Beyond the Bear Storm: Morishima Akiko, yuri mangaka
This is the story of an openly queer mangaka who really loves to write about women falling in love with other women.
LGBTQ+ Tag
Results-
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Growing into Love: How Kase-san models a healthy queer relationship
It can be hard to find manga that shows both the struggles and joys of the awkward period of teen romance, especially if you’re not straight. That’s exactly why the Kase-san and… manga series is a breath of fresh air, a slice-of-life comedy that models what a healthy, queer romantic relationship can look like.
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Hiding Then, Hesitating Now: Closeted sexuality and Confessions of a Mask
Due to the cultural dangers around me, along with my own family’s reservations (my wonderful mother excluded), Yukio Mishima’s Confessions of a Mask was a novel that, to me, reflected the violence and anxiety that society perpetrates against LGBTQ people.
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My trans experience with My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness
It is so rare to find fiction that speaks to your Otherness and to truly connect with it. As a trans woman, I more often than not feel disappointed after opening my soul up to allow for validation and comfort. So perhaps you can imagine the tenderness with which I turned the pages as I read Nagata Kabi’s My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness.
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Going Beyond Severance: Metaphorical and literal queerness in Yurikuma Arashi
Fantastical fiction is an ideal space for working through complex real-world issues using the frame of allegory, metaphor, and a little bit of magic. Yurikuma Arashi is one such series, a step detached from reality but with something to say about real-world problems, specifically about homophobia and the societal stigmas queer women face.
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Art as Discovery, Art as Hope: Kamatani Yuhki, x-gender and asexual mangaka
Kamatani Yuhki often confronts identity and marginalization in their work, as informed by their life as an x-gender (nonbinary) and asexual person. In a world where the oppressed often can’t tell their own stories, Kamatani’s manga are a must-read.
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Cardcaptor Sakura and the Stagnant LGBTQ Representation
While the currently airing sequel, Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card was created roughly twenty years after the original series, it so far seems less actively progressive than its predecessor. Specifically, it’s missing the original’s focus on explicitly representing LGBTQ characters as well as the way it sensitively portrayed their lives and emotions.
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Cozy Campfires, Bitter Broth: Female Relationships in Laid-Back Camp and Ms. Koizumi Loves Ramen Noodles
In Laid-Back Camp, the main characters’ relationship develops over the course of the series becomes a rewarding story about female closeness; Ms. Koizumi, on the other hand, sticks to the status quo established in its premiere, which creates a stale and repetitive story that perpetuates negative tropes about queer women.
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The People’s Hero (Some People Not Included): The exclusion of queer viewers in LUPIN THE 3rd PART 5
LUPIN THE 3rd PART 5 wants to explore Lupin as a folk hero of sorts. Unfortunately, it has very specific ideas about the audience to whom Lupin is a hero, and it doesn’t seem to include queer people.
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Nerdy Talk and New Frontiers: My wandering ramble on coming out in the anime fandom
Hi everybody! My name’s Samantha. I’m a gawky, geeky trans girl who loves video games and anime. I had a different name up until a few days ago, but it’s dead now. Please be kind and don’t bring that up, ‘kay? I’m just Samantha now. Thank you!
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Kino is the Nonbinary Protagonist We Deserve
Because of the choices made by the 2003 Kino’s Journey adaptation, Kino becomes something incredibly rare: a nonbinary, AFAB anime character who isn’t a robot, alien, or sentient rock, but a human being.
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Ohtori Revisited: My 18 years with Revolutionary Girl Utena
“Once upon a time…” Those first words of the opening monologue of Revolutionary Girl Utena captivated me. And every time it repeated itself, I learned more about how stories have power.
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Catherine, Trans Identities, and Representation in Japan
The inherent transphobia written into Erica’s character is reflective of Japanese society, as conformity is part of the social constructs within the country itself. Erica is the product of misinformation about lifestyles that were not visible, and still remain somewhat invisible, in a conservative society.
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DEVILMAN crybaby, Legacies of Queerness, and Diversifying Remakes
What do you do with a series that features sympathetic representation while also roundly killing its queer characters off, and does it make a difference that everybody is dying?
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Land of the Lustrous, singular “they,” and the politics of subtitles
Land of the Lustrous made minor waves by deciding to refer to almost the entire cast with neutral “they/them” pronouns. In an industry that has historically chosen binary pronouns for characters who aren’t gendered or are gendered ambiguously in the original text, this marks a small but important—and most crucially, conscious—shift.
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How Yuri!!! On ICE helped me understand myself
Last year, Yuri!!! On ICE took the anime community by storm. Whether it was from the passionate portrayal of figure skating, the queer romance, or the sincere way it cared for its characters, it resonated with many. I’m no exception.
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Persona 5 and the Abandoned Misfits
Persona 5 presents itself as a game about misfits and about exposing the unseen evils underlying Tokyo. Yet these misfits adhere to the same norms and assumptions as the oppressive adults the game claims to challenge.
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Escape from Yuri Hell: FLIP FLAPPERS’ critique of the Class S genre
In FLIP FLAPPERS Episode 5, Cocona and Papika are thrown into a world that combines Class S, a genre of sweet yuri romance, with horror. Now, what in the world could that strange combination be trying to tell us?
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The challenges of a queer immigrant and the shortcomings of A Certain Marriage
A bitter-sweet story, A Certain Marriage delves into the beauty of gay relationships and the discrimination LGBT people experience. The story, however, ultimately fails to delve into the challenges queer immigrants from Japan face living in America.
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The Quiet Revolutions of Contemporary Japanese Queer Novels
As a Southeast Asian, there are days when I wonder if my feelings are real and worth caring about. Where I live, videos blare about what it means to have a family and to be proper husbands and wives. Heterosexual families are the default unit in Asian societies, and going against them is considered not just sexually deviant, but morally wrong.
