“Hello, miss, but imagine, anything for you”: on the stereotypes of “beautiful girls“, myths, legends, cultures, sub-cultures and a whole manipulated area of our brain have made us, which pushes the world to always kneel in front of beauty, especially if it is a beautiful woman. Needless to deny it, it has always been like this, we will always remain social animals driven (also) by preconceptions and irrationality. But what does “beauty” mean? Who are the “bishojo” of the anime and manga? We have already addressed this topic in our special dedicated to the “beautiful boys”, the bishonen, another socio-cultural phenomenon born in Japan, extended to neighboring areas such as China and Korea, but now also widespread in the West. Obviously the female counterpart could not be missing, so here we are ready to explain who these beautiful girls are, who are the most famous and above all why they really exist.
Bishojo: what does it mean and what are the most famous “beautiful girls” in manga and anime?
What does bishojo mean?
Same linguistic “game” that we have already had the opportunity to discover with the term “bishonen”: “bishojo” literally means “beautiful girl” in Japanese. There are other ways to describe aesthetic beauty, of women as well as men, for example many of you may have already heard “kawaii” or “kakkoii” or even “suteki” and “kireii”, but in this specific case the three kanji, the phonetic ideograms, which form the term “bishojo”, they have the specific purpose of identifying a person who is aesthetically beautiful, according to a specific standard.
The three ideograms derive from the same translation of “shojo”, which in turn is divided into two kanji, “sho” which means “small” and the suffix “jo” commonly used for the “female figure“. The prefix “bi” is trivially a prefix often used to identify a “nice person” and once again the intricate mechanism of joints that give rise to the etymology of the term is revealed.
The history of bishojo
Who came first, the pretty boy or the pretty girl? Difficult to give a single answer, even more difficult to give a short answer. The origin of the two terms is lost in the culture of Japan itself, extremely artistic, idealized and sophisticated, made up of floating worlds, mystical dances and silk kimonos which highlight the essence of the flesh rather than its shape. Japanese aesthetics has never been based too much on explicit sexuality, to the point that the first “beautiful girls” were identified after the war, with westernization and the diffusion of other standards of beauty: women with big eyes, colored hair and delicate shapes, they introduced new themes on sexuality, psychology and socio-cultural evolution.
In the late 1970s, specialized adult magazines that contained nude photos, fiction and essays on the attractiveness of girls. This trend waned, also due to the innumerable bans on showing genitals and pubic hair under Japanese obscenity laws. It was never a phenomenon that went away, but many men preferred the more androgynous images, highlighting some aspects over others. Thus it was that they were born lolicon at the turn of the 70s and 80s, the female characters with the “Lolita complex“. Drawing inspiration from the 1955 novel by Vladimir Nabokov, Lolitawhich describes the protagonist’s obsession with a twelve-year-old girl, for whom he also feels sexual impulses, Japanese lolicons over time have embodied the stereotype of “pretty” girls, with physical traits closer to adolescence although sometimes they are inserted in a love context.
Thanks to controversial works such as i dojinshi of the artist Hideo Azuma, the lolicons “grew” increasingly abandoning the idealized sphere to represent more of a concrete sphere. Azuma’s characters combined the round bodies of characters from pornographic manga and the round, emotional faces from shōjo manga. In doing so, Azuma developed a “cute eroticism” (kawaii ero), a form of delicate sensuality.
Several important authors, over time, have promoted the imagery of bishojo girls, including Hayao Miyazakiwith Clarisse from the film Lupine III: the Castle of Cagliostroand Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. Another maker strongly associated with the bishojo boom was also Rumiko Takahashi with Ranma and InuyashaBesides Urusei Yatsura with her Lum.
The characteristics of the bishojo
Bishojo and bishonen are often mistakenly considered similar in the same country of origin. This creates quite a bit of confusion abroad too, but speaking of characteristics, there are big differences, aesthetic and otherwise. The bishōjo aesthetic is meant to a male audiencethat’s why we find precise graphic canons, typically focused on young girls, designed to always appear “pretty”. The bishonen, on the other hand, are mainly aimed at a female audience, which is attracted by an elegant, graceful and superfine masculinity.
The reasons why these canons exist in Japan, because it has been preferred to represent men as women and women as men, is a theme that we have already mentioned in the special dedicated to the bishonen, but we could summarize in a few words the very essence of Japanese culture, made of nuances, contradictions and masks that hide by showing.
Another common mistake is to assume that female characters in bishōnen manga and anime are all bishōjo. The bishojo par excellence are usually small, recalling their “lolita” origins, with traits that take the the expressiveness of the gaze, with large eyes, small lips, minute and basically “childish” features. They are less sexualized, less curvaceous than many female characters in the bishonen and appear in almost all genres of anime and manga, although they are typical of many video gamesespecially in dating simulators and visual novels.
The most famous bishojo
You can’t start a list of the most iconic bishojo without talking about Sailor Moon, aka Bunny, who almost thirty years after her debut, still remains one of the most popular “beautiful girls”. All the protagonists of the work written and drawn by Naoko Takeuchi they reflect the canon of “innocent” beauty and what’s more, the original title of the work itself is Bishōjo senshi Sērā Mūn, literally “the beautiful warrior girl Sailor Moon“. One of the greatest shojo successes, as well as one of the most famous anime of the nineties among the audience of children, adolescents and young adults who are passionate about anime, Sailor Moon undoubtedly represents one of the best known expressions of Japanese pop culture in the world, capable of conquer you under the sign of the Moon.
Among the other most famous bishojo of anime and manga are always carving out their own corner of success in our world, girls belonging to alternate realities and reinvented universes: they are an example Rem Of Re:Zero: Starting Life In Another World and Asuna Of Sword Art Online. The first is a helpful waitress, known to many by now: since October 2016, she has reached the first place in the poll of the most popular female characters among readers of newtype and always in the same year she was the winner of the Newtype Anime Awards in the best female character category.
Asuna, on the other hand, is one of the best swordswomen in the universe SAO extension. Her popularity began in the virtual world, but has spread widely both online and offline, earning her appreciation even outside the bishojo rankings: in fact, she is often even among the ideal female characters to “marry”, competing for the first places among the most popular waifu. So why didn’t we include it in that ranking as well? Matter of ethics: on the contrary, for example, of Hinatamost fans would “marry” the underage version of Asuna and, frankly, it just didn’t seem like the case.
Beautiful girls seem to be all the rage among school desks: there are countless bishojos who have made their fans fall in love with them in a story set in high schools and universities, including Komi Of Komi Can’t Communicate and Nagisa Of Clannad. But the rankings speak for themselves, among the names that stand out the most among the favorite bishojo, there is Yuzuki Eba Of Kimi no Iru Machi. Just like the other girls just mentioned, Yuzuki is beautiful, kind and a little naive, who even without realizing it or wanting it, greatly affects the small town where she moves.
Another beautiful girl who originates from a story born in the “time of apples”, is Kuronuma Sawako Of Getting to you. This work written and drawn by Karuho Shiinain 2008, two years after its serialization, won the award Kodansha in the shōjo category and has led to the creation of an anime, a live action and even two video games inspired by the story. All thanks to the delicate and moving love story between her and Shota: Sawako embodies the perfect ideal of the bishojo, a shy but adorable, kind and refined girl, despite being bullied because of her resemblance to a character who is anything but cute: Sadako of the famous horror The Ring. This strange similarity gives her an unexplored aspect of the bishojo, a “cursed” beauty, which allows us to see these “beautiful girls” in a new light until the end of the story.
To follow the vein of bishojo different from the “usual”, we also mention Kaga Kouko Of Golden Time, considered one of the trendiest romantic anime in the last period. Kaga is a young law student in love with a mate who rejected her several times. Despite her clingy and childish attitude about her, she is a devoted, intelligent, elegant and loving girl.
Another beautiful girl not to be missed in the list is Chitoge Kirisaki Of Nisekoia special case, as she is half American.
This explains her different spirit from the shy and introverted Japanese personality: Chitoge is energetic and expansive, sometimes a little too lively, she embodies the figure of the very “gal” bishojo, literally the transliteration of “girl”, a more “mature” variant of the “beautiful girl”, characterized by stereotyped female attitudes sometimes almost to excess.
