I must say that I, too, usually find Pollyannas unbearable. Being called a ‘Pollyanna’ is, as The Atlantic’s Ruth Graham puts it, not a compliment. The relentless sanguinity and naive idealism of these cheerleader-in-an-apocalypse characters are often seen as strenuous, saccharine and insufferable. Pollyannas are a common appearance in creative works – bearing resemblance to the genki girls in Japanese animes and mangas. The term came from the book Pollyanna, which is about an orphaned girl moving in with her wealthy aunt and proceeded to radiate gladness among townspeople. But her eternal optimism is put to test when she discovers the truth about the home she lives in and loves.īeing a sunny source of hope in treacherous situations, Kipo and Emma may be regarded as Pollyannas, which describes characters – usually female – who are unrealistically cheery come what may. Credit: CloverWorksĮmma is your typical shounen protagonist – a wide-eyed straight arrow who has a comical facial expression for every situation. Emma and her two best buddies, Norman (Maaya Uchida) and Ray (Mariya Ise), are the oldest and smartest kids of the lot. Based on on a wildly popular manga of the same name, The Promised Neverland is set in an idyllic orphanage by the woods, run by a smiling guardian called Mama.

Kipo’s survival instinct, however, is powered by friendship, communication, and - in more than one occasion - sick tunes.Įmma (Sumire Morohoshi) in The Promised Neverland would have loved her. Her newfound friends are used to life-threatening situations, and are thus cautious and sometimes selfish. She promptly adopts a motley crew (or maybe it’s the other way round) to search for her father, while trying to evade the capture of a human-harvesting villain. The chaos drove her above-ground, where she encounters dangerous strangers and dangerously cute critters. But a giant Mute, or mutated creatures, destroys her home. In Kipo and the Wonderbeasts, Kipo (Karen Fukuhara) is an average, slightly nerdy girl who has been living underground all her life (yes, in the show, that’s normal). In the face of survival-of-the-fittest, they do not succumb to obvious – some would say ‘grown-up’ – solutions. But Kipo and Emma are made of groovier stuff. Or would have, had they been normal people. Yet, Circumstances are forcing them to grow up overnight. Both celebrated their birthdays in the first season Kipo just turned 13 and Emma has turned 12. The two girls are at the cusps of entering teenhood. One is Kipo from Kipo and the Age of the Wonderbeasts, and the other is Emma from The Promised Neverland (both shows are on Netflix). They are over half my age and animated – both figuratively and literally. She may not always do the right thing, but has just enough earnestness, spunk and anxiety in everything she does that made her life as a romance writer with two hot men in her orbit, while warding off a criminal mastermind, very much a compass for my slightly duller (okay, very much duller) existence.īut, strangely, the current two beacons in my head now are not grown women, and technically, not even flesh and blood. I also often find myself asking, WWJD? As in, what would Jane do? I’m talking about Jane Gloriana Villanueva (the magnetic Gina Rodriguez) from Jane the Virgin. So much so that she defied the conventions of her time to tell jokes – cue old-fashion gasps – on stage. Her rapid-fire wit is reminiscent of Lorelai Gilmore (both Gilmore Girls and Marvelous share the same creator, Amy Sherman-Palladino), but Miriam is very much her own person. Then, there is Miriam Weissman (Rachel Brosnahan) from Amazon Prime’s The Marvelous Mrs. Their incisive intelligence, refreshing methods and internal struggle with the justice system made for such a riveting watch that I – kid you not – had the urge to sign up for the police academy.

There are the two cops, Detective Karen Duvall (Merritt Wever) and Detective Grace Rasmussen (Toni Collette), in the Netflix series Unbelievable. But now, with the golden age of TV amidst the streaming war and the growing force of women storytellers in the industry, there’s a galore of inspirational leads that fit no mould and take no shit. The paltry few women-led, well-written TV shows meant I only had Lorelai Gilmore to look up to in the past. I grew up seeing female leads in television shows as role models.

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