Not too OT, I hope.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Matrim
I think everyone should decide for himself whom (if any) of the two to admire in this case. If there is a moral, it's that we shouldn't judge others just because their way of coping with problems is different than ours.
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Don't get me wrong; I'm quite happy that we're left to judge this for ourselves. I was more curious about whether people thought the series' creators were more sympathetic to Yumi's or Hiro's point of view. I find Hiro's strength of character truly admirable, even if I'm turned off by her uber-commitment to the workplace. And while, like you, I didn't like Yumi's choice of the
kawaii strategy to get ahead, Yumi does remind Hiro that she is still a woman and not a hataraki
man.
I've always enjoyed studying how gender roles are portrayed in anime. As a gaijin with little or no exposure to Japanese culture and mores before watching anime, I wasn't prepared for the frequent appearance of feminist themes in many series aimed at girls and women.* I thought of Japan as a place where traditional gender roles still held sway and expected to see girls and women portrayed more submissively than in American programming.
I was thus surprised to see how feminist thinking pervades a lot of modern anime, especially shoujo and josei shows. While it's especially obvious in the work of artists like Miyazaki or the CLAMP collective, shows by many other artists also feature strong female protagonists. Obvious examples of what I sometimes call the "plucky girl" genre include Spirited Away, Angelic Layer, Noein, or Mahou Shoujo Tai Arusu. All of these depict preteen heroines who always do their best despite the difficulties they encounter and who succeed in the end. Older versions of these characters appear in shows like REC, Junni Kokki, or Saiunkoku Monogatari.** Even in historical dramas like Saiunkoku or Junni Kokki, the heroines have very modern sensibilities. They never worry that their gender will keep them from reaching their goals as long as they do their best.
Hiro is, I think, much less sanguine about her future than these younger counterparts. And, to return to the initial discussion, episode 6 made me wonder if this show's creators also have a more jaded view of feminism than does, say, Miyazaki. When Spirited Away's Chihiro grows up will she be one of four women in an office of forty people,*** horribly overworked and overworking, and constantly struggling to get the respect she so clearly deserves? I think Hiro tries to do her best every day just as much as Angelic Layer's Misaki, but in the adult world just doing your best may not be enough. Sometimes you need put on that scent of freesia to become female Hataraki Man.
Even though I can't imagine myself watching an office comedy on American network television, I'm strongly attached to this show. It combines laugh-out-loud humor with a depth of adult characterization that's rarely found in television programming of any sort. I happened to watch a bit of a network crime procedural (one of the CSI's) at a friend's house the other night and saw none of the humanity that's painted into every frame of Hataraki Man.
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*I also wish there was more of it in the series targeted at boys and men, by the way.
**Well, "older" in that they're 16-20. Anime has remarkably
few heroines over the age of 20. Hiro, at 28, thus joins Balalaika as one of the oldest female principals that I've seen in an anime.
***What makes the 10% female statistic so remarkable to my eyes is that, in the United States, publishing has traditionally been an industry that was relatively open to women. By the way, women as a whole in Japan make up about
40% of the work force, though they're
much less well-represented in professional and managerial positions like Hiro's.
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