As with any comic or graphic narrative I find myself lacking characters who are women being represented properly or at all in the literature. We had a good start with Wonder Woman, but it seems like we are regressing while reading Tezuka. I perused the entire text and found only two women represented in the narrative and one turned out to actually be the rabbit. The first appearance of this woman is on page 77 where the termite queen steps out onto the stage. On page 78 we are introduced to the Queen of the Underground World. She is aggressive, manipulative, and eventually becomes the overall villain of the story. It is interesting to me that Tezuka would choose a female character to portray evil in his narrative. On one hand, I see it as a nod to women’s independence and power. On the other, I find it extremely problematic that she is the only woman in the narrative and that she must be evil and “seduce” those to get what she wants. For example page 126, panel 1, Ham Egg says he was seduced by diamonds which was enough to betray his friends. He puts the blame on her and then in the second panel proceeds to punch her in the face. In this instance, perceived seduction leads to domestic violence.
However, one could argue that the rabbit in the story, Mimio, although often referred to by male pronouns has an ambiguous gender identity. On page 45, panel 1 the rabbit takes off their shirt, something I do not believe Tezuka would do with a female rabbit. However, he removes the traditional female qualities such as long eyelashes which make a return on the following pages. Later on, Mimio even turns into the first-class engineer, Mimi. Mimio dresses up as female character in order to keep going on adventures and helping his friends. the title of first-class engineer truly belong to the male version of Mimio not Mimi therefore taking away the hope that Tezuka would bring about a truly strong, female character that didn’t represent evil.
This is a really interesting take on this comic. I hadn’t thought about the lack of women or the roles of the women in the comic. I do agree though that the Underground Queen is very manipulative and uses seduction as a way to get what she wants. I thought your comment “perceived seduction leads to domestic violence” was particularly interesting too. I had not thought about it in the same way you had at all, thinking more along the lines of everyone wanting to punch the villain in stories. What would make this domestic violence as opposed to regular violence? What if it had been the other way around and she had punched him? Would people still view it as domestic violence? I think it’s a really interesting take on that action, but I’m just not sure if the same would be said if the roles were reversed. This itself demonstrates another double standard: if a woman is hit, it is domestic violence, but if a man is hit, it is usually deserved or goes unnoticed.
I totally agree with your idea on double standards and it is something I grappled with when thinking about using the term “domestic violence” but indeed, I did in order to highlight the fact that becasue she was truly the only woman in the comic that I viewed it as an act as domestic violence immediatley no matter how incorrect that may be. I also used the term domestic violence becasue the Queen and Ham Egg seem to have an interesting relationship going on although, with regard to power dynamic/nobility, he is lower than her.
I noticed this as I was reading, too. The Queen of the Underground is definitely not a flattering portrayal of women, and doesn’t look much like a human woman at all. I also thought that Mimio was a girl at first. It is strange to me that in the whole book there is only one female character, and at one point a male character dresses up as a female. It seems like a conscious choice Tezuka must have made to not include more female characters, and I wonder how he would defend it.
Definitley agree. I feel as though he might say it is a shonen manga so it is really for boys that need boy characters *shrugs*