As a child I was very excited about a lot of “tomboy” characters and then immediately disappointed with them. Now the Sailor Jupiter example is the one I remember the best, but as I got older I did learn that she was never meant to be “the tomboy” of the group – but as an 8 year old I thought she was.
Sailor Jupiter is a great character! I projected onto her as a child and got disappointed.
There is the argument however, about “tomboy” characters who are marketed as such but end up becoming “pretty” or getting a good makeover and now they act different. And that was NOT a fun thing to grow up with.
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(written from a middle of archive binge, love the comic!)
Sailor Jupiter on one hand is such a weird play on the feminine tomboy trope (she’s actually very cishet and femme… just tall and strong for her age), but at least the same franchise gave us very gender-transgressive Sailor Uranus (and the 90s anime STUCK SO HARD to making her butch, props to them!) and Sailor Starlights. And clearly Utena was Kunihiko Ikuhara’s natural profession of exploring the Uranus/Neptune relationship with each other and gender.
The bigger problem with doing tomboy characters dirty is denying the audience any sort of diversity of how female characters express themselves. Tomboys either get “fixed” to present more femme later or are just mildly less feminine than 1-2 other female characters in the cast. And that’s *before* we even ask for overt trans/nonbinary representation 🙃
After seeing Sailor Jupiter change so drastically when I was around 6 or 7, I abandoned ever identifying with a ‘female’ character and have stuck with ‘male’ characters – especially villains, since there’s rarely any expectations for them, outside of being evil.
Yeah, it’s like they NEVER talked to a real tomboy in their life! Or else they would know that at least some of them don’t secretly dream to be a princess (I can’t speak about ALL of them, of course). Also, always telling the same story is boring…… And representation matters…. T_T
Yes! I am so happy to see someone else feel the same type of disappointment of tomboy characters! It’s treated like a phase that she eventually grows out of and there’s always that one episode to remind the audience that she’s still a girl who wants to be pretty and noticed by boys.
No wonder I usually relate to the male characters instead!
Kind site will you please allow me to appreciate this comic