Japanese Animation and New Media
Week Eleven: Chapter Seventeen: The Absence of Sex
The girl who is not one is not one in the sense of not being a girl, and in the sense of not being unitary or unified (having no natural essence). Let’s look at some of the anime characters that we have seen who symbolize shojo or ‘girl.’ Recall that the term ‘shojo’ itself already indicates something that is not naturally a girl but symbolically (textually, literarily, mediatically) a girl. Shojo evokes ‘girl effects.’
Sheeta in Castle in the Sky: looks like a girl, acts like a girl, but belongs to a mysterious race, and has magical powers. Yet, until the end at least, she cannot access these powers actively and consciously. They kick in at an unconscious or bodily level via the jewel. Everyone wants to get their hands on her jewel, and she is constantly in flight, and is exchanged between different groups. When she finally assumes the power of her jewel consciously and actively, it is not to save herself but to save the world.
Nadia in Nadia: also looks like a girl, acts like a girl, but evokes a sense of racial otherness (African?) because she belongs to a mysterious race of aliens. And she has magical powers. Similar to Sheeta, until the end of the story, she cannot access these powers actively and consciously. They kick in at an unconscious or bodily level via the jewel. Everyone wants to get their hands on her jewel, and she is constantly in flight, and is exchanged between different groups. When she finally assumes the power of her jewel consciously and actively, it is not to save herself but to save the Jean who will be her husband. Unlike like Sheeta who assumes her destiny as a ‘girl who is not one’ bravely and sweetly, Nadia frequently becomes petulant and bossy, adopting contradictory and contrary stances. She’s not happy about being a girl who is not one.
Key in Key the Metal Idol: also looks and acts like a girl but is robot. She wants to win thirty thousand friends in order to become a real girl. She is clearly ‘not one’ both in the sense of being robot and in the sense of not being unitary or unified. She has to open herself to the forces of symbolization in order to be a girl — the recognition of thirty thousand friends. But the anime also introduces some doubt: she may be a girl who was somehow traumatized by growing up among robots, and finding thirty thousand friends may be her therapy. But then, as in the other stories, various groups are secretly trying to steer, co-opt, or protect her, as if the fate of the world depended on her.
Chise in She the Ultimate Weapon (SaiKano): looks and acts like a shy and uncertain schoolgirl but transforms into weapon of mass destruction, a sort of battle angel. Her romance with Shûji promises to let her be a ‘real’ girl, but that just isn’t possible in a world of total war in which salvation depends on her. No wonder she isn’t the happiest girl either.
Haruhi in Suzumiya Haruhi: looks and acts like girl but has no interest in humans. In fact, due to her passion for non-humans, she has somehow ‘restarted’ the world and has unknowingly summoned a variety of non-humans to her side (aliens, time travelers, espers). Bossy and overbearing, she nonetheless has no idea of her powers. But she has to be mollified and indulged or the world as we know it may end.
Chii in Chobits: looks and acts like a girl but is in fact a gynoid PC. She has somehow lost her OS and her memory, and again circles of conspiracy and rumour expand around her. The fate of the world somehow depends on her. Everything hinges on her finding her ‘one and only.’
We can add the ‘harem’ of girls around Shinji in Evangelion as well. In addition, in some of the more technophilic or tech-heavy animations with cyborg women that we discussed previously, a similar problematic arises. The problematic is more at the level of the ‘human who is not human’ in The Ghost in the Shell, but the burden of being ‘not one’ falls especially on the ‘woman who is not one’ nonetheless. Armitage III tries to resolve the problem of the fully cyborg-mecha ‘woman who is not one’ by allowing her to give birth to a human-looking child. But can that really solve the problem? Or does mecha birth simply reinforce the dilemma of being not one?
