Interpreting Anime by Christopher Bolton

Author:Christopher Bolton [Bolton, Christopher]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: SOC052000 Social Science / Media Studies
ISBN: 9781452956848
Publisher: University of Minnesota Press
Published: 2018-02-20T05:00:00+00:00

Figure 33. The demon Ranka in Vampire Princess Miyu not only takes the form of a puppet but transforms her victims into puppets as well. As for the beautiful boy, he goes willingly into her arms. From the Animeigo DVD (2001).

The examples of these patterns go on. Blood: The Last Vampire (2000) similarly turns on a cute, vicious vampire in the body of a young girl. She is a pastiche of anime fetishes (or Azuma’s database elements): a schoolgirl in braids and a sailor suit, wielding a samurai sword. And as the Blood franchise develops through one series after another, she repeatedly falls into a state of amnesia that allows the story to reset and repeat. In the most recent iteration, the repetition becomes so implausible and artificial that it can be explained only by revealing that the heroine’s life is a staged production (complete with television cameras) engineered by an evil producer cum puppeteer.

We will revisit some of these issues when we take a detailed look at the Blood franchise in chapter 6. For now, we might ask why these tropes are so prevalent in anime, or why we are drawn to notice them. Certainly there are practical explanations related to the economics of anime production. The demon girl, the phallic transformation, the dreaming heroine, and the puppet victim are all tested devices that allow a single series to be renewed and extended indefinitely. If a character becomes boring, she can be transformed into someone else (in a past life if not this one). If she resolves her conflicts, her memory can be reset and a new series can begin from square one. And if these repeated patterns become too stereotyped or too implausible, they can be revealed as a dream or staged construction, in a way that shifts the action up a level to a new set of characters, the puppeteers.

But at the same time, all of these motifs generate interesting effects that go beyond extending their franchises. The psychoanalytic theories discussed above point out that these tropes share an ability to destabilize and relativize conventional gender identities and gender roles—by opposing them, virtualizing them, parodying them through exaggeration, or mixing them indiscriminately together.[32] The results make these anime interesting to many contemporary critics, who sense that this free play with gender and sexual norms can make us consider how arbitrary these norms are to start with.

3x3 Eyes is interesting for the way it combines and sorts several of these different psychoanalytical frameworks: Pai/Sanjiyan/Parvati/Ayanokōji Pai/Hōwasho might embody Freud’s repressed memory or anxiety—a hidden meaning. But more interestingly, she is also Saitō’s beautiful fighting phallic girl, pure fiction and pure lack, identified with any and all significations according to the fantasies of her fans. Justifiably, one of those fantasies is a feminist one of tilting or toppling Saitō’s psychoanalytic structure itself: in a reading like Barbara Creed’s, Sanjiyan is the feminine castrator, wielding and severing the putatively male power of signification. Finally, all these multiple identities can be linked together by Azuma’s idea of dissociation and amnesia.

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