BotI: In Defense of Makie
"In Defense of Makie"
As I have been familiarizing myself with Blade of the Immortal fandom, the friendliness and intelligence of which I really admire, I have noticed a running strain of dislike for Makie. Since I love her dearly, I wanted to respond with a manifesto on her awesomeness. Now, I'm happy to say that Makie does not seem to be hated. Most comments are along the lines of "I'm sorry to say she annoys me." I understand where the annoyance comes from and I'm comforted that the fandom is not volatile in its dislikes. Yay, BotI fandom! And now, on with the defense...
(Spoilerific through volume 24)
Let me start by acknowledging some of the sources of Makie irritation. She whines. Yes, she does. She makes herself a victim. To an extent, I agree: she absolutely has some pretty dramatic self-destructive behaviors. She has the power to improve her situation, and she doesn't use it. In raw physical terms, I agree. Thanks to her martial prowess, she is not, like Fantine, physically constrained to life a deprivation and abuse. But, some opine, her fighting skills are too magicky. Yes, and I don't believe that her blades fit in that shamisen without affecting how it plays (or, indeed, at all).
Cultural Situatedness
So why doesn't all that bother me? (In truth, the magickiness bothers me a little, but I'll come to that.) The thing that first drew me to Makie is the highly unusual way she combines our modern fascination with kick-ass women with the socialization of a woman from Edo era Japan. She is steeped in values one might expect from such a woman. She opposes her fighting skills to her womanhood. She considers it immoral (most of the time) for a woman to kill. She strongly identifies being "seen as a person" with rejecting her fighting prowess and being seen a "woman." She is quiet, retiring, and considers it a high virtue to be unobtrusive, even if it means she wastes away unknown and uncared for. She easily falls into letting her primary duty be to "stand by her man." These are all characteristics that are overtly or implicitly invoked as part of her irritating "victimhood." They are also all characteristics that are understandable for a (fallen) samurai woman in eighteenth-century Japan.
In the disdain for Makie's "victimhood," I fear there's an undercurrent of universalizing modern, post-industrial values. We tend to have an assumption that a woman should be independent, assertive, willing to use physical force. None of these things is true, by and large, in the world Makie comes from, and to expect her to conduct her life as if they were is to undervalue the strength required of women to live in world that places a primary value on sacrifice, abnegation, subordination to others' needs. To disregard this strength is to underestimate the struggles women in diverse cultures face, which can lead to blaming women for being "victims" who don't properly assert themselves, when really that expectation is not reasonable. In other words, within her own cultural context, Makie is not as much a victim as she appears to us. On the contrary, she is an extremely strong woman making difficult choices within a very narrow range of perceived options. I grant there are options she doesn't perceive, but it makes sense that she doesn't.
In Defense of Makie's Choices
Makie's life went south when she bested her brother in swordsmanship. He killed himself and her father disowned her and her mother because she shamed the family. Right there, it makes sense that she has problematic feelings about her fighting skills. After that, she lived with her mother, who worked in a brothel. When her mother died in debt, Makie took over. Up to that point, it's hard to see what she could have done differently. As long as her mother's debt was unpaid, the brothel owned her. She could have run away, but that would be dishonorable: not paying her debt. Moreover, her mother indoctrinated her to believe that she should not be a warrior but should stick to prostitution: sleeping with people is better than killing them--a highly defensible argument. Makie naturally internalizes her mother's teachings; her mother was her role model in childhood and the only person to show her consistent love and not turn on her.
The next turning point in Makie's life was Anotsu's buying her freedom. This could have been her ticket out of selling herself (either sexually or more socially as a geisha); Anotsu intended it that way. But to Makie, it replaced one debt with another. In her unwillingness to live on someone's charity, she is both independent and honorable. (Makie and Anotsu's financial conversations remind me of Jane Eyre and Rochester's: Jane says she'll marry him but she still wants him to pay her to work as his daughter's governess and not just support her as his wife. He doesn't get it. Likewise, Makie keeps telling Anotsu she can't live on his charity. He doesn't get it either and keeps throwing money at her.)
So Makie is released from one debt into another, and to pay it, she goes to work as a geisha, which doesn't make her happy but is about the best she could do in terms of available employment. It doesn't require her to hurt and kill people; it typically doesn't require her to sleep with them either. It's better paid than other jobs she might find (singing in the street, making raincoats). It even lets her practice her musical skills, which we have ample evidence she enjoys (later, she plays and sings spontaneously for Anotsu without any obligation to).
Then comes Anotsu into her life again, filled with disapproval, as he often is, and demanding she kill people. She loves him enough to take a good, solid swing at this, even though she doesn't want to. She just can't do it. And I don't think any of us fault her for not killing Manji (or as close as she could get) over Rin's desperate, prostrate body. She chooses mercy over being with the man she loves. If that is not a strong and honorable decision, I don't know what is.
Now, her conversation with Rin convinces her (superficially, I think) that righteous revenge is a decent cause for someone with fighting skills. And this sets her off to find and slay her father, whom she understandably blames for her and her mother's misery. But she can't kill him either. She is instinctively too sympathetic to his remorse and illness and desire for a rapprochement. At the same time, she feels a Rin-like duty to kill him, mainly to avenge her mother. On the horns of this dilemma, she misses her chance and he dies of consumption. Here, too, I'm not sure she's greatly at fault. Rin, likewise, vacillates over her revenge. When you're torn between a basically peaceful nature and a society that prizes vendetta, that's almost inescapable.
But Makie interprets herself as being at fault, an assumption of responsibility that is probably characteristic of her native personality but is also typical of her society, which demands a quiet perfection in its women. After that, she goes bonkers. There's no question about it. People who are mentally sound do not sew up their sword hands. She is clearly very near despair and behaving bizarrely. I think this makes sense for someone who has held herself to such rigid moral standards with so little support from other people and so much abuse for so long. She is prone to internalizing her anger (both by nature and nurture), so it's unsurprising that she vents her anguish on her own body.
Meanwhile, when not pursuing her father issues, she has been living in a hut somewhere. At this point, she has two main goals: to live without hurting anyone and to pay her debt. Neither is a bad goal. That she is willing to subordinate her own personal happiness to these goals is quite virtuous by the standards of her society (and maybe it should be). If she were more creative and proactive, she might have found a better way to accomplish these goals than making raincoats (with one hand!) and prostitution, but I'm not sure what it would be. Her other skill set is killing, and she doesn't want to. Neither do I, for that matter.
Then comes Anotsu into her life again, filled with disapproval (again) and still wanting her to kill people. She tries to pay him back, but he throws more money at her. He also unsews her hand, which is only right and proper. Then, he goes on his way but leaves her with a very easy motivation for taking up her sword again: to protect him. She can tell he's sick, so she sets off after him and ends up killing a lot his enemies.
This is the crucial turning point in Makie's adult life, a reversal of her previous priorities. She has long been torn between love for Anotsu (who wants her kill for the Itto-Ryu) and her own sense of how to live a virtuous life. Up to now, the virtuous life has won. But seeing Anotsu in dire need makes it easy to leap to his aid, first in battle and then in care-taking. And once she goes to his side, there is no going back: she chooses him over her broader sense of moral behavior. If I fault Makie for anything, it's this (as much as I love it as a storyline). For the first time in the trajectory we see, she compromises her sense of what's right.
But this, too, can be seen as a virtue in her society, and not just for women. Edo era society is strongly oriented around group affiliation. Loyalty often trumps abstract moral principles. Thus, Rin has a duty to avenge her parents even though she questions the value of vengeance. While the premium placed on loyalty applies to men as well as women, it impacts women more. Indeed, Makie is highly unusual--and quite a proto-liberated woman--in ever adhering to a set of abstract moral principles more strongly than to affiliation with other people. This is understandable, however. She has had few people in her life to affiliate with. Rejected by her family, the group she ought to belong to, she creates a system for functioning as an independent. But once she affiliates with Anotsu, she gives him her loyalty, as is conventional and expected. In this, she follows the same value system as Hisoka, who while she abstractly ponders the morality of the Itto-Ryu, practically focuses on how to be a good wife.
It would have been interesting to see how Anotsu and Makie would have fared if she had not become ill with consumption early in their relationship. I expect that her illness spared them a great deal of conflict since Anotsu does not really expect her to fight while she's sick. As it is, she falls into the role of a fairly conventional wife: she is a quiet, obedient, self-effacing companion, who offers her opinions and insights to the degree she feels permissible; she also entertains with music. All this reads as proper in her cultural frame, and indeed, she and Anotsu appear to have quite a harmonious union, which would probably have been happy if not plagued by her impending death.
This change in her relation to Anotsu also changes their financial relations. Previously, she went to great lengths to avoid being indebted to him, but when they are living together, he presumably supports her. This is not charity to her, however. It is a social exchange for which she compensates him by doing a wife's/mistress's "work."
Conflict arises between them when he threatens this social exchange by announcing that he is going to leave and she is going to stay. He throws more money at her, which makes her cross. Makie clearly articulates her problem with his plan. Her life has been divided between two impulses: to live in the way that least harms other people and to live with Anotsu. After much inner conflict and a great deal of capitulation, she chose the latter, and now that she has painstakingly made that choice, he is taking it away from her. She quite rightly tells him that that is not how it's going to work, and he appears to accept this (at any rate, she gets the last word). And this, I believe, is the last we've seen of her to date.
To recap, Makie's life has been a series of difficult moral choices between few and imperfect options. Yes, with her physical prowess, there are doubtless other options she hasn't investigated. For example, she could, like Manji, search for a noble cause to battle for. But she has not been acculturated as Manji has been. He was raised to battle. She was raised to be a wife/prostitute. Like all of us, she functions according to her social training, and within that frame, she makes her choices, most of the time, thoughtfully and maturely.
Magic Fighting Skills!
If there's one aspect of Makie that doesn't make sense, it's her skill in battle. I admit it. She seems to be the most dangerous fighter in the saga with no practice whatever. In a story in which most people's martial skills (or lack thereof) are realistically explained, her super powers sit wrong. I think this is a flaw, or at least an omission, in the writing. But here's my best in-universe explanation for it.
Makie is a prodigy. Some people are; let's give her that. Nevertheless, she must practice. The story makes it clear that no one becomes good at fighting without oodles of work. And Makie is not (in-universe) magic; therefore, she must practice. Her commentary on sword orientation in the scene in which she stops a sword against her knee is evidence that she has formally studied swordsmanship.
She would never have beat her brother without practice, so she must have been taught swordsmanship since she was a very little girl. I suspect it was a family joke at first. She was doubtless a very athletic kid, a good tumbler, good dancer, a cutie. And her family played with her talents because it was fun to see her be so good at it. She was probably the sort of kid who was engaging in physical activity all the time, just because it was fun.
After she was disowned, she may have had to use her fighting skills periodically to survive. She does so in clobbering the pack of dogs Anotsu Senior essentially sets on her. It is also clear that she went through a period of attachment to a warrior's life. Hence her mother's litany of admonitions that being a prostitute was better: that came in response to something. From roughly ages 10-mother's death (in Makie's teens?), I suspect she practiced furiously with a strong sense of vengeance and an attachment to the sword rivaled only by her disdain for her mother's life as a prostitute.
When she herself became a prostitute, things must have changed. For one thing, working in a brothel is intensive and leaves little free time for more than sleep. For another, she had begun to internalize her mother's dislike for violence. So she probably practiced much less but still went through her moves, if only to blow off steam (as Anotsu does when he goes off in the woods to cut up leaves). She may also have periodically been menaced, as she is on the bridge in volume 3. She may even have courted being menaced (consciously or unconsciously) to maintain some real experience in fighting and killing people.
It's clear that Makie likes to fight. Otherwise, she wouldn't be so morally torn. Sewing up her hand is the act of addict, the act of someone who does not trust her willpower to keep that hand off her blades. She states that she did it so Anotsu would see her as a person, but I read that as an accusatory outburst in the heat of the moment. For one thing, after sewing her hand, she made no effort to find him. For another, even in a mentally unstable state, she can hardly fail to know he wouldn't approve of such a "person." And while her wish to get Anotsu off her back might, indeed, be part of her motivation, he hasn't been on her back of late. The bulk of her motive has to come from herself. In fact, I take this action as evidence that she practices a great deal, and probably with substantial of guilt, like any addict.
One thing, however, I love about Makie's fighting skills (and BotI's discussion of martial skill in general). Her approach makes sense for her body type. It is based on speed, agility, and flexibility, areas in which a lightweight woman can excel. She is not a Buffy or Xena-esque superhero who is just magically stronger than any man. She is the most powerful fighter in the series because she has a woman's body, and it can simply do things men, in general, can't do. I love that. (And I can see in this some of her influence on Anotsu, who is lightweight for a man and also very adept at using that to his advantage.)
Myers-Briggs--Because I Like It
I love me a character who is coherently drawn enough that I can pin a MB personality type on them. Makie is one of these. I type her as an INFP.
Introverted: energizes from being alone
Intuitive: more comfortable with instinctive/holistic leaps than sensory observation.
Feeling: making decisions based on how it affects individuals more than abstract, logical principles.
Perceiving: responding to life as it happens more than planning things out.
Now, like everyone, she's not just one thing or the other. Notably, she must have a strong sensing (S) component to be so phenomenal a fighter, but this seems almost an altered state of consciousness for her rather than a personality trait she consistently presents. Overall, I peg her as an INFP. Here's some description from Please Understand Me:
"INFPs present a calm face to the world and are seen as reticent and even shy…. [I]nside they are anything but distant…. They care deeply--indeed, passionately--about a few special persons or a cause. One word that captures this type is idealistic….
"INFPs have a profound sense of honor derived from internal values…. To understand an INFP their cause must be understood, for they are willing to make unusual sacrifices for someone or something they believe in….
"They often have a subtle tragic motif running through their lives…. The deep commitment of INFPs to the positive and the good causes them to be alert to the negative and the evil…. Thus INFPs may live a paradox, drawn toward purity and unity but looking over the shoulder toward the sullied and the desecrated. When INFPs believe that they have yielded to an impure temptation, they may be given to acts of self-sacrifice in atonement. The atonement, however, is within the INFP, who does not feel compelled to make public the issue.
"INFPs have a gift for interpreting symbols, as well as creating them, and thus often write in lyric fashion…. [Have you read Makie's songs??]
"[INFPs] relate well to most, albeit with some psychological distance….
"As mates, INFPs have a deep commitment to their pledges. They like to live in harmony and may go to great lengths to avoid constant conflict…. INFPs may seem fearful of exuberant attainment…. And thus, INFPs guard against giving way to relaxing in the happiness of mating.
"In routine rituals of daily living, INFPs tend to be compliant and may even prefer having decisions made on their behalf--until their value system is violated! Then, INFPs dig in their heels and will not budge from ideals."
All of which sounds like Makie to me (some other bits of the description do less, of course). I do wonder a little how much is nature and how much nurture, since many of the characteristics invoked here are ones I discuss above as typical for an Edo era woman.[1]
In Sum
* I like Makie because she is a consistently drawn character, realistically recognizable and plausible as an entity constructed out of a particular personality, life experiences, and broader culture.
* I like her because she enacts the values of her culture in a way that is not strongly anachronistic and still manages to be a kick-ass hero and to show great psychological strength.
* I like that she fights in a way that maximizes the power of her body type to make her incredibly badass.
* And I admire her as a person. I find her a person of deep feeling and great moral strength in face of much adversity.
[1] I have remarked elsewhere--or maybe I just thought it?--that traditional Japanese society strongly favors Feeling over Thinking in MB terms and perhaps this is related to my typing four out of five of the Yashashuu in Mirage of Blaze as Feelers. Hi, Irobe! They desperately need you!
As I have been familiarizing myself with Blade of the Immortal fandom, the friendliness and intelligence of which I really admire, I have noticed a running strain of dislike for Makie. Since I love her dearly, I wanted to respond with a manifesto on her awesomeness. Now, I'm happy to say that Makie does not seem to be hated. Most comments are along the lines of "I'm sorry to say she annoys me." I understand where the annoyance comes from and I'm comforted that the fandom is not volatile in its dislikes. Yay, BotI fandom! And now, on with the defense...
(Spoilerific through volume 24)
Let me start by acknowledging some of the sources of Makie irritation. She whines. Yes, she does. She makes herself a victim. To an extent, I agree: she absolutely has some pretty dramatic self-destructive behaviors. She has the power to improve her situation, and she doesn't use it. In raw physical terms, I agree. Thanks to her martial prowess, she is not, like Fantine, physically constrained to life a deprivation and abuse. But, some opine, her fighting skills are too magicky. Yes, and I don't believe that her blades fit in that shamisen without affecting how it plays (or, indeed, at all).
Cultural Situatedness
So why doesn't all that bother me? (In truth, the magickiness bothers me a little, but I'll come to that.) The thing that first drew me to Makie is the highly unusual way she combines our modern fascination with kick-ass women with the socialization of a woman from Edo era Japan. She is steeped in values one might expect from such a woman. She opposes her fighting skills to her womanhood. She considers it immoral (most of the time) for a woman to kill. She strongly identifies being "seen as a person" with rejecting her fighting prowess and being seen a "woman." She is quiet, retiring, and considers it a high virtue to be unobtrusive, even if it means she wastes away unknown and uncared for. She easily falls into letting her primary duty be to "stand by her man." These are all characteristics that are overtly or implicitly invoked as part of her irritating "victimhood." They are also all characteristics that are understandable for a (fallen) samurai woman in eighteenth-century Japan.
In the disdain for Makie's "victimhood," I fear there's an undercurrent of universalizing modern, post-industrial values. We tend to have an assumption that a woman should be independent, assertive, willing to use physical force. None of these things is true, by and large, in the world Makie comes from, and to expect her to conduct her life as if they were is to undervalue the strength required of women to live in world that places a primary value on sacrifice, abnegation, subordination to others' needs. To disregard this strength is to underestimate the struggles women in diverse cultures face, which can lead to blaming women for being "victims" who don't properly assert themselves, when really that expectation is not reasonable. In other words, within her own cultural context, Makie is not as much a victim as she appears to us. On the contrary, she is an extremely strong woman making difficult choices within a very narrow range of perceived options. I grant there are options she doesn't perceive, but it makes sense that she doesn't.
In Defense of Makie's Choices
Makie's life went south when she bested her brother in swordsmanship. He killed himself and her father disowned her and her mother because she shamed the family. Right there, it makes sense that she has problematic feelings about her fighting skills. After that, she lived with her mother, who worked in a brothel. When her mother died in debt, Makie took over. Up to that point, it's hard to see what she could have done differently. As long as her mother's debt was unpaid, the brothel owned her. She could have run away, but that would be dishonorable: not paying her debt. Moreover, her mother indoctrinated her to believe that she should not be a warrior but should stick to prostitution: sleeping with people is better than killing them--a highly defensible argument. Makie naturally internalizes her mother's teachings; her mother was her role model in childhood and the only person to show her consistent love and not turn on her.
The next turning point in Makie's life was Anotsu's buying her freedom. This could have been her ticket out of selling herself (either sexually or more socially as a geisha); Anotsu intended it that way. But to Makie, it replaced one debt with another. In her unwillingness to live on someone's charity, she is both independent and honorable. (Makie and Anotsu's financial conversations remind me of Jane Eyre and Rochester's: Jane says she'll marry him but she still wants him to pay her to work as his daughter's governess and not just support her as his wife. He doesn't get it. Likewise, Makie keeps telling Anotsu she can't live on his charity. He doesn't get it either and keeps throwing money at her.)
So Makie is released from one debt into another, and to pay it, she goes to work as a geisha, which doesn't make her happy but is about the best she could do in terms of available employment. It doesn't require her to hurt and kill people; it typically doesn't require her to sleep with them either. It's better paid than other jobs she might find (singing in the street, making raincoats). It even lets her practice her musical skills, which we have ample evidence she enjoys (later, she plays and sings spontaneously for Anotsu without any obligation to).
Then comes Anotsu into her life again, filled with disapproval, as he often is, and demanding she kill people. She loves him enough to take a good, solid swing at this, even though she doesn't want to. She just can't do it. And I don't think any of us fault her for not killing Manji (or as close as she could get) over Rin's desperate, prostrate body. She chooses mercy over being with the man she loves. If that is not a strong and honorable decision, I don't know what is.
Now, her conversation with Rin convinces her (superficially, I think) that righteous revenge is a decent cause for someone with fighting skills. And this sets her off to find and slay her father, whom she understandably blames for her and her mother's misery. But she can't kill him either. She is instinctively too sympathetic to his remorse and illness and desire for a rapprochement. At the same time, she feels a Rin-like duty to kill him, mainly to avenge her mother. On the horns of this dilemma, she misses her chance and he dies of consumption. Here, too, I'm not sure she's greatly at fault. Rin, likewise, vacillates over her revenge. When you're torn between a basically peaceful nature and a society that prizes vendetta, that's almost inescapable.
But Makie interprets herself as being at fault, an assumption of responsibility that is probably characteristic of her native personality but is also typical of her society, which demands a quiet perfection in its women. After that, she goes bonkers. There's no question about it. People who are mentally sound do not sew up their sword hands. She is clearly very near despair and behaving bizarrely. I think this makes sense for someone who has held herself to such rigid moral standards with so little support from other people and so much abuse for so long. She is prone to internalizing her anger (both by nature and nurture), so it's unsurprising that she vents her anguish on her own body.
Meanwhile, when not pursuing her father issues, she has been living in a hut somewhere. At this point, she has two main goals: to live without hurting anyone and to pay her debt. Neither is a bad goal. That she is willing to subordinate her own personal happiness to these goals is quite virtuous by the standards of her society (and maybe it should be). If she were more creative and proactive, she might have found a better way to accomplish these goals than making raincoats (with one hand!) and prostitution, but I'm not sure what it would be. Her other skill set is killing, and she doesn't want to. Neither do I, for that matter.
Then comes Anotsu into her life again, filled with disapproval (again) and still wanting her to kill people. She tries to pay him back, but he throws more money at her. He also unsews her hand, which is only right and proper. Then, he goes on his way but leaves her with a very easy motivation for taking up her sword again: to protect him. She can tell he's sick, so she sets off after him and ends up killing a lot his enemies.
This is the crucial turning point in Makie's adult life, a reversal of her previous priorities. She has long been torn between love for Anotsu (who wants her kill for the Itto-Ryu) and her own sense of how to live a virtuous life. Up to now, the virtuous life has won. But seeing Anotsu in dire need makes it easy to leap to his aid, first in battle and then in care-taking. And once she goes to his side, there is no going back: she chooses him over her broader sense of moral behavior. If I fault Makie for anything, it's this (as much as I love it as a storyline). For the first time in the trajectory we see, she compromises her sense of what's right.
But this, too, can be seen as a virtue in her society, and not just for women. Edo era society is strongly oriented around group affiliation. Loyalty often trumps abstract moral principles. Thus, Rin has a duty to avenge her parents even though she questions the value of vengeance. While the premium placed on loyalty applies to men as well as women, it impacts women more. Indeed, Makie is highly unusual--and quite a proto-liberated woman--in ever adhering to a set of abstract moral principles more strongly than to affiliation with other people. This is understandable, however. She has had few people in her life to affiliate with. Rejected by her family, the group she ought to belong to, she creates a system for functioning as an independent. But once she affiliates with Anotsu, she gives him her loyalty, as is conventional and expected. In this, she follows the same value system as Hisoka, who while she abstractly ponders the morality of the Itto-Ryu, practically focuses on how to be a good wife.
It would have been interesting to see how Anotsu and Makie would have fared if she had not become ill with consumption early in their relationship. I expect that her illness spared them a great deal of conflict since Anotsu does not really expect her to fight while she's sick. As it is, she falls into the role of a fairly conventional wife: she is a quiet, obedient, self-effacing companion, who offers her opinions and insights to the degree she feels permissible; she also entertains with music. All this reads as proper in her cultural frame, and indeed, she and Anotsu appear to have quite a harmonious union, which would probably have been happy if not plagued by her impending death.
This change in her relation to Anotsu also changes their financial relations. Previously, she went to great lengths to avoid being indebted to him, but when they are living together, he presumably supports her. This is not charity to her, however. It is a social exchange for which she compensates him by doing a wife's/mistress's "work."
Conflict arises between them when he threatens this social exchange by announcing that he is going to leave and she is going to stay. He throws more money at her, which makes her cross. Makie clearly articulates her problem with his plan. Her life has been divided between two impulses: to live in the way that least harms other people and to live with Anotsu. After much inner conflict and a great deal of capitulation, she chose the latter, and now that she has painstakingly made that choice, he is taking it away from her. She quite rightly tells him that that is not how it's going to work, and he appears to accept this (at any rate, she gets the last word). And this, I believe, is the last we've seen of her to date.
To recap, Makie's life has been a series of difficult moral choices between few and imperfect options. Yes, with her physical prowess, there are doubtless other options she hasn't investigated. For example, she could, like Manji, search for a noble cause to battle for. But she has not been acculturated as Manji has been. He was raised to battle. She was raised to be a wife/prostitute. Like all of us, she functions according to her social training, and within that frame, she makes her choices, most of the time, thoughtfully and maturely.
Magic Fighting Skills!
If there's one aspect of Makie that doesn't make sense, it's her skill in battle. I admit it. She seems to be the most dangerous fighter in the saga with no practice whatever. In a story in which most people's martial skills (or lack thereof) are realistically explained, her super powers sit wrong. I think this is a flaw, or at least an omission, in the writing. But here's my best in-universe explanation for it.
Makie is a prodigy. Some people are; let's give her that. Nevertheless, she must practice. The story makes it clear that no one becomes good at fighting without oodles of work. And Makie is not (in-universe) magic; therefore, she must practice. Her commentary on sword orientation in the scene in which she stops a sword against her knee is evidence that she has formally studied swordsmanship.
She would never have beat her brother without practice, so she must have been taught swordsmanship since she was a very little girl. I suspect it was a family joke at first. She was doubtless a very athletic kid, a good tumbler, good dancer, a cutie. And her family played with her talents because it was fun to see her be so good at it. She was probably the sort of kid who was engaging in physical activity all the time, just because it was fun.
After she was disowned, she may have had to use her fighting skills periodically to survive. She does so in clobbering the pack of dogs Anotsu Senior essentially sets on her. It is also clear that she went through a period of attachment to a warrior's life. Hence her mother's litany of admonitions that being a prostitute was better: that came in response to something. From roughly ages 10-mother's death (in Makie's teens?), I suspect she practiced furiously with a strong sense of vengeance and an attachment to the sword rivaled only by her disdain for her mother's life as a prostitute.
When she herself became a prostitute, things must have changed. For one thing, working in a brothel is intensive and leaves little free time for more than sleep. For another, she had begun to internalize her mother's dislike for violence. So she probably practiced much less but still went through her moves, if only to blow off steam (as Anotsu does when he goes off in the woods to cut up leaves). She may also have periodically been menaced, as she is on the bridge in volume 3. She may even have courted being menaced (consciously or unconsciously) to maintain some real experience in fighting and killing people.
It's clear that Makie likes to fight. Otherwise, she wouldn't be so morally torn. Sewing up her hand is the act of addict, the act of someone who does not trust her willpower to keep that hand off her blades. She states that she did it so Anotsu would see her as a person, but I read that as an accusatory outburst in the heat of the moment. For one thing, after sewing her hand, she made no effort to find him. For another, even in a mentally unstable state, she can hardly fail to know he wouldn't approve of such a "person." And while her wish to get Anotsu off her back might, indeed, be part of her motivation, he hasn't been on her back of late. The bulk of her motive has to come from herself. In fact, I take this action as evidence that she practices a great deal, and probably with substantial of guilt, like any addict.
One thing, however, I love about Makie's fighting skills (and BotI's discussion of martial skill in general). Her approach makes sense for her body type. It is based on speed, agility, and flexibility, areas in which a lightweight woman can excel. She is not a Buffy or Xena-esque superhero who is just magically stronger than any man. She is the most powerful fighter in the series because she has a woman's body, and it can simply do things men, in general, can't do. I love that. (And I can see in this some of her influence on Anotsu, who is lightweight for a man and also very adept at using that to his advantage.)
Myers-Briggs--Because I Like It
I love me a character who is coherently drawn enough that I can pin a MB personality type on them. Makie is one of these. I type her as an INFP.
Introverted: energizes from being alone
Intuitive: more comfortable with instinctive/holistic leaps than sensory observation.
Feeling: making decisions based on how it affects individuals more than abstract, logical principles.
Perceiving: responding to life as it happens more than planning things out.
Now, like everyone, she's not just one thing or the other. Notably, she must have a strong sensing (S) component to be so phenomenal a fighter, but this seems almost an altered state of consciousness for her rather than a personality trait she consistently presents. Overall, I peg her as an INFP. Here's some description from Please Understand Me:
"INFPs present a calm face to the world and are seen as reticent and even shy…. [I]nside they are anything but distant…. They care deeply--indeed, passionately--about a few special persons or a cause. One word that captures this type is idealistic….
"INFPs have a profound sense of honor derived from internal values…. To understand an INFP their cause must be understood, for they are willing to make unusual sacrifices for someone or something they believe in….
"They often have a subtle tragic motif running through their lives…. The deep commitment of INFPs to the positive and the good causes them to be alert to the negative and the evil…. Thus INFPs may live a paradox, drawn toward purity and unity but looking over the shoulder toward the sullied and the desecrated. When INFPs believe that they have yielded to an impure temptation, they may be given to acts of self-sacrifice in atonement. The atonement, however, is within the INFP, who does not feel compelled to make public the issue.
"INFPs have a gift for interpreting symbols, as well as creating them, and thus often write in lyric fashion…. [Have you read Makie's songs??]
"[INFPs] relate well to most, albeit with some psychological distance….
"As mates, INFPs have a deep commitment to their pledges. They like to live in harmony and may go to great lengths to avoid constant conflict…. INFPs may seem fearful of exuberant attainment…. And thus, INFPs guard against giving way to relaxing in the happiness of mating.
"In routine rituals of daily living, INFPs tend to be compliant and may even prefer having decisions made on their behalf--until their value system is violated! Then, INFPs dig in their heels and will not budge from ideals."
All of which sounds like Makie to me (some other bits of the description do less, of course). I do wonder a little how much is nature and how much nurture, since many of the characteristics invoked here are ones I discuss above as typical for an Edo era woman.[1]
In Sum
* I like Makie because she is a consistently drawn character, realistically recognizable and plausible as an entity constructed out of a particular personality, life experiences, and broader culture.
* I like her because she enacts the values of her culture in a way that is not strongly anachronistic and still manages to be a kick-ass hero and to show great psychological strength.
* I like that she fights in a way that maximizes the power of her body type to make her incredibly badass.
* And I admire her as a person. I find her a person of deep feeling and great moral strength in face of much adversity.
[1] I have remarked elsewhere--or maybe I just thought it?--that traditional Japanese society strongly favors Feeling over Thinking in MB terms and perhaps this is related to my typing four out of five of the Yashashuu in Mirage of Blaze as Feelers. Hi, Irobe! They desperately need you!