[1] Why did Cartoon Network take a chance on Rebecca Sugar and the animated series Steven Universe (2013–20)? This is the implicit question at the heart of Kathryn Hemmann's Japan-centric monograph Manga Cultures and the Female Gaze. Hemmann positions their answer in Japan, with the rise of women manga creators. The "manga cultures" of the title are the manga, anime, video games, and fan cultures Hemmann analyzes. For Hemmann, popular and academic discourses view manga cultures through a hegemonic male gaze that misses what an oppositional gaze (like the female gaze) can see (2). Hemmann argues that creators like Rebecca Sugar show the impact of women-led Japanese media through their ongoing references to women manga creators' work.
[2] Manga Cultures is separated into seven chapters accompanied by fifteen black-and-white and colored images pulled from manga, animation, fan art, and other media sources. The chapters focus on topics such as the mahou shojo/bishojou (magical girl/beautiful girl) character archetype, yaoi dojinshi (amateur fan comics featuring male homoerotic pairings), and global fan labor. Methodologically, Hemmann analyzes a mix of media texts, fan texts, and fan discourses. This monograph works at the intersection of queer/gender/feminist studies, fan studies, and Japanese media studies. Hemmann's research is an important contribution within a research area that is often more narrowly focused on boys' love, a homoerotic subgenre of shojo media, research that usually remains isolated from the interconnected flows of transnational media.
[3] In the introduction, "Interrogating the Text from the Wrong Perspective," Hemmann defines the female gaze as a "resistant reading" practice, a renaming of "what prominent feminist literary critics such as Sandra Gilbert, Susan Gubar, and Rita Felski have called 'the female voice' or 'feminist poetics'" (2). By turning from the "female voice" to the "female gaze," Hemmann inverts Laura Mulvey's concept of the male gaze, arguing that the female gaze is a projection of female (instead of male) "phantasy on to the male form" (2–3). This inversion of Mulvey's gaze is used as an entry point into the Japanese context of media production and consumption, which in Hemmann's eyes has positioned women as agents of production, consumption, and narrative privilege.
[4] Chapters 2 and 3 both deal specifically with women-created shojo manga. In chapter 2, "Short Skirts, Superpowers, and the Evolution of the Beautiful Fighting Girl," Hemmann critiques the works of Japanese cultural critics Eiji Otsuka, Hiroki Azuma, and Tamaki Saito, who position the "male gaze" of male otaku as the singular subject of academic study and the sole consumers of manga. Instead, Hemmann outlines the ways manga creators Takeuchi Naoko (Sailor Moon/Bishōjo Senshi Sērā Mūn, 1991–) and the all-women team known as CLAMP (Magic Knight Rayearth/Majikku Naito Reiāsu, 1993–97) utilize a female gaze in their work. These creators subvert character tropes and provide an alternative perspective for their female audiences to enjoy. Having established the need to consider women's perspectives as active consumers of manga and anime in chapter 2, Hemmann moves on in chapter 3, "The Maiden and the Witch: CLAMP's Subversion of Female Character Tropes," to argue that CLAMP's work actively subverts manga's reigning character tropes for women such as that of the pure-hearted, virtuous maiden or that of the black-hearted, sexually experienced witch. In CLAMP's work, as in the Sailor Moon franchise, Hemmann argues that "the shōjo is not purely good and the witch is not purely evil" (60). Essentially, the one-dimensional archetype of the pure maiden triumphing over the evil witch is given greater complexity. Using greater nuance with these archetypes and privileging female characters' narrative arcs allows creators like CLAMP to demonstrate a female gaze.
[5] From chapter 4 onward, Hemmann switches from analyzing original texts to analyzing the relationship between fans, texts, and derivative works. Chapters 4 and 5 both focus on yaoi dojinshi (male homoerotic fancomics mainly attributed to female creators), examining how creators alter the original, phallogocentric nature of texts in pursuit of their own readings and pleasures. In chapter 4, "Queering the Media Mix: The Female Gaze in Japanese Fancomics," Hemmann highlights the role dojinshi play in a broader media mix. "Media mix" is a Japanese marketing concept for media franchises that spread out across multiple different media forms, including dojinshi. Dojinshi aren't simply a way for fans to rewrite their favorite media properties for their own pleasure but also serve as a playground for future (and current) professional authors and artists.
[6] Hemmann opens chapter 5, "Beautiful War Games: Transfiguring Genders in Video Game Fancomics," with an examination of tropes pulled from Final Fantasy VII (1997) boys' love dojinshi as evidence that "the female gaze queers not just male characters but masculinist ideologies as well" (105). As a result, fans, while "not deliberately engaging in feminist activism," are engaging politically through their reading practices (105). Hemmann argues that this gaze (female, queer, or oppositional) is as easily accessed by any individual reader as a dominant gaze is in Japan. This is made apparent through Hemmann's analysis of the fan discourses surrounding the addition of Linkle to The Legend of Zelda (1986–) canon in Japan and the United States as a new female hero. Hemmann explains that Japanese fans were largely silent. While Western fans radiated displeasure at Linkle, considered overly sexualized and pandering to a near-pedophilic male libido, Japanese audiences saw Linkle as a cool, cute girl character who fights with dual crossbows. Hemmann argues that the contrasting reception of Linkle is because the female gaze, as a position to read from, is less accessible to Western audiences due to differing media climates.
[7] The next chapter is largely a departure from the preceding chapter's close analyses of Japanese audiences, turning instead to more global aspects of manga cultures. Chapter 6, "Link Is Not Silent: Queer Disability Positivity in Fan Readings of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild," swaps the gender-specific female gaze with a queer gaze. According to Hemmann, to queer a text is to interrupt the normative ideologies of a mainstream narrative (130). The global fan culture of Zelda had disseminated images of Link as a queer and disabled hero, shared across social media and creating a highly visible alternative to the diegetic representation of Link by Nintendo. By sharing these visions of a queer Link globally, Hemmann believes that fan communities have the "potential to facilitate the spread of acceptance and positivity…across borders of difference…[and] across national and linguistic borders as well" (140).
[8] The last chapter, "The Cultural Cross-Pollination of Shōjo Manga," brings the monograph to a close. Hemmann's conclusion explores what the past popularity of shojo manga in the United States means for the current mediascape. Adventure Time (2010–18) and Stephen Universe (2013–20) include numerous visual and verbal references to 1990s shojo manga. Manga licensor Tokyopop created an imprint of original English manga, looking to amateur art sites such as DeviantArt to find popular manga-style creators. With the rise of crowdfunding, fans have become integral to the creative process. Hemmann notes the role fans played in the original publishing and translation of My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness (2016) for spreading the manga-based memoir from its origins on Japanese gallery site Pixiv (163). Hemmann highlights the role of fans in media as "a model of fan-driven professional media production" that is spread through social networks such as Twitter (165). Connecting back to Hemmann's overarching narrative, the boom of shojo manga in the United States contributed to a growing recognition of the marginalized voices of girls and women as both media consumers and future talent. By adapting shojo sensibilities, girls and women enabled the denaturalization of the male gaze. Finally, Hemmann notes that while Western fans "feel distressed that their creative work has no commercial or cultural value within society," we feel the waves of Japan's fan-driven model of production (164).
[9] The monograph's narrative traces an evolution from Laura Mulvey's male gaze as a concept unifying Western media consumption to a rising recognition of the power of once marginalized viewers, positioned in resistance to the centrality of the male perspective. Following this argument requires readers to transition between topics such as chapter 3's focus on manga creators CLAMP to chapter 4's focus on yaoi dojinshi and chapter 5's transition from Final Fantasy VII to the character of Linkle. Readers unfamiliar with these media may find these transitions difficult to navigate. Additionally, Hemmann hits an unfortunate and unnecessary snag in chapter 5 when they accuse "many frequently cited essays on BL subcultures" of making "broad assumptions" regarding their creators and fans (104–5). "BL" stands for "boys' love," which refers to the professional publishing genre corresponding to yaoi dojinshi. This generalization is based on a small subset of early work done on BL prior to 2007 and doesn't account for additional scholarship published since then. In addition, Hemmann does not discuss the popularly cited ethnographic work of yaoi fan Akiko Mizoguchi (2003, 2008, 2010), the historicizing work of James Welker (2006, 2011, 2015), the hentai-positive scholarship of Kazumi Nagaike (2015, 2019), or Thomas Baudinette's (2017) work, which furthers Wim Lunsing's (2006) consideration of BL manga alongside manga for gay men. Ultimately, Hemmann's critique of BL studies feels unnecessary and in need of further development. However, for the most part, yaoi dojinshi are not addressed in any critical detail in BL studies. Dojinshi are amateur publications which are not as easy to acquire as professionally published manga are. As such, Hemmann's analysis of yaoi dojinshi makes a significant contribution to BL studies, even while their discussion of previous BL studies scholarship falls short.
[10] As a whole, Hemmann's choice of media texts and approach to the female gaze means Manga Cultures provides highly original research within anime and manga studies. In particular, chapter 3 stands out due to Hemmann's analysis of CLAMP, their focus on the maiden/witch trope, and their rereading of the destructive capability of female bodies. Other scholars may find it productive to ask themselves: How does CLAMP's subversion of the maiden/witch trope transfer to other works, genres, or to boy characters? Furthermore, Hemmann's argument in chapter 3 that the apocalypse operates as a new beginning in Chobits (2000–2002) presents new approaches for scholars analyzing the popular and growing genre of apocalyptic narratives. By combining Sara Ahmed's (2006) queer phenomenology and José Esteban Muñoz's (2009) queer utopia, Hemmann questions the entire notion of endings in post-apocalyptic media. Overall, Kathryn Hemmann's Manga Cultures and the Female Gaze is an excellent resource for researchers and students in anime and manga studies, Japanese and global media studies, and fandom studies, as well as anyone interested in Japanese media.