Erica Friedman did a post way back when on the Bechdel test. It prompted a fun comment thread, including a lengthy discussion by Melinda Beasi, which is reproduced below.
I’m glad you brought this topic back here after the conversation on Twitter. I think, in retrospect, why I reacted negatively to Mo’s personal taste being included as a criteria for the test, is that suddenly a test that I personally looked to as a guide for helping me find works I might enjoy (lists of manga, books, movies, etc. that fulfilled the letter of the test were popular when I was a regular on LJ) had essentially shut me out. Because while I always prefer stories containing strong female friendships and a significant female presence–the kind likely to emerge from following the letter of the test–by adding in Mo’s taste, nearly all the work I liked best was eliminated or at least deeply in question. So where was my list now? If the women I most identified with and most enjoyed reading about suddenly weren’t interesting enough for Mo, I felt thrown out along with them. It was as though after all the youthful years I spent being viewed by my peers as “not feminine enough” to be an acceptable girl were being followed up on with years in which I would be viewed as too girly to be an interesting woman.
Obviously, that’s an extreme (and inappropriate) reaction. Why should I care what Mo thinks of my books? I know why I like them and, whether she would read them or not, I gain strength and insight from the women within their pages. And it may be that I was simply mistaken to interpret the test as a guide for finding stories about women that might interest women. Perhaps it really is just intended to identify stories of interest just to women like Mo. So maybe what I’m really looking for is a different list. I, too, am interested in books where female characters are engaged with each other on issues other than the men in their lives. I think, though, that because the reality of my life differs so much from Mo’s, I’m looking for something a little different in my fiction.
I actually don’t think you’re wrong at all when you suggest that women are still socialized to be needy and that our fantasies are influenced by the expectations set up for us. This is our reality. This is my reality. So when I’m looking for characters I can identify with in manga, I’m going to find that in women who struggle with exactly those things.
For instance, one of the characters I identify with most is Nana Komatsu (aka “Hachi”) in Ai Yazawa’s NANA. While I’ve got a career drive that better resembles her friend Nana Osaki’s, like Hachi, I can measure my past in increments of ex-boyfriends. I’ve struggled, as she does, with being hung up on men, with needing to feel loved (even when it’s false), with needing to keep my real thoughts and feelings secret for fear of losing that love, and so on. I’ve come further than she has (*maybe*, that’s probably more appropriately discussed over beer) but while she’s a woman Mo might find tiresome, she’s one *I need to read about*. She’s relevant to my life. Not the life I maybe wish I had, but my actual life. What I love about NANA is that while Hachi struggles with these things, what the real story is about is how, ultimately, the relationship that Hachi and Nana have with each other is more real and more satisfying than their tumultuous relationships with men. Do they talk to each other about the men in their lives? Certainly. They also talk about their careers, their personal hopes and fears, each other, and everything else under the sun. These women reflect myself back to me, but they also provide a blueprint for female friendship in which I can find hope and inspiration. I can’t undo the person I am or the broken things in my own past. I can’t erase the way I was socialized or what that made me. So for me, seeing that addressed on paper is important. It’s what makes something more than fantasy for me as a reader. And because so many women still struggle with these things daily, I think these stories are important as stories for women, if not perhaps as stories for women like Mo. In my world, these women are heroic.
All that said (and perhaps to get around to your actual point), Blindmouse’s recent Top 12 Fictional Female Friendships inspired me to try to put together my own list focusing exclusively on manga. But when I sat down to write it, I had trouble coming up with more than five. Though I could think of many, many strong, inspiring, heroic women in manga, I could think of just a handful who actually appeared together in the same story. Perhaps that should not have surprised me, but it really did.
Now I’m curious about what’s on Melinda Beasi’s “top five fictional female friendships in manga” list.
Ha. Well, this was quite a while ago, so I can’t guarantee these would have been my picks at the time, but here goes (with hastily assembled supporting documentation):
Nana Komatsu & Nana Osaki (NANA)
Arisa Uotani & Saki Hanajima (Fruits Basket)
Sakura Kinomoto & Tomoyo Daidouji (Cardcaptor Sakura)
Ayane Yano & Chizuru Yoshida (Kimi ni Todoke)
Shusuran & Enju (Please Save My Earth)
I can’t even guarantee that these are my top five (it’s late, and my apartment is really noisy), but that’ll do for the moment. I also really like the three girls in Twin Spica (Asumi, Kei, & Marika) and Yamane & Sakai in Flower of Life.
Yay, you answered!
Now I’m thinking about what I’d put on my list. Sakura and Tomoyo would definitely be there, they’re adorable – but with that slight over-the-top edge that makes it interesting, on Tomoyo’s part. Arisa and Saki also have that crazy edge, but their personalities complement each other since one is hot and the other is cool. It seems to be a common thing for close school friendships in manga to have three people in them, I guess this kind of “stabilizes” it and keeps it from being two people just lost totally in their own world. And I guess maybe this also allows a little bit of frisson between two of the characters, without any pressure on the author to develop that into a relationship (since readers enjoy the trio more).
Haven’t read Kimi ni Todoke, but Nana+Nana is great… I love Please Save my Earth but have mixed feelings about how Enju being reborn as a man is specifically something she does to fix her crush-on-Gyokuren problem (because obviously if they are both men, nothing can happen). Though the feelings don’t go away, so I suppose it’s okay. And then doesn’t Sakura end up with him? That was very cute and a good match because she’s practical and he’s emotional, but I wondered why she didn’t say anything when they were both women. Just that kind of practical person, who unlike everyone else in the series can sleep on strong feelings without expressing them like they’re the most important thing in the world? In any case, <3 PSME.
No Sailor scouts?
Kayoko Shigeta and Fukunaga from Happy Mania would definitely be on my list – they have very similar relationship to Nana+Nana, actually.
@subdee, Happy Mania has long been on my list of older josei to attempt to collect and read (along with Tramps Like Us), though of course that’s a lot harder now than it used to be. I became a manga fan too late, and I’ve paid dearly for it.
@Noah, related to my response above, I’m actually just reading Sailor Moon for the first time via the Kodansha re-releases, and I’m not all that far along. So it’s possible (maybe even probable?) that they’d make my list at some point, but not yet!
Melinda, do you know what’s happening with Nana, by the way? Yazawa is sick, right? The series is discontinued?
Also:
+Orihime and Tatsuki from Bleach (protective friendship)
+Nagisa and 7(Nana) from Loveless (work colleagues)
+Mina and Ai from Doubt!! (rivals turned allies)
+Sana and her mom from Kodomo no Omocha (Kodocha) (prolly shouldn’t *be* friends in this way, but that’s what makes it interesting)
+Jolyne and Hermes from Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 6: Stone Ocean (because Araki treats them exactly the same as he treats his die-for-you male/male partnerships in Jojo)
+Rem and Misa from Death Note (funnily enough considering how misogynist this series is – but the author’s misogyny is so pronounced that it means he/she ends up drawing a lot of strong women and then expecting us to hate them because they are strong. older protector and capricious younger goth girl.)
Some manga authors I can think of who tend to write interesting female friendships are:
-Yun Kouga (Earthian, Loveless – notably there’s a lesbian couple in Loveless)
-Oh!Great (Tengo Tenge, Airgear – yeah he’s the panty shots guy but maybe because of that his series are full of strong women – the male protagonists sometimes just seem like they’re tagging along for the ride)
-Kubo Tite (Zombie Powder, Bleach – because he’s an equal opportunity writer, totally willing to write BOTH slashy female friends AND slashy male friendships lol. A big Jojo fan. Araki would be on this list too except he doesn’t tend to have manga female characters in his comics. (The ones who are there are AWESOME, though.))
-Gen Urobuchi (Fate:Zero, Madoka Magica – one of those shoujo anime directors who is more comfortable telling his stories with a female cast rather than a male one)
-Kunihiko Ikuhara (Revolutionary Girl Utena, Mawaru Penguindrum – same as Gen Urobuchi, only way weirder and with more incestuous overtones)
-Chika Umino (Honey and Clover, 3gatsu no Lion – very finely observed psychology in characters of both genders. women tend to have more meaningful friendships with men, though, now that I think about it. Her and Ai Yazawa both write series where cross-gender friendships are totally possibly, which is something I appreciate)
Typos ;_;. Anyway, in the pile of male creators who are more comfortable telling their stories with a female cast, there is:
Mohiro Kitoh (Shadow Star, Bokurano – I thought about putting Shiina and Hiroko from Shadow Star in my female friendships list, but the characters in Shadow Star are so disconnected from everything, including each other, that it didn’t feel right. They support each other despite not feeling much of anything outside of extreme situations, though.)
Kagami Yoshimizu (Lucky Star – four-panel gag comic)
Kiyohiko Azuma (Azumanga Daioh, Yosubata&! – another four-panel comic, and a comic that’s explicitly about a mid-twenties guy looking after a cute little girl, “tending” to her in the moe sense)
I’m not sure whether these count as female friendships as… well, it’s not that the characters aren’t female, but they are kind of proxies for the male creators who don’t feel comfortable tackling themes of ennui, same-sex crushes, childhood pain, or what have you with a male cast. As far as that goes, though, someone finally made one of “antic small stakes childhood misadventures” series with a male cast: The Daily Lives of High School Boys. That was kind of cool to see.
@Noah, I haven’t heard any updates on Ai Yazawa for a couple of years now. I think we know nothing about her current state of health or whether she will continue NANA. I’ve been assuming we won’t see any more of it, but I think I pretty much did that just to gain some control over my own longing.
@subdee, Orihime and Tatsuki from Bleach – count me in on that one as well.
I do love all the girls in both Azumanga Daioh and Yotsuba&! but in terms of friendships specifically… there aren’t any that just really grab my heart.
@Melinda Beasi Yeah, I couldn’t think of any from Azumanga Daioh or Yotsuba&! either. They are sort of ensemble comedies? Also Higurashi no Naku no Koro Ni, which harem/ensemble horror.
Orihime and Tatsuki are so cute.
Melinda, I hope you do manage to assemble all the Tramps Like Us volumes. There’s an interesting female friendship in that series, and I look forward to hearing your opinion about it. : )
Melinda- Hope you won’t mind me weighing in. Obviously, when I wrote that post about the Bechdel Test I was looking at it from the perspective that, I believe, Mo was looking at the situation. The key point is that a conversation about men does not in any way invalidate the friendship, only if they converse *exclusively* about men. Nana and Hachi clearly do not *only* talk about men. I would also consider that series to pass the Test. ^_^
Noah – To your point about the Sailor Senshi – they are all close friends, because they are comrades and sisters.
When I wrote about the Test and how most of the series choices I received were schoolgirl ensembles, like Azumanga Daioh and Senshi-like teams, to some extent I think the limitation was that there was little translated into English that didn’t fit outside those boxes.
The Senshi talk about other things because they are the Senshi, just as the ladies of AMP in Silent Mobius have to talk about business. Business at hand is the main topic, and boys and clothes are secondary. As they are in a life.
My favorite friendship in manga is Yaji and Kita from YajiKita Gakuen Douchuuki. Reiko and Junko start off really disliking one another, but about the time Reiko gets short somewhere in volume 12 or so, they realize that they need each other.
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