It’s been…a while! I have new stuff going on, so, many interesting things will be up soon.
Now, I decided to write about the famous “shojo” (teen girl targeted) manga and anime “Fushigi Yuugi”. The story is about a young girl who enters a book and finds herself in an imaginary world much like imperial China.
I began reading this manga with much interest, because of the good artwork, the nice story idea and the plethora of characters, something I particularly enjoy in all kinds of stories. The thing is… well, I’ve never been so frustrated with a manga before. Honestly.
Problematic characters
To begin with, Miaka, the female protagonist, is one of the worse imaginary women ever created. She is outrageously idiot (well, almost ALL of the characters indulge in moronic behavior, to the point the scenario holes make this manga appear like a piece of emmendal cheese) and moreover, her constant reveries and fantasies about being with Tamahome (her beloved from the book-world) and one day eventually marrying him prevent her from doing her sole duty, this being a priestess of the god Suzaku. Not to mention that love scenes between the two are half the pages. I have no problem with romances in stories, in fact I like them, but there’s a fine line between a nice romantic scene and a repeatedly boring Harlequin novella.
So when Miaka is filled with guilt (’cause this happens too often, guess why…) she runs forward to fix what is supposedly wrong…causing more problems instead. Again, we’ve seen troublemaker characters, but this is too much. I guess it’s the creator’s entire weakness to build a strong plot and characters with actual background, who do things for a reason.
The second main female of the story, Yui, was Miaka’s best friend until she got sucked in the book too, in order to save Miaka, and then she was raped. She blames Miaka since then for not helping her (Err, what? How could Miaka have known Yui was there? She even was in an other country of the book-word then!) and also (and mainly…) for being with Tamahome, on whom Yui apparently laid her eyes first. Excuse me, how all this make sense? It is later said in the story that Yui was brainwashed by Nakago’s words, who turned her against Miaka, and in fact, she was never raped.
Yui is but a bitter, stubborn immature person in the entire manga and for no obvious reason! I won’t comment much on the matter of jealousy regarding Tamahome (It’s one of the worst things in this scenario. Oh, come on. How lame can you be hating your best friend because she “stole” your love from you when she didn’t even know you liked him when you saw him…er…once, this being the time you both first met him?), instead, I’d rather write on the rape theme, which is quite apparent in the manga, along with sex, though both in an entirely crypto-puritan way.
A feminist’s view on sex & rape in FY
The dear creator of this story, in order to fill (with not much success) some huge plot gaps but also, in order to insert themes of sex and virginity in the most childish and awkward of ways, perplexed the story with some lines like “the priestess must be a virgin for the god will only answer to a pure body and soul” and “heterosexual intercourse is a way to replenish or draw chi power”…etc. So with the writer’s excuses much like the previous ones, I spent some hours of my life reading two volumes (no 9 & no 10) of total stupidity, with the main theme of one trying to hump another.
Really now. It’s natural themes like this appear since it’s targeted at teenage girls with concerns like these. Though the way the creator herself confronts them make me feel she’s less mature even than her reading audience. It’s like a 13-year-old clueless girl trying to write a more “grown-up” story. I’m not 15 anymore, but even if I were I’d still be fed up with the total absence of story and characters. Watase (the creator) tried for obscure reasons to over-stress the theme of sex in her story, but in an entirely distorted way. So it simply made her appear like a sexual frustrated person, who tries to talk about sex in a politically correct way, being too embarrassed to write about it clearly.
To return to the sensitive rape theme, it is also full of immaturity on the behalf of the creator. She treats rape as a convenient plot (sic) tool, in order to fill some story gaps (like why Yui turned against Miaka) or to (forcefully) introduce some sex themes but not as a rape-survival problematic, but rather as a primarily teenage concern on sexuality (which could have been done by other means, anyway). So rape is eventually viewed by the readers as something that simply “happens” and causes the protagonists hysterical behaviors. And how do they overcome it? Oh, they eventually learn they were never raped and all is fine (as if it would be). How irresponsible of a writer. Mocking on your readers’ and characters’ faces. As a reader, I suggest that when you introduce heavy elements in a story, make sure you have the guts to support them.
Sorry if I sound too harsh but I got so dissapointed by this manga. In every single way.
