In Defense of Korisu Morino: A Character Analysis
So I read and watched Makoako and for the most part a really enjoyed it. I see a handful of people sharing the sentiment of "mahoako would be good if they aged everyone up and got rid if korisu" or something along those lines. And I have to say I disagree, and no it's not because "yippe a loli" because I don't actually like lolicon :/ I may not care about it but that doesn't mean it's my cup of tea. No, I have my gripes with mahoako, but Korisu isn't one of them.
See I don't really mind that the cast is, for the most part, 8th graders. I like the idea of this story being about queer teenagers figuring out their sexuality as I feel like kink is a pretty big part of queer spaces and queer people owe a lot to kink. I understand that may not be the actual intention of mahoako, it's an eechi series where 14 year old girls do kinky shit to eachother, clearly a lot of the audience is going to be there for the horny nature of it. But I'm coming at this series from a sapphic asexual perspective, sex is always in the same realm as fantasy to me and it's not something I super care about.
All that said, coming at the series from the angle of "queer sexual awakenings and explorations" I think that korisu works very well and is really well written.
Korisu is unique from the other main characters because she represents the prepubesent sexual curiosity that a lot of children end up experiencing. In that way, Korisu reminds me a lot of myself as a young girl.
TMI about me, but I (and I'm sure many others) started masturbating around 9. I would not reach my first period until age 12 so I was very much still prepubesent. It wasn't a lot, but vague sexual attraction was there. I was trying to figure out what exactly I was attracted to and well at the time, gay was still an insult on the playground so my 9 year old brain was doing it's best to deny that I liked girls. I thought to myself, surely I can't be gay, I just think girls are pretty and I like boobs, but surely I'm straight. I was, in fact, not straight. And I had my confused little sexual fantasies every now and then.
Korisu in that way is very reminiscent of my own childhood experience with sexuality. She clearly has a little bit of a passive interest in sexuality, given some of her battles with tres magia. But she's also still written to be a child. A modest and shy child at that. Korisu is very soft spoken and childish. One if her main interests is toys. She loves to play with toys, and this seems to be the reason she joined enormita in the first place. She thought venelita was a toy and said yes to joining the evil organization so she could play with her. I also think that a lot of care has been put into how korisu is depicted. She's never directly sexualized. She projects her sexual fantasies onto others, but she is never the one in a sexual situation unless she is warping reality to pretend that she is an adult. Korisu is treated with a lot more modesty and decency than the other, older girls. You never see up her skirt, you never see any lewd expressions from her, the only time she is depicted naked is during a 1 panel heavily censored transformation sequence that isn't meant to be sexual, her swimsuit in the beach chapter/episode is almost comically conservative being one of those old timey looking striped suits with the shorts and sleeves and even a swim cap.
Her clothes always cover a lot of skin. It just seems like she's being purposefully written to be more than just the series resident loli, ya know? Like that's not why she's there. They could have written her to be permiscuous or to be obliviously and accidentally sexualized, but they didn't. They wrote her to be a child.
Diving into korisu's sexuality, as stated before, she tends to merely project her fantasies onto others with her powers, not getting directly involved. In our first encounter with her, when she shows off her powers as nero alice for the first time, she essentially just traps tres magia in a dollhouse and plays with them like dolls, having them act out a very sexually charged, but still rather childish and idealized game of house with a mommy, daddy, and child. House actually seems to be one of korisu's favorite games, sexual or not, which we will get into later. She doesn't involve herself in this game of house, just plays with her living dolls for a while before getting too sleepy to continue.
There are currently 2 instances where korisu directly involves herself in her little sexual fantasies, both if which I might argue are not entirely intentionally sexual on her end. The first of which, Utena has just given her back her favorite doll which she has stayed up all night to fix and has caught a cold with a fever as a result. Korisu decides to use her powers to place Utena and herself into her hospital doll set. She uses her powers to age herself up into an adult doctor and through a series of honestly comically childish ideas of what a doctor might do, despite the sexual twinge of the scene, cures Utena's cold. Not just treats it, but cures it outright. In like 5 minutes of playing doctor. What does she do? Presses a stick on Utena's tongue, places a toy stethoscope all over her chest, turned sexual by the fact that Utena has taken off her shirt and korisu just puts it right on her nipple, and then gives utena a shot. This is absolutely mostly just korisu playing doctor with her magic powers, it's just also a sexual fantasy of hers to be older and in a position of power, specifically in a caregiver role, something that comes up again later on and that we will delve deeper into later.
The second instance of korisu being directly involved in her sexual fantasies come to life via magic powers is during her play date with magenta. This I would argue is less sexual than the playing doctor scene for a few reasons, but first let's analyze this chapter/episode. The anime makes the argument that this scene isn't very sexual even more plausible by giving magenta an actual reason to regress. In the anime, magenta, who has been feeling like a burden to her team for not being very strong, is referred to as the mom friend. And she latches onto that. She takes her role as team mom very seriously and starts babying her friends, packing them lunches and such. This is a role magenta is comfortable in because she has 3 little sisters, and it's also clear it's making her feel useful to the team. Later on she ends up playing with korisu at the park, where they play a game of house, one of korisu's favorite games, in which magenta is the mommy. When she leaves she tells korisu she's always willing to play the mommy and then runs off to do her errands. We get like one mention of her having to pee. Back at the park, korisu is bummed about her play date being over and had the bright idea to keep playing house by using her powers to get magia magenta to show up and sucking her into a fantasy. Magenta obviously falls for this, and we flash into korisu's fantasy of magenta being a literal baby. She's in her crib scared and alone when suddenly her mommy shows up! And who is her mommy? Well it's adult korisu of course, ready to play house where this time she's the mommy.
Magenta is having a great time age regressing, playing with her "mommy" until she has to pee and ends up peeing. And then she starts to slip out of that regressed headspace and realizes she's not a baby and the person changing her diaper is nero alice and panic sets in alongside embarrassment because this is her enemy and she just pissed in front of her and she's not wearing pants and-
she rejects nero alice, who dejectedly starts to leave. And magenta sees that sad face and changes her mind. She can't just let nero alice leave all sad. She was just playing. She wasn't doing anything evil it was all just fun and games. She plays the role of a baby a little while longer so alice can have her fun playing caregiver. Which results in one of the funniest shots in the manga and the anime.
The rest of their time together basically consists of korisu bottle feeding magenta a lot of milk and making her pee into a diaper again. And then she's done. Neither of them really seem to come away from this encounter with the idea that it was sexual. Sure magenta felt embarrassed and yeah alice wanted her to pee again, going so far as to press lightly on her stomach, but at most the sexual fantasy for korisu stopped there. I genuinely don't believe her intention in this game of house were sexual, I think she really did just want to keep playing house but with her in the caregiving role this time. That doesn't change the fact that the scene was obviously pandering to age players and people with a piss kink. But yeah I just feel like the character's motivations were innocent. In the Manga this chapter is a little harder to read as purely age regression because it doesn't give her the stress of being the team mom and the need to regress. The chapter is more over the top about her needing to pee because she drank too much water at the park, and i don't think it's ever specified that the game they played at the park was house. Manga said piss kink age play chapter, but anime said piss kink age play chapter but give it some character depth.
Moving on from that way too long play by play of the piss kink age play chapter.
The rest of the time we see korisu she doesn't really use her powers sexually at all. She makes her toys bigger so she can ride them around, she traps people in doll houses, and sometimes she'll make a special dollhouse for Utena to use and then fuck off for the rest of the chapter so Utena is using Alice's powers sexually but alice herself is off doing kid stuff somewhere off screen. One of my favorite examples of korisu using her powers in a way that really displays that she is in fact a 9 year old kid, is when she gets so excited about the new toys she just got at the toy store that she transforms out of pure joy and decides to use her godzilla toy and wand toy to have a kaiju battle with her riding godzilla and fighting magenta who she turned giant. She's not doing this for sex, she's doing this because she wants to have a kaiju battle with her new toys. Utena and kiwi making it sexual by crawling into magenta's clothes is just aiding her in the kaiju battle. She didn't even win the battle but at the end of the day she's so happy.
Outside of her own sexual fantasies, korisu doesn't seem all that interested in sexuality. She either doesn't care, or, particularly with kiwi, gets annoyed and shoots her a disgusted "really?" look.
So looping back around to the consistent theme of Korisu's sexual fantasies either being a game of house or placing herself in a caregiver role. Why do I think she does this? This is just speculation on my end, but I really do think it has to do with her mother being so neglectful. Korisu is left home alone constantly because her mother is at work. She leaves her money to buy food, not even prepared food to eat, just money and a note on the kitchen table. Korisu is allowed to wander the city alone and does so often. The only reason she was able to join enormita is because she was by herself playing with sidewalk chalk in an alley. It's expanded upon that korisu really doesn't have any friends her age. Her first real friends as far as we know are her teammates at enormita, all of which are 5 years older than her. From what little we see of korisu's mom it seems like they love eachother, but she's just never home and her father is out of the picture for one reason or another. I think that this is why korisu is so enraptured with the idea of a perfect loving family. Why she wants to be a good caregiver, to give the love she craves from her mom, and to have a complete household, whatever she thinks that may be.
If you didn't have the experience of being sexually curious you may find yourself thinking why? Why is korisu the way that she is? Why is she having these sexual fantasies at such a young age but also is seemingly bothered by sexuality at other times?
And well, there could be more than one answer. There's the reading I've put forth that she is just having prepubesent sexual curiosity, the answer I think is the most likely to be intended if any. It could just be because the author wanted a loli and the fact the she's written modestly like this could be a coincidence (though I really think there was intent writing her this way especially when compared to how imitatio is written). There's always the possibility that korisu's past is darker than we know, that maybe she's experienced abuse of some kind, she's already experiencing neglect, who's to say there's not a reason her father is out of the picture, another reason her fantasies often revolve around family. We really can't say. I hope that we learn more about korisu when the author decides to pick the series back up again. I think it's likely that we will considering the last chapter introduced roboko.
I dunno man I don't know what I want the takeaway for this long winded post to be other than I think Korisu Morino is a well written character and a good representation of prepubesent sexual curiosity. She's written like a child, not like a sexualized fantasy of a child. When I was first reading through mahoako and got to the chapter where they introduced Korisu, I almost dropped the series. I thought "oh great they had to include a loli what the fuck she's 9" and then I kept reading, just to see what they'd do with her. And they didn't do what I expected. And by the end of reading I thought "wow. It's kind of refreshing to have a child character, especially in an eechi series that is THIS sexual, not being the object of sexualization." And that sentiment has stuck with me.
And then they introduced Imatatio and I wanted to throw my laptop 😤 but well that's a post for a different day because I have a lot of thoughts on her, not all as positive as my thoughts on Korisu, but it's more of a mixed bag.
At the end of the day I know that mahoako is a series that is meant to be arousing, it's eechi, it's a magical girl series about kink and bdsm that puts 14 year old girls in sexual situations for the audiences viewing pleasure. I get that. The series is by no means a masterpiece and I know it's very likely that I and a lot of other fans are reading too much into it. But I really think there is something there with the representation of queer kids exploring sexuality in a way that doesn't make them feel like outcasts for liking what they like.
Anyway, stan Korisu. Nero Alice best girl.
