World-Building a Queer Paradise in My Next Life as a Villainess
So, is the world of Villainess a queer utopia uniquely laid out so that Catarina’s love(s) can bloom? Or is the question of world- and story-building a little more complicated?
LGBTQ+ Tag
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Magical Girls as Metaphor: Why coded queer narratives still have value
Even now, with the vast increase of explicit queer womxn’s representation on television over the past decade, I still see myself in Sailor Moon and The iDOLM@STER more than I see myself in Orphan Black.
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How Can I Connect to You? Breaking out of toxic masculinity and capitalist ideologies in SARAZANMAI
Both Kazuki and Toi emerge from similar circumstances of capitalism, oppression, and the hypermasculine coping mechanisms they’ve been given to deal with the pain of that oppression. It is only through learning to care for one another—and learning that they can care for one another—that they can both be free.
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A Thousand Good Excuses: LGBTQ representation in Gankutsuou vs. The Count of Monte Cristo
If all representation is good representation, then Gankutsuou’s two LGBTQ characters should win out against Dumas’ one. But if we are to examine representation with a more critical eye, it is difficult to conclude that the later reimagining of the story does any more for queer people than does the story as first told some hundred and sixty years before.
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The intersection of queer and Deaf identity in I Hear the Sunspot
As a long-time reader of manga, I always found the medium to be a means of escape to fantastical worlds. Yet, there remained a disconnect between me and the stories I was reading. Discovering I Hear the Sunspot filled that absence with its portrayal of the specific reality of being both gay and Deaf.
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Allegory, Allegorier, Allegoriest: Visual storytelling and empathy in Revolutionary Girl Utena
Revolutionary Girl Utena has a well-deserved reputation for being difficult to parse. Dense with metaphor, thinly-veiled critique of old shoujo tropes, and allusions to obscure literature, Utena’s style of storytelling relies heavily on its own visual language.
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A Tale of Two Nanas: The fuzzy line between homoromantic subtext and queerbaiting in Nana
Though its depiction of queerness is a bit dated, it’s a powerful portrayal of a bond between women and the life of two young women trying to find their way in the world. It’s also a series that has found itself in a very unique place in discussion for its abrupt hiatus that has lasted for over a decade, with no ending in sight.
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How Kingdom Hearts helped me assert my gender identity
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.
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How Stars Align offers a fresh narrative model for LGBTQ+ characters
Every character in Stars Align gets at least a few moments under the spotlight, and the team’s manager, Asuka Yuu, is no exception. Yuu provides an example of how anime can respectfully and meaningfully incorporate both LGBTQ+ characters and the challenges they face into their stories.
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Ranma 1/2 and the Anything-Goes School of Accidental Trans Narrative
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.
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Yuri is for Everyone: An analysis of yuri demographics and readership
Throughout its 100-year history, yuri has uniquely evolved in and moved about multiple markets, often existing in many simultaneously. It is by and for a variety of people: men, women, heterosexuals, queer people, everyone!
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How Kindred Spirits on the Roof both represents and exploits queer teen girls
The first time I read Kindred Spirits on the Roof, I was surprised and even grateful, because it often felt like the game was speaking to my questioning teenage self. It attempts to honestly portray queer female relationships, but sometimes blurs the line between depicting attraction and sensationalizing it.
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Beautiful, Broken, and Queer: The complicated interplay of sexuality and trauma in Banana Fish
Ash is a problematic depiction of a queer assault survivor, but also one that claws open some of my most private, difficult wounds.
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The Transcendent and the Perverse: Sexuality in Apollo’s Song and MW
Tezuka Osamu’s gekiga show some artistic experimentation, but also dig further into his conservative ideas about gender and sexuality, which were more ignorable in titles aimed at wider audiences. Two stories in particular, Apollo’s Song and MW, hammer in how much of his work was steeped in heteronormativity and homophobia.
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“Queering” Heteronormativity: Biological essentialism in genderbending manga
The framework of “[cis character] must pretend to be [“opposite” gender] before restoring their [femininity or masculinity]” invites biological determinism by making the plot’s stakes dependent on the successful concealment of the main character’s “true” (here, meaning “assigned-at-birth”) gender. The idea of a “true” biological gender is itself a transphobic trope that does harm to the gender-nonconforming communities that genderbending manga purports to represent.
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FAKE and the Found Family: The ’90s BL cop drama that influenced a genre
FAKE is a BL mystery-drama manga originally published between 1994 and 2000. The dominant emotional line throughout the series is the evolving relationship between detectives Dee and Ryo. However, just as important as the mysteries and the growing romance is the found family that the detectives build and the support it provides them.
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Playing My Song: Queer autistic representation in Given
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.
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Our Dreams at Dusk and the process of healing through found families
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.
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Kase-san and Queer Thirst: Depicting sexuality in a “pure” yuri manga
“Purity” is most commonly used as a shorthand for chastity or sexlessness, and generally refers to stories that don’t engage with sex at all. Though Yamada’s sincerity and innocence is part of Kase-san‘s appeal, the way it engages with the girls’ sexuality is just as important. Sex does exist in Kase-san, and while the series focuses primarily on Kase and Yamada’s emotional relationship, it also explores their physical relationship and sexual attraction to each other from the very first chapter.
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The “Heart” of This Queer Body: An intimate look at The Heart of Thomas
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.
