How do you know if you have an anime fan on your message board if it’s not an anime-specific board? He or she uses the term “bishie”. Based on the term you might think it refers to someone with really long hair, and that is part of it. However, it’s not exactly correct. But that’s where “Trope Shark” comes in, to discuss what a bishie is.
Now remember anime/manga fans, this site isn’t dedicated to one particular media, although I do admittedly focus on comics, movies, and television because they’re easier to discuss. Therefore I potentially draw in a larger demographic and not all of them are into anime, so in keeping with this article series’ mission I will only be giving an overview of bishies to those not steeped in American anime/manga fan culture, so if there’s some specific detail I missed it’s because it wasn’t important to the overall discussion. If they wanted every trope connected to this trope they would have looked for it on TV Tropes and been lost for five hours following link after link to understand every term. We’re focused on explaining bishie here. And while I do some research my personal observations are also included in the discussion.
So what is a “bishie”? Well, let’s look at the word itself, because it’s not the full word. It is actually a Western fan short form for “bishōnen”, which roughly translates into “pretty boy”. You know, guys who take such care of themselves they look like women. From Wikipedia:
The prefix bi (美) more often than not refers to feminine beauty, and bijin, literally “beautiful person”, is usually, though not always, used to refer to beautiful women.[2]Bichūnen means “beautiful middle-aged man”.[5]Biseinen is to be distinguished from bishōnen as seinen is used to describe men who are of age, including those who have entered or completed tertiary education. The term shōnen is used to describe boys of middle and high school age. Last, bishota can be used to refer to a beautiful, pre-pubescent male child or a childlike male.[2] Outside Japan, bishōnen is the most well-known of the three terms, and has become a generic term for all beautiful boys and young men.
Artwork demonstrating the style of Bishōnen (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Not every homosexual depicted in Japanese media is a bishõnen, and not every bishõnen is gay. It does mean effeminate, but it connects mainly to men who can be confused with a woman. Think Hanson early in their career, especially the middle kid who’s the main singer. Go watch the early videos and see how much he looked like a girl. I thought he was until the second video. One of the best examples in wider berth is probably Sephiroth from Final Fantasy VII since you could make the case he’s the standard for the term. Long, luxurious hair and androgynous features and mannerisms are pretty much the norm, although short-haired men could fit the more official definition. Which mean the Final Fantasy series is loaded with bishies. I may be exaggerating with long hair as a factor but that’s how I often see it used, or at least someone with “bishie hair” (Tommy from Mighty Morphin Power Rangers at one point had longer hair than some of the female Rangers. But otherwise nobody would call him feminine even before his MMA days so Tommy isn’t technically a bishie.)
TV Tropes had this to say:
In the English fandom, the term bishōnen simply connotes “a really, really attractive male”, but in its original usage, it refers to a specific type of attractiveness that is found in adolescents. The cutoff for bishōnen in the strict sense is around 20 years old. Beyond this age, the Japanese describe male attractiveness through terms like biseinen or bidanshi (“beautiful man”) or ikemen (roughly “good-looking guy”). The affectionate English fandom shorthand “bishie” bypasses the lexical issues somewhat.
Cosplay of Shepiroth in Finncon (2006) because a pic of the actual character wouldn’t post right (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
They also bring up one theory about why bishõnen are such a hit with females, that having such strong female features that they are less threatening than men, and probably less likely to grope them on the subway. That doesn’t mean that all bishies are gay. Some most definitely are but there are some that are into women or sometimes asexual, being more interested in fighting or power (that’s usually the ones on the bad guys side; I think Loki from the Marvel movies would be an example, but I’m not convinced he’s a full bishie) than finding love. They also differ from crossdressers as they’re usually drawn to obviously be men in drag or requiring makeup to look like women (to the point that if the show is dubbed for kids in the Western culturues, say turning Tekkaman Blade into Saban’s Teknoman, the character could actually be turned into a girl, like that one character that always hit on Slade–used to be a gay man in drag) while bishies tend to naturally look like women either because they take good care of themselves (metrosexual style) or just never cut their hair and didn’t learn how to be masculine without being a “macho he-man” kind of guy. They may be devoted to a male sensei or traveling companion without actually being in love with them. It’s just their attitude that makes them appear that way. When a bishie is gay, they’re usually more obvious, but since so many are aloof anyway it’s not always easy for a while unless they’re so flamboyantly gay you can’t help but notice.
Originally, bishōnen characters were the province of shoujo (think Twilight or even The Hunger Games) and Boys Love (gay romance) Genres, but since the mid-90s, it has become the default style for teenage boys in pretty much any work looking for a cross-demographic audience. Since more modern anime and manga are overwhelming geared towards appealing to both men and women in this respect, a large majority of virtually all mainstream works will feature at least one bishōnen character, if not more. Also the farther bishōnen characters disseminate from their source genres, the less likely it becomes that there will be in-universe mention of their androgynous looks/attractiveness.
Although sometimes it’s either played as a joke or leaves them the object of ridicule unless they can kick butt (usually with a sword since I see these mostly popping up in samurai tales but that could just be my experience) and even they they’ll made fun of until they kick the person’s butt.
So now when someone calls a character a bishie you should have a better idea of what they’re talking about. Is it a good thing? Well, there are plenty of bishõnen that I don’t like, it’s usually the “bad boy” character, and Japanese bad boys are usually characters I can do without. I’m sure we’ll get into bad boys another time but I think we’ve suffered through them no matter your chosen media and genre. Personally I don’t have a negative opinion on the bishies as a whole but I wouldn’t miss them if they disappeared either. It depends on the character more than his fabulous hair. It never slowed Finn the Human down, did it?
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