At the Library

I have been spending this first holiday week reading. I just finished The Scarlet Letter.

I found the Ghost in the Shell manga at the library in the young adult fiction section (I was a young adult when it came out so I count!) 

This Major is far less serious than the one in the anime. She pulls goofy faces and is drawn in a highly sexualised way.

This is often the downside of "strong" female characters being designed by men. 

They never quite get us right. We have to be broken somehow and follow their ideas of what or who we should be while striking stupid poses and being vulnerable in some supposedly feminine way.

The drawings and design of Major make it clear that, working vagina or not, she's there to please the male gaze. This means she will have a teeny tiny waist, over sized breasts and a tendency to stand in weird twisted poses that are meant to show off said breasts and tiny waist.

Reading this manga reminded me of one I had purchased in Italy in 1997 about a cyborg named Alita.

The text was in Italian except for the German phrase "panzer kunst" and I had trouble following the plot. 

The artwork however, was brilliant.

In my story Alita had to race in some futuristic deadly roller ball game and she had roller blades instead of regular feet. 

She made a bet with this guy over something (did I mention it was in Italian?) and ended up betting her heart (which was a mechanical but shaped like a human heart).

Here are some images I found of the character:

I doubt my Alita manga is still around as I made the mistake of leaving it at my mothers house and, like my drag queen t-shirt from New York and Royal typewriter, it has probably been permanently misplaced (sold or destroyed in the name of Christianity).

I had a strange feeling that in the wake of film Ghost in the Shell someone might have gotten hold of the "Battle Angel Alita" story and decided to make a film of it.

I was right. That someone was James Cameron. He has since the passed the script on to another male director and the film is due for release in 2018.

I'm sure it will have the same over sexualised male wank fantasy vibe that the male designed manga had and end up ruining a potentially fantastic female character.

Hey fellas, I'm on all fours and my rear is in tact and ready for action.

At first I was pleased to rediscover these old favorites from my youth but then I begin to realize how often their personalities, stories and depiction are made ridiculous by the men who created them.

I hope one day my daughter (who is studying animation) and women like her are able to develop female characters with better stories, body types and personalities.