From "Suck-It-Up" to "Girl Power": A Cross-Cultural Study of Female Growth Narratives in 100 Yen Love vs YOLO
Abstract
This paper compares the 2014 Japanese film <100 Yen Love> and its 2024 Chinese remake to examine how divergent cultural logics—Japanese “suck-it-up” and Chinese “positive energy” —reshape the same female-boxer plot. Using quantitative content analysis and qualitative narrative analysis (n=2 films, 1 764 shots, 42 interview excerpts), we find that (1) protagonist visibility shifts from structural invisibility (Japan) to moral hyper-visibility (China); (2) the growth arc moves from acceptance of failure to conversion of failure into marketable success; (3) social predicaments are transformed from systemic violence to individualised, morally-coded betrayals. The study foregrounds how national affective regimes calibrate gendered subjectivity in the age of global remake culture.
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