[Image: Kanno Miho as the Shogun Tsunayoshi; she is holding a fan] Credit: moviecollection.jp
Contains major spoilers for Ôoku: Eien (Emonnosuke/Tsunayoshi) (film, 2013) and Yoshinaga Fumi’s Ôoku, vol. 4-6 (manga).
Archive for the ‘Manga’ Category
Mandate of Heaven, Law of Compassion: Ôoku: Eien (Emonnosuke/Tsunayoshi) (Film Review)
Posted in Ôoku, Gender, Manga, tagged Ôoku Eien, castle of crossed destinies, Emonnosuke, feminist film, Ooku: The Inner Chambers, Tsunayoshi, Ōoku on 2016/02/04| Leave a Comment »
The Rose of Versailles: Episodes
Posted in BeruBara (The Rose of Versailles), Manga, tagged ベルばら, ベルサイユのバラ, BeruBara, Episodes, Ikeda Riyoko, Margaret, new volume, shojo, The Rose of Versailles, The Rose of Versailles Episodes on 2015/01/26| 1 Comment »
I finally got around to reading the new volume of The Rose of Versailles (ベルサイユのバラ), which focuses on some side stories about the male characters: Andre Grandier, Florian Girodelle, Count Hans Axel Fersen, and Alain de Soisson.
Image via Amazon.co.jp
I have mixed feelings about the volume. Parts of it were brilliant, but some of it felt a little forced. Mild spoilers for the volume, major spoilers for the original series.
The Sherlock Manga is a Treasure
Posted in Manga, tagged BBC, Sherlock on 2014/12/17| 1 Comment »
Yes, this is an official BBC-sanctioned manga of A Study in Pink.
The manga is a fun way to get your Sherlock fix during the hiatus and brush up on your detective vocabulary in Japanese, but the real reason I want to recommend this is how the artist captured Benedict-Cumberbatch-as-Sherlock’s hilarious facial expressions. Oh, it’s Christmas, readers.
Video: “Marimo Antoinette”
Posted in Anime, BeruBara (The Rose of Versailles), Manga, tagged Beru Bara, humor, The Rose of Versailles on 2014/12/16| Leave a Comment »
We could do with a bit of humor around the holidays, yes? If you like fandom crack, Calorie Mate and FROGMAN collaborated on a Beru Bara parody anime, 「ベルサイユのマリモ」(“The Marimo of Versailles”).
Screenshot from YouTube of “Marimo Antoinette” arriving at court in a fish tank
Japan Gender Reader: July 2014
Posted in Art, Culture, Gender, Manga, tagged koseki, Rokudenashiko, sexual harassment, Shiomura Ayaka on 2014/07/31| Leave a Comment »
ギリギリセーフ！
Art by Murakami Takashi. Via Spoon & Tamago.
There is a lot to cover since I did my last gender reader at the start of June. In this gender reader: Shiomura Ayaka and the harassment case at the Tokyo Assembly, updates to koseki (family registry) laws, Rokudenashiko, and more.
Cross-Dressing in Anime and Manga
Posted in Anime, Conventions, Gender, Manga, tagged cross-dressing, reblog on 2014/07/27| 1 Comment »
My co-panelist Kathryn over at Contemporary Japanese Literature took the time out of her summer of research and writing to do a summary post of the essay version of our panel on cross-dressing, which I am reblogging here.
Some final notes: I have wanted to write about this topic for a long time, and Kathryn has been an incredible resource, motivator, sounding-board, supporter, and editor. It’s been a treat being her co-panelist and collaborator on this project. Since my own research lies in performing masculinities, I’ve enjoyed learning about performing femininities from her, and I hope we’ve been able to discuss effectively the pitfalls and triumphs of series that feature cross-dressing.
Kathryn’s own work in the field of gender and media studies is incredibly important, and her blog about Japanese literature in translation is a wonderful resource. Check it out here: http://japaneselit.net/
This past April, the ever-amazing Leah of The Lobster Dance and I gave a panel on cross-dressing in anime and manga at Sakura-Con in Seattle. Because we had an enormous turnout and not enough time to say everything we wanted to say, we decided to expand our talk and post it online.
Our essay is meant to be friendly and welcoming to newcomers to the fascinating field of Gender Studies, but readers should be advised that some portions of this essay contain mild spoilers for the series under discussion. For those of you who are looking for recommendations for anime, manga, and formal academic scholarship, feel free to jump ahead to our conclusion in Part Seven.
Part One
The Superpositionality of Gender
Gender plays a strong role in the life of each and every human individual from the moment of birth, even despite our difficulties in defining what “gender”…
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Revealing and Concealing Identities: Cross-Dressing in Anime and Manga, Part 7 [Finale]
Posted in Anime, Gender, Manga, tagged cross-dressing, femininities, gender fluidity, gender performance, gender play, gender roles, masculinities on 2014/07/25| 4 Comments »
Wrap-Up: The Endless Potential of Gender Performance
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Cross-dressing can help us see beyond gender binaries, and studying other cultures in a respectful way can help us understand more about how gender expression varies from culture to culture. We endeavored to provide a brief history of ideas about gender and cross-dressing in Japanese culture as well some general gender theory to create a framework for discussing the characters and tropes in manga and anime. (more…)
Revealing and Concealing Identities: Cross-Dressing in Anime and Manga, Part 6
Posted in Ôoku, Gender, Manga, tagged Arikoto, cross-dressing, gender non-conformity, Hiraga Gennai, Tokugawa Iemitsu, Yoshinaga Fumi on 2014/07/09| 6 Comments »
Ôoku: Cross-Dressing in a Matriarchy
We’ve already discussed several speculative fiction pieces with cross-dressing characters in them. Yet, where a piece like BeruBara focuses on alternate history by adding in a few fictional characters to actual historic events, the world portrayed by Yoshinaga Fumi in Ôoku (大奥) is an alternate history in which most of the historical figures’ genders have been swapped. The author’s use of speculative fiction serves to illustrate contemporary issues of gender and sexism by showing them to us through a tilted mirror. How does cross-dressing function in a gender-swapped world?
Content: this section contains mild spoilers for the manga series Ôoku, and some spoilers specific to the plots of the Iemitsu (vol. 2-4) and the Ieshige-Ieharu arcs (vol. 8-10). The spoilers are primarily events that occur in the first volumes of each story arc (vol. 2 and vol. 8). (Keep in mind that because this is historical fiction, general information about said historical figures will contain some spoilers.) Some discussion of misogyny, transphobia, homophobia, and domestic violence. All images safe for work.
Iemitsu and Arikoto. Ooku, Vol. 2, p. 117.
Revealing and Concealing Identities: Cross-Dressing in Anime and Manga, Part 5
Posted in Anime, Gender, Manga, tagged cross-dressing, femininities, gender identity, masculinities, trans*, transgender, transphobia, Wandering Son on 2014/06/19| 19 Comments »
Wandering Son: What You Can’t See
Part 4 here. Throughout this series, we’ve mentioned the difference between positive reactions to temporary, Carnival-esque cross-dressing and the transphobic and especially transmisogynistic negative reactions experienced by people who cross-dress more permanently or who are transgender. One of the best illustrations of this is Shimura Takako’s Wandering Son (Hôrô Musuko,「 放浪息子」), a manga and anime that feature several characters who are perceived to be cross-dressing by their community, when in fact several of them are dressing toward their gender identity (not cross-dressing). The show also features instances of socially acceptable cross-dressing (theatre) as a contrast to the transmisogyny experienced by an adult trans woman and a child designated male at birth (DMAB) on the cusp of puberty.
In this section, we’ll be discussing a manga and anime in which trans characters dressing toward their gender identity are perceived as cross-dressing, and will be using the terms “girls’ clothes” and “boys’ clothes” a lot. Please keep in mind that we mean this in the sense of culturally gendered clothing and school uniforms in a narrative about minors who are not out and who have to deal with transphobia in their schools and homes. An article of clothing itself, as comedian Eddie Izzard comments, is not inherently gendered, though the intent for it to be worn by (certain) cisgendered bodies is present.
Content warning: this section contains discussions of transphobia, transmisogyny, and sexism. There are also major spoilers for the anime and manga.
To briefly introduce the characters, Nitori Shûichi1 is a preteen who was designated male at birth and identifies as a girl. Her friend Takatsuki Yoshino is DFAB and identifies as a boy during elementary and junior high school.2 The manga follows Nitori and Takatsuki as they graduate elementary school, begin junior high school, and eventually enter high school; the anime focuses only on them in junior high school.
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