MYTHCOMICS: "BREAK YOUR DESTINY" GHOST SWEEPER MIKAMI (2011?)

 

"In essence, the domain of eroticism is the domain of violence, of violation"-- Bataille, EROTISM, p. 16.

"...in these comic circumstances, the beating may be deemed a symbolic displacement for the sex-act, since the female is almost always hot for the male."-- SHOOTING THE SHIRT, 2014. 

The title "Break Your Destiny" appears only on this splash page from the second part of the final SWEEPER story. Shiina's story, and those of other mangaka, were published in various magazines and in a 2013 collection, in order to generate revenue to be donated to the benefit of victims of a devastating 2011 Japanese earthquake. 

Any readers of the SWEEPER manga would have known that Tadao Yokoshima's "destiny" was to be the beloved butt-monkey of the phenomenal ghost sweeper Reiko Mikami, so author Takashi Shiina would have been having fun with that preconception by claiming that "this man's desire is going to change Japan's history." But the history of the Mikami-Yokoshima relationship ensures that none of the Japanese history-books must be changed, and despite the title Yokoshima finds that his destiny is locked in, and by his own free choice.

One element in the story suggests that this is supposed to be set in the early days of the Mikami-Yokoshima relationship: the fact that their colleague, the sweet-natured Okinu, is still a ghost. This state of affairs came to an end in the story-arc "Sleeping Beauty" (circa 1996), during which time Okinu was reincarnated in a mortal form. Okinu forgot her friends for a while, but when she remembered, she rejoined with "Mikami GS" for the remainder of the series in her purely mortal form. And yet, if this story were supposed to be taking place before "Beauty," that would create a continuity-problem, for reasons I'll explain shortly. Since Okinu's being a ghost is not important to the narrative, it's most likely that Shiina simply indulged in a little nostalgia with his friendly ghost-girl.  

  

The setup is only loosely established: Mikami has been hired to dispel a bunch of spirits from a deserted Japanese temple, and she demands that the holdouts inside the temple surrender to her authority, or she'll wipe them out. Okinu reminds Mikami that Yokoshima's being held hostage in the temple, and Mikami seems indifferent to her male assistant's fate, as long as she succeeds in her mission and gets paid. However, to herself Mikami muses, "I am really counting on your charm towards the supernatural, Yokoshima. It's one hell of a gamble whether she might fall for you or not." In other words, though Mikami unambiguously wants to earn her fee for ghost-sweeping, she's not just writing Yokoshima off, but is gambling that he will "charm" the head spirit somehow. (How Mikami knows it's a female spirit is left to the imagination.) But in the period prior to "Sleeping Beauty," Yokoshima-- never a Don Juan at the best of times-- had not demonstrated any special "charm towards the supernatural." It's only in the later adventures that Yokoshima attracts two or three "supernatural girls" into his orbit, and that's what Shiina's thinking of when he, speaking through Mikami, credits Yokoshima with "charm."

Yokoshima, however, was not apprised of Mikami's opinion of his charms, so he's in turmoil at having been deserted. However, the head spirit-- Seiryuto, an analogue to a character from another Shiina manga-- offers Yokoshima a deal. If Yokoshima supplies her with supernatural power, Seiryuto will whisk him back in time to an era where he can become the ruler of Japan and can have access to all the women in the world. Yokoshima agrees, and Seiryuto transforms her temple into a time-traveling spaceship. 

Mikami and Okinu witness the ship take off, and hear Yokoshima bid farewell to them, and to Mikami's "boobs, ass, and thighs." Though Mikami doesn't know what's going on, she demonstrates that she's not as willing to let her assistant disappear as she suggested earlier. She uses a wirepoon gun to fasten a line to the ship, so that it hauls Mikami and Okinu along in its wake. Thus the two intrepid heroines travel in time as well and end up receiving exposition from none other than the famed warlord Nobunaga Oda. This could be deemed a quasi-crossover in that Shiina's next manga after SWEEPER was a fictionalized series about Oda in his teenaged years.

One thing the girls learn from Oda is that they didn't end up in the same period as Yokoshima. He appeared in medieval Japan half a year ago and began using Seiryuto's advanced weaponry to conquer the local lords. From Mikami, Oda finds out how the greedy exorcist offended her assistant, and Oda has a suggestion on how to fix the situation so that Mikami and Okinu can take their buddy back to their time: Mikami must apologize to Yokoshima. The 16th-century warlord shows a remarkable knowledge of the 21st-century term "tsundere," advising the heroine that it's not good to "be too much tsun and no dere." Against her instincts, Mikami tries to practice apologizing, but Oda informs her that she looks like "a complete villain." Oda, knowing that her attitude will never compel Yokoshima to give in, formulates an alternative plan.

Sometime later, Oda's army marches on Yokoshima's lands. Yokoshima doesn't care about fighting Oda, for he's surrounded by the beautiful women of his court. But Seiryuto won't let him canoodle with the hotties, because Yokoshima can only endow her with his supernatural power as long as his lust is not satisfied. Presumably the alien yokai has been blocking Yokoshima for the past months for that very reason, since he's just as desperate for sex as he was working for Mikami. Yokoshima doesn't want to confront Mikami on the field of battle, but the court ladies affirm that they won't give him nookie if he has no temporal power. Boxed in by his Faustian bargain with the alien, Yokoshima dons his armor and joins his army in the field.

Oda's alternate plan was to still have Mikami apologize to Yokoshima, but with a mask over her face to conceal her insincerity. But headstrong Mikami pursues her own destiny, and dons the horrendous mask of an oni, which just stokes Yokoshima's fear of her. Despite her mixed signals, Mikami makes a sincere (for her) effort to apologize, but her need for absolute control causes her to deny her apology seconds after making it. Yokoshima is unable to follow Seiryuto's counsel and convert his fear into anger, but his fear of Mikami's vengeance drives him to attack her with his sword. She mostly blocks his blow, but he hits her mask and it splits. Seiryuto is then surprised at the disappearance of her power-source, for even though Mikami maintains through her words that she doesn't need her assistant in any way, her "crying eyes" belie her lying words. For some vague reason, Seiryuto's loss of power propels her and the three ghost-sweepers out of the medieval era.

And what is the reward for Yokoshima's virtue, his realization of how important Mikami is to him, and he to her? Why, his reward is vice-- the vice of Mikami's wrath. But going on all evidence, she's insincere again in saying that she's punishing him for having physically attacked her. Mikami resents that Yokoshima pushed her into losing her prized self-control, not to mention any anger she might feel at his willingness to leave her. Seiryuto builds on Oda's tsundere comment by claiming that Mikami is "99.9999 percent tsun"-- which is another way of saying that Mikami has no dere to spare. Okinu tries to see the sunny side of torture by saying, "Well, but at least their hearts are connected-- I think." 

And yet Mikami does speak a truth of sorts in her final adventure-- one that makes the most sense if she utters it after she and her butt-monkey have endured all the travails of the 1991-99 series. In some of those adventures, Mikami became hazily aware that she's conceived a liking for Yokoshima, but she would never verbally admit it in his presence. But this last time, when he protests that she ought to show him "some grade of affection" after he chose her over rulership of Japan, Control-Freak Mikami makes the admission, "This is how I show affection! Through my whip of love!" 

Such a confession is entirely in line with a female who became obsessed with control after she failed to hold the attention of the men in her youth with traditional female traits. The final words of Mikami explain why she didn't fire the horny teen who kept ogling and molesting her, and it certainly was not because Yokoshima worked cheap. It's because he's so besotted with her beauty that he'll endure any rigor, any torture, to be near her-- and his passion transforms her into the perfect domme for such an intrinsic sub. As with many similar figures from Japanese pop culture, her violence becomes a "symbolic displacement for the sex-act." But at least Takashi Shiina offered some "grade of affection" for his character Yokoshima in the story "Stranger Than Paradise," in which it's revealed that (maybe) Yokoshima and Mikami eventually tie the knot-- though even holy matrimony is not enough to resolve all the conflicts in this equally sacred "battle of the sexes."

                         

              

TSUNDERE, TSUNDERE

 (Apologies for the above pun to Blur and their nineties song, "Sunday, Sunday")

On this blog I've written quite a bit about the appearance of sadistic tendencies in various fictional characters, particularly of the feminine gender, who as a group are better known for "giving" than for "taking." Jordan Peterson has noted that females are generally more "agreeable" than males and less given to overt confrontation. Yet I think there are often currents of aggression that become intermingled with the most agreeable temperaments, and one might say that many of these have, in Japanese culture, manifested in what has been termed the "tsundere"-- the understanding of which is crucial to my impending conclusion to my ongoing GHOST SWEEPER MIKAMI analysis.  

So what's a tsundere? Grokipedia and Wikipedia agree on this basic definition:    

A tsundere (ツンデレ) is a character archetype originating in Japanese anime, manga, and visual novels, depicting an individual who initially behaves in a cold, hostile, or irritable manner—known as the "tsun" phase—before gradually revealing a softer, more affectionate and vulnerable side, referred to as the "dere" phase.

Grokipedia also adds a categorization I don't find in the Wiki essay:

The archetype has evolved to include variations, such as "Type A" (harsh exterior dominating initially) and "Type B" (affectionate by default but with tsun outbursts)

I for one have only seen the tsundere term used for Type A: the sort of character who projects hostility or indifference, whether to many people or to one specific person. I can see at least a chain of logic for Type B, though, and I can also see how readers of manga, and of fiction generally, will particularly have a tendency to use the term interchangeably for (a) those that project an aggressive vibe but have some level of agreeability hidden beneath a tough exterior, and (b) those that project an agreeable temperament but also evince aspects of aggression on occasion. Neither Type A nor Type B are intrinsically feminine character-types, and indeed I can think of prominent male archetypes along roughly the same lines. However, in this essay I'll confine myself to feminine examples, because traditionally aggression becomes more problematic, psychologically and socially, for females than for males.

Grok and Wiki also agree that the term "tsundere" was not coined until the very early years of the 21st century, though there had been several fictional progenitors of both types. Takashi Shiina's Reiko Mikami is unquestionably a member of Type A, and if the online translation of Mikami's final story, circa 2011, is an accurate one, that story might be among the first manga-stories to incorporate the newbie term. Rumiko Takahashi's Lum is sometimes labeled as a Type A as well, though I deem her a Type B based on the above description. But Lum may be the first major manga-female who intermingled agreeability and aggression so thoroughly that she's often deemed the first of the type, though she appeared over 20 years before the term was coined.

              

Shiina's indebtedness to Takahashi has been mentioned in online interviews with the two of them and is played for laughs in one of the late SWEEPER stories, "GS Mikami 78." This tale depicts a demon-battle in the career of Mikami's youthful mother Michie and includes a cute in-joke wherein young Rumiko Takahashi witnesses the fight and is inspired to create URUSEI YATSURA. Shiina is very careful to make sure his readers know that the joke has Takahashi's approval. That said, Michie is a closer analogue to Lum than Mikami is, and the "GS 78" arc even shows Michie winning over a reluctant male lover with her passion-- a thing Lum repeatedly seeks to do with Ataru, though with far less success.

Actually, in her very first appearance Lum does have some strong character-traits in common with Mikami. An alien race, strongly resembling the traditional Japanese ogres called "oni," threatens to conquer Earth. But the ETs offer a deal: they will withhold all attacks if a randomly chosen Earthman engages their champion in a game of "oni-tag." Lum is the champion, and she's totally okay with helping her people conquer an unoffending planet. Earth's champion can only win the contest if he tags Lum's horns, but her ability to fly makes that difficult. Ataru only earns Lum's wrath-- her "tsun" characteristics-- when he manages to pull off her bikini-top, which might be viewed as a deflected defloration motif. Lum then begins fighting Ataru on a personal level, the female responding to the male's crude advances, and she even sneers at his lack of toughness when he's knocked out by a fall to the ground. However, the moment Ataru defeats Lum, this time using her stolen bikini as bait, Lum shifts into the "dere" phase, and for the rest of the series she tries to convince Ataru to marry her willingly-- which is precisely where Lum's resemblance to Reiko Mikami ends. 

One assumes that on some level the Lum character knows she's not really Ataru's wife until they have the ceremony, but she reacts to his dalliances with other women as if he were a cheating husband. This leads to the series' most familiar trope: Lum violently punishing Ataru for his fickleness. In this she's certainly a revenge-figure for every woman who dealt with a trifling male, even though the comedy stems from both (a) the fact that she doesn't have any literal claim on Ataru, and (b) the fact that, if only because of their propinquity, Ataru does come to love Lum better than any other appealing woman-- though, much like Shiina's perpetual victim Yokoshima, Ataru always wants as many women as the world offers. But Lum generally projects an agreeable "Type B" personality no matter how many times she's moved to violence.

Shiina's final SWEEPER story appeared in or around 2011, the year that a great earthquake devastated Japan, prompting several manga-artists to contribute special stories .to generate revenue for victims. Possibly, had the earthquake never taken place, Shiina still might have found some other reason to present this capstone to his original series, which had concluded in 1999. The cover highlights Mikami's comeback by mentioning that Shiina's profit-seeking ghostbuster had "arrived in the 21st century"--though thus far this two-part tale has remained the last hurrah for Mikami and her crew. It does show that by 2011 the term "tsundere" has become accepted by manga-practitioners, enough that Shiina expects his audience to understand the context. And in the final SWEEPER story, Shiina pokes a little fun at how the term's meaning might, or might not, apply to so extreme a personality as Ghost Sweeper Reiko Mikami.

               

MIKAMI MEDITATIONS PT. 5

 To cut to the chase, my answer to the question "why is heroic Reiko Mikami such a greedhead sadist" boils down to compensation for daddy issues. 

Given how little information artist Takashi Shiina offers about Mikami's developmental years, it's likely that he never meant to lay bare his character's soul. Though he wasn't unique in concocting a shonen heroine with both positive and negative traits, Shiina may not have wanted to kill his golden goose by dissecting its innards. But that doesn't mean he didn't contrive a working psychological concept of his heroine.  

Mikami's passion for the ghost sweeping profession is first highlighted in the arc "Message from Mother," in a flashback showing Little Reiko with her mother Michie. In present times, though, Adult Mikami believes that her mother has died some years back. Thus it's a considerable shock when Michie time-travels to Adult Mikami's era to ask Mikami and her team to guard over Mikami's younger self, Little Reiko. Then Michie disappears, and Mikami mentions that she was in middle school when Michie died. Mikami tries to contact her still living father Kimihiko Mikami, but he's out of the country, and the incident only reveals to the reader the existence of some emotional rift between daughter and father. Then Mikami and her allies must confront a demon trying to kill Little Reiko for reasons that remain somewhat obscure by the story's end. In any case, Michie returns, so that mother and daughter vanquish the demon, after which Michie and Little Reiko return to their own time.

Shiina later follows up with an arc named "Someday, Somewhere." Though nothing much has been said about Mikami possessing the same time-travel power as her mother, both Mikami and Yokoshima experience premonitory dreams about Mikami's mother. Then a convenient "accident" propels both of them through time back to Japan's medieval era. During a battle with a demon, Yokoshima is killed, and a rage-filled Mikami attacks the demon. However, the fiend hits her with lightning, and this triggers her power, bumping her back a few minutes, so that she's able to save Yokoshima and defeat her enemy. They then return to the 20th century, and the story ends just before "The Man Who Can Summon a Storm." 

Having seen Yokoshima perish doesn't make Mikami any more generous to him, but in "Storm," she does soften when she encounters her childhood crush Saijou. Michie Mikami is still alive at this time, but though we don't know anything about ten-year-old Reiko's relationship with her still unseen father, a much later story will establish that Kimihiko's an absentee father. There's no way to prove that Shiina had fully planned out his intentions with Kimihiko, but on the hypothesis that he always had something sketched out, then Ten-Year-Old Reiko could be compensating for an inattentive father by crushing on an older, and not much less inappropriate, male figure. The conclusion of "Storm," however, suggests that Mikami has become totally invested in making money as self-validation, as opposed to Saijou's selfless altruism.  

I've stated that the earliest "internal chronology" mention of Mikami's fierce desire to make money appeared in an early story, where a middle-school-aged Mikami finds herself at odds with her sensei's desire to exorcise demons without making any profit. This early tale, "Love Needs Its Time," doesn't mention either of Mikami's parents, but it would be interesting to speculate that by this time Michie has passed (or rather, Mikami believes that she's dead). In such circumstances, even a middle-school-aged girl might have needed her father, and if he was still unavailable, that might have caused Mikami to believe that she was totally on her own as a ghost sweeper. Thus the desire to amass wealth becomes the lady exorcist's sole source of validation, which is why in "Storm" she goes catatonic from stress after trying to pursue Saijou's altruistic standards. 

Several episodes later, the arc "Death Zone" starts off with Mikami diverging from her usual habit of disparaging her junior assistant, by showing appreciation of his efforts with a salary increase. That it makes her uncomfortable to think about treating Yokoshima as a human being, rather than as a tool for her profit, is significant. Then another time-travel trip to medieval Japan ensues. Mikami and Yokoshima encounter their "reincarnation ancestors," respectively a demoness named Mephisto and a young exorcist of the medieval era. This is followed, after various interceding arcs, by the previously discussed "Mom's Here," which goes even further in demolishing Mikami's assurance that she won't ever succumb to Yokoshima's dubious charms. 

"Zone" loosely sets up a later series of arcs, over 60 episodes in number, that pits Mikami against Ashtaroth, the "Big Bad" of her entire series. In the arc "Merciless War," Ashtaroth, a demon obsessed with destroying humanity, sends three emissaries to launch hostilities, demonesses whom he spawned, much the same way he earlier spawned Mephisto, Mikami's "reincarnation ancestor." In the arc "The Longest Day," Ashtaroth seeks to subvert Mikami's will by speaking to her as if she were his daughter, making him the first real Mikami "father figure" the readers have seen "on-panel." Little does Ashtaroth know that Mikami is already somewhat father-alienated, so she head-butts him. Unwittingly, Ashtaroth scores more of a point against Mikami in that one of his new "daughters," Luciola, falls in love with Yokoshima. Luciola becomes Mikami's first real rival for Yokoshima's affections, and this state of affairs will eventually lead to Luciola's extinction.

It's in one of these "endless arcs" that Mikami's time-traveling mother Michie returns, taking command of the operation to defeat Ashtaroth. Not till the end of the 60-something episodes does Mikami learn the truth: her mother actually did not die during Mikami's middle-school years but has remained in hiding ever since faking her death. Why? Frankly, I didn't follow the author's logic, but it does make one wonder if Mikami didn't get her manipulative streak from her mother.

Only in a very late sequence did the readers finally encounter Mikami's actual mortal father Kimihiko Mikami-- but in flashback for the most part. Mikami seeks out her trainer Father Karasu and he relates to her, and other members of the Mikami posse, the story of how Michie and Kimihiko met, fell in love and got married. In many ways Kimihiko is the opposite of Yokoshima. Kimihiko possesses a freakish level of super-telepathy, a talent which he cannot control and which causes him to read people's minds and know all their secrets. In fact, after the spirited Michie proposes to him, Kimihiko tries to run away from her, but she tracks him down and compels him, with the intensity of her affection, to marry her. Nevertheless, Kimihiko remains aloof from his daughter throughout her childhood for fear of having a bad effect on her due to his telepathic influence. Ultimately, adult Mikami is able to transcend the disappointments of her childhood, by promising her father-- seen only from a distance-- to mend fences.

That's the last word of the series on fatherhood, both from Mikami's true father Kimihiko and from her "false father" Ashtaroth. Mikami's greediness doesn't play a big role in either of these scenarios, so my critical analysis remains only a weak correlation, since Shiina does not expressly connect Mikami's greed to her paternal issues. Further, by the technical end of the series-- not counting the "earthquake relief" story Shiina produced in 2011, which I'll address in my next essay-- Mikami is still expousing her gospel of profit. 

The story *appears* to commence in the far future, when Mikami, Yokoshima and Okinu have all died, leaving behind their spirits, or possibly just approximations of themselves, to haunt their old agency-building in year 2199. Two modern ghostbusters, a robot and a cyborg, intrude on the "ghosts" not to send them to paradise but to capture their spirits for profit-- but Mikami's superior GS skill defeats her enemies. 

Then Mikami and Yokoshima wake up in present times, having experienced the same futuristic dream. They and their colleague Okinu are then drawn into yet another of many battles with supernatural foes, and Mikami's last words are her motto, "Present profit comes first." The connotation I take from this is that even though Mikami sometimes looks gauche or foolish for wanting money so much, at base her desire for profit is an excuse, a motivation to drive herself to heights of excellence in ghost-sweeping. Her wish to emulate her mother may have engendered that ideal, but there's a reality of running a business that goes with that idealism, and the conclusion suggests that Mikami has reached a perfect balance between idealism and realism. To be sure, the final stories in the series don't provide closure for the 1991-99 series with regard to the Mikami-Yokoshima bond. But the "really final" 2011 story does provide the best of all possible conclusions to GHOST SWEEPER MIKAMI.

                              

MIKAMI MEDITATIONS PT. 4

 In this essay-series I've written a fair amount about Ghost Sweeper Reiko Mikami, but very little about her male co-star Tadao Yokoshima, who's integral to the series' concept. He unlike Mikami does not have a consistent "literary psychology," but is composed of a congeries of humor and heroism tropes, fluctuating between one set of tropes to another however it suits author Takashi Shiina.

    The first two-part adventure clearly establishes Yokoshima as the butt of most of the series' jokes. He's a horndog teenager who works as an assistant to the gorgeous ghost sweeper, risking his life for little remuneration, just because he lusts after Mikami. In the earliest adventure Mikami appears more flirtatious than in later episodes, seeming to offer Yokoshima the possibility for a future hookup, just to keep the teen working for chump change. 

Only one incident in the two-parter suggests that Yokoshima may be more than just a miserable lust-monkey. Both Mikami and Yokoshima are menaced by a deadly ghost, and Mikami is ready to go down fighting. Craven Yokoshima wants his last memory to be pleasurable, so he grabs Mikami's breasts. This action, for no explicit reason, allows the horny teen to release some magical/psychic power that amps up Mikami's abilities and exorcises the ghost. Despite the fact that Yokoshima's lustfulness saved their lives, Mikami beats the hell out of the teenager for taking liberties. To his credit, the threat of future beatings never permanently breaks Yokoshima's spirit. 

The matter of Yokoshima's lust-power finally becomes an ongoing story-element with the 20-part arc "For Whom the Bell Tolls." The dragon-goddess Shoryuki approaches the Mikami agency, fearing that a demonic power has compromised the testing-ground of the Ghost Sweeper Academy, and wanting Mikami to investigate. Shoryuki has already noticed that Yokoshima possesses an untapped spiritual power and suggests that it would be easy for the teenager to enter the Ghost Sweeper trials alongside other students. Though Mikami goes along with the plan, the lady exorcist has no faith in Yokoshima's potential and mocks him ruthlessly. However, when Shoryuki bestows a blessing on Yokoshima in the form of a kiss on the youth's forehead, Mikami is seen to be annoyed, even though she knows intellectually that the goddess isn't making any sort of romantic overture.

Yokoshima does pass his Ghost Sweeper tests, but there's little to indicate that he possesses the passion Mikami has for the profession. He oscillates between taking on heroic stature and devolving back into all-too-human cowardice, but I'd probably still deem him to belong to the persona-category of "hero," albeit of a very flawed nature. If anything, his "assistant ghost-sweeper" status binds him even more closely to Mikami's orbit, as she becomes "sensei" to his "student." And since he still screws up, this gives Mikami additional reasons to yell at him and beat him up. However, though Yokoshima does not intend to "stoop to conquer," the more Mikami works with the teen, the more she comes to want him around all the time, even though she consciously denies any such feelings.

Author Shiina also teased his readers with the possibility of a future Mikami-Yokoshima hookup in the time-travel arc "Stranger Than Paradise." Yokoshima meets a stranger who turns to be out the Yokoshima of ten years in the future, who reveals that by that time he and Mikami have become man and wife. More crucially, Future-Tadao has made the time-jaunt because in his time Future-Reiko is dying of an untended wound she took in the "present" era. Future-Tadao accompanies Yokoshima and the unwitting Mikami when they seek the demon who poisoned Future-Reiko. Future-Tadao hopes to use the monster's venom to concoct a counteragent to his wife's poison and take it back to his time to cure Future-Reiko.   

Naturally, this mission is successful as far as the reader knows, though Shiina throws in some plausible denials, having two characters state that Yokoshima and Mikami of this time may not be fully identical with their counterparts. When Mikami learns the nature of Future-Tadao, she uses magic so as to erase, from both Yokoshima's mind and her own, all knowledge of their rumored entanglement. 

Shiina never brings up the maybe-alternate future again. However, it's likely that many SWEEPER readers of the time shipped the two leads, and so the author gave them a "Tadreiko" to keep them happy. For good measure, Shiina does note that the two future-versions of the heroes remain on fractious terms, with Mikami dominating her husband while Yokoshima still hits on other women. In fact, in a scene paralleling a similar event in "The Man Who Can Summon a Storm," the ailing Future-Reiko experiences a surge of her will to live when she's told that her husband's been macking on the hospital nurses-- quite possibly because she anticipates punishing him again. 

Though Shiina devotes a couple of arcs to stories about Yokoshima's parents, neither of the teen's progenitors shape his personality the way Mikami is shaped by her parents-- which shaping I'll explore in another post. The dominant impression Shiina wants readers to reach is that Yokoshima remakes himself partly in response to Mikami's high expectations, and partly to his hormonal intensity. 

In two late stories, Shiina tells the story of the couple's first encounter. In the first, it's Mikami reflecting back on her low opinion of Yokoshima when they first met.

A later flashback, though, focuses more on the original concept. Even though Mikami gets irritated when Yokoshima molests her the moment he sees her, he's so eager to work with such a "gorgeous lady" that she realizes that she can save a lot of money on such an over-eager goof. 

Re: the comment about her finding Yokoshima "funny"-- Mikami never seems the least bit amused by either his blunders or his continued pursuit of her body. The most one can say is that there have been occasions where Mikami, like some femdom mistress (to which she's compared in one story), puts her subordinate through some grueling activity, which may or may not give her sadistic thrills. Yokoshima responds to all of these rigors by importuning Mikami to either give him sex or more money, and she, being both a virago and a capitalist, contrives to withhold both. Arguably Yokoshima's pertinacity does eventually wear Mikami down to the extent that she stops thinking of him purely as a tool-- though being placed in the position of a "sub" to her "domme" may not seem too much of an improvement to the beleagured youth.   

Yokoshima has a few arcs that test his devotion to his sensei/mistress, to be sure. But it's Mikami's personality that undergoes the most significant changes in the series as a whole, as I'll show in the next essay in this series.  
            

ADDENDUM: When I wrote about Mikami using magic to erase her knowledge, and that of Yokoshima, regarding their future marriage, I didn't make any comment as to her motive, but at the time I just thought she was doing so to (a) keep Yokoshima subservient, and (b) keep herself from conceiving any soft feelings toward her assistant. But TV Tropes had an interesting take: Mikami, by erasing her own memory, has put her control-freak self at a disadvantage, for in the absence of knowing the future she SAYS she finds disgusting, there's every possibility that her feelings for Yokoshima will morph over time and the future union will indeed transpire.         

MIKAMI MEDITATIONS PT. 3

 The other day I finished reading the last of Takashi Shiina's 1991-99 manga GHOST SWEEPER MIKAMI. The series is very much like several serials by Rumiko Takahashi, whom Shiina considers a symbolic "sensei" (though he never apprenticed under her) -- by which I mean that MIKAMI is a combination of utterly wacky comedy antics and of moments of sentimental insight into the complexities of the human heart. Anything I will write about this shonen series must take into account how Shiina chose to sell his unique heroine to his readers.

When I wrote the first part of MIKAMI MEDITATIONS in early March, I was probably a little over half through the series. I raised the question as to whether the domineering Mikami would ever reveal a deeper "I-thou" relationship to her bumbling assistant Yokoshima, as opposed to just using him as a tool, an "I-it" relationship. I was fairly sure, though, that Shiina meant to tease the readers on the subject for most if not all of the series, much as Takahashi did with the relationship of Ataru to Lum in URUSEI YATSURA. He threw in lots of little moments-- Mikami being jealous whenever Yokoshima received attention from another attractive female, obviously-- but he could have brought the relationship to a close, as Takahashi did with another series that Shiina probably encountered, MAISON IKKOKU. I can now say without doubt that Shiina chose to emulate URUSEI rather than MAISON, but also that all Mikami's protests, in which she claims not to need or want Yokoshima as anything but a tool, prove empty. She's more or less the "Ataru" of the series, managing to confess without confessing, as occured in the final URUSEI manga-tale, BOY MEETS GIRL.

In the first MEDITATIONS, I also wondered if Shiina was building to some big revelation as to what psychological attitudes led Mikami to become so extraordinarily greedy. However, to the very end Shiina kept that set of cards to himself. He does, in the arc "Message from Mother," demonstrate that neither of Mikami's parents knows how this attitude came about, and an even later arc, "GS Mikami '78," provides evidence that greed was not a major feature of either Mikami's mother Michie in her youth, or of her father, whose backstory is for the first time expanded for the reader's delectation. She's like neither of them in that regard, but I don't think Shiina had no opinion on the matter. He just wanted to keep readers guessing, which I'll explore in another post.

Also, though I've not mentioned it here, I was hoping to get at least two mythcomics posts out of the MIKAMI series, since March is "Women's History Month," an event I sometimes like to celebrate-- though often not in a way any ultra-feminist would recognize. And to my immense pleasure, Shiina provided a second concrescent work in this serial-- though it required an earthquake to bring it forth.   

            

MYTHCOMICS: "THE MAN WHO CAN SUMMON A STORM" (GHOST SWEEPER MIKAMI, 1995)

 As I write this, I've not yet finished reading the entire GHOST SWEEPER MIKAMI manga online, but paused at Volume 2 (1996), three years from the feature's conclusion. In MIKAMI MEDITATIONS I opined that mangaka Takashi Shiina intended to provide an epistemologically grounded psychology for his starring character Reiko Mikami, as to why she was both a peerless hero and a money-hungry businesswoman who exploited at least one employee. However, Shiina chose to dispense elements of that psychology in dribs and drabs. Shiina's biggest "drab" so far, 1995's "Storm," does not provide a total psychology for his heroine, but I'm seeing a strong pattern suggestive of Adler's compensation theory. So I'm writing this essay without reading all of the available volumes of SWEEPER, as something of a test of my method, before finishing the series and seeing what else the artist has in store.

"Storm" doesn't concern any sort of real tempest, and so far as I can tell, it's a metaphor for psychological upheaval. The story starts out largely with the status quo, although after roughly four years of acting the fool, Yokoshima has upgraded his skills, enough to function as an assistant ghost sweeper. But his ability to charm the skirt off Mikami remains non-existent.

Then Mikami learns that there's a competing GS outfit nearby, one subsidized by the Japanese government. She seeks them out, only to find that she knows the head of the agency-- and Yokoshima sees an unusual sight, that of Mikami acting "girly."

Saijou, head of the "Occult G-Men," lived with Mikami's family when she was just a child, because Saijou was training in GS skills with Mikami's mother. It's soon clear to Yokoshima that although Mikami calls Saijou "brother," her attitude toward him is hardly fraternal. Yokoshima immediately assumes that Saijou hopes to conquer Mikami's heart, especially since Saijou is taller, more handsome, and a stronger GS fighter than Yokoshima. However, it's soon disclosed that Saijou really doesn't see Mikami romantically, and his main purpose for seeking her out is to recruit her for his agency. And Mikami accepts, even though government pay is nothing like the money she makes as a private agent.

      

A flashback established that Saijou was the first crush of ten-year-old Mikami, and that she even confessed her feelings to him, though he didn't for an instant take her seriously. To be sure, Mikami only joins Saijou's agency on a probationary basis, and she expects Yokoshima and Okinu to keep running her private business, making big money for her. The young man, knowing Mikami better than Saijou does, enlists some of Mikami's colleagues to make the GS business more profitable than ever. However, when Mikami visits her agency, she's clearly depressed to see it functioning well without her.

Mikami overcompensates by trying to throw herself into her g-men work, but Saijou has seen the way she acts with Yokoshima. He gives Mikami a minor assignment to get her out of the way while Saijou has words with Yokoshima. The younger guy still believes that Saijou is a romantic rival despite the latter's denials, but Saijou still has only fraternal feelings for Mikami, and so he tests Yokoshima in battle. Yokoshima knows he's physically outclassed, so he not only flees battle, he humiliates Saijou with a variation on the old "order 100 pizzas for your enemy" trick.

   

However, Saijou accidentally pushes Mikami over the brink by giving her a mundane assignment--lecturing to schoolchildren-- that he'd easily perform with his altruistic mentality, but which is like poison to the high-spirited exorcist. Saijou, Yokoshima and Mikami's other friends find her in a hospital, not responding to anyone. She mechanically repeats the word "money," but doesn't respond when Okinu holds a pile of cash in front of her nose. She also doesn't respond when her first crush speaks to her. Then Yokoshima declares that her coma-like status means that he can take advantage of her, and Mikami immediately snaps back to normal and elbow-slams him. Saijou realizes that even though he only wanted to work with Mikami for non-romantic reasons, she's more suited to non-altruistic pursuits, so he fires her and returns her to Yokoshima. However, Saijou gets the last laugh by duplicating Yokoshima's "100 pizzas" trick, which has the added effect of putting the hapless schmuck back in the crosshairs of Mikami's wrath.

 So in "Storm," Shiina isn't quite ready to tell his readers exactly what makes Mikami coo-coo for currency. He does show that ten-year-old Mikami crushes so hard on "brother" Saijou that she acts just like a self-sacrificing female, willing to do anything to please her man. Yet when she tries to do it in her mature years, the effort almost destroys her, even though she can face down ghosts and demons without blinking. Further, whatever gave Mikami "gold fever" apparently happened between her pre-teen and teenaged years, going by the story I summarized in MIKAMI MEDITATIONS. "Storm" suggests to me that after ten-year-old Mikami was left behind by her crush when he sought altruistic pursuits, she overcompensated by pursuing a parallel course of heroic action, but only when she was well-paid. So she both followed Saijou's example and deviated from it.

And yet, if money was really all Mikami desired, she would have been pulled out of her coma by the presence of greenbacks. Instead, what awakens the sleeping beauty is not love's first kiss, but the (probably feigned) threat of rapine. Experienced readers are not likely to believe that Yokoshima would ever really rape a woman, in this story or in any other. He's a reader-proxy for very minor acts of molestation-- groping boobs, stealing kisses-- and in this story, he seems to realize, if only instinctually, that Mikami gets "fired up" when he molests her. In part, it stokes her ego to know that she can always kick his ass, while still feeding her sense of self-worth with his constant appreciation of her looks-- both pleasures she could never get from noble Saijou. Where Shiina will take his heroine from here, I don't yet know. But even if he goes in a different direction from "Storm," I expect I'll find his psychological twists just as engrossing. 

ADDENDUM: It belatedly struck me that although the title implies that the new character may be the "man" of the title, it seems to be Yokoshima who actually brings forth the full storm of Mikami's emotions, as opposed to causing her to repress them. That's assuming there's no special Japanese cultural meaning to the phrase, of course.