The Shōjo Images in Hayao Miyazaki's Animations: The Perspective of Battle Heroine

• Main Authors: Cheng, Wen Wen, 鄭聞文
• Other Authors: LI, Shih hui
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2018
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/x27369

碩士 === 國立政治大學 === 日本研究碩士學位學程 === 106 === While Hollywood’s superhero movies are blowing up entertainment industry all over the world, there is a kind of young female character toting weapon in Japanese subculture and promotes the development of Anime and Manga. From Sailor Moon to Neon Genesis Evangelion, also Puella Magi Madoka Magica, which played an important role in Japan’s foreign Policy titled “Cool Japan” in 2011, the Japanese animation industry seems to be led by this kind of character or genre called “Battle Heroine”. These girls are prepubescent and pretty, but not inferior to boys and man. Although they are different from western superwoman and female warrior shaped in Amazons, they still hold the initiative in theirs fights. In the same time, they also maintain the passivity came from their vulnerable bodies and naive personality. Therefore, the battle heroine turns to be an object of desire for male audiences or a projection of self-actualized for female audiences. In fact, such desire to manipulate young girls, who were named “Shōjo” in Japanese, was based on the culture of modern Japan and became a special social phenomenon in recent times. Despite the fact that Japanimation was condemned by public because of teeming with violence and pornography, it is no doubt that director Hayao Miyazaki is appreciated for the artistic value in his awarded animations and makes a fine line between his films and “otaku anime”. The woman images in his animations can be refreshing because of its independence and brave behavior. However, when we have made a careful study of character design and narrative structure in his works, we may found that there is a coincidence between these characters and battle heroines in otaku anime. Furthermore, Nausicaä in Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind is widely regarded as a stereotype of battle heroine. As a result, the thesis was intended to prioritize the development of Shōjo culture and battle heroine animations, and research whether Miyazaki attempted to shape female characters in battle heroine way to show his ideal Shōjo images or not among ten films directed during 1984 to 2013. Moreover, the meanings of Shōjo to Japanese were also discussed in this thesis. Throughout the research, I have found that Miyazaki tended to use “flying scene” to emphasize the deity of Shōjo characters, and the desexualized Shōjo images are familiar to the gender norms made in modern Japan. On the other side, the narrative approach of Miyazaki’s films revealed the exaggeration of maternal instinct and the redundancy of male gaze which have generally existed in Japanese culture. In my observation, these results proved that battle heroines are created to strengthen gender stereotypes instead of subverting the paternity rights.