My Fave is Problematic: Kakegurui
It soon becomes clear that within Hyakkaou Academy, it’s the women who get shit done. That was where I found what had first caught my interest in the first place: the women of Kakegurui.
LGBTQ+ Tag
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The queer blood ties of Vampire Princess Miyu
Miyu is born a vampire, and her bite does not seem to turn her victims into other vampires. In Vampire Princess Miyu, blood bonds become not something that transfers a vampiric condition, but something that creates connection. While in some vampire stories it can also forge mythical bonds, the conventional vampire bite crucially also transfers a condition (vampirism). But here, the connections are not accompanied by transformation. Rather than giving you new traits, its only effect is to create a link between yourself and another person.
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The Surprisingly Queer-Friendly Narrative of Cybersix
Japanese animation has found numerous sources of inspiration, from comics and novels to video games and toys, located from both within and outside of its national borders. But when it came to the 90s, few have the unique history, and overwhelming queer vibes , that the anime adaptation of Cybersix does.
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My Fave is Problematic: Free!
One of the biggest gripes I have now with Free! is the amount of fanservice the show throws at you. While the perfectly sculpted muscles of the main male cast is what led to the show’s boom in popularity, it has also caused harm for the show.
Despite its flaws, Free! remains close to my heart as a show full of relatable and raw emotions. There’s been times where I’ve shed tears along with the characters on screen, and also deeply sympathized with their hardships. -
Boys Run the Riot, Visual Kei, and Gender Euphoria Through Fashion
Gender identity, self expression, and ethnicity are so intertwined that it would be hard to discuss one without discussing the others. As a Japanese trans man, all of these things have come into play in relation to my self-expression and identity. One of the things I found solace and euphoria in, as a teenager, was clothing.
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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.
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Against the World: Madoka Rebellion, saviorism, and abolitionist schooling
As somebody who has witnessed repeatedly the failure of would-be individual saviors to undo entire oppressive systems, I want to try to come to a deeper understanding than what is afforded on the surface by Rebellion’s final twist. What happens when hope is institutionalized? How do oppressive ideologies shape the worlds we can imagine? And the question that has haunted me most: if in the moment we destroyed an oppressive world we were given the full power to create a new one before we had any time to heal, would we like what we make?
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Katarina of Irodori Comics on translating doujinshi to English
Irodori Comics launched an all-ages online doujinshi store featuring LGBTQ+ works. AniFem asked its editor to talk about the company’s future plans.
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“Who the Hell Do You Think We Are?” Gurren Lagann’s blunted message of liberation
A distinct antiauthoritarian spirit runs through Imaishi’s works. Yet nowhere is the director’s call for collective action more realized, but most glaringly compromised, than in the show that made him a household name: Gurren Lagann.
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World-Building a Queer Paradise in My Next Life as a Villainess
So, is the world of Villainess a queer utopia uniquely laid out so that Catarina’s love(s) can bloom? Or is the question of world- and story-building a little more complicated?
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Magical Girls as Metaphor: Why coded queer narratives still have value
Even now, with the vast increase of explicit queer womxn’s representation on television over the past decade, I still see myself in Sailor Moon and The iDOLM@STER more than I see myself in Orphan Black.
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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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The intersection of queer and Deaf identity in I Hear the Sunspot
As a long-time reader of manga, I always found the medium to be a means of escape to fantastical worlds. Yet, there remained a disconnect between me and the stories I was reading. Discovering I Hear the Sunspot filled that absence with its portrayal of the specific reality of being both gay and Deaf.
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Allegory, Allegorier, Allegoriest: Visual storytelling and empathy in Revolutionary Girl Utena
Revolutionary Girl Utena has a well-deserved reputation for being difficult to parse. Dense with metaphor, thinly-veiled critique of old shoujo tropes, and allusions to obscure literature, Utena’s style of storytelling relies heavily on its own visual language.
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A Tale of Two Nanas: The fuzzy line between homoromantic subtext and queerbaiting in Nana
Though its depiction of queerness is a bit dated, it’s a powerful portrayal of a bond between women and the life of two young women trying to find their way in the world. It’s also a series that has found itself in a very unique place in discussion for its abrupt hiatus that has lasted for over a decade, with no ending in sight.
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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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Yuri is for Everyone: An analysis of yuri demographics and readership
Throughout its 100-year history, yuri has uniquely evolved in and moved about multiple markets, often existing in many simultaneously. It is by and for a variety of people: men, women, heterosexuals, queer people, everyone!
