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    Your probably wondering why I’m writing about Virgin Maidens, but rest
assured I’m not…OK, maybe I am just a little, but an article about girl
oriented anime is bound to contain some references… That is what Shoujo is,
"girl anime." Shoujo’s dictionary definition is "Virgin Maiden" but in this
article, I would like to come up with a truly complete definition of the Genre of
Shoujo.

    The people at Urban Vision seem to think that all Shoujo is like sailor
moon, and none of it is worth watching. In an interview, of which all I did was
ask one member his opinion on the subject, he replied, "What?  You mean
sailor Moon and that crap?  We don’t got none of that, but we got lots of
action…" the conversation seemed to drag on from there.  On the other side of
the spectrum, someone who works at Gainax (I’m not sure who it is, because I
had to go through so many levels to get someone who actually spoke
English…I think it’s the president, though!) Told me that a good portion of
the things they produce are considered Shoujo titles, and he loves the whole
genre. "I own every episode of Fushigi Yuugi on DVD, I used to watch it on
TV while sitting in my office at work…The love story made me almost cry."
Was his reply when asked about FY, a very popular Shoujo title in circulation
in the states by Pioneer right now. So the opinion of Shoujo is very wide
based, so what I want to do in this article is dissect a lot of shoujo and see
what makes them tick, what the big underlying structure is, and from there
formulate a good definition.
 

                                                        FUSHIGI YUGGI

    A very popular series in the states right now, Fushigi Yuggi (mysterious play) deals
with a middle school aged girl named Miaka who, through a magic book, gets
sucked into a parallel universe, centered around the time of ancient China. Being
hilariously funny, full of action and suspense, and quite addictive, some times
you hardly even notice that the underlying love story unraveling between Miaka an
Tamahome is actually there. But it is the backbone to the show, the love triangle, or
square is more like it, between Miaka who love Tamahome, and Tamahome who loves
money, Hotohori, who loves Miaka, Nuriko, who’s really a man, baby, and is in
love with Hotohori…sounds like it could create some hysterical comedy scenes,
right? Wrong! For the most part the scenes that deal with the love story deal mostly
with the feelings of those involves, and it delves deeply into the persons inner most
 feelings…

     REVOLUTIONARY GIRL UTENA

 Utena is about a young girl who wants to be a Prince.  From the opening credits you can tell that its geared
 towards girls…The whole show is set in a dream like  cast, with clouds, and castle like buildings, and Princes
 coming to save the young mistresses, it touches on every  young girls core desires. Throughout the show, Utena
 gets overly emotional about things, the way young girls  tend to at that age, and everything is over exaggerated to
 prove that point. The Mysticism and fantasy surrounding the school and secret society are set up to
 be very romantic, and appealing to the age of 12-13.  Then there are the action scenes, with the sword fights.
 These are very showy, but not full of violence. This kinda shows that the show was keyed to touch the
 romantic, inner desires to be a princess of every young girl.
And now for something completely different...

    Supposedly the best piece of animation ever to come out of Japan, even though it hasnt been
released in the states yet, it is slated to be released sometime this summer in the theaters. X/1999 is a
sequel of sorts, to the popular Japanese TV show, X, but they have really nothing to do with each
other, except they were written by the same people. X/1999 deals with the possibilities of the
end of the world. One young man was selected to be the savior of the earth. He can be the light
side, and protect the earth as it is, or the dark side, and destroy it, and start from scratch. All in
all, this is the most violent anime i've ever seen, yet alone the most violent Shoujo, it deals with
the main characters inner most conflicts, as well as mourning for his dead love, and near insanity
from the choices he must make. It delves very deeply into the insanity that is caused, to the
point of him dreaming he is with the ghost of this love, hugging her, and her head slipping off,
which he doesn’t even think about.

    So far, we have figured that a shoujo is an anime that deals very heavily with people’s emotions, especially, but not exclusively, love. They also try to touch on people’s romantic side, even ever so slightly, to push the story along.
There are many other Shoujo titles out in the states right now, and they are insanely popular, especially in the men (go figure, huh?) There are also a huge amount of films that aren’t considered Shoujo, but posses the characteristics
we mentioned here, so the best place to start is your local video store, or online, if your interested!

                                         Pat McKernan