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Nurse
In anime, the nurse can be the traditional assistant in a hospital, but the nurse can also be taken from the literal level of healer to a more metaphorical or transcendent healer (perhaps in a personal capacity, but also, a healer of the world). This nurse is found in the girl with big dreams, young Moriya Ririka of the magical girl show Nurse Angel Ririka SOS, and in Maria of the bishoujo game Private Nurse. The nurse also appears as a fetish character-type. A hospital, for example, becomes the setting for the dating-game series from Trabulance, Kango Shicyauzo.
Like many magical girl shows, Nurse Angel Ririka SOS is centered around the power of love and healing, and also has motifs of the angelic-like quality of young girls (other savior shows do as well, such as Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne and Wedding Peach). Ririka has just turned 10 years old in episode 1. But not only that, her typical school day starts with excitement as a transfer student named Kanou arrives at the White Dove Academy. Much to the president of his fan club’s dismay, Kanou takes a great interest in Ririka. He gives her a present, which turns out to be an ornamented box housing the Angel Cap (a magical nurse's hat) that Ririka will be able to use to transform into the Legendary Nurse Angel. Ririka's best friend and neighbor, Seiya, is quite jealous at the attention between the two and does not like at all that Ririka seems to have a thing for the older student. But trouble strikes, and the Nurse Angel comes to the rescue, especially when it is Seiya who's in danger. He'd protect Ririka at all costs, being very devoted to his friend and crush.
Ririka learns that Kanou is really from the planet Queen Earth, which was a beautiful and peaceful planet just like this Earth until the Dark Joker came, bringing illness to the animals, people, and world itself, leaving it a wasteland. In order to save the Earth from the same fate, she must find the flower of life for the green vaccine. There is also a hinted at connection between Ririka and Queen Helena (ruler of Queen Earth) as Ririka is told she resembles her.
The combined imagery of the nurse and angel is an old and common one. Nurses are many times referred to as "angels" or the "angels of the battlefield" in cases such as the real-life nurses Clara Barton and Florence Nightingale. These women persevered, healed, and tended to the wounded and sick at any cost. Ririka has this kind of role. Too, Seiya's father is a doctor and Ririka's own grandmother is a retired nurse. Growing up around everyone with this kind of life, she naturally found herself picking up doctoring tips and becoming on her way to being a nurse herself in the probable future. So, like many magical girls who find their transformed state mirrors an unconscious dream or the quality of their personality, Ririka's other self is a nurse, albeit a magical one.
As mentioned, nurses historically and culturally have been given the label of "angels" for their efforts to tend those in need through love and dedication. Here it's taken a step further, and Ririka is taken on one level to be almost a literal angel. At least, there is something magical involved. Like Maron (Jeanne) and Meimi (Saint Tail), Ririka prays before her transformation, and her power is prayer from the heart. Prayer is traditionally communication with a deity, though here it is not a religious gesture or connotation, but a spiritual one. Unlike the aforementioned heroines, Ririka does not work for God, instead her prayers are a spiritual boost, a way to reaffirm spiritual guidance of the power inside her.
Like Ririka, Maria is an unusual woman. Hiroki being a sickly young man in need of care, is visited by the mysterious nurse Maria. Maria is all about natural care: herbs, vegetable and fruit drinks, lots of sunlight, and walks through the park to get close to nature. Who she is is never explicitly explained, but one can draw the conclusion that Maria is herself the spirit of the world tree or an elemental or spirit of the natural world. She is a guardian and healer whose powers extend from the living beings and plants, to nurture and watch over the human, animal, and plant worlds. Maria, finding a human boy crying out for love and to be well, comes to him as a young man to heal both his body and his mind. By healing one person at a time, her role fits into a philosophy that healing one life at a time will ultimately heal part of the greater whole. All things of the Earth are connected according to Maria, so every life on it is under responsibility to be watched over to keep a healthy balance not just in the individual person, but overall in the planet itself.
There is a strong link in both series between the feminine and earth/nature. The planet most like Earth in another universe is called Queen Earth (this of course implies ideas like Mother Earth, Gaea, etc.). This connection of the feminine is further alluded to in Nurse Angel Ririka's introductory speech: "The Bright Light of the Ages! The spirit of the voice of the earth, Nurse Angel. The spirit has sent me!" And as the earth needs cleansing from pollution and protected, Ririka as a nurse cleanses this and works to heal the natural world. This image of course plays out in Maria’s character in her true identity as a mother earth goddess or a world tree spirit. Both are guardians, mothers of the planet, and Maria as a nurse becomes a healing mother figure over the people and nature.
In the first Kango Shicyauzo, you play a young doctor who agrees to help teach the nurses in training at Saint Michael’s Nursing School. While there, Shinobu (the protagonist) has the option of dating and ultimately possibly marrying one of several young ladies, most of whom are nurses-to-be. Each is dutiful when it comes to her duties and her patients, and each represents a popular personality type of dating games: Momiji, the childhood friend, Nanana, the friendly and upbeat girl, and Chisa, the very quiet but dedicated young lady, just to name a few. The nurse is a figure thought of as nurturing, mothering, and granting of every whim when it comes to erotic fantasy, plus the uniform is one of many fetish types, so finding a seductive nurse or an adult anime or dating game featuring women in this type of work isn’t going to be uncommon. Along with this, the seductive nurse might also appear as an in-joke or a tongue in cheek take on this fantasy type. For example, some of the artist Junko Mizuno’s works feature sexy, cute nurses. But while these nurses may have cute faces and on the outside look seductive in their long hair and bared breasts, these ladies can have the hint of the dangerous underneath. Her heroines are meant to be strong character-types and to appeal to an audience seeking fun, independent characters. The bared breasts of her artwork are meant to capture more of the primal witch nature (the woman in-tune with magic or dangerous forces, quite in control of herself) or the flashing breasts used in art to depict the strength of the feminine, such as the naked breasts of the Amazons. So in an example like Mizuno’s work, the nurse image is being shifted in the direction towards an empowered female.
Mizuno work referenced:
“Miznotic Fantasy: a Junko Mizuno Fansite.” 12 August 2004. 17 November 2004.
< http://miznotic.viciously-kinky.net/index.php>.