Noi: An archetype or An evolution?
I recently watched Dorohedoro and became quickly obsessed with it; enough so that my bank account and I discussed how feasible getting all 23 volumes of the manga was. Like most people with a new obsession, I started to scour the ✨Fandom✨. Since joining TikTok recently, I decided to start there. I was pleased to see that everyone else was also — unashamedly — infatuated with Noi. Big, buff, boxy, brutish Noi.
“Wait”
Yes?
“Who’s Noi?”
This is Noi.
“huh.”
And you’re wondering — as I was when I took a step back from the mindset I programmed to fight my societal brainwashing — seriously?
Now, I could simply say, “Yeah, so what?” and point you to people who agree with me but, a meddling voice in my head needs to know where this “unexpected” shift came from. Is this shift even new or does there exist an exploration of these women in media and society at large?
The “Anime Girl”?
I could easily drag us into a conversation about the male versus female gaze but, that mostly covers the nuance of technique rather than the specific portrayal of traits. The sect of Noi lovers is a display of love for hyper-muscular, yet barely masculine (or feminine for that matter), women. Is it the perceived dominance from their stature and strength? Is it their characterizations as a whole? What makes us want them to choke us with their thighs till we die of pure bliss?
When you think of girls and women in anime you, (non-avid watchers) often think of shoujo, big breasts, infantile, ditzy. The camps of the audience are usually:
- men who like sexy women regardless of what they’re doing,
- women who like sexy women either through genuine attraction or an attempt to break their own prejudices cemented by the patriarchy,
- or people — who are not like other people — who condemn those that find these anime enjoyable without considering that a character’s body might not play a factor in their preference.
Whatever the case may be, viewers are praised for their maturity and level of inclusivity for liking women like Noi? But is this even revolutionary?
The Amazon, The Warrior
A broad, well-toned, strong woman isn’t new to media or on-screen depictions. Even recently, there’s Rurumu from Magi: Adventure of Sinbad or the more popular Brienne of Tarth from Game of Thrones. This prototype has always been present and has always had a subsection of audiences that deemed them sexy. So why is it a divergence from the norm to think so? When looking for the categorization of these women, and their female masculinities, you come across the Amazon archetype.
What is in focus here is the strong character of the Amazon and their resistance to conform to cultural mores.
(Ken Tully, The Amazon as Archetype in New Millennium Media, pg. 4)
I, however, am not trying to lean too far into the validity of Noi’s brawns and beauty as a warrior but rather outside of that. Although her prowess as fighters can be assumed as contributing factors to her physique, I want to question if the attraction is based on being a “strong woman” or on her female masculinity.
“One approach to examining female masculinity is through the ways in which cultural discourses receive or construct women coded as masculine. These women could include key morphologies of female masculinity, such as tomboys, drag kings, amazons, female bodybuilders, or butch lesbians. Or, they might be specific female figures such as Margaret Thatcher, Janet Reno, or Xena the warrior princess. Such women may call attention to female masculinity because of perceptions that masculinity is housed in a body where it should not be, and reactions to those women can be very revealing about cultural ideas on gender in a larger sense.”
(Todd W. Reeser, Masculinities in Theory An Introduction, p.132)
So that begs the question, where is our society now with our ideas of gender, gender expression and its promise for future integrations in media?
“in alternative models of gender variation, female masculinity is not simply the opposite of female femininity, nor is it a female version of male masculinity.”
( Jack Halberstam, Female Masculinity, pg. 29)
I believe these characters embody this distinction very well, especially propped against their male counterparts.
Side note: I cannot explicitly infer the role of the audience’s queerness (or their proximity of acceptance of the queerness of others) but is there any credit to the emphasis of the queer spectrum that allows viewers, without any revelations, to express attraction to these “unconventional” women?
Minus the Male
“Part of the anxiety created stems from the fact that, like effeminacy, female masculinity destabilizes imagined binary oppositions between male masculinity and female femininity.”
(Reeser, p. 133)
This was originally supposed to be a lengthy pontificating on the attractiveness of fictional characters. Instead, due to Dorohedoro not yet having true mainstream popularity (and thus insufficient resources), I was dragged down a rabbit hole of the dissection of female masculinity. More specifically, how it exists in society, and the constraints associated with a heterosexual, male world.
“far from being an imitation of maleness, female masculinity actually affords us a glimpse of how masculinity is constructed as masculinity.”
(Halberstam, pg. 1)
Although this can be easily applied to the idea behind the Warrior archetype with more modern depictions of women as superheroes, I can’t help but feel the true representation gets slighted through hyper sexualizing their appearances. Mind you, Noi is not exempt from that treatment, especially in fanart. But then, what exactly constitutes being coded as masculine?
“A strong or powerful woman like Wonder Woman, whose superhuman powers could possibly code her as masculine (like male heroes such as Superman), may or may not be viewed as masculine. Anxieties of female masculinity may mean that techniques are invented to keep potentially masculine women from being viewed as appropriating masculinity. Wonder Woman’s feminine outfit, her voluptuous breasts, and her heterosexuality could all be considered ways to offset potential masculinity. The gender of another Wonder Woman — one with an androgynous outfit, small breasts, and short hair, but with exactly the same powers — would most likely be received very differently as a symbol of female power.”
(Reeser, p.134)
What all of this led me to is the curiosity for what could truly exist in media if those binaries were did not exist. Or, if I didn’t still subconsciously buy into those binaries.
Conclusion
Although enlightening to me, I am very aware, as are the authors of my main resources — Halberstam and Reeser — that the most available literature that exists does not include voices from minorities or voices of identities with varying intersectionalities.
My research won’t end here but, I’m excited to see where anime will take me next.
“In some contexts, female masculinity opens up space for male masculinity to question the very naturalness of the link between sex and gender’ or between the male body and masculinity. A visible example of female masculinity may have the effect of disassociating masculinity from the male body enough to create a fissure in gender representation, and this splintering may have gender ripple effects that make other sex-gender relations (e.g., male femininity) seem equally possible or acceptable.”
(Reeser, p.134)
