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» Why kitajima?

Kitajima is the kind of character one can easily love or hate. She is an academic with few interpersonal skills, obsessive to a fault and desperate for recognition. But she also manages to display an admirable sense of humanity as her cold exterior is pulled back. I admire Kitajima for her strength, devotion and courage. She's not an innocent young girl and she never pretends to be — she is powerful, selfish and manipulative. Yet it is only after losing everything that she is able to be understand the world outside her studies.

Kitajima changes over the course of Dragonaut. She evolves. The Kitajima we see in episode twenty-five is a very different woman to the Kitajima introduced in episode one. It is her development as a character which manages to transform her from background fanservice into a very unique and compelling member of the dragonaut cast. Despite being a sullen woman with zero tact, Kitajima is a character I respect. She makes mistakes and suffers consequences, she advances and she grows. I utterly ♥ her.

» Where did the title come from?

Jezebel is a biblical name primarily associated with Israel's Queen Jezebel from the Old Testament. Married to King Ahab, Jezebel was born Phoenician and as such, tried to introduce the worship of the traditional deity Baal to her new kingdom. This was of course a bad thing to do because it turned the Israelites away from their true God. After her husband's death she continued to hold onto power through her sons. Cutting a long story short, Jehu is anointed as the True King and told to smite the house of Ahab. He does just this and Jezebel is hurled out a window to be eaten in the street by dogs. Charming. In the Bible, Jezebel is portrayed as manipulative, sinful and blood-thirsty. She is suggested to be a sexually loose woman with a wholly selfish, heathen agenda.

"Jezebel: guided by no principle, restrained by no fear of either God or man, passionate in her attachment to her heathen worship..." Easton's Dictionary

Etymology suggest that after the time of Queen Jezebel, wicked women began being dubbed "jezebels". In common circulation however, the noun didn't begin to surface in literature until at least the fifteen hundreds. Today, Merriam Webster defines a jezebel (noun) as "a shameless impudent scheming woman". Most other dictionaries define the term in similar ways (evil, immoral, whore, etc.)

So how does the lingering spirit of the jezebel link to Kitajima Yuuri? Our doctor is single-minded in her pursuit of knowledge. Kitajima does not worry about what others think of her actions, dragons are her sole interest. For the sake of these alien creatures she is willing to break all manner of rules. She is impudent and scheming through and through, not to mention incredibly selfish. To fans she is almost universally seen as something of a whore, with people citing her interaction with both Yonamine and Nozaki as shameless. Although constantly portrayed as being ignorant of the potential in her own physical appearance, her outrageous proportions lead many to wrongfully assume that she sexually loose.

Kitajima is a mature woman with beauty, intelligence and power. A self-serving woman who grows over the course of twenty-six episodes. A type of character easily labeled and cast aside by fans. A scientist seeking to discover truth in a world of lies could quite easily be viewed as something of a modern jezebel.

Plus yeah, it sounded cool and I'm fucking hopeless like that.

 

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