Boys are Weird, in Anime and Real Life

I now find myself captivated by shojo/slice-of-life shows, in stark contrast with my usual sci-fi fare (I blame both my job at GoBoiano and the influence of my senpai, FushigiNaKuniNo). This fall 2012 season presents audiences with two new shows, Say "I Love You" and My Little Monster, which roughly fall into this ambiguous pool of mass-mediated, Japanese female coming-of-age anime I'm indulging in. There's a few obvious themes that run throughout, chiefly that these are love stories. Then there's the fact that the men in these two shows are flat-out crazy. Is this how women view us men? Is this how we view ourselves?

 

My Little Monster Copyright Brain's Base, Robico.  Say  "I Love You" Copyright ZEXCH, Kanae Hazuki.

My Little Monster's Haru is a breed of troglodyte I've never seen before in anime. The very first episode of this purported romance show stirred controversy, as Haru drags his love interest Shizuku into an alley and threatens to rape her if she screams for help. As the rest of the show reveals, Haru is unfit to exist within contemporary society. His impetuous tendencies often thrust him into fights. His idea of romance strictly involves sex. He cuts class for almost all of middle school. What baffles many viewers is the fact that Shizuku eventually finds herself attracted to him and his barbaric ways, and the anime tries its hardest to humanize the sub-human Haru by letting him grow on us and giving him a back-story.

 

Perusing Google reveals that My Little Monster (Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun) began as a monthly entry in Dessert, a shojo magazine. I do think that as a matter of inevitability, young women who read Dessert are viewing parodied example of both: 1) What some young men are like; and 2) What some romances are like. Stereotypes and parodies often have a semblance of truth, or at least a gross misinterpretation of the truth. I have no qualms admitting I'm a strange fellow: my favorite pastimes include jumping over benches and other urban obstacles, and hilariously enough Haru does similar stunts regularly. If My Little Monster expresses the idea of men being bestial at times, such an assessment isn't entirely invalid. Taking this thought even further, if Shizuku is meant to "tame" the animal Haru through romance, then the saying, "You've been whipped," expressed by guys who think their friends are being controlled by their girlfriends, is incredibly apropos. 

The other shojo/slice-of-life series I've been watching, Say "I Love You," also happens to be a monthly Dessert manga installment. Mei Tachibana is a reserved girl who thinks all friendships result in broken hearts and backstabbing. Yamato Kurosawa walks into her life, eating a kick to the face Mei meant for his friend. Rather than repel Kurosawa, the attack makes Mei enigmatic... and attractive.


Say "I Love You" makes a point to embellish the discomfort and self-esteem issues its female characters face in school, issues not only exacerbated by other teenage girls, but boys as well. Asami Oikawa, Mei's large-breasted friend, is teased by boys because of her robust bust-size; I found it comical, considering large boobs are a nice bonus to most guys. I can only assume the boys were attracted to them and expressed this the only way immature teenage boys know how: teasing.

 

The idea of an objectifying masculine gaze gets a lot of attention in this series. In the first episode Mei is stalked by a bakery customer she regularly serves. The cinematography conspicuously zooms in on her face, legs and her name tag (which just so happens to sit on her chest), mimicking the wandering eye of Mei's stalker. And in the second episode, Kenji Nakanishi, Kurosawa's friend, seeks out Asami by seeking her large breasts out among a crown of women. Similar to My Little Monster, Kenji's sexual gestures are normalized through revealing that he envies Kurosawa's ability to get women. Naturally, men gaze at female bodies on occasion, but watching others do it on-screen sends a powerful message: this behavior can be threatening and perverse when taken too far.

Kurosawa is a bit of a character himself, the resident pretty-boy at high school. His policy: do whatever I want, get whatever I want, whenever I want it. Little wonder when Mei refuses to befriend him, he adamantly pursues her until she needs him to deter her male stalker. Kurosawa kisses her in public to suggest they're together, dissuading the stalker in the boldest way possible. But Kurosawa also claims to like Mei, so the kiss was sincere. He also doesn't have a problem kissing other girls, something he is rumored to do often and does not refute. Needless to say, Mei's emotions are thrown into chaos. While I can't identify with Kurosawa (my Kiss Count is nothing to marvel at), that sense of masculine freedom is familiar to people in patriarchal societies, i.e. much of the world. His naive attitude towards sexual gestures interestingly parallels My Little Monster's Haru, who saw sex as the epitome of romance. Their views seem complimentary, to say the least.

The more I watch shojo anime, the more I realize that men have plenty of idiosyncrasies we likely don't pay mind to. Acknowledging that anime is more than just Japanese cartoons and respecting its ability to communicate relevant issues, no matter how asinine the show may initially seem, yields a lot of information. Guys can be violent, inconsiderate and voyeuristic, there's no doubt about that. Watching such behavior unfold is alarming, even more so when it's animated because that's not something I expect anime to regularly address.

Much to learn, men still have.