Feminist Anime: Guardian of the Spirit
Jul. 25th, 2018 08:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
glaurungMoribito: Guardian of the Spirit started out as the first volume in a series of juvenile fantasy novels before being adapted into a 26 episode anime TV series. Set in a fantasy version of Heian Japan, it focuses on Balsa, a mercenary bodyguard and spearsworman, as she is hired by the Second Queen to protect her son Prince Chagum.
Chagum is the younger son of the Mikado, but his body is inhabited by a water spirit, and all the imperial advisors think that Chagum must be killed to protect the kingdom from the ravages of what they think is a water demon. So the Mikado orders him assassinated. Balsa must take Chagum away from the palace and protect him from the assassins, while also figuring out what exactly needs to be done about his water sprit. The series tells a single long story, but it's broken into self-contained mini arcs similarly to Babylon 5.
One of the most interesting things about this series is that it lacks an antagonist. The Mikado orders the death of his son because he thinks it's necessary to save the kingdom. Everyone who in a more pedestrian telling would be on Team Evil, is acting in the best interests of the kingdom and its people, and is deeply regretful that Chagum must die for the good of the many.
The anime's fantasy version of Japan has two peoples, one (the Yogo) modeled on Japanese society and another (the darker skinned Yakue) that seems to have been inspired by Japan's indigenous people, the Ainu. The Mikado and his Yogo advisers are far less knowledgable about the spirit world and the nature of the water spirit than the Yakue Shaman Torogai. This is head and shoulders above the typical treatment of ethnicity and race in typical anime.
After watching far too many anime that were about and seemingly for middle school children, and one-was-more-than-enough anime that seemed to have been made mostly for sexually stunted man-children, it was refreshing to see an anime with absolutely no fanservice whatsoever, in which most of the characters are adults and even the child characters are handled in a grown up and non-annoying manner.
This is by far the best feminist-friendly anime series I have watched to date.
Chagum is the younger son of the Mikado, but his body is inhabited by a water spirit, and all the imperial advisors think that Chagum must be killed to protect the kingdom from the ravages of what they think is a water demon. So the Mikado orders him assassinated. Balsa must take Chagum away from the palace and protect him from the assassins, while also figuring out what exactly needs to be done about his water sprit. The series tells a single long story, but it's broken into self-contained mini arcs similarly to Babylon 5.
One of the most interesting things about this series is that it lacks an antagonist. The Mikado orders the death of his son because he thinks it's necessary to save the kingdom. Everyone who in a more pedestrian telling would be on Team Evil, is acting in the best interests of the kingdom and its people, and is deeply regretful that Chagum must die for the good of the many.
The anime's fantasy version of Japan has two peoples, one (the Yogo) modeled on Japanese society and another (the darker skinned Yakue) that seems to have been inspired by Japan's indigenous people, the Ainu. The Mikado and his Yogo advisers are far less knowledgable about the spirit world and the nature of the water spirit than the Yakue Shaman Torogai. This is head and shoulders above the typical treatment of ethnicity and race in typical anime.
After watching far too many anime that were about and seemingly for middle school children, and one-was-more-than-enough anime that seemed to have been made mostly for sexually stunted man-children, it was refreshing to see an anime with absolutely no fanservice whatsoever, in which most of the characters are adults and even the child characters are handled in a grown up and non-annoying manner.
This is by far the best feminist-friendly anime series I have watched to date.