LAIN AND SAINTO SEYA : TWO DIFFERENT EXAMPLES OF JAPANESE ANIME  

Through the study of two different mangas, I want to give some examples of typical topics in Japanese mangas like adolescence, gender, hierarchy, relationships between humans and technology. Lain is a recent anime representative of a new kind of manga that tries to analyze the relation between humans and technology (Like Ghost in the shell or Akira) with a really unusual visual esthetic, it is a sort of intellectual manga. Sainto seya is a typical anime that I watched when I was ten years old: violent, bad drawings, a sort of Sailor Moon for boys.

Lain

Lain is a young school girl who lives in a society where a kind of improved internet called the wired has been developed, this system allows the user to materialize himself in a virtual world. She has no interest in the wired until she realizes that she is really skilled at using it (she can materialize herself completely in the system and control it). This anime plays on a classical dilemma:  between the wired and the so-called reality which one is the right one, the real one? She is going to discover that the wired is influencing the reality, that those two universes are not completely separated. For example: in one episode, her real sister is replaced by another one (a virtual one) although her family doesn’t realize it. The reality is depicted in an unreal way, the Tokyo suburbs are like a background of an old video game (always the same house the same anonym street), the power lines of the train become mobile as if they were alive. Technology becomes a part of the individual’s life or body: like Tetsuo’s body in Akira, Lain’s bedroom becomes a huge computer where she lives and sleeps. The theme of the technologized body started with Astro boy (a robot with a human soul) from Tezuka. In Lain this princip is reversed: Lain is a human with a virtual soul, she is really herself when she is trough a computer in the wired. The relationship between women and technology is something new in Japanese anime. During the 80’s, women were associated with the occult, for Susan J Napier[1], Oba Minako’s 1976 classic The smiles of the mountain witch in which the fantastic powers of the witch were implicitely equated with that of any every women who must use occulte powers in order to create a pleasing personna” is at the origin of this evolution. In the 90’s, technology and science fiction influences created a “cyborg” woman. In most cultures, women and technology have long been seen as having an antithetical relationship. But “Female bodies are therefore best suited to “mecha” precisely because it is related to reproduction and giving birth” [2]. Ghost in the shell is one the first example of this new role of woman. Lain and the heroine of Gost in the shell are a kind of medium between two different worlds (real and virtual), the notion of occult is in a sense still present.

During her exploration of the wired, the shy Lain is going to discover the existence of a cruel, sexy Lain linked with a group of hackers, a kind of “femme fatale”. Her double identity represents the adolescence evolution. Lain’s double is the virtual opposite of the real Lain, both represent the beginning and the end of the adolescence, it is like in Akira with the transformation of the weak Tetsuo in a monster because he can controlled his powers. Susan J Napier speaks about “the monstruous adolescent”[3].

Lain is also a typical “shojo”, one of the specific character of manga in Japan. John Treat argues that the term Shojo is almost impossible to translate in English since the most nearly translation is “young woman” that “implies a kind of sexual maturity clearly forbidden to shojo”. Let’s take some other examples of Shojo.

Shojo as vampire: Vampire princess. In this manga, all the vampires are women. Miyu the actual vampire princess, 13 years old, is condemned to stay a vampire forever because of a kind of familial malediction, she’ll never grow up. This manga is a conservative and a subversive work in the same time. The fact that Miyu has to accept her fate suggests a conservative structure but through the figure of the vampire the manga problematizes issues like the weight of Japanese tradition and his irrelevance. However Miyu rebels against her enforced vampirization, she accepts her nature. Vampire is a metaphor of the ambiguity of the shojo : cute and demon.　

The story of Mai, a young girl who possesses a telekinetic power which makes her capable of immense destruction is more conservative one. A sinister international organization discovers her power but she refuses to employ his gift and wants to stay a normal person (unusual maturity). Normality is to be preferred. She is passive and uses her power only to protect weak persons. Mai is meant to represent the ordinary Japanese schoolgirl. She has got one rival, a blond East-German girl, sent by the organization to kill her; she is cruel, selfish, egoist, western? It is important to underline that the image of the shojo is not always used to illustrate a traditional point of view about the role of the woman in Japanese. 

Miyazaki’s heroins are always empowered female. For example Nausicaa, she possesses elements of self-sacrificing and the sexlessness of Mai but combines them with an active and resolute personality to create a power full heroine. She overcomes her problem through a combination of empathy and strategy. She is successful in saving humanity from destruction by self-sacrificing herself. Contrary to Mai or Miyu, Nausicaa doesn’t have any problems with her powers.  

Sainto seya (French title les chevaliers du zodiaque)

This was one of my favorite anime when I was a kid. It is the story of 5 knights, each of them has got his personalized armour linked with a spatial constellation: Pegasus (red color, he is the leader), the dragoon (green color, he is from China), Andromeda (pink color, androgynous, naïve, always defeated during the fight because he is too weak), the phoenix (blue color, big brother of Andromeda, he is always the one that must sacrificied himself) and the swan (white color, from Siberia). They defend Athena, a young woman who is the reincarnation of the Greek goddess. Athena represents the good side of a universal cosmic energy (or whatever), the pope (grand pop in French I don’t know if it is a reference to the Orthodox or Catholic religion) represents the bad one helped by 12 gold knights (the 12 zodiacal signs). When Athena was a child, a Japanese old man found her abandoned while he was visiting a kind of acropol (here is the connection with Japan). Each gold knight has got his own characteristic, for example: the Virgo knight is a non-violent Buddhist who sends his enemies in a third dimension (a crazy mix of Christian, Hindu, Buddhist symbols); the Capricorn uses an epee called Excalibur; the Cancer (the 4^th knight) sends his enemies in the world of the death, it refers to Japanese tradition; the Pisces is an androgynous named Aphrodite who fights with poisoned roses…

As you may have notice this anime is a mix of everything you want: Greek mythology, religions, cliches of different nationalities, western legends. This kind of cultural mix is usually used in mangas. For example in Yugi-oh (French title, the Japanese one is something like carudo monsta, it is funny to notice that the French title sounds Japanese whereas the Japanese one is written in Katakana and sounds English) where young people use magic cards to fight against each other, each card represents a monster, to make it simple, let’s say this is more violent version of Pokemon. Card game is something quite developed in Japanese manga merchandising. In this anime we learn through many flashbacks that this card game comes from the Egyptian mythology. But I think that behind this cosmopolite wrapping, we can still feel Japanesness. For example in Sento Seya, there is an hierarchy between the five heroes that follows a colors code, Seya is on the top following by Andromeda, the swan, the dragoon. Phoenix has got a specific rank, he is each time killed by one of the bad guy but always manages to come back to help Seya for the last fight. The topic of the color-coded gangs of five is really developed in Japanese anime. We can find it for example in Sailor moon, each warrior   is represented by a color: sailor Venus (blue, water), sailor Mars (red, fire), sailor Jupiter (green? lightning)... Tom Gill explains that it reflects the strong Japanese tendency to divide the human world in different categories[4]. Each character has a single characteristic linked to their “totemic beast”. There is a hierarchy in the use of color (red>blue>pink>green>white usually). About the association of red with the dominant status, he explains that one of the aspects of the Chinese system of bureaucratic government adopted by the Japanese was the five rank hierarchy. Each rank was indicated by a specific color; red was one of the highest with purple.

In this manga, the question of gender is also at stake: one of the hero is androgynous behaving sometimes like a woman which basically means he cries often, he usually fights again other androgynous knights (like the Pisces knight). It recalls the so-called “bishonen” (beautiful boys comics). This character has got a homosexual dimension: one of his power is treating injuries, in one scene he tries to save the swan knight lying on him. Playing with gender is something current in mangas, the best example is Ranma ½.  Ranma, a regular high school boy skilled at practicing martial art, fiel in a magic spring, it causes him to turns into a girl when touched by cold water and to return to male form when touched by hot water (he is not the only one to have this transformation problem: his dad can become a panda, one of his enemy a pig, a Chinese girl a cat). He is in love with Akanne, who doesn’t accept the traditional role of woman and prefer to learn martial arts instead of tea ceremony, she behaves like a boy which is perfect to confuse completely everyone about who is the man, who is the woman.

The female characters in Sento Seya are not so strong, they have two possible roles that illustrate a really conservative vision of the woman: crying and waiting for the come back of the beloved knight or self sacrificing to save the world or the beloved man. Athena must be protected however she is supposed to be a power-full goddess. The female knights wear mask (is it a noh influence?) as if feminity must be hidden or as if  feelings are something forbidden, they are too weak to play any real role (except sacrifice of course).

Raphaël Chanay

Bibliography

Susan J Napier : Four faces of the young female in Japanese popular culture in The worlds of Japanese popular culture

Tom Gill : Transformational magic: some Japanese superheroes and monsters in The worlds of Japanese popular culture

Isolde Standish : Akira, postmodernism and resistance, in The worlds of Japanese popular culture

Kaori Yoshida : Beyond the border : the debut of Japanimation in the West

Susan J Napier : Anime: from Akira to princess Mononoke, experiencing contemporary Japanese anime