An Introduction to Anime: It’s a jungle out there
In the 18 years since Francis Spufford (2002) first recounted his memories of being a ‘child that books built’, I have experienced my own form of growth through childhood reading. Unlike Spufford, I would argue that the ‘tool[s[ of growth’ (p.7) that defined my literary ecology was less akin to the ‘Child’s Garden’ (Stevenson, 1896) of Romantic tradition than as ‘traditionally’ conceived. I define ‘literary ecology’ as the collection of narratives, characters, and modes of storytelling that an individual interacts with, and is informed by, during their lives. Personally, the literary ecology I navigated was altogether wilder than Spufford’s, populated by audio-visual and interactive narratives as afforded to me through technology. In this essay, I will be focusing upon the narratives I engaged with between the ages of eleven and thirteen, when I first gained access to technology, the internet, and a subsequent slew of visual narratives from the private space of my bedroom. One genre that I became enamoured with was the ‘Magical Girl’ narrative, first sparked by my discovery of the Japanese anime Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon (Sato, 1992).
It is perhaps this sudden growth in young people’s ability to access visual narratives independently that has caused what Reynolds (2007) refers to as the newly-constructed ‘knowing child’ (p.5), navigating the increasingly blurred lines between fantasy and reality within modern media ecologies defined by independent exploration. However, there seems to be somewhat of a critical hesitance to engage with traditionally ‘low’ forms of young people’s culture, and a tendency to exclude ‘childly’ figures who do not align with rose-tinted constructions of the traditional ‘child-as-reader’. Through this critical erasure, we risk an interpolation of these figures’ media interests into discourses solely based around the traditional paper book.
I encountered this critical dismissal of ‘literary value’ as a tweenage girl, which I define as the state of existing between comfortably defining oneself as either child or teenager. The socio-cultural taboo surrounding young female’s literary ecologies leaves many readers in an additional state of ‘betwixtness’. This does not just refer to the state of being ‘caught between PG-13 and NC-17’ (Cheu, 2005, p.294), but also the fact that socio-cultural hierarchies surrounding popular culture place narratives consumed by adolescent females as lower forms of ‘literature’, if they are even deemed deserving of that title at all. This aversion to the literatures associated with my identity led me as a young reader to hide much of my narrative consumption, for fear of appearing ‘cringe’, a word basically equated with hyperbolic, overly-twee emotional drama. Perhaps the ‘cringiest’ literary interest of my tween years was what I now jokingly refer to as ‘my anime phase’. Despite still referring to myself as a fan of Japanese animation, my anime consumption between the ages of eleven and thirteen stands apart from my current relationship with the literatures I encounter, echoing a semi-obsessive period of narrative consumption, categorised by solitary viewing habits, a deeply non-critical awe of the medium, and a particular fascination with the Magical Girl (mahou shojo) genre. Magical Girl series such as Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon (Sato, 1992), Tokyo Mew-Mew (Abe, 2002), and Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch (Fujimoto, 2003) populated my browser search history, leading me to search through local charity shops for manga and anime-inspired English books, such as the W.i.t.c.h series (Lenhard, 2003).
The Magical Girl genre, similarly to my young self, exists in that same state of ‘betwixtness’, caught inbetween accusations of providing either ‘cringy’ childish content with its hyperbolic stakes and lack of character nuance, or sexist coding. Tamaki (2011) has referred to the above series as ‘intended for very young girls’, echoing notions that ‘too much viewing of [Sailor Moon] will turn you into an imbecile’ (Tamaki, 2011, p.49), essentially contributing to cultural hierarchies through failing to recognise the female viewer as valid. The critical majority distances the female even further, analysing the Magical Girl genre through a lens that privileges a presumed heterosexual cis-gendered male perspective (Brophy, 2005; Tamaki et al., 2011). I stand in opposition to the hegemonic critics who gaze upon these Magical Girls with a combination of ‘adult’ aversion and sexual attraction, such as Brophy (2005), who describes them as ‘idols to worship’ (p.18), who extol […] prepubescent female hysteria [… and…] throb with that energy’ (p.200).
...Ick.
I am Brophy’s binary, as, aside from my status as a female anime viewer in a largely androphallocentric fanbase, I once viewed these narratives and saw myself reflected onscreen.
The remainder of this post will therefore interrogate both the viewing habits of my younger self, and the representations of femininity that I once so desperately wished to embody. Then, I explored my state of ‘betwixtness’, through an exaggerated medium where ‘the viewer may play in a liminal world of entertainment, free to take part in an infinitely transforming state of fantasy’ (Napier, 2005, p.294). My point, here, is that through my engagement with Magical Girl narratives, I was able to playfully explore constructions of girlhood and womanhood concurrently. As a ‘tween’, living in a state of ‘betwixt-ness’, by where I was neither child, nor adolescent, nor adult, I rarely encountered characters who revelled within that same state. The Magical Girl became almost Peter-Pan like in her inhabitation of the ‘betwixt and between’ (Valentova, 2018), as to me she not only navigated her liminal status, but thrived within it.
Betwixt and Be Tween: Transforming within Liminal Spaces
Whilst submerging my younger self into the hand-drawn fantasies of anime was undoubtedly a form of leisurely escapism, it is pertinent to note that the literary ecologies young people construct for themselves are vital to the performance of individual identity (Butler, 2019). I picture my tweenage self as constantly racing between positions and planes within Bourdieu’s (1990) field of cultural reproduction, an intersectional space of free movement, viewed in opposition to more rigid Marxist structures of class and power. Upon Bourdieu’s field, an individual agent may inhabit different identities or positions in relation to their peers and culture. Retrospectively, I see myself as a girl-woman, a child-adult, and even a Madonna-whore as puberty hit me with societal constructions of adolescent femininity, navigating what it meant for each of these identities to intersect, and where exactly in this liminal space I could locate myself.
It is of little wonder, looking back, that I attempted this navigation of femininity through animation, a form of narrative existent within the realms of strangeness and liminality. Tamaki (2011) argues that anime, specifically those series created for presumed young female viewers, encapsulates the spirit of ‘betwixtness’, of existing suspended between two or more identities in a ‘space [that] clearly tends toward atemporality’ (p.138). It is this atemporality of the shōjo (a genre of anime and manga roughly translated into ‘young girl’), with her unrealistic proportions, deliberate lines and exaggerated actions that ‘leaves the viewer continually aware of her hypermediated existence. She lives in a perpetual present’ (Greenwood, 2015. p.203), as seen through the hand-drawn nature of each cell, the girl only gaining motion when all of these moments are run sequentially. Her beauty and power is found within this ‘perpetual present’; without much concern for soliloquising or ethical dilemmas, she flits from one emotion to the next. This style is common to Japanese animation yet alien to British tradition, a disjuncture which no doubt drew me even further into the genre. Retrospectively, it seems to me that I not only saw myself reflected in the shōjo protagonist and her surrounding discourse, but also in the form of her representation. Anime, I argue, encapsulates the spirit of ‘tween’, addressing the youth who ‘watches television alone’ (Pilling, 1998, p.130). Onscreen, I saw Magical Girls drifting between states of identity, embodying possible transformation as Amazonian superwomen who ultimately regress into the ‘safe’ state of girlhood.
But where was this reflection located? When watching Usagi or Ichigo (the protagonists of Sailor Moon and Tokyo Mew Mew) melt into miniskirts against a glittery rainbow nebula, eleven-year-old me wasn’t yet even able to describe feminism, let alone apply the girl’s struggle for acceptance and representation to my television habits. Instead, I think what drew me towards these characters first was the innate strangeness of their facial composition, particularly their eyes. Lunning’s (2011) words echo the sense of awe that my young self found whilst staring through that veil thinly separating reader and character:
'The shojo culture is dominated by a feminine presence, cast and costumed by the normative popular cultures, yet some- how twinkling with something else, something weirdly historical, something a bit subversive. The immense eyes signal it, with pupils that glisten with moisture, reflections of incomprehensible sights, black spikes of eyelash, and bubbles of light. […] The characters develop as if from the eyes outward.' (p.4)
These were the eyes I saw reflected back at me, drawn into focus through the persistent use of mirror imagery within the Magical Girl genre. The opening sequence of Sailor Moon features the protagonist, Usagi, staring longingly at a reflection of her magical girl persona, Sailor Moon. In Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch’s opening sequence, there are intersections of the protagonists’ mirror images. Even in the W.i.t.c.h series, there are multiple scenes where a young Will sees her Magical Girl self in the mirror. These examples detail how the Magical Girl genre revels in the adolescent’s potential for transformation. As a young viewer whose body was in the midst of a simultaneously unnerving and exhilarating transformation into maturity, it may have been comforting to see a similar state of ‘betwixtness’ onscreen. I was encouraged to engage with this fantasy of transformation by associating the Magical Girl’s transformation with the physical changes puberty brings:
'The face in the mirror wore Will’s surprised expression.[…] But the body… once again, it was utterly foreign- tall and shapely, with a waist that nipped in and hips that flared out. Will’s eyes travelled to her reflection’s chest and blushed. […] Will stared at this… this ghost and was powerless to do anything but tremble.' (Lenhard, 2003, p.66-67)
Whilst re-reading the above extract, I was reminded of similar, if less hyperbolic, encounters I had as a tween with my own suddenly unrecognisable reflection in the bathroom mirror. Given the socio-cultural taboo surrounding girl’s relationships with their bodies, there is a sense of empowerment to be found within these ‘mirror scenes’. As opposed to the Lacanian (1985) mirror phase, the implied adolescent reader is encouraged not to see herself as separate from ‘The Other’, but instead to recognise a kinship between the two.
Focus is placed upon physical transformation sequences in these texts, with most Magical Girl anime series featuring recycled cutscenes, each girl changing into her magical alter-ego. Here the girls’ magical powers are specifically linked to their more adult, physical forms, as evidenced by a growth in Will’s confidence during battle as ‘she felt her limbs lengthening, her face changing, her muscles growing lean and strong’ (p.141). Despite the ‘womanly’ growth each Magical Girl experiences, however, she must always finish the episode or novel reverted back to her original form, offering the viewer a fantasy of multidirectional, non-linear interchangeability between woman and child. Later in adolescence, a haze of nostalgia began to creep over my childhood memories, along with a wish to return to that state of childhood, something only really found within fantasy narratives. Gray (2020) argues that adolescent readers ‘have the ability to choose the worlds they want to live in when they read, and the worlds they choose tell us who they are’ (p.60). I think, then, that to choose a genre reliant upon acts of moving between worlds, identities, and liminal spaces of transformation reflects that I was unwilling to commit to any sense of singularity, wishing to gaze upon characters who too navigated the limits of the body and self. For this reason, I would argue that these Magical Girl series offered me a fantasy which showcased, as Reynolds (2007) would say, young people’s ‘radical’ potential for change, albeit in a fictional world where young agents are given greater freedom and a lack of inevitable locking into adulthood. Upon my recent re-viewing of these girls, however, I began to realise that the images which fed my ‘radical’ fantasies of future adolescence may have simultaneously been feeding a more beastly fantasy.
Idol-Gazing: Interpolating myself into the position of the heterosexual male Otaku
I am now aware that my enamoured response towards anime, and Japanese-inspired European literature, derived from an Orientalist (Said, 1991) fascination with the ‘Other’. For someone who, I now regretfully admit, had never interacted with any culture other than that of white rural Britain, the Japan of Magical Girl anime was just as fantastical to me as any Narnia or Discworld I had previously engaged with. The architecture, language, even the act of changing shoes when entering an indoor space, was perceived as an escapist fantasy, which arguably resulted in me being less critical as to whether or not these programmes ‘adequately address[ed] girls’ lived experience’ (Kanai, 2015, p.99).
As an almost-adult, I now see the honey-trap of this logic, as by refusing to apply context or critical readership to a fantastical text, we ignore the fact that no narrative exists in a vacuum. These layers of fantasy, exacerbated through the double-alienation of subtitled viewing, seduced me into viewing these girls through the lens of the heterosexual, cisgendered, male otaku (a label applied to committed anime fans, associated with introversion and a certain lack of social aptitude). This lens, a culturally-specific form of the male gaze, views the Magical Girl as ‘encapsulating polymorphous perversity in a stable form. She radiates the potential for an omnidirectional sexuality latent with pe[a]dophilia, homosexuality, fetishism, sadism, masochism, and other perversions, yet she behaves as if she were completely unaware of it all’ (Tamaki et al., 2011, p.158). Though Tamaki’s words provoke in me now an uncomfortable and embarrassed response, they also point towards the double-address many narratives about and for young girls contain. Just as real adolescent girls must navigate their burgeoning capacity to be viewed as sexual objects, so too are Magical Girls subject to the whims of their creators, who are all too aware that sexual appeal sells, especially when attached to an image of ‘innocent’ girlhood.
The heterosexual male gaze is most evident during the Magical Girl’s transformation sequences. Each girl’s transition from passivity to empowerment, and girlhood to womanhood, is highlighted through her nude silhouette being clothed in tight, short material whilst the camera pans across her new mature figure. Below, I have included some particularly pertinent examples of the male gaze’s influence upon transformation sequences within Sailor Moon, Tokyo Mew Mew and Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch. By panning from the feet upward, particular focus is drawn towards the girls’ torsos, as the viewer becomes voyeur.
Within these liminal spaces of transformation, the Magical Girl appears to perform for a viewer, and I now realise that viewer was not necessarily the pre-teen girls who she might represent and reflect. This overt sexualisation of the teenage girl’s body is carried across from anime tradition into the W.i.t.c.h novels, as exemplified by Irma, the precocious water guardian’s, first transformation:
'Irma’s hair floated up from her scalp, and her eyes turned sultry and mischievous. Before Will’s very eyes, Irma’s lips went pouty, her clothes melted away, and feathers unfurled from her back'
(p.142-143)
Though the focus here may be upon the girls’ growth in confidence and power, the parallels between these transformations and traditional ‘makeover’ scenes are unmistakeable. Evoking the posthuman through a combination of doll-like plasticity and animal-like nakedness, the features these girls gain, from bigger breasts to ‘sultry’ looks, create an ideal of womanhood linked with heteronormative standards of male pleasure. Even though the majority of these narratives were originally female-authored, I agree with Hemmann’s (2015) assessment that many female consumers have ‘internaliz[ed] the male gaze’ (p.45). Patriarchal structures would not be sustained if women too were not complicit in this fantastical voyeurism, and I certainly failed to question how these Magical Girl’s transforming bodies might have been used to further such an agenda.
These anti-feminist undertones are also all too observable beyond the glittering space of liminal transformation. The Magical Girls’ costumes, from the Sailor Scouts' short-skirted school uniforms, to the Mew Mew’s garters, are impractical cladding for combat. Of course, there is a level of empowerment to be found within sexual liberation of the female body, and in their Japanese context, most of these girls are over the age of sexual consent. But despite this fact, the form of ‘girl power’ that the Magical Girl’s body represents is specifically in-line with the aesthetic tradition of the male-gaze. It is important to recognise that no individual sexualised character is directly to blame for this aesthetic tradition, but when I look back at the female characters that populated my literary ecologies, I believe that this homogenous image of empowered femininity did impact the relationship I had with my own body and aesthetics.
The double-directed address of these anime series can even be seen in the characters that make up each Magical Girl group, with each containing certain distinct personality types. Common character tropes include the bubbly, albeit clumsy, protagonist (Ichigo, Usagi, Lucia), and the older, often more overtly sexualised, voice of reason in the group (Rei from Sailor Moon, or Cornelia from W.i.t.c.h). The character archetype I was always drawn to, perhaps unsurprisingly, was the quiet, bookish Magical Girl, such as Sailor Moon’s Ami, or Tokyo Mew Mew’s Lettuce. Offering several different archetypal characters within the Magical Girl group is a common marketing tool, as it is expected that every young female viewer will find at least one character with whom they identify. However, these archetypes are also reminiscent of more adult-oriented harem anime, where a heterosexual male protagonist is surrounded by female romantic interests. Now that I am aware of this ‘dual address’ (Nodelman, 2008), I cannot help but wonder what negative impact this subliminal adult addressee may have had on my tweenage self.
But despite this worry, I refuse to adhere to the concept of child as tabula rasa, or as a sponge who unwittingly imbibes all messages, covert or otherwise, within a narrative. To do so would be disrespectful to my past self, and blatantly ignore the fact that young readers are still agents within the space where narrative exchange occurs. I, and other critics of young people’s viewing experiences, must be wary of assuming either authority or control over how young people navigate their literary ecologies.
Fighting Back: The Power of a Small Voice
I will be the first person to acknowledge that many of my favourite childhood texts and narratives are problematic when viewed through an intersectional post-structuralist lens, from visual adherence to androphallocentric cinematic tradition, to my own interpolation of these Magical Girls and Japanese culture into Orientalism. But to dismiss any of these texts as devoid of value or positivity would involve ignoring the nuanced interactions between reader and art.
Despite her hyperbolic sexualised aesthetic and, in most cases, archetypal personality, I was still enamoured with the images of powerful, feminine, superheroes on my screen. Lunning (2011) describes the Magical Girl as ‘a Trojan horse: she has appeared at the gates of the patriarchal fortress not as the grown and terrifying Amazon of the women's movement but as a guileless and powerless little girl of popular culture’ (p.18). At least in my personal experience, this analysis of the Magical Girl’s potential power rings true. When images of powerful adult women were shown on my screen or page, they were often the villain, reminiscent of Kristeva’s (1991) notions of the abject feminine, or their power was rooted in a negation of their femininity.
The Magical Girl’s femininity, however, was always central to her power, observable from her cute clothing to a focus upon female camaraderie throughout Magical Girl anime. Specifically, her manner of fighting is based upon her ability to speak, to use her voice. The Mermaid Melody girls sing to defeat their enemies, and the Magical Girls in W.i.t.c.h, Sailor Moon, and Tokyo Mew Mew all trigger their attacks through speaking a magical phrase. Not only does Usagi shouting ‘Moon Tiara Magic’ whilst preparing to throw her tiara like a discus insinuate that young female viewers may be able to find empowerment through using their voice, but it also begins to deconstruct androphallocentric traditions of combat as purely physical. I was never a fan of any texts that focused upon action or combat, but whenever I was on the sports field with a shotput or discus during the dreaded P.E lesson, I would imagine myself performing as the Magical Girls I loved so much. Looking back, maybe this could have been my first rudimentary engagement with something akin to Cixous’ (1998) écriture feminine, as I had located a source of fighting power that deconstructed the traditional androcentric focus upon physical strength and ‘masculinity’.
My tweenage construction of the Magical Girl as ‘girl-as-empowering-subject’ (Bae-Dimitriadis, 2018, p.70) meant that I became both a consumer and producer of Magical Girl narratives, or a ‘prosumer’ (Herrero-Diz et al., 2016), operating within the liminal spaces between text and reality. Though these figures may have been presented to me as overtly-sexualised, it would be naïve to assume that this negated any possibility for self-expression. Indeed, had the girls not been represented as engaging with their sexualities in adolescence through their transforming bodies and romantic subplots, I may not have felt drawn to them in the same manner. To successfully tease out the psychological nuances within my engagement with these texts would require an investigation on a far larger scale than this essay permits, and a feminist lens that is ‘inclusive of and work[s] with the complexities and affective ambivalence of teen feminine sexuality’ (Ringrose & Renold, 2016, p.117). Though my ‘betwixt and between’ state was informed by a surrounding structure of androphallocentrism, I – like Usagi, like Will, like Ichigo – utilised images of powerful feminine womanhood to help me navigate such structures from the unassuming position of a tweenage girl.
Conclusion
In summary, I now regretfully find myself in a familiar space of ‘betwixt and between’ when it comes to of the ‘beautiful fighting girl’ (Tamaki et al., 2011). She is simultaneously a figure of great nostalgia for the time when my ideals of adolescence weren’t yet subject to a misogynistic reality, and deep source of discomfort for precisely her contribution to that reality. I will perhaps never be able to fully consolidate these two sides of the Magical Girl; the presentation of overt feminine power, and covert patriarchal complicity, and my tweenage memories may be forever distorted because of it. However, it is the struggle for consolidation and critical viewership that inspired this essay, and I hope that soon Children’s Literature critics will turn their focus towards these oft-ignored aspects of modern children’s media ecologies. Then, I hope, the distorted lens through which I saw the Magical Girl reflected, in mirror and screen, may be more critically examined, giving adolescent female viewers the academic attention they have historically been denied.
Pretty Princess Mini-Charlotte, who always wanted some Moon Tiara Magic. Though I'm now the magical girl she dreamed of being, living my Heart-Pounding adventure, there are still times I yearn to transform back into who I used to be.
References
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