The Boys Got 4 Things Right With Kimiko (Where The MCU Failed)
In The Boys, Kimiko subverts four common television and movie tropes that the MCU has historically played into. The hit Prime Video superhero satire series The Boys, which follows the conflict between mortals (led by the vigilante group The Boys) and Supes (led by the corporation Vought), recently wrapped up its third season. Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara), a Supe member of the Boys, plays a major role in helping her fellow vigilantes secure a key weapon to use against a powerful Supe enemy.
The Boys expertly characterizes Kimiko as a determined, three-dimensional woman—a vast improvement from The Boys' Female, her underdeveloped (and unnamed) comic book counterpart. However, many female characters in television and film fail to receive this same narrative treatment. Instead, they tend to fall into one of two tropes: the manic pixie dream girl—an eccentric, mysterious love interest—or the girlboss—a strong, often distant hero. Asian women are often further characterized by two parallel, race-specific (and overly sexualized) tropes: the lotus blossom—a submissive, soft-spoken woman—or the dragon lady—a venomous, sly seductress.
Related: Why Kimiko Can't Speak In The Boys
Kimiko successfully subverts all four tropes. Though Kimiko has a traumatic childhood that makes her unique and emotionally complex, she is never utilized as an eccentric prop—a manic pixie dream girl— to help self-actualize a male romantic interest. For example, in The Boys season 1, episode 6, “The Innocents,” Kimiko rebels against her infatuated coworker Frenchie (Tomer Capone) who treats her like a project, and Frenchie ultimately apologizes for trying to “fix” who his boss (Karl Urban) refers to as his “feral pixie dream girl.” Kimiko also could’ve been
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