Japanese Anime Has A Problem With Women And Girls: Mamoru Hosoda

Japanese animation director Mamoru Hosoda arrives for the screening of the film “France” at the 74th Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, southern France, July 15, 2021
Image: Valery HACHE / AFP

Mamoru Hosoda has bones to choose from with Steven Spielberg and Hayao Miyazaki, the other great Japanese animator he’s often compared to.

Hosoda – whose brilliantly human “Mirai” received an Oscar three years ago – has had enough of the way Hollywood treats the digital world and Miyazaki portrays women.

The dystopian tropes on the net that run through so many films, including Spielberg’s “Ready Player One”, do no one any favors, especially women, Hosoda told AFP at the Cannes film festival, where his latest feature film ” Belle “is presented in preview.

Father of a young girl himself, the Japanese master wants to empower his generation to take control of their digital destiny rather than curl up in fear.

“They grew up with the net … but they are constantly told how malicious and dangerous it is,” he said.

“Belle” is his response, a spectacular dive into the emotional roller coaster life of a shy teenage girl named Suzu, in a 21st century version of “Beauty and the Beast”.

Digital diva
Much to her surprise, and that of everyone else, Suzu becomes a pop diva called Belle in the virtual universe of an app called U.

Rather than being burned by online abuse and harassment as she gains billions of followers, Suzu uses her online avatar to overcome enemies and her own blockages.

“Human relationships can be complex and extremely painful for young people. I wanted to show that this virtual world, which can be harsh and horrible, can also be positive,” Hosoda said.

Suzu and her computer geek friend are far from the women who usually populate Japanese anime, this is where Hosoda challenges Miyazaki, the Oscar-winning legend behind classics such as “Spirited Away.”

“You only have to watch Japanese animations to see how young women are underestimated and not taken seriously in Japanese society,” he said.

The director, whose films are more grounded in social realities than Miyazaki’s, was raised by a single mother, a rarity at the time.

Her 2012 classic “Wolf Children” is a hymn to the fierce independence with which she raised her little pack on her own.

“It really annoys me how often young women are seen in Japanese animation – treated as sacred – which has nothing to do with the reality of who they are,” Hosoda said, with obvious frustration. .

The bursting of Miyazaki
Without naming Miyazaki, Hosoda did not spare the founder of Studio Ghibli.

“I won’t name it, but there is a great master of animation who always takes a young woman as his heroine. And to be frank I think he does it because he doesn’t trust himself in as a man.

“This veneration of young women really bothers me and I don’t want to be a part of it,” he insisted.

He wants to free his heroines from being paragons of virtue and innocence and “this oppression of having to be like everyone else”.

Hosoda and Miyazaki have a story.

The 53-year-old was seen as Miyazaki’s natural successor after being called in from outside by Ghibli to lead Oscar-nominated “Howl’s Moving Castle”.

But Hosoda came out halfway to start his own studio.

The director prefers stories that “show the good and the bad in people. This tension is the reason for being human.”

This is why he was also drawn to the update to “Beauty and the Beast”.

“In the original story, the Beast is the most interesting character. He’s ugly and has that violence, but he’s also sensitive and vulnerable inside.

“Beauty is just a number. It’s all about how she looks. I wanted to make her so complex and rich.”

This duality is also present in his fascination with the digital world which began with his first hit, “Digimon: The Movie”.

“I keep coming back to the Internet. First with ‘Digimon’, then with ‘Summer Wars’ in 2009 and now again.”

And he is more convinced than ever that we cannot continue to dismiss him as the source of all evil.

“Young people can never part with it. They grew up with it. We have to accept it and learn to use it better.”