anime

[impuuuu]

Impuuuu - Have you tried Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun? That's a sweet romance/comedy/slice-of-life anime with a strong female lead and a non-wimpy guy. But it's played mostly for laughs. Maybe it's your thing?

 

Your list looks interesting, I shall check them out when I have the time!

I've heard of that one, seems to fit what I'm looking for. I'll check it out~

 

 

Ouran High School Host Club is a parody of shoujo romance manga that somehow manages to be much better at it than the real thing. Sorry I don't have any other suggestions, but all the other romance manga I read is LGBT-themed.

I'd love suggestions anyway! What do you recommend?

[tegan]

Rica 'tte Kanji is a super adorable lesbian romance made by a Japanese lesbian illustrator who was tired of all the "forbidden love" and tragic ending crap in most lesbian manga. It's about as indie as independent manga come, so it's got some weird quirks as far as official translations go (like all the text being in Comic Sans, but it's cute and it's available in English for free as an ebook because the English publisher decided to stopp printing books. There's also a Kindle edition for like five bucks under the alternate title "Tokyo Love." I'm lucky enough to have a print copy of the original version.

Wandering Son is primarily a slice of life drama series, but it builds more and more romantic relationships and hangups between the characters. The twist is that the characters are all kids, and that most of the major players are struggling with their gender identity and sexuality. The primary tension comes from the main character, who is MTF trans, having a crush on an FTM trans kid and not being sure if they like them as a straight girl crushing on a boy, a straight cis boy crushing on a girl, or a lesbian crushing on a tomboy. Currently being published in English by Fantagraphics. This is actually my favourite currently-running manga by a wide margin.

I haven't read What Did You Eat Yesterday? yet, but I fully intend to at some point. I know it's about gay dudes and food, so you know it's gotta' be good. Currently being published by Vertical, who do awesome work.

I also fully intend to watch Sakura Trick at some point, but haven't seen anything more than the theme song and some positive word of mouth.


I don't actually read/watch much pure romance stuff, to be honest

[Gormongous]

I haven't read What Did You Eat Yesterday? yet, but I fully intend to at some point. I know it's about gay dudes and food, so you know it's gotta' be good. Currently being published by Vertical, who do awesome work.

 

My friend just sent me an email mentioning this manga!

 

I am reading manga at the moment, What Did You Eat Yesterday?, volume 1. It's notable for several reasons, one of these being that it is a manga series about a gay couple that ran for a seinen audience (Fumi Yoshinaga has written yaoi in the past, but this is very different, realistic slice-of-life about middle-aged people; she clearly talked a lot to her gay friends before writing). It's also probably the best foodie manga since Oishinbo. It's pretty awesome that Fumi Yoshinaga not only authored what is likely the best historical/sf manga series of the past decade (Ooku) but some of the best fluff as well. Anyway, it's not really your thing, but I mention it because who else am I going to talk to about this?

[tegan]

Oh man, I just realized that I should totally recommend it to a friend of mine. He's gay, middle-aged, and a former professional chef. He'd probably love it.

[tegan]

I started reading another lesbian slice of life series called Honey and Honey and I'm really digging it. It's got very much the same tone as Rica 'tte Kanji did, and similarly simplistic art. One really interesting thing that came up in it: gay marriage is still illegal in Japan, so couples there still practice the older legal shenanigan of having their partner adopted into their family for legal purposes.

[tegan]

So I started watching Sakura Trick.

I feel like this show is a two steps forward, one step back sort of deal. I got into it because I read that it was refreshingly open about including gay characters, but that's kind of... not really? The first thing I noticed is that, besides being kind of a serviceable bog-standard school comedy deal, it's super male gazey. Not as overtly so as other series, but it's still pretty shamelessly meant with the interests of a male audience in mind. The opening has boob jiggle, there's loads and loads of chaste but needless shots of characters' breasts, hips, etc. for no reason; everyone has the weird modern anime figure with thigh gaps and pigeon-toed stances; and most disconcertingly and frustratingly of all, the show is in absolute vehement denial to the idea that any of its characters are gay.

One argument I always hate having with people is the one concerning what I'll refer to here as the Dumbledore Conundrum: the idea that gay characters should never address their sexuality. It always becomes this weird strawman situation where the character is supposed to either be overtly sexual or never ever mention their gender preferences. It's dumb. Really dumb. And crappy writing, to boot. Dumbledore is an example that comes up a lot because there was "never a good time" to bring it up in 4000+ pages of literature, never mind that Dumbledore was outed in the first place because one of the movie scripts found a place to bring his sexuality up casually and Rowling had to fix it. Ugh.

Sorry to rant like that, but it's entirely relevant to my biggest problem with the show: everyone kisses a lot, everyone makes out a little, everyone is "good friends." Every single situation where the characters could and should confirm that, yes, they are in a romantic relationship, there's a big "THE FRIENDSHIP THAT WE SHARE IS VERY SPECIAL #NOHOMO," like the characters are very transparently being written as "don't worry straight dudes, these girls still totally want to have sex with you." It's infuriating, it's shoddy writing, and it's insulting to everyone involved.

teg-rating: 7.5/5 tsunderes

[Gormongous]

... everyone has the weird modern anime figure with thigh gaps and pigeon-toed stances...

 

This bugs the fuck out of me these days. I watch plenty of slice-of-life shows, but I still hate all these prepubescent-looking teenage girls with fat little ankles running around like they're drowning in air. It's like moé staged a hostile takeover of the artists' brains.

 

One argument I always hate having with people is the one concerning what I'll refer to here as the Dumbledore Conundrum: the idea that gay characters should never address their sexuality. It always becomes this weird strawman situation where the character is supposed to either be overtly sexual or never ever mention their gender preferences. It's dumb. Really dumb. And crappy writing, to boot. Dumbledore is an example that comes up a lot because there was "never a good time" to bring it up in 4000+ pages of literature, never mind that Dumbledore was outed in the first place because one of the movie scripts found a place to bring his sexuality up casually and Rowling had to fix it. Ugh.

 

I dream of a day when a fictional character will simply be a woman or gay or a rape survivor because it's a part of their backstory and not because there's some crazy twist that requires it. I suspect that day will happen later in Japan, though. I can't think of an anime character I've seen in the past decade who has been both openly gay and not so flaming they're in danger of being immolated.

 

teg-rating: 7.5/5 tsunderes

 

D-don't be fooled, it's not like I enjoyed the show or anything, stupid!

[Twig]

pigeon-toed stances

I have nothing to comment on besides this: Japanese girls suffer from this greatly. As in real-life Japanese girls. When I lived there it was insane how many girls I saw standing and walking like this pretty much all the time. More suffered than did not suffer, by a large margin. I used to play a game with my friends where we'd try to spot girls who didn't walk or stand like this. It was a hard game. I was told, though I don't know if it's accurate, that it's because they wear high heels so frequently.

 

I've probably shared this before, but I once saw a woman wearing high heels while climbing Mt. Fuji.

[Codicier]

This bugs the fuck out of me these days. I watch plenty of slice-of-life shows, but I still hate all these prepubescent-looking teenage girls with fat little ankles running around like they're drowning in air. It's like moé staged a hostile takeover of the artists' brains.

 

 

I dream of a day when a fictional character will simply be a woman or gay or a rape survivor because it's a part of their backstory and not because there's some crazy twist that requires it. I suspect that day will happen later in Japan, though. I can't think of an anime character I've seen in the past decade who has been both openly gay and not so flaming they're in danger of being immolated.

 

 

D-don't be fooled, it's not like I enjoyed the show or anything, stupid!

 

For a moment i was thinking what about Franz in Gankutsuou, but of course the tragedy of that whole character was the audience could see he had feelings for someone but he couldn't/wouldn't articulate them.

[Gormongous]

For a moment i was thinking what about Franz in Gankutsuou, but of course the tragedy of that whole character was the audience could see he had feelings for someone but he couldn't/wouldn't articulate them.

 

Yeah, I wish I had more of a mind to flesh that out with you. Franz's sexuality is almost entirely peripheral to his character, except that it informs his sacrifice and death, which he himself calls the most significant acts of his life. It's complicated, more so than I really meant to say, of course.

[Codicier]

Franz was just the 1st character I could think of off the top of my head who as a audience we definitively knew was gay and who given a decent amount of screen time and wasn't shown as a flamboyant queen. I suppose Gankutsuou was a lot more liberal than normal with its attitude to sexuality since we had Pipo as well.

Actually I think in a weird way one thing where I think anime is more progressive than most media,is it's attitude to transgendered/cross dressing people. Perhaps something of a cultural legacy of kabuki?

[Twig]

It could be but I wonder why it wouldn't be a cultural legacy of theater in general, then.

[Gormongous]

Franz was just the 1st character I could think of off the top of my head who as a audience we definitively knew was gay and who given a decent amount of screen time and wasn't shown as a flamboyant queen. I suppose Gankutsuou was a lot more liberal than normal with its attitude to sexuality since we had Pipo as well.

Actually I think in a weird way one thing where I think anime is more progressive than most media,is it's attitude to transgendered/cross dressing people. Perhaps something of a cultural legacy of kabuki?

 

I just think there's a longer tradition of non-transgressive cross-dressing in general, like okama and all that. It may come from the theatre, but theatre is dying in Japan (and everywhere) so other mediums are better examples of it? I don't know.

[Codicier]

It could be but I wonder why it wouldn't be a cultural legacy of theater in general, then.

I guess it would because most theatre traditions never had an as important artistic genre as the Ukiyo-e woodcuts strongly associated with them.

[colinp]

I guess it would because most theatre traditions never had an as important artistic genre as the Ukiyo-e woodcuts strongly associated with them.

Hmmm, I'm not sure I understand your argument. Historically ukiyoe were cheap advertisements and porn. There was nothing artistically special about them, much less the artists that worked on them. At the time they were mass produced schlock. It is only in hindsight and because of their influence on so many western painters that they started to become appreciated on a deeper artistic and aesthetic level.

Even kabuki started as sexualy scandalous dance shows, turning to male only in an effort to tone this down as well as bring an end to the prostitution it brought/celebrated.

[Codicier]

Hmmm, I'm not sure I understand your argument. Historically ukiyoe were cheap advertisements and porn. There was nothing artistically special about them, much less the artists that worked on them. At the time they were mass produced schlock. It is only in hindsight and because of their influence on so many western painters that they started to become appreciated on a deeper artistic and aesthetic level.

Even kabuki started as sexualy scandalous dance shows, turning to male only in an effort to tone this down as well as bring an end to the prostitution it brought/celebrated.

Whether something is mass produced schlock or not has little bearing on if it is culturally significant, it's even the inverse to a extent. You can't be mass produced unless you have a wider audience. Ukiyo-e wasn't a flash in the pan either being a significant cultural force for over 200 years, it's influence only really dimming when the isolation of japan ended.

Many of the same criticism can be thrown at modern manga and anime, with fan service & product placement being often considered big problems.

The point of brining up Kabuki in the context of the supposition that the Japanese have a greater acceptance of the idea of cross dressing/transgender people is that the decision to only having male characters play female role ended up producing a situation where men dresses as woman were basically consider a sex symbols. Now they still weren't treated any better than their female colleges had been, still being prostituted etc, but through Ukiyo-e they did become more widely known, and the idea of a 'beautiful boy' etc became more accepted in Japanese culture.

It just feel unlikely to me that the existence of and cultural norms within such a popular mass market print visual form would have no influence on the development of manga (& therefore anime).

[colinp]

Whether something is mass produced schlock or not has little bearing on if it is culturally significant, it's even the inverse to a extent. You can't be mass produced unless you have a wider audience. Ukiyo-e wasn't a flash in the pan either being a significant cultural force for over 200 years, it's influence only really dimming when the isolation of japan ended.

Many of the same criticism can be thrown at modern manga and anime, with fan service & product placement being often considered big problems.

The point of brining up Kabuki in the context of the supposition that the Japanese have a greater acceptance of the idea of cross dressing/transgender people is that the decision to only having male characters play female role ended up producing a situation where men dresses as woman were basically consider a sex symbols. Now they still weren't treated any better than their female colleges had been, still being prostituted etc, but through Ukiyo-e they did become more widely known, and the idea of a 'beautiful boy' etc became more accepted in Japanese culture.

It just feel unlikely to me that the existence of and cultural norms within such a popular mass market print visual form would have no influence on the development of manga (& therefore anime).

Oh ok, I see. Thank you for expanding, I understand your idea much better now. I agree with you, though I'd hesitate to say the concept of beautiful boys in Japan started with kabuki or ukiyoe since the Tale of Genji and the Heiean period in general is full of beautiful boys (and girls for that matter). Japanese society was pretty deep into aesthetics as we know it today without actually calling it that, but it certainly is possible that ukiyoe helped to spread the concept of 'men wearing women's clothes' further.

But legitimized is something else altogether, and idealized men and the concept of 'beautiful boy' aren't exactly foreign in western culture or art either, see David as well as Ancient Greece and Rome. But you're right that there is no real western equivalent to ukiyoe that popularized the idea of men wearing women's clothes, is there?

[Codicier]

As a few have pointed out before theatre and cabaret was known for having cross dressing stars, the main difference in my view was although they had a limited local fame they were never the sort of person who was really represented much in visual media.

 

Good call on the ancient greek btw, that's probably the strongest western example I can think of, and certainly it's influence carried on in both the Roman and Mediterranean cultures that follow.

I remember finding out that David's penis had been intentionally made small because that was considered more beautiful to be quite surprising.

I think however to a extent time has diluted that aesthetic's effect on western culture in a way which it hasn't yet in Japan.

 

 

One really interesting thing that came up in it: gay marriage is still illegal in Japan, so couples there still practice the older legal shenanigan of having their partner adopted into their family for legal purposes.

 

This surprise me tbh. I mean this a country which has huge subgenre's of storytelling within visual art based around gay relationships, but it may be a sad case that a lot of the time it's offering non threatening fantasy's rather than a real acceptance. But who knows perhaps as the old guard move out of politics you will get more liberally minded people moving in and doing the sensible thing and allowing two people who love each other to celebrate that however they darn want.

 

On a completely different note ping pong & mushishi both continue to be great for entirely different reasons. It's almost a perfect contrast.

 

Ping Pong is fast paced both in terms of it's storytelling and its visual presentation. A at times almost stylistically incoherent show, with dramatic framing and 'camera' angles. 

 

Mushishi on the other hand probably uses less frames of animation in a whole episode than ping pong does in a single sequence. I mean seriously that show must be dirt cheap to produce compared to many other shows, yet still characters and slow panning shots fit perfectly with it's themes so it's still  a very visually striking show.

[Merus]

I think there's also a thing about it being culturally acceptable for schoolgirls to 'practice' with their female friends, with the expectation that they'll give up their childish schoolgirl love and move onto a man?

 

Anyway Japan is a fair bit behind on the social acceptance stakes. They still have trouble with second-wave feminism.

[Gormongous]

Anyway Japan is a fair bit behind on the social acceptance stakes. They still have trouble with second-wave feminism.

 

Hormonal birth control is practically nonexistent in Japan. It's almost universally thought there that women who take the pill even for a little while will grow a mustache or go sterile. There's an order of magnitude more faith in and use of the rhythm method, believe it or not. So yeah, certain cultural norms can put some countries ahead of the global liberal vanguard in a few respects, but Japan seems mostly equivalent to the US in the late 1960s in terms of women's and LGBTQ lib.

[colinp]

Hormonal birth control is practically nonexistent in Japan. It's almost universally thought there that women who take the pill even for a little while will grow a mustache or go sterile. There's an order of magnitude more faith in and use of the rhythm method, believe it or not. So yeah, certain cultural norms can put some countries ahead of the global liberal vanguard in a few respects, but Japan seems mostly equivalent to the US in the late 1960s in terms of women's and LGBTQ lib.

Umm, hormonal birth control is very much existent in Japan and is definitely available at women's clinics here. Not sure where you get that from, much less the idea that they think that after a while they will grow a mustache. Lots of people use the pill, lots of people don't. There are lots of unplanned pregnancies in Japan and lots of marriages that result from them.

Also, more generally, I think it's a bit misguided to look at a subculture of a subculture and try to make societal inferences based on that. I think a Japanese kid could probably look at some western media subculture and have the same takeaway that this thread is reaching for in manga re the west being so much more progressive or accepting. Kind of the grass is always greener effect I guess.

[colinp]

Codicier, the reason I mentioned David was because he is STILL considered an ideal male. More recently look at the sculpture of Rodin, or any list of 'ten hottest men'. I guarantee their physique is closer to David than any Japanese idealized male!

[BobbyBesar]

I think there's also a thing about it being culturally acceptable for schoolgirls to 'practice' with their female friends, with the expectation that they'll give up their childish schoolgirl love and move onto a man?

This is true, traditionally a girl's first love is supposed to be an older girl. There's a lot of reasons for this, but mostly it's because that relationship lacks stakes, both sexually and socially. Once boys and girls are interacting socially, there's a whole set of rules and expectations regarding how they are supposed to act. "Practicing' with a girl allows them to make mistakes without compromising a potential marriage pairing. (The idea of "safe" social spaces in Japanese society, where it's ok to screw up, is a fairly ubiquitous one, given how circumscribed "real" social interactions are).

 

As for the rest of it, the short answer is that gender politics in Japan are very, very complicated. See, for example, the entire hostess/host club phenomenon. I will note that a lot of cultures that have a very strong cult of masculinity seem to similarly have some culture of transgenderism (I'm thinking of some Latin American countries), so it's probably a sort of reactionary phenomenon (although Japanese conceptions of masculinity differ from Western ones, so a direct comparison gets complicated). I'll also note that you're sort of treating the Anglo-American relationship to transgenderism as the default, and trying to "explain" deviations from that, when that probably isn't the most progressive approach to take. (I assume that transgenderism is less acceptable in Judeo-Christian tradition because of the emphasis on the 1 man, 1 woman creation myth - anything else being an affront to God, which Hindu / Buddhism traditions have to the same degree). There are plenty of other examples, notably Thailand's ladyboy culture, and the complex status of transgendered individuals in traditional Hinduism.

 

That being said, there's probably something to the view that transvestism in Kabuki plays a role in the portrayal of the same _in anime_ particularly. Japanese entertainment and media creation has a tendency to see traditional forms as almost platonic ideals, and so new material that is created is often created explicitly in the model of traditional stories* Thus, the transvestite characters can probably be traced directly back to a particular dramatic character / archetype that they're meant to embody, the archetypes having originated in Noh or Kabuki traditions.

 

 

 

* You'll argue that this is true in Western dramatic tradition as well, as you can draw a line directly from Greek new comedy to modern romantic comedies. See: Menaechmii->Comedy of Errors->The Importance of Being Earnest. My only response is that the connections are less explicit and less intentional in the European tradition.

[Gormongous]

Umm, hormonal birth control is very much existent in Japan and is definitely available at women's clinics here. Not sure where you get that from, much less the idea that they think that after a while they will grow a mustache. Lots of people use the pill, lots of people don't. There are lots of unplanned pregnancies in Japan and lots of marriages that result from them.

 

I was mostly speaking from the CBS News article "Japanese Women Shun the Pill", which I'd just read for other reasons, but googling "hormonal birth control in Japan" or "oral contraceptives in Japan" pulls up plenty of studies showing that barely more than one percent of Japanese women are on the pill (compared to well over a third of, say, British women) and that less than twenty percent would ever even consider it. Most of the studies cite concerns over base effectiveness, societal mores, external and internal side-effects, and environmental contamination as reasons Japanese women have for not using the pill, as opposed to mostly socioeconomic reasons among Western women.

 

I guess I should have said that hormonal birth control use rather than just hormonal birth control is scarce in Japan, but I don't think I'm talking out of my ass. After all, it's something that's only been legal in that country since 1999, so it's not surprising that it's very rare and that there are still a ton of misconceptions surrounding it. I only offered it as an interesting juxtaposition, but if you have firsthand experience of reproductive rights in Japan, I'm incredibly interested in hearing more, although probably better in the Feminism thread than here.

[Twig]

http://www.crunchyroll.com/tonari-no-seki-kun-the-master-of-killing-time

This is silly and fantastic. Episodes are seven minutes long, so I'll just let it speak for itself.