When I played Kingdom Hearts Union X Cross (then called Unchained X) for the first time in 2016, I felt pressured to play as my assigned gender (female), due to the lack of options for both Black female video game characters and non-binary characters. As someone who was still exploring their gender identity and expression, this was extremely stifling.
The horror genre has historically stigmatized mental health conditions, but Ciconia normalizes plurality and frames it as explicitly positive, making me feel comfortable in trying to express myself as plural.
While Ranma 1/2 is officially the story of a cis boy dealing with a body-morphing curse, the series also accidentally provides a resonant allegory for transmasculine identity.
Ash is a problematic depiction of a queer assault survivor, but also one that claws open some of my most private, difficult wounds.
When I found Gintama, I was going through the worst depressive/anxious episode of my life. The thought that plagued me the most was: “How am I going to live like this?” Of all the people in the world, I was not expecting Sakata Gintoki to give me an answer.
Series that focus on non-cis male athletes in a serious, competitive environment, let alone deal with the mental health issues that some athletes face, are rare and valuable. I was absorbed with how much I saw my own relationship with tennis in Akira’s relationship with track, and that it wasn’t cute. It hurt.
I related to given‘s Mafuyu in a way that was different from how I’d ever connected with a character before. He was queer. He was coping with loss. He was socially awkward. And, most importantly, he was autistic-coded to the max.
Outside of the daily standardized tests, Grace Field House looks an awful lot like a high-quality preschool. Maybe that’s why, in a strange way, I found myself relating to Isabella through my own career in early childhood education.
I knew Our Dreams at Dusk: Shimanami Tasogare would be the series that got me back into manga as soon as I saw a cover image. The fourth volume features two women in wedding dresses, clearly getting married to each other. There were no pretenses; it wasn’t open to interpretation. This was a queer manga and I loved that the cover didn’t hide it.
While Dragon Ball Z is best known for its epic battles and power struggles, the series has meant much more to me than that. It helped me as a man address problematic aspects of my life and expectations placed upon me that I had up until that point either neglected or outright ignored.
Queerness opened up a new world, one in which male and female were no longer black-and-white concepts. Gender became this beautiful shade of gray that I didn’t want nor need to be boxed into. The gateway for this freedom was in the queer bodies of Thomas.
In an inclusive world, everyone would understand people with disabilities as a valuable source of social diversity. This world would be materially and socially accessible and barrier-free. This world does not yet exist, but there are ways to imagine what it would look like.
The very idea of being able to live on my own, make my own decisions, and grow based on my experiences outside of the stipulations placed upon me by my small town seemed like the ultimate dream. After seeing Kiki leave her parents and fly across the water at midnight with her little red radio, I thought that I could do the same.
Kingdom Hearts is mostly known for two key reasons: the increasingly convoluted mess of a timeline, and the LGBTQ-skewing elements of the characters and their relationships. Kingdom Hearts is really gay, and the fans definitely seem to know it.
Accepting that you’re not what’s considered “normal” by society is never easy. For me, it was accepting myself as a man romantically attracted to other men. Surrounded by a culture hostile to anybody that didn’t fit the cishet norm, I discovered myself through something very unlikely: otoge, or otome games.
When I was six years old, my mother had a heart attack, thrusting me onto a new path in my life that I didn’t understand the importance of until I was older. In fact, it never really bothered me to care for my mother. It was just a thing that was understood. I didn’t know any different.
Ladykiller in a Bind struck me on a very personal level. I’m a trans woman who is butch enough and scared enough that, while I am out in every other part of my life, I am not out at my workplace. Even coming out to my friends took incredible effort.
While I may reject the concept of wedding dresses both as a feminist and an individual, as a transgender woman I feel differently. Within the form of that gown I see the ideal womanhood of my sister, my mother, and my grandmother that I’ve been denied since my birth. It’s a womanhood I desperately wish to be a part of.
It was me, my mom, and my sister growing up. Like Velvet in Tales of Berseria, I was the middle point of the trio. Unlike Velvet’s family, it wasn’t the youngest I was worried about. It was the oldest—my mom.
Underneath Chise’s still demeanor and all her magic capabilities is a 15-year-old girl with barely enough energy to keep her head above the water. The Ancient Magus’ Bride dresses its narrative with sparkly romance, but Chise’s journey is far more personal. I know it, because it’s my journey too.
