Abstract
This chapter offers a close reading of dōjinshi fancomics based on the video game Final Fantasy VII in order to argue that the female gaze queers not just male characters but also masculinist ideologies. By analyzing how canonical characterizations and scenarios can yield different meanings than those suggested by the original work when viewed with a female gaze, it demonstrates how Japanese dōjinshi artists are able to queer the source texts by using the tropes and conventions of BL manga. The chapter concludes with a discussion of international manga-style fancomics based on the Legend of Zelda and demonstrates how sexist depictions of femininity within video games are routinely disrupted by female fans who are capable of applying a diverse set of hermeneutic lenses to mainstream narratives.
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- 1.
Free To Fanfic, “I Also Am Really Bothered by the Way English Fandom Has Adopted Genre Words from Japan.” Tumblr post, November 4, 2017. https://freedom-of-fanfic.tumblr.com/post/167135388789/im-curious-for-your-thoughts-on-this-subject-i
- 2.
Yoshio Sugimoto, An Introduction to Japanese Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 78.
- 3.
Ibid., 79.
- 4.
Ibid., 81. The “perceptive observer” Sugimoto cites is Rokurō Hidaka, the author of The Price of Affluence: Dilemma of Contemporary Japan (London: Penguin, 1985).
- 5.
Interpretations of Attack on Titan, a franchise stemming from a manga by Isayama Hajime that began serialization in 2009, have been varied. The creator assiduously maintains his privacy and the story has not yet reached its conclusion. See Joy Hui Lin, “Taking Solace in ‘Attack on Titan’,” Los Angeles Review of Books, August 4, 2017. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/taking-solace-in-attack-on-titan/
- 6.
Wim Lunsing, “Yaoi Ronsō: Discussing Depictions of Male Homosexuality in Japanese Girls’ Comics and Gay Pornography” in Intersections: Gender, History and Culture in the Asian Context 12 (2006). Accessed October 15, 2014. http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue12/lunsing.html
- 7.
Vincent, “A Japanese Electra and Her Queer Progeny.”
- 8.
Matsui Midori, “Little Girls Were Little Boy: Displaced Feminity in the Representation of Homosexuality in Japanese Girls’ Comics” in Feminism and the Politics of Difference, ed. Sneja Gunew and Anna Yeatman (Boulder: Westview Press, 1993).
- 9.
Aoyama, “Male Homosexuality as Treated by Japanese Women Writers.” See also Akatsuka, “Uttering the Absurd, Revaluing the Abject: Femininity and the Disavowal of Homosexuality in Transnational Boys’ Love Manga.”
- 10.
Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva, Ecofeminism (London: Zed Books, 1993).
- 11.
Rachael Hutchinson, “Nuclear Discourse in Final Fantasy VII: Embodied Experience and Social Critique.” In Introducing Japanese Popular Culture, ed. Alisa Freedman and Toby Slade (New York: Routledge, 2018).
- 12.
Ayako Kano, “Backlash, Fight Back, and Back-Pedaling: Responses to State Feminism in Contemporary Japan,” International Journal of Asian Studies 8 (2011).
- 13.
Judith Fetterly, The Resisting Reader: A Feminist Approach to American Fiction (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978).
- 14.
Wikipedia, “List of Best-Selling Video Game Franchises.”
- 15.
Audureau, “Miyamoto, la Wii U et le secret de la Triforce.”
- 16.
Other than Hyrule Warriors, there are a small number of auxiliary Zelda titles, including three games released on the disastrously unsuccessful Philips CD-i console in the early 1990s, three games starring the minor supporting character Tingle released on the handheld Nintendo DS console in the late 2000s, and a sports game titled Rinku no bōgan torēningu (Link’s Crossbow Training), which was given a Japan-only release on Nintendo’s Wii home console in November 2007.
- 17.
Zeruda musō Kōshiki, “Settei shiryōshū neta kyara datta no ni ‘Rinkuru (kari)’ o sasagete itadaku kata, ōi desu ne… Honshū de saiyō shita hō ga yokatta no kashira” Tweet, August 28, 2014. https://twitter.com/zelda_musou/status/504953276807122944
- 18.
Nintendo, “Nintendo Direct Presentation – Mario, Zelda, Pokemon & More|Game Overviews (11/12/15).” YouTube video, November 12, 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VF3AnGHbG6s
- 19.
TV Tropes, “Zettai Ryouiki,” last modified July 31, 2018. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ZettaiRyouiki
- 20.
Azuma, Otaku, 48.
- 21.
Brian Ashcraft, “There’s A Female Link, and Her Name Is Linkle” in Kotaku, August 13, 2014. https://kotaku.com/theres-a-female-link-and-her-name-is-linkle-1620664557
- 22.
Christine Yano, Pink Globalization: Hello Kitty’s Trek Across the Pacific (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2013), 56.
- 23.
Jennifer Prough, Straight from the Heart: Gender, Intimacy, and the Cultural Production of Shōjo Manga (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2010), 114.
- 24.
There is a surprising dearth of writing on Japanese mobile games targeted at a female demographic, many of which fall into the “raising sim” (kyōiku shimyurēshon) genre of grooming a young man or woman to become an entertainment industry professional. For more on fashion simulation games, see Shira Chess, Ready Player Two: Women Gamers and Designated Identity (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017).
- 25.
Maddy Meyers, “I Love Linkle. But Linkle Is Not Enough,” The Mary Sue, November 18, 2015. https://www.themarysue.com/the-linkle-backlash/
- 26.
Anita Sarkeesian, “Lingerie Is Not Armor,” Feminist Frequency, June 6, 2016. https://feministfrequency.com/video/lingerie-is-not-armor
- 27.
Betterbemeta, “I Think That the Problem Is Not How ‘Ridiculously’ Sexualized.”
- 28.
Michele Zorilla, “Gender Representation in Video Games,” blog post on Video Games and Gender, June 2011. http://www.radford.edu/~mzorrilla2/thesis/gamerepresentation.html
- 29.
Carolyn Petit, “The Legend of F. Scott: A Response to the Response to the Response to Linkle,” Tumblr post, November 17, 2015. http://carolynpetit.tumblr.com/post/133430748625/the-legend-of-f-scott-a-response-to-the-response
- 30.
Adi Robertson, “The FBI Has Released Its Gamergate Investigation Records,” The Verge, January 27, 2014. https://www.theverge.com/2017/1/27/14412594/fbi-gamergate-harassment-threat-investigation-records-release
- 31.
Women, Action, & the Media. “Harassment of Women on Twitter?” press release, November 6, 2014. http://womenactionmedia.org/2014/11/06/harassment-of-women-on-twitter-were-on-it/
- 32.
Matt Lees, “What Gamergate Should Have Taught Us About the ‘Alt-Right’.” The Guardian, December 1, 2016. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/01/gamergate-alt-right-hate-trump
- 33.
Michael McWhertor, “Animal Crossing: New Leaf Director Says Team Diversity, Communication Core to Its Success.” Polygon, March 19, 2014. https://www.polygon.com/2014/3/19/5526678/animal-crossing-new-leaf-diversity-aya-kyogoku
- 34.
Anna Anthropy, Rise of the Videogame Zinesters: How Freaks, Normals, Amateurs, Artists, Dreamers, Drop-outs, Queers, Housewives, and People Like You Are Taking Back an Art Form (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2012), 160.
- 35.
Kyle Hilliard, “Link Is Not a Woman in Zelda on Wii U.” Game Informer, June 12, 2014. http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2014/06/12/is-link-a-girl-in-zelda-on-wii-u.aspx
- 36.
Prough, Straight from the Heart.
- 37.
Ian Condry, The Soul of Anime: Collaborative Creativity and Japan’s Media Success Story (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2013).
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Hemmann, K. (2020). Beautiful War Games: Transfiguring Genders in Video Game Fancomics. In: Manga Cultures and the Female Gaze. East Asian Popular Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18095-9_5
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