Lady Oscar, the heroine who broke gender stereotypes turns 50
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If there is a shared imaginary, a common mythology, a sort of faith that is not only plausible but also indisputable, for the generation born between the beginning of the seventies and the end of the eighties, this is the common, Carthusian, affectionate knowledge of Japanese cartoons. classics, the result of the experience, common to all, of endless bread snacks and Nutella in front of an afternoon television that was very rich in good stories at the time. Among them, there was naturally that of Lady Oscarwhich will be celebrated at the next Lucca Comics & Games, on the occasion of 50th anniversary of Riyoko Ikeda’s manga Roses of Versaillesreleased since 1972, from which in 1979 the legendary animated series was releasedwhich then arrived in our country only three years later, in 1982.
It is indeed worth mentioning that the massive import of the best of Japanese animation (and then, simply, of all or almost all the production of the Rising Sun), which began in the 70s with the first super robots Grendizer and Mazinger, and then exploded in the 80s, an Italian unicum, which knows no parallels in other Western countries. Elsewhere, we should have awaited the boom of anime and manga, and more precisely of shonen (those of action and combat) following the affirmation of Dragon Ball. Only then would the publishing houses go to search, as refinements for fans, the best manga productions of the previous decades.
In Italy, things went very differently, with the heroes of those comics already well established in the hearts of every little girl and boy (among many cartoons intended for a purely male or female audience, Lady Oscar was able, logically for a character who anticipated gender bending, to win over fans from all sides) already twenty years earlier, through adaptations to cartoons. It was due to the proliferation of local television networks, which were looking for content to be purchased in bulk to fill the schedules. So, if elsewhere in the West titles like Lady Oscar, (but we could equally mention Ken the warrior, Lam, Candy Candy, Devilman or Lupine III) are stuff for fans, rediscovered and distributed only after the global success of Dragon Ball and its direct grandsons shonen One piece, Naruto, Bleach! and company, with us they are classics known to all, shared imagery of at least two generations. It was in such a context that the pioneers of the importation of Japanese comics also moved, which also occurred before the explosion of manga globally (and long before their recent conquest of the book sales charts): the story begins in 1989 in Bologna, with the Granata Press founded by Luigi Bernardi and with the fanzine Mangazine created by the Kappa Boys (a group of manga enthusiasts composed of Andrea Baricordi, Massimiliano De Giovanni, Andrea Pietroni and Barbara Rossi) and published, after five self-produced issues by the four pioneering boys, by the same Granata Press. This is how Lady Oscar’s comic series saw our newsstands for the first time in 1993 for Granata Press. Almost twenty years after its first release in Japan, but still earlier than in any other Western country, Lady Oscar’s manga therefore did not arrive in Italy as an obscure rediscovery for manga philologists, but as the natural and expected arrival on newsstands of a heroine already known to alland loved by all, thanks to a television adaptation that had never stopped airing (beyond the absolute value of some works, there is no doubt that the undaunted annual regularity of the reruns has contributed to their legendary status) .
There would have been some surprises anyway: in the mangawhich is now available in an excellent box set published by J-Pop, the character has in fact a different development arc: If when it came to the anime, Oscar Franois de Jarjayes’ star status was the starting point of the production, so it hadn’t been with the comic. Moreover, that title in the plural testifies to this: The roses of Versailles. Initially, Riyoko Ikeda’s work centered on Marie Antoinette and the other women of the courtincluding the daughter of the head of the Royal Guard, raised as a man and educated militarily. But from episode to episode (in Japan the manga come out in magazines, in episodes of sixteen or twenty pages, before being collected in the volumes with which we know them in the West, and the popularity of the titles – and even of the individual characters – is constantly monitored by editors with specific surveys aimed at readers), it became clear that female readers (and readers) wanted to see more and more Oscars in action, and so the blonde heroine in a glittering uniform took on the whole sceneuntil that epic and dramatic ending that sees her siding with the revolutionary forces and die during the storming of the Bastille: a moment that, in the cartoon version, indelibly imprinted (didn’t anyone cry?) in the retinas of all Italian spectators.
Self Lady Oscar’s popularity has never waned, it is also due to a series of factors that go beyond the iconic character of the character, and also to his ability to anticipate the times (certainly in 1972 we did not talk about gender issues in the same way as now): beyond the fictionality of the protagonist, Lady Oscar is based on a meticulous historical research and on a perfect narrative balance between intrigue, adventure, love and historical events: so, between old and new acronyms, editions and re-editions, fifty years after his birth, Oscar Franois de Jarjayes comes to be celebrated at Lucca Comics (among the godmothers, the cosplayers Lady Kurimi and Letizia Cosplay), and there is no doubt that the Italian community of fans of manga and anime in general, and Lady Oscar in particular, will make her a party worthy … of Versailles.
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22 October 2022 | 08:25
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