Get Your Gender On: Jaden Yuki and Yubel

With Jaden (Judai) Yuki, Yu-Gi-Oh as a franchise began its tradition of male protagonists, but he has more going on with gender than meets the eye. Although Jaden has a passion for a male-dominated game like his predecessor Yugi Mutou, he does not share his displays of heterosexuality. Jaden shows no attraction to his female peers, in contrast to how his classmates Syrus Truesdale, Chazz Princeton, Bastion Misawa, and Tyranno Hassleberry become fixated on at least one girl over the course of GX. Whereas the original Yu-Gi-Oh manga begins with boys sharing porn video tapes and Yugi harboring a crush on Anzu Mazaki (Téa Gardner), Jaden’s thoughts on romance range from obliviousness to discomfort. His Tag Force profile states, “His thoughts on girls are a mystery. At times a girl may have a crush on him, but he has rarely, if ever, shown any interest.” In Tag Force 2: “When it comes to girls, you’d expect him to be really outgoing, but he’s actually fairly passive. When dueling he shows all of his feelings so freely, but, with girls, he’s the exact opposite.” He often misunderstands romantic intentions, such as unknowingly dueling for the right to become Alexis Rhodes’s fiance in episode 15 or giving game advice to another student instead of the romantic guidance he hoped for in 81. This obliviousness includes interactions with boys, seen in episode 40 when he interprets Pharaoh Abidos’s offer to join him in the afterlife (with a more romantic sentiment of “staying together” eternally in the Japanese version) as strictly about dueling.

These instances portray Jaden as “pure-hearted” or a “late bloomer,” unconcerned with romance in favor of his enjoyment of Duel Monsters that can veer into a boyish disdain for “cooties.” His gender and age play into this characterization, whereas Alexis Rhodes disengages from heteronormative courtship fully aware of romantic context and the elder Zane Truesdale prioritizes dueling over dating girls because of his aloofness as a whole. When Blair Flannigan becomes increasingly verbally and physically affectionate with Jaden, he recoils. While Blair’s heteronormative flirting reinforces her femininity, Jaden’s disengagement from heterosexual courtship distances him from mature masculinity. In the Japanese version of season 3, his bond with Johan (Jesse) further disrupts the heterosexual matrix by taking implied romantic interest in another boy.

Above all else, Jaden’s interests lie with card games and making friends. His refusal to climb the social ladder of Duel Academy by staying in Slifer goes hand in hand with his indifference to gender roles, another hierarchy in society. In the Japanese version of episode 20 when Hayato Maeda (Chumley Huffington) speculates about Rei (Blair) being a girl disguised as a boy, Judai (Jaden) shrugs it off with his belief that “people come in all shapes and sizes.” Jaden’s acceptance of others and enthusiasm for fun endears others to him regardless of their gender, unlike Chazz’s posse of male fans or Alexis’s camaraderie with the Obelisk girls.

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Get Your Gender On: Jesse Anderson

The third season of GX introduces Jesse Anderson, one of four international transfer students to Duel Academy. In the Japanese version Johan hails from Northern Europe, while in the English version he speaks with an American country accent. Jesse serves as an homage to Ryo Bakura, Yu-Gi-Oh’s earliest queer-coded character with an androgynous appearance that leads to homophobic harassment in manga chapter 50. Like Bakura, Jesse enters the story as a friendly gamer and transfer student who ends up possessed by a supernatural villain.

Most of my analysis in this post comes from the original Japanese version of GX, so this will refer to him as Johan and other characters by their Japanese names from here on. In the Japanese version, voice actresses Kanako Irie and Rica Matsumoto play Johan and Bakura respectively, making them some of the only male human characters played by women in the franchise. This also includes Masami Suzuki as Sho Marufuji (Syrus Truesdale), whose soft and high voice embodies his immaturity as a duelist and matches his small frame. For Johan, Irie’s voice paired with Johan’s masculine first person pronoun “ore” and boyish character design make for an androgynous first impression.

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Get Your Gender On: Chazz Princeton

Where Alexis represents the female students of Duel Academy, Chazz Princeton (Jun Manjome) initially epitomizes the male students of Obelisk Blue. As a scion to an organization run by a rich family, his older brothers set unreasonable expectations on him to win at all costs. The Princeton family sees their son dueling as an arm of their empire, with first son Slade and second son Jagger in the other heteropatriarchal institutions of politics and in finance respectively, not mere cultural enrichment like for girls. With financial support from his family and favoritism from Crowler, Chazz’s success reflects the privilege afforded to a male heir at a structural heteropatriarchy like Duel Academy. When lower class students like Jaden Yuki and Bastion Misawa publicly defeat him (in episodes 4 and 12 respectively) and he shifts to using common cards instead of power-based strategies, Chazz’s family retaliates for no longer fulfilling the gender role of their third son. Slade and Jagger Princeton go from providing him expensive cards in episode 25 to dueling him for ownership of Duel Academy in episode 35.

Chazz’s biological family doesn’t entirely cut him off nor vice versa (as he uses their funds to renovate the Slifer dorm in season 2), but he nonetheless takes on a “family of choice” with duel spirits in their place. Chazz’s life changes not only when he makes his way to North Academy in episode 24 only to return to Duel Academy as a student of Slifer Red, but meets his duel spirit partner Ojama Yellow. He reluctantly employs the grotesque and wimpy monster card to great success. In episode 35, Chazz reunites Yellow with his older brothers Ojama Green and Ojama Black by retrieving them from a well for trashed trading cards. In Japanese, the Ojamas call Manjome “aniki,” a term of endearment for a masculine senior meaning “older brother,” though he doesn’t refer to them as family back like Jesse Anderson with his Crystal Beast partners. The dub leans into the gang connotations of “aniki” with the Ojamas calling him “boss,” but the parallel between the two sets of brothers speaks for itself in any language.

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Get Your Gender On: Atticus Rhodes

You can’t discuss Alexis without discussing Atticus Rhodes (Fubuki Tenjoin in the Japanese version), her older brother who disappears before the events of Yu-Gi-Oh GX. Alexis spends half the first season in search of her missing brother, taking an active role in unraveling the mystery around Duel Academy’s abandoned dorm building. The combined efforts of Alexis, Zane Tuesdale, and Jaden Yuki discover Atticus under the control of the evil entity Nightshroud.

Once recovered from possession and amnesia, starting from episode 41, Atticus’ true personality released from Nightshroud comes to light: a hopeless romantic, who can also be serious when the situation calls for it. His playful attitude and bishounen (“pretty boy”) good looks capture the hearts of countless female classmates–even Fonda Fontaine, the head professor of the Obelisk Blue girls. Whereas Alexis brushes off attention from “the opposite sex” and puts relatively minimal effort into her appearance, Atticus cultivates attention from girls by putting his charms, looks, and skills on display.

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Get Your Gender On: Alexis Rhodes

Alexis Rhodes, also known as Asuka Tenjoin in the Japanese version, resides as the only female character present in the main cast for all four seasons of GX. Unlike Téa Gardner (Anzu Mazaki), the only female central character of the previous Yu-Gi-Oh anime, Alexis considers herself a duelist and plays Duel Monsters throughout the show.

GX introduces Alexis as a representative of Obelisk Blue, Duel Academy’s highest ranked class, specifically the “pride of the Blue girls.” She has composure and refinement in common with the other elite girls, but her skills as a duelist set her apart. Although all female students of Duel Academy enroll in Obelisk by default, their high rank does not necessarily reflect dueling prowess. Indeed, Blair’s profile in the video game Tag Force 2 states that “all female students, regardless of their academic achievements, live there.”

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Get Your Gender On: Blair Flannigan

Blair Flannigan (Rei Saotome)’s debut in episode 20, in which she lies about her age to enroll and meet dueling prodigy Zane Truesdale, provides some insight into the gender politics of the three Duel Academy classes in Yu-Gi-Oh GX. In the episode, Professor Banner explains that any transfer student who enrolls mid-term joins Slifer Red despite their grades, which contradicts how all girl students join Obelisk Blue by default. This leaves any potential female student in a double bind, in which they can’t enroll mid-term. The writers of GX somewhat address this oversight with Blair, who disguises herself as a boy partially to obscure her true age but also because girls can only be admitted to Duel Academy through Obelisk.

Slifer and Ra each only have a single building for their dorms, exclusively for boys, leaving potential female students in them unaccounted for. In the Japanese version, Cronos (Crowler) derisively refers to the Red students as “dropout boys” (in English), defining the dorm by its gender demographic. Season 1 depicts the Slifer housing as dilapidated and their food as rancid, lacking “a woman’s touch” due to only having the lackadaisical Professor Banner in charge. The clean extravagance of Obelisk Blue would appeal more to the stereotypical girl who turns her nose up at dirt. Slifer students like Jaden Yuki and Syrus Truesdale also bond by bathing together, which a girl couldn’t participate in because the majority of onsen in Japan have been segregated by gender since the Meiji Restoration.

GX doesn’t address how Duel Academy would incorporate female Slifer students long term, as Blair leaves the island on a technicality in season 1 and no other girls enroll there. Alexis Rhodes temporarily resides in the Slifer dorm during season 2, using the room renovated by Chazz Princeton while he opts for the standard housing. Blair joins Slifer properly in season 3, but most characters spend the majority of the season across different dimensions with no need to dwell on her situation. By season 4, Blair ascends to Obelisk for her (off-screen) growth as a duelist. Neither Alexis nor Blair’s stays in Slifer indicate a larger shift to admitting girls to the Red dorm, let alone more to Duel Academy.

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Get Your Gender On: A Yu-Gi-Oh GX Deep Dive

Last time on Coherent Cats, we discussed how many people in the United States wrote off Yu-Gi-Oh as a mere fad in the early 2000s. This proved untrue, as it continued with the animated direct sequel Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters GX from 2004 to 2008 in Japan (2005 to 2008 in the US).

GX takes place at Duel Academy, a private school dedicated to the study and play of the Duel Monsters card game. Duel Academy delegates its students into three hierarchical dorms: Obelisk Blue for the elite, Ra Yellow for the academic, and Slifer Red for the meritless. However, a student can hypothetically rise in rank from Ra or even Slifer by winning duels and improving their grades, encouraging students to climb the social ladder by bootstrapping.

While the original Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters anime includes spectators and casual players in the ensemble, GX narrows down its characters to competitive gamers by taking place at a dueling school on a private island. Even the most minor of characters participate in the game in some way. Men and boys make up a majority of Duel Monsters players in the Yu-Gi-Oh anime universe, which reflects the demographics of competitive trading card game scenes in real life. In a 2023 survey of Yu-Gi-Oh players by HakunaMyData, 87% of the 1659 respondents identified as male. By matching these real life statistics rather than having an equal ratio of men and women, the secluded setting of GX limits any recurring female characters to the small number of those studying dueling.

Duel Academy also divides its students into dorms based on gender, distancing boys and girls from each other more than the co-ed school and public spaces of the original Yu-Gi-Oh. Due to the numerous male dorm mates and a lack of female students, GX primarily focuses on male homosociality through friendship, rivalries, and mentorship between boys and men. At the same time, many male characters have crushes on girls that counteracts potential homoeroticism. In turn, many of the female characters have crushes on boys. Girl characters rarely appear for more than a single episode, leaving little room for partnerships to grow from these crushes or the girls to develop as characters.

In this world where characters can openly display their heteronormative crushes, those who deviate from gender roles are met with opposition. When male characters continuously lose at Duel Monsters, others look down on them for not succeeding in a male-dominated game. When female characters participate in Duel Monsters, male characters underestimate them or only see them through a heteronomative lens based on gender roles. Even as individual characters reject gender norms, the structural heteropatriarchy of Duel Academy persists.

The third season of GX changes things up by not only transporting Duel Academy and its inhabitants to another dimension in an homage to Kazuo Umezz’s The Drifting Classroom, but also by introducing more major gender non-confirming and queer-coded characters. At first, an otherworldly genderqueer duel monster who threatens the status quo seems like the perfect villain for the heteropatriarchal world GX spends two seasons building. However, things become more complicated when it turns out the protagonist has a spiritual connection to the monster that can’t be ignored.

In honor of Yu-Gi-Oh GX’s 20th anniversary and the booster set “Phantom Nightmare” featuring the aforementioned nonbinary icon Yubel, let’s examine gender in GX in depth. For each day leading up to the release of “Phantom Nightmare,” I’ll be sharing a case study of a different character in relation to gender roles, with special attention paid to gender variance–behavior, expression, or identity that deviates from gender norms.

This series of posts contains spoilers for all of Yu-Gi-Oh GX; as well as discussion of misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia.

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The Kappa Kappa Butthole Musical Changed My Life!

It’s been a while! This post is not an article, but an announcement that I was part of a Sarazanmai zine arranged by Tomatobird:

“Well, we didn’t get it, but maybe the Kappa Kappa Butthole Anime changed YOUR Life.” – quote paraphrased from memory from a random anime podcast I listened to a couple years ago whose throwaway line inspired this whole project.

It’s been more than 4 years since a little anime telling a heartfelt, wild story about singing kappas, butts, and the epic highs and lows of middle school soccer changed some of our lives forever!

This zine explores the impact of Sarazanmai through artwork, reflective writing, and personal photography of 9 contributors. From an exploration of love and disability, to the joys of shipping and analysis, to the connections forged in the midst of the excitement of waiting for episodes to drop, to fanart celebrating and having fun with our favorite characters–this is just some of the wonderful work that has gone into this zine.

I contributed “In Sickness and In Health,” a sort of sequel to my article Reconstructed Body, Reconnecting Partners about Mabu as a disabled character and his relationship with Reo. My writing goes in a much more personal direction this time, so please be gentle as you take my metaphorical heart in your metaphorical hands.

You can read the whole zine by downloading a digital copy on itch.io (for free with optional donation) or buying a physical copy on Storenvy! Thank you to Tomatobird for inviting me to participate with wonderful contributors and for putting everything together.

Demystifying the Link Between CLAMP and JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure

Across the Internet, people often describe the relationship between the manga JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure and the mangaka collective CLAMP thusly: CLAMP got their start making JoJo dounjinshi, went professional, and proceeded to work JoJo character lookalikes into their manga. In actuality, the truth goes much deeper. For one thing, CLAMP did not transition straight from doujinshi to professional manga. At one point, they still published doujinshi while their manga ran in magazines, including their JoJo-themed CLAMP Laboratory 6 and “CLAMP in Wonderland” in 1994.

In December of 2021, I joined CLAMPcast in Wonderland for a bonus podcast episode about this relationship between CLAMP and JoJo. For a casual conversation about this topic, please listen to the episode here. For an in-depth write-up, look no further.

This post contains potential spoilers for all parts of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure and all manga by CLAMP.

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Asexuality in Manga and More: 2022 Addendum

Although anime conventions have re-opened their doors (with or without COVID-19 policies in place), we at Coherent Cats currently have no plans for future in-person panels. In lieu of convention appearances, here is a written addendum to Asexuality in Manga and More. Since we last discussed asexuality in manga, more and more relevant to the conversation have become available in English.

Please see Asexuality in Manga and More for an overview of Japanese terminology for asexual and aromantic identity. This post will primarily borrow the wording of the official English translations when discussing a specific series.

The rest of this post contains discussion of sexual content and anti-asexual and aromantic prejudice, as well as potential spoilers for all series mentioned.

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