Periods in Anime!

Very Long Read. You might want to skip past my long, personal story to reach the reviews on ‘After School Nightmare’, ‘Galko chan’, ‘Science Fell in Love’, and ‘Kaguya Sama; Love is War’.

You read it right – this blog is going to be entirely devoted to menstruation – or the lack thereof – in anime.

My experience of anime has shown me that the period is mysteriously absent, but I am determined to excavate those few examples that do exist and then… I’m going to talk about them. Unfortunately, I don’t know or remember many examples, so I’m going to need your help.

If you’re reading this and know of an anime that makes periods canon in its universe – please comment with the name! I’m also open to reading other people’s discussions on this topic!

But before I get into this undertaking, here’s some personal information that will inform some of my opinions and why I’m so determined to write this.

 

Just scroll past this bit if you want to skip to reviews about how the period is presented in various anime/manga.

Ouch!

Menstruation isn’t the same for everyone – it doesn’t occur to all women, firstly, and therefore it doesn’t define the ‘female’ experience. On the other hand, it does happen to the vast majority of women (and some men) at some stage in their lives.

Everyone’s experience is different. I’ve spoken to some girls who feel empowered by this very blatant sign of maturation, I’ve spoken to people who don’t really care about it, I’ve spoken to people who’ve panicked about their health because it didn’t happen for while. My experience is a negative one, but it’s this negativity that is pushing me to write on the subject.

I’m now in my 20s, and for me, the monthly cycle is a monthly trauma – but it never used to be. As a young girl waxing anorexic, the monthlies came and went and I kept studying. I never skipped P.E. because of it, I didn’t need painkillers either.

As a young woman, I’m now used to trying to plan my life around it. The first two days are excruciating – I’m often found crying at my desk at work approximately once a month. Booking holidays? Hold the phone! We need to book it within two weeks of my starting my irregular bleeding because I don’t intend to risk spending my scant time off, hunched over with gut wrenching cramps – I want to see the world! I want to eat it too – I don’t want the nausea that comes with the monthlies on holiday, either.

Not just holidays, I barely go out during these painful times. I struggle to eat. I feel exhausted. I feel betrayed for being born with a female body – but where is the representation of this experience in anime? When the ladies of Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni are murdering left, right and center – is there a moment where they’re wincing because of monthly cramps, rather than out of disgust for their actions? Maybe.

I’m not the only one whose period disables them for a brief time every month. Over the course of the average woman’s life, she spends over 6 years menstruating – so it’s not so brief after all, and while not every menstruating person finds their period debilitating, most agree its at least somewhat uncomfortable. This means that at it’s least harmful, six years of female-bodied discomfort is regularly written out of our media.

Is this because the period is viewed as something too dirty to discuss? I often find myself thinking about its lack, and wondering where such an intensely female-bodied experience has gone to. I wonder if most of the best girls in anime are all secretly male-bodied, or if they live in an alternate reality where the period is solved.

Does the female body even exist in anime??

It’s a pretty mad question to ask, given the proportions of the female-body are so often exaggerated beyond belief in media, but if I can find it with this blog – then I will.

Don’t forget to send me anime titles where periods exist!

I’m going to be updating this blog with discussions for each title I watch that mentions it. If this blog gets too long, I’ll turn it into a series. You can get notifications for updates by following me here, or by following my Twitter @Melancholy3004.

After School Nightmare

I picked this manga up after reading the TV Tropes page, No Periods, Period, where it is the first entry in the anime/manga section. After School Nightmare is a psychological shoujo horror that creates a sense of unease regarding perceptions of gender and the ideal body.

This manga sees the intersex protagonist who is ‘male on the top half, female from the waist down’ getting his first period and feeling deeply confused about it. Soon after, he is approached by a mysterious nurse who helps him to enter a dream state where an individual’s true self is revealed. Every Thursday evening, he revisits this world, accompanied by classmates who have become estranged by the weird forms they take on in the dream.

The aim is to find your true identity in the dream, after which you never return. For the protagonist, Mashiro, the decision to choose a gender and sexuality is an incredibly difficult one. For someone who identifies as male, his period is shown as a nightmare that shakes the foundations of everything he believed to be true about himself, and it returns throughout the plot to repeatedly betray his intents to appear manly.

In the beginning, Mashiro is a bit of a sexist who believes women to be weaker than men. He is ashamed of the period and the weaknesses it brings out in him. Throughout the plot, however, Mashiro comes to realise that women are actually really strong, and it’s at this point that his stress and fear over periods and his own femininity washes away. It’s really cathartic watching Mashiro unravel all the stereotypical perceptions he holds about male and female gender identities, and by the end I was really rooting for them!

I’d really love for this manga to get an animation! I’m still a little confused about the ending, but overall I thought it was pretty amazing!

Science Fell in Love, so I Tried to Prove It!

Shinya’s Hypothesis for Himuro’s Frustration

As much as I love Rikekoi, Shinya’s theory that Himuro is menstruating in episode 11 is… an interesting one.

It raises two questions:

• Does Shinya know that Himuro is on her period, and so he thinks it is affecting her reasoning?
• Does Shinya believe that Himuro is behaving so inexplicably that she must be on her period?

The distinction matters a little, because the second instance means that he associates all ‘poor’ female behaviour with menstruation. The anime does hint that Himuro could be her on period during the vacation, so it’s possible that Shinya is simply wondering whether pain could be making Himuro angry.

Here’s my hypothesis for Himuro truly being on her period in this arc:

• Her swimsuit is red (sometimes a trope in anime for girls on their period).
• She’s also wearing a skirt with her swimsuit which could be an extra precaution for any mishaps down there, rather than a fashion statement.
• She sprains her ankle in the finale!

Did you know that female athletes are more likely to suffer serious sprains and injury when sporting on their period? Here’s a science-y article about How Women are Underrepresented in Sports Science. That article is behind a paywall, but you can read some of the ideas behind it in this BBC article about female athletes and their periods.

Whether or not you assume that Himuro is on her period, we don’t know how her period affects her. For all we know, she could be a light bleeder whose daily activities are mostly unaffected by the monthlies. As such, it’s completely unfair to assume that Himuro’s intellectual talent is marred by her physiology, even if she is bleeding.

Conclusion: Shame on Shinya! It was wrong for him to assume Himuro’s period, and it was wrong to assume that it was causing her enough pain to affect her mental output.

As a science type, he should have known that periods are underrepresented in scientific study, therefore, bringing it into an analysis of Himuro’s current behaviour was a bad move – intellectually and socially. Make sure your arguments always come from a reputable source with decent studies!

Enough about the characters though, let’s think about the show handled it overall.

Rikekoi is a romcom that often portrays the common stereotypes of women and men in humorous fashions. It doesn’t always make a statement on these stereotypes, however. It isn’t always clear whether they are shown to be harmful or harmless. The common assumption that erratic female behaviour is linked to their period is certainly a dangerous one that causes tensions between relationships.

Rikekoi shows how ignorance about the role of menstruation in society can be dangerous. It often leads to misunderstandings and upset between people when its effects are exaggerated or understated. Remember! Everyone is an individual – we all experience and deal with things differently, periods included. Shinya’s failure to remember this makes the tension between the two more pronounced. Don’t be a Shinya!

Please Tell Me! Galko-chan

One of my lovely commenters recommended this anime to me after reading this blog! A big thank you for that because I absolutely loved this anime!

Galko-chan is an anime that will show you a high school experience you can only wish you had. Now, usually I don’t like these types of shows—I find them to be a bit vapid. What can I say? Cute girls don’t do it for me. Galko-chan is different.

Galko-chan is a refreshing dose of femininity in a harsh world, and it’s something more teenagers should be watching.

The female body is often portrayed as a forbidden land, waiting to be explored by a (usually male) conqueror. BUT NOT SO IN GALKO-CHAN. Galko-chan takes some popular questions about the female body and answers them with humour and honesty, periods included.  Better yet, it’s not about being discovered by anyone, it’s about discovering yourself. Don’t let some standard harem main character type barge in with random ideas about your body! Be Galko-chan and define yourself, with some healthy conversation between good friends who are on the same journey of self-discovery.

In episode two, the girls are talking about issues they have with period products, such as skin rashes caused by pads and a general fear of using tampons. They talk with honesty about their fears, like real teenagers might with their closest friends, and despite the fears of these two, the show is also keen to show that not everyone is afraid of the tampon, and that’s normal behaviour too!

Later on, the show goes on to address some of the more specific fears voiced in episode two with facts. Please Tell Me! Galko-chan isn’t merely empathetic to the plight of having a womb, it’s educational too!

In essence, this show is fantastic because it shows a range of experiences and freely discusses those fears and embarrassments with facts and laughter. From thoughts on sex to body hair, Galko-chan uncovers a lot!

Demystify the female body and watch Galko-chan! Share it with your friends (all of them, the men too) and laugh at the characters’ antics. Episodes are short—only seven minutes long—and currently, there are only twelve of them!

Here’s hoping for a season two!

Kaguya Sama Love Is War – Manga Ch.151.1 – LATEST UPDATE

04/04/2022

Like Science Fell in Love, Kaguya Sama Love is War is a romcom. I do wonder if romances are more likely to talk about periods or whether I just watch more romcoms than other shows. Either way, the manga briefly mentions periods so it’s showing up here!

Warning: this post could contain some minor spoilers for the manga, and eventually the anime.

To my knowledge, periods don’t get mentioned anywhere else in the manga, except for this brief nod in the extras. In the first paragraph, we get the following line:

‘Although this side of Kaguya is normally suppressed, Ice Kaguya will surface when Kaguya feels anxious, stressed, or worried, or when her period is irregular.’

Scan taken from here.

In the manga, ice Kaguya is one of Kaguya’s many personalities. It’s not an example of split personalities in this case, but more of an exaggeration of certain traits to communicate to the reader that the character isn’t feeling themselves.

Ice Kaguya is defined by fear and anxiety, as the page describes. She’s more standoffish than her usual self and hurts others more easily. Overall, her appearance is quite a tragic one, because it tells the reader that Kaguya isn’t feeling too confident and is going to act in ways where she defends herself first and foremost.

We all have those moments, but I find it interesting that Ice version isn’t simply linked to PMS, which a lazier comedy might have done. Instead, we learn that sometimes the Ice personality is linked to the irregularity of her period.

Firstly, this is an acknowledgement of a character who is irregular, which is nice. I remember reading the last book of Twilight and rolling my eyes at the idea that Bella had never had a late period even once. Period timing can be influenced by a lot of things like diet, significant life changes, stress… So this acknowledgement of irregular periods in the main character of Kaguya Sama made me pretty happy to see. Especially since it’s coming from a male author who won’t have first hand experience.

Next, Kaguya is a character who thrives on order and success, and she can also get pretty paranoid. It makes a lot of sense that her character would get stressed out by an irregular period. At its worst, it could be a sign of ill health, but at its least it’s just annoying. Especially if one has made plans requiring a lot of physical exertion and it comes early!

Overall, this tiny statement acknowledges that irregular periods can easily affect mental wellbeing, causing one to feel anxious, stressed, or worried. It’s such a tiny thing, but I was really happy to see one of my favourite manga acknowledge this reality.

Maybe she’s happy because her period was on time this month?

In all of it’s current 250+ chapters, I haven’t seen periods mentioned anywhere else in this manga–which strikes me as a little disappointing since there’s a lot of conversation regarding romance, sex, and embarrassment–but at least there’s this one line in the extras. That’s more than most.

See you again soon in my next update to this post!