On Queer Representation in Anime
By An Anonymous Student ’24
Content warning: This article mentions queerphobia, sexual assault, and fetishization. Phillips Exeter has a number of resources for survivors in the Exeter community. To access these resources, please refer to the Exeter website’s “Contacts and Resources” page. Additionally, if you find yourself distressed by any details, please seek confidential help at the National Sexual Assault Hotline: (800) 656-4673.
Dedication: I dedicate this article to my friends Katelyn, Jade, Alinne, and Gamze who helped me flesh out my ideas, and to Nico, Ly, Astrid, Luke, and Diana for making me fall in love with anime.
With its extravagant colors and styles, anime/manga has shifted cultures across the world and defined identities and relationships. With such stark influence, many have come to criticize themes within popular anime/manga concerning gender and sexuality. This article hopes to shed light on queer representation in anime and its effects on western and eastern cultures.
First off, let’s make it super straightforward: there are canon, relatively unproblematic queer characters and relationships in anime, and anyone who tells you otherwise is an ignorant moron. Do note that I use the phrase “relatively unproblematic” because there is no perfect representation of queer communities. Just like in U.S. media, queer characters in anime sometimes fall into the problematic tropes of the queer-coded villain or an “alien” non-binary identity. Since the beginning of anime history in the mid-twentieth century, anime has played around with fluid gender expressions and queer relationships. Princess Knight (1967), for example, depicts a princess who possesses two hearts, one of a boy and one of a girl, and disguises herself as a prince who goes on adventures. Some American queer-friendly cartoons like Steven Universe and She-Ra: Princess of Power were heavily influenced by the Japanese shōjo, or more specifically the magical girl genre, such as Sailor Moon (1992) and Revolutionary Girl Utena.
However, when adapted for U.S. audiences, LGBTQ+ relationships in anime have been straight-washed. In Sailor Moon, dubbing company Optimum Productions censored the lesbian couple Neptune and Uranus and turned into cousins in the original English audio translations (dubs) and subtitles (subs). Zoisite, another character from Sailor Moon, was changed to be female in order to heteronormalize his relationship with Kunzite. In Cardcaptor Sakura (1999), Nelvana Enterprises, the company that produced the first English adaptation, removed entire scenes from the show to disguise Tomoyo’s feelings towards Sakura and a romantic subplot between Yukito and Toya.
In recent years, things have been getting better. In 2014, when Sailor Moon was re-dubbed, the translation team corrected and acknowledged the previous censorship. But in 2019, Netflix received backlash for its re-translation of Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995) that erased potential romantic feelings between Shinji and Kaworu. Since I have always considered the United States to be one of the most liberal and LGBTQ+ friendly countries in the world, these facts are quite ironic.
Though there have been fewer cases of queer relationship censoring, pronoun usage has become the new battlefield. Until the early 2010s, it was the default to assign a binary gender to characters whose genders were ambiguous, a tradition now overcome. In Attack on Titan (2013), Hange was assigned she/her pronouns in the first season, but that translation was revoked after creator Hajime Isayama made it clear that Hange did not have a canon gender. More recently, when creating the English subtitles for Land of the Lustrous (2017), the translation team in Crunchyroll consulted the original manga author Haruko Ichikawa and decided to use they/them pronouns for the whole cast of genderless gem people. Similarly, Nanachi from Made in Abyss (2017) also used they/them pronouns. However, Funimation, another major anime streaming service continues to use gendered pronouns for non-binary characters in English dub and sub.
Despite the queer themes in anime, Japan is still a very conservative country especially with regards to the LGBTQ+ community. There is a great divide between what is acceptable in anime and what is acceptable in real life. This divide traces back to the history of homosexuality in Japan. Unlike the west, where homosexuality was once forbidden and considered a sin due to the prevalence of Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In ancient Japan and many other Asian countries, intimate, same-sex relationships had their discreet place in society. People involved in such relationships entered something akin to an unspoken social contract. Though not encouraged, it was accepted and acknowledged. In many Asian cultures, there is a strong emphasis on family and the continuation of family lineage. Thus, it is generally established that as long as men (because of the patriarchal society, there are few records of queer or lesbian relationships) fulfill their duty of marrying a woman, starting a family, and continuing the family line, no one really cared whether men were having sex with other men. This situation changed after colonization where western homophobia was brought to Asia along with Christianity and anti-sodomy laws. In Japan, the shift came with the Meiji Restoration in 1868, when Japan began its assimilation into the western world in an effort to preserve sovereignty. After that time, queer activities existed in dissonance: so long as they did not disturb societal traditions and values. Due to a synthesis of these factors, queer acceptance remains a fantasy in anime while reality is still rooted in staunch bigotry.
To tackle the problem of queer representation in anime, one must also explore the topic of yaoi (a similar idea to boys love) and yuri (that of girls love). Yaoi and yuri are genres of manga/anime that depict same-sex relationships, and they have existed as real genres in the Japanese manga market for years.
Yaoi manga, featuring male-male relationships, originated in the 1970s as a subgenre of shōjo, and it was generally created by female-identifying artists for female-identifying consumers. Though there is a rare instance of good yaoi manga like Banana Fish, the majority of yaoi manga depict gay relationships in an entirely unrealistic, oversexualized manner. Some are straight-up fetish pornography. The name “yaoi” is said to be an abbreviation of “yama nashi, ochi nashi, imi nashi” which means “no climax, no point, no meaning.” Similarly in China, a genre called “danmei” (basically the Chinese version of yaoi) has entered Chinese mainstream media in recent years. Most danmei are problematic for the same reasons as yaoi, and they even share a similar consumer demographic with the anime community. That being said, some research has suggested that danmei and other boys love content are forms of feminism as it is a media created for the female gaze by female authors, and it removes the baggage of gender dynamics and rather focuses on the pureness of a relationship. Personally, I am still processing the many layers of yaoi history and will leave it for the readers to decide how they want to interact with the genre.
Yuri, on the other hand, has a more diverse audience than just straight men fetishizing lesbian relationships. In a survey conducted by Verena Maser in 2015 about Japanese yuri readership, among 1,352 respondents, 52.4 percent identified as female, 46.1 percent identified male, and 1.6 percent identified as neither. The first manga that depicts intense emotional attraction between girls and is therefore often considered the first yuri was Yaneura no Nishojo (Two Virgins in the Attic) written by lesbian Yoshiya Nobuko in 1919. Similar tropes about non-sexual love between girls have been popular in shōjo markets throughout history. It was not until the 1970s that manga with yuri elements entered into shōnen, the market for young boy readers. Erotic yuri, as its yaoi counterpart, did not emerge until the 1990s following the popularity of lesbian couple Neptune and Uranus in Sailor Moon. Nowadays, yuri continues to appeal to a diverse demographic.
After examining the history of yaoi and yuri in Japan, let’s now turn to anime’s American audience. The most popular animes in America are usually shōnen action that do not have canon queer representation. However, if one goes on a fanfic site like AO3 or fanfiction.com, one will find that a majority of fans consider male-male (M/M) relationships as “head-canon.” Among all the 218055 fanfics about My Hero Academia on AO3, 53.6 percent of the entries are labeled as “M/M.” The five most popular ships (head-canon romantic relationships) are all M/M, although there are no official queer relationships in My Hero Academia. A similar situation exists in most other popular anime/manga fandoms such as Haikyuu!!, Naruto (2002), and Attack on Titan. Naturally, I ask why these queer ships are all male-male? Where are the lesbians and queer ships? The fact is, in shōnen anime, there are more well-developed male characters than female characters, and even less so non-binary characters. The female characters simply exist as a pretty romantic interest without ample character development. There is little meaningful interaction between the male character and his supposed “love interests.” Thus, it is literally impossible to buy into the official hetero ships.
First getting into anime, I was perplexed by the amount of gay ships in American fandoms. I soon realized that this does not make the American fandom LGBTQ+ inclusive. A total of 8.6 percent of the ones labeled “M/M” has the label “Underage” or “Rape/Non-Con,” and that is not to count the 35.8 percent of works for which the author chose not to include any content warnings. That is not to say shipping as a whole is bad. There are, of course, fanfics written by queer folks with head-canon, queer-ships or queer characters that are wonderful queer representation, but unfortunately they consist a relative small proportion of the fandom. It took me a long time to be able to fully acknowledge the different layers and complexity of the issue. My friend offered an interesting persepctive: “There are three types of people who ship: queer-identifying people, straight people being horny and fetishizing queer relationship, and people who enjoy the dynamic between characters and simply ignore gender when shipping.” There are queer ships that I adore, such as Hashirama and Madara from Naruto, Lelouch and Suzaku from Code Geass (2006), Phos and Antarc from Land of the Lustrous, and Nanachi and Mitty from Made in Abyss. It is completely fine to ship, but be cautious not to get caught within the toxic culture of shipping.
Further, despite anime’s seemingly problematic surface, the anime community is nonetheless attractive for queer audiences as it creates a space where social expectations can be challenged. I wonder if the idea that anime is a “lesser” genre contributes to the freedom that queer communities find in anime. And this “lesser” impression often derives from the mere fact that the visual graphics of anime do not conform to expectations of realism. Anime characters have extravagant hairstyles, big expressive eyes, and fancy clothes that do not exist in real life. Even the line between gender is blurred. Take the famous example of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure (especially my favorite season, “Golden Wind”). The clothing and hairstyles of the characters challenge men’s fashion. All of them can walk on in the Emmy-winning series RuPaul’s Drag Race and not look out of place. It is the rejection of realism, however, that gives anime character. The anime fantasy is imaginative and dynamic. It is a place where one can simply disregard the confines of the real world and experiment with self-expression and relationships. Additionally, anime often explores themes of isolation, coming of age, chosen family, and transformation that resonate with queer people.
Finally I’d like to recognize that non-explicit queer content steps into the realm of queerbaiting. It is difficult to define what really counts as a queer relationship. Nowadays, especially in the West, in order for media to offer good queer representation, the two characters must be involved in a defined romantic or sexual relationship. Sometimes even saying “I love you” is not enough for a relationship to be defined as queer. This restrictive definition of queer representation can be a very straight concept, as a large part of the queer experience is found in not fitting into labels and categories. Additionally, when talking about anime, it is important to keep in mind that its intended audience is generally not people from the West. Given Japan’s relatively conservative culture, queer-coded subtext is valuable because it serves as an outlet for queer people to express themselves without being outed. This article is published anonymously because I am not out to my family. As a Chinese who identifies as queer, I also find the queer-coded characters in the anime extremely comforting because they provide me with Asian queer representation that American media lacks. In Puella Magi Madoka Magica (2011), none of the girls in it are explicitly queer, but they are queer icons from my point of view. There should be space left for pure celebration of seeing oneself in a character, no matter whether it is head-canon or real canon. In recent years, anime is attracting a larger and larger queer audience in the West. Thus, it should absolutely be held accountable for profitting from queer-coded stories and characters without ackowledging their queerness, whether the creator intended it or not.
Queer representation has many dimensions. I hope I’ve shed light on what exists under the surface. As anime rises in popularity, queer representation becomes a more and more pertinent subject. Media is a way for people to explore the world and learn more about themselves. Anime has long been telling stories of self-discovery and characters’ reckoning with the pressures of society. As an Asian media that explores queer topics, anime is a unique lens through which one can reflect on the progress of queerness.
