Watching: Stop! Hibari-kun

 I'd reviewed this series briefly on my Letterboxd already, but I wanted to talk a little more in depth about the show.

 

      In late 00's (or perhaps it was 2010?) a couple fansubbed episodes of Stop! Hibari-kun popped up on Youtube. I'd discovered them quite accidentally, I think via someone on twitter mentioning the show, and right then and there I was hooked. At that time, I wasn't really encountering a lot of trans media and hadn't yet started to think of myself as trans, but it definitely caught my interest. Sadly, it was only a few episodes and the updates stopped. I'd also found the manga, but it was also in a state of only partial fan translation. Flash forward to the present day, where I was happy to learn that not only was a full fansub completed, but the whole series is now available in a good crisp quality. It looks gorgeous and I'm so glad this odd little slice of queer anime history has been preserved. I'd love for there to be an official release some day soon, but for now I'm just glad it's accessible.

    Stop! Hibari-kun is an anime based on the gag manga of the same name created by Hisashi Eguchi. The manga ran in Shonen Jump, a boy's periodical. It's not the typical thing you'd think of for shonen either- it's a romance parody, with its intent being to disrupt all the usual conventions of romance manga. The plot centers around Kosaku, who loses his mother and goes to live with an old flame of hers, a Yakuza boss named Ibari Ozora. Kosaku discovers that the Ozara family has 4 daughters- but as it turns out, one is "actually" a son. Hibari is trans and living as a girl, which is a source of a lot of the comedic conflict in the show. What was love at first sight for Kosaku is now terror at not wanting to be "weird", and to make matters worse, Hibari has her heart set on him. Ibari is also furious about the situation and often goes into a catatonic state where he hallucinates white alligators (which are characters in and of themselves that occur in the series somewhat as spirits or apparitions).

The white alligators are super cute.

    Sounds pretty transphobic, uncomfortable and bad right? It is, a bit, but the show overall is something very different. Hibari is incredibly cool and always comes out on top. She's plucky, confident, beautiful, strong, and can kick anyone's ass. She's a top student and the most popular girl at school. In a way, it's almost like Kosaku is the one who's weird for not being chill with her transness- she's the perfect girl. As the series progresses, both Kosaku and Hibari's family protect her from being outed and eventually the focus changes more from conflict centered around her gender to an overall acceptance. Perhaps it's that you can't milk that kind of tension forever without audiences getting bored, but I'd like to think that it's development on the side of these characters too. Hibari is who she is, and it's very hard to deny it.

    In an early episode, Hibari's father enlists a yakuza elite to try to train her to become more manly, and she thoroughly and completely wallops the guy. She doesn't need to be manly in order to be tough and strong. Time and again it's shown that she's great just the way she is. Later, his son comes seeking revenge, and instead that guy falls madly in love with Hibari. Beyond that, there isn't a lot of effort to actually prevent Hibari from living the way she wants. Later episodes focus more on different conflicts- school rivalries, other crushes, plots involving more development of other characters. The tone generally stays pretty light and silly.

    Even if there is a lot of initial conflict about her gender, Hibari's family does seem to soften as the series progresses. Her sisters eventually side with her, and even her father starts to relent- I should note that in the final episode he even says "you can play with dolls, just come home safe" when Hibari is challenged to a duel by a female rival. He's an interesting character. Old-fashioned, flawed, but ultimately a man who really loves his kids and dotes on them. He's also widowed, and it is apparent that he's very dedicated to caring for his remaining family as a single father. He also actively seeks the approval of his youngest daughter and really wants to be a good person in her eyes. Among all the silliness and gags of the show, there's a lot of surprising tenderness and care.

    While Kosaku definitely doesn't want to date Hibari, there's still a lot of affection from him towards his weird new found family. He always wants to do right by them and keep them safe, and that includes keeping Hibari's identity secret (even if sometimes that's about self interest and his own safety). You could do worse for a teen boy protagonist in a gender bender comedy.

    I'm not sure if the Yakuza element really ages well, but it's an element where it's more about the aesthetics than the reality of it. They're a criminal organization that doesn't really do any crime (just looks scary sometimes) and eventually they shift gears and try to be a detective agency. I imagine the yakuza setting was chosen to contrast specifically with Hibari, since it is a very masculine and particular environment.

    I will say, there certainly are a lot of gags and elements that are uncomfortable. But for me, it's actually some of the racist gags that are worse than any dealing with gender or sexuality. Seiji, one of the Yakuza goons, regularly dresses up to scare Kosaku awake in the mornings- and some of these outfits involve tribal facepaint and something like African or Pacific Islander costumes. Grass skirts, bone through the nose, leopard skins, that sort of thing. Not great, especially because Seiji is already darker skinned than most of the characters. There's also a minor character- a towering juvenile delinquent type- who is similarly racialized, complete with tribal nose-ring and some kind of speech quirk that doesn't feel apparent through translation but strikes me as playing on some racial trope. Frankly, a lot of anime is guilty of this, but so are a lot of European cartoons and American cartoons. I don't want to act like this is a specifically Japanese problem!

    The racial gags with Seiji are unfortunate too because he's honestly a sweet character. He's very good-natured and allows Suzume, the youngest Ozora daughter, to dress him up and put makeup on him. I know him being in drag is played for laughs but it's kind of iconic.

    Beyond some of these issues, the series is generally quite light-hearted and fun, with a lot of gags and plot-lines becoming outright surreal for humorous effect, especially towards the end. There's of course a ton of Japanese pop culture references- a good deal that go right over my head as I don't have a great grasp of everything celeb/tv/film in 80s Japan. Though of course there's all the ones you'd easily recognize- gags about Godzilla, Ultraman, Samurai films etc. Some American pop culture riffs sneak in there too- notably ET and Star Wars and some general goofs on Hollywood. 

 There is also, for some reason, a butler in an episode that looks like Klaus Nomi?

    What's also interesting is that Hibari isn't the only queer character in the series. While the representation isn't wholly positive, I would not say it's outright negative either- like in the case of Otori Jun, the girl's volleyball captain, who ends up getting a crush on Hibari. Otori also has a crowd of other girls fawning over her, and I do like the fact that the show has an appealing butch. I only wish she'd appeared in more episodes! She also has three gay leatherboy brothers and a drag king/trans masc parent who is an actor. There's also an episode where Hibari, Kosaku and her family are stranded on a desert island where they encounter a tribe with a girl just like Hibari (who turns out to also be trans), as well as a bittersweet episode where Ibari falls in love with Fumiko, a coffeeshop owner who ends up leaving him because she is trans and doesn't want to reveal that to him. She does end up sharing her identity with Hibari. Fumiko also clocks Hibari right away- and that's true to real life, we do tend to know our own kind fairly well.

Okay but I love them and they seem very nice

    The art style of the series is quite lovely too. I love the character designs, the visual comedy and expressions, as well as the pretty backgrounds. It's a good looking show! This period of anime really is a favorite. I have to say the opening theme and closing theme are very fun as well.

    What is most compelling really, is Hibari. She's the star of the show. Despite what anyone says, she's a girl and is living her truth, and she's wonderfully inspiring. I was not shocked to learn from an interview with the manga's creator that Hibari is essentially the girl he wanted to be. He went on to say that his focus in art, beautiful women, is a result of the frustration at not being born a woman too. It's hard to be harsh on the series knowing that a deeply personal thing inspired it. I've often felt that even with problematic representation, very often it's the result of someone processing their own feelings (and I wonder a bit about some of the problematic/recurring queer themes in other popular series).

    There's no real resolution for the anime- Kosaku and Hibari don't magically end up together by the end of it, nor does anything about their living situation or predicament resolve in any other way. I don't think it's something that could have resolved in a satisfying way, at least not at this place and this time. And I also don't think it's that kind of show. Though I'd like to think that maybe, eventually, Kosaku gets over himself. Or maybe the cute volleyball captain wins over Hibari's heart after all.