Japanese Animation and New Media
Week Eleven: Chapter Seventeen: The Absence of Sex
Castle in the Sky: Typically in Miyazaki’s animations, especially those after Castle in the Sky, even though the boy and girl work together and may feel some attraction to one another, the story does not end with a romantic resolution. The exception is the recent film Ponyo, which ends with a sort of arranged marriage between very young children. Generally, Miyazaki animations tend to focus on girls facing and meeting challenges without the mediation of adults, either men or women. And boys tend to be partners, giving help and receiving help in return. In the interactions of boys and girls in these animations, somewhat paradoxically, there is at once an insistence on gender dimorphism and a sort of pre-sexual propriety. How does this set-up negotiate the problem of the ‘girl who is not one’ and the ‘absence of sex’? It seems that these films are very much concerned with propriety and wholesomeness, with showing us good girls and good boys. In this respect, questions about sexuality and gender are largely cleaned up and swept away by focusing on ‘naturally’ good boys and girls. A mechanical girl seems unthinkable, even if a woman with a prosthetic arm is possible. What is more, we shouldn’t forget that the girls in earlier Miyazaki animations remain otaku favourites — there’s that ‘panty shot’ of Sheeta early in the film.
Nadia: Nadia is supposed to have sex appeal, and she remains at the top of the list of all-time favourite anime shojo characters. Oddly, however, despite the sense of autonomy implied in her bossiness and petulance, she doesn't seem to have much confidence. And her tale ends with an almost classically Oedipal romantic solution: she gives up her jewel to save Jean who will become her husband, at the same time that she is reconciled with her father as he dies. In other words, it seems that everything has followed the proper Oedipal pattern, with the husband replacing the father. What’s more, for all his earnest geekiness, Jean appears properly object-orientated: in the otaku episode, he politely declines joining the idol fan club because he has an object of desire, Nadia. In contrast, she’s always trying to figure out what phase of the romance they’re in. If this series indeed presents a departure from the basic psychoanalytic structure, it happens at the level of multiple frames of reference. The series also ends with Electra pregnant with Nemo’s child, and Sanson marrying the girl Marie. In other words, in addition to the Oedipal complex, we have the Electra complex and the Lolita complex. The multiplication of complexes makes the resolutions at the end feel rather disturbing.
Evangelion takes this impulse further, with Shinji and his ‘harem’ of girl and women figures. There are multiple frames of reference for romantic solutions, yet none of them is particularly convincing or long lasting. Still, it all happens in relation to the dispersed maternal body, and so maybe there is a girl for Shinji after all…
She the Ultimate Weapon: Chise and Shûji strive to maintain their relationship, despite the fact that she is a military weapon, and the world is coming to an end. They even try to escape and live ‘normal’ lives. In the end, however, they cannot escape, and the girl who is not one manages to save only one human, her boyfriend Shûji. The world has indeed been destroyed, but she provides a sort of shelter in which he lives on, the last man. In other words, he has truly succeeded at ‘being one,’ while she is entirely ‘not one,’ but what Saitô posits as a natural male-female asymmetry can only be sustained under the most extreme conditions of total war and planetary destruction.
Suzumiya Haruhi: Although Kyon has a soft-porn-style attraction to Asahina Mikuru (whom Haruhi is always dressing as if to attract his attention), the series makes clear that Haruhi has chosen him, a regular guy. As such, although Haruhi is apparently in control of everything, she doesn’t know that she is. And she cannot be allowed to know. Kyon does like her, but it’s tough to get past her bossiness. But she is his object. In other words, with his post-noir ironic narrative voice, Kyon seems able to be one, to be the only one who is in fact not configured in advance as stretched across space and time in weird ways. Haruhi is definitely not one. And at moments of extreme danger, when the world is about to end, Kyon and Haruhi kiss, and their moment of romantic resolution appears to save the world — for now. Would the world really end if boys do not manage to ‘be one,’ and girls do remain content to ‘be not one’?
Whether you ultimately agree with psychoanalytic theory or not, you should understand that these are the sorts of questions that it allows you to pose of gender and sexuality. And because manga and anime are so fond of the ‘girl who is not one,’ the resonance with psychoanalytic theory can’t be avoided.
But, as we’ll see in the next chapter, even though it is possible to read these anime in terms of this basic structural tendency (boy >> one; girl >> not one), these scenarios are getting more and more twisted, outlandish, and perverse. The question then is, can twisting the structure move you beyond it?
