For girls nongirls the ungirled and others floundering in the gossamer vapours of a rosetinted youth or otherwise writhing feminine malaise. Are you still evading the clown? Spoiler Warning Iras most epitomizing characteristics are her fantastical neuroses surrounding the terrors lying in wait as her adult life encroaches exemplified in the first few pages of the manga where she proclaims that her blood is going to freeze dry and turn to instant coffee once her sister gets married the next day. As a permanent fixture of her childhood her sisters presence symbolized a harmonious stasis of warmth and innocence serving as the amnioticfluidbarrier from the frightening outside world of adults. Her departure forcibly shakes Ira awake from her cozy dream of everlasting girlhood and reminds her of the fate that menacingly looms over her own horizon from which she has no viable escape. Her only solution is to retreat into juvenile dreams and shimmering illusions that firmly rivet her to an artificially maintained childhood. Aside from instant coffee blood powder she also readily believes in other delusions like this one originating as a bedtime story from her father a clown of otherworldly beauty who devours children that misbehave by staying up past 10 pm. Her belief in the clown specifically is so fervent that it reappears over and over again throughout the manga by way of dreams eagerly waiting to pounce when shes weakened. Ira is implied to be a highschooler and yet she plays pretend with dolls for fun she plays hopscotch sings lullabies to herself braids long grass together as though it were hair talks with the rose bushes that grow outside her house and believes they talk back to her she speaks of herself in the third person she dreams of a fairytale prince that gallantly rescues her from evildoersIra is indefinitely frozen in this naive starryeyed girlhood her youth immortalized in all the childish traits that define her. Other characters take notice of this as well even asserting that she needs Linuss peanuts comics security blanket to calm her down when she gets herself too riled up in her infantile anxieties. https://i.ur.com/FwlESM7.png Iras stubborn anchoring of herself in her girlhood is also the reason for her decision to marry a closeted gay man: she recognizes that marriage is compulsory and inescapable but if she chooses a homosexual shell manage to circumvent the obstacle of motherhood which is the ultimate seal of womanhood. Additionally gay men are not real men so her marriage with one wouldnt even constitute a real marriage at once eluding the mark of womanhood without having to endure her peers scorn. If this seems convoluted and somewhat nonsensical thats because it is. The Girls situation during the transitory period from girlhood to womanhood generates innumerable contradictions and conflicts within her when it comes to negotiating her place in the world and navigating her way between desires and fears which are often inextricably bound to each other. Virile force and masculine brutality draw her away from men but her curiosity and burgeoning desire draw her closer to them. She is enraptured by the idea of love transforming her into a beautiful butterfly but she senses that female metamorphosis is bloody and torturous so she imperiously remains a caterpillar. The mythology of the Girl engulfs Ira in stories and dreams of fairytale romances with knights in shining armor but harshly condemns any concrete expression of desire in real life as an unsightly blemish on her purity. She tries to find a balance between her girlish dreams of storybook romances and her fears of the tangible corporeal Man but they only deluge her brain with swirling irreconcilable forces that rip her to pieces. Shes meant to harbor nothing but positive associations with female adulthood wifehood motherhood etc but something within her is deeply afraid. Afraid of sexual initiation of becoming alienated in her own body as it changes shape against her will of being enclosed within an impermeable domestic sphere and somewhere inside herself Ira begins to realize that embracing her feminine vocation precludes her from emerging as a sovereign subject once puberty finishes. In childhood neither girl nor boy are fully autonomous subjects but their relative androgyny/sexlessness grants them a level of freedom that will be ruthlessly stripped from them as soon as theyre deemed old enough to bear the mark of gender. If Ira accepts womanhood she must renounce her personhood and instead become a thing of flesh becoming the female object in opposition to the male subject. The only part of this thats spelled out on a nearverbatim level in the manga is Iras deepseated and inexplicable fear of becoming an adult there is literally a scene where Ira runs away in tears after seeing an abstract painting entitled Departure which begins to become clearer and more explainable once you realize just how much its tangled up in the throes of her gender. https://i.ur.com/rrsClNR.png And Iras only coping mechanism is retreating into childish fantasy. She whines and cries and throws tantrums spends her time with frivolous childrens games and hobbies she should have grown out of years ago begs to be swaddled and cradled and sung to sleep she believes in fairytales and foolish bedtime stories and lives by them as though they were inscribed as natural laws of the universe. This is actually the throughline between a lot of Yumiko Ooshimas work centralizing female protagonists at this specific juncture in their adolescent lives retreating into the makebelieve and generally just being hysterically insane. Kusakanmuri no Hime/Grass Crown Princess is the quintessential example where the protagonist fully convinces herself that she must be pregnant as a result of merely being kissed by a man causing a mental breakdown. Her girlish naivete and lack of sexual knowledge isnt just cute happenstance it is a desperate attempt for her to cling to fantasy and childhood due to fear of real sexual initiation. Ooshima writes about girls who are fundamentally maladapted to reality fanning their childish narcissism cloistered and coddled in their mental frailty. I honestly think the popularity of this archetype was partially fueled by outdated medical beliefs i.e. womens bodies having no differentiation between psychic life and psychological realization causing them to experience imaginary illnesses women are biologically hysterical creatures. Stuff which would now be considered abhorrent pseudoscience but was unfortunately very commonly widely believed at the time Ooshima was working although it would have been on its way out. Also in line with this is the quintessential year24 allusions to psychoanalytics especially when shes being cheeky about it with one student saying This is like something out of Freud Well yes There is also a panel where one of the main cast is holding a book entitled psychoanalysis and psychotherapy and a whole section towards the end where they start using actual theoretical terms when talking about incest womb regression and homosexuality. Im purposefully not doing this writeup through a psychoanalytical framework because I think the entire field is Evil but I do find it genuinely funny. https://i.ur.com/8ZrrXD9.png In chapter 3 Ira has a hysterical breakdown when her presumably gay husband walks in on her and her best friend during their sleepover after theyve both beautified the other in a makeover fully clothed. She cries and screams in a temper tantrum that no one quite understands especially since she insists that being seen by him like this is more indecent than nudity. This is because she still believes herself to possess the androgynous sexless body of a child. But applying makeup to that bodyadding a warm flush to the cheeks a bittenred quality to the lips a sultry darkness to the eyesinvariably evokes eroticism. Which isnt remarkable when shes alone in her innocence but the second a man enters the picture or more specifically his eyes his gaze his perception she suddenly finds herself smothered by the indomitable filth of Sex. Her flesh is transformed upon reaching male eyes instantly dirtier and more distinctly woman she grasps herself as an object of flesh on which men have a hold. His gaze is the lethal revelation of her feminine destiny. Ira yearns to bask in the sunlight of her girlhood she does not consent to becoming Woman because she does not consent to becoming Flesh she does not consent to becoming carnal prey surrendering to the strange and disturbing new shape that this body is taking through puberty. This body from which she is alienated. This body which only remains in her possession for a finite period of time. This body which will exist solely for purposes outside of herself. This body which becomes a passive vessel for proliferation. Made of flesh through flesh and for other flesh it exists within itself but never beyond itself. Once Girl becomes Woman she is barred from transcending her flesh in perpetuity and her flesh thus becomes a prison wherein she wallows immanently devolving into nothing but pure inertia. Ira rejects this premise but doesnt understand how to effectively combat it so she squirms helplessly and runs backwards into the past. https://i.ur.com/gjcrK69.png The worse her situation gets the more she regresses. When its revealed her husband is secretly heterosexual and was deceiving her the entire time her griefstricken frenzy propels her outside to ardently pray to the stars that she be reincarnated as her sisters baby. If she can return to infancy she obtains the ultimate innocence as clearly her current youthful displays arent sufficing. She is soon devoured by the ethereal clown in one of her dreams and when she awakens Ira has fully convinced herself that shes become the clown monster. She specifically likens it to bodily possession referencing the Exorcist films. At this point Ooshima is kind of beating you on the head with the metaphor saying this playfully and not as criticism pls dont get me twisted in the whole changing from girl to woman depersonalization aspect as Ira peers into the mirror and covers her eyes in horror at the form standing before her: uncanny disturbing and not recognizable as herself. She never consummated the marriage they never even so much as kissed but the fact alone that a heterosexual man was able to gaze upon Ira in the context of her being a woman makes her feel so thoroughly defiled that all of her personhood is evisceratedor in this case swallowed whole and replaced by an unidentifiable skinwalker. https://i.ur.com/cvtas64.png After Ira stabs her second husband thistimelegitimatelyhomosexual closeted professor at her school several decades her senior and extremely abusive through the heart with a knife shes sent down a manic spiral. The only two pathways forward she imagines are either suicide or being locked away in a sealed chamber for the rest of her life. The only wrinkle is that hes barely even injured whatsoever as the great stabbing was entirely a delusion on Iras part having barely wounded him with a small scratch. In all of her misery and desperation the singular most drastic act of defiance Ira musters is one she cant even follow through with. It is wholly symbolic in nature. Instead of just pushing that knife a couple inches deeper she submits to the constraints that bind her. In the ultimate resignation she opts for an audacious spectacle rather than something that actually changes the course of her life. She wriggles around in her shackles and the action only tightens them. Meek fragile and powerless she is bereft of agency she once possessed and can no longer effectuate change on her ownshe is forced to rely on the agency of men to make her cage more comfortable. She accomplishes this by flailing around femininely to garner attention and paternal concern. This resignation propels her into womanhood and she ultimately ends up dating the man who was her first husband the fakegay heterosexual shouldering the burden of her new life without protest. https://i.ur.com/6C0bo6e.png The last few pages of the manga punctuate the ending with a baffling dream wherein Iras future baby is speaking to her and she instructs it to not be afraid to escape from the womb to enter the outside world as a wonderful future lies ahead. When she wakes up she wonders why she felt so assured in her words when she has yet to encounter that magnificent future of her own and would have no concrete reason to believe it even exists. What Ooshima wants her readers to take from this is in my opinion entirely inscrutable especially since it stations Ira at an awkward threequarterscomplete of a prescribed character arc and just ends it there. Her transition to womanhood finally feels like an ascension rather than a plummet into the abyss and whatever prison shes eternally entrapped in is one that she graciously accepts. She is no longer fleeing from an ineluctable capture shes instead decorating the walls of her jail cell in sparkling adornments to assuage herself in her subjugation. I swear Im not making the ending sound more cynical than it isthe last page is Ira questioning herself questioning the validity of a positive statement she made questioning whether she has the credibility to tell her future child that life is worth livingand the question remains unanswered Ira would like more than anything to assure herself and the world around her that shes finally happy with growing into her womanhood but she cant say the words without doubting herself. Ira is no longer permitted any greater search for meaning in any continuous movement because her meaning is predefined she already has an ascribed fixed value as woman. In commencing with womanhood she finds herself firmly riveted in place encased within the four walls of her home doomed to repetition and perpetuating the present. Whats left to wonder is whether there are any other foreseeable pathways any other futures that would enable Ira to age into adulthood without becoming Woman in its current form. In all the vast stretches of Iras vivid imagination where she conjures up fantasies of talking rose bushes childeating clowns and blood that turns to instant coffee she never once envisions a life unbound to her carnal flesh and untethered to her animal function. In all the glitter rose petals and sweet cherubic angelbaby dreams the ending of Banana Bread Pudding finds Ira fumbling around in despairing obscurity for answers that wont ever come to her. https://i.ur.com/MP5g0hC.png The mangas form and Iras place within that construction and I have to talk about this because Im insufferable renders the space of the story itself into a sort of paradisal gynaeceum for the young girl reader to take temporary refuge in protected from the tyranny of the masculine universe. Ira fears being surrendered to masculine brutality appearing to man as a physical being and fleshly entity so she races backwards against time to prevent it. Ooshimas audience attains this same illusoryeternalgirlhood themselves within the pages of the manga caressed by scattered cherry blossoms and sunflower bundles peering deeply into the glassy dolleyes of the protagonist sighing sweetly to drawings of pastel silks vanilla creams and roseperfumed bathwater. The vast majority of vintage shoujo manga posits their female subjects within this realm the ephemeral dream of youth reigning supreme this is not entirely relevant but its not coincidental that an inordinately large portion of western womens literature also does this many of them actually being subsumed into the animanga world as well through adaptation e.g. Akage no Anne Alps no Shoujo Heidi Perrine Monogatari Shojoko Sera like half of World Masterpiece Theaters catalogue. The average vintage shoujo heroine is unable to envisage herself or her life in any domain outside of the fanciful abstractions of girlish immaturity. Sex does not yet exist in this domain. Every pulse of the heart quiver of the flesh and swelling of the breast is pure as shining snow since the sinful taint of sex has not yet crystallized itself in the heart of the young girl. But when it does enter the picture it will send the skies of their insular worlds crashing down. This is also why tragedy is such a hallmark of vintage shoujo where someone always has to die be abused or otherwise suffer. The childish fantasy of ageless girlhood is so sacred because of the extreme contingency and precariousness of its position. This is also why vintage yuri also usually characterizes lesbianism as childish for girls no matter what type of girl all roads point to the same destination. Im trying really hard to not type 379977 words about this because this topic makes me insane but all throughout vintage shoujo even in series with selfassured rebellious otenba protagonists from Candy Candy to Haikarasan ga Tooru they cannot escape the inexorable force of womanization which usually takes shape as marriage. These stories often end when the girl is married or she finds a man who shes implied to end up marrying. After being quickly integrated into the heterosexual regime there is no use continuing the story. There is girlhood and there is wifehood but there is seldom a period of autonomous independent female adulthood youd have to wait until the 80s and the rise of josei for that. https://i.ur.com/mWUJABA.png To be fully clear I do not believe that vintage shoujo mangaka are terrible misogynists operating solely to induct vulnerable young girls into the patriarchal economy except Yumiko Igarashi sorry girl but you are kind of evil. These mangaka for the most part were fully aware that that girlhood isnt actually this mystically flawless period in a womans life but that it only reached that status through patriarchal propagandization. Elevated on a pedestal in her symbolism of virginity and purity woven into myth and legend and embroidered into the seams of countless societies as the ultimate Ideal she is youthful beautiful uneducated inexperienced not tarnished by the sexual world she is the blazing emblem of virtuousness. And once she grows up she loses absolutely everything. She will be forced into sexual initiation and subsequently defiled and by becoming the sexual creature she was always destined to be she forfeits the gleaming virgin halo she once possessed and becomes dirt. This quote is overused but Denis Diderot said in his letters to Sophie Vollant of young girls You will all die at fifteen and understandably Ira doesnt want to die. And yet she has to she is expected to. This is the eternal dilemma of the young girl this tragic double bind where shes doomed no matter what. This is I think what vintage shoujo mangaka are trying to capture over and over again to varying degrees of success. Yumiko Ooshima along with the other year 24 mangaka tend to do it better than most. For Banana Bread Pudding to have a less shaky ending sex would first have to not turn women to Dirt. For women to stop being Dirt every single facet of this world would have to change so radically that even Ooshima herself cant imagine what it would look like and therefore cant write a conclusive ending. https://i.ur.com/kjdQWK5.png On a more positive note I do genuinely believe that women have been more staunchly refusing Dirthood for a while now and there are more people outside of The Young Girl who enjoy Yumiko Ooshimas work. Haggard unsocialized gay people LOVE Yumiko Ooshima I am one of them. And the young girl likely isnt reading her anymoreshe might be reading Kyoko Okazaki instead Some of her kind have even been spotted reading Jujutsu Kaisen We have not determined whether this is good or bad yet. Much of Banana Bread Pudding is still indecipherable to me there are entire layers of the story I left out of this writeup just to help me focus. Above all else it might actually be a melodrama about a messy lovepentagon. Its deranged nonsensical whimsical traumatizing magical sparkly depressing silly fantastical and painful. Its about girlhood and its about fear. The first time I read it it sort of just washed over me like a tsunami in its jampacked everythingness and if youd asked me why it provoked such an intense emotional reaction I wouldnt have been able to tell you. I imagine thats something along the lines of what the average 1970s Japanese fourteen yearold girl may have felt reading it. And after this lifesucking ordeal of arranging my incoherent thoughts into letters and words and sentences this entire writeup feels profoundly futile and superfluous because what Im really trying to do is indicate which part of my soul this manga pokes and prods at. Banana Bread Pudding offers a transitional sanctuary to the girl who trembles beneath the branding iron that stands to mark her as Woman as time passes shell one day manage to sift through her delusions and emerge from her turbidity in a triumphant luminosity but if this happens somewhere in the future or is even beginning to happen now Yumiko Ooshima certainly hasnt witnessed it for herself. When she was a girl her hands were empty: in hope in dreams she possessed everything. Now she has acquired a share of the world and she thinks in anguish: there is nothing more than this forever. Forever this husband forever this home. Simone de Beauvoir https://i.ur.com/Tv0p5PP.png