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.
LGBTQ+ Tag
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Raising a Girl With Agency: Long Live The Queen versus Needy Streamer Overload
What does it take to raise a girl? According to one genre of games … it takes day-to-day event scheduling to get all the right stats in all the right places.
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Queer time and the quarter-life crisis in contemporary yuri
Series that focus on queer adult characters open the door to a storytelling niche that’s still relatively underrepresented despite the rich narrative potential it offers: the post-adolescence queer coming-of-age story. Or, in other words, the gay quarter-life crisis.
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BL Manga Artist Aiba Kyoko on Industry Demands, Artistic Growth, and Writing About Young Carers
We were able to sit down with Aiba for a gregarious and sadly brief conversation to discuss writing relationship dynamics, greater awareness of LGBTQ+ issues, and her latest work.
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My Fave Is Problematic: Stop!! Hibari-Kun!
The dichotomy of Hibari as both a progressive trans narrative and an ignorant product of its time showcases Japan’s complicated relationship with trans women and other marginalized groups.
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Lilies In Transition: The state of trans representation in yuri
As yuri continues to get queerer, the existence of trans people in these stories would be one way to provide validation for trans readers in their gender and sexuality while also helping cis people understand and internalize our long standing place in the sapphic community. Yuri works featuring trans characters do exist, though their history is complex and they remain relatively few.
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Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou and Transgender Cyborgs’ Experience of the Apocalypse
The story of Alpha Hatsuseno, an android girl in a collapsed world, serves as an allegory for what many transgender people went through during the pandemic. In the solitude and desolation of COVID-19, cut off from the pressures and expectations of society, there was a silent wave of transgender people coming to the realization that they no longer needed to pretend to be someone they were not, beginning their transitions in the midst of death, despair, and loneliness.
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Queerplatonic relationships and found family in Buddy Daddies
Despite the lack of a love story between the protagonists, however, Buddy Daddies can still be read as a queer series. While queer relationships in mainstream media are often defined by romantic and sexual attraction, Buddy Daddies stands out because it examines queerplatonic relationships, which is rarely depicted even in LGBTQIA+ storytelling.
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Author and scriptwriter Watari Wataru on cynical heroines, getting a lesbian kiss onscreen, and keeping his day job
We spoke with Watari about his wonderful trash girl heroine Chitose, adapting The Magical Revolution of the Reincarnated Princess and the Genius Young Lady, and his future plans.
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My Fave is Problematic: Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure
As I took in each new part and new Jojo, I became increasingly invested in the story and characters, and when Stone Ocean was finally adapted, Jolyne was everything I’d hoped for and then some; however, because the source manga has been around since the late 1980’s, some parts, particularly early on, haven’t exactly aged well. It’s too big a franchise to cover in every detail here, but its biggest issues feel worth discussing alongside its strengths.
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A Life Drawing Boys: Takemiya Keiko, the shoujo trailblazer who drew manga’s first gay kiss
Classic shoujo has a hard time being exported, especially in the Anglophone sphere, and in pop culture discussions it’s generally been reduced to a subpar category of comics when compared to the high-praise shounen manga are known to receive. However, her value as a multifaceted artist and storyteller should be valued as much as other prominent authors from the ‘70s and ‘80s.
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She Has Two Hands! Room For non-monogamous love in yuri
Yuri and the wider GL community has an increasing reach that seems to be growing each year, and it’s worth examining the ways in which the increased variety of yuri stories are representing different kinds of love and relationships. Love can be so many different things, after all, and it’s gratifying when fiction reflects that—not to mention how it opens new possibilities for storytelling and discussions of relationship dynamics.
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Chatty AF 182: Ace/Aro Representation in Anime and Manga – Part 2 (WITH TRANSCRIPT)
Dee, Alex, and Cy return to their discussion of asexual and aromantic coding, and dive deep into the works of Uta Isaki!
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Ugly Things Cannot Be Loved: Penguindrum and the dilemma of Yuri
Yuri’s assault on Ringo is emblematic of how the tensions and arguable flaws in Penguindrum point to larger tensions and unresolved questions in our movements for transformative justice, abolition, and queer liberation.
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Chatty AF 181: Ace/Aro Representation in Anime and Manga – Part 1 (WITH TRANSCRIPT)
Dee, Alex, and Cy discuss asexual and aromantic coded characters and several new manga with explicit ace and/or aro leads.
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Can’t Quite Be Your Sister: Looking at the Japanese laws relating to gender identity disorder
Japanese blogger Honeshabri breaks down laws regarding the stipulations trans people face in changing their gender markers in Japan.
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How Otherside Picnic masterfully uses horror to explore abuse and show healing queer love
Otherside Picnic makes a wonderful addition to the canon by centering queer love and examining how survivors of abusive relationships can heal from their pain and trauma in order to move onto healthier relationships.
