LGBTQ+ Tag

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Orb: On the Movements of the Earth and imagining radical futures
As I watched Orb’s various protagonists stake their lives against a violently oppressive religious institution, my real-life government grew alarmingly hostile toward my existence and those of my ilk. Watching Orb became an acutely personal experience, demonstrating the force with which established power structures will suppress truths that threaten their authority and how hope for radical change can be found through community and collective action.

Perspectivesby S. Chang June 13, 20250 Comments
In Sailor Moon S and Revolutionary Girl Utena, butchness is vital fluidity
Utena and Haruka are butch female characters who are treated positively and hold center stage in their narratives, making them noteworthy even after all this time.

Featureby Elif Sinem Erdem June 11, 20250 Comments
BanG Dream! It’s MyGo!!!!!, Ave Mujica, and the Doll in Asian Feminism
Bang Dream: It’s My Go!!!!! and Ave Mujica challenge overly simple distinctions between fake and real that imagine Asian girls as doll-like constructs of femininity and marginalize trans women.

Featureby Tony Sun Prickett May 7, 20250 Comments
Kamikaze Girls: An alternative and queer retrospective
The story of lolita-meets-biker-girl was formative to me in my high school years, and rewatching it recently with the Discotek release made me realize the impact it had on my gender, my sexuality, my friendships with others, my self-expression, and self-acceptance.

Perspectivesby Maddy February 14, 20250 Comments
Trans Safety and Education Resources
We’ve attempted to put together a list of resources for those feeling a similar sense of fear and powerlessness, in order to emphasize that we can and must protect one another as systems of power not only fail but persecute us.

Resourcesby Anime Feminist February 10, 20250 Comments
Cannibalism, the abject, and queering the narrative in Delicious in Dungeon
The main cast all cross, blur, or sit outside of social norms in some way, engaging in some taboo or another—heroes on the margins who are uniquely placed to engage with the abject horrors of the dungeon and transform them into something else through their unique, outsider perspectives.

Featureby Naina Singh December 13, 20240 Comments
Visiting the CLAMP Exhibition in Tokyo to celebrate 35 years of the legendary manga collective
CLAMP is a creative group of four women who have produced a range of iconic manga across a variety of demographics, from shoujo to seinen. Their body of work was recently celebrated with a showing at the prestigious National Art Center.

Creator Spotlightby Chibi Yuuto December 11, 20240 Comments
Shattering the Self: A conversation with Blood on the Tracks creator Shuzo Oshimi
Oshimi’s work has not lost its raw power and interest in toxic relationships. However, 2012’s Inside Mari marked a turning point: many of his later works explore the experiences of queer adolescents trying to escape from heteronormative, transphobic, and often misogynist ideas of how one should live.

Interviewby Anime Feminist December 6, 20240 Comments
Ayaka is in Love with Hiroko! and the toxic workplace
While toxic workplace culture is originally presented as something that’s keeping the couple apart, ultimately the narrative ends up reinforcing it, asserting that finding happiness in love and expressing your own queer identity are less important than maintaining a conservative, capitalistic status quo.

Featureby Megan Navarro Conley December 4, 20240 Comments
Hagio Moto’s Marginal and BL manga as feminist fabulation
With regards to her own work, Hagio Moto has often talked about how writing boy’s love manga freed her to explore kinds of stories that she felt like she couldn’t tell about female characters, and 1985’s Marginal is a particularly interesting example of how BL comics can be used to talk about women’s experiences of their own gender and the patriarchy.

Historyby Mehitabel Glenhaber November 27, 20240 Comments
Coming of age as a queer teen in Okazaki Kyoko’s River’s Edge
River’s Edge features a range of queer representations within its central cast, from frank depictions of closeted life and homophobia to more ambiguous depictions of attraction, making it a layered piece of LGBTQIA+ media and a powerful time capsule of the state of queer representation and queer life in Japan during the 1990s.

Historyby Celeste Seifert September 4, 20240 Comments
Parade Parade and the Phallic Woman Fantasy
Parade Parade is part of a long tradition of media, especially pornographic media, that fetishizes trans and intersex women as victims and perpetrators of rape. It is also somewhat unusual in its focus on lesbian and long-term relationships.

Because we marginalized women are considered too unsanitary for the societies we live in, we are forced to look to the margins of media for representation, even if it also dehumanizes us. The narrative violence of the film, to those of us who relate to Kaori’s position, is not at all unlike how the world outside of Parade Parade treats us trans and/or intersex women.

Featureby Sarah Guinevere Smit August 30, 20240 Comments
Classmates and finding the humanity in clichés
In the afterword of the first volume of Classmates, Nakamura Asumiko wrote of her first BL series, “I wanted to go with something cliche, almost hackneyed.” It’s true, Classmates does indulge many of the standards of the genre. Instead of using these cliches as shortcuts, however, Nakamura uses the reader’s familiarity to build a framework for a humanistic, multifaceted story about queer intimacy, connection, and joy.

Featureby Caitlin Moore July 17, 20240 Comments
Not Just Roses and Sparkles: Unpacking assumptions about shoujo through Hagio Moto’s work
Manga artist Hagio Moto’s work in particular opened my eyes to how versatile the iconic shoujo style can be as a storytelling tool—not just for romance, but for horror, mystery, and mind-expanding science fiction.

Creator Spotlightby Mehitabel Glenhaber June 14, 20240 Comments
From Takarazuka to Terayama: The influence of queer theater on Revolutionary Girl Utena
While the influence of theater on Utena isn’t subtle, knowing what specific strains of theater the show references would likely be lost on most viewers. Yet uncovering those histories can be like finding little Rosetta Stones to help you parse a show that prides itself on obscurity.

Historyby Clover DeMerritt May 1, 20240 Comments
Becoming Monstrous: Yurikuma Arashi and transmisogyny in the school system
Everything in Yurikuma Arashi is more symbol than literal representation, and I have often mulled over its meaning as I’ve navigated entering the teaching profession as a nonbinary Chinese person. Like the bears, I’ve often asked myself: what do I sacrifice to be allowed to exist within the school?

Perspectivesby Contributor March 15, 20240 Comments
Curses and True Forms: Reading Fruits Basket as a lesbian
As a lesbian, Fruits Basket was not written for me. Even so, the romance between Kyo and Tohru resonates deeply with my experience of queerness.

Perspectivesby Zoe London March 13, 20240 Comments
My Fave is Problematic: I’m in Love with the Villainess
I’m in Love with the Villainess starts out as a silly isekai romance but grows into a story that earnestly advocates for queer people, taking on complex subjects like homophobia, transphobia, and classism. However, the story’s reliance on messy tropes can sometimes muddle its messages.

My Fave is Problematicby Caitlin Donovan March 6, 20240 Comments
Rainbows and Rollerblades: The queer evolution of the Scott Pilgrim series
This series has always been queer, it’s just been handled in different ways, with earnest character writing that nonetheless reflected the stereotypes and assumptions of the early 2000s, before unfolding into a more careful, nuanced narrative of sexual fluidity and love in the 2020s.

Historyby Beatrix Kondo February 14, 20240 Comments
Transmasculinity and queer sexuality in the works of Ikeda Riyoko
Unlike many other gender-bending stories of the time, which often fall back on a “born in the wrong body” story, or a Mulan-style passing narrative, Ikeda acknowledges a wide range of trans experiences, and the complex ways in which trans experiences are socially constructed, and historically specific, intersectional, and, above all, personal.

Creator Spotlightby Mehitabel Glenhaber December 6, 20230 Comments