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.
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.
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.
The Rose of Versailles makes the argument that women’s lives and the romance genre can be radical and revolutionary—and, in fact, they were always central to revolutionary movements.
