Using Takarazuka Revue to Focus on Genre Tropes
Takarazuka Revue. Tropes. Get it?
Actually this is just answering a call from Gia, who wonders if people would play blog ping pong with her (ideally on AnimeVice, natch):
Find some Takarazuka elements in shoujo manga or anime series– OTHER than the following: Utena, Princess Knight, Rose of Versailles. Note that the mention or appearance of Takarazuka (such as in Ouran High School Host Club) isn’t the same as the series actually containing “elements of” Takarazuka!
Ok, so Sakura Wars isn’t “shoujo” but I think it makes a much more interesting question–how does elements of Takarazuka work in a shounen/seinen title like Sakutai?
All I could think about in terms of shoujo titles along that line (at first) would be stuff like Marimite, where a big key here is that the girls take on roles that a guy would–well, more like within a certain liberated confine (a walled garden if oxymorons are not your thing) in which the gender roles are reinvented in an unisex fashion to cater to certain mainstream fantasies about womanhood. (Or manhood.) We could find these “elements” in even perhaps shows like Natsume Yuujincho, which a real-life adaptation would fit its untamed, undead, and ungendered host of ghosts. It doesn’t matter if you carry one or two X genes in your chromosomes, as long as you can scream with your emotions in style it’ll sell. Actually Natsume would be a good example, and I always want to write about how Natsume the boy is such a patsy compared to his yankee [the Japanese slang] grandmother, and what does that signify. Maybe some other time.
To me, it’s clear that there is no one answer, or one mechanism or element that makes Takarazuka Revue attractive to its predominately-female audience. And short of mentioning that not all yuri fangirls think alike, it’s just common wisdom to pepper your work with all the elements of that genre you love. Because maybe more people would love your work if there are more elements of things people in general like to see?
Which is why the whole idea about pinning Takarazuka Revue’s charm points from shoujo manga a bit like shooting fish in a barrel. (Admittedly it’s a barrel I do not read, and do not want in general, so this is real “homework” to a degree.) It’s just much more exciting to see it play out in seinen/shounen works like Sakura Wars, Simoun, or Hitohira (does this really count?), or a very deep read of the Sola anime. Because you don’t expect to see it there, yet there it is.
(For Sola, I look at it from a context that there is a whole slew of late-night breed of anime that resemble stage plays from a script compositional standpoint. I am not sure if many of them have “Takarazuka elements” or whatever but those showgirls are relatively well known in Japan. They leave a mark in the mind of some, and it’s not just some superficial reference usually. Maybe sometimes it’s an subconscious imprint which affects people or the arts as practiced locally. At any rate it’s a long shot.)
But perhaps all of that is just a coincidence. To be honest, a major theme in Ouran High Host Club is Haruhi’s personal development through interpersonal relationships, and how that is a way of feminine empowerment in Haruhi’s own context. A big part of Haruhi’s story is invariably entwined with the identity of a woman lawyer, an identity taken by her mother. Suddenly Phoenix Wright seems a natural title for the Revue to do, and it is well.
This post is dedicated to all the women who practice law in Japan. Just by being so, odds are you have done more than I at changing the world for the better.
…….Strike Witches……?
Sky Girls fo sho.
Funnily enough, I hadn’t even seen the shows that Gia already mentioned and Sakura Wars popped into my head as well.
Simoun? Though granted, the characters are gender-neutral before the spring.
Cool and Spicy? I haven’t seen enough of that though. :P
I was going to mention Simoun (how could I not?) but I forgot to add that in. It’s definitely something which is a gender role remix. It’s a good piece to do a contrast, too, because it has a very different approach than your typical Utena or Oniisama e concept.
Gender neutral is not a “though” and it goes to the heart of one of the key points here. Anyways, I went back namedropped Simoun in the post.
I’ve always found it weird that ghosts in Natsume are supposed to be genderless, but most of the noble ones have clear genders. Some of them are even hot.
Well, “hot” is something subjective although we could probably go on and say that there are some universal truths to designing hot animu charas.
But yea, they’re not just randomly assigning gender or lack-of-gender. If we think about it, the whole point behind all the little stories in Natsume Yuujincho is about humanity of ghosts and their emotions, et cetera. It’s very much just like how in an alternative, all-male or all-female society where the same humanity is reflected despite some strange alternate roles which now has no gender meaning attached to them. Of course, in Natsume they get to deal with the “just how are ghosts not human” point that we don’t really care about outside of that context, but other than that it’s pretty much the same o’ shoujo genderbending tropes in play.
Hmm. When I think Takarazuka, I think of not gender neutral, but exaggerated performed gender. The female roles aren’t “female roles” but “daughter roles”, for example. The male performances are more masculine than real men. And then there’s the whole idea of training them so that they’ll be “good wives and mothers” upon retirement.
So then I figure that the exaggerated gender roles then lend themselves well to things like exaggerated storylines. The otokoyaku are exaggerated masculinity just as Phoenix Wright is an exaggerated lawyer. And, going off of your original idea, this combination of exaggerated gender and blurred gender is what makes Sakutai so interesting. It’s a dating sim, but it’s also a dating sim where the games have titles like “Kimi, shinitamo koto nakare” or the say such blatantly obvious lines like in one of the OVAs where Sakura is like “Gee mom, how come you chose to have a family rather than a career like I am?” Or I think about the dichotomy gets reflected in something like Hanabi’s storyline, where there’s the conflict between the learn to be a good wife and mother thing that Takarazuka is “supposed” to teach and then the reality of how they actually need to act (and by “act” I mean both in the stage sense and in the doing stuff in general sense).
Hmm, now that I think about it, maybe this is why it’s “easier” to do this when thinking about shoujo? If gender roles are patriarchically constructed and enforced, women’s stuff would have more of an incentive to do works that play with these concepts, while men’s stuff would want to preserve them.
Very good points. It makes sense in the context of Natsume Yuujincho too, as that’s how all the ghosts act.
Perhaps the subversion is distinguished between the lead character. In Sakutai, we get our manly man Ogami (and that guy from ST5…), where as it’s not the case in Natsume. I’m not sure if it is “easier” to do it in men’s stuff as opposed women’s stuff, but the concept is definitely closer to traditional shoujo themes, so it’s easier to spot them there.