Gintama Group Project

Team Members: Dezi Olivares, Janely Becerra, Jared Krzysko, Jiayi Liu

Introduction:

Our group analyzed the gendered language from two prominent female characters in the anime Gintama. Gintama is an action-comedy series based in an alternate Edo where different alien races have invaded earth and thus accelerated technology. The story follows Gintoki, Kagura and Shinpachi, who run an Odd-Jobs business. The series prides itself on having a large cast of characters, so we decided to keep it simple by choosing the two earliest female characters introduced; those being Kagura and Shimura Tae, or Shimura Tae.  

Since Gintama is such a large and long series, we thought it’d be best to pull quotes from different parts of the series, as it’s possible for characters to change over the course of 300+ episodes. Thus we’ve chosen many quotes from different parts of the series, from the beginning to the later episodes nearing the 300s. 

Characters:

Kagura: Kagura is the lead female protagonist in Gintama. She is a young girl from an alien race who isn’t afraid to speak her mind or insult people even if it’s a stranger. She has a bit of a temper, and often uses masculine gendered language during combat or when joking around with the other 2 main characters in the group (both are men). Despite her noticeable use of masculine gendered language, she also utilizes feminine gender features in calm and casual environments. Kagura speaks Japanese with an accent based on an old Chinese stereotype, and ends many of her sentences with「ある」which can be seen within in our collection of sentences below. In order to compare and contrast with Otae, we will primarily focus on Kagura’s use of masculine language features.  

Shimura Tae (Otae): The older sister of the main character Shinpachi. Throughout the anime she goes by Otae (お妙), and the お before the 妙 is an honorific used to refer to women. Otae has a handful of moments where she uses masculine features, but throughout Gintama she mainly uses feminine speech. When Otae is at her job talking to customers or is putting on a “face” and acting sweet and kind, she always uses feminine speech, but due to her short-temper she sometimes has outbursts towards characters and uses more vulgar speech. Despite her short-temper, Otae is very caring to her older brother Shinpachi, her only family left, as well as her close friends, such as Kagura and Gintoki.

Quotes: 

Kagura: 

“おばあちゃんがそんなくられない金かせわせるためにおまえをはたらかせてだっと思あるか。” (Ep. 139 21:30)

“マジでか。姉御はあんなん好みあるか。(Ep. 262 9:01)

“マジで江戸滅ぶぞ。” (Ep. 289 11:35)

“誰て、俺だよオラ。カグラあるよ。” (Ep. 202 5:34)

“この肉本当に肉あるか。” (Ep. 2 9:28)

“おまえらばかですか。”　(Ep. 4 7:15)

“おまえはきらいだけどな。” (Ep 4 15:18)

“はあ。おい、おまえまでなんでかてなことを。” (Ep. 221 17:16)

“ええ、車じゃないあるか。”(Ep. 19 5:55)

“どうせいおまえの人生ももされしちんだろ。” (Ep. 19 13:18)

“感動したぞ。” (Ep. 27 1:07)

Shimura Tae (Otae): 

“みなから聞いたわ” (Ep. 46 8:57)

“もちろん、丁重にお断りしたけど、びっくりしたわ” (Ep. 8 4:50)

“本当、困ちゃうわ“ (Ep. 8 7:26)

“足さえ止めなければきと追いつけるわよ“ (Ep. 202 14:01)

“こんな所でなにをやっているの？お仕事は？(Ep. 3 7:22)

“まーでも落ち込まないで。最近、出番なかったですもんね” (Ep. 182 16:01)

“とにかく、私は七日がいいんです” (Ep. 240 7:14)

“寿限無なんてどうかしら” (Ep. 221 5:54)

“それに、やっぱり闇の力を駆使するのはあまり縁起が良くない気がするわ” (Ep. 221 8:27)

“こんなのはどうかしら” (Ep. 221 8:35)

“要するに食事の前にアイスをたべるだけななの”  (Ep. 91 4:46)

Analysis & Discussion:

Kagura’s Masculine Gendered Language: Kagura has a very peculiar way of speaking. Not only does she use a lot of masculine dubbed phrases, she also has an accent. As discussed in our introduction of Kagura, she is of an alien race who isn’t one to be aware of gendered roles or how females her age speak. Since she grew up in a very violent and masculine environment, as well as being employed with two men, it was very easy for masculine language to rub off on her.

In our selection of quotes, we saw an abundant use of masculine phrases, such as おまえ. Phrases such as おまえ and あいつ and the like seem to be recurring choices in Kagura’s speech. This could be due to the fact that the alien race Kagura is a part of, the Yato clan, is a race with the sole interest of fighting. Phrases like these are definitely more prominent in action anime where young men will be fighting villains frequently. So, while separated from the clan, it is likely that these aspects of speech could have stuck with her. We also found Kagura to end her sentences with particles like ぞ and な often. She also ends questions with a plain form word and か, often combining this with her accent to end a lot of her sentences with あるか.

While a lot of what we found from Kagura was fairly textbook masculine speech, a lot of her speech just felt fairly simplified in general. It was very rarely that Kagura was found ending sentences with です or ます. It is there sometimes, but the interesting part of Gintama’s comedic side is that the writing will have characters’ speech style change for comedic effect. Thus it stands to be that Kagura’s occasional use of です or ます stands to accentuate her usual rough speech style. 

Otae’s Feminine Gendered Language: As opposed to Kagura, Otae has what one could consider a more traditional/traditionally feminine way of speaking, mostly. Her job requires her to utilize feminine speech but she uses it outside of her job as well. From the quotes we pulled from the anime, Otae ends many of here sentences with わ, わよ, の, and なの. These sentence ending particles are part of feminine speech, and you rarely see Otae using masculine sentence enders when Otae is acting as her usual self. Otae does not just use feminine sentence enders to show her femininity through speech, she also speaks in a very polite manner as well. This is seen when she uses お断り and お仕事. Adding the お before 仕事 and お断り makes the phrase much more polite, due to the お before the word being an honorific.

Compared to Kagura, who rarely uses honorifics, Otae uses honorifics in normal conversation to express her femininity. When Otae refers to herself, she primarily uses 私 which is a feminine first person pronoun. Otae also uses かしら a lot, which is the feminine way of saying I wonder. Using かしら indicates her use of feminine speech, while characters who use かな are using masculine speech. Last but not least, Otae ends one of her sentences using ですもんね, not only is she being polite using this phrase, the もん in the phrase is a feminine way of expressing dissatisfaction. 

Both of them use gendered language to emphasize the other side of the character in their portrayals. When expressing the normal expression of the girlish side of Kagura’s character, she is referred to in one person as watashi/watashi” while the reversal of Otae’s character, such as when she is rude, is also referred to as “wagahai/我輩し” which man used to their younger generations.

Conclusion: 

All-in-all, while both characters don’t necessarily speak to a masculine of feminine speech style 100% of the time, Kagura and Otae both have a direction that they lean into and a lot of the characters’ pasts and backgrounds can help to understand why they speak the way they do. With Kagura being an alien and having more rough, masculine styled speech, to Otae being from a traditional uprising and having more feminine-centric speech patterns. Through the analyses, we see that both characters adapt their language speech styles from masculine to feminine depending on their environments and when they feel most comfortable or appropriate when using specific gendered language. Otae’s feminine speech style is polite, respectful, and a reflection of her indirectness as a way to avoid harshness. Kagura uses masculine speech to poke fun, insult people, and display her toughness with her words.  It shows that their use of language allows for unique expression of each individual and how their characters play out in the series.