How are manga girls evaluated? Polish perception of female characters from mangas by female mangakas. Results of the studies on the image of women in mangas concentrated on the female characters indicate that the conservative image of women is still popular (e.g. Yukari, 2014; Hill, 2012). Women seem to be presented as dependent, less active than men, interested in family. On the other hand, otaku culture is associated with sexualised figurines showing women as sexual objects (Stockins, 2009). We wanted to check whether those claims are applicable to XXI century female gaze works (Erik-Soussi, 2015), especially in the eye of the audience. We chose 21 comic series being published after the beginning of the current century. 15 of them featured a contrast between a positive and a negative female character. Those were mainly of shoujo (addressed to young girls) or fantasy genre. In 6 there was a female protagonist without an equal antagonist which belonged to shoujo or josei (addressed to adult women) genres. We asked our participants to evaluate portraits of the characters marking on a 5-point scales (with 1 = “not at all”) how friendly, intelligent, sexy, independent and feminine the characters were. We were mostly interested in interactions between the five features and whether they differ between the positive and negative characters. While the positive and main characters scored high on friendliness and femininity, the negative ones were evaluated lower. Also, sexiness remained the feature with the lowest mean score (mostly below 3), while independence got the highest score, in many cases above the mean scale point. We also found positive interactions between independence, femininity and intelligence or between friendliness and sexiness (however reversed in the negative characters). We asked our participants whether they read mangas, other comics or are interested in Asiatic culture. It turned out that the participants who do not read mangas (or other comics) tend to give the characters generally lover scores than those others. General interest in Asia or participants' gender did not affect their judgement. The results of our study shows that female gaze manga girls do not seem overly sexualised or dependent, especially to the audience familiar with manga and other comics. Literature: Erik-Soussi, M. (2015). The Western Sailor Moon Generation: North American Women and Feminine-Friendly Global Manga. Global Manga:“Japanese” Comics without Japan. Hill, M. (2012). Ranma ½: Gender and Genre Shifting in Manga. The Comics Grid. Yukari, F. (2014). 10 Women in “Naruto”, Women Reading “Naruto”. Manga's Cultural Crossroads, 5, 172.

1. How are manga girls evaluated?
Polish perception of female
characters from mangas by
female mangakas.
Agnieszka Czoska
Hanna Kupś
Compilation of presentations from two conferences:
The woman through women’s eyes. Gender – Literature – Language;
5-6 December, 2016, Warsaw
Oriental Studies – yesterday, today, tomorrow. 8-9 December, 2016, Belgrade

2. Agenda
● Short history of female gaze in manga
● Current study
● Mangas used in the study
● Procedure
● Participants
● Results: differences between characters
● Results: relations between features
● Conclusions

3. Short history of female gaze in
manga
● 1946 – Machiko Hasegawa publishes
Sazae-san
● 60' & 70' – shōjo manga written mainly by
female authors
● 80' – the emergence of josei genre (ladies
comics) and boys love (BL) manga
● 90' – popularization of shōjo and josei in the
West

4. Current study: mangas
● 14 manga series by
female artists
● 7 with contrasted
positive and negative
female characters, 7
presenting female
main characters
● shōjo, josei, fantasy
● published after 2000

5. Current study: procedure
● On-line survey
● Picture with five
assesment scales:
intelligence,
independence,
feminity, friendliness
and sexiness
● Additional questions
about the participant
● 126 participants; age:
under 18 – over 45

6. Current study: participants
126 participants: 62 women and 62 men
Age: from under 18 to above 45 (majority 18-35)

7. Results: by characters
21 characters:
7 main, 7 positive and 7 negative ones

8. Results: by participants
126 participants: 64 reading mangas often or rarely,
21 not reading it anymore, 41 rather not or not
reading

9. Results: independence
● Positive relations between femininity or
intelligence and independence (charts show
percentage of answers)

10. Results: independence
● Non-linear relation between friendliness and
independence (chart shows percentage of
answers)

11. Results: sexiness
● Positive relations between friendliness and
sexiness (chart shows percentage of answers)

12. Conclusions 1 (characters and
participants)
● Low scores of sexiness and femininity in
relation to all characters; high scores of
independence.
● "Correct" friendliness assesment in both
groups of participants
● Partcicpants who do not read manga have a
tendency give the characters lower scores...
● ... and the type of character does not influence
this trend

13. Conclusions 2 (features)
● Positive relations between femininity and
independence, intelligence and independence,
friendliness and sexiness...
● Non-linear relation between friendliness and
independence

14. Thank you!
agaczoska[at]gmail.com
hanna.kups[at]gmail.com