CLAMP and adult women
Jan. 15th, 2011 01:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
branchandrootThis post dedicated to the idiot fanbrats who really seem to think I'm making this all up.
The point: While CLAMP writes plenty of girls with power, agency, and romance, adult women characters who possess or approach those things, most especially ones with adult sexuality, are frequently killed off. In the rare cases they live past the ending, or for that matter the beginning, their agency and sexuality are foreclosed in some other way.
RG Veda It isn't nearly as notable, here, because absolutely everyone but the focal couple dies by the last page, but there are certainly no women survivors. The focal couple are both men.*
Man of Many Faces/Twenty Faces, Please! The main romance focuses on a boy of nine and a girl of five. Akira's mothers are completely immature and without agency, and are taken care of in every way by their son. Just to make sure they cannot be read as mature women his father is absent, only appearing once and that only to his son--the women are left sleeping for this rare visit by the man they presumably love. Even the epilogue, which shows Akira and Utako as young adults, also shows them sleeping in separate beds. Sexuality is consistently and carefully foreclosed.
Tokyo Babylon The only significant female main character is a girl, and is still killed. Subaru's grandmother cannot conceal him and succeeds in saving his life only at the cost of her remaining power and agency.
Clamp School Detectives There are many women, but they are uniformly damsels in distress who require male intervention to save them and there is no romance to be seen. The one woman with her own power, the maybe-yakuza businesswoman is promptly defeated.
Duklyon: Clamp School Defenders We have a girl in charge of the group, and she has a successful romance, but only as long as they are school-age. In the epilogue, which shows the characters grown, she has vanished in favor of the married-couple antics of the two young men. Kotobuki's fiancee, explicitly identified as an older woman, loses the romantic 'competition' with Eri as well as being defeated in the various slapstick 'battles' and likewise vanishes from the ending.
Shirahime-syo: Snow Goddess Tales Fubuki's mother, while bereft of her husband, has at least the power of her gun... and uses it to shoot the wolf that saved her daughter and who her daughter loves. Agency, in this case, is tragic. Kaya dies while waiting for her lover's return, and even the heron woman loses first her mate and then her own life.
X/1999 This one does not have an ending, but the plot trend so far is consistent with previous examples. The young girl Yuzuriha is the only successful romance so far. Kanoe is dead, as are both the Magami sisters and Saya. Satsuki's anime fate, killed by her jealous computer as soon as she starts to be attracted to Yuuto, is well foreshadowed in the manga. Arashi changes sides the very morning after she finally sleeps with Sorata (of her own will in the anime, presumably in an effort to keep him from dying for her sake, and by Hinoto's machinations in the manga, and a confrontation seems equally likely in both media); anyone who actually imagines this will not be a self-fulfilling prophecy and that she will not then sincerely wish for death has not been paying attention to this manga. Karen finds herself attracted to a happily married man, and is set to languish in unrequited love while working as a prostitute; just how much sexual agency that represents is arguable, but her romantic possibilities have been firmly closed. Given the survival rate of any female characters in CLAMP manga whose focal couple is a male pair (see above, RG Veda and Tokyo Babylon, and below, Legal Drug), it seems very unlikely that most, if any, of them will survive the ending.
The Legend of Chun Hyang Wol Mae, who has great power and the gumption to have a child out of wedlock, kills herself off in the first issue. The sister shamans of the next issue both die too, despite one being in the normally-survivable age bracket, leaving Yago, whose old age seems to have reduced her power significantly. The female Yang Ban is a) evil b) has her maybe-lover killed and c) is defeated and hauled off to the capital for judgment and, given the results so far, most likely death.
Magic Knights Rayearth Alcione is killed. The sisters who rule Chizeta are defeated, the elder of them being the only one in the second half who appears old enough to count as grown/mature. The princess looks like a girl only so long as she is still caring at least somewhat for her charge (everyone else's good rather than her own); the moment she focuses fully on the romantic relationship that she desires for herself she a) turns evil and b) becomes instantly physically mature, and is promptly killed in order to save the world because her continued life as a mature romantic agent would destroy it. This is the most bald-faced representation of the theme. We do also have Caldina, who, though a very minor character by the second half, does get, at least, very strong indications of a romance. And doesn't die!
Miyuki-chan in Wonderland Every sexualized woman in this is a predator, victimizing the heroine who is presented as completely innocent. On top of this, the women in question are written off at the end of every issue as dreams or hallucinations. Even if this weren't transparent soft porn catering to men, it would still be following the pattern of erasing mature women.
The One I Love The heroines of about half the vingettes in this volume are presented as older than school-girls, and all the storylets involve successful romances. None of them, however, is even a complete short story; they are, rather, a dozen isolated scenes, and there isn't so much as a kiss shown among them. The difference in degree of attention lavished on the schoolgirls and angst-ridden boys versus these women is notable.
Cardcaptor Sakura The mother is dead and the only adult woman in evidence, Kaho, is denied the romance she might have had (Touya) and exiled from the plot after a few volumes. She shows up again at the very end, and even has a romantic relationship, but it is one with someone physically frozen at elementary-school age. Her potential for any mature, sexual relationship is meticulously foreclosed throughout the story, and this foreclosure presented as an uplifting message about how true love surpasses all barriers. She has magical power of her own, but the only visible action of it is the foresight that closes down her first romance; her pivotal action in the plot involves only someone else's borrowed magic, a twist that is quite gratuitous given the lip service previously paid to her power.
Wish Theoretically the celestials are sexless, but Clamp is, as previously noted, very bad at that*. Even if we read Kohaku as feminine instead of masculine, however, s/he is innocent in character, physically young in appearance, and spends over half the manga in chibi form to boot. Hisui, if read as feminine, could represent a mature woman with a successful romance, but the scenes that most clearly indicate sexuality, or at least sensuality, are also the scenes that emphasize most strongly Hisui's masculine features, pushing the reader away from that possibility.
Clover The mature love interest with a mind and career of her own gets shot, making way for the young girl.
Angelic Layer The mother of the heroine is alive but absent, debilitatingly incapable of dealing with any emotional intimacy, either familial or romantic. She has great strength as a fighter-by-proxy, but only manages to relate to her daughter through the arena and seems oblivious to the man who may like her (or perhaps not, given he shows up in Chobits married to Hibiya Chitose).
Suki, Dakara Suki Again, we have an already departed love interest, now out of the way of the schoolgirl heroine.
Legal Drug The only women are mysteriously and, it is hinted, tragically absent, and have no function in the plot so far besides providing mysterious angst for the male protagonists.
Chobits This is eight volumes of soft porn focused on a robot girl with the mind of a child. Distressingly, give that circumstance, this is also the series with the clearest successful, adult relationship for a mature woman, albeit among the secondary characters. Shimizu Takako doesn't have the kind of power the perso-coms do, but she does have a strong will, knows what she wants, and ends up in a successful relationship. Compared to the perso-coms, who are computerized dolls with no free will, and Chitose, whose husband is dead and family is broken and who is debarred from action, she stands out all the more. It's enough to make you cry that she shows up here. It is also notable that Chi, despite all the cheesecake, is rendered incapable of ever having sex without dying by being rebooted. A secondary character gets an adult relationship, but the primary romance hammers in a downright anti-sexual message.
Xxxholic We are presented with an adult woman of great power and agency, and cheerful physicality though no romantic potential we ever witness. The climax involves her dying in order to save the world, because her continued life would destroy it.
Tsubasa Reservoir Chonicle The only woman among the main characters, Sakura, reaches maturity of some kind four times. The first time she's killed by a curse on her sixteenth birthday, before she can tell Shaoran of her love. The second, as a spirit/clone, she is killed by Shaoran's clone at the same age. The third, as a spirit/clone, she survives long enough to bear Shaoran and then sacrifices herself to save him and her original. This leaves the original at sixteen, alive, and she is promptly dropped out of even the implied future plot and left at home while the three men continue adventuring. Among other things, this ensures that her relationship with Shaoran will not be maturing in the forseeable future.
Kobato This is currently ongoing, so it is possible that the mature relationship, Sayaka and Okiura, will be salvaged in the end, but at this point the actual body of the manga is full of little but deep misunderstanding and pain between them, short circuiting both Sayaka's relationship and her career. This in contrast to the child Kobato, with her angelic powers and still-growing romantic understanding with Fujimoto.
***
Breakdown out of 21:
Mature women with agency and/or adult romances exist and survive in some fashion: 7
Mature women with agency/power exist and survive with that agency intact: 5
Mature women with adult romantic and sexual connections exist and survive with that romance/sexuality intact: 3
Mature women who can be assumed to have had an adult relationship at one time exist and live but are bereft or otherwise explicitly isolated from any such thing: 5
Mature women with successful agency and/or adult romances do not exist and/or are killed/already dead/not real: 17
* Theoretically Ashura, like Yue, Kohaku, and Nataku, is sexless, but androgyny, in CLAMP, is an Informed Ability that the text itself runs against. "Sexless" characters are drawn with distinctly masculine silhouettes/clothing/alter-egos. Compare the way Ashura, Yue, Kohaku, and Nataku are drawn with the way Fai, Kazahaya, or even Watanuki are drawn. Now compare them with the way Arashi, Himawari, or even Hikaru are drawn. Comparing within the approximate physical age bracket in question, it's clear the "sexless" characters are drawn as men rather than women or some blend of the two. Kohaku is the only one who even approaches a genuine blend, and that's solely due to having some of the CLAMP-feminine wavy hair; Kohaku's outline and clothing still tips toward styles CLAMP uses for male characters.
Nutshell: The only mature woman shown on-page to have a current, sexual romance who does not subsequently die is in the series with a heroine that is explicitly and permanently incapable of sex. Think about that. It is slightly more common for a mature woman to have agency or power of some kind, but only slightly, and it is directly accompanied more often than not by angst or tragedy in their relationships. It is about that common for a mature woman to have, in the past, had a romantic and sexual relationship and to be bereft in-canon. It's over three times as likely that they have neither agency nor adult romance, however broken, ended, or angst-stricken.
Thumbnail: CLAMP: Girl Power! (Adult women need not apply.)
The point: While CLAMP writes plenty of girls with power, agency, and romance, adult women characters who possess or approach those things, most especially ones with adult sexuality, are frequently killed off. In the rare cases they live past the ending, or for that matter the beginning, their agency and sexuality are foreclosed in some other way.
RG Veda It isn't nearly as notable, here, because absolutely everyone but the focal couple dies by the last page, but there are certainly no women survivors. The focal couple are both men.*
Man of Many Faces/Twenty Faces, Please! The main romance focuses on a boy of nine and a girl of five. Akira's mothers are completely immature and without agency, and are taken care of in every way by their son. Just to make sure they cannot be read as mature women his father is absent, only appearing once and that only to his son--the women are left sleeping for this rare visit by the man they presumably love. Even the epilogue, which shows Akira and Utako as young adults, also shows them sleeping in separate beds. Sexuality is consistently and carefully foreclosed.
Tokyo Babylon The only significant female main character is a girl, and is still killed. Subaru's grandmother cannot conceal him and succeeds in saving his life only at the cost of her remaining power and agency.
Clamp School Detectives There are many women, but they are uniformly damsels in distress who require male intervention to save them and there is no romance to be seen. The one woman with her own power, the maybe-yakuza businesswoman is promptly defeated.
Duklyon: Clamp School Defenders We have a girl in charge of the group, and she has a successful romance, but only as long as they are school-age. In the epilogue, which shows the characters grown, she has vanished in favor of the married-couple antics of the two young men. Kotobuki's fiancee, explicitly identified as an older woman, loses the romantic 'competition' with Eri as well as being defeated in the various slapstick 'battles' and likewise vanishes from the ending.
Shirahime-syo: Snow Goddess Tales Fubuki's mother, while bereft of her husband, has at least the power of her gun... and uses it to shoot the wolf that saved her daughter and who her daughter loves. Agency, in this case, is tragic. Kaya dies while waiting for her lover's return, and even the heron woman loses first her mate and then her own life.
X/1999 This one does not have an ending, but the plot trend so far is consistent with previous examples. The young girl Yuzuriha is the only successful romance so far. Kanoe is dead, as are both the Magami sisters and Saya. Satsuki's anime fate, killed by her jealous computer as soon as she starts to be attracted to Yuuto, is well foreshadowed in the manga. Arashi changes sides the very morning after she finally sleeps with Sorata (of her own will in the anime, presumably in an effort to keep him from dying for her sake, and by Hinoto's machinations in the manga, and a confrontation seems equally likely in both media); anyone who actually imagines this will not be a self-fulfilling prophecy and that she will not then sincerely wish for death has not been paying attention to this manga. Karen finds herself attracted to a happily married man, and is set to languish in unrequited love while working as a prostitute; just how much sexual agency that represents is arguable, but her romantic possibilities have been firmly closed. Given the survival rate of any female characters in CLAMP manga whose focal couple is a male pair (see above, RG Veda and Tokyo Babylon, and below, Legal Drug), it seems very unlikely that most, if any, of them will survive the ending.
The Legend of Chun Hyang Wol Mae, who has great power and the gumption to have a child out of wedlock, kills herself off in the first issue. The sister shamans of the next issue both die too, despite one being in the normally-survivable age bracket, leaving Yago, whose old age seems to have reduced her power significantly. The female Yang Ban is a) evil b) has her maybe-lover killed and c) is defeated and hauled off to the capital for judgment and, given the results so far, most likely death.
Magic Knights Rayearth Alcione is killed. The sisters who rule Chizeta are defeated, the elder of them being the only one in the second half who appears old enough to count as grown/mature. The princess looks like a girl only so long as she is still caring at least somewhat for her charge (everyone else's good rather than her own); the moment she focuses fully on the romantic relationship that she desires for herself she a) turns evil and b) becomes instantly physically mature, and is promptly killed in order to save the world because her continued life as a mature romantic agent would destroy it. This is the most bald-faced representation of the theme. We do also have Caldina, who, though a very minor character by the second half, does get, at least, very strong indications of a romance. And doesn't die!
Miyuki-chan in Wonderland Every sexualized woman in this is a predator, victimizing the heroine who is presented as completely innocent. On top of this, the women in question are written off at the end of every issue as dreams or hallucinations. Even if this weren't transparent soft porn catering to men, it would still be following the pattern of erasing mature women.
The One I Love The heroines of about half the vingettes in this volume are presented as older than school-girls, and all the storylets involve successful romances. None of them, however, is even a complete short story; they are, rather, a dozen isolated scenes, and there isn't so much as a kiss shown among them. The difference in degree of attention lavished on the schoolgirls and angst-ridden boys versus these women is notable.
Cardcaptor Sakura The mother is dead and the only adult woman in evidence, Kaho, is denied the romance she might have had (Touya) and exiled from the plot after a few volumes. She shows up again at the very end, and even has a romantic relationship, but it is one with someone physically frozen at elementary-school age. Her potential for any mature, sexual relationship is meticulously foreclosed throughout the story, and this foreclosure presented as an uplifting message about how true love surpasses all barriers. She has magical power of her own, but the only visible action of it is the foresight that closes down her first romance; her pivotal action in the plot involves only someone else's borrowed magic, a twist that is quite gratuitous given the lip service previously paid to her power.
Wish Theoretically the celestials are sexless, but Clamp is, as previously noted, very bad at that*. Even if we read Kohaku as feminine instead of masculine, however, s/he is innocent in character, physically young in appearance, and spends over half the manga in chibi form to boot. Hisui, if read as feminine, could represent a mature woman with a successful romance, but the scenes that most clearly indicate sexuality, or at least sensuality, are also the scenes that emphasize most strongly Hisui's masculine features, pushing the reader away from that possibility.
Clover The mature love interest with a mind and career of her own gets shot, making way for the young girl.
Angelic Layer The mother of the heroine is alive but absent, debilitatingly incapable of dealing with any emotional intimacy, either familial or romantic. She has great strength as a fighter-by-proxy, but only manages to relate to her daughter through the arena and seems oblivious to the man who may like her (or perhaps not, given he shows up in Chobits married to Hibiya Chitose).
Suki, Dakara Suki Again, we have an already departed love interest, now out of the way of the schoolgirl heroine.
Legal Drug The only women are mysteriously and, it is hinted, tragically absent, and have no function in the plot so far besides providing mysterious angst for the male protagonists.
Chobits This is eight volumes of soft porn focused on a robot girl with the mind of a child. Distressingly, give that circumstance, this is also the series with the clearest successful, adult relationship for a mature woman, albeit among the secondary characters. Shimizu Takako doesn't have the kind of power the perso-coms do, but she does have a strong will, knows what she wants, and ends up in a successful relationship. Compared to the perso-coms, who are computerized dolls with no free will, and Chitose, whose husband is dead and family is broken and who is debarred from action, she stands out all the more. It's enough to make you cry that she shows up here. It is also notable that Chi, despite all the cheesecake, is rendered incapable of ever having sex without dying by being rebooted. A secondary character gets an adult relationship, but the primary romance hammers in a downright anti-sexual message.
Xxxholic We are presented with an adult woman of great power and agency, and cheerful physicality though no romantic potential we ever witness. The climax involves her dying in order to save the world, because her continued life would destroy it.
Tsubasa Reservoir Chonicle The only woman among the main characters, Sakura, reaches maturity of some kind four times. The first time she's killed by a curse on her sixteenth birthday, before she can tell Shaoran of her love. The second, as a spirit/clone, she is killed by Shaoran's clone at the same age. The third, as a spirit/clone, she survives long enough to bear Shaoran and then sacrifices herself to save him and her original. This leaves the original at sixteen, alive, and she is promptly dropped out of even the implied future plot and left at home while the three men continue adventuring. Among other things, this ensures that her relationship with Shaoran will not be maturing in the forseeable future.
Kobato This is currently ongoing, so it is possible that the mature relationship, Sayaka and Okiura, will be salvaged in the end, but at this point the actual body of the manga is full of little but deep misunderstanding and pain between them, short circuiting both Sayaka's relationship and her career. This in contrast to the child Kobato, with her angelic powers and still-growing romantic understanding with Fujimoto.
Breakdown out of 21:
Mature women with agency and/or adult romances exist and survive in some fashion: 7
- Shirahime-syo
- Magic Knight Rayearth
- One I Love
- Cardcaptor Sakura
- Angelic Layer
- Chobits
- Kobato
- (Not counting X, because, seriously, if you honestly believe anyone but the focal couple and maybe Yuzuriha and Kusanagi are going to survive the ending I've got this bridge in Brooklyn to sell you. Cheap!)
Mature women with agency/power exist and survive with that agency intact: 5
- Shirahime-syo
- Cardcaptor Sakura
- Angelic Layer
- Chobits
- Kobato
- (Note that in three of the five cases, the agency in question is accompanied by or even the cause of angst or tragedy on the relationship end.)
Mature women with adult romantic and sexual connections exist and survive with that romance/sexuality intact: 3
- Magic Knight Rayearth
- One I Love
- Chobits
- (Note that the first and second examples are complicated by having zero actual indication of sexuality on the page, though Caldina is at least physically sexualized and one certainly hopes that the women getting married are going to get some.)
Mature women who can be assumed to have had an adult relationship at one time exist and live but are bereft or otherwise explicitly isolated from any such thing: 5
- Man of Many Faces
- Shirahime-syo
- Angelic Layer
- Chobits
- Kobato
Mature women with successful agency and/or adult romances do not exist and/or are killed/already dead/not real: 17
- RG Veda
- Man of Many Faces
- Tokyo Babylon
- Clamp School Detectives
- Duklyon: Clamp School Defenders
- Shirahime-syo
- X/1999
- Legend of Chun Hyang
- Magic Knights Rayearth
- Miyuki-chan in Wonderland
- Card Captor Sakura
- Wish
- Clover
- Suki, Dakara Suki
- Legal Drug
- Xxxholic
- Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle
* Theoretically Ashura, like Yue, Kohaku, and Nataku, is sexless, but androgyny, in CLAMP, is an Informed Ability that the text itself runs against. "Sexless" characters are drawn with distinctly masculine silhouettes/clothing/alter-egos. Compare the way Ashura, Yue, Kohaku, and Nataku are drawn with the way Fai, Kazahaya, or even Watanuki are drawn. Now compare them with the way Arashi, Himawari, or even Hikaru are drawn. Comparing within the approximate physical age bracket in question, it's clear the "sexless" characters are drawn as men rather than women or some blend of the two. Kohaku is the only one who even approaches a genuine blend, and that's solely due to having some of the CLAMP-feminine wavy hair; Kohaku's outline and clothing still tips toward styles CLAMP uses for male characters.
Nutshell: The only mature woman shown on-page to have a current, sexual romance who does not subsequently die is in the series with a heroine that is explicitly and permanently incapable of sex. Think about that. It is slightly more common for a mature woman to have agency or power of some kind, but only slightly, and it is directly accompanied more often than not by angst or tragedy in their relationships. It is about that common for a mature woman to have, in the past, had a romantic and sexual relationship and to be bereft in-canon. It's over three times as likely that they have neither agency nor adult romance, however broken, ended, or angst-stricken.
Thumbnail: CLAMP: Girl Power! (Adult women need not apply.)
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Date: 2011-01-15 10:23 pm (UTC)