Image1: Gyro Power! (She probably has no idea why it does what it does.)
Image2: Experiments involving liquid nitrogen. (She has no idea what
it means for it to boil in room temperature, or the significance of
transition between liquid and gaseous states. Wait a minute. Was she
really a high school student!?)
Image3: Making of charcoal-foil battery. That little yellow fan is
turning.
Image4: She is hopelessly and cluelessly trying to connect multiple
batteries together to turn higher power motors. (No, really. Was she
a high school student!? How did she graduate?)
Image5: Very nice! pachi-pachi! (At least she can do something well.)
Normally, I don't write more stuff after talking about the images, but
here I think I have to. I think she really was clueless about most of
the things she messed around with at the museum. I don't think that's
a good thing at all. I'm not so against the "prince on a white horse
saving the princess" type fairy tales, but I think such things can
have negative effect on children. Can you think of such a weak female
lead character in Miyazaki anime? Of course not. Where am I going
with all this? I think there is a cultural desire, if you will, to
keep the girls... not as involved in education. (Whew, it's hard to
say it nicely.) It's as if the society prefers girls that are a bit
clueless. Of course, the level of this tendency varies among
different cultures, but I think it's there in almost all cultures.
I think Japan is pretty bad on this. Just look at all the typical
"bad at math, scared of ghosts, and likes to cook" type female
characters out there.
While on this topic, here's another thought. I think that more
"opposite" an "idol" is from the target audience, the more popular
she gets. I don't want to stereotype anyone, but isn't it generally
true that most fans of such genre are geeks of some sort? I think
the qualities of the "idol" and the "fan" are extreme opposites. I
don't know if it occurs naturally or if it's marketed to be that way,
but I think it's something to think about anyway. To put it another
way, if there were an intelligent (scientific way or something like
that) idol, would she be popular? If so, with what kind of audience?
While I'm writing this, I think I came up with my own answers. Such
intelligent person probably wouldn't choose to be an idol. Also,
maybe she would be popular anyway since I do see female anime
characters who are computer geeks and what not. Then again, what kind
of fans like that kind of characters, versus clueless kind of
characters. I think I'm just digging myself into a hole here. I'm
going to stop now.
*** All images are aspect ratio corrected ***
