The Minami sisters are warping reality worse than Haruhi ever did
December 28, 2007So I’m not sure if you’re watching Minami-ke, but if you like Ichigo Mashimaro you — well, you are, because everyone already said “if you love X you’ll love Y.” For the rest of you… You don’t have to be a youth appreciation enthusiast to enjoy this one, I promise.
I believe I’m a few episodes ahead of my friend over at Anime wa Bakuhatsu da, but given that this is not a race, I think that’s probably unimportant. He has already put into words one of the massive strengths of this comedy: its surrealism. It truly does challenge the bounds of what’s “realistic,” though — if we’re to be honest with one another here, and if we can’t be honest with thousands of miles, dozens of servers, and a handful of pixels between us, when will we ever manage it, you and I? — pretty much in the same way an American sitcom or Wodehousian comedy of manners does.
Now, the fansubs for Minami-ke are already up to twelve — I had a busy few weeks (what with the end of the semester, all the lazing around and hanging out afterwards, and then Christmas) so I’ve just gotten to episode ten. I’ll probably be catching up in between finishing Dracula and my assorted crap I have to do tomorrow. Anyway, I’m just warning you that I’m not exactly on the pulse-beat of this show. Which, I am forced to conclude, would probably sound like a timpani scrounging up a reggae beat.
I mean, who else does this:
on a slice-of-life comedy about young ladies?
Anyway.
In fact, I don’t feel the particular need to summarize the episode. Here’s the show concept: three sisters live alone, their parents being, uh, elsewhere (dead? Who knows?). One is in high school, one in middle school, and the last in elementary school. Because every Japanese household strives to uphold the census records, I suppose. They have friends, and do strange things, and occasionally tie the youngest one up overnight to guarantee good weather.
That’s right.
So, if I’m not summarizing the episode, what am I doing? Well, I’m going to slap together a few thoughts on gender in Japanese anime, of course.
It may come as no surprise — given that I’m about to devote a post to gender — that I’m a fan of Ouran Host Club. I first realized the interesting stuff going on in terms of gender when I watched this show, nearly a year ago now — I started in January or February 2007, for the record.
Gender isn’t really the crux of Minami-ke, but it is a consistent theme. Our protagonists are, after all, a trio of young women living alone. Here’s the classic question about anime:
Which is a guy, and which is a girl?
C’mon, faster.
Left, girl. Right, also girl.
~
That’s Makoto, in the pretty pretty skirt and hair clip. He’s a dude.
Here’s Makoto at school:
Yes, he’s cutting into a raw egg.
Moving on. Chiaki (the youngest Minami sibling, pictured on the floor above, claims Touma as her younger brother (despite being younger than Touma), and tells her to act like a proper man.
Which Touma proceeds to try very hard at. Sure, super.
Before this episode Makoto (the one above, who can’t cook) developed a crush on the oldest sibling, Haruka, but no one will invite him back over. He bypasses this by dressing like a girl — it’s Kana’s fault (she’s the middle child). Touma, a girl, gets sick of a guy hiding behind the patriarchal claim that guys shouldn’t fight girls, and proceeds to knock him over.
Oh, are you still not convinced that Touma’s a girl?
Kana checked for you. She totally is.
Now the trick here is that a few people in the circle of friends knows about the crossdressing of each person, and their mixed gender dealio. Touma seems to, in some sense, genuinely identify as male, while Makoto just wants to hang out with Haruka and cook with her, or something (is that what you kids are calling it these days?). No one cares.
I’ll repeat that. No one cares. Kana is deeply amused by the whole affair (given that half of it is her fault I guess that makes sense). Chiaki and Haruka don’t know about Makoto — but upon Makoto trying to confess, Chiaki says if “she” is going to be masculine, she needs to try to act a little like Touma — and Chiaki knows, if she hasn’t bothered to admit it verbally, that Touma is a lady. Does anyone in the show actually bother having a gender identity, one might ask. One character seems to consciously tag himself — he “loves” Haruka, and is apparently a world-class cook who never gets it quite right, compared to what he wants. He thinks Haruka isn’t eating right, or something. Whatever.
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I’ll take this moment in the middle of my post for an interruption, Minami-ke style, to talk about Sensei to Ninomiya-kun, the show they all religiously watch. It starts as a typical drama, escalates into soap opera realms, and eventually arrives at the ultimate (legal) spectacle: stage magic.
They only ever say “sensei!” and “Ninomiya-kun,” respectively. It works as well as any soap opera dialogue — my mother loves them, I ought to know.
Can I put the lie to my previous statement and connect these two topics?
Yes.
Sensei’s relationship with Ninomiya-kun, while couched in a scandalous student-and-teacher dynamic, represents the typical gender roles, right down to the repeated names. Ninomiya-kun only ever refers to her teacher, who clearly loves her, as “sensei,” maintaining the respect an older male accords in Japanese cultural hierarchy. The “~kun” of “Ninomiya-kun” is typically the honorific afforded a young male in Japanese society, but I have noticed it bandied about for students of any gender — the lines have been drawn between the two quite clearly. If you want some proof of this, contrast Ninomiya-kun’s school uniform with that worn by most of the characters (and, at some point, all of them, as all the siblings went through the same elementary school):
There is no difference in the blazer — males wear pants and females wear skirts, that is all. Paying attention to the individualizing portions of the students (body build, face, head, &c.), one couldn’t really notice a difference in gender. Ninomiya-kun is wearing the typical sailor fuku. So while possibly distorting gender with the “~kun” honorific, the soap opera in the show stays pretty well within gender lines.
If you think what I just did was weird, I should tell you I could compare this show to Shakespeare right now. Leave comments if you want me to do it later, because I’ll forget.
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So, back to gender. Comedies have traditionally dealt with gender in some way (there’s part of the Shakespeare thing, but I’m also referring back to such stuff as Greek drama — a traditional comedy does, after all, end in a marriage; well, unless it’s the Lysistrata I suppose, then it presumably ends [off-stage] with fucking, because those logs were heavy and not symbolic at all). But generally gender is the point of the whole thing, if it’s crossed like this. What’s impressive about Minami-ke is that the show doesn’t pay any attention to it. It’s just another joke, like pulling a hiding person out of a kotatsu as “a magic trick” to cover up that they’ve been there for the past half-hour, while everyone’s been sitting with their legs under there.
Yes, if you were curious, Makoto is indeed The Bitch.
I don’t have a real conclusion here, sorry. It seems like I should. In my defense, it’s past five in the morning right now. But also, I don’t feel there’s much to conclude about it that isn’t a gross over-generalization. I’m tempted to claim that Japan must, based on this (flimsy, inconsequential) evidence, have looser worries than we thought about gender issues. This is, given most of my reading, patently untrue. What rises up out of my sub-consciousness, however, is the interesting idea that, in some way, the manga/anime art form contains more permeable gender lines, somehow. It could be a product of the times, rather like Virginia Woolf’s Orlando. Certainly it could be a reaction against stiff gender roles; the Edwardian era had enough of them. Is it culture-wide? Of course not. For every Orlando there is a Kipling, and for every Minami-ke or Ouran Host Club there is a Bleach (yes, I’m a Bleach fan actually. I’m not dissing the show, I just think it uses typical gender lines, which isn’t bad at all).
