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To get you up to speed: Wandering Son follows two fifth graders who do not identify with the genders they were assigned at birth. I don’t want to dwell on Wandering Son, because Tash Wolfe gave a lovely review of it in her visual representation series, and you should seriously go read that! However, like Tash and many others, Wandering Son stands out to me as one of few manga to treat transgender identities as real and valid, rather than the butt of a joke. Many queer youth are treated as outcasts during high school, so Kaori isn’t alone. It’s sad that the manga pushes its only queer character to the periphery, but in a way this adds realism to the story. During their third and final year, she alone ends up in a different class and her scenes – which are few and far apart – are dominated by a need to run away from a creepy male teacher. She isn’t able to visit Chiyo’s summer house until their senior year, and thus misses out on key bonding time that even includes the teachers. The real bummer about Kaori’s character (and the reason Azumanga Daioh is lowest on this list ) is that she operates on the periphery of the main friend group. This crush is consistent, and it is real. At the end of the race, Kaori sits in a happy daze, hoping they’ll be stuck together forever. Despite being much shorter than Sakaki, she gets lucky and ends up tied to her for a three-legged race. When Tomo nonchalantly shows Kaori the photo, Kaori flips her shit.) At the end of the series, it becomes clear that Kaori’s feelings have not dissipated.
#EXPLICIT GAY ANIME CHARACTERS SERIES#
(Through an odd series of events, a photo of Tomo sleeping and accidentally resting her hand on Sakaki’s boob surfaces. In the beginning of the series, she shows manga/anime telltale signs of a crush: she blushes during conversations, acts as her crush’s cheerleader during athletic contests or whenever possible, and is jealous when others are able to get close to Sakaki. (Sakaki is crushable because she is athletic, and thus “cooler than the boys.”) Kaori’s crush is a bit unique.įirst, Kaori’s feelings are explicit from day one, and never waver. However, these crushes are usually insignificant and seem to be justified by the tsundere character’s tough, “masculine” qualities. Late in the Fruit’s Basket manga, for example, Rika attracts some younger girls who find out she was in a gang. In manga, it’s not unusual for girls to have infatuations with tsundere characters.
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One of Kaori’s defining characteristics is that she has a crush on Sakaki. I’m delighted to share with you my top five anime and manga series that uplift queer voices, and hope that there will be many more to add to this list in the future. A newbie anime geek might be surprised to find themselves still thirsting for realistic, believable queer people.ĭon’t fret, friends! As I’ve become more critical about what I watch and read, I’ve come across anime and manga that do contain nuanced portrayals of queer, genderqueer and transgender characters. And, just like American comics and cartoons, the portrayals of transgender and genderqueer folks are usually nonexistent or offensive. Unfortunately, just like American comics and cartoons, these genres are rife with stereotypes. If you set out to make a list of LGBTQ characters in anime and manga, you might be surprised by the list’s length. These genres have a somewhat deceiving glamour when it comes to the hunt for queer representation. Were we able to see ourselves more in those stories because they contained more queer characters than American TV? Did we already feel like outcasts before we got sucked in? It feels less like coincidence and more like logic that many of the anime and manga lovers I knew as a teen (and have met since!) are also queer. Even with this history, I can’t quite put my finger on what drew us into the world of anime. I was a total anime geek in high school, the kind that watched anime with friends at every hangout, stayed up late reading manga or sneakily catching bits of FLCL on Adult Swim, and attended anime conventions. Anime and manga hold a strange allure for teens.