sliceofshoyou

[sliceofshoyou]

A Rose by Any Other Name Would Be a Pokéball: A Study on How Anime Encourages Audiences to Read into Queer Subtext: Closure

I’d love for my study to serve in carving out a space for imagining a future full of queerness, and also for it to share with others the enjoyment of having a community where queer headcanons are welcomed. After the Ulysses Fair, I hope to post my findings up on my Tumblr. Nothing too special. For me, I think conducting my research will help me have better conversations with others about queerness. For some, I think having access to this information would aid them in backing up their position on the topic if they ever need to for whatever reason. For others, my research might expand their thinking beyond what they already know, or it might change the way they perceive and engage with media. In following up my research, asking how engaging in queer headcanons can create community could be a cool next question to ask.

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A Rose by Any Other Name Would Be a Pokéball: A Study on How Anime Encourages Audiences to Read into Queer Subtext: Format for Presentation

Classroom Panel

In my slideshow, I’ll include my main research topic and subtopics.

How reading into queer subtext can help create queer possibility in everyday life.

The ways in which queer subtext shows up in anime.

Why unspoken details in anime/manga are meant to be read into.

The definition of queer possibility as I will be referring to it in my presentation.

Overview of my original research:

Focus group

I’ll create a focus group of five or so people who are anime fans and ask them questions about their opinions on anime ships, headcanons, and anime in general.

This serves to learn about fans’ feelings towards reimagining relationships and characters in anime.

Interview

I’ll interview a few queer fan creators about why they write or draw their favorite characters as queer and ask if they’ve ever gotten backlash for their queer headcanons.

This will provide me with information on queer creators’ experience with interacting with fandoms and the extent to which queer headcanons contribute to their sense of identity and belonging.

Auditorium Audience

For the auditorium, I’ll make an online personality quiz of “Which Anime Character Are You?” It will introduce my audience to my topic and help them connect with it. I hope that it will be fun and stimulate their imagination and curiosity, since that’s what I want them feeling when hearing about my research. I want to encourage my audience to choose which anime they want to hear about so that I can explain the details of my research through that specific anime, as I believe it will make the information more digestible and easy to understand. On my board, I’ll put up pictures of each anime or manga that I researched along with their titles. I will also hang up panels of my favorite queer scenes to aid in the conversation about queerness in anime, and maybe connect the panels with a red string to mimic the feel of a detective film, alluding to the idea of reading into hints and clues. Any graphs I decide to create will also be on the board, and I’ll make them into fun graphic designs so that they seem more intriguing. I intend to have an anime playing, most likely Haikyuu!! And I’d like to have a Tumblr page open on my iPad for people to scroll through fanworks. I want to set out a basket of anime plushes and a stack of manga to make my booth stand out.

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A Rose by Any Other Name Would Be a Pokéball: A Study on How Anime Encourages Audiences to Read into Queer Subtext: Ethical Consideration

My research does pose an emotional risk. The topic of queerness can illicit contradictory and confusing feelings in people that can be difficult to articulate and may cause conflicts. I feel very strongly about my research topic, so certain things people might say could hurt me emotionally. Before conducting any focus groups, I’ll make the participants aware of the topic of my research and let them know that this subject can be very personal to some people. I’ll make sure to quell any disagreements that become too heated and remind everyone to speak with care. I will also give participants the option to step out if the conversation has upset them. As a queer person who greatly enjoys indulging in queer headcanons, I’m biased towards the opinions of people who enjoy that same thing. I’ll make the effort to remain objective by carefully phrasing my survey, interview, and focus group questions to avoid writing any leading questions. In addition, I’ll ask my friends and mentor to read my questions to check for any present biases. When considering participants’ opinions, I will avoid dismissing their thoughts. While analyzing my sources and data, I’ll include all relevant information even if some of it doesn’t share my view. To protect the identities of survey participants, I won’t ask for any personal identifiers. I’ll also allow them to opt out of participating if they wish. My topic is appropriate for all ages, though high school age students and above will likely be better able to understand the information presented.

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A Rose by Any Other Name Would Be a Pokéball: A Study on How Anime Encourages Audiences to Read into Queer Subtext: Original Research

In growing up queer, I have found great comfort, inspiration, and guidance through queer subtext in anime I love, which led me to my primary research question: How does reading into queer subtext in anime help us see queer possibility in everyday life? I will be examining the ways in which queerness shows up in anime as well as how fans envision the possibility for queerness past what is strictly within the boundaries of “canon,” especially through writing fanfiction and drawing fanart; and so, my research will be almost completely qualitative.

Outside of reading research and analyses done by other scholars, I plan to conduct one in-person focus group with people who regularly watch anime and one online focus group with people who consider themselves a part of an anime fandom. I’m hoping that this will help me gain information on people’s thoughts and feelings about queer headcanons or headcanons in general. I’d like to know if they have any headcanons of their own and their attitudes about fan discourse over queer headcanons. I think it's important to collect information on people's feelings about queerness and anime to make a connection between anime and society. Equally as important will be watching a variety of anime with queer subtext. It'd be very helpful to have conversations about those anime in particular to examine how queer subtext comes across to people.

I'm planning to watch the following anime to start with: Revolutionary Girl Utena, Hunter X Hunter, Ouran High School Host Club, Haikyuu!!, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Yuri!!! On Ice, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Sailor Moon, and Stars Align. I intend to write my observations on where queerness may be extracted from these shows and what they have in common with each other. I'll examine the interactions and dialogue of possibly queer characters and especially make note of the different (possibly) queer relationships portrayed to identify tropes and ways of either overtly or subtly showing feelings of love. It's also vital that I connect my findings to research on Japanese culture, so I intend to examine these different anime early on to leave me with enough time to dissect and elaborate on what my findings might mean.

I plan to specifically select anime and manga fans for my focus groups to ensure their validity. My reliability will be fostered through watching or reading many different anime and manga to find recurring themes. I intend to watch anime in Japanese to glean what I can from the intricacies I understand of the language, and I will hopefully rewatch one or two in English to examine the dub voice actors’ interpretations of the characters.

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A Rose by Any Other Name Would Be a Pokéball: A Study on How Anime Encourages Audiences to Read into Queer Subtext: Annotated Bibliography

Bouissou, Jean-Marie. “Manga: A Historical Overview.” Manga: An Anthology of Global and Cultural Perspectives. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014. Accessed 1 May 2024. The author of this chapter is a French historian, specializing in contemporary Japan. He uses his research and knowledge to lay out the history of manga. The author found that manga delves into a lot of taboo subjects. Through his analysis, the author of the article below found that the shojo anime and manga Revolutionary Girl Utena contains taboo subjects like Bouissou discusses in this chapter.

Cornejo, Giancarlo. "The Sedgwickian Queerness of an Anime Lesbian: Reading Revolutionary Girl Utena." Lectora, no. 27, 2021, pp. 211-226. ProQuest, https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/sedgwickian-queerness-anime-lesbian-reading/docview/2602732076/se-2, doi:https://doi.org/10.1344/Lectora2021.27.10. Accessed 1 May 2024. The author is Assistant Professor in the Division of Cinema and Media studies at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts, and he holds a Ph.D. in Rhetoric with a Designated Emphasis in Women, Gender, and Sexuality from the University of California, Berkeley. He uses his expertise in the field to analyze how the anime Revolutionary Girl Utena answers the question of “How to Bring Your Kids Up Gay,” an essay by Eve Sedgwick that argues that queerness is a desirable condition of life. The author found that in Revolutionary Girl Utena, queer femininity is presented as being vast. The character Juri becomes a vessel for queer desire and projection by rejecting heteronormativity. The anime also inverts the male homosocial triangle. This article supports the findings in Manga: An Anthology of Global and Cultural Perspectives because the author discovered that Revolutionary Girl Utena deals with unconventional and taboo topics such as: a girl main character openly wearing a boy’s uniform while using the male first person pronoun ore, and an inverted homosocial triangle.

Jackson, Maghan M. "’Reading Too Much into it’: Affective Excess, Extrapolative Reading, and Queer Temporalities in MCU Fanfiction." Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, vol. 63, no. 1, 2023, pp. 30-52. ProQuest, https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/reading-too-much-into-affective-excess/docview/2913150609/se-2. Accessed 6 May 2024. The author is a lecturer in the Department of Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies at the Ohio State University. She holds Bachelor of Arts degrees in Art History and English Literature from Kalamazoo College, and a Masters degree in Sociology from Goldsmiths, University of London, where her concentration was in Gender, Media & Culture, and a Doctor of Philosophy in Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies from The Ohio State University. Through fanfiction, she engages José Esteban Muñoz's theory of queer utopian temporality. The close-reading of several fanfics of the film Captain America: The Winter Soldier (Anthony Russo and Joe Russo) serve to demonstrate fanfiction's utility in imagining queer utopian temporalities through the practice of "reading too much into" narratives. She also analyzes interactions within fan communities centering around the phrase “reading too much into it.” The author found that extrapolative fanfiction disrupts “straight time” by making queerness an imaginable possibility. She concludes that “reading too much into” media is necessary for accessing the possibility that characters could be queer. Through reading Sam Wilson and Steve Rogers slash fanfiction, she explains how Steve’s relationship to time and excess make queer utopian future easily imaginable. These findings are similar to Van den Berg’s below who found that gender and sexuality are fluid, which disrupts heteronormativity just as extrapolative slash fanfiction does.

Van den Berg, Maria Elizabeth Susanna (Elbie). "Bodies as Open Projects: Reflections on Gender and Sexuality." South African Journal of Philosophy, vol. 30, no. 3, 2011, pp. 385-402. ProQuest, https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/bodies-as-open-projects-reflections-on-gender/docview/894273301/se-2. Accessed 1 May 2024.

The author is a professor of philosophy at the University of South Africa. She uses real-life examples to share her perspective on gender and sexuality. The author found that gender and sexuality are not binary or one-dimensional but instead fluid and ambiguous. In this way, her research corroborates Jackson’s in the article above because both articles discuss that humans are unfixed. Both articles were written through the perspective of “bodies as open projects,” meaning that gender and sexuality cannot be reduced to biological categories or cultural constructs, so they reject heteronormativity.

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introducing my project :-)

A Rose by Any Other Name Would Be a Pokéball: A Study on How Anime Encourages Audiences to Read into Queer Subtext: Introduction

Those very subtle pieces of dialogue about two rival young men such as, “You don’t make friends easily, do you? But when you do, it’s true love,” or those extremely hidden, nearly unnoticeable hints of queer feeling like a character painting an enormous, rainbow rose outside of the frame that his father demanded he stay in, or the super unrevealing detail of a girl stating with a radiant smile that she will begin to refer to herself using the male first person pronoun ore; these are all examples of pieces of queer subtext that have guided me as a queer kid and shown me that having a queer future is possible if I am only willing to look for it. But of course, I often receive the accusation that I’m reading too much into these things. That no, they’re not gay, the creator never said they were gay, so that can’t be right. Which begged the question, why is the notion of the average anime character being gay so undesirable to people? Why does it matter whether the creator said their characters were gay or not, and why should the state of this perceived queerness being unconfirmed negate my perception? Basically, why is queerness unimaginable?

My primary research question is: How can reading into queer subtext in anime help create queer possibility in everyday life? Here are my sub-questions:

In what ways does queer subtext show up in anime?

Are silence and details left unspoken purposeful choices in anime?

What is queer possibility?

Why is the idea of a queer anime character considered undesirable?

How does adapting anime characters and storylines contribute to queer fans’ sense of identity or belonging?

How do queer anime fans assign queer qualities to these texts to enhance or embrace their personal identities?

Why do queer fans reimagine established anime franchises, characters, and plots to incorporate queer characters and relationships?

One helpful source I will use is "’Reading Too Much into It’: Affective Excess, Extrapolative Reading, and Queer Temporalities in MCU Fanfiction," a study by Maghan Jackson which demonstrates how “reading too much into” media is necessary for accessing the possibility that characters could be queer. I will be basing an important portion of my project on the findings in this study. Another source I’ll use is "The Sedgwickian Queerness of an Anime Lesbian: Reading Revolutionary Girl Utena," a study by Giancarlo Cornejo which analyzes a heavily queercoded character from Revolutionary Girl Utena and how she becomes a vessel for queer desire.

Many people think badly of “reading too much into” fictional media to find queer people and relationships. Society likes to hammer into us the idea that a future full of queerness is unimaginable and undesirable, and that there is no option but to live in the cishet present. It’s not easy to find positive and safe queer spaces in the world, so by conducting my research, I hope to create space for seeing queerness where it previously did not exist and making queerness an imaginable possibility.