and can
have any girl he wants...until one day you bump into him
on the roof, and as you mumble an apology and try to scoot
he grips your arm and expresses interest. Omigod, Mike wants to go out with you?! But he's been with so
many girls! With cheeks flushed you rush home, wear your
prettiest, and go out with him that night. You're too shy
to talk much, but he puts some moves on you and leaves with
a kiss and a bit of a feel-up. You don't know Mike really
well, but you're so excited he's putting his hands on you
that you don't care. His sexual advances are making you
fall in love with him.
Within a month or two of dating similarly (or a volume
or two of manga), you let Mike take your virginity. Despite
the fact that he's no older than 16, he's slept with tons
of girls and knows exactly how to make it perfect--so the
experience is wonderful save for your slight embarrassment.
In the days that come, Mike initiates sexual activity pretty
much every time the two of you are alone, and even though
you voice tiny complaints like "We're in a public place"
or "My mom's downstairs," you don't actually
argue with him because you like it. Once or twice he pushes
his limits and drives you to do something you don't want,
at which point you storm off, cry because you never want
to be apart from him, and immediately make up with him (and
have sex to celebrate) as soon as he apologizes.
Mike is always the one to initiate sex. When Mike's jealous
of another boy talking to you, he forcefully kisses and/or
has intercourse with you, and you're touched by this sign
of fervent love for you (and therefore fall in love with
him further). He's possessive, and you're happy. He's dominating,
and that's the way you like it. You two live happily ever
after.
And there you have a typical "risqué"
older-shoujo
romance, the likes of which you'll find in Cheese
phonebook
manga magazine or the popular
mag Shoujo Comics (aka Sho-Comi, the magazine
Yuu
Watase's titles run in). These sorts of magazines are
generally read by high-school aged girls in Japan, or anyone
who can download off IRC and grab Shoujo
Magic's stuff. For those titles that don't follow the
exact formula (the above scenario, with some modifications
and a pop idol, is pretty much the manga
Get
You), shades of the same themes will appear in different
forms: the submissive slave doormat Hatsumi of Hot Gimmick,
the inexplicable forgiveness of abuse in Boys Over Flowers,
the ridiculous male sexual domination in 90% of anything
Mayu
Shinjo writes. As these titles slowly leak into the
American market, the dangerous clichés of older-shoujo
manga are seeping into American readers, and a shocking
number of them--most notably the teenage girls--don't seem
to be noticing that these themes go against everything taught
to us by health class, older siblings, and protective fathers.
Does anyone else see something wrong with this picture?
Before You Send Your Flames
The purpose of this article is not to bash your favorite
manga. Many of the titles mentioned in this article have
redeeming features such as interesting plot points, a few
likable characters, large casts of attractive men, and addictive
soap-opera elements. We don't want censorship or boycotting,
all we want to do is bring up a few points that the American
manga audience doesn't seem to have picked up on yet--and
possibly make some readers think about what they're reading.
The Problem
Until rather recently, the shoujo titles that made it to
our market didn't pitch themes against collective American
values; Sailor Moon did date a much older man, but
they rarely even kissed. Peach
Girl and Mars,
although both adult comics that dealt with sex, made it
very clear that sex wasn't okay until the girl gave
explicit written permission. Since everyone has a different
opinion on when sex is a good idea, these titles, like most
of our own media, presented an opinion still within standard
guidelines: characters thought about it, talked about it,
and reached consent before continuing. These titles didn't
push any buttons much of American media hasn't already hammered.
What has happened recently is the more dangerous
Japanese titles, series like Hot
Gimmick, Boys
Over Flowers (aka Hana Yori Dango), Sensual
(AKA Kaikan) Phrase, and the soon-to-be-released Haou
Airen, are joining the ranks of American bookstores.
These series feature possessive and controlling men, young
girls who find male domination a standard and a turn-on,
and the concept that sex is something only men initiate.
Where in American media have these themes ever been
encouraged? Despite the large readerships of these shoujo
titles, few readers seem to be commenting on these detestable
morals, and it makes us wonder if people are noticing them
at all (possibly because these themes are limited to a select
few titles in America as of this writing, but similar series
have been licensed and are on their way). More readers need
to start thinking about what they're reading before these
values unconsciously become some sort of twisted standard.
Believe us; if you read enough of this shoujo, before long
a boyfriend raping his girlfriend won't make you bat an
eye.
And hence this article. We just want people to think about
they're reading--bad things happen when people don't think.
Dangerous Theme #1: Nice Guys
Finish Last
The main male love interest in risqué shoujo can
be honestly frightening. Outgoing, controlling, jealous,
and generally much more experienced than his female counterpart,
he often isn't particularly concerned with making his love
interest happy or comfortable unless he's getting what he
wants out of the deal. The main female character may be
surrounded by many controlling men, but the one she eventually
hooks up with is distinguished by his obsession with her
and her alone. This is a variation on the "bad boy"
cliche found in so many love stories, but taken to such
an extreme that any redeemable factors these boys have are
completely overshadowed by their abusive or dominating tendencies.
Dating a conventional bad boy is exciting, broadens your
horizons, and really pisses off your parents; dating one
of these bad boys will probably leave you in therapy
for years, if not the hospital after he catches you glancing
in the general direction of another guy. Akuma
na Eros (one of Mayu Shinjo's import titles) actually
features a young woman choosing Satan as her love
interest over the potential love of an angel. Not surprising,
unfortunately.
Dangerous Theme #2: The
Leaders Of The Woman's Movement Are Spinning In Their Graves
This kind of male character wouldn't be such a problem
if the main female characters stood up for themselves. Unfortunately,
many of these shoujo female characters are willing to be
victims of their own romances, relinquishing all control
of their lives, relationships, and bodies to someone who's
dangerously unqualified. The main female character is often
depicted as an ordinary student whose main distinguishing
feature is how nice she is. Unfortunately, "being nice"
often equates to "being a doormat," so she ends
up in all kinds of horrible situations simply because she
can't bring herself to say no or speak badly of anyone.
(See Alice
19th, one of Yuu Watase's most recent, for a most heartening
and positive handling of such a problem.)
Hatsumi, the main character of Hot Gimmick, is probably
the worst example of this. At one point during the manga,
one of her skeevy suitors attempts to have her gang-raped
by a bunch of his friends as revenge on her family; as these
strangers are doing their best to have sex with her, she
actually feels that she has to apologize to her love interest
for something one of her family members did to one of his.
Thankfully, most shoujo characters aren't as bad as Hatsumi,
although too many fall along the same lines. Tsukushi from
Boys Over Flowers is for the most part a strong female character
who stands up for herself and her beliefs, so why on Earth
does she think the assholes around her (guilty of repeat
physical and/or verbal and/or emotional abuse offenses)
are worth considering a relationship with?
Even the better female characters in this kind of shoujo
are content to waste time on a guy whose bad characteristics
outweigh his good to a ridiculous degree, forgiving him
for unforgivable offenses and giving him second, third,
and fourth chances without his even bothering to apologize.
Being a forgiving person is a good thing, but forgiving
someone and trusting them are two very different things,
and girls can't afford to be stupid about their relationships.
Let's not forget these are often high school girls with
high school boys; either member of the relationship being
stupid can lead to very dangerous, even violent consequences.
Dangerous Theme #3: The
Man Wears The Pants and Lays Claim to Hers
As you might imagine, a love story between an obsessive,
controlling boy and a passive, sexually-inexperienced girl
generally results in an extremely bad relationship, where
any sensible girl would have called the cops three volumes
ago and gotten his ass arrested. The relationships are too
often one-sided, with the girl relinquishing all power in
the relationship to the boy. She'll do what he tells her
to do, she'll have sex when and where he decides, and whatever
doubts she has in her head about what she's doing will be
pushed aside. Not only is this moronic, it takes away any
respect a girl might have for herself, her body, and her
right to decide how far she'll let things go. Intimacy is
no longer something a man and a woman decide on together--now
the boys can force it upon their love interests as a twisted
means of showing affection, and the girls are desperate
(or stupid) enough to accept that.
Dangerous Theme #4:
Problems From The Inside
These comics are written by women as escapist romantic
fantasies for women and teenage girls. Worse yet, the weak,
submissive female characters are accepted by large portions
of their female audience as realistic depictions of normal
high school girls. As a few reader reviews from Amazon.com
wrote about Hot Gimmick:
"It's so sweet^__^"
or even
"Hot Gimmick is kind of like watching your own life
unfold."
Hot Gimmick, for those who don't know, centers on a teenage
boy blackmailing a teenage girl into performing sexual activities
with him. When he's not assaulting her, he's referring to
her as his "slave," verbally abusing her at every
available opportunity, and even pushed her down the stairs
when the two of them were kids.
He's her main love interest.
Is anyone else bothered by this?
The ultimate problem here isn't actually with manga. We're
worried about the way some girls view themselves and their
relationships, their desire to make others happy at the
expense of their own happiness, and their tendency to get
pushed into things they don't necessarily want by boys.
Manga and other types of fiction reflect and exaggerate
real-life problems. The only time this is dangerous is when
a reader uses a work of fiction to reinforce the bad, unhealthy
opinions that she already has about the way the world normally
works.
Please think about what you're reading. Manga is fun, but
don't let it ruin your life. 
-Christopher Butcher, a very very cool comic connoisseur/neighbor with an amazing website at previewsreview.com and an also-amazing blog, recently commented on our article here.
-This led to a debate here on Elin Winkler's livejournal, which largely agreed with our points...
-...as well as on Johanna Draper Carlson's Cognitive Dissonance page here, which largely disagreed.
-Chris Butcher then commented again here.
-At some point, telophase--who writes amazing stuff in livejournal--jumped in, and there's another debate here.
-At another point, there was more talk (from a mother of girls/manga reader; cool!) at Mangablog here.
-There was also someone who hated us (cool!) at Love Manga here.
-And of course, here's the now-fixed link to the discussion hosted on this site: Shoujo Dangers forum thread. It's a shame we lost the old forum to a hacker, since that thread was robust with talk 6 months ago. Ah, such is life.
Feel free to jump in and add to the debate! We'll be back here with a new-and-improved version of this article in a few weeks--this thing desperately needs a revision. See you soon! |
