THESIS STATEMENT:
In the anime -Ranma ½, Ouran Host Club and Princess Mononoke, genders and sexualities are juxtaposed and performed in ways that either run counter to or subvert hetro-normative expectations, and juxtaposed and probed to prove that they are merely ‘baseless constructions’.
ABSTRACT:
This study examines how gender and sexuality operate within English-translations of certain Anime, (animated Japanese television series;) with special emphasis on Ouran High School Host Club(Ouran), Princess Mononoke and Ranma 1/2.. through these anime, which employ tropes of fantasy, the supernatural, metamorphosis, gender-switching, cross-dressing, bishonen (meaning ‘pretty boy’) and yaoi (meaning ‘male-love,’) I propose to question the universal, traditional and normative roles and perceptions of gender.
An even more important aspect of animation is that, compared to other twentieth-century visual media, it is explicitly nonreferential. animation stresses to the viewer that it is separate from reality, or perhaps even an alternative reality. In animation , there is no underlying expectation of any kind of normality, which allows for the creation of genres and autonomous stereotypes, displayed through exaggerated and over emphasized characters , which influence rather than are influenced by society.
The concept of ‘performativity’ comes from references from Gender Trouble, Bodies that Matter and other texts by Judith Butler. Performativity conceptualises the paradox of identity as apparently fixed but inherently unstable, revealing (gender) norms requiring continual maintenance. Here, gender is seen not as essence or socialisation, but as the consequence of the performative.
Ouran, through the aesthetic traditions of the queer practice of camp and the fan practice of parody complicates and ridicules traditional sexuality and ideal gender roles. Princess Mononoke revolves around three main female characters, set in the historical time of the fourteenth-century Muromachi period, who are all distinctively ‘androgenous.’ Ranma ½, through the trope of metamorphoses, narrates the adventures of an adolescent whose sex changes when water is poured on him.
In these anime and manga, female and male protagonists perform their own genders and sexualities in ways that run counter to or subvert heterosexual expectations. Gender and sexuality are thus juxtaposed and probed to prove that they are merely baseless constructions’ originating from society, culture and language
OVERVIEW
- Abstract
- Introduction
- Ranma ½ : The Ultimate Gender-Bender
- Ouran High School Host Club: Doujinshi at its Best
- Princess Mononoke: The Vicious Feminine
- Conclusion
- Works Cited
- Glossary of Terms
- Attachments
INTRODUCTION
Japanese culture has seen a change, especially in the last two and a half decades,, and most of the social trends in recent years have been gender-related, as both men and women increasingly question their assigned roles in society. (Napier)
One trend seen in women recently is the tendency to put off marriage and child-bearing, or completely forsaking them for the free single life, sometimes turning, along with their male counter-parts, into a Hikikomori, or/and Otaru. Another trend is the movement toward the sexualization of young girls, exemplified by enjokosai, a practice in which high school and junior high school girls “date” older men for money to buy fancy consumer Goods. This can be directly recognized in the iconic figures of the shojo {anime and manga directed towards teenage and adolescent girls), is clearly both a reflection of and a comment on these trends. (Napier)
The culture of Japanese boys seems equally problematic, as the media increasingly fixes on sensational stories of their violence and irresponsibility. Even in arenas like the sports world, some of the players see traditional masculinity as “out of date.” (Napier)
Japanese men are finding a more nuanced masculine identity. For example, in his study of young Japanese men, anthropologist Fu toshi Toga interviews a number of youths who seem open to a changing gender identity, especially in regard to the roles women play in their lives. Several of Toga’s respondents specifically mentioned a willingness to share the housework and acceptance of and support for their potential wife’s career. Lifestyles that have been seen as exclusively the preserve of women are beginning to open. In her report on men’s cooking in Japan, Tomoko Aoyama suggests that “the cooking man has never before quite enjoyed the profile that he does in contemporary media and popular culture.”
Negative or positive, what does seem clear is that the gender identity of men in contemporary Japan is as much in flux as that of women, perhaps even more so. Japanese men today are being forced out of traditional notions of masculine performance and presented with a wide range of possible identities.
Media and cultural products explore these changes as well. However, it is in the world of Japanese animation and manga, however, that we can find a particularly wide variety of masculine representations. Because animation and manga function in a nonreferential realm, they may allow for a more complex form of viewer identification than live action can, which Paul Wells says, serve to “challenge. .. the illusions of realism. ” (Napier)
When it comes to the body, we cannot ignore the most important device in animation, the process of metamorphosis, also known as henshin in Japanese. This device allows us to explore the ways in which the body works within each narrative to highlight some of the most explosive issues of Japanese identity.
What Scott Bukatman says of superhero comics in America is highly appropriate, both for Japanese comics and for anime as well:, “The body is obsessively centered upon. It is contained and delineated, becomes irresistible force and immovable object… The body is asexual and homosexual, heterosexual and hermaphroditic.”
In shojo texts, being effeminate does not detract from the male character’s appeal. Instead, it only enhances his charm and social status. As a matter of fact, the female subject is put in a lesser position because she is not able to ‘perform’ femininity better than the male characters. As Judith Butler notes about gender construction, ‘Identity is performatively constituted by the very ‘expressions’’ that are said to be its results’. What Butler claims is that the performance aspect of one’s gender is itself the process of constructing one’s own gender identity. (Hay)
RANMA ½: THE ULTIMATE GENDER-BENDER
To put Ranma ½ into theoretical perspective, let us examine two quotes:
Segregating the sexes during childhood and defining the contexts and nature of their encounters later on, Japanese society defines gender roles with adamantine rules, In the realm of the imaginary, the strict roles encapsulating male and female are broken, being transgressed in fantasies which can be singly and variously violent, sadistic, maudlin, sentimental or comical…(Boronoff, Nicholas. The Pursuit and Politics of Sex in Japan)
…identification is always an ambivalent process, Identifying with a gender under contemporary regimes of power involves identifying with a set of norms that are and are not realizable, and whose power and status precede the identifications by which they are insistently approximated, This “being a man” and this “being a woman” are internally unstable affairs, They are always beset by ambivalence precisely because there is a cost in every identification, the loss of some other set of identifications, the forcible approximation of a norm one never chooses, a norm that chooses us, but which we occupy, reverse, resignify to the extent that the norm fails to determine us completely. (Butler, Judith. Bodies that Matter)
Ranma ½, an anime popular in the late 1980s and early 1990s is an imaginative comic romance that plays with gender (mis)identification through a fantasized form of transsexuality. Ranma Saotome, the hero of the series, is simply a regular high school boy who falls into a magic spring while practicing martial arts with his father. The magic of the spring causes him to turn into a girl when touched by cold water and to return to male form when touched by warm water.
Since rainy days, hot baths, and ponds or pools abound in the series, the opportunities for inadvertent metamorphoses are plentiful.therefore, we can say that Ranma is a literal representation of Butler’s vision of the “norm that chooses us.“ Unfortunately for Ranma, norms choose him, and his very public and haphazard boundary-crossing between male and female creates confusion not only for him but also for those around him. They are uncomfortably aware of a threatening destabilization of social boundaries without necessarily understanding the reasons for their own discomfort. (Napier)
Ranma 1/2 operates on at least two levels: the issue of constructing gender identity at the individual level and the public level. At the individual level, the viewer watches the appealing characters of Ranma and, at certain moments, Akane as they attempt to construct their gender identities while navigating the confusing tides of adolescence. At the public level, the series shows the gender norms that society attempts to impose upon him through the agencies of school and family. Issues of sexual identity, generational conflict, and societal confusion, are all invoked. (Napier)
It is clear that Ranma is not the only character with a confusing gender identity in the series. Akane, the youngest of the sisters of the Tendo family, whom with which Ranma and his father stay with throughout the series, is the most fully developed female character. Akane is in many ways Ranma’s feminine “double,” both mirroring and distorting his own gender identity problems, Although she is attractive and feminine (and without overtly masculine speech patterns), Akane is clearly shown as “different,” not only from her sisters, but also from the other high school girls. it is interesting to examine her character in terms of homosexuality and androgyny. Like Ranma, she too is a brilliantly gifted martial artist, who insists that she hates boys, although they constantly flock to her beauty. (Napier)
Whereas turning from female into male is usually seen in many fantasies as a means of empowerment, Ranma’s transformation from male to female is clearly coded as negative. As scholar Rebecca BellMetereau puts it in her discussion of androgyny and cross-dressing in Western film, “Impersonating a woman involves anxiety over loss of power, because it means that the male must identify with a typically lower-status figure. (Napier) However, it is clear that Ranma begins to come to terms with his dual self towards the end of the anime, and even volenteeraly changes his gender at times, clearly no longer looking at his curse in a negative light.
rejected by a girl he likes (Akane), Ranma-as-girl is the fantastic embodiment of certain key adolescent fears. Perhaps one of the most terrifying of these fears is what literary scholar Eve Sedgewick calls “homosexual panic,” the fear of the heterosexual male that he is really homosexual. This fear is played out in a variety of episodes throughout the series. For example, in one of the episodes, when Ranma is fighting with Kuno, one of his obmoxious schoolmate, he is splashed by water and becomes a girl. What follows is Kuno falling in love with Ranma, calling her ‘the pigtailed girl’. What is more revealing is the dream Ranma has later in the episode, where he has a dream where he and Kuno are seen naked in a bathtub, with Ranma changing from girl to boy.
The action in subsequent, increasingly broad episodes consists of Ranma fleeing various male and female figures who have fallen madly in love with one or the other of his identities. The mad pursuit of the evertransforming Ranma, and the ambiguously gender-coded Akane is evocative of Shakespearean comedy in which cross-dressing becomes a catalyst for a variety of misidentifications and misadventures. (Napier)
Kuno, in fact, appears to be the only ‘traditionally male’ character in the anime, being well-built, rich, and a good Kendo swordsman. He is the only person to wield a sword, which has strong symbolic allusions to phallic potency. He often duels with Ranma, and the duel can be recognized as a way to negate gender anxieties in Ranma, as he struggles to prove his manhood. Kuno is also the most comic character, with his over-the-top and obnoxious nature being the butt of many jokes, as well as parodying the traditional male image.
To conclude, Ranma1/2 is an anime that destabilizes sex and gender by juxtaposing sex in an individual human being, thus showing it as ‘literally’ baseless.
OURAN HIGH SCHOOL HOST CLUB: DOUJINSHI AT ITS BEST
Like Ranma, as both male and female, who suggested an extremely appealing form of androgyny, one that recalls the so-called bishonen (“beautiful boy”, is only one of the examples from a larger fantasy world in Japanese culture in which androgyny and gender-crossing are staple tropes. The boys of the Ouran Host Club take gender ambiguity to a whole new level.
What Boronoff calls the “realm of the imaginary” includes such famous cultural institutions as the all-male kabuki theater where onnagata, or female impersonators, were traditionally raised from boyhood to be more womanly than a woman. A more contemporary example of genderbending fantasy would be the renowned Takarazuka acting troops, in which women take all the parts in plays that themselves often revolve around plots based on manga and anime.
As John Fiorillo, in FAQ: Onnagata,says,
since the 1600s, onnagata are responsible for playing female roles. Like bishônen, the early onnagata struck a chord with the female audience and “became, ironically, the arbiters of female style among the urban population, and their skill at onnarashisa (‘female likeness’) represented a model for feminine expression and behavior that women found compelling, and which they sometimes emulated
Ouran High School Host Club is one of a handful of otaku parody anime released during 2006.The anime revolves around a girl, Haruki-Fujioka, whose cross-dressing and androgenous features lead the viewer as well as the ‘boys howst club’ to mistake her for a boy. The first episode shows her journey as she is forced to join the host blub, and towards the end of it, is revealed as a girl.
Gender-fluidity and cross-dressing have been accepted into Japanese culture, and are reflected in anime and manga. Apart from these, Ouran uses genres like reverse harem, bishonen, incest, bishojo, parody and sets all these events within the traditional limits of a high school ‘for the rich and famous’.
Ouran plays on these popular tropes and pushes against their boundaries by poking fun at the tropes themselves and the fans who enjoy them. In doing so, Ouran engages two important aesthetic traditions, both of which explicitly question traditional sexualities and gender roles, the queer practice of camp and the fan practice of parody. (Darlington)
Both camp and fan parody complicate traditional narratives by appropriating and refiguring them. In each case, a marginalized group seizes on an iconic cultural production and draws attention to its ridiculousness through playful, often reverent, exploitation. The more recent Japanese tradition of fan parody is associated with anime and manga fanatics who both undermine and pay homage to popular mainstream anime and manga by creating their own counternarratives that involve well-known characters in fantastic, often absurd, situations and unexpected homoerotic pairings, creating a subtext that complicates and questions the inclusiveness of the master narrative. Thus, while Ouran seems harmless though somewhat condescending toward both fan culture and cross-dressing, its engagement with these fundamentally disruptive traditions suggests a subtle undermining of Japanese patriarchal and heteronormative traditions. (Darlington)
According to James Welker’s article, “Beautiful, Borrowed and Bent:
The bishônen is a liminal figure who is “visually and physically neither male nor female; his romantic and erotic interests are directed at other beautiful boys, but his tastes are not exclusively homosexual; he lives and loves outside the heteropatriarchal world inhabited by his readers.
Another boundary-pushing theme which came into prominence – was female-to-male cross-dressing, a genre that was also dominated by female mangaka. Ouran is primarily based on this theme. Though a mainstream anime, Ouran engages in the style of camp/parody that is generally associated with dojinshi: It plays on earlier cross-dressing and shônen-ai manga by incorporating names and elements from famous series; its central character is a cross-dressing woman; it includes overt and excessive symbols associated with shônen-ai manga such as roses, lilies and the black/blond binary; and it constantly alludes to homosexual attraction and potential (through unrealized) homosexual relationships, which are watched closely by their female fans, who are always waiting for potential moments of homosexual lust, and often buy photos to commemorate them. (Darlington)
men are obsessively and fiercely objectified in the host club, which offers the clients, the high school girls, ‘every type of boy’, ranging from the ‘strong silent type, the boy-lolita, the smart type, the ‘apparently‘ homosexual twin brothers (who constantly evoke screams from their fans as they display ‘brotherly love’), the sophisticated and good-looking ‘king’ of the host club, and now Haruhi, who features as the ‘androgenous commoner’.
Like much good camp, Ouran’s ridicule is so couched in a layer of humor and over-the-top silliness that it easily slips under the radar. In the meantime, it has established incestuousness, cross-dressing and gay identities as normative narratives to be played against rather than questioned. (Darlington) In this way, Ouran, through a multiple number of themes, shows us that there can be more than one way, in fact many ways, in which gender and sexuality can be perceived. Lastly, through Haruhi Fujioka, the protagonist, it shows us that one’s gender or sex can not be decided based on looks or personality.
PRINCESS MONONOKE: THE VICIOUS FEMININE
Miyazaki Hayao’s 1 997 epic Princess Mononoke (Mononoke- hime) is a film that traces the journey of a prince, Ashitaka who strives, and finally succeeds in lifting a curse that was put on him by a tatarigami, a boar-god. Though arguably, the film mostly focuses on Ashitaka, what rendered it a ground-breaking and popular film was its ‘unconventional’ female characters, its imaginery, yet grounded retelling of history from the female perspective, as well as the ambiguous depiction of gender and the supernatural. The film is set in the japan that existed before the patriarchal system, in which nature, rather than humans, ruled.
Princess Mononoke reenvisions the conventions of Japanese history through a variety of distinctive and effective strategies. Perhaps the most important is one of subversion and defamiliarization. The film defamiliarizes two important icons in Japanese culture, the myth of the feminine as long-suffering and supportive and the myth of the Japanese as living in harmony with nature, often expressed through a union of the feminine with the natural. (Napier)
Princess Mononoke starts squarely in the realm of the non-human. It is set firstly in the sacred forests that are ruled by a fantastic deer-like presence known as the ‘shishigami’ and contains supernatural creatures such as the doll-like forest spirits known as the ‘nodama’ and clans of sentient animals such as wolves, monkeys, and boars. The second is the fortress of Tatara, a manufacturing factory headed by Lady Eboshi, where they mine iron ore to make armaments. In another example of subversion, guns, rather than swords are manufactured here. (Napier)
Furthermore, the film defamiliarizes conventional notions of Japanese history through Miyazaki’s decision to set the film during the fourteenth-century Muromachi period and his subsequent subversion of conventional expectations concerning what a film set in that period should be “about. (Napier)
As critic Komatsu Kazuhiko said in his book “Mori no kamikoroshi”, “This is not a work based on historical faithfulness. …This is fantasy dressed as historical fiction with a variety of facts and fictions gathered together.” Princess Mononoke takes place in a mythical space deeply removed from the capital, both literally and symbolically. As Miyazaki states in his introduction to a book about the film, “Contrary to the usual film, this is a movie in which few samurai, peasants, or feudal lords appear. This is a film in which the main protagonists are those who usually do not appear on the stage of history. Instead, this is the story of the marginals of history”.
The marginals, in particular, the female characters represent the ‘abjected Other’, which, when linked to the aspects of repudiation and destruction, can be seen as ‘seeking revenge’, something we see happen directly between San and Eboshi, where San, who hates all humans, harbours a particular hatred towards Lady Eboshi, the leader of the technology-driven and modernised community of Tatara. Eboshi in turn is determined to take over the forest, requiring her to killl the shishigami. Thus, Miyazaki aptly titles his introduction to The Art of Mononoke-hime, “This is a story of battle between humanity and the wild gods”.
The way in which the film mixes “facts and fiction” is an important element in its destabilizing effect.Two of the most important aspects of this destabilization are the film’s defamiliarizing of conventional female characterization and its “supernaturalization” of nature. (Napier)
Animation scholar Paul Wells says that earlier Miyazaki films ” operate in ways which re-negotiate narrative paradigms accentuating masculine power and authority…” and this is especially true for Princess Mononoke. Turning to his female characters, it is evident that in Princess Mononoke, Miyazaki not only undermines a host of female stereo-types from conventional Japanese culture, but also from the anime world
As critic Murase Hiromi points out, there are three important female characters in the film: Eboshi, the leader of Tatara; San, the human girl who has joined wild nature; and Moro, San’s adoptive wolf mother. What is most remarkable in the three characters is the lack of the expected gendered aspects of sweetness and cuteness s(kawaii), which are more or less present in all other Shojo anime. Overall, the female characters possess a gender-neutral, or at least deeply ambiguous, characterization compared to traditional female stereotypes, and they remain completely outside the misogynistic patriarchal collectivity that rapidly became the foundation of premodern Japan.
In her provocative essay, Murase Hiromi sees the three females as occupying significantly different positions in relation to the nature-culture dichotomy that exists as one of the main pivots of the film, For Murase, San and Moro exist as a mother-daughter coalition aligned with nature and in opposition to the “civilization ” of Tatara over which Eboshi rules, Eboshi in turn may be seen as a kind of artificial mother to the collectivity of Tatara, In the death of Moro at the film’s end, Murase sees nature being overwhelmed by culture. Murase also suggests that Miyazaki may be covertly playing with gender boundaries behind the screen of the nature/culture dichotomy.
It is certainly true that all three female protagonists possess characteristics traditionally coded as male, and that, with the important exception of Ashitaka, there are no male “heroes” in the film. It is also possible to suggest that the use of females in conventionally male-coded roles is another link within the film’s overall strategy of destabilization. (Napier)
This is even true in the case of Moro who, at first glance, could just as easily have been made into a male wolf. By making her both female and a mother but refusing to allow her any conventionally maternal characteristics disturbs the audience’. Even more defamiliarizing is Eboshi. While most standard historical dramas use the main female character as a “vehicle for tradition,” Eboshi’s character subverts the conventional notion of the traditional female role. (Napier)
San’s character also defamiliarizes the feminine. The “heroine” of the film, she is shown as a ruthless figure of virtually unrelenting violence. Her blood-smeared face, fierce demeanor, and fur clothing obviously connect San with both violence and nature, but there is also a strong hint of the sexual primordial female as well, who is more ominous than erotic. San’s body is thus inscribed with wildness and primordial sexuality, making her Otherness not simply female but bestial as well‘. (Napier)
Her refusal to live with Ashitaka and her decision to stay in the forest ensure that a sense of loss or absence inevitably permeates the film’s conclusion. As a result, the ending of Princess Mononoke is a kind of draw, with neither side triumphant and the abject still not entirely repudiated. (Napier) Therefore, by showing that gender and sexuality are merely constructions of society and culture through its female protagonists, Princess Mononoke renders these constructions ‘baseless’ .
CONCLUSION
Ouran, Ranma1/2 and Princess Mononoke are just three anime that reflect Japanese culture’s reaction and parodying of gender and sexuality by performing their gender roles in non-familiar ways, which disturb the normative understanding and force us to reinvestigate what gender and sexuality mean to us, or even if they mean anything at all.
Therefore, shojo anime uses tropes like metamorphoses, cross-dressing, bishonen, gender-switching, homosexuality yaoi and yuri to not only act as a reflection to contemporary events but a response (or, rather, a variety of responses) to them
WORKS CITED
Napier, Susan. Experiencing Contemporary Japanese Animation. 2nd ed. New York: Palgrave Macmillant, 2005.
Hay, Valerie. “The Politics of Performative Resignification.” British Journal of Sociology of Education Vol 27, No. 4 (September 2006): pp. 439-457
Darlington, Tania. “The Queering of Haruhi Fujioka: Cross-Dressing, Camp and Commoner Culture in Ouran High School Host Club.” . ImageTexT: Interdisciplinary Comics Studies. 4.3 (2009). Dept of English, University of Florida. 7 Feb 2012. <http://www.english.ufl.edu/imagetext/archives/v4_3/darlington/>.
‘Okayama DNNG Guide: New Anime Series Previews’, 10 Feb 2012
http://www.animeph.com/anime-terminology-vocabulary-term
Ouran High School Host Club. Dir. Takuya Igarashi. 26 episodes. Prod. Bones/Animax, NTV. 2006.
Ranma 1/2. Dir. Tomomi Mochizuki (season 1). 161 episodes. Prod. MVM Films Network Fuji Television, Animax1989-1992
Princess Mononoke. Dir. Hayao Miyazaki. Prod. Nippon Television Network . 1997
GLOSSARY OF TERMS: ANIME TERMINOLOGY OR LEXICAN )
A
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Anime:
Animes are Japanese cartoons. They used to be hand-drawn, but today most series are computer-generated (CG). Anime authors often base their works on the stories of popular manga, H-Games, novels and computer games. A typical anime television episode is 24 minutes long. A series usually consists of 12, 24, 52 or more than 100 episodes
(B
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Bishoujo:
Anime/manga genre. Literally means “beautiful girl”. Bishoujo series usually are targeted at men and this subgenre is present in almost all genres where there are attractive female character designs, like for example in harem series or eroge.
Bishounen:
Anime/manga genre. It is literally translated to “beautiful boy”. Bishounen anime/manga usually deal with homosexuality or are romances with a female protagonist.
D
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Doujinshi:
Usually short One-shot mangas drawn by amateurs and fans, which are then sold and traded in big and popular manga conventions in Japan. But even some popular professional mangaka participate in those events and create doujinshi. Doujinshi are based on popular manga and anime and often function as comedy, parody and erotica. The copyright owner of these series sometimes do not wish to see any violation in their rights by doujinshi, but often it is commonly accepted anyhow and can be rather seen as promotion. Doujinshi scans and translations are also available on the internet.
E
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Ecchi:
Ecchi is the Japanese letter for „H“, which is short for hentai. Still ecchi is different from hentai. Ecchi as a genre stands for series with lots of fanservice, sexual hints/thoughts and skin showing, often in a comical manner or creating a funny situation. There is no pornography involved. Anime characters either say hentai or ecchi to call someone else a pervert, while hentai is stronger than ecchi.
Enjo kosai:
Enjo kosai or compensated/assisted dating is a practice in Japan where high school-aged girls are paid by older men to accompany them on dates and sometimes even to render sexual services. While in some cases it is a form of child prostitution, in most cases enjo kosai does not even involve kissing or holding hands. Enjo k?sai is linked with the consumerist ko-gal subculture and many observers believe that it serves as a way for young girls to preserve an expensive lifestyle, despite their families’ more difficult financial situations.
F
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Fanservice:
Fanservice in anime/manga refers to sexual hints like breasts showing or panty shots. There is a very large variety in fanservice. Shower scenes, sexy clothes, swimsuits, close-ups, wet see-throughs and many more things count as fanservice. It is basically all sorts of sexual eye candy and it is shown in almost every Anime/manga series to a certain extend.
Fujoshi:
Fujoshi is what fan-girls of the yaoi genre call themselves. It is a pun on the terms for “rotten girl” and “respectable woman”, which are homophonous but slightly different in Japanese writing.
H
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Harem:
Anime/manga genre. The term is a creation of Western anime fans. Harem animes are love comedy shows that feature 3 or more girls who are or fall in love with the male protagonist. The concept of these shows is for the viewer to identify himself with the often average type protagonist and find a girl among the large female cast appealing to his taste. These series are often adaptations of famous Japanese dating simulation games or designed to appeal to a similar audience.
Hentai:
Literally means pervert. Hentai are pornographic anime. There is also hentai-manga, hentai-doujinshi and hentai-games. Because of a certain very old law in Japan, it is forbidden to sell erotica that clearly shows genitals. Therefore male and female genitals (if shown) have to be censored in every piece of adult material on the Japanese market. However, there is Japanese adult material licensed by foreign companies and produced for foreign companies, which are therefore available uncensored in foreign counties.
Hikikomori:
Literally means “pulling away, being confined”. The term hikikomori refers not only to the sociological phenomenon but also to individuals belonging to that group. Hikikomori are people who feel uncomfortable in public and lock themselves away from society in their apartment or their parent’s home. They rarely leave their dumped down room and often kill time by playing computer games all day or watching anime and the likes.
J
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Josei:
Anime/manga genre. Josei literally means woman and is targeted at woman and older teens. It is one of the rather rare genres and feature realistic romance stories about adulthood, growing up, collage, complicated relationships and other post-modern realistic topics with female protagonists. Josei is something like a rather mature shoujo. Examples for Josei are Paradise Kiss and Nana.
K
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Ka-waii:
Japanese for „cute“. This word is very very often used in anime. Often even as a single word (Kawaii!!).
Kendo:
Japanese material art with a typical wooden sword. In anime there is always a kendo club at school.
L
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Lolicon:
Erotica anime, anime pictures and manga that feature young girls. While erotica involving minors is illegal of course, lolicon is still legal in most countries because of the artistic freedom. This genre even has a surprisingly large fandom in Japan.
This word is also used to describe, insult or mock people for being interested in this kind of material.
M
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Mahou Shoujo:
Anime/manga genre. Literally means magical girl. Mahou shoujo are stories about witches or sorceress with magical powers. They are usually rather young and depend on transformations to activate their powers. A very famous example for mahou shoujo is Sailor Moon.
Manga:
Manga are Japanese comic books. Manga series are usually released in weekly magazines (for example Shounen Jump), which contain several different series of the same genre. Later on each of those series will be released as box-sets. Depending on the series one volume of a certain manga can contain from 2 up till more than 12 chapters, but in the end, no matter in how many chapter a volume is divided in, it almost always consists of roughly 200 pages. The amount of volumes a manga series lasts depends not only on the mangaka`s (the author`s) intentions, but also on the popularity of the manga. Weekly manga magazines also contain one-shots, which are short stories that consist of only one chapter. Most Manga are black and white and are read from right to left, which might be a bit confusing for foreign readers at first. In economic terms, weekly sales of comics in Japan exceed the entire annual output of the American comic industry. Manga series get licensed, translated and released all over the world. International manga-fans complain about edited and censored manga. Editing happens due to cultural references, voilence and nudity. A lot of Fan-groups also release their own translated scanlations of unlicensed (and sometimes even licensed) manga and release them for free on the internet (For further information on this topic look at my Download-Guide).
Mangaka:
Mangaka are professional manga authors. Successful mangaka are treated like big celebrities in Japan.
Mononoke:
Means ‘possessed by a human spirit’
Moe:
Moe is a Japanese slang word and would be best translated to „cute“. But it is not simply cute. There is a big moe fandom. Anime and manga characters that are described as moe are often young, naïve, cute and innocent.
O
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Otaku:
Literally means fanatic. Otaku are obsessed Japanese anime and manga fans. Certain merchandise and anime that air late at night are exclusively targeted at otaku. While it has negative connotations in Japan to be called otaku, in America and the international anime community this term is more flexible. Some call themselves otaku with pride for their detailed knowledge of anime, manga and the Japanese culture, others think it is negative and implies being a freak and even others think it is only appropriate for Japanese people to be called otaku.
S
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Seinen:
Anime/manga genre. Literally means young adult. Seinen is targeted at men and older male teens. It is sometimes similar to shounen but deals with darker, deeper and more realistic themes and characters, but most often it deals with issues of university students, adulthood and the working world. Can also contain sexual hints.
Shishigami:
The deer-like spirit of the forest, turns into a figure at night, known as the ‘night-walker.’ The forest depends on it for life.
Shoujo:
Anime/manga genre. Literally means girl. Shoujo is targeted at young female audience and usually features a romance story with a female protagonist. The most common setting is 2 or more beautiful boys from school fall in love with the protagonist, while she herself is unsure about her feeling.
Shoujo-ai:
Anime/manga genre. It literally means girls` love. Shoujo-ai series deal with homosexual relationships between females. Shoujo-ai is synonymous with yuri, while yuri usually is more graphical. This genre is very popular among male readers and viewers.
Shounen:
Anime/manga genre. Literally means boy. Shounen is targeted at young male audience. Most common shounen settings are action adventures of the male protagonist in a fantasy world that features fighters and super powers.
Shounen-ai:
Anime/manga genre. Literally means boys` love. Series of this genre deal with homosexual relationships between men. Shounen-ai is synonymous with yaoi, while yaoi is usually more graphical. This genre is very popular among Japanese girls and women.
T
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Tatarigami
A powerful spirit, usually one of a god, that has been contaminated with hatred and evil
Y
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Yaoi:
Anime/manga genre. Series of this genre deal with homosexual relationships between men. Yaoi is synonymous with shounen-ai, while shounen-ai is usually not as graphic as yaoi. This genre is very popular among Japanese girls and women.
Yuri:
Anime/manga genre. Series of this genre deal with female homosexual relationships. Yuri is synonymous with shoujo-ai, while yuri is usually more graphical. This genre is very popular among male readers and viewers.
(Okayama DNNG Guide)
ATTACHMENTS
CD containing three anime:
1. Ouran High School Host Club. Dir. Takuya Igarashi. episode.1 )Run time: 23 min.) Prod. Bones/Animax, NTV. 2006.
2. Ranma 1/2. Dir. Tomomi Mochizuki. season 1, episode 1 (Run time: 23 mins.) Prod. MVM Films Network Fuji Television, Animax1989-1992
3. Princess Mononoke. Dir. Hayao Miyazaki. Prod. Movie (Run time: 130 mins.) Nippon Television Network . 1997
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