Shameful Otaku Secret!

Some folks might be aware that I’ve been watching Space Runaway Ideon after taking a tossed-off random joke by Hisui that wasn’t even directed at me as some sort of personal challenge.

There’s plenty of good reasons for watching it though. Of course anyone who’s heard of it has probably heard of its two most common contexts:

1. It was an influence on Hideaki Anno’s Evangelion.
2. It’s a prime example of “Kill ‘Em All Tomino” doing his thing. We’ll see about that at the end, I guess. NO SPOILERS IN MY COMMENTS THANKS.

Aside from a few interesting similarities probably worth expounding upon later, in these early episodes it’s a lot more like Gundam‘s journey of the White Base (which of course is just the old Yamato thing) than it is Eva.

But then there’s the group dynamic of the Solo Ship’s crew, which, like the White Base, is made up of partial military and partial civilian survivors of a brutal opening episode. But without magical Newtype abiities to help them through battle, the stressed Ideon cast slip into hardcore sniping drama very quickly.

And sure, I joke, but I can’t help but notice the other thing that Tomino’s scripts are notorious for is starting to rear its head: the misogyny. I could look at the primary female characters of this series with a positive spin, but it feels a lot more natural to read them like this:

• Sheryl, cold-hearted scientist woman, jealous of Karala’s looks and unaware of what it means to be a real woman. For her, this means hating men. Even by anime standards, where the ambitious woman (the Ritsuko, if you will) tends to ruin her life and forget about being human, let alone a woman, Sheryl seems poised to evolve into a cartoon lizard before the series ends. Either that or a man will come along and warm her icy core.
• Kasha, for whom being a hot-blooded mecha pilot is a downside, because yep, she’s a girl and is also unaware of how to properly be a woman. But unlike Sheryl, she doesn’t resent men that much — she’s trying to be a man. She’s also a bit tsundere for Afromuro (thx Schneider).
• Karala-sama, the alien yamato nadeshiko. She’s mistrusted by Sheryl (not because she came from the enemy, but obviously because Sheryl’s jealous of her woman-ness). Of course she’s the only woman on board the Solo Ship in whom any man has expressed any kind of interest.
• Lotte, who takes care of the kids and is pretty much abused by every other cast member (especially the kids).

Lotte is, I’d hazard to guess, the sole concession to a little respect for women, although it’s ass-backwards and somewhat medieval. Look at the wonderful things your (surrogate) mother does for you, and yet you don’t appreciate it! And you, Sheryl! Yelling at this poor creature who is trying to be a woman while you remain cold and lizardy. This is a woman’s role, and Lotte’s not exactly the model of it, but she certainly does try.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m being paranoid or reading too much into it, or not taking Japanese society into account, but there’s a significant difference in my mind even between Leiji Matsumoto’s patronizing marginalization of women, and Tomino’s often snide and sneering representation of female ambition as being a more terrible enemy than attacking aliens or rebelling colonists.