Spoilers for 16bit Sensation: Another Layer
When addressing fiction through the lens of feminist criticism, the idea of female characters’ agency is a topic that frequently comes up. Agency usually refers to someone’s ability to act freely and with control over themself; a fictional character’s agency, then, is their ability to act and exert control over the story that they’re in. Obviously, fictional women are fictional, and they do not have actual agency over their decisions and actions because whatever they do is dictated by the real humans writing them. Discussion of character agency, then, is a discussion of authorial choices, and ultimately a discussion of representation: how has this creator constructed their heroines? Has this creator made a narrative world in which female characters have an impact on their setting? And has this creator built their story in such a way that it feels like the female protagonist is genuinely driving it forward with her decisions and actions, all informed by who she is as an autonomous person… or is the story happening around her or to her without any of her input?
2023’s 16bit Sensation: Another Layer is a useful case study in this discussion because it manages to be an example of both. In the beginning and middle of its story, the female protagonist drives the plot forward with her choices, actions, and personality—ultimately altering the very fabric of the universe with her decisions and creating problems that the narrative hinges on. However, by the show’s final arc, her agency as a character is drastically reduced: she reacts rather than acts, has no impact on nor personal stakes in how the climax resolves itself, and is superseded as hero of her own story by a male side character. It’s a frustrating turn for the series to take, though it does helpfully demonstrate what “female characters driving the story” looks like—and doesn’t look like—by providing the audience with this internal contrast.