MIKAMI MEDITATIONS

My next mythcomics post will deal with a moderately obscure manga, GHOST SWEEPER MIKAMI (1991-99), and so part of this essay will be to explicate the manga's rationale and the background of its main characters. But I also want to use elements of this series to illustrate a special dynamic about epistemological patterns in fiction: that, unlike the patterns that human beings ascribe to aspects of reality, fictional patterns proceed not from cause to effect, but from effect to cause.

Every author who utilizes epistemological patterns in his fiction is naturally influenced by those found in reality. But whether the author is the organized type who plans out everything, or the type who flies by his pants-seat, authors in general first conceive of the effect they want to make with their characters/situations and then work backwards to justify the cause of the effects. The justification may not even be one that is currently validated by the dominant intellectual culture. Freudianism is not as validated today as in past eras. But when an author wants his story to invoke the psychological potentiality, Freud supplies the needed rationales for works ranging from MOURNING BECOMES ELECTRA to "Superman's Return to Krypton."

Here's what I wrote about the manga series for my review of the anime TV show:             

Starring character Reiko Mikami is a "ghost sweeper" in her late twenties or early thirties, and she uses a variety of supernatural weapons to exorcise troublesome ghosts and demons who plague modern-day people and businesses. Mikami is as courageous and resourceful as the best heroes, but she's also extremely mercenary, taxing her customers with huge bills so that someday she can become a rich woman. She's also slightly larcenous-- one episode displays her knowledge of burglary techniques-- and she constantly underpays her male assistant, seventeen-year-old Tadao Yokoshima. She gets away with this because she's super-hot and knows that horndog Yokoshima will accept any wage just to scope her out. The fact that she's exploiting the youth, however, does not keep her from doling out brutal punishment to the teen any time he tries to feel her up, or even expresses a negative opinion of her. Yokoshima, for his part, is clearly meant to be the "goat" of the series, the one who has all the terrible things happen to him-- and because he's such an unregenerate perv, his sufferings are funny.

Now, many long-running manga serials have exploited similar situations without imbuing their characters with anything like a psychology, and the first two years of SWEEPER seem like a lot of other comedy-oriented shonen manga: lots of high-powered action with some comedy relief in the form of a dumb guy getting clobbered. Reiko Mikami's first episode clearly shows her as a master of her ghostbusting craft, as well as her determination that anyone who needs her services must pay heavily for them. 

In contrast, she underpays assistant Yokoshima because he appears to be a subservient minion and even implies that she gives him fringe benefits whenever he peeps at her in the bath-- though when he goes so far as to touch her, or even to make lewd propositions, she beats the hell out of him. And yet, unlike similar serials like LOVE HINA and ZERO'S FAMILIAR, there's no internal rationale for keeping the fractious couple together. If Mikami is really repelled by Yokoshima's attentions, why doesn't she just fire him and find another cheap, horny teenager? 

 During the first two years of the feature, most of the stories were adapted to the aforementioned tv show-- though not the one entitled "Dad's Here." At the opening of the story, Mikami's second assistant Okinu, a naive young ghost, teases the sexy exorcist about being "gloomy" in Yokoshima's absence. Mikami asserts that she doesn't take the youth seriously because he's a lust-mongering "brat" while she's a mature woman. Yet she hedges her bets by stating that if he ever did become a real man, she might reconsider her verdict. The rest of the story, however, just shows Yokoshima messing up as usual.      

Now, while the manga-artist Takashi Shiina doesn't expend a lot of time on a backstory for Yokoshima, the story "Love Needs Its Time" provides some basic info on how high-schooler Mikami became a superior ghostbuster by training under a Christian exorcist. In addition, Shiina is careful to show that the priest is too idealistic to ask for remuneration. Yet his student Mikami is nothing like her sensei, being exceptionally desirous of making lots of money once she sets up her own ghost-sweeping business. But Shiina doesn't tell the reader why she came to be this way: a fairly unique admixture of heroism and avarice. 

Shiina does bring up the subject intermittently, though. One story shows how an enemy de-ages Mikami into a little girl, after which even Mikami's sensei remarks on the differences between the cute munchkin and her money-hungry adult self. In my next post, I'll show how I think Shiina built up some of Mikami's psychology in order to render a partial answer, guiding his readers to get the effect he Shiina desired.