Week 5&6

 Q. What is the ‘Shoujo’ and how does it often function in anime?

 I like Japanese anime, and I often watch that. Whenever I watch anime, I could think there are many young woman heroines in Japanese animes. Young woman and girls are called “Shoujo” in Japanese, aged between 12 and 13. These girls are generally passive and powerless in Japan. Shoujo metaphorically is expressed as the admixture of both childhood and adulthood. According to Tamae Prindle, “What fascinates the Japanese is that the shoujo nestle in a shallow lacuna between adulthood and childhood, power and powerlessness, awareness and innocence as well as masculinity and femininity.” (1998, as cited in Cavallaro, 2006)

Anime stories by shoujo are different from anime stories which deal with science fiction and war because the worlds by shoujo are dreamy and magical like fairy stories.

Heroines in Miyazaki’s films are active, brave, heroic and curious unlike typical Japanese girls, shoujo. Moreover, Miyazaki has avoided depicting the heroines as typically attractive woman characters as pets and dolls. For example, there is San, Princess Mononoke. Her face is bloodstained and she tried to bleed out from Wolf God’s body by using her mouth. We can know that she has lived unlike other human to viewers thought her appearance and her action. Like San, Miyazaki depicted heroine in Princess Mononoke as a wild warrior girl who has grown by wolves, not by human.

Miyazaki has dealt not only with a various stories of anime but also ambivalent heroines who we cannot meet in reality.

Reference

Cavallaro, D. (2006). Introduction. In The Anime Art of Hayao Miyazaki (pp.5-13). London: McFarland & Company.