リボンの騎士 1 by Osamu Tezuka
My rating: 4 of 5 stars Gender, Adventure, Romance, Suspense, and Humor in the First Modern Shojo Manga By mixing adventure and romance with a disguised female protagonist, Tezuka Osamu’s Ribbon No Kishi or Ribbon Knight or Princess Knight (1953-56) started the modern shojo (girls’) manga, leading to things like Sailor Moon. Tezuka also added some interesting elements regarding gender and identity, and through 700 pages told an exciting, humorous, unpredictable story with dynamic artwork and layouts. The story begins in heaven, when a mischievous pint-sized angel called Tink approaches the line of babies waiting to be born on earth and shoves a boy’s heart into a baby girl just before God inserts a girl’s heart in her, so she is born with both a boy’s and a girl’s heart. Tink’s punishment is to descend to earth until he’s able to get the girl to act feminine enough and or to remove her boy’s heart from her. His task is complicated by the fact that the girl, Sapphire, is born to the King and Queen of Silverland, and as only males may inherit the throne (shades of Japan) and as they have no other children, they announce that their baby is a boy. Thus, Sapphire grows up as Prince Sapphire, learning fencing and horse riding and acting masculine, apart from some private moments where she’s able to dress like a girl and enjoy flowers in a private palace garden. Meanwhile, the scheming Duke Duralumin and his nefarious minion Sir Nylon suspect the truth and try underhandedly to reveal that Sapphire is a girl. If they’re successful, Duralumin has an spoiled young son called Plastic ready to be a puppet on the throne. This situation provides Tezuka with plenty of gender material. Much of it is stereotypically disappointing: e.g., boys’ hearts in heaven are blue, girls’ red, and Sapphire is rather weak, passive, blushing, and “feminine” when her girl’s heart is dominant compared to her feisty self when her boy’s heart is dominant, while Plastic becomes independent and commanding after swallowing Sapphire’s boy’s heart. Despite Sapphire having been raised as a boy, she starts acting like a girl the second she has a chance to. At one point, the pirate Captain Blood gives her (disguised as a boy) a beautiful ball gown, and as soon as she’s alone she puts on the dress, becoming a swooning maiden daydream-dancing with the prince of Goldland, Franz Charming. She speaks feminine Japanese when alone and masculine Japanese around other people. The reader never forgets that Sapphire is always a girl, even when she refers to herself with the male pronoun “boku” and says to guys who see her in feminine costume and want to marry her, “Hah--I’m a boy!” The manga repeatedly indicates that because her body is female, Sapphire is female, regardless of the gender of her heart or hearts. Although Sapphire is a girl who can do most of the things a boy can, she’s often rather passive, getting captured and wounded and rescued more often than she does the capturing, wounding, and rescuing. A good fighter, she’s nonetheless often defeated when possessed only of her girl’s heart. After all, in many ways she’s a stereotypical traditional girl as seen from the 1950s. Tink at one point asks Sapphire, “Which do you want to be, a boy or a girl?” That the question is starkly binary reveals Tezuka’s 1950s era: there’s no question of Sapphire choosing both or neither. All that said, when the early 50s publication of the manga is accounted for, Tezuka does some cool things with gender, like criticizing the (Japanese style) line of succession through male heirs only. The women of Silverland are stronger than the men (husbands, soldiers, advisors, etc.), and make the men start doing “women’s” work to teach them a lesson and win a war between the genders. And the most powerful and compelling characters in the story are female. Metamorphosing people or turning herself into a dragon and summoning snakes etc., the formidable witch Madam Hell wants to take Sapphire’s girl’s heart and give it to her own wild daughter Hecate. The ponytailed Hecate, clad in modern slacks and turtleneck, doesn’t want Sapphire’s girl’s heart and constantly subverts her mother’s plans. The goddess Venus also transforms herself or others and becomes a potent foe of Sapphire’s. Finally, Furibe, a young lady who dons black armor (with hearts over her breasts), fights in tournaments and wants to marry Sapphire disguised as a boy. Into his episodic story Tezuka weaves disparate elements: Christianity, Greek mythology, the supernatural, chivalry, pirates, fairy tales, and exotic islands. He also does some social commentary (as when Plastic makes a law guaranteeing equal treatment for women and men), refers to other literature (as when Duralumin compares his suddenly independent and feminist-oriented son Plastic to King Lear’s wicked daughters), and plays postmodernist tricks (as when Duralumin tells Nylon to take a photo of Sapphire dressed as a girl only to have his minion say, “Unfortunately, cameras have not been invented in this era”). About Tezuka’s art, it often looks cartoonish and violates human anatomy. His animals look cuter and less natural even than Disney’s. His art is nothing like Hal Foster’s for Prince Valiant or Otomo’s for Akira. But Tezuka’s art is dynamic and vivid and boasts playful or compelling visual touches, as when Duralumin becomes so frustrated at not being able to execute Sapphire that he bites the bottom line of his panel frame and pulls it up with his teeth. Another remarkable page features a broad panel at the top showing Captain Blood bringing a life-restoring medicine to Silverland, sailing in a small boat on the sea set against the big full moon, beneath which panel a pair of broad ones combine to show a single scene, Silverland’s castle and surrounding town set against the same moon. The juxtaposed scenes impress with suspense and beauty. And Tezuka’s imaginative flights of fancy are neat, as when Tink dreams that he’s surrounded by an orchestra of crickets, their music swirling all around him. In Ribbon no Kishi, Tezuka created a compelling and immeasurably influential and amusing, exciting, surprising, and sometimes moving story. There is an English translation available… View all my reviews
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