MIKAMI MEDITATIONS PT. 3

 The other day I finished reading the last of Takashi Shiina's 1991-99 manga GHOST SWEEPER MIKAMI. The series is very much like several serials by Rumiko Takahashi, whom Shiina considers a symbolic "sensei" (though he never apprenticed under her) -- by which I mean that MIKAMI is a combination of utterly wacky comedy antics and of moments of sentimental insight into the complexities of the human heart. Anything I will write about this shonen series must take into account how Shiina chose to sell his unique heroine to his readers.

When I wrote the first part of MIKAMI MEDITATIONS in early March, I was probably a little over half through the series. I raised the question as to whether the domineering Mikami would ever reveal a deeper "I-thou" relationship to her bumbling assistant Yokoshima, as opposed to just using him as a tool, an "I-it" relationship. I was fairly sure, though, that Shiina meant to tease the readers on the subject for most if not all of the series, much as Takahashi did with the relationship of Ataru to Lum in URUSEI YATSURA. He threw in lots of little moments-- Mikami being jealous whenever Yokoshima received attention from another attractive female, obviously-- but he could have brought the relationship to a close, as Takahashi did with another series that Shiina probably encountered, MAISON IKKOKU. I can now say without doubt that Shiina chose to emulate URUSEI rather than MAISON, but also that all Mikami's protests, in which she claims not to need or want Yokoshima as anything but a tool, prove empty. She's more or less the "Ataru" of the series, managing to confess without confessing, as occured in the final URUSEI manga-tale, BOY MEETS GIRL.

In the first MEDITATIONS, I also wondered if Shiina was building to some big revelation as to what psychological attitudes led Mikami to become so extraordinarily greedy. However, to the very end Shiina kept that set of cards to himself. He does, in the arc "Message from Mother," demonstrate that neither of Mikami's parents knows how this attitude came about, and an even later arc, "GS Mikami '78," provides evidence that greed was not a major feature of either Mikami's mother Michie in her youth, or of her father, whose backstory is for the first time expanded for the reader's delectation. She's like neither of them in that regard, but I don't think Shiina had no opinion on the matter. He just wanted to keep readers guessing, which I'll explore in another post.

Also, though I've not mentioned it here, I was hoping to get at least two mythcomics posts out of the MIKAMI series, since March is "Women's History Month," an event I sometimes like to celebrate-- though often not in a way any ultra-feminist would recognize. And to my immense pleasure, Shiina provided a second concrescent work in this serial-- though it required an earthquake to bring it forth.