Eisner Winners Announced
Eisner Award Winners are announce on The Beat.
What do you think? I’ll have my reaction and others’ tomorrow!
Reading Over Shoulders
I just found out Oklahoma has an aquarium!
You know I can’t resist free manga giveaways!!! – thanks Manga Critic!
Read About Comics reviews Chicken With Plums. It’s got a very different feel than Persepolis but the artwork is very lyrical and beautiful.
Check out this cool blog I just discovered – PopKissKiss.
Good Comics for Kids offers up some kiddie horror with Dracula Madness.
Manga Maniac Cafe reviews B.Ichi, a title which has been sitting on my bookcase for weeks…I just keep finding more appealing stuff to read I guess.
And, hot off my twitter feed – Manga Recon posts about Brilliant Blue.
In Defense of the Shojo Heroine
When I first met T0hru Honda she was standing in a tent and I was curled up on my couch, searching for something to contribute to the library I had just been hired at. She was an orphan. I had just graduated library school. She needed a home and desperately wanted to please the men who allowed her to live with them. I had just moved through four states and desperately wanted to thrive at my job. We had nothing in common.
Ugh, who is this girl?, I thought. With her cloying sweetness and submissive nature I couldn’t understand why any teenager would want to read her story or worse, emulate her behavior. After all, this was America. Where our women kick ass, take names and would stomp all over Kyo the minute he pulled his pay attention to meeeee routine. Yet, for some reason, I couldn’t give up on Tohru anymore than she could give up on Kyo.
After a few volumes, I wasn’t just hooked on Fruits Basket, I was hooked on the shojo heroine. A couple years later when I first served on the Great Graphic Novels for Teens committee I would go to bat for women like Nana’s Hachi. The yasashi girl. I would admire these qualities in the young women that attended my monthly anime club meetings. They were a new generation, defining feminism and rearranging the cultural norms to fit their ideals.
So what makes the yasashi or “don’t rock the boat” girl so unappealing to our American sensibilities? Is it the idea that by bending to those around her she somehow gives up her individuality? But, these days, how overrated is individuality anyhow? What I notice is a woman who takes her strength from herself then offers that to her friends, her lovers, her parents and her community at large. The shojo heroine consciously makes the choice to be better every day.
It doesn’t always have the most obvious benefits to the character. Hachi’s romance with that jerk Takumi is an example of an unhealthy relationship perpetuated by Hachi’s “weak” sense of self. Yet, she stays for her child which is a much better reason than that of “strong” Nana who stays with her trainwreck Ren simply out of fear.
When standing beside a shojo heroine the ultimate goal is happiness for everyone. If they are happy, so will she be happy. And that, is not a bad thing. Yes, there are complications with the formula and I would have a hard time telling anyone to be as submissive as some of these characters are – yet, I can see how the shojo heroine would thrive in America if she were just given a chance. How her spirit can help pull others up and challenge everyone to be their best.
.
