[Author's note: the following essay is based mostly on the Fushigi Yuugi TV series. Despite this, it contains heavy spoilers from both the TV Series and the OVA's. Let the reader beware. The following also contains opinions, assumptions, postulations and incredible leaps of logic. The level of over-analysis that went into this humble paper is enough to make any English professor proud. That aside, the author looks forward to friendly discussion of this work and hopes that readers will take a moment to email their thoughts and ideas. Enjoy!]
"What is love?" That's the question Yuu Watase poses to us every time we watch Fushigi Yuugi. What is love? What is "true love?" And how do we tell what is real from what is false? Everyone has their own opinions, and everyone has their own ideals. No one person is necessarily right or wrong. The chances are, however, that each of us has thought a great deal about this subject at some point in time.
What is sex? Is it an expression of love? Is it a mere physical act? Is it a point of no return? These questions too plague our minds. We live in an era where teens and preteens are becoming sexually active at younger and younger ages. At the same time, STD's and teen pregnancies remain a constant threat. We live in a world where sex is used to sell everything from cars to soap and where the hero always gets the girl in the end. Conservative ideals of love remain prevalent, and yet, they are all-too-often ignored. In the end, it becomes difficult to even make such personal decisions
Growing up in this sort of environment is understandably tough. Peer pressure, family pressure, and societal pressure work on each of us until we can no longer tell up from down. By the age of fifteen--and in some cases, even younger--we are expected to make decisions that will affect the rest of our lives. The mere idea is daunting. Can we honestly blame kids for making the wrong decisions?
Fushigi Yuugi works to ease this transition. From the beginning, the subject matter indicates that we will be discussing sex a great deal. We are bombarded with cross-dressers, virgin mikos, and sex magic. Even the show's title, translated roughly to mean "Mysterious Play," or "Strange Game", takes on a distinctly sexual connotation. And what game is more strange and mysterious to us than love?
The elements of the story and the characters are a road map designed to guide us through these difficult decisions. The story becomes an allegory for our first experiences with romantic love and sex. Since in an allegory, each character represents an idea, and emotion, or a quality, each of the characters within Fushigi Yuugi represents an idea about love and sex.
Miaka
As the principle character, Miaka Yuuki represents the viewer--or in a more formal sense, humanity--in this allegory. She encompasses many of the qualities we wish to see in ourselves. She is forthright and earnest, and, if not the brightest of girls, she possesses a good heart that more than makes up for it. Essentially, however, she is your average teenage girl, no better or worse than anyone, save that she has a good heart. At the beginning of the story, she is thrust into a strange world. The world of the Shijintenchisho is at once inviting, exciting, and full of horror.
Isn't this what everyone goes through when they are fifteen? Emotionally, physically, and intellectually, we are developing past childhood. Miaka is growing up, and as she does, she is presented with new choices and decisions. Some of these choices involve love, some involve friendship, and some involve responsibility.
Miaka encounters many ordeals which mimic decisions in our own world. She must make decisions that involve friends and lovers, and there may not always be a perfect solution. As the series progresses, her virginity becomes integral to the story. In many ways, this is simply a heightening of the significance we place on virginity now. In an era where we feel less inhibited about sex, Yuu Watase is asking us to reexamine the issue. She indicates that we have responsibilities that can be compromised in the act of sex.
Miaka exists then, not as a representation of a concept, but as she who learns and grows from this lesson. She interacts and is affected by many forms of love, and ultimately, her choices make her a stronger, more mature individual.
Yui
Yui Hongo is Miaka's foil throughout the series. She exists much for the same reasons Miaka does, but her actions ultimately lead her down a darker path. Yui is the intellectual of the pair, and yet, though she tries to reason out the proper actions, she is constantly beset by greater problems and difficulties. In the end, Yui learns as much as Miaka about love and friendship, but her lessons came at a greater price.
The key to Yui's downfall is her intellect. Yui tries to reason her way through problems. In trials of love, however, we soon discover that rational thought will not lead to the correct answers. Yui falls victim to her own bitterness. Her reason casts doubt over her friendship with Miaka, and her trust in Nakago's logical arguments leads her down the wrong path. Yui demonstrates to us that in the realm of love, we cannot always trust our minds, and we must follow our hearts. Further, by her actions at the end of the series, she teaches us that we can atone for our mistakes. There is no point of no return in the world of relationships; we can always turn away from a bad situation, no matter how powerless we feel.
Each of the fourteen principle Shichiseishi in the series represent a quality of love. In general, the Suzaku Shichiseishi represent positive (if sometimes misguided forms of love), the Seiryuu generally represent love that is misused or harmful.
Article copyrighted 1999 Bard
