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Answerman - What Do Miko (Shrine Maiden) Actually Do?


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Wingbeats



Joined: 23 Feb 2015
Posts: 272
Location: Boise, Idaho
PostPosted: Wed Mar 08, 2017 11:53 pm Reply with quote
Himiko does indeed sound awesome, that was an interesting bit of reading. I kinda knew her from Okami, cool to learn what figure she was based on.

I'm surprised too that she isn't in more anime.
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Joe Carpenter



Joined: 29 Oct 2011
Posts: 503
PostPosted: Thu Mar 09, 2017 12:02 am Reply with quote
I too am surprised Himiko is not more well known and used for more anime, I myself had never heard of her until I played the 2013 Tomb Raider reboot.
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Wandering Samurai



Joined: 30 Mar 2014
Posts: 875
Location: USA
PostPosted: Thu Mar 09, 2017 7:01 am Reply with quote
Abe no Seimei gets more love in anime than Himiko does. Sometimes she's referred to as Pimiko, though I'm not sure where this comes from.
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ReifuTD



Joined: 19 Sep 2009
Posts: 171
PostPosted: Thu Mar 09, 2017 9:30 am Reply with quote
BadNewsBlues wrote:
Quote:

Himiko was said to have practiced magic and sorcery over her people,


Hmmm I wonder if this is why there's a segment of Japan's not all that enthused about the idea of a female ruling the country.


There seems to be a huge amount of female warship in the culture just looks at the list of god prominent gods alone. Amaterasu is a big one that rulers would claim their blood right from. Fuji is pretty big, Fox god Inari is like the highest miko priest or something.

I remember hearing that in the early days of Japan that females was a big part of the ruling class and wrote almost all of the historical documents from back then. So this Himiko thing explains a lot in that.
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ignitingblue



Joined: 08 Jun 2016
Posts: 14
Location: Canton
PostPosted: Thu Mar 09, 2017 11:40 am Reply with quote
A question answered at the right time. I always have a fetish for the white-crimson dress and I just enjoyed plenty of miko illustrations at Niconico Seiga yesterday. It's true that nowadays miko are mostly girls working part-time; a few of them are even overseas students from China.

Joe Carpenter wrote:
I too am surprised Himiko is not more well known and used for more anime, I myself had never heard of her until I played the 2013 Tomb Raider reboot.

I was wondering about this as well. There was a Taiwanese video game themed around three kingdom period of China which has her as the leader of Japan. Miko is a unit type in that game as well, but they do not dressed like typical miko.
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Shay Guy



Joined: 03 Jul 2009
Posts: 2116
PostPosted: Thu Mar 09, 2017 11:41 am Reply with quote
harminia wrote:
I'd love more anime about oldschool Miko's, rather than the modern day fetish bait stuff. It'd be especially cool for a story to explore the mental conditions the Miko's had; hysteria, epilepsy, or hallucinations etc.
But I don't think modern anime wants to explore stuff like that; they just want cute girls in cute outfits doing cute stuff.


Key the Metal Idol is the closest thing I've seen to what the article describes, and that's a 20-year-old series about a cyberpunk megacorp trying to control miko telekinesis for robot purposes.

ReifuTD wrote:
There seems to be a huge amount of female warship in the culture


I dunno, I don't hear too much about KanColle these days. Very Happy
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svines85



Joined: 30 Sep 2011
Posts: 42
PostPosted: Thu Mar 09, 2017 12:23 pm Reply with quote
Cool, very interesting, thanks Smile
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nargun



Joined: 29 Mar 2006
Posts: 925
PostPosted: Thu Mar 09, 2017 3:10 pm Reply with quote
Wandering Samurai wrote:
Sometimes she's referred to as Pimiko, though I'm not sure where this comes from.


Words that start with H in modern japanese started with P in ancient japanese.

[Actually _all_ Ps became H unless doubled, but the ones in the middle of words became W and were then lost entirely through vowel mergers except before A...]
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Afezeria



Joined: 20 Aug 2015
Posts: 817
Location: Malaysia, Kuantan.
PostPosted: Fri Mar 10, 2017 5:59 am Reply with quote
harminia wrote:
...
There's barely any other anime that focused on shrine maiden alone, so why should one expects for a realistic take on the subject at hand in the first place? Not to mentions that cute girls doing cute things have nothing to do with miko at all as it's an entirely different theme. Or are you saying that any anime with girls in it is only gonna be about CGDCT? As for the fetishization of miko, it shouldn't be surprising if such shit even existed, everything in this world can be made into a fetish.
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Northlander



Joined: 10 Feb 2009
Posts: 901
PostPosted: Sat Mar 11, 2017 1:01 pm Reply with quote
Hmm. I do remember an old Taito arcade game named Kiki KaiKai, where you control a miko, I believe? I remember playing that game and being charmed by the oddity a long time before I knew what a miko even was.

The game even had spiritual sequels (sort of) in the Pocky & Rocky games.
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