Smack my Boy up
The bit where our boy hero cocks up is vital to many a stereotypical anime plotline. But how can our plucky protagonist recover his mojo? It is simple:
He needs a (male) ally to hit him.
To hit him in the face.
Corporal punishment has been widely discredited as a child-raising practice. I wouldn’t suggest that anime offers a serious alternative view - I mainly think that a smack in the face is just a good way to dramatise things.
Still, when said punch is coming from an admirable elder male, it makes me wonder just what sort of masculinity these shows believe in.
True Tears:
In the midst of despair over the presumed parentage of his beloved, Shinchiro voices his fear to his father - and gets slapped. Our hero’s crime: believing that daddy could have fathered an illegitimate child.
In the moment after the slap, Shinchiro looks up at the big guy with wide eyes. He’s clearly surprised and vulnerable, even feminized in his distance from the mature man. As a child he doesn’t merit a punch - and he doesn’t appear to be in any pain. Shinchiro is dismissed without rancour or combative intent. None of the bystanders step in to interfere with the father doing his job.
The boy’s not really being punished, he’s being rebuked for his immaturity and lack of certainty. Even if the dead lady in question had, in all (genetically-informed) likelihood, possessed the sex appeal of some kind of minor-league goddess, he should have assumed that his dad had self-control.
Mahou Tsukai ni Taisetsu na Koto ~Natsu no Sora~:
Once more our hero assumes that the elder man has been in pursuit of the ladies. Though this time rather more inexcusably (Sora is just a kid).
Anyway, with the added fact that Gouta sees Seiichirou Hara as his competition, this is a full-on confrontation. Gouta is, of course, being a complete idiot. He is also a full-grown near-adult; so he gets an proper punch in the face.
But, importantly, the emphasis here is placed on the punch-er. The camera is fixed on Hara’s face before he delivers the explosive blow - and it shows real anger. This is a more emotional image of masculinity, one based in individual directness rather than stern composure. A violent image.
Getting punched is still a good thing. The result, a floored youth, asserts who’s right. And Hara shows masculine justice as furious rather than aloof. The punch welcomes Gouta to the world of men, where being a dick will get people angry.
Tengen Toppa Gurren-Lagann:
Again we see the adult male inconvenienced by a youth’s preoccupation with the confusions of the groin. Once more the readjustment is to be painful.
As in Natsu no Sora, the emphasis is on the punch-er as much as the punch-ee. And he is angry.
Gurren-Lagann Punch
We see Kamina wind up the blow way in advance, and it’s one of the few occasions when his human-sized muscularity is actually menacing. Later on we might look back on Kamina as offering a more rounded and intriguing embodiment of masculinity than was initially apparent. But in the moment it’s all sinews and knuckles. There’s no deception or showiness, Kamina lives up to his own hyperbole. Direct, instinctive, stunning.
Conclusions:
Fighting will always be used to symbolize gaps in power - to assert superiority between individuals. What these kid-bashing scenes are all showing is really re-assertion, they highlight existing seniority/superiority. This serves to establish heroism as a journey away from childhood.
In all of these cases immaturity is tied to sex. Our hero has to overcome his own failure to get to grips with something which is thoroughly adult. The use of violence paints immaturity as personal impotence.
I think that in these scenes we can see a difference between ideals of adult masculinity. True Tears’ image of mental solidity and self-control is miles from the righteous fury of Hara or Kamina. Those latter cases show seniority as expressed between fellow men, rather than being articulated in the gulf between man and child.
Violence can be used to show masculinity as ordered or as instinctive. The cool slap of the patriarch or the emotional punch of the strong friend. The sort of blow helps to define what sort of journey our hero has to go on.
The lack of Brightslaps in this post disappoints me.