In her latest Buzzscope column, Tania del Rio sees girls reading more shonen than shoujo manga and wonders if cultural differences have something to do with it:
It makes me think about what girls in our society enjoy in terms of story and character, and I wonder if our own culture plays a part in this. I wonder if the messages in shoujo aren’t as strong to Western girls as they are to Japanese girls.
Tania notes that gender roles are still more rigid in Japan, and while Japanese shoujo heroines are often fixated on finding a boyfriend, that may still be a radical concept for the Japanese.
A female character finding love on her own is a liberating theme. Even today, many marriages in Japan are still arranged. And if the bride-to-be does have more of a say in whom she ends up with, chances are her parents are still very much involved in the process of selecting a husband. In shoujo, the girls always discover love on their own. To a Western reader, a shoujo character’s actions may come off as pining and starry-eyed, but they are truly acting independently – learning love and heartbreak on their own.
This column spawned two interesting discussions, one on Tania’s livejournal site and the other on Rivkah’s blog.
One point that Tania makes in her livejournal is that OEL creators are writing from their own experience rather than trying to be Japanese. In fact, OEL seem to be developing in a completely different direction from traditional manga. You don’t have to read a lot of Japanese manga before you notice the same storylines cropping up over and over again, such as the heroine who goes to great lengths to appear cool/brilliant/beautiful and then is blackmailed by someone who catches her in an unguarded moment. And the girls put up with all kinds of abuse from boys. Even the supposedly beloved Tohru Honda gets smacked around a few times by Kyo (and probably apologizes to him afterwards). The strong/weak woman is a major motif in Japanese manga, but OEL manga seems to be developing a different set of themes and archetypes, including girls with strong personalities.
