Japan – Bitch Flicks

“Everything Is Going To Be OK!” – How the Female Gaze Was Celebrated and Censored in ‘Cardcaptor Sakura’

In other words, there was a concerted effort to twist the female gaze into a male one under the belief that CLAMP’s blend of hyper-femininity and action would be unappealing for the male audience it was being aimed at.

This guest post by Hannah Collins appears as part of our theme week on The Female Gaze.

With their starry eyes, cutesy costumes, Barbie-esque features, and catchphrases overflowing with dreamy positivity, the magical girls of the shoujo (girls) genre of anime might not seem like the most feminist of heroines upon cursory glance. Yet, the plucky sorceress’ of such cult classics as Sailor Moon can be seen an emblematic of a counter-movement of female action heroes in Japanese culture – the antidote to the hyper-masculinity of the shonen (boys) genre.

This assessment by no means disregards the problems of the magical girl genre – infantalisation; fetishisation and glorification of hyper-femininity – and shoujo characters with their typically doe-eyed innocence can be easily corrupted to cater to a specific male fantasy of virginal femininity. However, the work of the all-female team of manga/anime creators known as “CLAMP” not only combats these issues, but also, as Kathryn Hemmann in The Female Gaze in Contemporary Japanese Culture writes, “employs shŌjo for themselves and their own pleasure.”

I became a fan of CLAMP – like most people of my age – in the 1990s. As a child, my introduction to the wonderfully weird world of Japanese cartoons consisted of the standard diet for most children of that era: Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh! and Dragon Ball Z. Imported, dissected, re-dubbed, and re-packaged to suit the tastes of a Western audience, and more specifically, a male audience. But amongst the shouts of “Gotta Catch ‘Em All!” and “Kamehameha!” there was one show that really left a lasting impression on me. It was about a little girl gifted with great power through capturing and using magical “Clow” cards. She wasn’t muscly; she wasn’t self-assured; and she certainly wasn’t male. She was Sakura Kinomoto, the show was called Cardcaptors (Cardcaptor Sakura in its original Japanese format), and it was my first exposure to both CLAMP and the magical girl or “mahou shoujo” genre they helped to popularise.

Like most adolescent heroes, Sakura seems hopelessly ill-equipped to begin with, and yet her sheer determination to achieve her full potential sees her through to becoming a magical force to be reckoned with without ever surrendering her loving personality. Rather than conforming to the “strong female character” stereotype that implies that women must act more masculine to achieve truly equal footing with male action heroes, Sakura’s power stems from traits considered more conventionally feminine: love, empathy, and pureness. Even her wardrobe changes into unapologetically girly battle outfits aesthetically reinforce CLAMP’s refusal to bow to a male audiences’ preferences.

These themes of romance and friendship are a core part of the story development and instrumental in the viewer’s investment in the characters. Through Cardcaptor Sakura, CLAMP explores the complexities of both platonic and romantic female love – both heterosexual and homosexual – from an almost exclusively female perspective. As Sakura pines over her older brother’s best friend (who unbeknownst to her, is also his love interest) Sakura’s best friend Tomoyo pines over her. Tomoyo, who lives a rich and sheltered life in a female-centric household, seems to live vicariously through Sakura. Upon discovering her secret heroics at night, she begins to capture Sakura’s adventures on camera and even provides her with her signature battle costumes, which cause Sakura huge embarrassment. Yet, at the risk of hurting her friend’s feelings, she grudgingly wears them anyway.

As the show develops, we are shown more and more just how deeply Tomoyo’s feelings run. In episode 11, Tomoyo gives Sakura a rare tour of her impressive mansion home, including a cinema room in which she confesses that she watches her recordings back of Sakura in battle constantly. It seems that Tomoyo is as much a part of the audience to Sakura’s life as we – the viewers – are. It also strikes me that this obsessive behaviour might translate entirely differently if Tomoyo were male.

Tomoyo’s idolisation of Sakura is far from veiled, and yet it is not revealed to be unmistakeably romantic until Episode 40, in which Sakura must capture a Clow card that makes people dream about their hidden desires. Sakura, Tomoyo, Syaoran Li (Sakura’s rival and love interest) and his cousin Meilin visit a fun fair. Sakura and Meilin team up to play a Whack-A-Mole game and Tomoyo – as usual – picks up her camera to film Sakura in action. Suddenly, the Clow card appears in the form of a glowing butterfly and lands on Tomoyo’s shoulder. Tomoyo falls into a dream sequence, in which we see her deepest desire play out through her eyes. On a pink background of falling cherry blossom, copies of Sakura dressed in Tomoyo’s outfits call her name and dance playfully around her. We are shown a shot of Tomoyo’s face – staring in awe at first, and then relax into a smile. “I’m so happy!” she says to herself, and runs toward the dancing copies of Sakura – still filming.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAx_vfayMTw”]

It seems like an odd moment to be sexually awakened – watching your crush play a Whack-A-Mole game at a fun fair – and perhaps if the show had been targeted at a more mixed audience (or the characters were older) this moment might have been filled with more obvious sexualised content. But through Tomoyo’s own eyes, CLAMP visually summarise the complex feelings of romance, admiration, obsession, and innocent love she feels for Sakura. Not only this, but as Sakura dances continually out of Tomoyo’s physical reach, the implication becomes one of wanting something you know you can never have. Tomoyo knows by now of Syaoran’s feelings for Sakura and like a true friend encourages their romance for the sake of Sakura’s happiness rather than her own.

This “doomed” romance trap seems to be a family curse, as we discover in episode 10 that Tomoyo’s mother appeared to also be hopelessly in love with Sakura’s mother (her cousin). Similarly, Sakura’s mother didn’t return her cousin’s feelings as she was in love with an older man (Sakura’s father) in the same way that Sakura is attracted to Yukito – an older boy. Both mothers are absent from their lives – Sakura’s mother through death, and Tomoyo’s through continual business trips – yet their daughters seem fated to play out their romantic histories.

Suffering from a bout of nostalgia, I decided to revisit the show as an adult, first in it’s Americanised form, and then the original Japanese version to compare the differences. I was shocked to discover that in an effort to make the show fit the perceived needs of their rigidly defined demographic of young boys, the executives at Kids WB had hacked all elements of “toxic” feminisation from it – romance, homosexuality, and the agency of Sakura has a protagonist (even her name is removed from the title) – dramatically reducing the run-time from 70 to just 39 episodes. In fact, if they had been able to “maximise” their cuts, the show would reportedly have run for merely 13 episodes. In other words, there was a concerted effort to twist the female gaze into a male one under the belief that CLAMP’s blend of hyper-femininity and action would be unappealing for the male audience it was being aimed at. In Japanese Superheroes for Global Girls, Anne Allison quotes this from an executive from Mattel, “[…] In America, girls will watch male-oriented programming but boys won’t watch female-oriented shows; this makes a male superhero a better bet.”

Whilst moaning about all this to my partner recently, I asked him if he had watched the dubbed version of the show as a child. He said that he had, but didn’t realise until he was older that the show had probably been intended for girls. I asked him if he remembered being turned-off that the show’s hero was a little girl as opposed to the ultra-masculine characters of his favourite childhood anime, Dragon Ball Z. His totally undermines Mattel’s assumptions about the show’s gender appeal: “I thought Sakura was really cool. In fact, I loved her so much I begged my mum for roller-skates that Christmas so that I could skate around to be like her.” Even more affirming than this is the fact that whilst the dubbed version of the show ended up being cancelled, the original Japanese one ran to its intended conclusion; spawned two films; and inspired two spin-off series using the same characters – Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle and xxxHolic.

Sadly, by “butching” Cardcaptor Sakura up to be squeezed into the TV schedule alongside Pokemon and Dragon Ball Z, Western children were deprived of the tender and emotionally complex storytelling and character development behind all the magic and swordplay – and even from getting a satisfying ending to the show. It seems that whilst Japanese children are considered mature enough to deal with female superheroes, complex pre-pubescent emotions, and LGBTQ+ representation from a female perspective, Western children are unfortunately not treated with the same respect or intelligence.

Sources

The Female Gaze in Contemporary Japanese Literature, Kathryn Hemmann.

On Writing (Strong) Female Characters, Daniel Swensen.

Magical Girls: Empowered or Objectified? Wiki for SC2220: Gender Studies for University of Singapore.

The Americanisation of Cardcaptor Sakura, Actar’s Reviews.

Hannah Collins is a freelance illustrator, writer, Feminist, anime nerd, and Britney Spears apologist. You can read more of her writing on gender in pop culture at Fanny Pack and her on own blog.

Learn from the Future: ‘Battle Royale’

This guest post by Belle Artiquez appears as part of our theme week on Dystopias.

We have all seen dystopian futures represented in film and literature: desolate landscapes with survivors of some war-torn/zombie apocalypse struggling to live their bleak lives under the rule of brutal and selfish dictators who are only out for themselves. It’s a theme we are well-accustomed to, and there are numerous examples of different dystopian futures: zombie apocalypses are in full swing at the moment in TV and film (The Walking Dead, The Last Ship, World War Z), but then there is also the fall of religion (The Book of Eli), the loss of fertility (Children of Men), and the loss of resources such as water and oil (Mad Max).

The examples of how humanity could fall are in such abundance that when we get a film that doesn’t necessarily look that different to our own current world, it may not be the harsh dystopian world that we are so used to seeing on screen. Battle Royale (2000) is that film, and yet its reality is somewhat harsher than these other dystopian themes. Directed by Kinji Fukasaku, and adapted from a book of the same title, the apocalyptic film portrays a totalitarian government that rules Japan, where communication with the western world is forbidden, and every year one school class is chosen to be pitted against each other in the ultimate fight to the death as a way of controlling the young generations and reminding them that they cannot rebel, they cannot be free, and they will only ever be restrained by their government.

The actual Battle is set on a highly guarded, isolated island, and the chosen class (a ninth grade class) is brought to it and ordered to fight in a zero sum game of death in a highly publicized slaughter game where there will be only one winner. The children are given one weapon each ranging from sauce pans to rifles and survival gear with maps and other necessities as they navigate through the island, of which there are interchangeable “forbidden zones.” Around their necks, a collar with the power to instantly kill is fitted to make sure any student disobeying the rules or being in a death zone at the wrong time will be killed. It appears to all to be a completely unfair setup, but this is a harsh dystopian world, so what do we expect?

9th grade class photo, looking like students not murderers — Ninth grade class photo–all looking like students, not murderers.

Not only does the film portray existing anxieties for Japan, it also represents the severe landscape of our current era–the fact that people struggle to survive already, that some are unfairly given better opportunities regardless of value (portrayed through the weapons the students are given) and are almost set up for failure. The fact that a ninth grade class is always the chosen class depicts the hardship and suffering of actual ninth grade classes in Japan currently. Up until that grade, students need only be in attendance to proceed to the next grade, but suddenly at ninth grade they are faced with extremely difficult exams in order to get a placement in a more prestigious school, putting immense pressure on students who are suddenly pitted against each other for these few places. Apart from this obvious nod, the film also suggests that we are already currently set up for failure worldwide. Our banking system for instance is the biggest fraud of our time, where people are given loans of money that doesn’t actually exist only to have to work even harder to repay the non-existent money back with actual hard cash. We are told that we need to earn a living doing jobs that we hate, instead of living and doing what makes us happy. We are born into constant monitoring, not being able to move around the world without asking permission or being watched. Governments may not be totalitarian, authoritarian ones but they certainly act in similar ways under the guise of protectors. These are all aspects of what the students of Battle Royale have to cope with. They are watched not only by the controllers of the battle, but by the entire country, as if nothing more than a reality show.

The “Forbidden Zones” also illustrate the ways in which laws are put in place. We know that most laws are put into place for our benefit–murder, theft, and abuse are all illegal for the good of the people–so that we feel safe in our day-to-day lives. However, governments have been known to create laws for their own benefit, take for example the new law created in Australia that states it is illegal for detention centre workers to report child abuse, rape and human rights violations. Or the American law that states it is illegal to film and report animal abuse on farms, establishing severe criminal sanctions for those who would report the abuse as opposed to those causing the abuse. These laws are not in place to protect the people, they are conceived in order to protect the corporations in charge, the authorities. This use of law-making is of course related to the “Forbidden Zones,” which are set up so the game will run within the three day time limit, and also for the entertainment of viewers watching from the safety of their homes. The students have not only to fight and kill their classmates with whatever they were given but they also have to worry about where they go, at what times.

The leader and man in charge of the battle is also the representative of our current powers/governments/politicians. Kitano is the man who tells the students the rules of the game, as well as handing them their weapons and survival gear, and who likewise has no problem killing two students before stating it is actually against the rules for him to do so. By breaking the rules in such a nonchalant manner Kitano shows the class that they must obey a hypocritical generation in order to survive. He even goes as far as asking the students to be friends with him, establishing a false sense of security, the contrast between being friends with this man and then witnessing him kill two of them is stark and also conveys the same governmental control that most countries understand, the “We are here to help you” attitude while they only ever help themselves. Another facet of this dynamic relationship refers to the fact that the classmates are all friends with histories and memories together and now they must let go of all of that and slaughter each other. However, not all students have the ability to do this and end up committing suicide as a way out of this and also as an escape of the imminent betrayal they will face.

Kitano threatens a student, and shows the hypocritical nature of authority. — Kitano threatens a student and shows the hypocritical nature of authority.

And just as the film articulates these contrasting attitudes and dilemmas with regard to controlling powers and zero sum attitudes, so too does it address these issues within themes of gender, sexuality and authority. Battle Royale does stereotype its female and male characters to conform to society’s ideas of femininity and masculinity. Most of the women are rendered weak, helpless, and in need of protection. Where some girls need the help of their male friends to survive (Noriko, whose protection is passed on when her initial protector is killed), others cling to each other in the hopes that some sort of sisterhood will unite them and make them strong enough to survive, showing a kind of stupidity on their part since there can only be one winner. These united girls end up in anarchy as one of them eats a poisoned dinner meant for a male classmate and suddenly they are all slaughtering each other without even trying to overcome the misunderstanding. In total contrast to this we see male students working together in perfect harmony even with a few moments of misunderstandings as a few of them work together to get the death collars deactivated. The male characters do their best to protect the female students, but only the ones that have strong emotional relationships with the men.

Noriko hides behind male student for protection portraying the fragile nature of the class's female students — Noriko hides behind a male student for protection, portraying the fragile nature of the class’s female students.

The only strong female character also happens to be presented as the villain of the piece (as does the previous winner of the game who happens to be a young girl, although we only see her briefly at the beginning), and this is possibly because she is independent, sexual, and in control. Mitsuko is violent, she quickly becomes a killing machine in order to survive, and even uses her sexuality to do so. A loner in her class before the slaughter, a victim of sexual abuse and a murderer at a young age (in self defense against the man who was going to abuse her), she now just “doesn’t want to be the loser anymore” and uses everything at her disposal to win. This includes her obvious sexuality, which she uses in ways similar to a Venus fly trap. A good deceiver, she entices a two male classmates and while they feel at ease, happy to be getting any sexual action, she kills them. Now who’s at fault for this? The girl who was just playing the brutal game like all the other students in order to survive, or the boys who stupidly thought that sex was worth the risk? Yet Mitsuko is the villain, which may actually just be another acknowledgment of current gender expectation in Japan, which is where the film and book are based on after all. Gender roles are an important part of Japanese society: men are expected to work hard, and housewives are considered valuable for their child rearing abilities; this could be why we see the group of girls acting in ways similar to the housewife, while the male students work to either outright win the game or fight the authority by breaking the collars. Traits associated with individualism such as assertiveness and self-reliance is not seen in high regard, which is why we are shown Mitsuko in a negative, villainous way. So for a film that nearly entirely describes our current living situation, it could be said that the gender roles and stereotypes too are another way of acknowledging existing gender positions and expectations in Japan.

While the strong, independent female characters are shown in negative lights.

This is certainly a terrifying film; we are presented with a nightmarish portrayal of a hyper-violent, dystopian, totalitarian world we would be afraid to be a part of, yet we are also delivered a unique depiction of the word we are already a part of and that in itself is the most nightmarish aspect of Battle Royale. The film is an acknowledgment of not only the world we live in right now but also of the human condition and the gender roles that are currently prevalent in a society that is supposed to be based on equality; however, it is anything but. We need to look to such films and recognise that although they are fictional, and depictions of a harsh dystopia, they are also reflections of our present issues in society. They are showing us how bleak and grim our own realities are without the slaughter games and authoritarian powers that make the Battle Royale world so frightening.

Congratulations for being chosen to take part in this horror game called life!

How ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’ Demonstrates a More Inclusive Masculinity

All of them, even those that have more traditional male expressions than the others, end up rejecting more toxic expressions of masculinity.

This guest post by Aaron Radney appears as part of our theme week on Masculinity.

To call Avatar: The Last Airbender (ATLA) one of the best shows in recent memory isn’t a controversial statement. It’s been lauded, and rightly so, for its varied female cast, but that nuanced treatment of heroic depictions isn’t limited to the women of the show.

It’s a generally understood in feminism that forced adherence to gender roles can hurt men as much as women with what we’d call traditional masculinity being celebrated to the detriment of other gender expressions. As a coming of age story I felt the young men in the show–Aang, Sokka, and Zuko–all demonstrated the struggle young men face journeying into manhood with Uncle Iroh providing a vision of what the end of that road might look like. All of them, even those that have more traditional male expressions than the others, end up rejecting more toxic expressions of masculinity.

As is typical with these sorts of things, spoilers of all types going forward.

Starting with Aang we have what I think could be the least stereotypical male lead I’ve ever seen in action fiction. Not the bumbling everyman hero, the sarcastic anti-hero or the brooding master, Aang is a guile hero with more in common with Bugs Bunny than Superman or James Bond, with a balance of competence and sensitivity. Then there’s his elemental bending. The four bending elements always seemed obviously gender coded to me with air and water being based on “soft” martial arts styles build more on evasion and redirection, and fire and earth being built on “hard” styles and as such more aggressive, direct and forceful. Far from playing these tropes straight, ATLA stands them on their head with a male hero using one of the two feminine elements. This doesn’t seem to me a fluke either as an episode late in the series, “The Ember Island Players” has Aang played in a stage performance by a woman both as a joke on typical voice casting but also in seeming acknowledgement of those aspects of his personality.

Rather than compensating for his element with extreme aggression as one might see in another show, Aang is the least aggressive member of his group. This is a kid who’d rather talk than fight, doesn’t enjoy combat when he has to do it, and prefers to evade and defend and trick rather than use brute force. Instead of a righteous chosen one or someone who identifies as a warrior, Aang’s primary expression is that of a pacifist monk and the narrative never tries to make him anything else. In fact, anytime he tries to ignore his emotions in favor of the cold reason and detachment we’d expect of someone in his role, the story actively rebuffs him for it. It’s not true to who he is.

Furthermore, many of Aang’s greatest moments come not through physical prowess but through doing what he can to help others. He even demonstrates that men can, and should, be advocates for women’s equality when he stands up to the sexist Master Pakku, who refuses to train Katara. Even going so far as to use his privilege as the Avatar to attempt to sway Pakku’s mind.

Not only does Aang have no problem training side by side with a woman, but he is later trained by that same woman when she surpasses his skills (and again has no problem being trained by another woman later in the narrative’s run). Never do we see him bothered by this or feel diminished by it. Aang’s far too secure in who he is as a person for anyone else’s success to bother him.

Sokka’s gender expression is a bit more conventional but his arc hits some of the same themes. Overtly sexist in a way he’s checked on more than once his macho streak reeks of a young boy trying too hard to be what he thinks a warrior and man of his tribe is supposed to be. His bravado in the face of the Fire Nation threat plays out like a typical wish fulfillment fantasy of a little boy desirous of glory in battle but in his first encounter with the antagonist Zuko he’s trounced almost comically. The show clearly demonstrates that direct physical prowess is not Sokka’s path.

Over time however, Sokka confronts his insecurities and matures into the team’s idea guy. He becomes a potent strategist and realizes his lack of formidable physique (he’s got a body type that, like the other young men on the show is not unreasonable for someone his age who engages in regular activity but it’s not the masculine ideal we’re used to seeing) and lack of bending skills does not preclude him from being both beneficial to the team and to others. He’s no less brave and no less noble than his friends and far from being the stoic analytic or cringing braniac we envision with a male in this role; Sokka embodies the goofy charmer. He’s the class clown who nevertheless gets straight A’s. He’s never made fun of for not conforming to what you’d expect in a show of this type.

If Aang and Sokka demonstrate a non-traditional masculinity through growing up, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say that Zuko and Uncle Iroh demonstrate the idea of shaking off patriarchal constraints. Both are of the Fire Nation, which is based heavily on imperialist Japan, is highly paternalistic and builds its masculine identity on ideas of domination and honor gained by conquest. Probably the most visible expression of this is the ritual duel of Fire Nation culture known as the Agni Kai. Iroh, however, gives us a vision of a different path of the Fire Nation male and how this expression is regarded, that is to say, not all that well.

Seen as a bit of an eccentric Iroh lost the throne to his more aggressive and conniving brother. Meanwhile, we discover that Iroh is probably one of the most decent people in the entire show. Though demonstrably able to respond to violence in kind being a former general in the Fire Nation army and originally the crown prince, Iroh, much like Aang, prefers to talk and avoid trouble when he can. Like Aang many of Iroh’s most memorable moments stem not from his physicality, but his empathy. Perhaps the most famous instance is one in which he disarms a would-be mugger easily, but rather than that being the end of it, or him punishing said mugger for the attempt, he first gives him pointers on proper stance when using a knife, and then proceeds to sit with him and show him kindness, encouraging him to pursue his dream of becoming a masseur. This is not a one-off for Iroh. He is calm rather than stoic and exemplifies a maturity that seeks to empathize and assist people when and how he can.

Iroh’s nephew Zuko on the other hand begins as an antagonist determined to capture the Avatar to reclaim his honor. His brooding, anger, and attempts at stoicism make him the most stereotypically masculine teenage boy on the show. Over time, we learn that his father banished him both for showing compassion about a group of soldiers that would have been sacrificed in a military action AND for refusing to fight his father in an Agni Kai. It’s noted that Zuko’s unwillingness to fight his own father was seen as a sign of weakness. The Fire Lord, his father, and the literal patriarch of his family and his nation, burns Zuko’s face and he carries the scar throughout the show. One could say without irony he was literally scarred by the patriarchy and we see that Zuko’s rage and bravado is at odds with the compassion and empathy he exhibits in the flashback.

For two seasons Zuko pursues the Avatar to win his father’s approval. His adherence to the Fire Nation’s belief of fire’s power coming from rage keeps him in a constant state of hostility and his pride explicitly keeps him from bending lightning, a skill that he’s told requires absolute control of his emotions and one at which his sister excels. All through this, his Uncle is by his side attempting to show him a better way and encouraging him to set aside his anger and frustration.

Iroh even teaches him a technique for lightning redirection, a move he created by studying water benders and explains to his nephew that studying other elements and other cultures can help him become stronger. The show, subtly or not, through Zuko demonstrates the expectations under which he’s been placed holding him back.

Later, while living their lives as fugitives in another nation, Zuko begins to grow emotionally. No longer constantly hunting the Avatar we see him protect a village from bullying bandits, provide joy to a young woman in a town he’s staying in by lighting the candles of a town square with his fire bending and helping his uncle in a tea shop. Zuko begins to relearn the joy found in helping others.

However, in one of the most lauded fake-outs of the show, Zuko is seduced back to the dark side at the end of season 2 and when it looks as though he’s killed the Avatar he’s welcomed back into his father’s good graces but betrays his Uncle. At this point, Zuko has everything he ever wanted and yet his shame is too great and he doesn’t’ have the emotional tools to deal with it. This realization is plain and stark when he says, “I’m angry and I don’t know why.” It’s not long after this that Zuko has a change of heart.

He storms into his father’s chamber and renounces his father and the Fire Nation’s warlike ways. He proclaims the only way his nation’s honor will be restored is if they embrace a path of love and peace and that he will be leaving to join the Avatar. His father takes this about as well as you’d expect and launches a powerful blast of lightning at his own son.

Zuko responds with the lightning redirection technique he learned in the previous season and the weight of the moment is palpable. He embraces his Uncle’s path of peace, expresses his desire to help the Avatar, and when met with full masculine coded killing force, draws on a technique derived from the principles one of the two female coded elements to protect himself and redirects the aggression, rather than meeting it head on. In that moment he affirms that his father’s power over him is gone, and quietly demonstrates for boys that which is masculine and that which is feminine can coexist and strength can come from this.

All of this comes to a head in the show’s finale and as the primary foils I think it’s only right Aang and Zuko’s final acts parallel each other. Zuko battles his sister and Aang Zuko’s father, the Fire Lord. Previously, many of Aang’s closest friends, including Zuko, tell him that to save the world, the Fire Lord has to die. Aang is convinced there has to be a better way. He refuses to abandon the teachings of the monks who raised him. On a meta level, Aang’s killing of the Fire Lord would have done little good. Having been at war for 100 years, the world didn’t need more killing but rather a third option. In a distinct subversion of the “A real man is a killer” trope Aang eliminates the threat by removing his enemy’s bending rather than ending his life. It is in this moment that Aang can be said to become a man in the form of a fully realized Avatar. Even the domination aspect is rebuked. Aang doesn’t dominate the Fire Lord in their final battle of wills that is Energy Bending. Instead Aang’s own spirit proves indomitable. Aang succeeds because he refuses to be taken over himself and that distinction is an important one. The act that defines Aang as an adult and shows the kind of man he has become is not one of taking the life of another being, but remaining true to his own principles. The final moment we see for Aang where he ends the Fire Nation’s final act of destruction with a single waterbending move–an act of healing and putting out the fire of war.

Similarly, Zuko’s final act against his sister is not one of destruction but one of protection. He nearly sacrifices himself to protect Katara from a lightning attack by his sister. Zuko attempts to perform lightning redirection but isn’t grounded properly. This wasn’t a matter of saving the damsel but rather him recognizing he had a specific skill he could use to protect a friend. Another show would have had that be a moment of triumph for Zuko where he performed the move perfectly. Instead Zuko’s failure here becomes important because it wasn’t due to any inadequacy, but rather the complexities of the situation. To me, it felt like an acknowledgement that to be a man doesn’t mean one must be perfect.

I’m not entirely sure how much of this is intentional and how much is just the result of good storytelling, but ATLA manages to say great things about a type of masculinity you don’t always get to see. One that says there’s no singular way to be male and taken seriously. It doesn’t make the mistake of playing certain male archetypes for laughs or build its idea of what it means for these boys to grow into manhood on the domination of others, but rather stresses the need for empathy, constant personal growth and security in one’s own identity, and using our abilities to help others, rather than for abuse and subjugation.

Aaron Radney is an aspiring illustrator who attended Memphis College of Art and lives in St. Louis, Missouri. Though he spent far too long fighting against the impulse to let his race and his feminism impact his work, he’s slowly beginning to more actively embrace both looks forward to doing more writing and art on both subjects. His work can be found on his website http://aaronradney.com or on his Facebook page here.

Miyazaki’s Swan Song ‘The Wind Rises’

Hayao Miyazaki is one of the most renowned animators alive. He brought us visually arresting, pro-woman, environmentalist tales like ‘Princess Mononoke’ and ‘Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind.’ He brought us lush tales of magic and mythology, like ‘Spirited Away’ and ‘Howl’s Moving Castle,’ with young women as protagonists and other women as focal, powerful characters throughout. Miyazaki now insists that his latest animated film, ‘The Wind Rises’ (‘Kaze Tachinu’), will be his last.

"The Wind Rises" poster — “The Wind Rises” poster

Written by Amanda Rodriguez
Spoiler Alert

Hayao Miyazaki is one of the most renowned animators alive. He brought us visually arresting, pro-woman, environmentalist tales like Princess Mononoke and Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. He brought us lush tales of magic and mythology, like Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle, with young women as protagonists and other women as focal, powerful characters throughout. Miyazaki now insists that his latest animated film, The Wind Rises (Kaze Tachinu), will be his last.

The film felt like a goodbye with its insistence that artists can only be creative and productive for 10 years, its somber outlook, and the way in which it concluded at the end of a major era in Japanese history (Japan’s defeat in World War II). The Wind Rises also features one of Miyazaki’s rare male protagonists, Jirô Horikoshi (a fictionalized version of the eponymous historical aeronautical engineer who designed Japan’s model “Zero” fighter plane); I suspect this is because Miyazaki identifies with Jirô and his dreams that are too big and too pure for this world.

Jiro Dream Pilot — “Airplanes are beautiful, cursed dreams, waiting for the sky to swallow them up.”

Considering Miyazaki’s focus on the centrality of female characters throughout his career, The Wind Rises is disappointing in its lack of developed female characters. There’s really only Jirô’s loud and pushy but soft-hearted little sister, Kayo, who grows up to be a doctor. Jirô’s encouragement of her medical school dreams and the achievement of a peripheral female character’s big dreams in the 1940’s are a bit too subtle to consider feminist, but it’s a welcome nod nonetheless. Nahoko is Jirô’s tragic love interest who has loved him completely and selflessly since he rescued her as a girl from the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923. Though we know Nahoko loves painting, French poetry, and Jirô, there is little else that we know about her beyond that. She exists solely to love and support Jirô and to humanize him in a way that none of his other relationships do.

Nahoko and Jirô meet by a picturesque spring

Though The Wind Rises is (as to be expected) beautiful, it is overly sentimental. Jirô’s reunion with a woman who he helped many years ago only to fall in love with her only to have her be tragically ill was a bit too neat of an unrealistic package designed to give magic and wonder to the external life of a young man who mainly lived within his own head. Not only that, but the ethereal quality of dreams is the heart of the film, insisting that we must make our beautiful dreams a reality no matter what the consequences, no matter how the world may pervert those dreams. This is particularly true of Jirô’s innocent desire to design planes that is warped and manipulated to serve his country’s wartime needs. As a member of the country who heinously dropped two atomic bombs on Japan during World War II, I find this particular theme questionable. Though I valued a glimpse of history from Japan’s perspective, which the US rarely sees, I would have been extremely uncomfortable had I been watching a tale about the creation of the atom bomb and how it was a beautiful dream that life distorted, a dream with deadly real life applications for which the dreamer takes little responsibility. We only know that Jiro and his dreamland mentor, the Italian Caproni, would prefer to design planes that weren’t used for war, but they do so anyway and without question.

This leads me to my final critique of the film. The war and the purpose of the planes that Jirô builds are, strangely, non-issues. The Wind Rises is an oddly apolitical nationalistic film that laments Japan’s poverty, inability to innovate due to economic challenges, and the pain of pride for being a country technologically left behind. The motivations for the war are never discussed. No one is pro-war or anti-war. The film seems to be asserting that Japan’s involvement in World War II was due to a sense of honor rather than conviction or even political profit. Japan, like Jirô, is, instead a little country with a big dream. Miyazaki’s blasé approach to the war does not measure up to the clear-cut environmentalist stance he takes in many of his other films.

Jiro stands before his failed plane prototype — Jirô stands before his failed plane prototype

While Miyazaki continues to deliver breathtaking animated scenes and a sense of wonder and magic, The Wind Rises disappoints on a thematic level with its lack of engagement or curiosity about Japan’s involvement in World War II or an artist’s responsibility for their creations. The borderline cloying saccharine sentimentality along with the lack of strong female characters we’ve come to expect from Miyazaki leave me hoping The Wind Rises is not his swan song, that he will make just one more film that rivals, if not surpasses, the masterpieces he has already given us.

Amanda Rodriguez is an environmental activist living in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a BA from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio and an MFA in fiction writing from Queens University in Charlotte, NC. She writes all about food and drinking games on her blog Booze and Baking. Fun fact: while living in Kyoto, Japan, her house was attacked by monkeys.