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REVIEW: Dororo GN 1-3

They're only doing the first three volumes of Black Jack in hardback, unfortunately, and those are only supposed to be available from bricks and mortar outlets.

Moomintroll wrote:

Read these and other pearls of wisdom here.

Is that supposed to be Ms. Brienza's blog?

Manga and anime are filled to the brim with images of the objectification and exploitation of women. Should we be outraged? And if so, how much?

The Real Deal Answer: It depends.

Consider the following examples, starting from the least egregious to the most:

Berserk: Rape, rape and mutilation, rape and murder, oh yeah and more rape. Some people don't like looking at graphic rape scenes, no matter what the context, and that's fine. But context in this case is paramount. Yes, it's explicit and titillating. Yes, it's eroguro. But. Rape in Berserk is what all the bad guys do, and regardless of who is involved (even sympathetic characters), it never comes without terrible consequence. After Casca is raped by Femto, for example, she becomes a simpleton who cannot talk. Although watching her totter around does get tiresome, remember that her trauma is of monstrous proportions because Femto is supposed to be the monster to end all monsters. The trauma for Guts is palatable as well; he loved her for her strength and continues to act on her behalf in spite of her weakness, not because of it. You know he'd rather have the old, warrior woman Casca back. In later volumes, Guts, possessed by creeping evil, rapes Casca himself...and there is consequence for this as well. Now, even though her mind is nearly gone, she has enough self-possession left to loathe him for it, and the dirty looks she shoots at him appear on the manga's pages like clockwork. Key here is not how much rape there is or is not in Berserk; key is how it is understood. And there is no question that it is understood in this manga as a terrible evil, something that can ruin the lives of both the victim and those closest to the victim.

Rosario+Vampire: Say hello to a harem manga series that never lets an opportunity for a panty shot joke to go by unexploited. Yes, it's annoying, but the series as a whole is so cartoonish and stupid that it's hard to take anything about it too seriously, even the panels drawn from groin-angle. (Dude, the heroine's got bubblegum-pink hair!)

Tide Line Blue: This anime series means to make big, grandiose statements about humanity, warfare, and environmental destruction. In short, High Seriousness. But in the first episode, we are introduced to a girl who looks like she's about twelve years old--and is very pregnant. She gives birth at the beginning of the show. No explanation is ever given of how she got pregnant and who the father is, which in itself might not have been so bad if it didn't look like a child with a child. For the rest of the series, she's the perfect, subservient little woman who finds self-actualization in cooking and cleaning for all the men...with a newborn infant strapped to her back that never cries. None of it is remotely realistic--yet the show would like you to believe that it is. In other words, the degree to which this sort of depiction of a female character is offensive is directly proportional to the degree to which the series expects the audience to take it seriously.

Manga by Tezuka (take your pick of the ones published in English): Women in Tezuka manga are typically one-dimensional maidens, mothers, or monsters. Oh yeah, and he also has major mother complexes going in a lot of the stories. Yes, you could argue that Tezuka is just a product of his time. (Never mind that at the height of his creative production you also saw the emergence of the Second Wave Feminist 49ers--Hagio Moto and Takemiya Keiko, ya know, don't "count.") The problem lies not with the text itself per se but the context of its reception today. All of the (male) opinion makers will tell you that Tezuka is the God of Manga, and his work should be placed up on a pedestal where it is rendered immune from criticism. But I can't tell you how many times women have come up to me and complained about the misogyny that they see in his works. No one had ever told them about it; they were not warned; they're disgusted. All they ever heard about was how great he is now in the 21st century--and then they are told they are not allowed to condemn what they see now in the 21st century that offends them. This is a big problem. If in 21st century eyes the most commercial and slapdash of Tezuka's manga are to be received now as "great" works of sequential art/literature, why can't they also be seen as misogynist in 21st century eyes? Why is only the former a valid opinion? Why should history protect Tezuka from criticism if it's what is used to justify that selfsame protection? This is the place where we, as women, should be most outraged--the marginalization is not of the female character on the page, but first and foremost of the female reader who dares take offense.

vash: The fact that he's a nut-job doesn't make me think less of him as a scumbag. You don't go into an important profession like medicine when you've got those kinds of problems

Casey sees a lot of pervasive sexism in Tezuka and Gekiga and thus has every right to point it out. And if you read her recent essay (someone even copied and pasted it into this thread), she explains that her biggest problem with Tezuka and Gekiga is that too many modern reviewers brush off talking about the sexism.

If we want the manga reviewing world to have as many robust discussions as possible, we absolutely need Casey to keep writing. She gets people to think a lot harder about what they're reading.

She can be pretty brutal, but that also spurs people to debate her points--and debate is always a good thing. Not enough people talk about the sexism in Tezuka and Gekiga.

liannesentar wrote:

Casey sees a lot of pervasive sexism in Tezuka and Gekiga and thus has every right to point it out. And if you read her recent essay (someone even copied and pasted it into this thread), she explains that her biggest problem with Tezuka and Gekiga is that too many modern reviewers brush off talking about the sexism.

Alright, if we're talking about creators, their beliefs, and how this may snake into their narratives, let's talk about Lovecraft. What a racist that man was! He used "n*gger" in his works! He took on a negative view on blacks! We should all focus on that because only morally agreeable artists and products are good!

It's not "thought-provoking" when her criticisms have a tendency to reveal more about herself than the work she's reviewing.

When she insisters that Me and the Devil Blues is racist and is somehow a commentary on U.S. foreign policy, it's her wishing to see something that's just not there in the manga, period.

When she states that Hagu from Honey and Clover is the epitome of passive Japanese women, as well as generalizing all of Tezuka's female characters, she ignores both the actual situation in the former series and multiple examples completely contrary to her vague and bland assertions in the latter's output.

They're only doing the first three volumes of Black Jack in hardback, unfortunately, and those are only supposed to be available from bricks and mortar outlets. The paperbacks should be easy enough to find though, either online or off.
Vertical are distributed through Random House so even if your local bookshops don't generally stock much of their stuff, ordering it in shouldn't be a problem.

You guys can like Casey, hate Casey, or even treat her indifferently--she still provides a hell of a springboard for debate.

Her technique is generally to pick an issue within those three realms that she thinks is particularly worthy of discussion and make that one of the main points of her review. The issue she picks is usually very under-discussed.

Not enough people talk about the sexism in Tezuka and Gekiga. Sure, the sexism was largely a product of earlier time periods and it doesn't eliminated the artistic merit of the works, but SOMEONE SHOULD STILL POINT IT OUT.

she explains that her biggest problem with Tezuka and Gekiga is that too many modern reviewers brush off talking about the sexism. She has more problem with the current reception of those genres than with the comics themselves!

If we want the manga reviewing world to have as many robust discussions as possible, we absolutely need Casey to keep writing.

liannesentar wrote:

You guys can like Casey, hate Casey, or even treat her indifferently--she still provides a hell of a springboard for debate.

That's not a good thing when the debate centres on the reviewer rather than the text being reviewed.

Plus, if you're lookin' for a role model, the nun takes the initiative near the end of the book.

But it was 1970, and people still have utterly unenlightened ideas about rape nowadays, so it's hardly surprising that Tezuka "didn't get it." Like many things from the past, it rightly makes us uncomfortable, but also makes us think about why it makes us feel that way, which is a good thing.

That's absolutely not what I'm suggesting, nor is Casey.

Why not? She's a well-read, educated, adult American woman with a lot of experience in media and Japanese pop culture. Why don't her experiences and the resulting opinions matter, since she's clear about the perspective she's writing from and she backs up her feelings with arguments? Her reviews definitely get personal at times, but she explains why she feels the way she does. That's a perfectly acceptable critical style.

I didn't read that review of hers, but was she saying that was the intent of the title, or was it simply a comparison she made?

But Hagu from Honey and Clover is the lead, adult woman in a manga intended for adult women. The fact that she looks and acts (at least socially) like she's eight years ago, and the fact that two of her adult male classmates fall in love with her practically at first sight, is pretty disturbing. You don't have to agree with Casey, and I don't always agree with her sweeping generalizations (especially about Japanese culture), but one can definitely make the argument that something sketchy seems to be going on there.

And if she wants to write an essay about that I'll be happy to read it. I just don't understand what it has to do with a review of Dororo (as opposed to, say, Ode To Kirihito), especially when the rant is provided without any obvious context.

It's like writing about Hergé's depictions of black people in a review of a Tintin book that doesn't feature any black people, then complaining about the absence of black people in the book and then dismissing Hergé's lauded place in the history of the medium as being the work of racist opinion makers whilst simultaneously knocking his work for being too much like all the later books that imitated him.

It's crappy logic.