SPOILER WARNING: Spoilers for the following shows are discussed: Neon Genesis Evangelion, Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam

Sometimes you step through some sort of dimensional rift. People on the other side don’t have goatees and evil grins, but rather friendly faces in the future. Then you get up, dust yourself off, and wonder where in blazes the last two weeks have gone. Assuming there isn’t an evil editor rewriting my backstory as we speak, let’s just say I ought to shape up, and move swiftly on.

So, about a year and a half ago, I was talking about Beast Wars: Transformers with a work mate of mine. This colleague did not enjoy Beast Wars but was a fan of the original Transformers series. I mentioned that one of my favourite Transformers was Blackarachnia (despite certain problematics I’ll go into later).

“Ah, no,” he said, “that whole deal is stupid.”

“What do you mean,” I asked.

“Her, you know! A female Transformer! Robots don’t have genders!”

“Oh yeah? Then why are all the other robots, both in the old show and Beast Wars, voiced by male actors, treated as males and referred to as hes?”

Silence.

The truth is, giant robots tend to have genders. And this is an issue that began to fascinate me as I explored it more and more, being as I am a giant robot nut. Today I’ll share a few patterns I’ve observed in anime and manga. Generally speaking, western realisations of giant robots are less human, and rely more on the idea of actual machinery (see Mechwarrior for example). Most Japanese productions, on the other hand, present the robot in more humanoid terms.

Frenchy Lunning’s essay in Mechademia volume 2, entitled “Between the Child and the Mecha”, illustrates the reasoning, conscious or no, for the prevalence of giant humanoid robots in japanese animation. (And I feel like I’m about to take a wrong step here, since Lunning is a Ph.D who has done a great amount of anime-related scholarship. Let’s just say I’m prepared to get whipped into oblivion in the comments for misrepresenting her ideas.)

She presents that the mecha is the external expression of the inner desire of the pilot, and how the mecha basically becomes the pilot, representing and iconising him or her. So, let’s go back to the very first piloted mecha, Mazinger Z (known in the United States as Tranzor).

Mazinger is a powerful robot, piloted by brash youth Koji Kabuto. Among Koji’s allies is Sayaka, who pilots Aphrodite-A. Aphrodite is a female mecha in a completely stereotyped way: it’s designed for peace rather than the war-like Mazinger, and despite being made of the same material as Mazinger, it suffers damage much more easily. I suppose I don’t need to add the word ‘essentialism’ here, but I’ll just toss it out there anyway.

After the Super Robot era that Mazinger heralded, giant robot anime evolved into the Real Robot era with Mobile Suit Gundam. The robots in Gundam were still predominantly piloted by men, and followed the same design cues of previous eras, but adding a touch of realism. The Gundam series, by now, has evolved so much that summarizing the gendering of its mecha (and its human cast) would require a whole separate article. However, let’s take a look at the ‘golden age’ of Gundam, during the first few shows of the Universal Century. In Mobile Suit Gundam, there are only two female pilots: Sayla Mass and Lalah Sune. Neither of them pilot humanoid machines, but rather a fighter plane and a “monster of the week” Mobile Armor. Lalah sees herself involved in a star-crossed affair, which would become a series staple. In Lalah, the creators also started another tradition: the mystified female enemy pilot. By mystified, I mean that said pilot is either mystical, bordering on the supernatural (thus ‘othered’) or, in many cases, mentally unstable (thus victimised and ‘othered’).

A perfect example of this is one of the antagonists of the first sequel series, Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam (who becomes the main antagonist of its sequel, Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ). I’m talking about Haman Khan, leader of the Axis Zeon. To provide some background, Khan is a charismatic leader, who finds herself and her faction being pivotal to deciding a civil war. After the civil war ends, Haman’s forces are in prime position to take over the Earth and its Colonies. Khan is a dictator, a powerful, cunning leader, a beautiful woman and an incredibly strong, superhuman pilot. Yet she is female, something that is remarked as “strange” more often than not, as it contradicts the happy essentialism we’ve come to know and love in comics and animation. In any case, Khan pilots the sleek newtype-use Mobile Suit, the Qubeley. Qubeley is unique in its design for many reasons. It is not boxy, and it’s not quite humanoid, for one, contradicting Gundam design principles. In fact, while most robots in Gundam are designed with practicality in mind, Qubeley’s look seems more aesthetic than anything else. Instead of straight lines, we have curves. Instead of primary colour schemes (or military ones), it’s mostly pink, white and purple. Oh yes, and it doesn’t even use conventional weapons. When Qubeley shows up, it is certainly an ‘other’ among mobile suits, and it manifests the ’strange female evil’ idea quite well. The follow-up would see a legion of Qubeleys, piloted by a legion of clones of… a young girl. I don’t think any man has ever piloted a Qubeley in any Gundam story.

(As a side note, while the human mecha in 1982 production Macross are quite realistic and thus relatively neutral, the mecha of the alien Zentradi race is not. The female Zentradi pilots utilise vastly different machines, which are more humanoid but also more stylised and curvy in their design. This is the first instance, in the Real Robot era, of machines being assigned genders on purpose, as it predates Zeta Gundam by three years.)

This segues well into my look at the next bit of mecha history, which is the body of work of Mamoru Nagano. Nagano designed the Qubeley and a few other mecha for Zeta Gundam, with his own unique style. He then went on to create the epic manga The Five Star Stories, which featured more of his sleek, unique designs, many of which are intentionally female-looking. In FSS, the robots tend to have a very close, personal link with their pilots, and can be seen as their will manifest. However, I will leave this for another article, since untangling the complex interactions of gender in FSS is, once more, a story unto itself.

Readers may be surprised to know that giant mecha anime went into decline by the early ’90s. By that point, with the exception of successful series like Macross, Gundam, and Patlabor, the genre was not fertile ground for too many productions, mainly due to its budgetary requirements. As such, innovation in mecha starts to slow down, with the most notable ’90s landmark being Neon Genesis Evangelion.

Evangelion’s mecha are unique, not just because of their design but by the fact that they are not actual mechs. They are basically gigantic cyborgs, mostly organic, the armor there to control the living being that is the Eva unit. I will go on a limb and say that the EVA mechs never felt male to me. There always seemed to be a sort of androgynous quality to them. It is ironic, then, that being Evangelions basically large-scale human clones, they are in fact the least gendered in their design. The film “The End of Evangelion”, however, throws a spanner in the works by clearly defining the EVA-01 as a clone of Lilith, thus female, and the rest of the EVAs as clones of Adam, thus male. As far as I’m aware, this is the first time when a mecha’s sex itself is discussed, albeit indirectly, in an animated series (I believe Mamoru Nagano’s Mortar Headd’s do, in fact, have separate sexes).

This brings us mostly up to date. I admit to not having seen a recent, quite relevant show called Rahxephon. With that exception, however, many mecha anime have not innovated so much in the presentation of the mecha, as they have in writing and story style. Thus, I have not myself witnessed any radical evolution since Evangelion’s take on the subject.

To wrap this up, I’ll just pose a question to you, dear reader. Why this gendering of giant robots? My take on it follows Lunning’s thesis that the mecha are an expression of desire, of the inner will of the pilot. Moreover, the pilot is often an iconised character designed for the audience to relate. Hence why many mecha anime have teenage boys as the pilots: they are, or at least have historically been, the main audience. Which, in turn, gives us a good inkling as to why robots must be gendered: the robot itself is not gendered, but rather its pilot is, and this gendering transfers to the robot in question. Zeta Gundam’s relevant female characters all pilot ’special’ mecha with important symbolism, though not necessarily ones I would gender as ‘female’. In Macross, the Zentradi culture is divided strictly along gender lines, which explains why Zentradi women have differently designed vehicles: they are an expression of their own view of themselves.

The Evangelions, thus, work well with this theory. Their nature is mysterious and ambiguous. Troubled, if I were moved to use that term in all of my posts which I assure you, I am not. The pilots of Evangelion are also deeply troubled, their personalities and desires unresolved and often dubious.

But I’ll tell you what I’m not dubious about. Optimus Prime is a dude. And he leads a race of dudes. Why is that? Because the audience for Transformers was little boys, and we all know that girls are i-ckay!

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[I hope you all enjoyed our site-wide April Fools Fruit/Veg activism. This new reality for G-W.org was a concerted effort by the whole Girl-Wonder team, and I hope you enjoyed it. To find out threads and other stuff that went down during April 1st, check here.]

Apologies for the tardiness, life gets in the way. Today I have just a brief update/catch-up, with a more complete one on the way in the next few days.

I must mention that I did not know that April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. It is not observed here in Europe, which is probably the reason why it was not in my radar at all. For this I apologise, as I have not done enough research to have proper articles prepared for it. I hope my American colleagues and readers will forgive this omission. I simply do not think I can do research on the topic, with all the seriousness and attention it deserves, in such a short stretch of time. Meanwhile, if you want to read a great series of columns on the subject, and how it relates to comics, Rachel’s post links to the columns she wrote for SAAM 2007. Check them out.

In any case, I will urge readers of this blog to get informed, and get involved, and I hope you forgive me if I do not write about comics today. I want to highlight, in this post, the situation of the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre here in Ireland.

Sexual assault and Domestic violence were issues which were taboo for a very long time here in Ireland. For example, it was only in 1990 that rape within marriage was made illegal here. The RCC was established in 1979 as a response to this urgent problem and the silence surrounding rape and domestic violence.

The centre offers telephone counselling as well as face-to-face counselling for victims, relatives and loved ones, medical and court accompainment. The RCC do a tremendous job helping out those in need, receiving over 37,000 calls in 2004. I have spoken to volunteers and they have described to me the appalling conditions in which they work. The Irish government provides nominal funding for the organisation, which regularly fails to help cover its costs to the tune of half a million Euro a year. The rest is obtained by the RCC through donations and fundraising events.

During International Women’s Day 2008, I took part in the Feminist Walking Tour of Dublin, organised by Choice Ireland in collaboration with RAG. A volunteer from the RCC addressed a crowd of over a hundred and explained the situation to us in detail. The helplessness in her voice was tangible as she explained how the issue of funding drastically undermined the work done by the RCC. I was close enough to notice the volunteer tear up as she finished her speech. “There’s just not enough money,” she said. This organisation provides an invaluable service, and is permanently at risk of shutting down completely. Yet all the Irish government wants to talk about is the banning of poets from classrooms, or the glorifying of the now deposed Glorious Leader.

Let me be very clear on this. The people who work at the RCC kick ass. They have all my admiration and respect for providing support to people in dire need of it, and for continuing unabated after being shrugged off by the government time and again. If you are outside of Ireland, you can donate. If you’re in Ireland, please attend their fundraising events, or contact them if you think you can help out.

If you want to read about the history of the RCC, you can check out Susan McKay’s Without Fear: 25 Years of the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre. The book is available from Amazon UK and many Irish booksellers.

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Now, allow me to break blog etiquette (blogiquette?) by talking about an unrelated subject.

My readers may not know this, but I am a committed fruit and vegetable activist. It has come to my attention that in my selfish blogging on gender issues, I have been casting a blind eye towards the plight of fruits and vegetables and their representation in the media. Before I can get into any actual analysis though, I feel it is proper for me to put some definitions on the table. I understand that many people may be unaware of these issues, and I acknowledge that. What you must know, however, is that much of the terminology used in this regard is actually very fluid. Bryce Noah’s seminal work “Not You Nor Anybody Else’s Side Salad”(1), for example, has revolutionised the usage of the word ‘legume’. On the other hand, the earlier compilation of Alice Buckman’s works, “Tomatos and Peppers United and Other Writings” (2), provides many terms that are now considered offensive in the Fruit/Veg* community.

The main term that needs discussing is the so-called Fruit/Veg binary, and how it relates to the more well-known idea of a Plantiarchal system. You see, it is in the interest of those in power that Fruits and Vegetables remain as separate categories, in other words, a binary opposition. The definition of one, thus, is meant to completely exclude the other. This benefits a number of powerful agents, and on the day-to-day level, it grants those in the upper echelons of the Plantiarchy power over, and often well above, the common plant. It is, in essence, a hierarchical system of oppression.

What we must come to accept as a society, is that the Fruit and Vegetable binary is a lie, simple as that. There are numerous individuals and institutions which are dedicated to ensure the rigidity of this binary. Moreover, a great deal of hateful and bigoted intellectuals, such as Richard Hunter, whose despicable “No Apples in my Salad” pretty much set back the Fruit/Veg movement 10 years. It is retrograde attitudes like these which must be vehemently opposed.

Hunter’s title speaks volumes about a kind of ignorance that has been allowed to run rampant even in the 21st Century. Someone needs to tell the man about the goddamn Waldorf Salad, for crying out loud.

Binary apologists often refer to the fact that ‘fruit’ is a scientific term, while ‘vegetable’ is a culinary one. As such, the argument goes, they have no place being in the same sentence, let alone the same discussion. However, we can see how this is simply oppressive discourse, aimed at keeping the thinking of alternatives to the binary as impossible to conceive in vocabulary. In common usage, the word “plant” covers both vegetables and fruits, for example. Yet this word is too all-encompassing, and includes many beings that are not edible. The binary is so intrinsic in our understanding of fruits and vegetables that it is almost impossible for us to think in different terms. Luckily, that is beginning to slowly change.

There is only one radical answer activists can give to such a reactionary, binarist view of fruit/veg politics. Shut up.

And there is only one icon we can adopt. One whose plight represents our plight. One which defies the binary conventions as defined by elitist cooks and scientists, lording their privilege over fruits and vegetables, and defining them instead of letting them define themselves.

This icon is the Tomato.

Never has the binary’s oppressive nature been displayed in a more direct way than in society’s dealing with the Tomato plant. Many have attempted to suppress the Tomato’s identity as a fruit, by defining it a vegetable. Maybe some people sleep better at night, knowing their salads have only vegetables, and their fruit salads only fruits. But this is a falsehood, perpetrated by the plantiarchy, which coerces all fruit/veg, not just tomatoes, into buying into a plant identity they may not hold for themselves. Not to mention the 1887 dispute in the United States, regarding the taxation of fruits and vegetables. Leaving aside the horrifying fact of a tax on fruits and vegetables, it was only six years later when the greatest judiciary of that nation, the Supreme Court, reached a verdict. The Tomato was a vegetable based on its use, and that was that.

As an activist and concerned blogger, I cannot sit on the sidelines anymore. From now on, it will be my duty to work to dismantle this oppressive system in my own small way: by analysing the enforcement of the fruit/veg binary in comics, particularly manga, anime and european comics.

Let our Tomato brethren be at the forefront of our fight for fruit/veg justice. Let us not fall into the old pitfalls and stereotypes. Join me for a whole new era for Prepare for Trouble!

*I realise that many members of the community have found Veg used as an offensive term. However, I firmly believe there is a process to reclaim this short form of vegetable, and that we shall wear our Veg credentials proudly. We’re Veg, we’ve got the edge, and we want rights, now!

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[PLEASE NOTE: This post contains spoilers for Fruits Basket, volume 16 (Chapter 97) and onward. If you want to avoid MAJOR spoilers, do NOT read. This warning will not be repeated.]

One of the few manga I follow on an on-going basis is Fruits Basket. Part of it is tradition: I watched the anime 6 years ago and loved it, getting into the manga as soon as it started publication. Part of it is its popularity, which renders it relevant due to its huge circulation numbers all over the world. But mostly, it is because I love it to bits, warts and all. It’s an amazing comic despite its (at times numerous) flaws. When the final volume is out in English, I’ll do one or two columns talking about the story as a whole. But not today.

No, today I want to talk about a big curveball thrown at the reader by author Natsuki Takaya. This is something I wanted to talk about because it was published only recently in English (last year) and I find it to be greatly relevant to this blog. Avid Fruits Basket followers know that this big revelation was originally published in 2004. I feel quite out of the loop, as I only found out upon recently picked up the English volume that contained the now-famous Chapter 97.

The audience which has only seen the anime may ignore that the anime was produced in 2002 and covered less than a third of the manga’s completed storyline. As such, large alterations were required to make the animated story cohesive. One of the biggest alterations was done to Akito Sohma, head of the Sohma clan. Akito is a big mystery in the storyline, and as such many details about him were withheld for a long time in the comic. Since the Fruits Basket anime was to be one short season, it was necessary to give the viewer information about Akito based on his characterisation in the manga up to that point. An example of this is the revelation in the anime that Akito’s sickliness is due to the Zodiac Curse, and that he will die young because of it. In the manga, on the other hand, this is not the case, and it is heavily implied that Akito’s illness and delicate state are psychological, more than anything.

Then, in volume 16 of the manga, Takaya provides us with more background regarding Akito’s psychological make-up. It is revealed by Kureno Sohma that Akito is, in fact, biologically female. He has been raised as a male, and is male-identified, however.

Oh goodie, thought I, late to the party as usual. However, as of this writing I have yet to find any thought or analysis of this big revelation, at least from a feminist/gender-aware perspective. I am still in the process of locating friendly feminist anime/manga blogs, I must admit (please leave any handy links in the comments, maybe I didn’t look hard enough). But aside from the academic essays printed in Mechademia, so far I feel like an unconnected island.

Back to the topic, while I have not read past volume 18, so far the plot purpose of this revelation is to highlight Akito’s delicate emotional state, in opposition to his violent outbursts. In fact, when Kureno reveals this secret to Tohru, he emphasizes Akito’s emotional fragility and weakness. Identifying as male allows Akito to present a facade that does not have this ‘female weakness. This is the explicit message.

Akito’s male identity is not voluntary. It has been imposed from above by her mother, who believed a head of the Sohma clan should not be female, because females are weak (again!). However, her misoginy is not exactly advocated by the text, since she is portrayed as an aggressive, violent, selfish character.

No, my bone is that this is not the first time I have seen gender identity used as a narrative tool to highlight a character’s oppression. Here I recall one of my favourite manga, The Rose of Versailles, which features a similar situation: the main character, Oscar, is raised as a male to satisfy the wishes of her father. While this only comes into play near the end, it is used as a plot device to highlight oppressive forces bearing down on the character. And this is exactly what Akito’s case is: Akito is not only constrained by the curse and his own psychological problems, but he is also constrained by a gender identity that is presented as ‘unnatural’.

Now, I will say here that I believe the aggressive imposition of a gender identity on someone is wrong. This is very broad, however, and it includes the way in which many people, dare I say most, are bullied into gender conformity. However, what I see in Fruits Basket is the opposite: someone who is crossing gender barriers is seen as unnatural, with the implication that biological sex is what really matters. Further, any deviation from that is an artificial imposition.

This isn’t the first time Fruits Basket has dealt with the gender binary in such a way, the other case being Ritsu Sohma. Ritsu is male-identified yet dresses as a woman. To recap, Ritsu dresses as a female because he feels inadequate. He feels he is too weak and pathetic to be a man so he… dresses as a woman. Once more, the “female=weak” motif emerges, to my chagrin.

What both of these cases have in common is that they are not representative of the real issues faced by people who do not conform to the gender binary. I admit ignorance on the situation of trans people in Japan. Yet in my experience as a Westerner, these two characters are not representative of trans issues. Rather, transgenderism is being utilised as a blunt tool for characterisation, with a number of rather worrying assumptions.

Before writing this, I came across Keith Vincent’s article on Yaoi, entitled “A Japanese Electra and her Queer Progeny” (published in Mechademia vol.2). Vincent cites debates rising from the queer community regarding the portrayal of homosexuality in manga. An ongoing debate involves Gay activists arguing against yaoi. They feel it does not represent real gay men, but rather a fantastic, idealised notion of them created for women.

Transgenderism in manga seems to be suffering from the same problem, a lack of connection to the reality of these situations. Gender bending has been used as entertainment for a very, very long time, mostly as comedy. And Fruits Basket has done this, but I am not entirely sure that is necesarily damaging.

However, when it comes to dealing with these issues seriously, Fruits Basket fails due to its lack of realism. This is worrying in a series typically held up for its realistic, complex characters in spite of the slightly fantastic setting. In Fruits Basket, transgender is simply a dramatic plot device, and an oppressive, ‘unnatural one’ at that. The “female=weak” motif doesn’t help either. In Fruits Basket’s defence, however, a motif of the story seems to be that everyone is weak. Regardless, time and again the ideas that “men are weak despite being men” and “women are strong despite being women” are driven home.

Finally, the last thing I wanted to point out is the fandom reaction to this, which has been divided. This was to be expected due to wide ignorance regarding trans issues, including the ignorance of the author. While I am sure discerning queer fans read Fruits Basket, the reactions I have seen more often fall into two camps. Camp one regards the plot device as incredibly contrived and unnecessary, and claim that it has “ruined” Akito. I suppose they have never met a female-to-male transgender person, if it seems so unrealistic that someone biologically female could be male-identified.

Camp two is equally problematic. In opposition to camp one, they accept the revelation, and continue to appreciate Akito as an interesting, complex character. An inclination in this camp has been to refer to Akito as female. “After all,” the reasoning goes, “that is her real sex, right?”

Admittedly, talking about the wishes of fictional characters is dodgy at best, tedious at worst. But as far as I have read in the story, despite his troubles, I have not seen Akito wanting to be a woman. This is an issue that most people have problems with when first learning about transgender issues. Something one quickly learns is that what matters is the way an individual identifies themselves. Akito identifies as a male. This is why I still refer to him in such fashion.

In conclusion, Akito’s reveal highlights the problematic situation of queer representation in Japanese media. The largely male-dominated world of Western comics often chooses to simply pretend transgender, bisexual or homosexual people do not exist. In the Japanese Shoujo tradition, queerness has been co-opted for a number of reasons, sometimes with less-than-optimal results.

I do understand that different people interpret things differently. I spoke before of how queer anime fans in Argentina saw Sailor Moon as very positive. This is despite being as problematic as Yaoi often is, upon deeper analysis. However, I cannot see how a transgender teen reading of Akito’s story can derive a positive message about their own gender identity. And this bothers me to no end.

Identifying these issues made me wince a bit when re-reading some old Furuba books. It happened because I love this comic, dammit. I think Fruits Basket does a lot of things extremely well as a comic and a piece of human drama. Sadly, dealing with queer issues seriously seems to be marked “pending” in mainstream manga.

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Greetings, readers! How are you? Come inside, and sit down. We’ve got a lot to discuss. Would you like a cup of tea? I’ll switch on the kettle. Yes, yes, I know I’m a week and a half late. I blame exhaustion, plus Int’l Women’s Day, which kept me mad busy (and entertained and inspired) and away from my computer. (Next article will be up on Friday, though!)

I hope you’re comfortable, because today I’ll be telling you about an anime series called Planetes, released around five years ago. I’m still beating myself up for taking so long to get around to it, having now seen it in its entirety. If you’ve never watched anime, and you’re looking for something mature, not exploitative, intelligent and insightful to get you started, this series would be it. After watching it, you can always settle for the crushing disappointment that is 90% of the anime and manga world.

Now, let me preface by saying two things. One, as you may know, in most cases it is very difficult to figure out authorial intent in anime and manga. This is because most interviews and source material are in Japanese, and only few people have the skills/time/inclination to translate them. Add this to the fact that I don’t read anime magazines, and what you have is that I am a bit misinformed regarding the background of certain works. I am not the only one, either. Read anime blogs and you’ll find, time after time, deconstructions of the work with little to no reference to the authors and producers, unless they’re crazy famous. I also want to point out I have yet to read the manga, but since it is a separate production, I’m fine with that.

Two, is that I recommend Planetes because it hits all the right buttons in my head. My buttons mightn’t be everyone else’s, which is only a good thing of course. And yet… it deals with space exploration as well as the concept of privilege, international relations as well as love, the conflicting views of a capitalism for the few versus the needs of the many… In short, it’s not for everyone. But enough gushing, on with the article.

In the near future, year 2075, humanity has started colonising space. There are two small cities in the moon, and numerous orbiting stations which are like small floating cities (though nothing like the mammoth colonies of Gundam). Because of the spike in development, the issue of space debris has become crucial to the expansion of this new frontier. Its collection is entrusted to the space development companies themselves. We are put in the midst of Technora’s Debris Section, which despite its huge importance is seen as a bunch of failures and losers by the rest of the company. The story begins as Tanabe Ai, a graduate fresh from college, enlists with Technora and is assigned to the Debris section. Despite their unkempt, unprofessional look, these people are actually adept professionals, and soon Tanabe is part and parcel of the ragtag team.

What sets Planetes apart is its execution. The key word here is realism. Realistic science, realistic characters, and a realistic world. Many science fiction series touch on the problems humanity faces, but the viewer bears witness to these only fleetingly. Planetes, however, meets these head-on. The main themes are the meaning of space exploration, as well as its harsh realities: loneliness, disease… and privilege.

I’m not going to go into the scientific realism of the setting. This has been praised elsewhere, and while it is noteworthy, it isn’t unique. Planetes treatment of international privilege is one of its defining characteristics. That’s right, much like the more recent (and less realistic) Gundam 00, Planetes deals with the issue of international privilege head on. As episodes transpire, we slowly realise that this is not a bright new future for mankind, but rather the future of the world we live in. Disease and poverty are still widespread, with Third World nations falling behind drastically as they are denied access to the benefits of exploiting Space.

This isn’t an afterthought. The characters are actually affected by this reality. Two secondary characters come from the Third World, and they start seeing little by little what the reality is for them, being ‘others’. Their bitterness at the privilege others enjoy is portrayed perfectly, as well as the frustration with the biggest privilege of all: being unaware one is privileged. I’ll go as far as saying my only gripe with these two characters is that their home nations are fictional, although they are rather obvious stand-ins for Brazil and Conflict-Rife Middle Eastern Nation #32. I have seen this done in anime numerous times, and it feels like a bit of a “get out of jail free card” for ignorance about particular national sensitivities, but still allowing the use of a specific national characteristic. Still, the characters are treated with such respect, and their motivations are so well-developed, that they are truly humanised despite the renaming of their very real nations of origin.

The other triumph of Planetes is in its characters. Admittedly, I was not impressed with Tanabe. She is not given much of a character arc, and comes across as excessively naive. However, despite being quite passive, she is shown as being a very capable individual, making her own choices. Hachimaki, like Tanabe, also comes from a cliché archetype (Tanabe is the shy short girl, Hachimaki is the rude antisocial boy). However, his development shows us a complex person with a deep anguish hidden behind his contrary behaviour.

Genderwise, though, the kudos goes to the characterisation of Fee Carmichael, an experienced astronaut who takes the astronauts of Debris Section out on their missions. Fee’s story has ended by the time the series starts, so she gets no arc, only what we can piece together. Regardless, she’s very well fleshed-out. Fee is married, happily so, and working away from home most of the time. She is not objectified, she is not chastised as being a bad mother for prioritising work over family, and she is highly, no, make that incredibly good at what she does. It is a common anime trope to depict tough women as being soft and weak on the inside, just waiting for the right man to come along and pry them out of their shell. Another common trope is that strong, capable women are somehow incomplete, due to their independence. Fee’s characterisation combats this stereotype quite beautifully.

What else? Well, fans of space exploration will get their due. The show is mega-realistic, as I’ve mentioned, with all the technology looking very plausible. However, the point of international privilege vs disadvantage is driven home quite frequently. This may make space exploration advocates think about what kind of world we would be exporting into the cosmos should we choose to do so. And yes, there is no sound in space, something used very well as a tool for dramatic tension.

Planetes didn’t happen in a vacuum. While it is a recent series, the 1980s fostered a new kind of science fiction anime, focused on realistic environments and realistic, mature characterisation. Planetes, thus, follows in their steps, proudly so. It’s well-written, it contains realistic female characters, and it explores privilege in a way no other anime is doing right now.

Planetes is available on DVD in both Regions 1 and 2. The manga is published in the United States by TOKYOPOP.

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[As usual, we start with an announcement between brackets. Firstly, I want to thank everyone who has been commenting on posts, be it at the blog itself, or at the blog's message board. I appreciate all your comments and I am glad you are all enjoying Prepare for Trouble. I just wanted to let you know that from now on I am disabling comments in the blog. If you want to comment, it's as easy as signing up for the Girl-Wonder.org boards and leaving your feedback. They are really good boards and definitely worth your internet time. I look forward to hearing from all of you again!]

Yes, readers, it is me, I have not gone the way of the dinosaurs just yet. I suppose I should set an update schedule for this thing, lest I become complacent each time I click the “publish” button. The Mafalda article was much more work than I predicted at the beginning. My essay-writing skills prove useful but alas, they demand that I research things to the point of absurdity. Here is where I reveal that the last post was actually twice as long originally. Some may see academic education as a plus, but when it comes down to being succinct, it can cripple the unattentive mind.

This post, however, signals a good-bye to the done-and-dusted mentality. I’m all about realistic schedules, so this is me setting a bi-weekly schedule for updates, switching between longer posts and rants as I announced before (unexpectedly, my first rant sparked so much debate I ended up writing more than I had intended on the subject. It just took place over at the forum.)

And now, for today’s post. When I began down the path of feminist inquiry and analysing the mechanisms of patriarchy, I began noticing small things. Certain attitudes, present in myself, acquaintances, and also co-workers. One day I was quite surprised by a co-worker who refused to watch Revolutionnary Girl Utena, one of my favourite anime shows. His reasoning was that Utena was way too ‘girly’, to which I thought, you know, whatever. The following week, this person went to see Transformers on the big screen, and the double-standard hit me square in the face like a hot metal slab.

The double-standard is this: boyish good, girly bad. We know it, right? But I was surprised, as I delved deeper into my past, at how prevalent this was throughout my childhood. Looking at the cartoons I watched (and the merchandise my poor parents had to dole out money for), an interesting picture emerges. In this picture, it is perfectly understandable for The Transformers to become a major motion picture, but there are no rumblings of a Care Bears or Strawberry Shortcake film in the works. No, don’t look for them. I know, amazing, isn’t it?

Yet for a lot of people it seems like common sense. Girly cartoons are stupid and frivolous, right? Boy cartoons are serious! I mean, a bunch of teddy bears with stupid names like Bedtime Bear or whatever, that’s just absurd. But grab a character from a boy’s show, say, I don’t know, a casette tape that transforms into a robotic panther, off the top of my head, and it’s no longer absurd! Now it’s cool, it’s interesting and we can make a Hollywood film for adults based on it.

The scary thing, to me, is how gendering gets drilled into people in such an absolutist way. I mean, sure, I watched probably way too much TV as a child. And I watched a lot of boys cartoons, to be sure. But I have distinct memories of visiting my cousin’s place and submerging myself in the fantasy worlds she was into. I had no problem as a wee toddler with sitting down to watch Care Bears or whatever. I found those toons fun in their own right. But I wouldn’t have dreamed back then to go and tell my male friends that I actually enjoyed She-Ra more than He-Man, or that I thought that, as far as transforming toys went, the Popples were just as fun to play with as the Transformers.

The gendering of children’s cartoons is nothing new, of course. Yet it’s amazing how they are derived from diferent societies’ perceptions of social roles. TV shows “for boys” were all about capable men fighting evil through light violence. The girl ones were, mostly, concerned about resolving problems through caring and love, and all this maternal crap that gets shoved down women’s throats. But this absurd double-standard I mentioned above means that, as one evolves into the adult world, boy cartoons remain as a fond, nostalgic memory, and girl cartoons are seen as an embarrassment.

And it’s ridiculous, because from an adult perspective all of these shows are equally stupid ploys to sell toys to children. It’s not like there’s a quantifiable difference in quality between the stories in girl cartoons and boy ones, for the most part. Hell, She-Ra had a much more interesting premise than He-Man: A bunch of guys beating on a bunch of bad guys (He-Man), or a bunch of rebels fighting a powerful evil empire led by a scary cyborg vampire (She-Ra)? I know which one I’d pick.

The Transformers originated from a board meeting in which toy executives in Japan said “wait a minute! Kids love robots, they love cars… how about robots that turn into cars?”. Add all the sci-fi trappings you want on top, but in the end it was, as Orson Welles said, a giant toy commercial. So is the current film. But that’s alright, because it was for boys. And it’s still for boys. Grown-up boys that have a beer after it and drop the word ‘gay’ referring to things they don’t like.

I suppose what I’m getting at is that it’s good that I had access to the so-called ‘girl’s world’, thus expanding the ‘boys world’ I lived in. I’m sure most people reading this, whether gender troubled like yours truly or no, can relate similar experiences. Yet I am sad for the person that cannot allow themselves to delve into certain kinds of art simply based on limitations enacted into them as children.

I feel old. I watch children’s cartoons these days, and while gendering is still present, there’s at least a greater breadth of animation (and comics) available to the current generation. Sure, toy commercial style shows still sell, but they’re not the fad of the day anymore. Barbies and Transformers are still around, but nowadays the big hitters are more surreal, unisex cartoons like Spongebob Squarepants, or the Pokemon behemoth. I’d be interested to read a comprehensive analysis of the changes in children’s cartoons in the last 20 years or so, personally.

(And before I get flames… for all I’ve said, I was a huge Transformers fan. But hey, one must get some steam out every now and again, y’know?)

Discuss this post in the forums.

[Before we start today, I wanted to quickly link again to the comment thread for my last post. In a surprising turn of events, Kenny Penman, owner of Forbidden Planet Dublin, which I mentioned in my rant. Kenny argues some of my points, and sheds lights on others. While at the end we disagree, the discussion remains civil throughout, and I believe his contributions are a really important complement to my column. Please check it out! I also want to thank Journalista and When Fangirls Attack for linking to my Sailor Moon article! Welcome, Journalista and WFA readers!]

Mafalda: From Viral Marketing to National Icon

Look! That’s the world, you see? You know why this world is lovely? Because it’s only a model. The real one is a disaster! -Mafalda showing her doll a mapamundi.

I must admit, it’s difficult to make a concise blog post about Mafalda. It’s the kind of comic (or rather comic strip) that has had entire doctoral theses devoted to its analysis. Yet, despite its fame throughout Latin America and continental Europe, it has largely been ignored in the anglophone world. This is a great shame, I find, and a great loss to those readers not fortunate enough to experience the joy of encountering Mafalda. It was my first comic strip and still one of my favourites. Hopefully this post will tell you why, and make you curious enough to track down the collections in English (they do exist!).

Whenever I used to talk to people about Mafalda, I didn’t know what point of reference to compare it to in the anglophone world. Peanuts comparisons are easy, but they are quite inaccurate. Mafalda is a much more intricate work, more mature and deep, as well as being deeply subversive. I recently encountered Calvin and Hobbes for the first time, and my dilemma was solved. Mafalda is like Calvin and Hobbes, only with a cast of seven kids instead of two or three. It has the same imaginary childhood escapism, the same analogies with real world events, and a similar take on kids and parenthood. However, Mafalda is at times more brutal in its honesty, more depressing in its outlook and, crucially, much more interesting from a feminist perspective. This has made Mafalda an icon (and character) of protest throughout nations like its native Argentina, Uruguay, Italy and Spain (where the Franco regime forced a “For Adults Only” label on the Mafalda books).

Mafalda is born out of the mind of Joaquín Salvador Lavado, a.k.a “Quino”, an Argentinian cartoonist who creates the character as part of an undercover marketing campaign (which we would now call ‘Viral Marketing’) for an electric appliances company. The deal fell through, thank God, and thus the strip proceeded to find its home in several publications. At this point, a look at the genesis of the comic may be timely, but fortunately that area has been covered, and I can move on to look at what makes Mafalda timeless for me.

With the background out of the way, just what is Mafalda, exactly? The premise is very simple: with no on-going storyline, Mafalda recounts the daily lives of Mafalda, a 7 year-old middle-class child living in Buenos Aires, as well as her friends and parents. As time goes by, more and more characters are added to the strip, each providing something unique in their personality which serves as a foil for Mafalda as for each other. Despite having very little character evolution, each of Quino’s creation has a life of their own, a personality that comes through in vastly different situations.

Let’s start with the protagonist. Mafalda is a child who doesn’t take no for an answer. As soon as she learns to read, she is immersed in newspapers half of the time, pondering on the problems of humankind. She comments on them with her friends, from the unique perspective a child can have on, issues such as the women’s rights movement, Vietnam, and Israel.

Aside from her, the rest of the characters are easy to summarise in few words. Felipe is imaginative but depressed by school and homework. Manolito is greedy and ignorant, symbolising the shallow material obsession of capitalism. Miguelito is a selfish dreamer yet, unlike Felipe, he is more selfish than anything else. Mafalda’s baby brother Guille, is quite like Mafalda in many ways only younger and more demanding. Mafalda’s overworked father tries to answer his daughter’s tough questions while, at the same time, enduring a mid-life crisis.

Felipe and Mafalda

Manolito and Mafalda:

Miguelito’s take on life:

Baby Guille and his Dad:

The female side of the cast, however, proves infinitely interesting from a feminist perspective. Her mother Raquel, who dropped out of university to get married, provides a critique to the traditional view of women remaining at home. Her choices are often questioned by Mafalda, who is growing up in the midst of second-wave Feminism, and strongly believes it is time for women to take part in public life in a major way.

Another hugely important female character in the comic is Susanita. She is often a foil and counterpoint to Mafalda. While the protagonist of the strip often ponders the great problems that face humankind, Susanita has but one aim: to become a high society lady, get married to a prestigious man, and have kids. Susanita is in fact obsessed with this, and considers alternatives to be unimportant or irrelevant. Indeed, she represents a certain conservative cynicism, and is based on the stereotype of the gossip-peddling housewife. Her confrontations with Mafalda often revolve around their drastically different outlooks.

Finally, near the end of the comic’s life, Libertad (”Freedom”) is introduced; her tiny size a symbol of the concept she is named after. She is a small girl who is, basically, a more radical version of Mafalda. The daughter of a couple of idealist young intellectuals, Libertad is constantly awaiting the impending social revolution which will bring justice to the oppressed masses. However, she lacks Mafalda’s healthy skepticism, naively regurgitating her parents’ ideas without much thought regarding their complexities.

The characters are very uniform and their personalities do not evolve or change, but this is quite irrelevant, as Quino is a master of the “gag” strip. Oftentimes, one can see the same basic joke presented in over a dozen strips, yet the presentation and delivery are so different that, despite having the same punchline (Manolito is ignorant, Susanita is shallow, Felipe is depressive), still manage to surprise and amuse.

The strip is made timeless due to the fact that many of the problems that concern the characters have endured: Vietnam’s ghost is now ever-present with Iraq; Israel and its neighbouring nations are still in conflict; women’s liberation hasn’t been achieved. And, of course, the more innocent side of the comic is also timeless: everyone hated school at some point, or knew a very selfish boy or girl. Many generations of Argentinian children grew up with the imagery of these kids, often trying to see where our personality “fit” with these archetypes. Myself, I was somewhere between Mafalda’s inappropriate questions, Felipe’s escapist fantasies, and Miguelito’s unabated selfishness.

For Argentinians, there is another timelessness feature of Mafalda: the representation of cultural features of our society which remain largely unchanged. The ghost of militarism is ever-present, with the 1966-1970 period seeing the comic become slightly less overtly political due to the dictatorship of General Juan Carlos Onganía. Free market capitalism is still a huge concern, as is U.S. imperialism. Many women in Argentinian society still aspire to little other than being a wife and a mother because of society’s pressures. Indeed, in Buenos Aires it is common to say of women obsessed with these trappings “she is such a Susanita”. Other characters are synonymous with personality quirks (Mafalda=contrariness; Manolito=greed; Miguelito = selfishness; Felipe=idealism with bouts of depression).

For this column, I’ve been re-reading my Mafalda collections. Every time I return to it, I find something new that draws me in. As a child, I was amused by the adventures of kids like me. In my adolescence and college years, the politicisation I experienced was reflected in the comic, and I finally got all those jokes I was too young to understand before. Now, I see the strip was incredibly subversive in feminist terms (though perhaps not in gender terms).

At the time, comics in Argentina (and largely, all over the world) did not feature female characters who were more than a relative or love interest of the hero of the story. It is very interesting to me that, over 20 years before its creation, Mafalda stands up to Bechdel’s Test much better than hundreds of comics that came afterwards. Not only that, but what fascinated me is that Mafalda actually… subverts Bechdel’s Test.

See, Bechdel’s Test (though originally applied only to films) requires three points: 1. Two or more women who 2. Speak to each other about 3. Something besides a man. The point of this is that in film and many media, women have been unfairly depicted exclusively in supporting roles of the main male characters. In Mafalda, a regular gag involves Susanita talknig about her future husband and home life, but this is subverted by Mafalda’s frequent observations that these are superficial ambitions. Mafalda tells Susanita that a woman ought to see past these limited horizons set by society. The conversation thus ceases to be about a man, and becomes one about how and why women may hold these limited ambitions.

I guess you can see now why I consider Mafalda to be one of my favourite comics, perhaps the best I’ve ever encountered. Here is where I have to tell you its flaws, and sadly I have come to realise they do exist. The first flaw that comes to mind is subtle racism. Let’s clear something up first: Mafalda herself declares often her distaste with racism, her disgust with anyone that can dehumanise another human being in such a manner. She often calls for human understanding and world peace. However, at the time the comic began, Mao’s declaration were a source of grave concern for many in the West, who feared a Third World War if the two Communist colossi united their forces to invade. This is reflected in many comics in which the characters are scared of the Chinese people due to their massive numbers.

Moreover, Manolito is, though relatively harmless, a slightly racist stereotype. In Argentina, it is common to call a Spaniard “Galician”, this being a strong cultural stereotype. These stereotyped features and attitudes include: large thick eyebrows, lack of education and outright ignorance, as well as greed. The stereotype of the “Galician” is exactly what Manolito represents: brutish and ignorant, with a materialist mentality that is only concerned with money. Thankfully, Quino’s writing allows Manolito to rise above the stereotype as a character, becoming more a critique of a very Argentinian kind of greed.

Finally, and this is a personal issue of mine, Mafalda often displays a rather naive nationalism, the kind that is promoted to children. It’s very hard to form an opinion regarding this, because the Argentina of 2008 is not the same nation as 44 years ago. Indeed, three years after Mafalda ceased publication, my country endured the most bloody dictatorship of its history, which murdered over 20,000 of its own citizens. A “Western Catholic Capitalist” oppressive regime, it was intrinsically nationalistic, ending with the lamentable Falklands War. After that, nationalism in Argentina has never meant the same thing. Perhaps foreseeing this, Quino stopped the strip quite suddenly in 1973, as the nation began spiralling into violence, which would culminate in the aforementioned regime.

As a final critique, while traditional gender roles are questioned very often throughout, gender identity is seldom an issue. It only comes into play when, by accident, someone preys on the fears of the “older generation”, and this is very infrequent. Generally, Quino uses this as a tool to display the conservative attitudes of previous generations. What may appear so normal as to be ignored by youth may be perceived as “depraved” by an older character (usually a passers-by).

Closing thoughts? I don’t have many. Mafalda is the best kind of comic strip, in my honest opinion. It is funny, it is endearing, but it can also challenge the outside world, and has little pretense and a lot of hope for humankind. It’s a fantastic second-wave feminism comic strip while, at the same time, being much broader in scope. It offers a complex image of children very much at odds with the traditional view of a child as an innocent angel. And it is always, always, insightful, shallow, depressing, hilarious, thoughtful and profound. Often all at once.

Now, for a useful tidbit, I’ve tried to track down English-language editions of Mafalda. This is difficult: an old British edition of the books is lost to the mists of time, and to this day there is no U.S. edition (U.S. publishers rejected the strip in 2004 saying it was too complex for children). Regardless, Mafalda has been finding an audience in English, thanks to its publication by the Argentinian publisher of the collections, Ediciones de la Flor, which still sell by the thousands. The translations aren’t always 100%, after all a few strips rely on wordplay that is untranslatable cultural lingo or slang. But for what is possible, it is an appropriate adaptation (I own 3 of the 5 collections in English). Here are some sites that stock the collections in English. For now, only 5 out of the 10 books have been published so far. If you want to search for it yourself, the books are published as Mafalda and Friends.
Amazon

Amazon UK

Blackwell

Finally, if you’re a Spanish speaker, I recommend Toda Mafalda. It is a coffee-table sized book which includes all the ten collections, as well as extra strips and illustrations made by Quino of his characters down the years. It includes tributes by artists and cartoonists as well.

Comment on this post at the forums!

[I've got another long-ish article coming, this time about an Argentinian comic. So, I've decided that for now this is how it's going to work. Barring exceptional circumstances (i.e., the sudden, unpredicted heat death of the universe), I will alternate shorter posts (which I will title "Troubled Rants") with longer analysis articles/reviews. I have a lot of ideas for different kinds of articles, and even different kinds of reviews, which you will hopefully find interesting. I believe my first article was a tad esoteric, or niche, and I believe with time Prepare for Trouble will have a good variety of posts to appeal to more people. That said, on with the rant!]

Today’s rant finds me mentally zapping all over the globe. These mental visits are not for courtesy, no. In my mind, I’m walking through the comic book stores I know. I’m walking down the aisles of familiar places, of shops that closed over half a decade ago, as well as those I still frequent. I pass countless covers of super-heroines in small clothing, unbefitting to their dangerous profession. That bothers me. But that’s not what I’m trying to suss out today.

You see, when I applied for the position of blogger, I explained that while I am a big fan of manga and anime, these would not be the sole focus of my blogging. I would also put European (and Argentinian) comics under the genderscope, and see what I came up with. Hitting the ‘Send’ button, I sat back and felt confident in my ability to deliver, smugly thinking to myself about all those non-American, non-Japanese comics I could analyse. And indeed, there were quite a few.

But recently I took a look at my comic book collection, dear readers, and found myself perplexed. Why, I have as many American comics as I have European/Argentinian. And these two, put together, don’t come near being half of what I know or own of manga and anime. “Well, I’ll be,” said I, and sat back in mild confusion. Then I got back up. Time to get some work done, I said. I decided I will now be always in the lookout for European comics. Hunt them out, wherever they hide. I’ve hit up a few links recommending French comics, for example, but I couldn’t find a woman listed as an author anywhere. The hunt goes on.

So, this brought me to the biggest comics shop in town, a branch of the UK chain Forbidden Planet. I spent an hour there, and left without buying anything, in mild confusion. Where were the European comics? There were some Asterix and Tintin albums in the little humour section to one side, neatly laid out next to the Garfields and whatnot. But what about serious ones? I’ve been to comic book stores in Spain and Italy, I know there are more European comics than those. But it’s hard for me to figure out what’s good to get in online shops, and I don’t have any friends in Italy or Spain that are as much into comics as I am, or whose focus is as, well… niche. I don’t think many of them will be thinking about gender and class representations in their comics. Sure enough, there’s even been a book published cataloguing European comics translated into English. But it’s hella expensive, if you ask me.

What this got me thinking about, though, are the expectations of people when they go into comic book stores, how the comics are presented and laid out. In Forbidden Planet, there was a clear separation: Manga, and comics. Because, you know, manga aren’t real comics, they have all those mushy stories that… girls read. No, no, no, the important stuff is in the comics section, of course. And by “important” I mean “90% American”. I found Scott Pilgrim, a Canadian comic that little has to do with the chauvinist superhero tradition tucked comfortably between other books in the manga section. This made no sense to me. If I wanted to read a Spanish or French comic, how would I know where to find it unless I knew the specific title? I realised it was impossible to browse for comics. The classification system used was: manga on one side (and manga-like, non-Japanese comics) ; then comics from the big imprints on the other, with a small section devoted to famous “artsy” comics like Watchmen. A small corner devoted to humour and… well, that’s it. The other two, smaller shops, were much the same, although since they were Irish, at least they had Irish comic books. Hooray! This was progress, but nowhere near what I wanted.

I was recently in Spain, and rather logically, I went into a comic book store. A rather large one, might I add, the variety of which leaves any store on this island (and probably in Great Britain) crying in a corner, their shameful tears forming a rather large puddle. Of shame.

You see, as you come into this veritable temple to comic-dom, you are faced with choices. Choices! Turn left and you’ll find yourself surrounded with manga as far as the eye can see, action figures, art books, the works. Turn right, and you’ll find the European comics section, with Spanish comics separate, in their own section. Down there in the back, there’s every Corto Maltese album ever published. Further back, there’s the ‘adult’ section, which includes, yes, pornographic comics and manga. Then the basement is a huge shrine to anglophone comics, where you have all your favourite Marvel, DC and even a lot of indies, published in well-translated Spanish. Can you see the difference?

If I, as a comics fan, walk into that store, I have much greater choice open to me. If I know what I’m looking for, of course, I know where to go. But if one day, as a manga fan, I decide to explore European comics, like I’ve been trying to, I don’t have to navigate the area where “worthwhile” comics are placed, hoping to run into a non-anglophone comic by sheer luck. All I need to do is take a few steps. If I want to find my superhero comics, I can still find them no problem. Though with a much smaller selection, comic book stores in Argentina used to follow the same pattern. I say “used to”, since nowadays they are mostly devoted to manga and local comics.

Being the pretentious social scientist I am, I start thinking why is this layout difference there? And I keep coming back to a cultural imperialist reason. Through many historical mechanisms I don’t feel like discussing, the United States has sold itself and its culture remarkably well down the years, and US comics culture has done a lot to foster that art form worldwide. But Italians, Spaniards, Germans had to translate these comics into their respective languages. So, the act of translation has been linked inextricably with these popular cultures for decades, particularly in countries like Spain and Italy, where it was actually illegal, until recently, to show films that were NOT dubbed. Other nations have simply not pushed their cultural products as relentlessly as the United States has after World War II. And the U.S. being the dominant western power, there were many ideological reasons why there was little interest in translating a European comic into English. The act of cultural production and consumption was simply not linked to the act of translation, to the act of learning about a different culture. Because of the ideology of the United States as the place where all ethnicities meet and mingle, it is deemed unnecessary to look at an outside world that is actually changing and developing, all the time.

Britain doesn’t fare much better, in part due to its historical animosity with continental Europe and its culture. Of course, the continent reciprocates said animosity towards British culture to a degree. Back in the anglophone world, I’m afraid the only other country I know much about is Ireland. Comic book culture in Ireland, like much of Irish popular culture, is permanently looking at the other side of the Atlantic (and being influenced by the British from the other side), and is thus stuck with aspiring to be either of the two. But this is a struggle for Irish identity, and comic book culture is but a symptom of a larger issue which, I believe, is beyond the scope of this blog.

So, I’m not surprised I couldn’t find European comics. Nobody is interested, much less the close-minded people who actually run the shops and have grown up in this culture of worship of American cultural productions. I am not saying here, mind you, that American comics are inherently inferior. By the same token, I am not saying the wide availability of manga as the main alternative is a bad thing. What I’m saying is that there is an entire world of comics out there, of which this is but a fraction.

Want an example? My next post will be about Mafalda, a comic created in 1964 which not only passes Bechdel’s test regularly, but subverts its very underpinnings, twenty years before Bechdel’s test emerged. Mafalda is an Argentinian comic, and it’s possibly the best newspaper-published comic strip I have ever read.

——-

Blog for Choice Tuesday

I apologise, everyone, but this following bit won’t be geeky at all, and it’s a bit serious. I hope you can bear with me, as I wanted to provide a small contribution to this blog-wide event, where pro-choice bloggers (mostly American I assume) celebrate the anniversary of Roe v Wade. As you well know, I’m not American. However, I am involved with an Irish pro-choice group. This year’s topic for Blog for Choice Tuesday is about voting pro-choice and why it is important. Of course, this refers to the U.S. election. But we had an election here last year, so I thought you’d like to hear about it.

What part did abortion legislation play in the policy war between candidates? That’s right, none. Only one of the major parties, the most minor one (Irish Labour) held a pro-choice stance. The other parties didn’t really have much to say about the subject, holding fast to their fears of the Catholic voting base abandoning them in droves should they side with those crazy, hairy atheists that want to kill your babies.

You see, I believe abortion legislation is the most pressing human rights issue in the Republic of Ireland. The Republic indeed has a shameful history with abortion (wiki, I know, but it’s a decent article), culminating with the doubly shameful D case last year, in which a teenager in the care of the state was denied the right to travel to the United Kingdom to obtain an abortion. Miss D defined herself as pro-life in most cases, yet the foetus had been diagnosed with anencephaly and would have only lived for a few hours outside her body. In a case of amazing, stupefying legal theatre, the state appointed a lawyer… to defend the unborn foetus.

I won’t go further, except to say that my response is there is little one can do at the voting booth in Ireland to help the pro-choice cause. Which is a shame. Luckily, however, Choice Ireland is alive and kicking, as well as the Safe and Legal campaign, and our support is growing. Politicians are starting to discuss the issue, which is a start. But as it stands, thousands of women travel to Britain every year for an abortion, a journey encapsulated greatly in the film Like a Ship in the Night, usually carrying by themselves the entire financial weight, as well as the emotional weight, due to the great taboo nature of abortion in this country.

Discuss this thread in the forums.

And so we begin regular updates! I know I’m excited, so let’s get right to it!

For my first column, I wanted to talk about one of the shows that got me (and many people) into anime in the first place: Sailor Moon, and how it impacted on my queerness as well as many people of my generation. In looking for references for this column, I stumbled across this interesting article regarding queerness and attitudes to sexuality and gender in anime.

If you were coming of age in mid-’90s Argentina, and you sensed you were, let’s say, ‘different’ from your peers with regards to your sexual identity, there weren’t a lot of readily available images for you to begin to understand yourself more. Media images influence us: they contribute to defining how we see ourselves, and may sometimes even help contribute to our development by giving us positive role models. This is particularly important if one is part of a minority, one which doesn’t get a lot of airtime or attention. And as we know, queerness is something that gets silenced in many societies.

In Argentina, there weren’t really many role models at all if you were a coming-of-age young queer. Indeed, queerness was relegated to homosexuality and cross-dressing as a source of comedy, the best exponent of which was Antonio Gasalla. A TV presenter with his own sketch show, the late Gasalla was as intelligent and witty as he was problematic. For all his groundbreaking, anti-establishment comedy, Gasalla still played up to certain stereotypes of camp which were deemed acceptable by mainstream Argentinian society. So we can file him under “mixed blessing” at best. Apart from him, there wasn’t much else on TV or film, you had the stereotypical “tragic gay” here and there in arthouse films and that was it. Argentinian society really didn’t have room for much more (for added context: sexual ‘minorities’ were denied the vote in the city of Buenos Aires until the year 1990).

The year 1995 marked the beginning of the ’second wave’ of anime in Argentina. The first wave had been very light, consisting of Astro Boy, Mazinger Z and other old time classics, as well as Robotech, being aired. The second wave provided more authentic, less altered content. The spearheads of anime were three shows in particular: Sailor Moon, Saint Seiya, and Dragon Ball.

They all stood out in their own ways, but as far as different ways of doing an adventure show, Sailor Moon was quite groundbreaking for many of us, accustomed to getting our animation/comic fix from American derivates. First of all, it was a show about a group of girls. While they may have their loves and relationships (and on further analysis many of these were troubled in the way they were presented), each of them was their own person, with their own lives, and no male ally or villain ever really stole the spotlight. The first season of the show already featured a queer romance, that between villains Zoycite and Kunzyte, yet the dub for that season, the only one based on the U.S. one (though without blatant censorship for the most part), portrayed Zoycite as a woman. Many, myself included, took little notice, after all his facial features matched those of the women in the show, and few people were used to anime portrayals of feminine men.

Still, a while later Sailor Moon S came along, one of the heights of plotting and drama for the series. And there you had it: Haruka and Michiru. Haruka was a woman, identified as such, but used a low voice when in ‘civilian’ guise, and dressed as a man. At first sight, most of the main characters were attracted to her. Oh, but Haruka was going out with the very feminine Michiru. They rarely did more than hold hands, but the normality with which their relationship was presented was a clincher for those of us in the audience. After that, whenever queer characters showed up, they were treated with the same normality in the narrative: Fish-Eye’s trans sensitivities were not played for laughs, it was just another feature of the character. Later on, we get the more protagonic Sailor Star Lights who, for the unitiated, were men in their civilian identity but transformed into women when changing into Sailor Scouts. Once more, the characters seemed at home with either gender, which was quite unique at a time when all other trans people on Argentinian TV were part of cop dramas, usually involved in sordid tales of prostitution.

In hindsight, the relationship is not without problematics, of course. Haruka and Michiru suscribe to the butch-femme binary to the letter, a common misinterpretation of identity in homosexual relationships (that is to say, the idea that that is ‘the way’ in which they occur). Also, they are both tragic characters, their destiny is considered by both of them to be doomed, which may put them in the category of the ‘tragic gay couple’, one that is not seldom found in shoujo manga. Furthermore, I remember clearly back then, in the budding fandom that sprung up around the aforementioned anime shows, many people started to spread the misconception that, somehow, Japan was an advanced society in which being gay or trans was perfectly acceptable and a-okay. In the pre-internet world, with only anime to gauge it, it may have indeed seemed to be the case.

In opposition to this, I link to the aforementioned article, as well as this interesting essay entitled Male Homosexuality and Popular Culture in Japan. Both look into queerness in manga, particularly shoujo (manga ‘for girls’), a classification Sailor Moon and most of its companions in the ‘magical girl’ genre fall within. While the second article focuses on male homosexuality, it points out how, for a lot of Japanese gay men, homosexual imagery in shoujo manga isn’t a plus, but rather it is a burden due to stereotyping. I can imagine Japanese lesbians may feel the same way about the very idealised relationship between Haruka and Michiru. However, it is interesting how for a large part of it, the main concern is that sexual activity, or the indication of it, remain behind closed doors. This social taboo against public sexual conduct appears to be more of a concern in Japanese society rather than which sexuality it is that is practiced.

Back to the main topic, I’d say the issue here is one of perception, visibility versus stereotyping. When we first encounter queerness in the West, often visibility is enough to start with. If this happens through anime, since the stereotypes emanate from the ignorance (or desires) of another culture, we are often unaware of their actual problematics. We have to remember that Sailor Moon, and its iconisation by queer anime fans happens in the context of that barren land known as the pre-Internet world. Before MySpace, before MMOs, before big-name shows like Queer as Folk or The L Word (with all their problems), back when the web was neither massive nor well-known, and our access to different portrayals of sexual identity were exceedingly limited.

As such, with its problems (and it has many), I’m not ready to dismiss Sailor Moon. Its portrayal of female characters at the center of the narrative was extremely important in how I came to perceive superhero stories (which is what Sailor Moon is at its core), for one. And its normalisation of queer characters was important as part of the self-acceptance process. For indeed, stories make us reflect on ourselves, if they are compelling and well-written, even if they can be infantile and feature men wearing tights fighting crime, or girls in Sailor outfits fighting aliens. It’s the beauty of fiction that we can allow such indulgences for the stories, and characters, that lie beneath.

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Starting launch checks…

>>Blog layout… check.
>>Iconic character for maximum blog cred… check.
>>Obsession with Japanese cultural products… check.
>>Willingness to engage in feminist-gender readings on japanese, European and Argentinian comics and animation… check.

>>Personal gender identity… FLUCTUATING. ATTEMPTING TO DEFINE…

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There’s plenty of trouble afoot, my friends. There’s trouble in Japan: the schoolgirls aren’t all sweet and meek, some of them carry heavy ordinance, and many don’t care about how they appear to boys (some don’t even care for boys). There’s trouble in pre-revolutionnary France: a General raises his daughter as a boy, and she climbs to the upper echelons of the military on skill alone, defying class and cultural norms in her pursuit of justice and love. There’s trouble in Argentina, 1964, where a little girl unsettles her parents with difficult questions. There’s trouble with me, trouble with you, trouble with everyone.

“So that could be the theme, you know, trouble” said I, starry eyed. “Sure, whatever,” responded a friend. “Just stop bothering me, please, and write your goddamn blog about comics or manga or whichever it is.”

So this is me, leaving people alone, writing a blog. Expect anecdotal entries on experiences with particular manga, anime, or European/Argentinian comics. Because this is who I am, a genderqueer, Argentinian theory bore, obsessed with animation and comics, and dying to rip apart everything that I love if it means I will gain some enlightenment from the process.

Just know this: I don’t like simple (or rather, simplistic) explanations. I am a trained sociologist, after all. This also means I am obsessed with fascism, I write letters of complaint to news agencies, and I am obsessed with the structure versus agency debate. I’ll try not to go into all that, I promise. Much.