Tag: LGBTQ

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 fiancé 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 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.

Continue reading →

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.

Continue reading →

Rainbow Releases: Spring & Summer 2020

In 2018, we introduced an anime convention panel called Rainbow Releases to highlight LGBTQ-related anime and manga coming to the United States in English. With anime conventions on hold for the foreseeable future, you won’t see Rainbow Releases: LGBTQ Anime and Manga in person any time soon. However, we are looking into digital events. For DigiKumo, the online alternative to Kumoricon 2020, we pre-recorded a video to be streamed by the organizers. Thank you for tuning in!

As always, we will also provide blog post companions to our panel as well as a list of releases throughout the year, even if they are delayed. There may be some inconsistences between the recorded panel and these posts, as we correct and learn new information after recording. Without further ado, here is our recap of spring and summer 2020.

Continue reading →

Where to Find Gay and Bisexual Male Characters in Recent Children’s Cartoons: An Incomplete Overview

It feels like every time two female characters become a couple in a cartoon for children, some people steer the conversation toward (the lack of) gay male characters in animation instead. Specifically, they claim that lesbians and bisexual women are over-represented in fiction compared to gay and bisexual men. In actuality, all kinds of LGBTQ identities are vastly outnumbered by heterosexual and cisgender characters.

As a lifelong fan of cartoons, a number of examples come to mind when others lament a lack of gay and bisexual male characters. They often appear in the same cartoons as lesbian and bisexual female characters: OK K.O.! Let’s Be Heroes, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, Steven Universe, The Loud House, Twelve Forever, etc. No one’s obligated to watch or enjoy the source material, but people act as if they don’t exist. On one hand, I don’t want to derail news about lesbians. On the other hand, perhaps an informative resource could expand the conversation and prevent bad faith in the future.

Before we get to the list, let’s first establish that LGBTQ creators take precedent over fictional characters, whether they’re out and whether they have LGBTQ characters. In observance of Pride Month and in honor of Black Lives Matter, here are ten openly LGBTQ Black people in animation to start with. You can also find this list at the end of the article.

Now, here it is: an article of just what it says on the tin, created to answer “where are the gay/bi male characters?” in good faith. It’s not about gay and bisexual men behind the scenes, the history of queer-coding, or characters in animation aimed at adults. A little subjective analysis here and there, but aiming to mostly state the facts. As such, these are not recommendations or endorsements. This is not a comprehensive list of every single instance of gay and bisexual male characters in children’s animation, either. It is an overview of patterns within the last decade primarily from the United States, with illustrative examples for each category. (Unfortunately, some examples come from cartoons with allegedly abusive creators. The titles have been marked with an asterisk and you can read the allegations here.) It is incomplete without characters outside the Anglosphere (such as Henri and Masato from Hugtto! Pretty Cure), and does not claim otherwise. Feel free to add your own examples via comments, but please don’t frame it as if they’ve been forgotten or erased.

Continue reading “Where to Find Gay and Bisexual Male Characters in Recent Children’s Cartoons: An Incomplete Overview” →

Rainbow Releases: Winter 2020

In 2018, we introduced an anime convention panel called Rainbow Releases to highlight LGBTQ-related anime and manga coming to the United States in English. As of this post’s publication, we don’t have plans to host Rainbow Releases as a panel at any future anime conventions. We’re unsure when it will be safe to attend conventions again, or safe to be held at all. For now, Rainbow Releases will remain as our list of titles throughout the year and seasonal recaps such as these.

Continue reading “Rainbow Releases: Winter 2020” →

Rainbow Releases: Autumn 2019

In 2018, we introduced an anime convention panel called Rainbow Releases to highlight LGBTQ-related anime and manga coming to the United States in English. Thank you to everyone who attended at Chibi Chibi Con 2019, Sakura-Con 2019, and Kumoricon 2019!

For 2018, we transcribed our midyear panel as a single blog post, which left out unprecedented works later in the year such as Zombieland Saga. Since then, we’ve keep a simple list of all releases on a Rainbow Releases: LGBTQ Anime and Manga of 2019 blog page, with in-depth blog posts looking back on each season as we move through the year.

Unfortunately, we won’t be hosting Rainbow Releases at Sakura-con 2020 as the convention was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Here is the list of anime and manga that would have been touched on in our presentation. The future of convention panels, anime production, and physical book releases are uncertain, but we will continue to update our blog with seasonal recaps of what makes its way to the US.

At long last, here is our recap of LGBTQ-themed anime and manga from the autumn season of 2019! With that, all of 2019 has been covered.

Continue reading “Rainbow Releases: Autumn 2019” →

12 Days of Anime: To BL or Not to BL

This year, I started working at a bookstore. My knowledge of manga comes in handy for our manga section, particularly boys love and yuri as I’m the only employee familiar with the genres. I follow BL and yuri in English closely to present Rainbow Releases at conventions, as well as for my own enjoyment. I don’t consider myself an expert in the genres–or any field–because I am always learning, but I sure feel like one compared to how little the average person at my job knows of BL and yuri. They definitely haven’t witnessed the “what is BL and what isn’t” arguments that seem to happen on my sphere of Twitter every month. As a result, the designated BL and yuri shelves are largely my responsibility.

The books we order are not obviously labeled BL or yuri, with the exception of SuBLime’s logo on the spine and Tokyopop’s “boys love” and “girls love” genre boxes. At most, a book’s blurb may describe it as BL of yuri. It’s up to us, the bookstore, to decide where to shelve them.

Continue reading “12 Days of Anime: To BL or Not to BL” →

The Voxy Bunch and the Legacy of Animated Queer-Coded Villains

Over the last few years, the amount of confirmed LGBTQ characters in animated television aimed at children in the United States has significantly increased. Media for children has additional hoops to leap through when including LGBTQ characters, such as fear of “corrupting” children into queerness or exposing them to “sexual content” of same-gender relationships. We’re currently at a turning point between reliance on subtext for depiction of LGBTQ people (such as under the Hays Code) and more openness about LGBTQ topics, and all the complications that come with it.

OK K.O.! Let’s Be Heroes on Cartoon Network juggles straightforward representation with the more nebulous. As brief as it is, Enid is deliberately drawn riding vehicles with a bisexual pride sticker, the same one Rebecca Sugar used to come out in real life. Lord Boxman and Professor Venomous, the main antagonists of the series, come across as queer in another less direct way. Boxman seeks business partnerships with other supervillains of any gender, given the same weight and imagery as if they were romantic relationships. He eventually joins forces with Professor Venomous, who previously dated a woman. Together, Boxman and Venomous are ostensibly a same-gender couple under the bisexual umbrella. Showrunner Ian Jones-Quartey later confirmed via Twitter that Boxman is pansexual and Venomous is bisexual.

On paper, two major antagonists being queer(-coded) sounds unfortunately like yet another offensive stereotype in cartoons. However, the big picture is much more complex. OK K.O. has queer characters on both the hero and villain sides of Lakewood, and even that hero and villain divide becomes blurred.

The rest of this post contains major spoilers for OK K.O.! Let’s Be Heroes.

Continue reading “The Voxy Bunch and the Legacy of Animated Queer-Coded Villains” →

The Duality of Miki

It’s been one year since Devilman Crybaby, Masaaki Yuasa’s anime adaptation of Go Nagai’s classic manga, took the world by storm. Devilman Crybaby increased the presence of women in the main cast from a single girl named Miki to two both named, well, Miki. Although they share a name, they have distinct personalities and roles in the story. Miki can no longer be reduced to “the girl,” nor does one character have to represent all of womanhood. Between the Miki Makimura admired by her peers and the Miki Kuroda left behind, Crybaby paints a picture of how misogyny affects women deemed good or bad when they’re truly not so different.

This post contains discussion of rape, as well as spoilers for the original Devilman manga and Devilman Crybaby.

Continue reading “The Duality of Miki” →

Ash Get iPad: The Perils of Banana Fish’s Modernization

Banana Fish by Akimi Yoshida, at the time of serialization, was once a contemporary story. It began in 1985 and ended in 1994, while the timeline of the main plot spanned from 1985 to 1987. So in a way, modernizing the anime adaptation of Banana Fish to be set in 2018 is appropriate. Rather than a near complete replication of a story set in the 1980s, there can be a parallel story that integrates the ideas and themes to be timely like the original was.

However, updating Banana Fish raises some clear issues. The original manga is deeply 1980s, from its aesthetics to its politics, and if handled without care, you wind up with a story that’s already dated from the very start. It’s one thing for a story to be old; we still have centuries old classics. Plus, our suspension of disbelief can be higher when we know a story was from a different time. However, with an adaptation you’re already setting up a compare and contrast situation, to mix in modernization too, it’s key to think through what needs to be changed, why it needs to be changed, and how that affects the original story. This is different for all kinds of adaptations and renditions, but ultimately it can be done in a lot of fun, unique, creative ways. In the case of Banana Fish though, it’s all about the lack of change. Though the style and technology is there, the story ultimately feels like a rerun in different clothes. This especially feels like a missed opportunity with the legacy that Banana Fish has as a classic manga that tackles heavy social issues.

This isn’t to disparage the work put into the anime or to imply it’s a complete waste. Translating a story to a new medium is difficult work and there are plenty of parts I enjoyed. It’s at least introduced the story to new audiences, including me, and opened up new avenues to discuss it. In this spirit, I want to talk about some of the missed opportunities that the anime passed over when modernizing the manga in the context of the social themes Yoshida touches on. There are some issues that are thoughtfully examined in the manga but would be reflected differently in a modern setting, and other issues that weren’t examined as deeply as they could have been in an adaptation.

Spoiler warning for the end of Banana Fish, including the side story Garden of Light.

Content warning for discussions of police brutality and sexual trauma (including child sex abuse).

Continue reading “Ash Get iPad: The Perils of Banana Fish’s Modernization” →