In my book A Psychiatric Analysis of Pretty Combat Girls, I take up the 'combat girl' as a typical example of Japanese character culture. This particular character probably has no equivalent in the entire world. This is a peculiar cultural representation created and carefully nurtured by Japanese manga and animation culture. Japanese animation culture, in particular, features so many pretty combat girls that it would not be an exaggeration to call it a culture of combating girls.

 Painyan, the heroine of 'Hakujyaden' (Legend of the White Snake), the first feature length color animation in our country, is said to have inspired the famous Miyazaki Hayao. Miyazaki himself confesses that he has acquired the taste for 'moe' (cute and sexy) after seeing Painyan. It is said that Miyazaki came across her when he was a high school student, and since then he has been unable to write a story without having a girl as the central character. In this sense, we can say that the encounter with Painyan was a kind of traumatic experience for Miyazaki as a boy.

 'Ribon no kishi' (Ribbon Knight) can also be seen as a forerunner of pretty combat girls. However, the characters were still androgenic and we detect the influence of Takarazuka theater, which Tezuka liked. In American movies, such as 'Babarera', fighting women appear, though they are not girls but older Amazon-type heroines. Nagai Tsuyoshi's 'Cuty Honey' also features a young girl. Moriyuki, the heroine of Yamamoto Reiji's 'Uchusenkan Yamato' (Space Battleship Yamato), was favored by many otakus. 'Gorenja' (Five Rangers) was a pioneer of the battle genre animation from about 30 years ago and Momorenja (Pink Ranger) was the girl amongst the five. The genre that includes a pretty combat girl as a representative member of the fair sex probably came from this. Ramuchan of 'Urusei yatsura', Verdandi of 'Ahh megamisama' (Oh Goddess), Mine Fujiko of 'Rupan Sansei' (Lupin III), and Saira Masu of 'Kidosenshi Gandamu' (Machine Fighter Gandam) are other epoch making icons in the history of pretty combat girl characters. In particular, 'Machine Fighter Gandam' includes sexually explicit representations as a part of Tomino's style. For example, there is a scene where Saira takes a shower in the feature film version of Gandam, and many otakus are said to have taken photographs simultaneously at that moment. Legend goes that people in the porno industry who happened to be there realized that they could produce erotic animation and came up with our country's first pornographic animation series 'Cream Lemon'. What actually happened cannot be confirmed but we can say that it led to the discovery of commercialization of sexual representation in animation. 'Maho no Purinsesu Minki Momo' (Magic Princess Minky Momo) is clearly an animation made for men with 'Lolicon'. Since then 'Lolicon' features came to be deliberately included.

 Miyazaki Hayao's 'Kaze no tani no naushika' (Naushika of the Windy Valley) is also a typical pretty combat girl animation representative of the 1980s. 'Bishojosenshi Seramuun' (Pretty Combat Girls Sailor Moon) is a work that swept over the animation world in the first half of the 1990s. It is significant in the sense that it created a wide range of fans from children to otakus. However, from around this period onwards Japanese animation ceases to be able to create new genres. In other words, the works since then are all mixtures of previous genres and producers can only think about how to combine genres. 'Sailor Moon' is also a mixture of magic girl genre and combat genre.

 The film directed by Oshii Mamoru called 'Ghost in the Shell' was based on manga by Shiro Masamune. The pictures of the original are rather close to the pretty girl genre but the form of the characters in the feature film version is more adult like. It is famous as the first work of animation made by a Japanese to be number one in the billboard in the cell video section. 'Shinseiki Evagerion' (Evangel of the New Century) is also a mixed work including various genres such as robot genre and school life genre. This probably became a hit because the director Anno Hideaki recreated the autobiographical novel in the form of animation. In this work, an emotionally inexpressive, very depressing heroine called Ayanami Rei captivated enthusiastic fans. Of course there are various prototypes of this character but I think it was an epoch making work in the sense that this type of heroine captivated men to such an extent.

 If I may divert from my argument a little, recently little combating girls are emerging amongst American comic heroines, too, though they are not very pretty. 'Battle Chaser' is an example, and 'Power Puff Girls', though this is more like a cartoon than a comic. Recently, pretty girls are gradually beginning to be depicted more than the past due to the influence of Japanese animation.

 Next I want to talk briefly about the genre called yaoi. Manga representation developed tremendously after it discovered the possibility of depiction of sexuality. The presence of the comic market is very much related to this development. The comic market is where otakus buy and sell coterie magazines most of which are pornographic parodies. Here the authors compete and improve their works. We can say that works for men evolved into genres of beautiful, cute and sexy girls, and many works for women evolved into genres of young homosexual men (yaoi). There is no doubt that yaoi and pretty girl genres are the two greatest forces in the otaku industry today, though they are further divided into categories such as 'shota' and hermaphrodite.

 Yaoi is said to be an abbreviation for 'yamanashi, ochinashi, iminashi' (no climax, no conclusion, no meaning). It is a term expressing a genre of work that has very little narrative and just depicts homosexual relationships between men. The simplest definition of yaoi would be a 'love story between men written by women only for women'. Many professional manga authors have emerged from this genre.

 For example, Yoshinaga Fumi is famous for her work 'Seiyo Kotto Yogashiten' (Western Antique Confectionary Shop), which is a very well made yaoi manga. As a matter of fact, she herself has produced a self-parody of this work for the comic market. This was published by a coterie magazine, so extremely explicit sexual scenes are depicted. Of course, such depictions are not found in the commercially circulated versions, so the mania version is very popular among yaoi lovers as such depictions can be found everywhere in that particular version. Whether good or bad, this kind of culture has become firmly rooted in the comic market.

 Yoshinaga has an established reputation as the author of 'Ai ga nakutemo kutte ikemasu' (We can survive without love), which is a manga about gourmet, but she of course began her career in yaoi coterie magazines. This genre has already become a very powerful system for nurturing authors and very talented authors are emerging from this genre. If we consider this fact, we cannot just dismiss yaoi, because we feel it is unwholesome or revolting. It is also one aspect of manga evolution.

 There is also a genre called 'shota' which is again a different genre to those I have mentioned above. 'Shota', to put it simply, involves having sexual desire for small boys up till the age of about primary school. The word derives from Shotaro, who appears in 'Tetsujin 28go' (Iron Man Number 28) wearing shorts and controlling the iron man. There are maniacs who think this boy is cute, so the phenomenon is known as the Shotaro complex. This was further abbreviated to shota (shotacon). If one fulfills such sexual desires in reality, one would be treated as a pedophile, but of course the phenomenon is restricted to boys in virtual reality.

 As a further development from shota, there is a manga in a coterie magazine, for example, which depicts a small boy becoming a green caterpillar. This 'green caterpillar boy' is then sexually abused. I will not show you that particular scene here because it is too grotesque. When we see scenes depicting sexual intercourse of such characters, we cannot even classify them in psychoanalytic terms. They could be seen as instances of bestiality or pedophilia, but I really do not know how to describe these things.

 I presented these examples because I want you to understand how the desires of otakus are completely dissociated from real sex. Even women who are into yaoi manga have husbands and children in real life. But in virtual space, their sexuality is transformed, and that is why the comic market includes such a variety of genres. Half of sexual desires of otakus are impossible to fulfill in reality. There is no such thing as a green caterpillar with a boy's face. So in that sense, there is a peculiar form of sexuality in which a person can have desire in virtual space, even though there is no such object of sex in reality. Such estranged and anomalous form of sexuality is again a form of evolution in manga space.