So... bullying is apparently just a THING in shoou manga, especially among girls. I don't know if this indicates a corresponding kind of 'the nail that sticks up gets hammered down' mentality among Japanese girls or if it's just one of those common fiction tropes that tend to spring up in genres.
I've been kind of idly speculating about what they call ijime in Japan. I've actually read a few articles about it outside of manga, so I know it's an actual issue to the point where the Japanese prime minister was discussing it as a widespread social concern.
Ijime differs slightly from what I tend to think of as bullying. I tend to think of bullies as a one person to a small group. If there's widespread complicity then it's usually in the nature of silence. Everyone wants someone else to step up, but they aren' necessarily agreeing that the victim deserves their fate. Conversely, Ijime tends to be widespread as the norm. It seems to be that anywhere from a whole class to an entire grade level will band together to actively pick on a designated underdog.
There's an established tradition in shoujo manga of having the heroine experience ijime as a result of having caught the eye of the popular hero. It's gotten to the point where "You've been showing off lately." is practically de rigueur as an opening shot as a group of discontent mean girls form a semi-circle around the hapless heroine in some remote spot (roof, sports shed, off by the trash incinerator, etc.).
Usually the hero's traditional response seems designed to egg the mean girls on. He'll make some sort of statement that clearly displays his preference for the heroine meant to either stake his claim on her or shame her assailants. Unfortunately, the end result is almost always that the heroine stands out even more than before and the situation just gets worse. Eventually the heroine has to deal with the issue (usually by being such a goodie-goodie that the mean girls are either won over or disgusted into leaving her alone), but not after her chances at making friends is pretty much shot. It's okay though! She has her Most Important Person!She can stand anything if she's got her love interest! At this point he's usually thrown away his peer group to be with her too so they can be one of those creepy couples with no outside friends.
I can see the draw of this set up. The idea of being totally wound up in someone who's totally wound up in you can be very intoxicating and since we're talking about YA fantasy fiction aimed at teenage girls... I mean, come on. Twilight is popular for a reason and it hits a lot of the same buttons that you see in traditional shojou manga.
Lately, there's been a popular set up for the heroine. It hits a lot of stuff IDed by the TV Tropes Wiki. Here's the scenario: Girl A is entering a new school as theresult of change in financial situation/parental transfer/death in the family/change in family situation/etc. and she's tenatively positive about the change. She's been a bit shy in the past and had trouble making friends, but is hopeful that new school = new start. She attracts the attention of the hero early on. Either she's cute or needs saving from something. Sometimes she needs directions or doesn't react to his playboy ways as he expected. Whatever she does, she becomes interesting to him and he starts paying more attention to her ... usually by doing everything short of dipping her braids in the inkwell. If she has a bad opinion of him then it's usually reinforced at this point when she observes him doing something bad like smoking or making out with different girls in the hallway. Something will happen that improves her opinion of him and they slowly start warming up to each other. The other girls in the class (previously neutral in rggards to her) begin to look grim and ijime looms on the horizon. This is the point where the hero finds out that the heroine is having trouble with the other girls and becomes concerned.
This is where things have begun to diverge. Part of it, I think, is that the cardboard-cutout hero is losing popularity in Shojou manga. Girls are starting to demand heros with things like depth and motivations and complicated mentalities. One of the ways this gets expressed is how a hero handles the consequences that his popularity has for people around him.
You still get heroes who make the grand stand. Take Toshi from
Five. Toshi is your classic goodtime-guy and a victim of the 'Boy X belongs to everyone!' cliche. His fans have basically acheived a kind of agreement regarding their affections for him. Everyone can be near him... just so long as nobody gets too close. Understandably, its not necessarily fun for Toshi who gets this bizarre social pressure to always smile for the girls and never be too complicated a person to be around. As a result, he's gotten very good at faking a smile. Enter Hina, our happy transfer student who is smart, somewhat literal-minded, observant, and not particularly awed by Toshi. They start off on the wrong foot, but she still doesn't hestitat to tell him when she spots him faking a smile. "Why should you have to smile when you aren't feeling happy?" Which effectively makes her basically the first girl ever to notice his emotions, much less consider them. From there they become friends and she gets roped into to his group of frends, known as the 'Five'. Hina gets cornered by his adoring fans behind the school. Hina, being somewhat simple when it comes to people, had NO clue that she's about to get pushed around. She thinks they want to make friends. When the mean girls make it clear that she needs to back away from Toshi, a voice comes from overhead. "Wow, this sort of thing actually happens outside of manga?". Toshi's reaction is basically to tell the mean girls to get lost. His words are literally "We don't need you." as he covers Hina's eyes with one hand. His motivations are pretty clear at this point. He's not feeling fond of his female classmates and seeing them bully Hina is kind of the last straw. Hina probably can do without friends like those and Toshi is probably aware of that, but he's mentally classified her as one of his people. As a heroine, Hina has the benefit of making very good friends with the Five so she doesn't get isolated the way another heroine would be in her situation. Unfortunately, the Five is completely composed of guys (not counting her) and while you are mercifully spared the reverse harem phenomenon (she's completely plantonic with most of them) it's clear that her chances at getting some girlfriends are kinda shot for the foreseeable future.
In the middle of the spectrum, you have heroes like Rei from
Mars. He's got issues. His issues have issues. His mother had issues. His twin brother had issues. His father has issues. His Father has issues about his mother's issues. He has issues about his brother's issues. His brother had issues about his father's issues about his mother's issues. EVERYONE who can be considered either a main character or a strong secondary character has serious fucking issues. Rei's issues have an awful lot to do with controlling his aggression and a whole lot of self-inflicted amnesia about his screwed up family dynamics. This is one of those series that take psychological issues and runs a marathon with them, however the story is tight and consistant. It's one of those rare stories where you know that the mangaka tells the story they wanted to from the first page to the last... even though it's fifteen volumes long. His female lead is the painfully quiet Kira who can't stand to be around men. (Yes, you read about her for five pages and you can see the rape in her backstory looming like the Monolith in Space Odessy... if the Monolith had needed to be run into headfirst a few times by the hero before it woke up). They also start out as friends when she inadverantly gives him a sketch on the back of a map she drew for him and things proceed apace. When she has her fated encounter with one of Rei's love-em-and-leave-em refguees and all her girl-pack, Kira ends up facing it mostly alone. Rei tries to intervene, but he is both confused as to what he can do and effectively powerless in the world of women. He does end up threatening the ringleader (we think he's bluffing, but with Rei you can never tell when Kira's involved. She hits pretty much every protective instinct he ever had.), but that's not what gets her to stop. Kira ends up weathering the storm and using the experience as a stepping stone in her own personal growth. Against all odds, yet in a completely beleivable fashion (unless you ask Rei) the girls end up friends and before long the mean girl is the strongest person in Kira's corner.
One of my favorite heroes right now is Hakuo from
Shitsuji-sama no Oikini iri. He's got the interesting position of being in a super elite school with two classes: the L class (Lords and Ladies) for the privileged children of the Japanese nobility and the super-difficult and completely merit-based B class (bulter). He is the eldest son of a prestigous family and heir to a Zaibatsu corporation. He not only attends the B class out of choice, he's taken the top place in both his year and the entire program. He has an awkward position, socially, as an object of reverance and as a result has only two friends... or he would if they weren't fellow butlers who are dedicated to serving him. Enter Ryou, a cheerful and simple girl who's parents have died and left her in the care of her elderly grandparents who are very blue-blooded, but somewhat poor. As a result of a scandal before she was born, Ryou grew up as a commoner and is new to this whole Ojou-sama thing. She runs into Hakuo on the ground on her first day and asks for direction. Her natural charms and unfussy nature attract his attention. You get the idea that he's less than impressed with the members of the L class and Ryou represents a refreshing chance. Once you get into his backstory a bit you realize that he kind of likes taking care of people and Ryou is someone he can use his butler skills on who won't act stupidly about it. Ryou has several run-ins with ther archetypal well-established girl pack. The first run-in results in Hakuo becoming her personal butler in order to satisfy a challenge issued by the mean girl ringleader. That's about the point when the hate mail starts. Ryou doesn't make a lot of fuss about it. In fact she doesn't even really tell Hakuo about it. He, not being dumb, notices them wadded up in her bookbag and begins chewing over the problem. Shortly thereafter, Ryou accidently managed to knock over a very valuable candleabra in the courtyard of school. Hakuo ends up being very curt with Ryou and leaving her to face the disciplinary comittee alone.
Now, most heroines would have been destroyed by that and would have been sobbing and weeping after the hero in a red hot minute. Ryou is in fact contrite, but not because Hakuo is angry with her. In her mind she did wrong and deserves to be punished for it. Her concern is regaining Hakuo's respect. It doesn't help that one of Hakuo's bulter buddies points out that if he hadn't acted a little harsh with her after that then the hate mail would have doubled again. However, talking it out with Hakuo proves difficult as he immediately takes to avoiding her after the incident. It says something about Ryou that she takes it for a few days and then grimly goes to track him down to have it out.Now, a lot of heroes would have been acting that way to punish the heroine. Hakuo on the other hand has been trying to avoid passing on the cold he caught scouring antique shops on the sly for a replacement candleabra. Hakuo represents an emerging breed of hero who is not only aware of the Heroine's troubles, but is keenly aware of her desire to make friends. He's well aware that that is something he can't interfere with without making the situation worse and adjusts his behavior to minimize his impact. He manages to strike the right balance between not being completely subserviant to her needs while being considerate of her situation. He's neither an alpha-beast nor a wimp.
I find it very interesting to find that kind of range in what is generally considered a ... forumalic(?) genre. While the ijime trope doesn't seem to be going anywhere any time soon it's still interesting to see how the heroine faces and deals with her problems. In the end, almost every heroine has to solve the problem by herself in order to grow and develop as a character. I can't wait to see where this new trend is going.