Oh, author, a disability analysis might've helped you there. Or not.

[terajk]

Because I am the luckiest person EVER, I've been chatting with the fabulous and sparkly esmenet about gender in Rumiko Takahashi's manga Ranma 1/2. It made me remember this godawful analysis of gender in Ranma 1/2 I read a while back (Akira and Ranma 1/2: The Monstrous Adolescent by Susan Jollife Napier, available as part of a Google Books preview for USAians). While arguing that in Ranma 1/2 "boundaries are reinscribed into the conventions of a heterosexual hierarchical society" with a straight face (ahahahaha), she said this. (Out of spite, I fixed a sentence. My correction is in bold and CAPSLOCK):

Ryoga, one of Ranma's competitors transforms into an adorable miniature pig, unhappily at first, but he becomes increasingly philosophical about it as he realizes this allows him to sleep with Akane. It is clear therefore that male is the norm, and it is the female that is one of a variety of attributes (including panda-ness, pig-ness, [DISABILITY],) that signify difference. Furthermore, being female is coded as being inferior to being a pig or a panda.

But is female coded as being inferior to being disabled? In a way that is obvious to everyone in the entire cast? Hint: No. Takahashi doesn't treat one as worse than the other, and everyone's response to Ranma's being a girl sometimes and Ryoga's amazing lostness is basically a flash of "OH MY GAWD" "Wha?" followed by "Eh, that happens."

Also, esmenet and I have been discussing this male norm that Ryoga upholds. It involves protecting women from that guy you're obsessed with men who would sully their honor by day and sleeping with them without their consent at night (That guy you're obsessed with calls you on your skeevy bullshit. Regularly); fantasizing about living with them in a cave full of monsters that terrify them because that way they will be physically unable to leave you; trying to murder the hypoteneuse to get him out of the way (the hypoteneuse is too easygoing to even think of killing you), and using your sudden and inexplicable Neurotypicality Bonus--it's over 9,000!--to stalk them. (In the author's defense, THAT example of the norm only happens in the manga. And yes, that Neurotypicality Bonus vanishes into thin air afterwards, never to be seen again. Which I guess is Ryoga upholding a norm. Or the status quo, at least.)

Ranma's curse isn't "inferior" to anyone else's: everyone except Kuno knows that Ranma is a girl sometimes in the same way they except Akane know that Ryoga is a pig or that Ranma's dad is a panda, and no real fucks are given. Ranma is as ambivalent about their curse as Ryoga is (all the cursed characters' feelings are complicated), because even though Ranma will insist "I am a guy!" they'll don the girl form at any opportunity--to flirt with Kuno to get something they want, to mess with Ryoga, (Ranma pretends to be Ryoga's fiance in the anime), to get free food.

Also, Ryoga *still* hates his pig curse even knowing that he gets Akane's attention that way, partly because he can ONLY get her attention that way, partly because he's a miserable person in general and partly because turning into a small, tasty pig kind of sucks when a significant part of your disability (ahem) which strangers are shocked by (*ahem*) and EVERYONE is aware of (ahem) but pretty much accepts (AHEM) involves regularly wandering lost in the woods for a week.

Check out this shining example of the NORM OF MALENESS. The "male norm" thing does seem to happen at first but it gets...complicated* at the very least:

(He ends up back at this village twice more, still looking for Furinkan High School; someone says he could be a tourist attraction. Nope--no monstrous adolescent bodies here.)

In the manga, this shining example of masculine superiority intends to ask a girl he's (thinking he's) dating to walk him to his own house. I don't hear of too many girls walking dudes home on stereotypical het dates. (FTR, I'm female and have Ryoga's impairment, which he is a scarily accurate portrayal of; strangers are ALWAYS offering to take me home.)

TL;DR: esmenet's analysis of gender in Ranma 1/2 is WAY BETTER.

*And by "complicated" I don't mean "emasculating." Ryoga is very strong and capable--and Ranma's first serious threat--but he doesn't quite fit the very strict box of Shining Maleness that exists IN HIS OWN HEAD. IOW, Ryoga's the one with strict ideas about masculinity--not the series. He is always telling Ranma to do things "like a man" and, in cases where Ryoga's gotten so lost he couldn't find Ranma for a fight (once in the middle of the fight they were having), he accuses RANMA of "running away" or being a "coward" and gets angry/defensive when Ranma tries to defend themself with the facts. ("You wandered off and got lost! "Don't patronize me!")

Comments

[nenena]

Everything that Susan Napier has ever written about anime is stupid. AMAZINGLY stupid. She's like a textbook example of how NOT to write about another culture's media from an outsider's perspective. (In fact, one of my Japanese professors in college used her first book about anime for exactly that purpose - to demonstrate what DOIN IT WRONG looks like.)

[terajk]

Everything that Susan Napier has ever written about anime is stupid. AMAZINGLY stupid.

This is good to know! (I was just really excited to find an analysis of gender in Ranma at the time. My disappointment, it was palpable.)

She uses Ranma's nightmare about a giant Kuno attacking them as evidence of Ranma's fear of homosexuality. As esmenet said to me, no, that dream is about Ranma's fear of KUNO, as he is a total creep who won't take 'no' for an answer.

Seriously, it's like she decided in advance that Ranma upheld strict heterosexist gender norms and THEN looked for evidence.

[nenena]

I think my *~favorite~* thing that Napier ever wrote was her analysis of how Ah! My Goddess (and somehow by extension all "magical girlfriend" anime) was totally super-feminist because the non-powered male protagonist totally didn't mind dating a girlfriend who was more powerful than him.

Like, did we not notice how Belldandy's powers were entirely devoted to being subservient to Keiichi and making his life awesome and/or protecting him from harm. Or how it's a common male fantasy that you can be a total loser with no awesome skills and still have an amazingly powerful woman fall completely in love with you. And I'm saying this as somebody who shamelessly LOVES Ah! My Goddess. But it takes a very special type of stupid to not notice the story and characters are totally male wish-fulfillment fantasies.

I could probably rant more about Napier but I feel like I'm hijacking the topic of this post already. I think back in the day she also wrote some absolutely off-the-wall crazy stuff about magical girls (like, her examples of the 'magical girl' genre were Sailor Moon and Bubblegum Crisis wait WRONG GENRE HON) but she was also among the first Western academics to write about anime and get published in Serious Academic Publications so a lot of people just sort of took her word for stuff that they shouldn't have taken her word on.

[terajk]

I'm so spiteful and bitter that I changed this icon's keywords in Napier's honor.

I could probably rant more about Napier but I feel like I'm hijacking the topic of this post already.

Oh, if you want to rant some more, PLEASE DO. :D I haven't been exposed to a whole lot of manga and anime yet (so I dunno how well I can discuss with you), but if you'd like to rant I would like to read it.

Speaking of which, I read that Napier got interested in anime because one of her students gave her a copy of Akira. Which is a perfectly valid way of becoming interested in anime! I mean, the anime that got me interested in anime was Perfect Blue--make of that what you will--but, hell, I wouldn't suddenly become a MANGA SCHOLAR. (cf: all the influential manga/anime I haven't yet read/watched. To wit:)

I haven't read/seen Ah! My Goddess!--it's on the list of Read All the Manga, but I haven't gotten there yet--but I just looked it up ON WIKIPEDIA and, I am sorry, but, as you say, I'm not seeing anything super-feminist about a dude wishing for a woman to stay with him forever and her having to do it. (Not that super-feminist things can't/don't happen! But this seems like a major plot point that Napier somehow forgot.)

Also, I may be a little unfair to Napier, as ignoring Ryoga's lostness as an important part of his character (at least) made me defensive. Or, at least, it *apparently* does, as she's the first person I've seen do it. It's portrayed very similarly to how Kid's OCD is in Soul Eater: it just doesn't fit into a diagnostic category most people have heard of, so some fans explicitly call/recognize it as a disability and some don't. But even the people who don't think of it as a disability still think of it as an IMPORTANT PART OF HIS CHARACTER, sheesh.

*check out this brilliant segue*

OMG, that color insert for chapter 100 of Soul Eater is a thing of JOY and BEAUTY. All their faces are adorable--with special mention for Liz. Everyone is probably congratulating Kid on winning the popularity poll again, and he's upset because he didn't come in 8th and also because of Black*Star being Black*Star.

[nenena]

I think that what irks me the most about Napier is that she just plain fell right into the Number One Mistake that scholars about media from outside their culture do, and that is that she made sweeping conclusions about all Japanese media based on a very few examples that she had been exposed to. And the fact that she hadn't been exposed to much shows through in her writing - I mean, she thought that Bubblegum Crisis was a magical girl anime because IF THE CHARACTERS TRANSFORM THEN THEY'RE MAGICAL GIRLS, RIGHT?! - and it's just, argh.

Speaking of Perfect Blue and terrible anime criticism! Every year when my first-year Japanese students watch Princess Mononoke I make it a tradition to share with them this amazing set of idiotic quotes from Actual Serious Respected Movie Reviewers about the Pokemon the Movie/Perfect Blue/Princess Mononoke trifecta that suddenly burst into mainstream US theaters in 1998/1999ish:

http://www.megami-sama.net/files/ljpics04/criticalmassjpg_01.jpg

http://www.megami-sama.net/files/ljpics04/criticalmassjpg_02.jpg

(copy and paste the URLs)

At the time anime was like this brand-new thing to mainstream audiences and nobody really knew what to make of films like Perfect Blue and Princess Mononoke. I remember that Mononoke being released in theaters was such a big deal that major news outlets like Dateline and 60 Minutes were doing features about it. But again, none of the reporters or critics had really experienced non-kiddie anime before, so a lot of them did the same thing Napier did and rushed to show how ~deeply~ they understood this ~unique and exotic~ stuff from Japan by, you know, overgeneralizing and exoticizing it. Napier did that in the academic arena but a lot of non-academics were doing it in the journalism world too.

I mean, none of the above will ever quite reach the depths of stupidity of academics like John Wittier Treat (who famously analyzed Banana Yoshimoto's Kitchen as a novella about pure, non-sexual love while COMPLETELY MISSING that the story was all about the heroine's sexual frustration because the object of her lust was OBLIVIOUS to how she felt about him, thus proving himself as HILARIOUSLY CLUELESS as the love interest in the story - oh and he also said that shoujo comics were all about representing non-sexual love while basing his entire analysis on Sailor Moon and somehow totally missing the fact that Usagi actually DID have sex with Mamoru, you know, on page and everything). But it's still hilarious to revisit nonetheless.

[terajk]

THOSE LINKS. I AM DED.

The water is like a Japanese print! The trying to find some Super Serious Depth in Pokemon and then BLAMING POKEMON when they can't find it! And then I got to all the putting Legend of the Overfiend in out of NOWHERE and I think I bruised my organs. And I say this as someone who...liked? Legend of the Overfiend. But it's like: You do know that Legend of the Overfiend is famous in the West partly because OH NO GRAPHIC RAPE AND TENTACLES IN A CARTOON won't somebody think of the CHILDREN? and some video stores put it in the "cartoon" section, right? I...don't know how to put this into words, but it's really odd that serious reviews of movies that aren't porn just insert a reference to some porn at random.

I saw Perfect Blue in college, when the Japanese club showed it. (I came for the free sushi. Ranma Saotome am I). And afterwards, someone asked an exchange student from Japan who was there something like: "So, you see movies like this all the time?" And she was like: "I've never seen anything like that in my life!"

I mean, it's like judging all American movies ever by "Eraserhead." Or something.

[nenena]

True story: I was one of those kids who rented "Legend of the Overfiend" from Blockbuster because they put it in the kids' section and I didn't know what it was.

And I brought it to a sleepover.

One of the most embarrassing moments of my life.

[terajk]

Oh, poor sleepover. Poor you.

[esmenet]

I remember she wrote some stuff about Miyazaki and Sailor Moon that was TOTALLY OFF BASE—I think she called SM unfeminist or something?—and then I totally scribbled all over the photocopy my film teacher gave me, going on and on about NO THIS IS WRONG and also wtf are you doing those are totally different genres you need some more background there to not look like you are just pulling it out of your ass. LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT MAGICAL GIRL HISTORY, SUSAN NAPIER. LET ME LINK YOU TO THESE VIDEOS OF MAGICAL GIRL OPENINGS FROM 1966 ONWARDS ON YOUTUBE.

(bwahaha how do you interpret shoujo manga as NON-SEXUAL love, quite a lot of shoujo manga is just thinly veiled porn or porn lead-up (*cough* Vampire Knight *cough* Black Bird *cough*) and I should know)

[esmenet]

I wish my film teacher last semester had been experienced enough to do that! Sadly, he gave us like three handouts from her, most of which I didn't read because I knew I probably knew more about anime at that point than was actually printed in English-language books. Always fun, that.

[nenena]

Wow. I didn't know that Napier was still respected in film studies circles or read in classes. That's disappointing.

[esmenet]

THERE ARE NO BETTER ADJECTIVES TO APPLY TO MY NAME. And aaah, I forgot about the time he was going to ask Akane to walk him home! I do remember that the first indication of Ryoga and Ranma being actual friends instead of friendly-ish rivals was when Ranma said they'd walked him home about three hundred times. YOUR RYOUGA ANALYSIS IS SO MUCH BETTER THAN MY RYOUGA ANALYSIS.

[terajk]

THERE ARE NO BETTER ADJECTIVES TO APPLY TO MY NAME.

♥♥esmenet♥♥

I do remember that the first indication of Ryoga and Ranma being actual friends instead of friendly-ish rivals was when Ranma said they'd walked him home about three hundred times.

And how many damns does Ranma give about taking Ryouga home? Exactly none. Even after being KICKED AWAKE. There's no evidence that they even *pity* him. Taking Ryouga home is just a thing you do. About 300 times. Okay, so Ranma was mildly annoyed when they realized what Ryoga
wanted--"So what you're saying is, you want ME to take YOU home"--but dude was BEATING THEM AWAKE and also being a manipulative, cocky bastard. ("I said, let's finish this [fight] at my house!" Oh Ryouga, you bad cripple, you! I LOVE YOU.)

That whole arc is my very favorite, packed so full of disability and gender things as it is, and I was ALL EXCITED to see how it played out in the anime. But the anime removes it entirely, which makes me sadface.

Speaking of gender and walking people with navigational impairments places! Ranma pretends to be Ryouga's sister, and I read that her fake name, Yoiko, means "good girl." (NB: My knowledge of Japanese is *really* super dubious.) Which, yeah, fits thematically with Ryouga's name ("good fang"), but is *still* a very interesting name for Ranma to give herself.

And then! "Yoiko" has much fun being adorable and girly putting her fists under her chin and getting in the way of Ryouga's "date!" but THEN she loses control of of the con when Ryouga's Gross Ideas About Men and Women are triggered and he will not leave her alone/ forces male attention on her she Does. Not. Want. ("Losing control of the con" may be part of why a giant Kuno is so nightmarish.) And then he spanks her for doing something unfeminine--I think it was using rough language or swearing--because god*damn,* Ryouga is gross and creepy sometimes.

And THEN. To get away from this jackass, she wants to go for a walk. BY HERSELF.

And Ryouga is like *SHOCK* "I won't allow this!" because as his sister "Her sense of direction must be as bad as mine!" and, in a perfect example of how Ryouga's ideas about masculinity and femininity defy all logic he MAKES HER HOLD HIS HAND SO SHE DOES NOT GET LOST. (Seriously. This entire "logic" trail takes all of TWO PANELS.)

YOUR RYOUGA ANALYSIS IS SO MUCH BETTER THAN MY RYOUGA ANALYSIS.

I keep getting disability analysis into your gender analysis I AM SORRY. Although, to be fair, you got your gender analysis in my disability analysis AND I LOVE IT. In Ranma 1/2 especially they are like chocolate and peanut butter. Or fabulousness and sparkliness. You can use/borrow/play with it, if you like.

Although...man. You could write a freaking dissertation on gender in Ranma 1/2, I think. If we aren't careful, your paper will be like 1,000 pages long.

Speaking of Ryouga's disability vis a vis his gender presentation/theory!

[terajk]

In my righteous anger at Napier using Ryouga OF ALL PEOPLE as proof of how Ranma 1/2 upholds masculinity as a norm, I can't believe I forgot that his disability and his super-masculine strength are connected, as he's spent lots of time in the wilderness with wild animals/horrible weather/little food and is not dead. In this interview from Shounen Sunday in 1996, Takahashi connects them explicitly:

The Hibiki family all have a really horrible sense of direction. It's been passed on from generation to generation. But in Ryoga's case, since he's wandering all over the place around Japan, he has various encounters with vicious beasts and lives alone in desolate areas. The result of it is, it's his training and allows him to have the strength that he does.