Miscommunication as narrative conflict is often linked with contrivance and bad writing—and no genre faces this criticism more than romance. That’s what makes Yuri is My Job! so refreshing. In the process of building a will-they-won’t-they story, it explores the gendered, neurotypical, and heteronormative expectations that are built into social interaction.
Spy x Family is a great example of how a story might have queer resonances and queer themes even if it cannot be classed as queer fiction.
While the series itself is a sweet, wholesome story about self-discovery, it also offers an incredibly potent metatextual analysis of how queer media can help LGBTQ+ teens come to understand themselves.
New layers and new ways to appreciate the series emerge when it’s considered as a campy melodrama rather than the brooding thriller that writer Ohba Tsugumi intended it to be.
Set in 1900 England and steeped in references to both the history and literature of the Victorian era, Goodbye, My Rose Garden draws on turn-of-the-century reality and fantasy alike to highlight the intersectional struggles of queer women of the period.
Foxglove Games, a new developer on the scene and based in Europe, is working to add to this diversity of representation with their forthcoming visual novel Trouble Comes Twice. This new game, currently in development, offers players two distinct queer characters to play as, twin siblings Jace and Hazel.
Since his introduction, despite the fact that he’s a character quite hated by the audience, I’ve loved the Earl Alois Trancy as a multi-layered character that carries many intertwined themes around child abuse, queerness, genre influences and slut-shaming.
Though inherently absurd once verbalized, “Abenime” are stories that speak to a nation’s plight. They are designed to manufacture consent by defining baby making as the norm. Women can make babies; ipso facto, their role in saving Japanese society lies in buffering the ever-shrinking population with young, healthy babies who will carry on the nation in the future.
And while this attitude reaches public discourse by way of popular entertainment, it also likewise prevails within narratives not often discussed out in the open.
Much of the franchise’s homoeroticism is a result of the franchise’s severe gender disparity, which it has only recently taken steps to address; the series took 31 years to get its first female Kamen Rider. There have also been canonically gay, transgender and nonbinary characters, but the quality of representation is questionable. Regardless, many LGBTQ+ viewers have seen their own experiences reflected in the many characters of Kamen Rider, whether implicitly or explicitly.
No one has ever asked whether Samurai Flamenco is good, because the question is a loud and simultaneous “no” and “yes.” But the question of whether it “counts” as queer romance has waged on for eight exhausting years now. Incidentally: yes, it does.
In the discussion surrounding queer representation in fiction, things are not always so simple as stamping a work with “good rep” or “bad rep”. While the series is not perfect—or perhaps because the series is not perfect—Land of the Lustrous makes a useful case study for reading and critiquing through a queer lens.
Women in shounen battle anime and manga have traditionally been sidelined, even as it became more and more common to include women as fellow fighters. When the guys go in to fight the final boss, the girls stay behind to help with some B-plot battle no matter how competent they may seem. In a new era of shounen, we’ve seen some of these tired tropes be turned on their heads. However, even when series like Black Clover make some strides, they still end up repeating tired cliches.
The lovable characters have kept me hooked on Yu Yu Hakusho for the past 18 years, in addition to the “fight your enemies head on and defeat them through raw power and sheer force of will” storyline that will always be a guilty pleasure of mine. Although these elements make it worth the rewatch even now, my love for this anime hasn’t completely blinded me to its flaws. Yu Yu Hakusho, unfortunately, overtly and subtly fails its female characters time and again.
From their first appearance disguised as a young woman to their dangly earrings and lilting English dub performance, Orochimaru carries many of the unfortunate hallmarks of a queer-coded antagonist, one whose most terrifying power includes the ability to inhabit the bodies of others in a bid for eternal life. Their portrayal, already mired in queerphobia, is complicated by the franchise’s later decision to portray Orochimaru as a character with a non-binary gender identity, the first canonically LGBTQ+ character in the franchise.
Of all the amazing things about the show, one of the most striking to me was the revolutionary way it portrayed the intersection of queer and Slavic identity.
I often want to share a cool story after reading it, but, as an avid reader of doujinshi, I find few outlets where I can share that passion. For all the interesting work indie publications can harbor, they are largely inaccessible to non-Japanese markets, making it difficult to share my passion with English fans.
You wouldn’t expect an otome game like Code:Realize to have themes that resonate so strongly with common queer experiences. In many ways, the game follows genre conventions, with a heterosexual romance story following a singular heroine and a cast of attractive men. Yet it spoke to me, an enby transgender man, by exploring themes of inner discovery, found family, and self-love.
It took years of consuming BL and Yuri to finally face my truth: that I am queer.
Vrai, Alex, and Mercedez go over the wealth of yuri being published on the English market and share some of their faves!
Our Dreams at Dusk and Blue Flag are two series about queer characters, but it’s clear that each is aimed at a different target audience.
