“Deadly
little Miho. She won't let you feel a thing unless she wants you to. She twists
the blade. He feels it.” (Dwight McCarthy, The Big Fat Kill)
Hello
my dears. I am the Raven who speaks to you.
Today
I approach a badass female character. This is Miho, a mute assassin of japanese
descent who works in the gothic and hopeless Sin City. Sin City is the title of
Frank Miller's comics, which have a style that is very much supported by the
noir genre.
A
common knowledge says that “in the smallest bottles are the best perfumes”. And
it fits Miho like a glove. Sin City is chaotic, gripped by corruption and
violence. The fact that Frank Miller drew the series in black and white only
amplifies the feeling that Sin City is a grim place to live. The feeling is
that we are always in a nocturnal environment, but that shows not only
coldness, distrust and uncertainty, but also the emotions of the characters
that inhabit this universe. As they are immersed in this corrupted and always
dark world, Sin City is also, in a certain dimension, a depressive comic book,
which recounts dark times in its narrative. The dirty schemes of the streets
are constant, there is no security other than what someone is able to achieve
with their own hands. The powerful oppress and manipulate. In Sin City, it is
always necessary to know who, where and what to talk to. There is never really
a real sense of security. It's a city that, in the open exposure of its
cultural sewer, never sleeps. And obliges those who manage to survive or have
some kind of perspective to always sleep with one eye open.
Miho,
in this environment, is a small bottle of perfume with a different fragrance.
In the land of thugs, gangsters armed to the teeth, traitors, snitches,
manipulators and people who like to hear their own voice, she is a tiny asian,
always quiet, never uttering a sound. Those who judge Miho by appearance make a
serious mistake: upon seeing her, she appears so small and fragile that it
would be possible to break her arm just by twisting it with one hand. But, come
on... try to do it... and one or two seconds will be enough for not see what
hit you. And your head will be rolling on the floor.
In
the land of Sin City, Miho is not just a killer. She is death itself. She
arrives without warning. She approaches silently and quickly takes a life,
stealthily disappearing just the same. In Sin City, people like the smell of
gunpowder. Miho don’t. At the most, she likes some useful oil to clean and
polish her weapon of trade, which is practically a part of her body: the sword,
a beautiful japanese katana. Miho is incredibly skilled and pointing a gun at
her at close range is not a wise move. The aggressor will lose both hands and
throat in two quick moves. And the only sound he will hear will not come from
her, but from himself... from choking on his own blood before the life leaves
the body completely.
Miho,
with a few exceptions (when someone pisses her off, for example), is normally
discreet and has an inert face. Her external fragility belies a formidable warrior, which makes her
perhaps Sin City's most lethal character. She doesn't talk or want to be in any
spotlight. Miho is quite introverted, as we can notice in her body language.
The most interesting thing about reading Sin City is that we see a bunch of
self-centered characters competing to know who has the biggest navel, while what really leaves us mesmerized is a
character like Miho, who we are trying to look for, find in the shadows. It is
the quest to see precisely those who do not want to be seen. Someone who is
indifferent even to us readers.
She
is a recurring character in Sin City, but not much. That's because she doesn't
usually leave a stone unturned when she's around and, of course, in addition to
being feared, Miho is certainly hated and has several guys in town who would be
very interested in having her head on a platter. Miho is explosive, she doesn't
accept challenges. Especially when people make fun of her looks and make
xenophobic jokes about her ethnicity.
Due to her short temper, it is not uncommon for Miho to gouge people who would
be better off eliminating more quietly in the world of Sin City, without giving
too much away about who did the job. Like I said, Miho tends to be low-key...
until she loses her temper. Then she turns into a reaper of life, and when she
finishes the work, she dwindles again, back into the shadows. The point is that
her weapon of choice and the way she exterminates her enemies is very
characteristic, it has her DNA. It is a matter of just contemplate a crime
scene and we already find Miho's trademark in the corpses she left behind.
Even
though she is not one of the most central characters in the series, the times
Miho appeared was either interceding for someone (as she did with Dwight
MacCarthy) or when she was in trouble, having to look around, knowing where to
step. Miho is commonly called "Deadly Little Miho" by Dwight McCarthy
and there isn't a more assertive title for her: it's simple, small, but says it
all. But where does she fits into the world of Sin City? I think that
clarifying this issue is, at the same time, also clarifying the other
characteristics and moral codes of the character. What she does is proportionately
related to who she is and where she lives in Sin City. To talk about Miho, we
need to talk about the region where she works and the people she lives with: we
need to talk about the Old Town.
The
Old Town is, without a doubt, an energetic response from the feminine. This is
an area of Sin City known mainly for prostitution. But here, it is the girls
who do the talking: no pimps beating and extorting women or filling their
bodies with drugs to make them even more dependent on them. Gail is the person
that we can really identify as being the leader of Old Town and, along with
Miho, they are the ones who control the whole damn thing. We see in them women
who do not allow themselves to be dominated or, rather, do not tolerate
something like that. They refuse to be subservient, victims of physical and
moral abuse. They took over the sexual entertainment business themselves, but
by their own rules and without any male influence in management. Wendy, Goldie
and Gail are representatives with whom Miho has a direct relationship (although
she doesn't like to get involved with the administrative part, she works only in
security). This girls made the Old Town a place not only for business, but one
that needed to establish a policy and rules of conduct that would help them
protect themselves. And if anyone wants to have fun in the region, they won't
just have to pay, but walk in line and obey the girls’s rules. If anyone enters
the Old Town without permission, they will know Miho's katana. If you don't pay
for services, Miho will make you pay... with money or with your life. Hitting
any of the girls will cause Miho to make the person beg for a quick and
painless death. The Old Town girls are no joke: they carry guns and have basic
self-defense skills. And Miho, shall we say, is the ultimate symbol of their
protection. She is their sword.
The
prostitution business, from the beginning, was born with the purpose of sex
tourism. The idea was to make The Old Town a hub, a reference point for
prostitutes in the west, where there would be a wide variety (vará-éri) of
ethnic groups, women from the most diverse regions of the world. The plan aimed
to make the place a sex tourism paradise, a place visited only by rich people,
a rotten part of society. But with a business like this, obviously there are
obstacles. As this is an illicit activity, it would take corruption to actually
have some control and not be constantly at war with Sin City's larger
politicians and authorities. When the Old Town girls put the pimps and mobsters
out of there, leadership changed several times, passing through Wendy, Goldie,
and Gail. But with all of them, it was always hard to keep the business working.
It involves a lot of money and many vultures wanting to take control, making
girls their own commodity.
The
form of leadership curiously was never formal in the Old Town. The leader is
always one of the girls that was recognized by the others. In the case of Miho,
she is always mysterious and never speaks a single word. So it's not clear if
she would in fact occupy this position one day. Although we can think that the
absence of speech is a difficulty for Miho, for example, to get involved with
the constant negotiations and bribes to keep the business going, Miho
apparently does not show interest in governing. Just to protect the girls.
Messed with one, messed with all. There will be retribution. The girls' great
achievement was precisely to get rid of male dominance in their territory. And
Miho seems to despise everything related to the Sin City’s mafia, former and current
threat to the Old Town and their own management model. A lot of blood was shed
due to the urban war fought between the girls and the mafia, until they managed
to stabilize due to an agreement with the Sin City’s police. The deal,
basically, is that the girls would provide free entertainment for the police,
ensure that no police officers would be killed in the Old Town, and in return,
they would be able to do anything against their opponents and create local laws
that favored themselves. The law of the Old Town became the law of girls, an
advantageous deal in the view of most of them. But Miho isn't the type to take
shit from anyone. She is not subservient and, at one point in the narrative, was
harassed by a bunch of drunks in the
Old Town, ended up killing them all not knowing that one of them was a
policeman. This incident almost took the whole deal down the drain.
The
important thing here is to make it clear that this little girl hates any kind
of domination over her and, unlike many girls who are apparently satisfied with
the terms of the agreements, Miho never seemed to have this satisfaction. She
doesn't intentionally breaks this conditions, but at the same time demonstrates
that if she needs to fight back some shit that's thrown at her, she'll sting
without pity. It's a recurring thing in Sin City that there's always someone
above you, who makes you play by certain rules. And Miho is a character in this
universe who clearly, even though she doesn't speak and always keeps the same
face as always (facially she's not very expressive), demonstrates that she has tremendous
anger about it. The person that Miho has a real friendship is Dwight McCarthy
because he had saved her from a gang attack. She would surely die without his
help. After that, whenever Miho finds out that Dwight is in trouble, she
abandons everything she's doing (whatever it is) to go help him, leaving
several katana blows and a carpet of blood along the way. This is something
reciprocal and recurring in the series: Dwight saves Miho, who then saves
Dwight. It's not something that happens just once. What Miho makes clear is
that she has a very strong moral code. Gratitude is a value that we can clearly
see in her.
However,
little to nothing is known about Miho's past. And the fact that she is mute is
perhaps indicative of trauma or abuse suffered. This is left in suspense, since
revealing her origins is also breaking all the mystique that accompanies the
character. But what is clearly evident is the deep hatred that Miho feels for
men. She doesn't like to be approached or touched by men. Miho responds in the
most aggressive way to any misogynistic joke made with her. Mercilessly. Dwight
is the only male character in Sin City that Miho really tolerates and seemingly
acts as if she owes him a lifetime debt, even though he never demand any kind
of repayment. It makes me think: maybe Dwight was the only male figure in Miho's
life who really did something worthy for her. And she seems to attach a lot of
weight to that. That said, Miho's hatred is gigantic with male figures; Dwight
is really the only exception.
As
she does not allow herself to be touched, her activity and existence in the Old
Town, a place of red light, would need to be justified in another way. And what
justifies her existence among the girls is precisely the fact that she has
become a ruthless, exemplary killer. Miho is a force of nature, and thus she earns
her place in the sorority working with security, not entertainment. The Old
Town girls have complete respect, trust and admiration for Miho, as seen the
countless times she has demonstrated that would be capable of anything to
protect them. In the Old Town, Miho is a symbol of strength. For outsiders, those
who are not part of the group, Miho is a symbol of death. Anyone looking for
entertainment in the Old Town is naturally conditioned to know that Miho is
watching, even if we can't see her.
In a
brief commentary, Sin City’s creator Frank Miller said that Miho and Kevin are
characters he created with very similar elements. The constant silence of both
is their most notorious feature, as well as their efficiency in killing. Frank
Miller imagined them as demons, but with a different moral compass: while Kevin
is the evil, sadistic and complete psychopath, Miho is the good demon, capable
of torturing and slaughtering, but only in retaliation for the threats made to
her sorority, the Old Town girls. There is no negotiation and diplomacy with
Miho. “Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth”,
but with a huge dose of resentment which makes her not pay exactly in the same
coin. A minor offense done to Miho is enough for her to ship you, finely
chopped, to the cemetery. But other than that, if not assaulted or threatened,
Miho is quiet and silent. It's like she doesn't even exist. The character also
does indeed carry a ghostly aura. Kevin fells pleasure in causing pain to
others. He lives by it. Miho does it in order to appease the great hatred she
feels due to threats and aggressions, recent or a certainly violent past that
marked her a lot. This is who Deadly Little Miho are. Written not to be the
most notorious persona in Sin City’s universe, but one that can unintentionally
steal the spotlight.
Corvid
greetings!
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