The Gateway to Anime podcast was kind enough to invite me for a chat about all things queer anime, plus the ins and outs of working with AniFem and writing about anime from an intersectional perspective! Watch (or listen, on a podcast app of your choice) along for some recommendations!
Category Archives: Fun with Isms
Podcast | LGBTQIA+ Anime – Revolutionary Girl Utena, Yuri on Ice & more – Featuring Alex from Anime Feminist
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Genre conventions and a gentle story of recovery in My New Boss is Goofy
When you think of “mental health representation” a light-hearted slice-of-life series probably isn’t the first thing that comes to mind. It’s certainly not what I expected when I pressed play on a series called My New Boss is Goofy. Yet underpinning this fluffy office comedy is an earnest story of trauma and recovery. This being a fluffy comedy, there was a real risk that the protagonist’s trauma might be belittled by being filtered through the conventions of its genre—in other words, played off as a joke, treated as “no big deal,” or simply not addressed at all in favor of maintaining a comfy low-stakes vibe. Instead, the protagonist’s experience with an abusive workplace and the lingering physical and mental effects of this trauma are depicted with care and authenticity. As is the process by which the protagonist begins to heal now that he’s in a safe place—and now that he’s the main character in a sweet, low-stakes story where genre expectations basically guarantee he won’t get hurt again. Rather than ignoring or downplaying themes of trauma in favor of maintaining slice-of-life genre conventions, My New Boss is Goofy uses its positioning as a cozy slice-of-life story to tell a gentle, but still meaningful, story about mental health and healing.
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Queer time and the quarter-life crisis in contemporary yuri
Historically, the tropes and traditions of yuri have been anchored in the school setting, meaning that the recent uptick in titles starring adult characters has been exciting and worthy of note. There’s an increasingly varied platter of yuri with post-high school protagonists, from college stories like How Do We Relationship? and I Don’t Know Which is Love; to workplace romances like Still Sick and I Love You So Much I Hate You; and even into the realm of genre fiction with titles like Otherside Picnic and SHWD. All these series do the valuable work of demonstrating that while schoolgirl yuri is surely going to remain a beloved mainstay, yuri can also function effectively outside the walls of the school setting and outside the structure of adolescent romance. Series that focus on adult characters also open the door to a storytelling niche that’s still relatively underrepresented despite the rich narrative potential it offers: the post-adolescence queer coming-of-age story. Or, in other words, the gay quarter-life crisis.
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A Pile of YA Novels with Non-binary Protagonists (Part 2!)
For my PhD thesis—which was submitted in August 2022, resubmitted with revisions in May 2023, and officially wrapped up in July 2023—I studied the increasing presence of non-binary main characters in young adult fiction. With my graduation (funny hat and cape and all) coming up this month, it’s time for a long-delayed follow-up to my initial recommendation pile from last year! Here, we’ve got a variety of stories with heroes under the non-binary umbrella, from dark thrillers to soft magical adventures. This features some newer releases, too, as well as a “classic”.
Continue readingFiled under Alex Reads, Fun with Isms
Working Out the Kinks: Deconstructing gendered expectations of sex in Ladies On Top
Content warnings: discussion of sexual trauma and heteronormativity; NSFW screencaps
Spoilers for volumes 1 and 2 of Ladies On Top
NEJIGANAMETA’s manga Ladies On Top is a cute, sexy josei romcom about the crushing pressures of heteronormative gender roles. I know, the emotional trauma inflicted by society’s narrow expectations about acceptable masculinity, femininity, and sexual desire doesn’t sound very cute or sexy, but trust me when I say Ladies On Top weaves these themes together effectively with its fluffy romance. The end result is a series with a big heart and a biting edge of social critique, emphasizing the positive power of communication, trust, and escaping from the roles that patriarchal assumptions can box us into.
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Podcast | Ace/Aro Representation in Anime and Manga – Part 2
Join me, Dee, and Cy as we return to our discussion of asexual and aromantic coding, and dive deep into the works of Uta Isaki!
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Podcast | Ace/Aro Representation in Anime and Manga – Part 1
Join me, Cy, and Dee as we discuss asexual and aromantic coded characters, and several new manga with explicit ace and/or aro leads!
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Wonder Egg Priority and the (Missed) Opportunities of Trans Magic
Content warning: discussions of transphobia, dysphoria; brief mentions of self-mutilation and surgery
It’s a beautiful day in March, 2023. The morning air is crisp, shimmering in between summer and autumn. The sun’s rays melt through a low-lying mist, lighting the world in smudges of gold, as if on the edge of a dream.
It is two years since the anime season of Winter 2021, when a certain series called Wonder Egg Priority aired.
And I’m still thinking about it.
God damn it, I’m still thinking about it. C’mere. Get comfy. Can I get you a cup of tea?
Continue readingFiled under Archetypes and Genre, Fun with Isms
Genre-savvy Protagonists in Queer YA Rom-coms
LGBTQIA+ characters (and their quests for love) are increasingly appearing in YA fiction, and more specifically in YA romantic comedies. The rom-com, particularly in its most mainstream and familiar Hollywood form, has long been rooted in heteronormativity, in so far as it rarely deviates from or offers any substantive variation of the boy-meets-girl model of romantic love. This is something that adolescent readers will surely be aware of. Likewise, many marginalised young adult protagonists are characterised by an awareness of these same conventions, thus placed by their authors in a metatextual conversation with the very genre they inhabit.
Read the full mini-article in the Journal of Popular Romance Studies!
Filed under Archetypes and Genre, Fun with Isms
Otherworldly Bodies: Non-human Non-binary Characters in YA Fiction
Originally presented at the Young Adult Studies Association online conference, November 2022.
Transcript: Hello YASA, wherever you are in the world! My name is Alex, and I’m recording today from Ngunnawal country. In this paper I’ll be presenting some work from my recently submitted doctoral thesis, which examined non-binary representation in YA through the lens of mythology-inspired fantasy. Specifically, today I’m going to talk about an issue that crops up when representing groups like non-binary people in fantasy, or other speculative fiction: the idea of the non-human non-binary character. This potentially dallies with a lot of negative conceptions, but I argue it’s also potentially a very playful space to explore gender identity outside of the confines of contemporary realism.
Continue readingFiled under Fun with Isms
The Afictionado 