Short Skirts and Superpowers: The Evolution of the Beautiful Fighting Girl

Abstract

Shōjo manga are filled with rivalries between innocent and naive young girls and evil older women. Antagonism between pure-hearted young women and villainous older women has been communicated to shōjo manga from bishōjo manga written by and for men through the process of narrative consumption and reproduction. To understand why this is so, this essay examines the work of three Japanese cultural theorists on the topic of the bishōjo, or beautiful girl, character type. The ultimate goal of this essay, however, is to argue that female manga artists are fully aware of the cycle of narrative consumption and reproduction, and are thus able to intervene in and disrupt the process and offer new interpretations of female character types that are empowering to female readers. On February 9, 2011, the New York Times published an article entitled “In Tokyo, a Crackdown on Sexual Images of Minors.”1 Although the “sexual images” in question come from a variety of media, such as adult films and role-playing video games, the Tokyo Metropolitan Ordinance Regarding the Healthy Development of Minors (Tōkyō-to Seishōnen no Kenzen Naikusei ni Kan Suru Jōrei), or the “Tokyo Youth Ordinance Act,” passed by the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly on December 15, 2010, specifically targets manga featuring young female characters in what are deemed to be sexually compromising poses or situations.2 The journalist who penned the article, Hiroko Tabuchi, quotes Tokyo governor Ishihara Shintarō as saying of the manga in question that “these are for abnormal people, for perverts.” The article sensationalizes the media that Ishihara hopes to censor as child pornography by emphasizing the young ages and sexual exploitation of its models