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ship_manifestoAuthor: Hideyuki Kurata
Fandom: Read or Die
Pairing: Yomiko Readman and Nancy Makuhari
Warning: Spoilers for Read or Die OVA, TV series, manga, and novels, as well as the Read or Dream manga.
Word count: Long.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Read or Die was the first anime series I ever saw, and it was the interaction between Yomiko and Nancy that got me interested. At first, the ROD OVA seemed like a fun though rather weird action/spy cartoon. Then it slowed down and Yomiko and Nancy started talking to each other in a way that seemed to be both intimate and oddly guarded. I said to myself, "There's something going on here, but I don't know what. It's certainly more mature and character-oriented than what one usually sees in animation." And then Nancy KISSED Yomiko on the neck and I sat up and said: "WHAT was THAT?"
I. Yin and Yang
What indeed. The relationship between Yomiko and Nancy is one of the oddest ships to sail the anime seas. Superficially, these two couldn't be less alike. Yomiko Readman is the classic bookworm. She wears nerd glasses (even in bed), always wears the same outfit, never cleans her room or combs her hair, and seems to live off of cucumber sandwiches. She blows all her paycheck on books, and her apartment is jammed with them. She seems to live her life through their pages; she's so busy swooning over the German romantics that she doesn't even notice when a real person is coming on to her at the same time. She's incredibly sweet and nice, super-polite even to the villains who are trying to kill her. She is almost always cheerful, and continues to believe the best about others even in the teeth of the evidence.
Did I say ‘villains who are trying to kill her’? Yes—because Yomiko is a superheroine, believe it or not. She is a ‘papermaster.’ Through a combination of her love of books, special training, and possibly a genetic predisposition, Yomiko has the ability to manipulate paper at will. She can (and does) use paper as a weapon. She is a schoolteacher part of the time, but when she’s not in class, she is doing dangerous book-recovery missions for the British Library, which in the RODverse is a hyper-powerful organization with its own James Bond-like Special Operations Section. It is not at all clear, though, whether this outfit is “good,” “bad,” or a mixture of the two. Yomiko could ask her employers (the suave Mr. Joker and the ancient Mr. Gentleman) about that, but she probably wouldn’t get a straight answer.
The British Library, of course, has a rival secret organization: Dokusensha, a Chinese mega-library that goes back to Imperial days. These two outfits have been waging a secret and deadly war for control of the world’s knowledge. Dokusensha has its own ‘powered’ agents, including its own paper masters. Among the latter are three rather ditzy sisters—Anita King, Michelle Cheung, and Maggie Mui, known simply as the Paper Sisters—who are actually unaware of their origins and of the part that Dokusensha plays in their lives. The ROD TV series focuses more on them, but Yomiko and Nancy enter the story at an important point.
Nancy Makuhari—Code Name Miss Deep (no kidding) -- is another of the British Library’s special agents with her own peculiar physical powers. Nancy and Yomiko team up early on in the OVA to fight a new danger from Dokusensha. Dokusensha has created the Ijin, a group of clones of great men from the past: the Zen poet Ikkyu Sojun (the leader of the group), the Buddhist monk Genjo Sanzo, the scientist Gennai Hiraga, the insect expert Jean Henri Fabre, and Ludwig Van Beethoven.
If you think that sounds weird…well, Nancy is a pretty strange story herself. We've all probably known people as sweet, geeky, and socially helpless as Yomiko, but how many of us can honestly say that we've encountered anyone remotely like Nancy Makuhari?
Nancy has the bio you expect for a top British secret agent: born in Japan and educated at Cambridge University, she spent a year with the British Police before joining Joker’s team. Like Yomiko, she may be part British and part Japanese, though we don’t know for certain. Later on some doubts are raised about this whole backstory, but it certainly sounds impeccable.
It’s Nancy’s looks and personality, though, that really command attention. She's a combination of Emma Peel and Tera Patrick, a catsuit-clad super assassin with a killer body. You could walk by Yomiko a hundred times and not notice her, but Nancy draws the eyes of both men and women--except when she wants to disguise herself, which she's very good at doing. Nancy's remarkable for more than just her fanservice assets. She's totally focused on her work and highly competent at it, a complete pro and disdainful of those who aren't. She seems to really dig killing--just watch her eyes light up when she's plunging her fist through someone's chest. Nancy is cynical, cold, blunt, witty, and foul-mouthed, the kind of woman who will accept names like 'bitch' and 'tease' as accurate descriptions of herself. Her personality seems to repel as much as her body attracts.
Nancy has no illusions about people, love, or herself. She has reasons for her cynicism, because she is in fact a double agent. Nancy is a clone or possibly a human ‘vessel,’ in her case for the spirit of Margaretha Zelle, AKA Mata Hari, the Dutch-born World War One spy, nude dancer, and prostitute. Her mission now is to infiltrate the British Library for the Ijin--whose leader, Ikkyu, is also her lover. (She has another secret too—she has a twin sister who hates her.) As Mata Hari, of course, Nancy qualifies as the typical femme fatale. She certainly looks the part, and from the way she acts, you can guess that she is equally fatale to both men and women.
Yet both Nancy and Yomiko are more complicated than they look, and the plot of ROD centers on the progressive revelation of their characters. Yomiko is not as harmless or simple as she seems. She's torn between her obsession with books and her feelings for the people she cares about. When someone she loves (and yes, this girl can love people very deeply) is hurt or threatened, Yomiko can explode in a destructive rage. When that happens, she can be paralyzed with guilt and remorse afterwards. Sometimes her conflicting emotions (‘which is more important, people or books?’) can reduce her to catatonic immobility. Normally cheerful and unreflective, she can be stricken by self-doubt and become incapable of choice. In her efforts not to hurt others' feelings, she can tell lies and half-truths that wind up being more hurtful than the whole truth would have been. In desperation, she may hide herself in some safe book nest far away from the world.
Yomiko is not as virginal as she looks, either. Her emotional and sexual urges, though hidden beneath that child-like smile, are extremely powerful--in fact, that may well be where she gets some of her paper powers from, as the ROD manga suggests. Yomiko and paper, it seems, have a little bit of a--ahem--THING for each other. She can respond to books in the most intimate physical way, and books can respond to her. It's classic Krafft-Ebbing fetishism.
Yet you can understand why books take as much of an interest in her as she does in them, because beneath her Columbo coat this sweet young high school teacher is a knockout. The guys in her high school classes whisper to each other about her bust. And women...well, they seem to notice her even more than male teenagers do. There's the aggressively suggestive villainess Fire in the ROD manga, to say nothing of the crazed young authoress Nenene Sumiregawa, whose friendship with Yomiko has some deeply ambiguous aspects.
Yomiko has been seriously in love already when we meet her in the ROD OVA, with her teacher and predecessor Donny Nakajima--in fact she still wears his glasses as an obsessive reminder of her dead (?) boyfriend. She has obviously refused to "move on," and has become even more book-centered than ever. Socially awkward people who are hurt in love and life tend to escape into fantasy, and that's Yomiko's life story.
Enter, then, Nancy Makuhari, or Miss Deep. If Yomiko's personality is complex, Miss Deep's is multiple. Her powers and skills are indicative of her character, just as Yomiko's are. Nancy wears many masks, just as Mata Hari did. As a ‘deep,’ she penetrates through objects (and people), and moves on quickly, ever elusive. She always makes an impression, but she never stays around very long.
Talking about Nancy is difficult, because you're never quite sure which Nancy you mean. Do you mean the 'good' Nancy who becomes Yomiko's friend (Nancy 1)? Do you mean Nancy 1’s twin sister/clone (Nancy 2), the 'bad' Nancy who later tries to kill Yomiko? Do you mean the young, brown-haired girl (Young Nancy) in a photograph attached to a death certificate we see in the OVA? When we say “Nancy,” we may also mean Margaretha Zelle, the once-proper Dutch girl who re-invented herself several times. As writer Hideyuki Kurata lays it out, Nancy’s backstory in the OVA is muddled and not all of it seems to make sense. Just to make things still more confusing, Nancy has an entirely different backstory in the ROD novels, where she runs an antique shop in Australia (!) between missions for the British Library.
It’s just my own (nutty?) theory, but I like to think that the Nancy (Nancies) we see in the OVA/TV continuity is a compound of these individuals, a single personality that happens to inhabit two or three different bodies at the same time and alters subtly depending on which one she’s in. Nancy 2 certainly bears more than just a physical resemblance to her ‘good’ sister; she’s just a little more brutal, perhaps a shade more sexually aggressive, and definitely more subservient to/in love with Ikkyu Sojun. Yet the psychological likeness between the Nancies is there. We’ve all heard about the weird relationships twins can have. Both Nancies are attracted to Yomiko in the OVA (to Ikkyu’s annoyance), though Nancy 2’s attraction to the papermaster seems to be more physical with no emotional component at all. Yet Nancy 2 has some of her sister’s goodness, too; her later relationship with Yomiko is proof of that. Under Yomiko’s tutelage (can we call it love?), Nancy 2 becomes as sweet (if not sweeter) than Yomiko herself.
The relationship between the sisters is intriguing, and it’s a pity we don’t see more of it. Nancy 2 may be a clone, but she doesn’t seem to me to be someone who was just whipped up in a test tube 15 minutes ago. These two women seem to know each other very well; they may have been living side by side and fighting over the same lover for years for all we know.
Both of them are in love, of course—perhaps with more than one person at the same time. That’s the funny and surprising thing about Nancy. Her words and manner are cynically realistic, she pours scorn on Yomiko’s romantic illusions, and her body shouts “bimbo” to the world; yet she’s not a tramp at all. On the contrary, she may be even more genuinely romantic than Yomiko. When she falls in love, Nancy commits totally and holds nothing back. She’s loyal to the end—or nearly so. You can abuse her, lie to her, try to kill her—and she still won’t give up on a love, or the ghost of a love. The only thing that can draw her away or drive her away from someone is the love of someone else. Even then, she’ll resist choosing to the very last minute. Choosing between people is as painfully difficult for Nancy as it is for Yomiko, and it can provoke the same behavior: paralysis or furious violence, either towards others or herself.
Yomiko has powerful sexual drives, but these are usually well hidden beneath her sweet nerdiness and biblomania. Nancy’s sexuality (however you define it) is open to the point of blatancy. There’s her black catsuit, for one thing. It doesn’t look like a very practical fighting outfit, but that’s clearly not the point. Nancy wears a pair of crossbelts, but if you look closely you’ll notice that they’re not actually holding up anything. The belts are just there to look bitching and show off Nancy’s narrow waist and wide hips. When she’s off duty, Nancy dresses in very low-cut tops and jeans or cutoffs, which she always wears with the top button undone. Her body language speaks volumes. Critical distance doesn’t mean anything to Nancy; if she’s interested in someone, she’ll cuddle up as close as she dares. She’s the most touchy-feely person in the series, the queen of PDA. As for the gender of a love/sex object, that doesn’t seem to matter to Nancy at all. Other ROD women (Nenene, Maggie, Yomiko) get hesitant and choked up when subtext rears its head, but Nancy is a sophisticated woman of the world in that as in so much else. Nancy also bears more than a passing resemblance to the other sexually ambiguous ROD villainesses, Fire (in the ROD manga) and Lily the Book Pirate (in the Read or Dream manga).
Despite all their superficial differences, then, Nancy and Yomiko have a surprising amount in common. Both of them have been hurt in love (with men, as it happens), but both of them are still seeking it. Both have strong sexual urges that need an outlet. (Yomiko has channeled her desires into books, while Nancy’s are directed towards a man who apparently no longer loves her.) Both are torn between conflicting loyalties of various kinds, and both have violent urges that explode when they cannot resolve (or flee from) their conflicts and responsibilities.
Finally, they’re both alone. Yomiko has left Nenene and Japan far away. Donny is either dead or in some horrible undead or half-human state. Yomiko looks up to Joker and Mr. Gentleman, and Wendy (Joker’s secretary) seems to like her, but none of them is really close to her. Certainly none of them can understand what she’s already lost in Donny, and none of them seem to perceive the very mature emotions beneath Yomiko’s childlike exterior. Nancy is even more isolated. She is a double agent, and by definition such persons can trust no one. The only two people she loves (Ikkyu and her sister) have stopped loving her and will soon cease to trust her as well.
The Nancy/Yomiko pairing looks very unlikely at first, but it is less so than you might think. In fact, many shoujo pairings in anime/manga fall into this pattern. There’s the strong, beautiful, tough, street-wise (but troubled) older girl, and the cute, innocent, inexperienced (but trusting) younger girl. The older girl serves as teacher/older sister to the younger one, whose innocent trust softens the tough girl’s hard heart. Sometimes the relationship has a sexual component, sometimes it doesn’t, but the pattern remains the same. For what it’s worth, some Western lesbian novels (like Patricia Highsmith’s The Price of Salt) use the same basic situation.
II. Yin and Yang Together
At first, Nancy x Yomiko follows this pattern very closely. In the beginning of the OVA, Nancy (the tough, older one) initially treats Yomiko with coldness and disdain. That changes when they get into action together. Nancy admires skill, and Yomiko turns out to be a lot better in a fight than she looks. Nancy finds the young book nerd’s naiveté both amusing and touching; it has been a while since she has met anyone this sweet and innocent. Yomiko awakens Nancy’s own softer emotions, which she hasn’t had much of a chance to use. For her part, Yomiko admires Nancy and learns from her; she also sees the kind heart beneath that massive bust. She clearly thinks the world of her new teacher, and that baffles Nancy—who’s all too aware of her double role, and increasingly conscience stricken about it. Beneath her egotistical exterior Nancy does not like herself very much, and she doesn’t quite know how to handle Yomiko’s unrestrained, unselfish admiration.
There’s a critical scene between these two about a third of the way through the OVA. It looks very much as if Nancy is coming on to Yomiko. Nancy sits very close to Yomiko, braids her hair, sniffs it after she braids it, and brushes Yomiko’s cheek with the braid— while soft, romantic music plays on the soundtrack. Yet Yomiko doesn’t notice, or pretends not to—she’s too deep in a book, Beethoven’s “Immortal Beloved”. Look at how Nancy takes this: she turns away from Yomiko, her body slumps, she yawns—to keep herself from reacting more obviously?
Yomiko then jumps up and reads Beethoven’s declaration of love to his “Immortal Beloved”—while still ignoring the woman next to her. This leads to a discussion of the nature of love between Nancy and Yomiko, in which Nancy presents a rather cynical (or realistic?) view of the question. She’s speaking about her own tragic situation, of course: she’s bound in a sincere but pointless love (“a love you want without a future”) with a man who hardly cares for her anymore. She also speaks of “a love you don’t mind with a future” (i.e., a second best), and you can’t help but wonder if she isn’t speaking of Yomiko herself here. Nancy tries to warn Yomiko that real love isn’t like it is in books, that it has a very high price and doesn’t last forever. Yomiko doesn’t seem to take this too seriously, and gives Nancy a bookmark as a keepsake which will make her “lucky in love.”
The feelings between these two deepen further when they fight Genjo Sanzo in India. Each woman risks her life to save the other, and Nancy is nearly killed as a result. Nancy risks more than just her life here; she risks the hatred of the man she loves. Nancy undoubtedly violates Ikkyu’s orders by saving Yomiko; by her actions, she forces Ikkyu to kill Genjo himself, which he can’t be too happy about. If Ikkyu was wondering about Nancy 1’s motives and feelings before, then this whole business must clinch it for him. Nancy 1’s feelings for Yomiko (however you define them) have ruined her usefulness as a double agent.(Something very similar did happen to Mata Hari, actually; in fact, Nancy's story parallels Mata Hari's at many points, just as her character is similar to Mata's.)Yomiko’s feeling for Nancy has grown even stronger. This surprises Nancy, wounds her conscience, and depresses her.
And so we come to the climax of the OVA, where the tragic quadrangle of Nancy 1—Nancy 2—Ikkyu—Yomiko is played out. Nancy 2 reveals herself (and Ikkyu’s plot) when she kisses Yomiko and escapes. Despite this, Yomiko refuses to believe that her friend and teacher has really betrayed her; perhaps it’s all a mistake. Significantly, she refuses to wash off Nancy 2’s lipstick; it’s still on her neck when she lands on the Ijin fortress. There she learns the truth at last, when Ikkyu shows the two Nancies at the same time. He obviously has plans for Yomiko, but he is irked with Nancy 1 because Yomiko in her present state (i.e., uncorrupted, still innocent) is useless to him. This implies that bringing Yomiko over to the Ijin—perhaps by seducing her—was part of Nancy’s assignment. Ikkyu also complains that even Nancy 2 has become a little “maudlin” where Yomiko is concerned.
Though apparently killed by her sister, Nancy 1 returns to save the day. She puts her sister out of action and kills Ikkyu, but to Yomiko’s shock she chooses to kill herself beside the body of the man she once loved. Yomiko is broken-hearted; she runs at the nose afterwards, a sign of extreme emotional distress in Japan. Yet Nancy 1 has left her something: her dying wish is that Yomiko look after her sister. Nancy 2 remains alive, though she has suffered from oxygen deprivation and has reverted to a childlike persona. In the closing scene of the OVA, we see Yomiko fulfilling her promise.
Yomiko takes this promise very seriously indeed, and her loyalty to Nancy precipitates the critical events of the ROD TV series. When Joker takes Nancy 2’s child by Ikkyu (Junior) away, Yomiko is outraged. Joker has his own plans for Junior, whose Ijin body will serve as the new human‘vessel’ for the dying Mr. Gentleman. Yomiko doesn’t know all this, but she now challenges the chief whom she had always admired before. To spite her, Joker incautiously reveals a few of the nasty things he’s done to Donny. Yomiko goes berserk, and destroys the British Library in her rage. She flees to Japan with Nancy 2 (though we are not told how), and the two hide away in the overflow storage stacks of the Diet Library (the Japanese equivalent of the Library of Congress) for nearly 5 years. They can’t escape forever, of course: Nenene, driven by her own obsession, finds them with the help of the Paper Sisters. Joker and the British Library (now hell-bent on world conquest) are right behind, and the final story arc begins.
The 5 years in the Diet Library are the most interesting of all in the Yomiko-Nancy relationship, but we know nothing about them in detail. Yet when Nenene and the Paper Sisters discover them, we see that the dynamic of the relationship has changed greatly from what we saw between Nancy 1 and Yomiko in the OVA. In fact, it’s been reversed. Now Yomiko is the teacher/older girl figure, with Nancy 2 in the role of the sweet young innocent. Some fans see the change in Nancy 2 as largely due to brain damage suffered in the OVA, and even consider Nancy 2 retarded. I don’t think this is quite so. Nancy 2 certainly seems to have some memory loss (though she apparently remembers Ikkyu and Joker well enough), but she certainly seems competent enough otherwise. She hasn’t forgotten how to fight or use a gun, and she’s doing both by the end of the TV series. She’s a good cook, and apparently does some of the household stuff that Yomiko has never been good at. I think the change in Nancy is due to the aftereffects of the considerable psychological traumas that she has suffered—the loss of her lover, her sister, and her child.
There’s another factor involved: Yomiko’s own influence. Just as Nancy helps Yomiko learn maturity and toughness in the OVA, so Yomiko remolds Nancy 2 in her own sweet image. At first, Nancy 2 seems very unlike the leather-clad assassin we met in the OVA. She loves reading and adores cute, cuddly things: small children, origami butterflies, etc. Yomiko’s softening influence on Nancy may in fact have gone too far, infantilizing Nancy and making her over-dependent on Yomiko. Only later on—when Yomiko and her own son are threatened—does her toughness and determination return.
Yomiko is different now, too. Her old giggly silliness has vanished and she has become more mature. She is much more patient and thoughtful—and sadder, too. She lost much of her innocence about the world in the OVA, and she has come to doubt herself since she destroyed the British Library. Joker’s words confuse her and reinforce her guilt feelings, and these become even stronger when the truth about Junior’s fate (which Yomiko hid from Nancy) emerges.
The interaction between Nancy and Yomiko in the TV series is very interesting psychologically. They are very patient and gentle with each other, though Yomiko is plainly dominant. Yomiko often looks at Nancy 2 with the same quiet warmth with which Nancy 1 looked at her in the OVA. Each is the center of the other’s universe. Yomiko says that as long as Nancy is happy “nothing else matters.” Nancy says that Yomiko is the “most important person in the world to me,” placing Yomiko even above her own son. All they seem to want is to hide away from the world together, presumably forever. Even after they have been rediscovered by Nenene and have fled to Yomiko’s old house in Saitama, Nancy says that they can stay there permanently, and that “it will be just like before.”
III. Are They or Aren’t They?
Such, in outline, is the history of the relationship. But wait a minute—aren’t we getting ahead of ourselves here? Just what kind of relationship are we talking about? Are these two friends, or something more?
Now, as we should all know by now, gender-bending and sexual ambiguity are standard fare in Japanese popular entertainment. The Yomiko/Nancy relationship is one of the most commonly cited examples of subtext in anime/manga, and with good reason. It’s by no means easy to determine what (if anything) is going on between these two women.
First of all, it’s clear that the creator of ROD, Kurata, loves subtext. It crops up all over the place in the ROD universe. In addition to Nancy x Yomiko as a possibility, we also have Nenene x Yomiko (a ship that deserves its own manifesto), as well as Anita x Hisami Hisaichi, persistent hinting about Maggie Mui’s sexual identity, Fire, and Lily, a villainess from the Read or Dream manga with a serious loli fetish.
Kurata loves to play with his reader’s heads on this subject. Artwork is one way to do that, of course, and there’s certainly a good deal of fan service in ROD. Much fan service art is strictly for show: OOC T & A stuff with no relationship to the characters or the storyline. Yet the quotient of fan service art featuring Nancy x Yomiko is quite high, higher than for any other two characters or any other potential pairing in the ROD universe. The art is more revealing, too, and some of it implies some interesting things about the Nancy x Yomiko relationship. The image below, for example (from the ROD novels), certainly seems to imply certain things.
You can argue about it all day long and not come to any definite conclusions. That’s probably as it should be. Discretion and innocence are two of the things that make ROD so charming, and I wouldn’t want to lose those qualities. You can interpret the relationship between Nancy and Yomiko as simply an intense, emotional friendship, and many fans do so. That interpretation certainly works well enough to cover most of what we see.
As for me, though, I find it rather hard to believe that there is no sexual or romantic fire at all beneath that huge cloud of fan service smoke. The fan service art of these two relates to their behavior in the story much more closely than such art usually does; it seems to draw out the subtext or implications of their interaction.
Certainly, that interaction by itself is enough to make many viewers guess at a romantic or sexual attraction between Nancy and Yomiko. The hair-braiding, love-discussion scene in the OVA was what made me start to wonder. There are plenty of other hints, too—the frequency with which Nancy pinches Yomiko’s cheeks, for example, and Yomiko’s happy sighs in response. The music is another clue—it’s not the kind of music you expect to hear when the two parties concerned are just good pals. It’s syrupy, love-theme stuff. I’ve already mentioned Nancy’s body language in the OVA, and you see the same thing in the TV series. Nancy keeps touching Yomiko, as if in fear that she will disappear. The body language between them in the Saitama scenes is very tender and intimate.
The viewer may not be the only one to suspect that something is going on. Junior is plainly (and understandably) jealous of Yomiko’s influence over his mother. And Nenene is clearly a little worried when she learns that Yomiko (for whom she may have a repressed thing of her own) has been living alone with this sex bomb for five years.
For what it’s worth, it seems to me that Nancy 1 is definitely attracted to Yomiko in the OVA (and so is Nancy 2, in her different way). As mentioned above, seducing Yomiko may well be part of the assignment that Ikkyu has given Nancy, but Nancy is drawn to Yomiko emotionally as well as physically, and that’s dangerous. But how does Yomiko feel? Her responses to Miss Deep’s come-ons (and that’s what they appear to me to be) are bafflingly inconsistent; one minute she hardly seems to notice, the next minute she’s sighing in rapture when Nancy pinches her. No wonder poor Nancy seems confused and depressed by the situation.
But…does anything actually HAPPEN? Not in the OVA, I think, if you go by the action we actually see. There simply isn’t time. You can say, ‘ah, yes, but off-screen…’ But if anything did happen off-screen, then the action we see on-screen—and especially the denouement—would be different too.
Nancy 1 chooses death, and it’s worth while to ask why. She clearly has a lot of loyalty to Ikkyu left, and some faded memories of the time when he was good to her. (Though it’s hard to believe he ever was.) Like a lot of women in abusive love affairs Nancy finds it almost impossible to break free emotionally, even after she’s killed the lover who tormented her. She can escape to safety with Yomiko, yes—but what kind of safety would it be? It becomes clear later that Joker hates Nancy, and she would certainly be tried for treason. That would put Yomiko through hell and strain her loyalties. Finally, would Nancy and Yomiko have any kind of future as a couple anyway? Yomiko’s responses to Nancy, as we’ve seen, have been maddeningly unpredictable. At several points, you may want to yell at Nancy 1 to just grab Yomiko and go at it. That’s Nancy 2’s way, certainly (that kiss!), but Nancy 1 may be in love and that makes her hesitate. One of the things that Nancy 1 loves about Yomiko—perhaps the thing she loves most of all—is Yomiko’s innocence. A blunt, direct approach would damage that innocence, and a full-blown sexual affair might well destroy it. So Nancy 1 is caught in an impossible dilemma, and in such situations death can seem like a logical way out.
That leaves us with the TV. If anything ever happens sexually or romantically between these two, it has to happen when they’re alone in the Diet Library for all those years. There’s plenty of time, and they are off-screen. Certainly, when we see them again much of their interaction (particularly body language) suggests that they have gotten very intimate indeed. However, many fans seem uncomfortable with this idea. After all, Nancy 2 seems rather childlike when we first meet her again, and the relationship between her and Yomiko is at times similar to that between a child and its mother. The idea of Yomiko and Nancy 2 doing anything sexual can seem almost like abuse of a child or a crippled person.
I can well understand such a reaction by some fans, but I think it may be based on a partial misreading of the situation and the characters. Nancy 2’s brain damage seems to have affected parts of her memory, yes, but she is competent otherwise. She may be child-like, but she’s not a child. As the TV series progresses, she becomes progressively more active and assertive; she’s recovering the energy and combativeness that were dormant under Yomiko’s sweetening influence. Nancy 2 is an odd character, but she’s not the mental basket case that some see her as. If we go by canon, then the Diet Library is the only place and time where these two can get serious. I think they are both capable of it, and there are some indications that this has happened.
I said earlier that the fanservice art of Nancy and Yomiko says or implies some important things about their relationship and their personalities. In most of this art, Nancy is invariably the sexual aggressor. She is usually depicted in her catsuit, and such aggressive behavior fits the Nancy we see in the OVA. Yomiko is usually surprised by whatever Nancy’s doing—sometimes she looks positively alarmed. Sometimes, though, Yomiko looks pleased as punch and is obviously enjoying herself as much as Nancy is. That reflects Yomiko’s divided responses to Nancy in the OVA.
There are two pieces of art that seem to refer to the period of the TV series—you can tell because Nancy’s hair is cut short. One is about the most blatant fanservice artwork in all of ROD, a nighttime onsen scene of Nancy and Yomiko with Nancy shown starkers from the rear. It’s a very curious image; Yomiko is looking up at Nancy from the water with a bemused-but-fascinated expression. In the background, you can see Ikkyu and several other Ijin looking on at Nancy with their eyes bugging out—the ghosts of Nancy’s past, perhaps? Nancy herself is the oddest thing of all; she’s not looking at anyone in the picture, not even Yomiko. Instead, she’s staring out very intently at a point somewhere over the viewer’s own right shoulder. It’s quite strange: here she is, naked with an attractive woman whom she cares about deeply, and yet Nancy is fixated on something else over the horizon, something only she seems to notice. It echoes something that is apparent in both the OVA and the TV: however much she cares about her, there are depths of loneliness, longing, and perhaps anger in Nancy that not even Yomiko can reach.
There’s another picture that says something about the changed dynamic of the Nancy-Yomiko relationship, as we see it in the TV. It shows a cheerfully naughty Nancy 2 flashing her backside at Yomiko. In a corner of the picture, we see Yomiko grinning back in a mirror. It’s quite startling and very revealing, for a variety of reasons. First of all, this “childlike” Nancy still has a very adult sexuality, albeit with a kind of little-girl dirtiness to it. Secondly, Yomiko knows and responds to it. Finally, the sexual dynamic between the two has shifted. In other artwork—as in her behavior in the OVA and, perhaps, the novels—Nancy is pursuing aggressively. She’s the initiator here, too, yes, but it’s different this time. Now she’s offering herself to Yomiko. She’s placing herself in the passive or receptive role sexually, just as she is in the passive role in the other aspects of the relationship that we see in the TV series. Nancy wants only to make Yomiko happy, and she’ll give Yomiko all she has to do so. There is a tendency in the fandom to see this pairing in stereotypic terms, with Nancy (the leather clad dom type, natch) as the one on top. I have a feeling that it’s much more complex and ‘even’ than that in the TV. These two comfort and compliment each other. They’re constantly giving freely to one another, so it’s logical that this would apply sexually too.
By the way, from the hints we have in the artwork this doesn’t seem to be a sweetly-sentimental affair either—all shared diaries and tears and violins in the background. No, if these two are doing it at all they’re laughing all the time and having a heck of a lot of dirty fun. Nancy’s Mata Hari, after all (see below), and SHE certainly enjoyed every ride she took.
OK, it seems very possible that something is, indeed, going on in the TV series. But what happens afterwards? Do these two have a future? At the end of the TV series, the British Library has been overthrown and Nancy and Junior have been happily reunited. Nenene and Yomiko are spending an awful lot of time together. Nenene tells Yomiko “I’m not letting you out of my sight.” In the meantime, Nancy has gone off to India to learn more of the truth about her past. She seems cheerful and highly competent, but she will be back to take care of her son. That is clearly a major priority for her. Has Nancy taken everything she can from her relationship with Yomiko? Is she now ready to move on from that into a new, Yomiko-free life? As for Yomiko, has she really made a definitive choice in favor of Nenene, now that Nancy can stand on her own feet?
The answers would appear to be “yes,” but caution is in order. Since so much is unknown about the Nancy-Yomiko-Nenene triangle, it would be a little rash to assume that it’s been resolved. Kurata likes some ambiguity in his endings; happily-ever-after is something he shies away from. He has left the door open for a sequel even in the TV storyline, and he has said he’d like to do one. So, who knows what the future holds?
IV
Reason/Treason?
Ambiguity and subtext are so interwoven through the ROD story that it’s hard even to determine whether Nancy and Yomiko are a “pairing” or not. There certainly seems to be good (though not irrefutable) evidence for it by the time we get to the TV series, and the novels have yet to be revealed to us.
Why care, then? First of all, because this relationship (however you read it) is extremely close; if these two are in love--and it sure looks that way at times--then it's very, very intense. This is certainly so emotionally, and may be so sexually as well. Nancy and Yomiko risk their lives and sacrifice everything for each other, and you can't prove your feelings more powerfully than that. That commands respect, and you can see why these two are postergirls for shoujoai. Their relationship is the hinge on which the whole plot of the ROD OVA/TV sequence turns, so it's important for that reason as well.
These two are both fun, complex characters, and the interaction between them is fascinating and moving. The ambiguity and subtext help make it so, but there’s plenty else going on. They make a great fighting team for one thing, and they’re also FUNNY. Yomiko’s impulsive geekiness makes an amusing contrast to Nancy 1’s witty cynicism. They can be a little hard to picture as a couple, but we get some idea of what they might be like together. We can imagine Nancy always pushing the envelope, saying and doing slyly outrageous things in order to tease, provoke, or titillate Yomiko; Yomiko being properly shocked, then blushing and giggling coquettishly, finally throwing herself laughingly into whatever dirty game Nancy has in mind. (Sometimes Nancy and Yomiko remind me a little of Hopey and Maggie in Jaime Hernandez’ Love and Rockets.) You don’t have to believe in them as a couple in order to enjoy watching them as friends, but it adds an extra dimension. Besides, how many super-heroine crime-fighting female couples are there these days?
SHE's a socially helpless book nerd high-school teacher!
Uh..SHE's a big-breasted bisexual leather-clad assassin!
TOGETHER...they fight crime!
And after all…they’re both hot.
Fandom: Read or Die
Pairing: Yomiko Readman and Nancy Makuhari
Warning: Spoilers for Read or Die OVA, TV series, manga, and novels, as well as the Read or Dream manga.
Word count: Long.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Read or Die was the first anime series I ever saw, and it was the interaction between Yomiko and Nancy that got me interested. At first, the ROD OVA seemed like a fun though rather weird action/spy cartoon. Then it slowed down and Yomiko and Nancy started talking to each other in a way that seemed to be both intimate and oddly guarded. I said to myself, "There's something going on here, but I don't know what. It's certainly more mature and character-oriented than what one usually sees in animation." And then Nancy KISSED Yomiko on the neck and I sat up and said: "WHAT was THAT?"
I. Yin and Yang
What indeed. The relationship between Yomiko and Nancy is one of the oddest ships to sail the anime seas. Superficially, these two couldn't be less alike. Yomiko Readman is the classic bookworm. She wears nerd glasses (even in bed), always wears the same outfit, never cleans her room or combs her hair, and seems to live off of cucumber sandwiches. She blows all her paycheck on books, and her apartment is jammed with them. She seems to live her life through their pages; she's so busy swooning over the German romantics that she doesn't even notice when a real person is coming on to her at the same time. She's incredibly sweet and nice, super-polite even to the villains who are trying to kill her. She is almost always cheerful, and continues to believe the best about others even in the teeth of the evidence.
Did I say ‘villains who are trying to kill her’? Yes—because Yomiko is a superheroine, believe it or not. She is a ‘papermaster.’ Through a combination of her love of books, special training, and possibly a genetic predisposition, Yomiko has the ability to manipulate paper at will. She can (and does) use paper as a weapon. She is a schoolteacher part of the time, but when she’s not in class, she is doing dangerous book-recovery missions for the British Library, which in the RODverse is a hyper-powerful organization with its own James Bond-like Special Operations Section. It is not at all clear, though, whether this outfit is “good,” “bad,” or a mixture of the two. Yomiko could ask her employers (the suave Mr. Joker and the ancient Mr. Gentleman) about that, but she probably wouldn’t get a straight answer.
The British Library, of course, has a rival secret organization: Dokusensha, a Chinese mega-library that goes back to Imperial days. These two outfits have been waging a secret and deadly war for control of the world’s knowledge. Dokusensha has its own ‘powered’ agents, including its own paper masters. Among the latter are three rather ditzy sisters—Anita King, Michelle Cheung, and Maggie Mui, known simply as the Paper Sisters—who are actually unaware of their origins and of the part that Dokusensha plays in their lives. The ROD TV series focuses more on them, but Yomiko and Nancy enter the story at an important point.
Nancy Makuhari—Code Name Miss Deep (no kidding) -- is another of the British Library’s special agents with her own peculiar physical powers. Nancy and Yomiko team up early on in the OVA to fight a new danger from Dokusensha. Dokusensha has created the Ijin, a group of clones of great men from the past: the Zen poet Ikkyu Sojun (the leader of the group), the Buddhist monk Genjo Sanzo, the scientist Gennai Hiraga, the insect expert Jean Henri Fabre, and Ludwig Van Beethoven.
If you think that sounds weird…well, Nancy is a pretty strange story herself. We've all probably known people as sweet, geeky, and socially helpless as Yomiko, but how many of us can honestly say that we've encountered anyone remotely like Nancy Makuhari?
Nancy has the bio you expect for a top British secret agent: born in Japan and educated at Cambridge University, she spent a year with the British Police before joining Joker’s team. Like Yomiko, she may be part British and part Japanese, though we don’t know for certain. Later on some doubts are raised about this whole backstory, but it certainly sounds impeccable.
It’s Nancy’s looks and personality, though, that really command attention. She's a combination of Emma Peel and Tera Patrick, a catsuit-clad super assassin with a killer body. You could walk by Yomiko a hundred times and not notice her, but Nancy draws the eyes of both men and women--except when she wants to disguise herself, which she's very good at doing. Nancy's remarkable for more than just her fanservice assets. She's totally focused on her work and highly competent at it, a complete pro and disdainful of those who aren't. She seems to really dig killing--just watch her eyes light up when she's plunging her fist through someone's chest. Nancy is cynical, cold, blunt, witty, and foul-mouthed, the kind of woman who will accept names like 'bitch' and 'tease' as accurate descriptions of herself. Her personality seems to repel as much as her body attracts.
Nancy has no illusions about people, love, or herself. She has reasons for her cynicism, because she is in fact a double agent. Nancy is a clone or possibly a human ‘vessel,’ in her case for the spirit of Margaretha Zelle, AKA Mata Hari, the Dutch-born World War One spy, nude dancer, and prostitute. Her mission now is to infiltrate the British Library for the Ijin--whose leader, Ikkyu, is also her lover. (She has another secret too—she has a twin sister who hates her.) As Mata Hari, of course, Nancy qualifies as the typical femme fatale. She certainly looks the part, and from the way she acts, you can guess that she is equally fatale to both men and women.
Yet both Nancy and Yomiko are more complicated than they look, and the plot of ROD centers on the progressive revelation of their characters. Yomiko is not as harmless or simple as she seems. She's torn between her obsession with books and her feelings for the people she cares about. When someone she loves (and yes, this girl can love people very deeply) is hurt or threatened, Yomiko can explode in a destructive rage. When that happens, she can be paralyzed with guilt and remorse afterwards. Sometimes her conflicting emotions (‘which is more important, people or books?’) can reduce her to catatonic immobility. Normally cheerful and unreflective, she can be stricken by self-doubt and become incapable of choice. In her efforts not to hurt others' feelings, she can tell lies and half-truths that wind up being more hurtful than the whole truth would have been. In desperation, she may hide herself in some safe book nest far away from the world.
Yomiko is not as virginal as she looks, either. Her emotional and sexual urges, though hidden beneath that child-like smile, are extremely powerful--in fact, that may well be where she gets some of her paper powers from, as the ROD manga suggests. Yomiko and paper, it seems, have a little bit of a--ahem--THING for each other. She can respond to books in the most intimate physical way, and books can respond to her. It's classic Krafft-Ebbing fetishism.
Yet you can understand why books take as much of an interest in her as she does in them, because beneath her Columbo coat this sweet young high school teacher is a knockout. The guys in her high school classes whisper to each other about her bust. And women...well, they seem to notice her even more than male teenagers do. There's the aggressively suggestive villainess Fire in the ROD manga, to say nothing of the crazed young authoress Nenene Sumiregawa, whose friendship with Yomiko has some deeply ambiguous aspects.
Yomiko has been seriously in love already when we meet her in the ROD OVA, with her teacher and predecessor Donny Nakajima--in fact she still wears his glasses as an obsessive reminder of her dead (?) boyfriend. She has obviously refused to "move on," and has become even more book-centered than ever. Socially awkward people who are hurt in love and life tend to escape into fantasy, and that's Yomiko's life story.
Enter, then, Nancy Makuhari, or Miss Deep. If Yomiko's personality is complex, Miss Deep's is multiple. Her powers and skills are indicative of her character, just as Yomiko's are. Nancy wears many masks, just as Mata Hari did. As a ‘deep,’ she penetrates through objects (and people), and moves on quickly, ever elusive. She always makes an impression, but she never stays around very long.
Talking about Nancy is difficult, because you're never quite sure which Nancy you mean. Do you mean the 'good' Nancy who becomes Yomiko's friend (Nancy 1)? Do you mean Nancy 1’s twin sister/clone (Nancy 2), the 'bad' Nancy who later tries to kill Yomiko? Do you mean the young, brown-haired girl (Young Nancy) in a photograph attached to a death certificate we see in the OVA? When we say “Nancy,” we may also mean Margaretha Zelle, the once-proper Dutch girl who re-invented herself several times. As writer Hideyuki Kurata lays it out, Nancy’s backstory in the OVA is muddled and not all of it seems to make sense. Just to make things still more confusing, Nancy has an entirely different backstory in the ROD novels, where she runs an antique shop in Australia (!) between missions for the British Library.
It’s just my own (nutty?) theory, but I like to think that the Nancy (Nancies) we see in the OVA/TV continuity is a compound of these individuals, a single personality that happens to inhabit two or three different bodies at the same time and alters subtly depending on which one she’s in. Nancy 2 certainly bears more than just a physical resemblance to her ‘good’ sister; she’s just a little more brutal, perhaps a shade more sexually aggressive, and definitely more subservient to/in love with Ikkyu Sojun. Yet the psychological likeness between the Nancies is there. We’ve all heard about the weird relationships twins can have. Both Nancies are attracted to Yomiko in the OVA (to Ikkyu’s annoyance), though Nancy 2’s attraction to the papermaster seems to be more physical with no emotional component at all. Yet Nancy 2 has some of her sister’s goodness, too; her later relationship with Yomiko is proof of that. Under Yomiko’s tutelage (can we call it love?), Nancy 2 becomes as sweet (if not sweeter) than Yomiko herself.
The relationship between the sisters is intriguing, and it’s a pity we don’t see more of it. Nancy 2 may be a clone, but she doesn’t seem to me to be someone who was just whipped up in a test tube 15 minutes ago. These two women seem to know each other very well; they may have been living side by side and fighting over the same lover for years for all we know.
Both of them are in love, of course—perhaps with more than one person at the same time. That’s the funny and surprising thing about Nancy. Her words and manner are cynically realistic, she pours scorn on Yomiko’s romantic illusions, and her body shouts “bimbo” to the world; yet she’s not a tramp at all. On the contrary, she may be even more genuinely romantic than Yomiko. When she falls in love, Nancy commits totally and holds nothing back. She’s loyal to the end—or nearly so. You can abuse her, lie to her, try to kill her—and she still won’t give up on a love, or the ghost of a love. The only thing that can draw her away or drive her away from someone is the love of someone else. Even then, she’ll resist choosing to the very last minute. Choosing between people is as painfully difficult for Nancy as it is for Yomiko, and it can provoke the same behavior: paralysis or furious violence, either towards others or herself.
Yomiko has powerful sexual drives, but these are usually well hidden beneath her sweet nerdiness and biblomania. Nancy’s sexuality (however you define it) is open to the point of blatancy. There’s her black catsuit, for one thing. It doesn’t look like a very practical fighting outfit, but that’s clearly not the point. Nancy wears a pair of crossbelts, but if you look closely you’ll notice that they’re not actually holding up anything. The belts are just there to look bitching and show off Nancy’s narrow waist and wide hips. When she’s off duty, Nancy dresses in very low-cut tops and jeans or cutoffs, which she always wears with the top button undone. Her body language speaks volumes. Critical distance doesn’t mean anything to Nancy; if she’s interested in someone, she’ll cuddle up as close as she dares. She’s the most touchy-feely person in the series, the queen of PDA. As for the gender of a love/sex object, that doesn’t seem to matter to Nancy at all. Other ROD women (Nenene, Maggie, Yomiko) get hesitant and choked up when subtext rears its head, but Nancy is a sophisticated woman of the world in that as in so much else. Nancy also bears more than a passing resemblance to the other sexually ambiguous ROD villainesses, Fire (in the ROD manga) and Lily the Book Pirate (in the Read or Dream manga).
Despite all their superficial differences, then, Nancy and Yomiko have a surprising amount in common. Both of them have been hurt in love (with men, as it happens), but both of them are still seeking it. Both have strong sexual urges that need an outlet. (Yomiko has channeled her desires into books, while Nancy’s are directed towards a man who apparently no longer loves her.) Both are torn between conflicting loyalties of various kinds, and both have violent urges that explode when they cannot resolve (or flee from) their conflicts and responsibilities.
Finally, they’re both alone. Yomiko has left Nenene and Japan far away. Donny is either dead or in some horrible undead or half-human state. Yomiko looks up to Joker and Mr. Gentleman, and Wendy (Joker’s secretary) seems to like her, but none of them is really close to her. Certainly none of them can understand what she’s already lost in Donny, and none of them seem to perceive the very mature emotions beneath Yomiko’s childlike exterior. Nancy is even more isolated. She is a double agent, and by definition such persons can trust no one. The only two people she loves (Ikkyu and her sister) have stopped loving her and will soon cease to trust her as well.
The Nancy/Yomiko pairing looks very unlikely at first, but it is less so than you might think. In fact, many shoujo pairings in anime/manga fall into this pattern. There’s the strong, beautiful, tough, street-wise (but troubled) older girl, and the cute, innocent, inexperienced (but trusting) younger girl. The older girl serves as teacher/older sister to the younger one, whose innocent trust softens the tough girl’s hard heart. Sometimes the relationship has a sexual component, sometimes it doesn’t, but the pattern remains the same. For what it’s worth, some Western lesbian novels (like Patricia Highsmith’s The Price of Salt) use the same basic situation.
II. Yin and Yang Together
At first, Nancy x Yomiko follows this pattern very closely. In the beginning of the OVA, Nancy (the tough, older one) initially treats Yomiko with coldness and disdain. That changes when they get into action together. Nancy admires skill, and Yomiko turns out to be a lot better in a fight than she looks. Nancy finds the young book nerd’s naiveté both amusing and touching; it has been a while since she has met anyone this sweet and innocent. Yomiko awakens Nancy’s own softer emotions, which she hasn’t had much of a chance to use. For her part, Yomiko admires Nancy and learns from her; she also sees the kind heart beneath that massive bust. She clearly thinks the world of her new teacher, and that baffles Nancy—who’s all too aware of her double role, and increasingly conscience stricken about it. Beneath her egotistical exterior Nancy does not like herself very much, and she doesn’t quite know how to handle Yomiko’s unrestrained, unselfish admiration.
There’s a critical scene between these two about a third of the way through the OVA. It looks very much as if Nancy is coming on to Yomiko. Nancy sits very close to Yomiko, braids her hair, sniffs it after she braids it, and brushes Yomiko’s cheek with the braid— while soft, romantic music plays on the soundtrack. Yet Yomiko doesn’t notice, or pretends not to—she’s too deep in a book, Beethoven’s “Immortal Beloved”. Look at how Nancy takes this: she turns away from Yomiko, her body slumps, she yawns—to keep herself from reacting more obviously?
Yomiko then jumps up and reads Beethoven’s declaration of love to his “Immortal Beloved”—while still ignoring the woman next to her. This leads to a discussion of the nature of love between Nancy and Yomiko, in which Nancy presents a rather cynical (or realistic?) view of the question. She’s speaking about her own tragic situation, of course: she’s bound in a sincere but pointless love (“a love you want without a future”) with a man who hardly cares for her anymore. She also speaks of “a love you don’t mind with a future” (i.e., a second best), and you can’t help but wonder if she isn’t speaking of Yomiko herself here. Nancy tries to warn Yomiko that real love isn’t like it is in books, that it has a very high price and doesn’t last forever. Yomiko doesn’t seem to take this too seriously, and gives Nancy a bookmark as a keepsake which will make her “lucky in love.”
The feelings between these two deepen further when they fight Genjo Sanzo in India. Each woman risks her life to save the other, and Nancy is nearly killed as a result. Nancy risks more than just her life here; she risks the hatred of the man she loves. Nancy undoubtedly violates Ikkyu’s orders by saving Yomiko; by her actions, she forces Ikkyu to kill Genjo himself, which he can’t be too happy about. If Ikkyu was wondering about Nancy 1’s motives and feelings before, then this whole business must clinch it for him. Nancy 1’s feelings for Yomiko (however you define them) have ruined her usefulness as a double agent.(Something very similar did happen to Mata Hari, actually; in fact, Nancy's story parallels Mata Hari's at many points, just as her character is similar to Mata's.)Yomiko’s feeling for Nancy has grown even stronger. This surprises Nancy, wounds her conscience, and depresses her.
And so we come to the climax of the OVA, where the tragic quadrangle of Nancy 1—Nancy 2—Ikkyu—Yomiko is played out. Nancy 2 reveals herself (and Ikkyu’s plot) when she kisses Yomiko and escapes. Despite this, Yomiko refuses to believe that her friend and teacher has really betrayed her; perhaps it’s all a mistake. Significantly, she refuses to wash off Nancy 2’s lipstick; it’s still on her neck when she lands on the Ijin fortress. There she learns the truth at last, when Ikkyu shows the two Nancies at the same time. He obviously has plans for Yomiko, but he is irked with Nancy 1 because Yomiko in her present state (i.e., uncorrupted, still innocent) is useless to him. This implies that bringing Yomiko over to the Ijin—perhaps by seducing her—was part of Nancy’s assignment. Ikkyu also complains that even Nancy 2 has become a little “maudlin” where Yomiko is concerned.
Though apparently killed by her sister, Nancy 1 returns to save the day. She puts her sister out of action and kills Ikkyu, but to Yomiko’s shock she chooses to kill herself beside the body of the man she once loved. Yomiko is broken-hearted; she runs at the nose afterwards, a sign of extreme emotional distress in Japan. Yet Nancy 1 has left her something: her dying wish is that Yomiko look after her sister. Nancy 2 remains alive, though she has suffered from oxygen deprivation and has reverted to a childlike persona. In the closing scene of the OVA, we see Yomiko fulfilling her promise.
Yomiko takes this promise very seriously indeed, and her loyalty to Nancy precipitates the critical events of the ROD TV series. When Joker takes Nancy 2’s child by Ikkyu (Junior) away, Yomiko is outraged. Joker has his own plans for Junior, whose Ijin body will serve as the new human‘vessel’ for the dying Mr. Gentleman. Yomiko doesn’t know all this, but she now challenges the chief whom she had always admired before. To spite her, Joker incautiously reveals a few of the nasty things he’s done to Donny. Yomiko goes berserk, and destroys the British Library in her rage. She flees to Japan with Nancy 2 (though we are not told how), and the two hide away in the overflow storage stacks of the Diet Library (the Japanese equivalent of the Library of Congress) for nearly 5 years. They can’t escape forever, of course: Nenene, driven by her own obsession, finds them with the help of the Paper Sisters. Joker and the British Library (now hell-bent on world conquest) are right behind, and the final story arc begins.
The 5 years in the Diet Library are the most interesting of all in the Yomiko-Nancy relationship, but we know nothing about them in detail. Yet when Nenene and the Paper Sisters discover them, we see that the dynamic of the relationship has changed greatly from what we saw between Nancy 1 and Yomiko in the OVA. In fact, it’s been reversed. Now Yomiko is the teacher/older girl figure, with Nancy 2 in the role of the sweet young innocent. Some fans see the change in Nancy 2 as largely due to brain damage suffered in the OVA, and even consider Nancy 2 retarded. I don’t think this is quite so. Nancy 2 certainly seems to have some memory loss (though she apparently remembers Ikkyu and Joker well enough), but she certainly seems competent enough otherwise. She hasn’t forgotten how to fight or use a gun, and she’s doing both by the end of the TV series. She’s a good cook, and apparently does some of the household stuff that Yomiko has never been good at. I think the change in Nancy is due to the aftereffects of the considerable psychological traumas that she has suffered—the loss of her lover, her sister, and her child.
There’s another factor involved: Yomiko’s own influence. Just as Nancy helps Yomiko learn maturity and toughness in the OVA, so Yomiko remolds Nancy 2 in her own sweet image. At first, Nancy 2 seems very unlike the leather-clad assassin we met in the OVA. She loves reading and adores cute, cuddly things: small children, origami butterflies, etc. Yomiko’s softening influence on Nancy may in fact have gone too far, infantilizing Nancy and making her over-dependent on Yomiko. Only later on—when Yomiko and her own son are threatened—does her toughness and determination return.
Yomiko is different now, too. Her old giggly silliness has vanished and she has become more mature. She is much more patient and thoughtful—and sadder, too. She lost much of her innocence about the world in the OVA, and she has come to doubt herself since she destroyed the British Library. Joker’s words confuse her and reinforce her guilt feelings, and these become even stronger when the truth about Junior’s fate (which Yomiko hid from Nancy) emerges.
The interaction between Nancy and Yomiko in the TV series is very interesting psychologically. They are very patient and gentle with each other, though Yomiko is plainly dominant. Yomiko often looks at Nancy 2 with the same quiet warmth with which Nancy 1 looked at her in the OVA. Each is the center of the other’s universe. Yomiko says that as long as Nancy is happy “nothing else matters.” Nancy says that Yomiko is the “most important person in the world to me,” placing Yomiko even above her own son. All they seem to want is to hide away from the world together, presumably forever. Even after they have been rediscovered by Nenene and have fled to Yomiko’s old house in Saitama, Nancy says that they can stay there permanently, and that “it will be just like before.”
III. Are They or Aren’t They?
Such, in outline, is the history of the relationship. But wait a minute—aren’t we getting ahead of ourselves here? Just what kind of relationship are we talking about? Are these two friends, or something more?
Now, as we should all know by now, gender-bending and sexual ambiguity are standard fare in Japanese popular entertainment. The Yomiko/Nancy relationship is one of the most commonly cited examples of subtext in anime/manga, and with good reason. It’s by no means easy to determine what (if anything) is going on between these two women.
First of all, it’s clear that the creator of ROD, Kurata, loves subtext. It crops up all over the place in the ROD universe. In addition to Nancy x Yomiko as a possibility, we also have Nenene x Yomiko (a ship that deserves its own manifesto), as well as Anita x Hisami Hisaichi, persistent hinting about Maggie Mui’s sexual identity, Fire, and Lily, a villainess from the Read or Dream manga with a serious loli fetish.
Kurata loves to play with his reader’s heads on this subject. Artwork is one way to do that, of course, and there’s certainly a good deal of fan service in ROD. Much fan service art is strictly for show: OOC T & A stuff with no relationship to the characters or the storyline. Yet the quotient of fan service art featuring Nancy x Yomiko is quite high, higher than for any other two characters or any other potential pairing in the ROD universe. The art is more revealing, too, and some of it implies some interesting things about the Nancy x Yomiko relationship. The image below, for example (from the ROD novels), certainly seems to imply certain things.
You can argue about it all day long and not come to any definite conclusions. That’s probably as it should be. Discretion and innocence are two of the things that make ROD so charming, and I wouldn’t want to lose those qualities. You can interpret the relationship between Nancy and Yomiko as simply an intense, emotional friendship, and many fans do so. That interpretation certainly works well enough to cover most of what we see.
As for me, though, I find it rather hard to believe that there is no sexual or romantic fire at all beneath that huge cloud of fan service smoke. The fan service art of these two relates to their behavior in the story much more closely than such art usually does; it seems to draw out the subtext or implications of their interaction.
Certainly, that interaction by itself is enough to make many viewers guess at a romantic or sexual attraction between Nancy and Yomiko. The hair-braiding, love-discussion scene in the OVA was what made me start to wonder. There are plenty of other hints, too—the frequency with which Nancy pinches Yomiko’s cheeks, for example, and Yomiko’s happy sighs in response. The music is another clue—it’s not the kind of music you expect to hear when the two parties concerned are just good pals. It’s syrupy, love-theme stuff. I’ve already mentioned Nancy’s body language in the OVA, and you see the same thing in the TV series. Nancy keeps touching Yomiko, as if in fear that she will disappear. The body language between them in the Saitama scenes is very tender and intimate.
The viewer may not be the only one to suspect that something is going on. Junior is plainly (and understandably) jealous of Yomiko’s influence over his mother. And Nenene is clearly a little worried when she learns that Yomiko (for whom she may have a repressed thing of her own) has been living alone with this sex bomb for five years.
For what it’s worth, it seems to me that Nancy 1 is definitely attracted to Yomiko in the OVA (and so is Nancy 2, in her different way). As mentioned above, seducing Yomiko may well be part of the assignment that Ikkyu has given Nancy, but Nancy is drawn to Yomiko emotionally as well as physically, and that’s dangerous. But how does Yomiko feel? Her responses to Miss Deep’s come-ons (and that’s what they appear to me to be) are bafflingly inconsistent; one minute she hardly seems to notice, the next minute she’s sighing in rapture when Nancy pinches her. No wonder poor Nancy seems confused and depressed by the situation.
But…does anything actually HAPPEN? Not in the OVA, I think, if you go by the action we actually see. There simply isn’t time. You can say, ‘ah, yes, but off-screen…’ But if anything did happen off-screen, then the action we see on-screen—and especially the denouement—would be different too.
Nancy 1 chooses death, and it’s worth while to ask why. She clearly has a lot of loyalty to Ikkyu left, and some faded memories of the time when he was good to her. (Though it’s hard to believe he ever was.) Like a lot of women in abusive love affairs Nancy finds it almost impossible to break free emotionally, even after she’s killed the lover who tormented her. She can escape to safety with Yomiko, yes—but what kind of safety would it be? It becomes clear later that Joker hates Nancy, and she would certainly be tried for treason. That would put Yomiko through hell and strain her loyalties. Finally, would Nancy and Yomiko have any kind of future as a couple anyway? Yomiko’s responses to Nancy, as we’ve seen, have been maddeningly unpredictable. At several points, you may want to yell at Nancy 1 to just grab Yomiko and go at it. That’s Nancy 2’s way, certainly (that kiss!), but Nancy 1 may be in love and that makes her hesitate. One of the things that Nancy 1 loves about Yomiko—perhaps the thing she loves most of all—is Yomiko’s innocence. A blunt, direct approach would damage that innocence, and a full-blown sexual affair might well destroy it. So Nancy 1 is caught in an impossible dilemma, and in such situations death can seem like a logical way out.
That leaves us with the TV. If anything ever happens sexually or romantically between these two, it has to happen when they’re alone in the Diet Library for all those years. There’s plenty of time, and they are off-screen. Certainly, when we see them again much of their interaction (particularly body language) suggests that they have gotten very intimate indeed. However, many fans seem uncomfortable with this idea. After all, Nancy 2 seems rather childlike when we first meet her again, and the relationship between her and Yomiko is at times similar to that between a child and its mother. The idea of Yomiko and Nancy 2 doing anything sexual can seem almost like abuse of a child or a crippled person.
I can well understand such a reaction by some fans, but I think it may be based on a partial misreading of the situation and the characters. Nancy 2’s brain damage seems to have affected parts of her memory, yes, but she is competent otherwise. She may be child-like, but she’s not a child. As the TV series progresses, she becomes progressively more active and assertive; she’s recovering the energy and combativeness that were dormant under Yomiko’s sweetening influence. Nancy 2 is an odd character, but she’s not the mental basket case that some see her as. If we go by canon, then the Diet Library is the only place and time where these two can get serious. I think they are both capable of it, and there are some indications that this has happened.
I said earlier that the fanservice art of Nancy and Yomiko says or implies some important things about their relationship and their personalities. In most of this art, Nancy is invariably the sexual aggressor. She is usually depicted in her catsuit, and such aggressive behavior fits the Nancy we see in the OVA. Yomiko is usually surprised by whatever Nancy’s doing—sometimes she looks positively alarmed. Sometimes, though, Yomiko looks pleased as punch and is obviously enjoying herself as much as Nancy is. That reflects Yomiko’s divided responses to Nancy in the OVA.
There are two pieces of art that seem to refer to the period of the TV series—you can tell because Nancy’s hair is cut short. One is about the most blatant fanservice artwork in all of ROD, a nighttime onsen scene of Nancy and Yomiko with Nancy shown starkers from the rear. It’s a very curious image; Yomiko is looking up at Nancy from the water with a bemused-but-fascinated expression. In the background, you can see Ikkyu and several other Ijin looking on at Nancy with their eyes bugging out—the ghosts of Nancy’s past, perhaps? Nancy herself is the oddest thing of all; she’s not looking at anyone in the picture, not even Yomiko. Instead, she’s staring out very intently at a point somewhere over the viewer’s own right shoulder. It’s quite strange: here she is, naked with an attractive woman whom she cares about deeply, and yet Nancy is fixated on something else over the horizon, something only she seems to notice. It echoes something that is apparent in both the OVA and the TV: however much she cares about her, there are depths of loneliness, longing, and perhaps anger in Nancy that not even Yomiko can reach.
There’s another picture that says something about the changed dynamic of the Nancy-Yomiko relationship, as we see it in the TV. It shows a cheerfully naughty Nancy 2 flashing her backside at Yomiko. In a corner of the picture, we see Yomiko grinning back in a mirror. It’s quite startling and very revealing, for a variety of reasons. First of all, this “childlike” Nancy still has a very adult sexuality, albeit with a kind of little-girl dirtiness to it. Secondly, Yomiko knows and responds to it. Finally, the sexual dynamic between the two has shifted. In other artwork—as in her behavior in the OVA and, perhaps, the novels—Nancy is pursuing aggressively. She’s the initiator here, too, yes, but it’s different this time. Now she’s offering herself to Yomiko. She’s placing herself in the passive or receptive role sexually, just as she is in the passive role in the other aspects of the relationship that we see in the TV series. Nancy wants only to make Yomiko happy, and she’ll give Yomiko all she has to do so. There is a tendency in the fandom to see this pairing in stereotypic terms, with Nancy (the leather clad dom type, natch) as the one on top. I have a feeling that it’s much more complex and ‘even’ than that in the TV. These two comfort and compliment each other. They’re constantly giving freely to one another, so it’s logical that this would apply sexually too.
By the way, from the hints we have in the artwork this doesn’t seem to be a sweetly-sentimental affair either—all shared diaries and tears and violins in the background. No, if these two are doing it at all they’re laughing all the time and having a heck of a lot of dirty fun. Nancy’s Mata Hari, after all (see below), and SHE certainly enjoyed every ride she took.
OK, it seems very possible that something is, indeed, going on in the TV series. But what happens afterwards? Do these two have a future? At the end of the TV series, the British Library has been overthrown and Nancy and Junior have been happily reunited. Nenene and Yomiko are spending an awful lot of time together. Nenene tells Yomiko “I’m not letting you out of my sight.” In the meantime, Nancy has gone off to India to learn more of the truth about her past. She seems cheerful and highly competent, but she will be back to take care of her son. That is clearly a major priority for her. Has Nancy taken everything she can from her relationship with Yomiko? Is she now ready to move on from that into a new, Yomiko-free life? As for Yomiko, has she really made a definitive choice in favor of Nenene, now that Nancy can stand on her own feet?
The answers would appear to be “yes,” but caution is in order. Since so much is unknown about the Nancy-Yomiko-Nenene triangle, it would be a little rash to assume that it’s been resolved. Kurata likes some ambiguity in his endings; happily-ever-after is something he shies away from. He has left the door open for a sequel even in the TV storyline, and he has said he’d like to do one. So, who knows what the future holds?
IV
Reason/Treason?
Ambiguity and subtext are so interwoven through the ROD story that it’s hard even to determine whether Nancy and Yomiko are a “pairing” or not. There certainly seems to be good (though not irrefutable) evidence for it by the time we get to the TV series, and the novels have yet to be revealed to us.
Why care, then? First of all, because this relationship (however you read it) is extremely close; if these two are in love--and it sure looks that way at times--then it's very, very intense. This is certainly so emotionally, and may be so sexually as well. Nancy and Yomiko risk their lives and sacrifice everything for each other, and you can't prove your feelings more powerfully than that. That commands respect, and you can see why these two are postergirls for shoujoai. Their relationship is the hinge on which the whole plot of the ROD OVA/TV sequence turns, so it's important for that reason as well.
These two are both fun, complex characters, and the interaction between them is fascinating and moving. The ambiguity and subtext help make it so, but there’s plenty else going on. They make a great fighting team for one thing, and they’re also FUNNY. Yomiko’s impulsive geekiness makes an amusing contrast to Nancy 1’s witty cynicism. They can be a little hard to picture as a couple, but we get some idea of what they might be like together. We can imagine Nancy always pushing the envelope, saying and doing slyly outrageous things in order to tease, provoke, or titillate Yomiko; Yomiko being properly shocked, then blushing and giggling coquettishly, finally throwing herself laughingly into whatever dirty game Nancy has in mind. (Sometimes Nancy and Yomiko remind me a little of Hopey and Maggie in Jaime Hernandez’ Love and Rockets.) You don’t have to believe in them as a couple in order to enjoy watching them as friends, but it adds an extra dimension. Besides, how many super-heroine crime-fighting female couples are there these days?
SHE's a socially helpless book nerd high-school teacher!
Uh..SHE's a big-breasted bisexual leather-clad assassin!
TOGETHER...they fight crime!
And after all…they’re both hot.
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