Love Me for Who I Am is inclusive, but falls short for some non-binary people
The Love Me for Who I Am manga is educational on how not to treat nonbinary people, but it’s not enough and needs to do better.
gender variance Tag
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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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Pride, Policing, and the Conservative Politics of My Hero Academia
My Hero Academia, in its proud declarations of right and wrong, good and evil, heroism and villainy, argues how the world should be. Understanding how My Hero Academia works means understanding what this prescription is, and who gets labeled the villains.
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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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“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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Nonconforming in the ‘90s: How Pokemon’s gender variance caught the hearts of a generation
Twenty years ago, I fell in love with the Pokemon anime. Now, I think I can finally tell you why: why this strange, silly, sincere show mattered. How it filled the space between “boy stuff” and “girl stuff,” treated both as having value, and challenged why there was a division in the first place.
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Mangaka Ichikawa Haruko and the beautiful horror of growth
There’s no one else doing manga quite like Haruko Ichikawa does it. Not only is her work recognizable at a glance from its simple, spindly character designs and striking compositions, her stories tread a fine line between hard sci-fi and surrealism—or perhaps sci-fi as surrealism—that few other creators care to walk.
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The Tezuka Revue: How an all-woman theatre troupe influenced the Godfather of Manga
Osamu Tezuka is considered one of the most influential artists in the manga and comic industry. But who inspired Tezuka? It’s common knowledge that he was a huge Walt Disney fan, but there’s an influence on Tezuka that isn’t as well known: the Takarazuka Revue.
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“Boys Can Be Princesses Too”: Challenging gendered stereotypes in Hugtto! PreCure
SPOILERS: This article covers episodes 1-29 of Hugtto! PreCure. The magical girl genre as a whole is often stereotyped as blatantly feminine. Characters fight in skirts and frills, love and kindness save the day, and our magical protagonist is almost consistently covered in pink. As a whole, the genre seems to play off of gender […]
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A Dress Isn’t Just A Dress: Finding yourself in Love Live’s “Love Wing Bell”
While I may reject the concept of wedding dresses both as a feminist and an individual, as a transgender woman I feel differently. Within the form of that gown I see the ideal womanhood of my sister, my mother, and my grandmother that I’ve been denied since my birth. It’s a womanhood I desperately wish to be a part of.
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All Folks Bright and Beautiful: The casual gender diversity of Heaven’s Design Team
Come for the neat animal facts, stay for the charming cast breezily ignoring gender norms.
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If the Belt Fits: The battle for trans characters in fighting games
Ask someone who plays fighting games to list trans characters and they’re probably going to struggle. It’s not exactly their fault, either: While indie games offer marginalized creators a chance to represent themselves and major Action/RPG franchises have worked to make their worlds more diverse, fighting games are one of the many genres lagging behind.
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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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The Sparkling Masculinity of Sanrio Boys
While there’s certainly a male audience for handsome dudes and fluffy mascots (like the guy writing this article), Sanrio Boys also wants to reach out to those conditioned to dislike cute things, directly addressing its male viewers through its musings on—and challenges of—traditional ideas about masculinity.
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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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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.
