“Mini Mendacious Moments” is a brand new feature of mine about small moments (a page, an opening sequence, a character design, or something a character said) in manga, anime, or games that simply makes me pause and just wonder why something so silly, demeaning, or pertaining to a double standard was even mentioned or briefly touched upon. Being such a small and blatant moment, in-dept analysis will not be given, rather, this is more for snarky me to share my snarky commentary.
Being the first one featured, today’s page from the shounen manga, Flame of Recca, is the inspiration behind this new feature:
Yes, Flame of Recca, hair is super duper important to women. It's not like it won't grow back if you cut it, oh wait. (Chapter 62, page 11)
I’m sorry, but this is just really ridiculous. Granted, some women are super proud of their hair and what not. In fact, I love my hair and take good care of it, but I still think it’s ridiculous to paint hair as something sacred to women. Furthermore, this is a female warrior who is using it as a weapon and you’re going to go to great lengths to point out she must not want it cut, because all women must be super obsessed with having long and beautiful hair and their delicate hearts can’t take the reality of having it cruelly cut in a battle. Ironically enough, a few chapters later when we get a flashback of the girl before she had magic hair, she is shown having short hair! Not that I should be super surprised, this manga has enough silly WTF bits to make a few posts about it. (¬__¬) *sigh* I guess I should also point out that this isn’t the first time it’s been mentioned as well, our dear heroine Yanagi had her hair cut against her will too and preachy Recca also got angry about that, because well, hair is freaken damn important to women and it won’t grow back, you hear me!
–SW
14/04/2012 at 7:40 pm
I honestly had to hold back a facepalm while reading this! Admittedly that feeling didn’t hit me full on until after I read the part about her hair being a weapon! Sometimes you really have to wonder where these people get these ideas from…
I am looking forward to more of your Mini Mendacious Moments! I mean, if this was the start, I am seriously looking forward to what else you are going to find!
15/04/2012 at 2:08 pm
Yeah, the whole fight in the manga was just me looking on and wondering if the writer went and took all the female warrior stereotypes and made a character out of it.
Haha, well this was more a spur of the moment thing. As of now, I don’t have any more entries planned (although there are a few things I remember that I could do if I manage to find them again). If I do come across something in the stuff I am currently watching/reading, I’ll definitely be making another MMM entry. :3
15/04/2012 at 12:11 am
To be fair though this isn’t the only manga/anime where a sudden, unexpected, hair cut has been presented as traumatic to some degree. I think this may be at least partially a cultural trope.
Two other examples that spring to my currently sleep fogged mind are Ranma 1/2 (Akane) and ARIA (Aika).
15/04/2012 at 2:02 pm
Yes, I do agree with you there. I personally know someone whose mother refuses to yet her cut her hair and her mother isn’t super strict or anything. It’s just she really loves her daughter’s long hair (they are also “white” or it’s not a Japan-only thing by any means).
The reason Flame of Recca is brought up is because this is the second time it has occured in this manga and this particular instance is just really silly on a number of levels. First, the girl is using it as a weapon and he’s worrying about cutting it, the statement Recca makes is a generalization (“a girl’s hair is just so important to her” – by using the indefinitive article, he is not specifying the current girl in the panel but all girls, which I think is ridiculous, not to mention he knows nothing about the current girl he is fighting), a few pages down the line, there is a flash back and the girl has short hair (which just makes this whole sequence even more silly).
As for your two example, I haven’t read those myself, so I can’t really comment on how they handle the hair cutting bit.
16/04/2012 at 10:44 am
They get over it, but there is a fair degree of angst for a little while. Both are accidental in public, and both had been preening over the length/richness of said hair just before it happened…
15/04/2012 at 1:10 am
Mendacious, huh? Sweet I learned a new word. In any case I support this move for more snarkiness. Snarksters unite!
By the way I believe in John’s Aria example, the hair cutting was used more as a symbolic thing for becoming an adult, in a kinda “discarding childish things” sort of way I suppose. Maybe that’s why everyone in Nisemonogatari also seem to be doing it…
Looking forward to more of these MMMs!
15/04/2012 at 5:19 am
Fair comment in respect of the ARIA example. However it is worth noting that this is identified as not one but TWO tropes with a signifcant list of anime/manga examples on TV Tropes:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ImportantHaircut
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TraumaticHaircut
15/04/2012 at 2:25 pm
Fair enough. It’s definitely not just Flame of Recca that is doing it, but it is the first manga that I have come across that did it twice in similar ways and then had the male lead crusading about it afterwards. I think if Recca didn’t get so upset about it, I would have let it go, but him going out of his way to defend the hair of women, it becomes really silly. (Not to mention that in the example above, it’s not really built up to some traumatic or life defining moment. He just cuts her hair because it’s her weapon and afterwards feel like he commited a big wrong. I’m fine with hair being used to represent something and then it being cut being significant, but that’s not really what’s happening here. In fact, the girl doesn’t really seem to react to it at all.)
16/04/2012 at 10:46 am
This is not to say that I disagree with you, only that I was surprised that you weren’t already familiar with it.
I definitely agree that this is a gendered trope, and often negatively so.
[There ARE male examples, but they tend to be much rarer]
15/04/2012 at 2:15 pm
Let me tell you, it took me awhile to settle on a name. I wanted something catchy. Mendacious is probably too strong a word for this feature, but I wanted a word that started with M to go along with the other two words and mendacious was the only one closest enough to the intent of the article and it had a nice ring to it as well. xD (Certainly not all things cover in the feature are doing to be dealing with falsehoods.)
Oh, I’ve got nothing against the “cutting hair” rite. I think it works remarkably well and I’ve seen it used in a number of manga and anime. It’s also been used when recovering from a broken heart too (by both male and female characters). My issue is more in the way it’s framed in FoR (see reply to John for details).
Yea, I’m glad you like my more cynical side! xD
16/04/2012 at 10:48 am
Snark is good. There should always be more snark.
I find that quoting Tom Lehrer and/or the Devil’s Dictionary puts me in the right mood to be snarky.
(And at this point the whimsy is clearly setting in for the evening. :) )
15/04/2012 at 3:02 pm
I like this idea for a regular column! To comment on your actual post, yeah this panel scene is so ridiculous it’s not even funny. But then again manga has pointed out that in Japan cutting your hair is a big deal. At least if you just broke up with someone and you have long hair, cutting the long locks off means new beginnings I think? Out with the old, in with the new? I know it was kind of explained that way in Marmalade Boy I believe. In any case, this scene from Flame of Recca makes you want to smack the character who made the comment.
15/04/2012 at 7:24 pm
Thank you. :D
Indeed, I’ve seen it used to that effect in quite a few manga and anime. I actually think that is sort of neat because as you said, it’s meant to symbolize a new beginning (and it’s used by both male and female characters). This though, is just silly.
15/04/2012 at 4:17 pm
Definitely looking forward to reading more Mini Mendacious Moments! :) The hair thing sort of reminds me of Ranma 1/2 when Akane has her hair sliced off accidently in front of a crowd of people and everyone acts as though she had just been punched or something. Everyone in the series just saw it as natural that a girl getting her hair cut would be the most devastating thing in the world, without even acknowledging that there are women who prefer short hair or who simply don’t care (which really just comes down to the sentiment that not all women are the same). It’s funny to see the little ways in which traditional gender roles are reinforced.
15/04/2012 at 7:35 pm
Ah, so that’s what happened in Ranma 1/2. I haven’t read or watched it, so I wasn’t familiar with what happened to Akane. Seems like this is more common than I originally thought when posting this. I haven’t really come across it much outside the symbolic cutting one’s hair as a means to become a new/stronger person (which is a trope I actually like and think works nicely since hair is a part of you and the act of cutting it is the perfect symbol for change in oneself). This though, I think is definitely silly and based, at least in part, on gender roles too.
16/04/2012 at 10:50 am
As I said above there was also a “pride goeth before a fall” aspect with Akane: she was competing (in her own mind at least) with Kasumi and quite proud of where she had gotten her hair to.
From memory the anime episode title is “Hair is a girl’s life” which basically sums up the problem you’ve been pointing out with the trope.
16/04/2012 at 10:51 am
Not to mention Ranma and Ryouga pausing their fight for Akane to take a swing at them as therapy…
06/02/2013 at 7:40 am
Ah, the funny thing is: Yanagi and Menou didn’t really shocked or angry when their hair got cut. It’s Recca the one that freaked out.
06/02/2013 at 3:42 pm
Yeah, Recca being the one that freaks out more than the girls definitely makes this even more ridiculous.
06/02/2013 at 4:08 pm
Recca is… duh. He is a typical “idiot” shonen hero. The worse thing: he’s the type that wouldn’t hit the female enemies. So different from Mikagami.