Ruki, Sora and the Feminine
As you know, I am right now deep down the hole of Japanese papers on media, sociology, and how certain cultural aspects relate to one another. And it takes me back to the one thing I have spoken about quite a bit before: how fandom interacts with Ruki, with Sora, and with the concept of both of them being tomboys.
And now I get a bit more context for this. Because I start to understand, that a big issue of this is, that a western archetype is used to read a Japanese character, who was not written in a social context where "tomboy" was the main access to read boyish girls.
Though my core thesis still remains the same. The main issue with how fandom reacts to these characters and their story is how they read a female character becoming more feminine as something being taken from a character. As a lot of western ideas of gender are reading "male archetypes" as good, and "female archetypes" as bad.
So. In Japanese media there is the concept of 紅一点 (Koitten). Which translate to "a single red dot", but largely means: the one female character in a largely male cast. Which is something that you will encounter in a lot of different Shonen media. You have a bunch of male characters, and then there is the one girl, that is there, because we need a girl character. And those girls often get defined against the boys they are surrounded by. Which might mean they are explicitly feminine and this is their point, or they might either be おてんば (otenba) or even 男勝り(otokomasari). The former gets often translated as tomboy, but it is not quite it. It means a girl who has some less feminine attributes, but does not necessarily reject femininity in the way a tomboy might do. And the Otokomasari stereotype meanwhile is a character who explicitly is competing and trying to surpass men. The latter one might usually be more aware of her gender in relationship to everyone else.
It should be noted that this is Japanese media at a time when western influence was there, but Japanese media production is still very much isolated from western media production in many ways. And Japanese society at this time was very heavily influenced by the Lost Decade, which very much influenced the way gender was being read and performed in society. Because - again, I spoke about it last week: it became less and less viable as a societal model to have the dad works, multigenerational household, community driven kind of life. Now, obviously there were Japanese feminists before this, but Japanese society due to being very much a collectivist society in which you were more defined by the people around you, this feminism looked different. And it was specifically that the traditional system was no longer working due to the economy, that made people have a lot of complicated feelings about, well... everything.
So, let's look at Sora. Because the big issue with her and the way the western fandom is reading her, is, that the western fandom was always quite interested in reading her as a tomboy. She wears trousers, she plays soccer, hence she has to be a tomboy, right? (And mind you, this is me noting this from within the house. When I was 10, did not know that I was trans, and was playing soccer in the boy's team, I totally identified with Sora on this. So, if that is true for you: believe me. I get it. This is all more about... you know, the cultural context that none of us could have reasonably have known, because we were living in a completely different culture.)
Only that, again, the tomboy as an archetype did not really exist in Japan at the time. It was not as if Japan did not also know "boyish girls", but it was not the same archetype that we knew in the west and had in a bunch of old kids shows and movies. In western media tomboy was not just a general description of a boyish girl, it was a specific archetype of a girl actively rejecting femininity - with the plot either being framed around the girl getting a makeover and having to accept femininity, or the opposite, of the femininity itself being indeed something that is seen as a weakness. Both kind of stories have their own issues, obviously. But Sora specifically was often read in her development between Adventure and 02 as being an example of the former. A girl who gets a makeover and gets pushed into the proper girl form.
Which... was not what happened, because Sora never was a tomboy.
See, for Sora you first need to understand that yes, when she was designed, she was the only girl in the team. Because Mimi got added so late in the preproduction (and Hikari only when production had already begun), that her being there as well did not influence how Sora was written. Sora was originally designed to be the only girl in Digimon Adventure.
The six core characters in Adventure were generally written all with the same kind of schema: this is a kid, who has a specific good trait, and something about how they were raised or what they have lived through in reality kinda made them lose not the trait, but their believe in it. Now the Digital World makes them confront this trauma and rediscover their trait.
And for Sora that trait is love. The most inherently feminine coded emotion you could ever think of. And specifically the way she is written it clearly is meant a motherly, nurturing love - which is exactly why the split with her mother is making it so hard for her to access it. Because she feels like she has not been given this motherly love and hence cannot show it. But of course she overcomes this, understands her mother, and reconnects with her, and through this accesses motherly love.
Which, again, is at the core a very feminine thing. Sora did not play soccer because she rejected femininity. She played soccer because she was an otensha girl. An energetic girl. So as she reconnects with her femininity through her mother, she moves on to playing tennis later. Still otensha, but more feminine. This is not a broken tomboy, it is a different trope because it is working from another context.
Now, obviously this does not address the other problems with how tri. and later Kizuna treated her - taking a lot of agency from her and such. But... For Adventure and 02, that is basically what we are seeing. It is not about "breaking the tomboy", it is about her core trait being a very feminine trait (motherly, nurturing love) and reconnecting with it.
Ruki and the Broken Heart
Ruki's character arc is actually surprisingly similar to Sora's but also very different - partially because Tamers allows her story to have more breathing room, and does not put the entire development into a single bottle episode, but partially also because generally Tamers is better done in regards to character work. And of course, also, because Ruki's mother is more of a concrete character, rather than a vague idea haunting the narrative.
Ruki fits the western tomboy stereotype a lot more. Though technically speaking she is otokomasari koitten. The one girl, who is also surpassing the guys around her. That is basically her entire function in the first bit of the show. She is a girl. She actively rejects femininity (hence fitting a bit more with the western idea of the tomboy). And she is surpassing the guys around her, partially because of it.
And then we get the context. And it is quite interesting, because Tamers does often not actively tell you something. Without looking online you do not technically know that her mom was a teen mom. It asks you to pick up on it. But we see generally: Ruki is going to a good private school. Her mom is very young and very pretty. Her mom also is emotionally neglectful at times. And her mom is very feminine, and this femininity gets rejected by Ruki.
It becomes clear over the course of the first half of the series, that Ruki's rejection of femininity is largely tied to her feeling unseen by her mother, and hence rejecting her mother, with femininity for Ruki being tied up in the perception she has of her mother.
However, other than Sora, whose arc is largely about realizing she is like her mother, and through this learning that she has been loved by her mother, and she can love as well, it is not that straight forward for Ruki. Instead, Ruki learns that there are other forms of femininity that do exist. Her mothers femininity is tied up in beauty and cuteness. But Ruki learns that femininity can also be nurturing, graceful, and protective. Not through her mother, but through Renamon, and partially also through Juri.
This ties Ruki's arc up in having her accept femininity, while still not liking the femininity of her mother. She can more openly communicate with her mother in the end, but it is still very clear that her mother does need to learn to actually be a mother, and that this is not just a misunderstanding. Her mother not being available is a problem on the side of the mother - it is not a character development thing for Ruki to overcome.
However, her mother reaches out to her by the end gifting her a shirt that is still very much like the shirt Ruki wears throughout the show, but showing a full heart, rather than a broken one. It is basically her mother saying: "Okay, I see that you do not like my femininity, but here, this is a bit of your femininity."
Fandom Rejecting Femininity
The main issue in regards to how the fandom interacted with both characters however was, that the western fandom did look at those characters, and ended up on: "Tomboy being made less tomboy. That is sexist actually." Or rather, for Ruki most people just overlooked the entire point of her arc, given that she still ends the series wearing trousers and being more tough. A lot of fanfiction that is taken places after the end of Tamers kinda just shrugs, and has Ruki be very masculine still. Often in the framing of a western rock, metal or goth kid. And yes, this is also something that Konaka himself was eventually kinda guilty of, making her a motorcross champion in the audio play that we collectively decided to just ignore for a bunch of very good reasons. (Arguably because a good bit of her arc was written by Yoshimura.)
And ironically the same is kinda true for Sora.
Now, for both characters I think we need to address a certain elephant in the room that usually does not get addressed: both were largely written not by Nishizono, or Kakudou, or in Ruki's case Konaka, but by Yoshimura Genki, herself a woman, and Maekawa, who is not a woman, but actually pretty good with female characters. For Sora it also can be argued that there was a bit of influence from Yoshida, who also is a woman. Especially as Sora does definitely fit with a certain archetype that Yoshida likes to write. Though while the production of Adventure was chaotic, this is actually more visible for Tamers, where an effort was made to have Yoshimura write the episodes in which Ruki is the central character.
You know, good old: anime is definitely not a medium for auteurs. Especially not Media Mix anime like Digimon.
The main issue is though, that fandom often conflates feminine characters with characters who have no agency. Not out of malice, but moreso because it is true for a lot of media. A lot of Koitten characters do have no agency or at least severely less agency than the male characters they are surrounded by. This even holds true for Sora to an extend. Though then it is hard to blame this on Sora being female, given that Mimi is arguably the character in Digimon Adventure who has more agency than anyone else, including Taichi.
For Ruki her becoming more feminine does not translate to her having less agency. It just translates to her being more at peace with herself. But the problem remains that a lot of people do not really want to engage with her on that end. They want the cool tomboy character to stay a cool tomboy character who wears black leather and rides a motorcycle. Because it is kinda cool.
I just... well, I do not like it a lot. Because I actually think that from a pure feminist perspective, Ruki's character arc is one of the female character arcs ever. Because it is explicitly about what femininity can be, and how rejecting femininity in of itself is not only kinda shitty, but also can be harmful to yourself, if you focus so much on being not feminine that it becomes your whole personality. (And I will note once more: the credit for this is not just with Konaka, but majorly with Yoshimura, who was the lead writer for Ruki's story. Yoshimura being part of the duo who had done 02, and also being the lead writer for Ken on it. Just so that you have some reference.)
And it makes me sort of sad that the fandom does rarely engage with this theme.
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