Asuka Masamune is everything society says a good, traditional woman should be: Asuka sews like no one’s business, cooks meals that are both delicious and aesthetically appealing, likes cute things and sweets and would choose pink over blue any day, has pure ideals of love, cleans, etc. In other words, this protagonist is the ideal woman. The thing is, Asuka is a guy. With that one detail, his interests become something to be ashamed of instead of proud.
As a child, his frail mother discovered his inclination toward sparks, cute things, and love stories and she begged him to give up his hobbies, saying that’s not what boys should be interested in. After this, Asuka realized his true self was a self he could never show. In a society where men are supposed to reject everything feminine to be considered “manly,” if his secret were to be uncovered, it would earn him scorn worse than if he were a man with the plague in the middle ages. Thus, he hid his true self well and struggled to become the ideal man. At seventeen, he’s an accomplished athlete, he’s stoic and tough yet chivalrous, and he applies himself to the warrior spirit. Everywhere he goes he sets the bar for the other guys and the girls love him for his cool image. Yet it’s all a facade and to make things more complicated, he’s fallen in love with the new transfer student, Ryo. What’s a guy to do when everything he really loves is considered taboo for a man and he’s constantly having to keep up a persona?
Otomen explores an issue that only a small portion of fiction dares address: the invisible, inflexible box that men are forced to occupy. It is cramped and ancient yet to step out of that invisible box and do something that is not limited to the limited definition of the ideal man means facing the firing range of society. Staying in the box is no easy task either. After all, the ideal man is more akin to a statue than human with his inability to show emotion and his purpose to be stable and hard. While women struggle to rise above stereotypes of weakness, men are pressured not to do anything to suggest any likeness to women. Unfortunately, as Otomen depicts, men and women alike hold people to these stereotypes and, sadly, many of us never question them.
Through Asuka, we get an idea of what it means to be a man struggling with societal expectations and personal feelings. He worries if his crush, Ryo, will ever be able to love a man who likes things that are not masculine. We also see the day-to-day fight he deals with to be someone completely different from who he really is. He feels he has no one to confide his true self to, not even his family. However, as readers soon discover, Asuka isn’t the only one who doesn’t fit the narrow molds assigned to genders; Ryo can’t seem to pull off things girls are supposed to be good at like cooking or sewing to save her, but is as tough and unshakeable as any “manly” man; and finally, Juta, a fellow male classmate who writes and draws a successful shojo series under a pen name. These are the first of what appears to be a growing cast of characters who don’t fit in a neat, old box of stereotypes and slowly Asuka is able to be honest about who he is.
So far, the series has tackled these issues relatively well. Mixing drama with comedy and romance in an episodic manner, it can exaggerate and go off into the realms of the fantastical, but it’s an enjoyable read that mixes in bigger messages about gender roles in a big way. It’s one of the few manga I’ve read where a male character has had an interest in things that are traditionally associated with women without being made a joke (usually a thinly veiled one about that stereotypes gay men).
It’s not easy to juggle ideas of gender roles and at times I worried about stereotypes creeping in. The words “manly” and “girly”get thrown around a lot, which is an easy way to describe some things, but ultimately sticks to traditional ideas of gender. Asuka also has to play the hero like a traditional male protagonist. This sends the message that Asuka is still a man in the traditional sense. But even when I began to feel something was becoming a bit stereotypical, the series usually got back on track. For example, at times I felt Ryo was becoming a typical female love interest in that she gets saved by Asuka repeatedly, but then the series throws in scenes where Ryo works together with Asuka.
In closing, what I’m really liking about Otomen right now is that it addresses both female and male stereotypes, even if it’s not always prefect. I’ll be reading to find out if that continues as the series goes on!
Gagging on Sexism 
I want to read the series. The premise always struck me as being different from all the other shojo manga you have lately, and it’s great they are breaking the usual gender stereotypes down. The fact you have a guy as the main protagonist who just so happens to like typically “girly” hobbies and things without automatically categorizing him as gay is great. It shows that being a male or female doesn’t have to mean what our society has predetermined for us. Guys don’t always have to be the manly man and girls don’t have to be the girly girl either. And to be honest, those assumptions about our sex are tiresome to encounter on a daily basis.
Exactly. In some ways, male and female stereotypes go hand in hand because whatever a man is supposed to be, a stereotypical woman isn’t and vice versa. What a person likes should be dependent only on what he or she is interested and not on gender. It is also not dependent on your sexual orientation which is another stereotype society likes to use.
Ah, I need to catch up Otomen.
What’s wrong with guy reading shoujo manga and like romantic series?
Some may like it, some may not.
I don’t mind rescue mission as long as it’s not overdone and the girl is not annoying. Ryo is not annoying so it’s okay.
I’ve always wondered why guys can’t read shojo manga or other types of love stories. While it’s traditional to assume that all girls like romance, if a girl were to read an action or shonen series, I don’t think she’d get any weird looks yet guys can’t read romance at all. It’s silly.
As for the rescue missions, I agree it depends on the context. Like you said, Ryo isn’t annoying and helpless so, I don’t mind it in Otomen.
Yeah. I’ve seen little boy buying some shoujo manga and my guy friend like to watch romantic series. It’s same as girl reading shonen manga and still can be feminime.
I do not have issues with shojo stories when they catch my interest I watch them, like for example Kotoura-san (It is one half dark side of life and one half romantic comedy). But my main problem with most shojo manga is that all we get is the love story and nothing else in the world of the story other then what is needed to describe the love story and the women are flawed while the men are the perfect suitors, in the same way most shonen manga go for world building only so far as the stuff in the world that is needed for all the action and to show that women are weak and in need of protection with the children while men are these perfect stoic warriors that do the protecting (Except of course the protagonist(s), the side characters that are about to die and the villain(s) right before their defeat(s)/death(s)).
Also I am waiting for the ending of the first season of Kotoura-san to be sure but it would seem that they forgot to give the male characters the same level of complexity they gave the female characters. I am still enjoying it and if they have forgotten to add the same level of complexity to the male characters as they did to the female ones this series is going into my guilty pleasure pile.
That’s a good point. I suppose it depends on the series, but yes, it’s not unusual for the male love interest to be kind of flat in terms of his character. After all, he’s based off an ideal or fantasy and that often leads to issues in creating a realistic character. Good comparison with the female love interests in shonen. I’d never thought of how similar that issue is, but in both cases the genre plays to the fantasy of the gender. It’s hard to find complex characters, both male and female, no matter the genre.
I might have to check this series out. It is important to remember that both women and men struggle with gender stereotypes, but sadly, a lot of people turn a blind eye to that.
It’s true. And while more people have become aware of sexism toward women, I don’t hear much at all about how men are stereotyped and forced to conform to an idea of gender.
This series caught my eye for these exact reasons. I haven’t started it yet, but I hope it lives up to its premise. :3
So far I’d say it seems worthy, but I can’t help but worry that series will let me down. After all, I’ve read plenty of series that I thought had potential at the beginning and let me down some where along the way. Hopefully, this isn’t one of those series.
You mentioned that certain words get thrown around a lot, like “manly”, “girly” and so on. Perhaps one of the main reasons we can’t entirely overcome gender roles in the media, is because we’ve yet to break free from the bindings of language. Anita Sarkeesian recently released the first episode of her “Tropes Vs Women In Video Games” series, and throughout the whole video, I kept pondering on the origin of gender roles and the stigmatization of certain behaviors, tastes, and so on. However, it really hit me when she presented a photoshopped image of Princess Zelda in Link’s attire. Now, of course she did this for practical reasons, but then I thought, “IF Zelda were to actually star in her own game where she were the main action protagonist, what would she wear?” Now, that’s a major issue when it comes to character design, because it is believed that if you make a female character take an active role, especially a combat role, a sense of femininity is lost. Thus, they usually compensate by juxtaposing her attitude with her wardrobe, as to hint that her feminine side is expressed by her clothes. So, if she were to use clothes that’s suited for the job, the word “manly” immediately gets thrown in there. So perhaps it’s not that certain concepts are stigmatized for their association with specific roles, but rather that specific roles are associated with concepts due to a lack of verbal flexibility. Sorry if it’s a bit of a tangent, but I thought it was worth mentioning.
That very well could be part of the problem. I feel like this is one of those issues where the old saying “what came first: the chicken or the egg?” feels very relevant. It’s difficult to tell what came first, language or roles associated with gender? I’m not sure if we’ll ever know the answer, but it’s an intriguing concept to consider and regardless, I think that both have an affect on gender stereotypes.
As for the female protagonists in games, that’s an interesting point about getting femininity across through character design. I think it’s difficult for people to create character designs for action girls because they get caught up in keeping that sense of femininity, whether it’s cuteness, sexiness, or pretty. Perhaps we just get too stuck on making genders look a certain way? Anyway, these aren’t video game characters, but Miyazaki does an excellent job on his female character designs.