The manga craze, gender, and sexuality
Dec. 31st, 2018 11:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
isaacsapphireGoing through some of my manga and manwah, and kinda blown away by just how much of what got licensed early anyway involved cannon genderfuckery.
Ouran High School Host Club has a girl forced to pass as a boy as an integral part of the premise.
W Juliet has a boy, Makoto, passing as a girl deliberately, who becomes close with tomboy Ito. They eventually become romantically involved, but since their relationship will either be seen as a lesbian one, or will expose Makoto's gender, it too must be kept a secret.
Satisfaction Guaranteed starts with this exchange between the two male leads: "I was expecting a girl" "You thought Kaori was a girl's name..." "Well, most of the time it is."
In multiple shonen-ai or shojo manga focused on the relationship between two cute boys, one is possessed by a woman, the reincarnation of a woman, or turns into a woman (Les Bijoux), possibly even like a werewolf turns into a wolf (Until the Full Moon).
Ouran High School Host Club has a girl forced to pass as a boy as an integral part of the premise.
W Juliet has a boy, Makoto, passing as a girl deliberately, who becomes close with tomboy Ito. They eventually become romantically involved, but since their relationship will either be seen as a lesbian one, or will expose Makoto's gender, it too must be kept a secret.
Satisfaction Guaranteed starts with this exchange between the two male leads: "I was expecting a girl" "You thought Kaori was a girl's name..." "Well, most of the time it is."
In multiple shonen-ai or shojo manga focused on the relationship between two cute boys, one is possessed by a woman, the reincarnation of a woman, or turns into a woman (Les Bijoux), possibly even like a werewolf turns into a wolf (Until the Full Moon).
no subject
Date: 2019-01-01 03:28 am (UTC)Dual! Parallel Trouble Adventure, where the male main character spends a couple episodes masquerading as a lady because men normally aren't able to pilot mecha, was kinda weird for basically cutting off the 'ai' in shonen-ai. Wasn't very popular, but was from the studio that made Tenchi Muyo.
Kino's Journey had some gender complications that weren't as obvious outside of the cultural boundaries.
It's kinda surprising, but then again, there were a lot of weird decisions, esp regarding sex politics. The unusual nature may well have been what attracted people : a fair share of stuff seemed to have been translated and imported preferentially as a Weird Japanese Thing.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-01 12:25 pm (UTC)I didn't hear about Dual! at the time I don't think, but yeah, there's a lot of crossdressing going on to the point where it's not even worth writing home about it.
Even earlier, Sailor Moon had the Sailor Starlights (boys who turned into [magical] girls) and of course the lesbians. Both were censored in the main English release, but the size of the fandom meant there was demand for "the Sailor Moon They Don't want you to see!" and a lot of people who were already deep into the fandom before they found out about the lesbians or whatever the Starlights were.
And over in the Pokemon TV show, Jessie and James were both crossdressing frequently, although James coming off as gay might be an artifact of the translation rather than in the original Japanese.
As best as I can tell, manga/anime basically ate a certain section of what had been science fiction fantasy fandom; previously, that was the only place to get stories like that.