Disclaimer: I began writing this before Pokémon Go was announced. All of this post is still valid for the game I describe, but holy hell, I hope Pokémon Go is going to live up to the hype. Because in theory, it's everything I ever wanted as a child (and let's be honest, as an adult) and while it would be so easy to get it wrong, I have faith that GameFreak are looking at the mistakes competitors are currently making and avoiding them themselves.
That this is all opinion and daydreaming on my part. I'm not in any position of power to nudge GameFreak into doing any of this, and I'm well aware that I don't speak for everyone. But I've been thinking a lot lately about how amazing a current-gen console Pokémon game would be, and what I'd like to see in it.
First and foremost: a freeroaming exploration. None of this travelling between set locations via cutscene and catching Pokémon off other trainers that was such a letdown in Coliseum. You can still guide people in the right direction - the tree blocking a path or man refusing to let you past until he's had his morning coffee are staples in the series, and while I would prefer something more subtle, I can acknowledge the need to gently encourage people in the right direction, especially if there is a storytelling element. However, games don't need to channel you down the right path. Do you want the plot to progress? Then maybe go to the last place that got mentioned to you and see what's going on, there. Or maybe, the plot could be experienced in a slightly more organic way; hints and whispers of criminal activity going on wherever you happen to go first? Multiple plans over different places, that when foiled lead you into the wider plot through key items and dialogue?
What would be really impressive to me would be levels of wild Pokémon and trainers tracking your level for a true free-roaming experience. It would provide a larger incentive to explore over level grind and explore strategies and a varied party over simply over-levelling before Gyms and the Elite Four. Perhaps provide a few areas with static levels for people who want to EV train, but for everyone who wants to experience the game, this could be a very good system. Of course, your own Pokémon will always have a slight advantage over wild ones of a similar level due to Effort Values, so it wouldn't stop people from level grinding if they wanted that extra advantage. It would just allow people who wanted to progress quickly and explore the tools to get out into the world a little quicker.
Imagine this: you start out in your little village hometown, where the graphics are gorgeous and picturesque, but trees make the field of view seem small. Then you step out onto the first route, and a large rolling plain is spread before you, teaming with movement and new monsters to battle and catch. I want it to give that 'first time on Hyrule Field' goosebumps. I want that slow realisation that that far point in the distance can be walked to, and explored, and look beautiful while doing it.
The Wii U can give very pretty graphics when handled correctly. Look at stills of Mario Kart 8 - lots of detail packed into a charming style. Look at the demos of the new Legend of Zelda game - utterly gorgeous. I want that level of detail in a console Pokémon game. I would still keep it stylised - hyper realistic would not work for the Pokémon franchise, and would look dated incredibly quickly.
Battle, as a large part of any Pokémon game, would be incredibly important. There's a lot of depth and complexity in the main, turn-based series, which I love, but the idea of being able to control your Pokémon beyond four attack moves is also appealing. Of course, there is the arcade-fighter, Pokkén Tournament, which shows that they have played around with fully controllable Pokémon and Pokémon moves connecting properly with their target, but I see this as unlikely to happen in a main game unless as a minigame (similar to the Beauty Contests in the main series). Why? One, Pokkén Tournament is being made with Namco Bandai, who have experience with fighting games and systems, but a collaboration on a main game seems unlikely. Two, the console game will probably be (and should be) cross-compatible with the handheld series. Changing the fighting system too drastically would result in a nightmare of trying to code Pokémon so they still work on both games, and a good fighter on one game could be a poor choice on the other. With this in mind, I would still keep the turnbased battles intact, though I would love better detailed battles - moves that connect with the opponent fully, gorgeous backgrounds and settings that add to the world and makes you really feel like you are on a epic journey.
Despite wanting to maintain the status quo with regardless to battles, I do want to get rid of one staple of the franchise - Hidden Move machines, or HMs. In the handheld series, they're used to guide the player to the next area, but if the plot shifted to accommodate freeroaming, along with the levels of encounters adjusting to the party, suddenly limiting the use of them seems odd. I mean, logically, all flying type Pokémon can fly, they don't have to learn it from a machine. The same with water-type Pokémon swimming - though I have always wondered why player characters seem unable to swim, when they so often live near bodies of water and other people are seen swimming, frequently as young children. What I'm suggesting here is that any Pokémon which logically should be able to preform that move can, innately, without having to learn a move. This will encourage team diversity a little more naturally and will stop one (or more!) Pokémon in the party being kept around just for their HM abilities.
A console game should integrate well with the handheld games and vice versa. This would be a perfect opportunity for Nintendo to promote Pokémon Bank, their subscription-based storage facility. I mean, I'm not a fan of paying monthly to transfer Pokémon between games, but if more games in the series used it, it would feel less like a rip-off. Of course, there is a better way for Nintendo to cash in on extra stuff - Amiibos. Both the Wii U and the new 3DS can read and write data stored on Amiibos - why not use them as 'shuttles' between games? It wouldn't be backwards compatible with the current gen of handheld games, but could be a fun idea in the future. At the very least, kids can take their team with them in an Amiibo to challenge their friends when they go and visit and play Wii U together (so can adults, I mean, I would, but I'm also a massive dork who would charge into the room, Pokéball held in an outstretched arm yelling "Trainer Ame wants to battle!")
Along with more free-roaming elements, I'd like a way for you to feel accomplished in the world of Pokémon even if battles aren't your biggest passion. Sure, have a Gym/Elite Four network there, and be rewarded for challenging them and winning, but also be rewarded for other actions. Fully exploring hidden areas, catching particularly difficult Pokémon, breeding particularly great IV'd Pokémon. Even little challenges like completing the game without using legendary Pokémon or having a team of all the same elemental type that still kicks butt. I want to see challenges that shake up the way competitive play is done (for the uninitiated, international Pokémon tournaments are a pretty dull e-sport, as most top ranked players use similar teams and plays, because they've worked out that, mathematically, it's the least risky way to win. In the end, it comes down to which player exploited the mathematics behind the game the most, which kinda sucks all the fun out of it). Basically, encourage players to have fun with the mechanics and the idea and wonder that the world of Pokémon still holds today.
A complete bonus from me, but I would adore it if it would ever happen: remember Pokémon Snap? Can you imagine Pokémon Snap, a game where you take pictures of Pokémon while riding through predetermined routes, but in a current gen world, with no rails? Can you imagine having it as a fun sidequest that you could always dabble in for extra money, but don't actually need it for progression - it's literally just for your own enjoyment? I mean, the Wii U would be perfect for this - you could move the controller like a camera and use the screen as your view through the lens, you could share them on Miiverse if you're so hell bent on making social networks a thing...come on, Nintendo, you gave us Link selfies, you can realise my dream of becoming a wildlife photographer in the world of Pokémon!
Monday 21 September 2015
Saturday 19 September 2015
Fanfiction and Fanart: What is 'Real' Art, Anyway?
Every fan-artist or fanfiction writer has heard a variation of this at least once: "Why don't you do real art instead?" Sometimes it's phrased more like concern: "You're really talented, and you'd be successful if you only stopped drawing/writing 'x'" or "You'll never make a career out of fanworks".
I don't like this at all. It devalues not only creative endeavours, but the people who create them. It's a a social problem, and it needs to stop. You probably think I'm overreacting, and right now, that's fine. Just read on a bit before you make up your mind completely.
Fanart is seen as 'lesser' because it draws on existing work and doesn't require the artist's own imagination or creativity.
If anything, people are more critical of fanfiction and fanart because it draws from an existing work, one that people admire enough to find and read fanworks of. Characters are judged against the standard of the original - if they are too different, works easily become out of character and unappealing to fans.
It takes a lot of close analysis to truly understand complex characters - to not only understand what they do, but why. This 'why' is essential to fanworks, to understand how a character may react in circumstances they aren't shown in in the original media.
Original art and writing has the privilege of being judged on it's own merit, outside of a pre-existing idea of setting, tone and character. It's far easier to work out the motivations of your characters - you should know them intimately, having created them - than the motivations of another's characters, where you only have what limited knowledge the creator has made public about them.
If fanart was somehow a 'lesser' art form, you would be writing off a vast proportion of art through the ages. Every biblical and mythological painting would be inferior, because it's just fanart (often commissioned fanart) of the Bible and classical myths. Not to mention the wealth of literature you'd be passing up. Tolkien was inspired by Shakespeare, Shakespeare was inspired by Chaucer and Plutarch. All classical literature were inspired by word of mouth tales, embellished over years of oral storytelling tradition, before writing and reading were commonplace.
The Arthurian tales are a good example of this: Celtic folkstories were passed down by word of mouth over hundreds of years, finally being written down in the Mabinogion. These tales were later embellished by Geoffrey of Monmouth, and framed in a way to be more appealing to French audiences. These chivalrous tales became reinterpreted time and time again - Thomas Malory, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Mark Twain, Marion Zimmer Bradley - they've all had a hand, big or small in changing the way we perceive the Arthurian legends. This is of course, without mentioning the many film and television adaptations of the myths; from Disney to Monty Python, so many people have reworked and re-imagined the tales. It is a truly successful fanwork, in it's current state. It bears little resemblance to the original Celtic myths, barring a few recognisable details, and yet it's known internationally.
Of course, delve a little deeper, and you'd see that there aren't many 'original' works of art, anyway, even in modern media. Films are predominantly sequels and adaptations of other media. Any long running television show has to employ writers to carry on the existing story, as it is too much work for one writer to do alone. Long running comics and graphics novels are in a constant cycle of renewing artists and writers to carry on the story as previous artists and writers move on to different projects. Even games are often sequels or remakes of existing games. In fact, if you wanted to eschew any unoriginal ideas, you'd have to search for obscure content creators - independent film festivals, small press books, small art shows - it'd be a huge boost for independent media, until you noticed the reoccurring tropes in all these things, even as original as they are.
The thing is, art doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's meant to ask questions, to be explored and responded to. The problem is, the people who are against fanworks aren't really against the idea of fanworks. They want their favourite series to continue, and they want to keep enjoying film adaptations even if they aren't aware of the original media it came from. If they were against the idea of fanworks, these logical arguments would have won out against them a long time ago - I'm certainly not the first to make these points. The world would also be much poorer for the amount of art that got spurned as they rejected anything that could be feasibly termed a fanwork.
No, they're really against the people who make fanworks. Fanfiction and fanart is primarily a term applied to female artists within fandoms. It's certainly not to say that male don't create fanworks - they do, and face a lot of the same criticisms, but the problem is caused by the way society sees and codes fandom as female. There is a long history of bias towards work that is coded as 'feminine' as being valued less than work coded as 'masculine'. Fandom creators become seen as amateurs, creating work for free - ignoring the fact that some creators are professionals, and dabble in fanworks as exercise, for publicity or even just because it's fun - and further devaluing the idea of fanart in capitalism (the argument being that if creators are so talented, why aren't they making money from it, which implies that money is the materialistic end goal for all creative endeavours).
When a caricaturist draws a celebrity, it's not fanart, it's just art. When a woman does the same, it's fanart. When a screenwriter writes the script for the latest book adaptation, it's not fanfiction, it's just a script. When a storyboard artist or a concept artist or a digital painter is doing the work that makes any movie possible, often referencing earlier designs or movies or media, they are creating art, not fanart. All of these positions are male-dominated, where female artists are the exception, not the norm. There are social, economic and cultural barriers in order to limit the amount of women in these jobs (and this is not limited to the art world and creative jobs, either). It's not the fault of any one person, but a system of exclusion that is upheld to maintain the status quo as much as possible. Disregarding fandom and fanworks as 'not real' art helps maintain that status quo.
While I have many issues with '50 Shades of Grey', it's undeniable that it is an example of fanwork that has become successful. It's far from an isolated incident, either; many authors have been discovered through fanfiction, many fanartists have gained work through their fanart. I only hope this becomes more usual, and that the stigma around fanworks ceases for good. It helps no one to put down fanworks - not the artist creating them, nor the established artists making a name for themselves through 'original' works.
I don't like this at all. It devalues not only creative endeavours, but the people who create them. It's a a social problem, and it needs to stop. You probably think I'm overreacting, and right now, that's fine. Just read on a bit before you make up your mind completely.
Fanart is seen as 'lesser' because it draws on existing work and doesn't require the artist's own imagination or creativity.
If anything, people are more critical of fanfiction and fanart because it draws from an existing work, one that people admire enough to find and read fanworks of. Characters are judged against the standard of the original - if they are too different, works easily become out of character and unappealing to fans.
It takes a lot of close analysis to truly understand complex characters - to not only understand what they do, but why. This 'why' is essential to fanworks, to understand how a character may react in circumstances they aren't shown in in the original media.
Original art and writing has the privilege of being judged on it's own merit, outside of a pre-existing idea of setting, tone and character. It's far easier to work out the motivations of your characters - you should know them intimately, having created them - than the motivations of another's characters, where you only have what limited knowledge the creator has made public about them.
If fanart was somehow a 'lesser' art form, you would be writing off a vast proportion of art through the ages. Every biblical and mythological painting would be inferior, because it's just fanart (often commissioned fanart) of the Bible and classical myths. Not to mention the wealth of literature you'd be passing up. Tolkien was inspired by Shakespeare, Shakespeare was inspired by Chaucer and Plutarch. All classical literature were inspired by word of mouth tales, embellished over years of oral storytelling tradition, before writing and reading were commonplace.
The Arthurian tales are a good example of this: Celtic folkstories were passed down by word of mouth over hundreds of years, finally being written down in the Mabinogion. These tales were later embellished by Geoffrey of Monmouth, and framed in a way to be more appealing to French audiences. These chivalrous tales became reinterpreted time and time again - Thomas Malory, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Mark Twain, Marion Zimmer Bradley - they've all had a hand, big or small in changing the way we perceive the Arthurian legends. This is of course, without mentioning the many film and television adaptations of the myths; from Disney to Monty Python, so many people have reworked and re-imagined the tales. It is a truly successful fanwork, in it's current state. It bears little resemblance to the original Celtic myths, barring a few recognisable details, and yet it's known internationally.
Of course, delve a little deeper, and you'd see that there aren't many 'original' works of art, anyway, even in modern media. Films are predominantly sequels and adaptations of other media. Any long running television show has to employ writers to carry on the existing story, as it is too much work for one writer to do alone. Long running comics and graphics novels are in a constant cycle of renewing artists and writers to carry on the story as previous artists and writers move on to different projects. Even games are often sequels or remakes of existing games. In fact, if you wanted to eschew any unoriginal ideas, you'd have to search for obscure content creators - independent film festivals, small press books, small art shows - it'd be a huge boost for independent media, until you noticed the reoccurring tropes in all these things, even as original as they are.
The thing is, art doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's meant to ask questions, to be explored and responded to. The problem is, the people who are against fanworks aren't really against the idea of fanworks. They want their favourite series to continue, and they want to keep enjoying film adaptations even if they aren't aware of the original media it came from. If they were against the idea of fanworks, these logical arguments would have won out against them a long time ago - I'm certainly not the first to make these points. The world would also be much poorer for the amount of art that got spurned as they rejected anything that could be feasibly termed a fanwork.
No, they're really against the people who make fanworks. Fanfiction and fanart is primarily a term applied to female artists within fandoms. It's certainly not to say that male don't create fanworks - they do, and face a lot of the same criticisms, but the problem is caused by the way society sees and codes fandom as female. There is a long history of bias towards work that is coded as 'feminine' as being valued less than work coded as 'masculine'. Fandom creators become seen as amateurs, creating work for free - ignoring the fact that some creators are professionals, and dabble in fanworks as exercise, for publicity or even just because it's fun - and further devaluing the idea of fanart in capitalism (the argument being that if creators are so talented, why aren't they making money from it, which implies that money is the materialistic end goal for all creative endeavours).
When a caricaturist draws a celebrity, it's not fanart, it's just art. When a woman does the same, it's fanart. When a screenwriter writes the script for the latest book adaptation, it's not fanfiction, it's just a script. When a storyboard artist or a concept artist or a digital painter is doing the work that makes any movie possible, often referencing earlier designs or movies or media, they are creating art, not fanart. All of these positions are male-dominated, where female artists are the exception, not the norm. There are social, economic and cultural barriers in order to limit the amount of women in these jobs (and this is not limited to the art world and creative jobs, either). It's not the fault of any one person, but a system of exclusion that is upheld to maintain the status quo as much as possible. Disregarding fandom and fanworks as 'not real' art helps maintain that status quo.
While I have many issues with '50 Shades of Grey', it's undeniable that it is an example of fanwork that has become successful. It's far from an isolated incident, either; many authors have been discovered through fanfiction, many fanartists have gained work through their fanart. I only hope this becomes more usual, and that the stigma around fanworks ceases for good. It helps no one to put down fanworks - not the artist creating them, nor the established artists making a name for themselves through 'original' works.
Monday 14 September 2015
Representation Matters: Studio Ghibli
I like to focus on the positives rather than the negatives in media. Partly because there are plenty of people already calling out mass media for what they're not doing well, and those people are doing pretty well at raising awareness and getting their voices heard. But partly because I feel like if we fail to recognise the stuff that is done well, many things become seen as unsuccessful, and makes similar projects much harder to finance and make a reality. The best way to support messages that you want to see is by throwing your financial and social support behind it - the money lets executives know that this kind of idea is profitable, so they'll continue doing it, and the social support makes the message more widespread and hopefully encourages other people to support it, too.
With that in mind, I want to look at Studio Ghibli and their presentation of female characters over the years. Due to the nature of the post, there will be some spoilers, but I will endeavour to keep them to a minimum. Still, this is your early warning: there are spoilers within!
Studio Ghibli is a Japanese animation studio famed internationally for their gorgeous imagery and complex storytelling. They range from cute, family-friendly stories like Kiki's Delivery Service to darker works like Princess Mononoke. They won the Best Animated Feature Oscar in 2002 for Spirited Away, the only non-English-speaking animated film to win the award to date (the majority of winners comes from Disney/Pixar, with the occasional Dreamworks film).
Even a cursory look at the Studio's history reveals a wealth of female lead characters rarely found anywhere else: of the 22 main feature films released by Studio Ghibli, 11 have the lead 'view point' character be female and a further 5 have stories that have either an even amount of importance between the male and female lead or the female driving the plot, despite a male viewpoint. Even in the stories where women don't drive the plot, they still appear: as maternal characters, sisters, friends, family - in short, as people, with ambitions and skills and their own point of view.
But for examples of something a little more specific, I'm going to be looking at a couple of my favourite films that they've made, and point out instances of what I mean.
Princess Mononoke is one of the films where the viewpoint character is male (Prince Ashitaka) however women are a vastly integral part of the world and the plot of the film. San, the titular Princess Mononoke, is a woman raised by the god-wolf Moro, and shares Moro's distaste of humans, whom she sees as polluting the land and destroying the forest. San takes an active stance in this fight, directing her wolf-brothers into fights and attempting to assassinate Lady Eboshi.
Lady Eboshi herself is a strong woman who rules Irontown (Tatara in the original Japanese) fairly, rescuing and creating a safe haven for ex-prostitutes and lepers, and using the local resource of iron to maintain a strategic advantage over her neighbours. What I love about the film is that nothing is absolute in terms of morality. While it would be easy to completely vilify Lady Eboshi, we are shown that she is sincerely only acting in the best interests of her people, and she's highly compassionate towards the least valued members of society, not only offering them safety, but work and shelter. The women of Irontown work the bellows that smelt the iron they use for trade and weapons, and the film shows it to be hard work, but work they chose over their old lives. When men try to put them down for their work being safer than theirs, the women have the power to retort back. Without them, the economy and trade of Irontown would be diminished, if not downright broken.
Moro, the god-wolf and mother figure to San is a wonderful example of the ferociousness of a mother who is threatened. She's smart - smart enough to see what humans have done to other animal-gods, and smart enough to recognise the humans luring the boars into a trap, and to know that the boars will still charge in blindly even if they knew. She's protective of her adoptive daughter in the same way as her wolf-sons. She fights to protect her land and those dependant on her in a very similar way to Lady Eboshi.
If anything, it is Ashitaka who takes a passive role for much of the film, observing the differing points of view and only interfering when absolutely necessary. In fact, he openly acknowledges that he is watching and trying to stay neutral in the conflict. It doesn't stop him from doing the right thing, and acting to make the situation better, but it does stop him rushing 'to the rescue' of these women without understanding how and why they're in conflict, like so many films would.
The film portrays the early stages of a romance between Ashitaka and San, yet this doesn't reduce San to just a romantic interest. The characters complement each other and help each other grow - Ashitaka opens San to the idea that not all humans are bad and helps her come to terms with her own humanity, yet her goals and ideals remain the same - protect the forest. One of his major contributions to San is convincing her that she shouldn't throw her life away in mindless defence of the forest and that her life matters as an individual, not just a cause.
On all levels, the film is very respectful of women and the choices that female characters make, from background flavour characters to the women who drive the conflict and the plot forward. There are no blameless heroes, nor truly vilified characters, and all of the women have a complex nature that makes them stand out as fully formed characters, not two-dimensional stereotypes.
Spirited Away, arguably their most famous work, stars Chihiro, a young 10-year old girl moving to her new home. She begins the story reluctant to uproot her life, a little sullen and nervous and self-centred - things that are perfectly normal for a young girl, especially when facing such a big change in her life. Even this is quite a leap forward from many children's movies - she's allowed to be flawed in a way that isn't so extreme to be unrecognisable. Everyone's encountered a shy child, or a self-centred one or a nervous or sullen one. There's a good chance that was you, when growing up.
When the plot truly begins, and the 'abandoned' themepark is revealed to be a bath-house resort for the gods, Chihiro is scared and runs to her parents for support, but finds them transformed into pigs. This kickstarts her character growth, forcing her to become more emotionally independent and confident in her own abilities. The whole film explores this growth, and allows you to see a slow and steady improvement from clingy, nervous, self-centred child to a confident, generous young girl. She has to muster up courage, resourcefulness and put in a fair bit of hard work, and she's still the same person, but it is very clear that she learns a lot through the course of the film.
Chihiro is a wonderful character for children to learn from - she is faced with things children find scary, and she is scared herself, but she finds a way to be brave and get through it. She loves her parents dearly. She learns to be respectful of all kinds of people, no matter how weird or alien they might seem at first. She grows while learning to remain true to herself. She's not afraid to shoulder her fair share of the hard work, despite not being practised at it.
The supporting cast are good, too, from Lin, who acts more brusque and mercenary than she truly is, to Yubaba, the money-motivated owner of the bathhouse who would do anything to keep her baby safe. They all have their own motivations and goals and actively achieve things on their own.
These are just two brief examples from a very long list of wonderful female characters in Studio Ghibli. I could have mentioned the pirate matriarch in Laputa: Castle in the Sky, the sisters in My Neighbour Totoro, Kiki and the baker whom she rents her room from in Kiki's Delivery Service, Sophie in Howl's Moving Castle...I honestly could have thrown a dart, and as long as it didn't land on Tales from Earthsea, I would have had something positive to say.
This is (quite obviously, I hope) something that's pretty dear to my heart. I don't want all films to be only about and for women. But I do want to see women as being represented as more than an accessory for a male character. More than a 'sexy lamp'. As we can see, it's not impossible - it's not even difficult. Just treat your characters - all your characters - as human, with their own strengths and flaws and backgrounds and motivations.
In the words of Miyasaki himself: “Many of my movies have strong female leads - brave, self-sufficient girls that don’t think twice about fighting for what they believe in with all their heart. They’ll need a friend, or a supporter, but never a saviour. Any woman is just as capable of being a hero as any man.”
With that in mind, I want to look at Studio Ghibli and their presentation of female characters over the years. Due to the nature of the post, there will be some spoilers, but I will endeavour to keep them to a minimum. Still, this is your early warning: there are spoilers within!
Studio Ghibli is a Japanese animation studio famed internationally for their gorgeous imagery and complex storytelling. They range from cute, family-friendly stories like Kiki's Delivery Service to darker works like Princess Mononoke. They won the Best Animated Feature Oscar in 2002 for Spirited Away, the only non-English-speaking animated film to win the award to date (the majority of winners comes from Disney/Pixar, with the occasional Dreamworks film).
Even a cursory look at the Studio's history reveals a wealth of female lead characters rarely found anywhere else: of the 22 main feature films released by Studio Ghibli, 11 have the lead 'view point' character be female and a further 5 have stories that have either an even amount of importance between the male and female lead or the female driving the plot, despite a male viewpoint. Even in the stories where women don't drive the plot, they still appear: as maternal characters, sisters, friends, family - in short, as people, with ambitions and skills and their own point of view.
But for examples of something a little more specific, I'm going to be looking at a couple of my favourite films that they've made, and point out instances of what I mean.
Princess Mononoke is one of the films where the viewpoint character is male (Prince Ashitaka) however women are a vastly integral part of the world and the plot of the film. San, the titular Princess Mononoke, is a woman raised by the god-wolf Moro, and shares Moro's distaste of humans, whom she sees as polluting the land and destroying the forest. San takes an active stance in this fight, directing her wolf-brothers into fights and attempting to assassinate Lady Eboshi.
Lady Eboshi herself is a strong woman who rules Irontown (Tatara in the original Japanese) fairly, rescuing and creating a safe haven for ex-prostitutes and lepers, and using the local resource of iron to maintain a strategic advantage over her neighbours. What I love about the film is that nothing is absolute in terms of morality. While it would be easy to completely vilify Lady Eboshi, we are shown that she is sincerely only acting in the best interests of her people, and she's highly compassionate towards the least valued members of society, not only offering them safety, but work and shelter. The women of Irontown work the bellows that smelt the iron they use for trade and weapons, and the film shows it to be hard work, but work they chose over their old lives. When men try to put them down for their work being safer than theirs, the women have the power to retort back. Without them, the economy and trade of Irontown would be diminished, if not downright broken.
Moro, the god-wolf and mother figure to San is a wonderful example of the ferociousness of a mother who is threatened. She's smart - smart enough to see what humans have done to other animal-gods, and smart enough to recognise the humans luring the boars into a trap, and to know that the boars will still charge in blindly even if they knew. She's protective of her adoptive daughter in the same way as her wolf-sons. She fights to protect her land and those dependant on her in a very similar way to Lady Eboshi.
If anything, it is Ashitaka who takes a passive role for much of the film, observing the differing points of view and only interfering when absolutely necessary. In fact, he openly acknowledges that he is watching and trying to stay neutral in the conflict. It doesn't stop him from doing the right thing, and acting to make the situation better, but it does stop him rushing 'to the rescue' of these women without understanding how and why they're in conflict, like so many films would.
The film portrays the early stages of a romance between Ashitaka and San, yet this doesn't reduce San to just a romantic interest. The characters complement each other and help each other grow - Ashitaka opens San to the idea that not all humans are bad and helps her come to terms with her own humanity, yet her goals and ideals remain the same - protect the forest. One of his major contributions to San is convincing her that she shouldn't throw her life away in mindless defence of the forest and that her life matters as an individual, not just a cause.
On all levels, the film is very respectful of women and the choices that female characters make, from background flavour characters to the women who drive the conflict and the plot forward. There are no blameless heroes, nor truly vilified characters, and all of the women have a complex nature that makes them stand out as fully formed characters, not two-dimensional stereotypes.
Spirited Away, arguably their most famous work, stars Chihiro, a young 10-year old girl moving to her new home. She begins the story reluctant to uproot her life, a little sullen and nervous and self-centred - things that are perfectly normal for a young girl, especially when facing such a big change in her life. Even this is quite a leap forward from many children's movies - she's allowed to be flawed in a way that isn't so extreme to be unrecognisable. Everyone's encountered a shy child, or a self-centred one or a nervous or sullen one. There's a good chance that was you, when growing up.
When the plot truly begins, and the 'abandoned' themepark is revealed to be a bath-house resort for the gods, Chihiro is scared and runs to her parents for support, but finds them transformed into pigs. This kickstarts her character growth, forcing her to become more emotionally independent and confident in her own abilities. The whole film explores this growth, and allows you to see a slow and steady improvement from clingy, nervous, self-centred child to a confident, generous young girl. She has to muster up courage, resourcefulness and put in a fair bit of hard work, and she's still the same person, but it is very clear that she learns a lot through the course of the film.
Chihiro is a wonderful character for children to learn from - she is faced with things children find scary, and she is scared herself, but she finds a way to be brave and get through it. She loves her parents dearly. She learns to be respectful of all kinds of people, no matter how weird or alien they might seem at first. She grows while learning to remain true to herself. She's not afraid to shoulder her fair share of the hard work, despite not being practised at it.
The supporting cast are good, too, from Lin, who acts more brusque and mercenary than she truly is, to Yubaba, the money-motivated owner of the bathhouse who would do anything to keep her baby safe. They all have their own motivations and goals and actively achieve things on their own.
These are just two brief examples from a very long list of wonderful female characters in Studio Ghibli. I could have mentioned the pirate matriarch in Laputa: Castle in the Sky, the sisters in My Neighbour Totoro, Kiki and the baker whom she rents her room from in Kiki's Delivery Service, Sophie in Howl's Moving Castle...I honestly could have thrown a dart, and as long as it didn't land on Tales from Earthsea, I would have had something positive to say.
This is (quite obviously, I hope) something that's pretty dear to my heart. I don't want all films to be only about and for women. But I do want to see women as being represented as more than an accessory for a male character. More than a 'sexy lamp'. As we can see, it's not impossible - it's not even difficult. Just treat your characters - all your characters - as human, with their own strengths and flaws and backgrounds and motivations.
In the words of Miyasaki himself: “Many of my movies have strong female leads - brave, self-sufficient girls that don’t think twice about fighting for what they believe in with all their heart. They’ll need a friend, or a supporter, but never a saviour. Any woman is just as capable of being a hero as any man.”
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