The Coolest Shounen Protagonist (who happens to be a Girl)

Greetings, newcomers. And to all those who know who I am, it's been quite a while, hasn't it? I'm not exactly sure what spurred me to write a rant of all things, but I reckon it could be attributed to a year of general frustrations and anxiety. The question then was whether I wanted to rant about how awfully mediocre My Deku no Pico is, or how my oh-so-beloved LWA has aged like months-old goat milk.

Then A Certain Magical Index III finally arrived, reminding me of everything I detest about anime.* But that's not what I'm here to talk about.

Nah, I'm about to tear the Shounen genre a new one. Specifically, why Japanese media's (anime, live-action or otherwise) reluctance to portray a girl or woman as THE action protagonist bothers me.

Disclaimer: Critical-thinking and general awareness of sexism in Chinese cartoons required. Not for the intellectually faint-of-thought.

Since the past decade or so, there have been more Shounen shows (literally manga/anime for boys) that feature girls and women as prominent characters. Nami and Robin from One Piece; Sakura from Naruto; Ochako from My Hero Academia; Morgiana from Magi; so on and forth. Without a doubt, these characters are beloved by fans for various reasons.

What strikes me as odd, then, is how we almost never have a girl in the role of a Shounen Protagonist. You would think gender is a non-issue when deciding the lead character of an action story, but Japanese creators seem to have a very different idea. Apparently, the issues female characters face, how they challenge them, and the realizations they come to must be very different than the ones a typical male protagonist deals with. And in Shounen stories, this is most definitely the case more often than not.

And that's just fucking stupid.

Let's take a moment to break down the characters I mentioned earlier to bare minimums.

Robin struggles with trust and acceptance amongst her crew and those around her. Sakura's insecurity and weakness are frequently at odds with her desire to fight with her friends. Ochako wants to be a hero to gain income for her family; she's also in love with Deku. Morgiana... hits things really hard? I dunno, I have yet to watch Magi.**

These personal traits and conflicts, when taken on their own, are actually quite compelling. Within the context of their respective stories, however, they're indicative of a larger concern I have with how characters are presented and written. It's a general rule of storytelling that you don't write a character based around their gender, that it should be the second or even last thing to consider. This is because of how endemic gendered notions and stereotypes are to our culture, and that those biases will often bleed into our work whether we're aware of it or not. And unless a writer is habitually conscious enough of this to experiment and diversify (which is unlikely for most Japanese creators I've seen), gender-coded characters can come off of as being tone-deaf at best, and one-note caricatures at worse.

For instance, singling out a character as "the girl" or "the woman" of the show's cast emphasizes and essentializes their gendered traits, usually to the point where they may supersede other existing character traits and elements. Not to mention anime already has an awful reputation for the rampant sexualisation, objectification, and fetishization of young girls. You know the drill - an upskirt shot; voyeuristic camera pans; sexual harassment; hot springs and yadda yadda.

Regardless of the story's setting and context (or perhaps to their active detriment), normalizing this treatment of female characters undermines their potential for meaningful engagement with the audience. This is especially important when you consider Shounen's intended audience, young boys, and how difficult it'd be for them to connect with action heroines - much less aspire to be like them - when such characters are sexualized as eye-candy for the sake of bullshit.

Another issue is how themes like acceptance, empathy, and love are frequently considered "essential" to the characterization of women in stories. Yet, they are all too seldom the core of a male protagonist's character, if at all. Such themes can be present, sure, but it's more likely that our Shounen hero's primary focus would be on other, more definable issues thematically tied to an overarching narrative.

Let's look at Deku from HeroAca, for example. Like Robin, he occasionally struggles with trust and acceptance, if mostly in the context of One For All's secrecy. He is generally insecure about himself, struggling to reconcile his inherent weakness with his desire to protect others, like Sakura. He also hits really hard. Like Morgiana. I guess. Oh, and there's the whole romance thing with Ochako if you're into that. More than any of these, though, Deku has to deal with the legacy left behind by his hero All Might (the story's greatest hero, mind you), and proving to everyone else - and more importantly, himself - that he is indeed worthy of the power passed on to him.

"Can he live up to All-Might's expectations, as well as of those around him?"

"Can he become a new symbol of hope? Can he triumph over the rise of villainy?"

There are plenty of discussions over Deku's importance to HeroAca's themes and conflicts. But you really don't see female characters in Shounen stories deal with similar themes or issues in significant depth. And even if you can argue that these girls or women can still keep up with their male counterparts physically, that doesn't change the fact that the priorities for their development are allocated elsewhere (or simply to their breast size). The precedence for female characters just seems so much more skewed towards commercialized notions of femininity, like "the powa of fwiendship" or "twoo wuv".

This saddens me since I'm all for empowering femininity in characters from all walks of life, including men - especially men. But it needs to be an aspect that inspires empathy and understanding, not emphasized to the point of fetishization and/or sexualisation. I actively want to identify with more female protagonists, and not be relegated to the myriad of readily available testosterone-blooded mansplainers.***

Now, allow me to describe a Shounen-esque main character who possesses the charisma to inspire, can move characters and the plot forward without dominating them, and can generate equal amounts awe and investment from the audience.

Our hero possesses incredible power, so much so that they are among the strongest few in their city. They use this power to challenge injustice and corruption, which solidifies their heroic reputation. The acts of this hero inspire other characters to step up and do good themselves, while also drawing the ire from various antagonists. Despite the hero's good intentions, however, their skewed perception of responsibility leads to the hero to become increasingly reckless. They attempt to protect the city numerous times, relying on their own power and no one else's. This culminates in the hero's fruitless struggle to save lives against more cunning and powerful foes, slowly becoming frustrated over their own perceived uselessness. Eventually, the hero comes to understand - through the support of their friends and allies - that they alone cannot save everyone. They realize that it is only through trust in others can the world be changed. By learning to swallow their pride, the hero's ideals are reaffirmed and given the chance to mature, empower, and become reality.

Y'all still with me? Good. What I just described is a character I'm confident in the potential of from both a narrative and development standpoint. Even if it's nothing we haven't seen before,  even if there's no guarantee the execution will be good, the paragraph above can still be used as a template for either new characters to be written, or to describe already existing ones.

That being said, this sort of character is not new and has probably existed in other variants. What I've described is arguably a similar formula to Light Novel or Isekai protagonists. What I've described can be the masses' ideal image of a hero that's not female. Even though such a character can be made relatable, empowering, and inspiring for a general audience, regardless of their gender, we really don't see female characters in anime fulfilling this role often, if at all.

The big exception to this is Mikoto Misaka.

Mikasa is the main protagonist of the manga and anime adaptation A Certain Scientific Railgun.**** She is a young girl who fulfills the role of an action hero. In fact, the character I wrote earlier as an example of a Shounen protagonist is based on her. And it works. It works fantastically! It's fresh, it's exciting, and it's not skeevy the way most forms of Japanese media are with their female characters. Misaka is just a human being struggling to do the right thing against all odds. She isn't ridiculed or objectified for it. There is no cynical narrative behind why she does what she does, either. Much like any hero, male or female, Misaka inspires hope in people almost as much as she's scorned by her enemies. She's targeted not because she's some petty love interest to an alpha male, but because her very existence represents that much of a threat to the dark side of her home and raison d'etre, Academy City.

Kazuma Kamachi (yes, the guy who wrote the horrid Index series) somehow wrote and continues to write, a story about a young girl with phenomenal powers as an action hero. A story, while neither original in concept nor flawless in execution (the swimsuit episode, Misaka's occasional A-cup angst, and Kuroko as poor lesbian representation all come to mind*****), is at least original and engaging in much of its execution. And its impact on the genre is not lost or undermined by her gender. In fact, that aspect of her character is played to the narrative's strengths, particularly in demonstrating just how important the bonds between Misaka and her friends are. Female solidarity is a criminally underutilized concept in Shounen fiction, so to see it normalized in Railgun demonstrates care by the creators to neither alienate nor trivialize their female audiences. Heck, even Touma Kamijou (aka the number one reason I despise Index) becomes a decent character in Railgun as Misaka's sarcastic, on-and-off love interest (whereas in Index, he's merely a bland metaphor for Kazuma's expanded dong).

It's quite refreshing enjoying an anime/manga without the stink plaguing the rest of the medium. I never bought that something as inconsequential as one's gender should have any influence on whether or not they can wage war on filthy Argonians. So any story that doesn't create caveats just because of gasp! she's a grill gets an A- in my book.

Of course, this is still the bare-minimum standard.













* In case I wasn't transparent enough, I hate the mainline Index series. I've read the Light Novels until New Testament began, and watched both the 1st and 2nd seasons. It's awful, most of it. Touma is a fuckwit, Misaka is a significantly worse character here, the magic side is a slog, and the writing is stiff and mechanical to the point where it feels the need to explain every single thing to the audience... including the fucking character development! That's not how development works, Kazuma! Ugh. The only reason I'm watching III is so my brother and I have something to make fun of.

** And given my schedule, I probably never will.

*** While the boys in my elementary school grew up wanting to be Batman, I grew up wanting to be just like Sakura Kinomoto (or Sakuura Avalon according to the dub). So I find the argument that boys can't look up to women to be utter bullshit.

**** They recently announced that Railgun is getting a 3rd season! YAAAAASSSS XD

***** Make no mistake, I still love Kuroko Shirai. She's the only perverted anime character I'll ever tolerate.