#the inherent yuri of mecha

[vyriadurav]

Beat Balteus my second try on stream! Loving Armored Core 6 so far!

[somahind]

Tag ppl you wanna know betteeer

Tagged by: @zendoe . thank you for tagging me, I followed you because I inherently trust deer furries

Last song: the last album I listened through was The Hot Rock by Sleater-Kinney, so it'd be A Quarter To Three. love that one.

Favorite Color: red red red. Earlier in the year I catalogued my favorite shades of red, and found that the average of them was #B0303A.

Currently Watching: Fionna and Cake. I'm 6 episodes in, and so far it's managing the tonal balancing act that makes seasons 5-7 of Adventure Time so good. I just wrapped up the last Patlabor OVAs with my girlfriend yesterday, so we're in between shows now. Though we have been occasionally putting on episodes of Bang Dream MyGO per a friend's "dude trust me" recommendation. It is a generic high school idol anime except it's about a female manipulator picking up the pieces of a friend group that imploded and inadvertently reigniting all of their old drama in her attempt to start a band. If the show was yuribaiting a little harder I'd be obsessed, but where it stands it's a fun social mess.

Last Movie: Patlabor 2. Really challenging movie, and not for the reasons I was expecting. Oshii's criticisms of the JSDF's scope and Japan's place in the neoliberal order are delivered quite straightforwardly, it's the atmosphere that's so melancholy and complicated. I spent most of the year going through the Patlabor TV show and OVAs and falling in love with them, and this is a movie about moving on from all of that. The bubble economy is over, the cold war has ended, SV2 has scattered to the wind, the artstyle has gotten more serious, and Noa explicitly states that she no longer wants to be the mecha otaku girl she once was. It's probably a great standalone watch, but it really got to me because of its willingness as a sequel to say goodbye for the sake of looking forward, even if only uncertainty lies ahead.

Currently Reading: …the patlabor manga. A bit dry compared to the show or movies, but I'm milking this franchise for everything it's got. The last book I read was Light From Uncommon Stars, which has an extremely well-executed main narrative about trans survivor's guilt alongside a terrible B-plot that fails to mesh thematically at all. Very uneven book, but the good stuff is real potent and I'll definitely read whatever Ryka Aoki cooks up next.

Sweet/spicy/savory: Sweet

Relationship status: Partnered and living a domestic yuri 4koma

Current Obsessions: I mean, in case you couldn't tell it's been Patlabor, but I'm finally reaching the tail end of that. I've been on a mecha kick all year, and that includes little gunpla guys gradually taking over the apartment. In a broader sense I'm becoming more at peace with being a huge weeb, and that's shifted my recent media consumption very strongly in that direction, which will probably even out over time.

Last googled: Some doxxable info about trying to schedule flu shots. Before that, "sidney powell kraken" after reading a news article and trying to remember what the fuck was going on there.

Currently working on: preparing for the end of the year! My yearly creative projects are assembling a Christmas album with my old college friends and writing 10 or so pieces for my anime side blog @floatingcatacombs, which go up in mid-December. I've also been messing around with GameMaker again, a intermittent hobby for most of my life even if I have little to show for it. Maybe this time!

I'll tag my oldest mutuals who I've never talked to: @magicians-rad @bl0ndle . and also some pals who have recently joined the site @dudettastone and @bluemouseblackpad . Obviously feel free to ignore if you don't want to do it

[artemis-entreri]

I have a silly question, is it homophobic if I am straight and am not into seeing men with men or woman with woman, etc ? I think you make great art! Don't let this discourage you at all. Take care of yourself!

[[ Hey there, I’m glad you asked. My answer would be: it depends on what you mean by “am not into seeing”. There are a lot of fine lines and nuances on this topic, but it’s impossible to cover them all in a reasonably short post, so I’ll try to cover some of the bigger points. In a general sense, the answer would lean towards “yes”, however while I stand very firmly for LGBT+ rights, I don’t believe in condemning someone and shutting them down very swiftly for asking a question like the one you asked, as I think that discussion is important to help each other understand and grow. 

So, I ask these questions, not necessarily for you to answer me, but rather for you to think on. By, “am not into seeing men with men or women with women”, do you mean that you don’t actively seek out gay content? If so, I don’t believe that’s inherently homophobic. However, the age of “gay content” being its own section is in my opinion becoming antiquated, since traditionally, things in this category are anything that includes non-straight elements. For too long, “normal” is that which doesn’t acknowledge the existence of non-straight. However, this is really artificial and not at all reflective of what reality is, the true normal would include people of all sexualities and gender identities. But, if we were to artificially try to restrict this question to gauge your outlook, I guess we can use this example: Let’s pretend that you’re into manga. You collect certain genres of manga, but like anyone else, you have specific tastes. Maybe you’re not into romance. Maybe you’re not into mecha. You don’t collect yaoi/yuri manga, which is manga whose purpose is focused on gay/lesbian relationships. That wouldn’t inherently make you homophobic, because content like yaoi/yuri is specifically gay. It is only about the gay and goes all out for the gay. Its main purpose is the gay, its main audience is people who seek actively out that gay content. Not seeking out this type of genre isn’t homophobic, it’s just a preference, and isn’t too different from not being into the other genres. DISCLAIMER: This example is restricted to manga and probably porn. It is NOT the same thing to be like, “I’m not into cars, why is it a problem if I’m not into seeing gay people?” For the record, something like that would indubitably be homophobic.

When you see something that includes gay content, does the gay content devalue the piece for you? You complimented my art, which makes me think that it’s unlikely that you’re a raging homophobe because those types tend to foam at the mouth at anything that’s remotely LGBT and would sooner have a seizure than say anything good about gay content even in an insincere way. Here’s a thought experiment: imagine if your favorite artist (musical or visual) created something containing gay content, would you give it a fair shot or would it automatically not be as good as their other pieces for you? Again, this is a bit challenging in that for most people, they don’t love all of their favorite artist’s creations, and of course there’s the matter of our own personal experiences allowing us to relate more or less to any particular work and rate it accordingly. Here’s another way to think about it, if you look at classic works of art by the great masters, would it ever cross your mind that the ones depicting characters of a gender that you are attracted to are automatically superior to the ones depicting characters of a gender that you aren’t attracted to? I don’t mean in terms of personal appeal, but rather, would you feel that two works by the same master, containing different genders, would be different in terms of mastery? Anything with gay content is really no different, if you can see the value of a piece regardless of what’s depicted (gay versus not gay, we’re not talking about other subjects here), then you probably aren’t homophobic. Further, do you think it would matter to your appreciation of the art if you knew or did not know that the great master creating it was themselves gay?

Again, this is a complicated and important topic, but my blog isn’t dedicated to this topic so I’ll wrap things up here.

Finally, your sexuality doesn’t factor into this equation, in my opinion at least. It is sadly possible for LGBT+ people to discriminate against other LGBT+, a common instance of this is the erasure/invalidation/discrimination against bisexual people, pansexual people, and asexual people by others in the LGBT+ community. That being said, you might feel like because you’re straight it can make you be considered more homophobic. For instance, perhaps you’ve seen things along the lines of, “fuck straight people”. However, this sort condemnation I believe comes from the issue of societal imbalance and privilege. Being straight is a privilege because it’s considered the “norm” by society, and unfortunately, a lot of people who are privileged are blind about it and abuse that privilege. Like all generalizations, condemning a privileged group is flawed, but messages like “fuck <insert privileged party>” really mean, “fuck members of  <insert privileged party> who abuse their privilege”. Anyway, I wanted to mention this, because your own identity does matter, and it’s important to take a step back and think about where you’re standing relative to an issue. I think you’re ok, Anon. It’s difficult to ask questions like these, even anonymously, especially to an LGBT+ content creator such as myself who one would expect to not give you an answer that you’d want to hear. It is such an understandably sensitive topic that you could’ve even been blasted for asking your question, but you did so anyway, so I think that’s pretty admirable. The ability to challenge our own perceptions is what allows us to grow, and makes us better people than those who are not capable of doing so. ]]

[multi-fandom-nutjob]

Epithet Erased OCs

Some of these are definitely better than others, but I’m open to critique and some fun discourse!

Ali Muradif

Alignment: Lawful Evil

Epithet: REWRITE

(can change any nearby Inscribed’s epithet to a synonym and give nearby Mundies a random epithet; cannot control the outcome of rewriting an Epithet; examples would include turning Dumb into Mute or Brainless, and turning Barrier into Fencing or Barricade)

Ricardo Beranduago

Alignment: True Neutral

Epithet: CONTINUOUS

(can cause others to “jump cut” in time to a later time and location, so long as it isn’t the same place and within less than an hour; cannot jump cut two things at the same time or the same thing frequently)

Farah Kliche

Alignment: Chaotic Good

Epithet: STEREOTYPE

(can temporarily alter the personalities of Inscribed to reflect their Epithets, either to make it obvious or to confuse them; can also simplify Epithets with high creativity down to one star)

Akira Ryoshi

Alignment: Neutral Good

Epithet: FISHERMAN

(can summon and communicate with fish from miles away; when inland, his epitome allows him to turn himself into a literal half-man, half-marine animal, so long as said animal is deliberately fished for somewhere in the world; examples include Alaskan King Crabs, Scallops, Calamari, Sea Urchins, Skates, Eels, and Pufferfish)

Yuri Yadernoy

Alignment: Lawful Neutral

Epithet: NUCLEAR

(can fire small bursts of nuclear energy and can power electronics with ease; excessive use gives him symptoms of radiation sickness)

Banzai Vice Principal Lenore Deformatione

Alignment: Lawful Evil

Epithet: DISTORTION

(can reshape inorganic materials based on elemental-compounds; has to know the chemical makeup of whatever she is manipulating, so she carries around specialized clay for that purpose)

Banzai Vice Principal Dante Peregrinus

Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Epithet: CRUSADE

(can duplicate himself into an small army running on a hive mind, so long as said army has an ideological goal to achieve)

Esperanza Sunbrilo

Alignment: Chaotic Good

Epithet: SUNSHINE

(can flash light quickly, control the heat of a nearby vicinity, encourage plant growth, and shoot plasma)

Israel Kanaka

Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

Epithet: CANVAS

(can distort light to “paint” on anything, changing the appearances of objects, enabling invisibility, and allowing himself to detect the non-visible light spectrum)

Banzai Captain Alexander Žetva

Alignment: Neutral Evil

Epithet: HARVEST

(can manipulate plant life to an absurd degree, but isn’t intelligent enough to do more than just make weapons)

Wade Webster

Alignment: True Neutral

Epithet: DEFINE

(can manipulate the dictionary definition to alter the properties of other Epithets for the better or worse)

Sia Pai

Alignment: Lawful Good

Epithet: CRYSTAL

(can turn herself into a humanoid gemstone with all the same properties as the gemstone she chose)

Akari Tateru

Alignment: Chaotic Good

Epithet: MECHA

(can build a giant robot out of virtually any nearby materials in seconds; some have speculated that she is just a very fast and intelligent Mundie)

Danny Daunter

Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

Epithet: FEARLESS

(can instill an irrational lack of concern for danger or consequences in himself and others merely by touching both of his index fingers to his or the subject’s temples)

Banzai Captain Cassie Blade

Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Epithet: KNIFE

(can make a seemingly endless amount of knives... that’s it)

Amadeus Dirigent

Alignment: Lawful Good

Epithet: CONDUCTOR

(can manipulate massive sound waves, steal momentum from moving vehicles or accelerate them at will, and can intake and eject massive amounts of electricity and heat without getting harmed)

Albert Kleyn

Alignment: Lawful Neutral

Epithet: COMPACT

(can shrink objects while maintaining their mass; must make contact with his skin to activate the process)

Grace Cevity

Alignment: Neutral Good

Epithet: GRAVITY

(can telekinetically manipulate objects that have less mass than what’s currently touching her; wears heavy weights and multiple layers at all times (along with glasses that are thicker than her prescription) in order to enhance her Epithet, and has been known to grab hold of trees, vehicles, and even buildings to ensure she holds onto her target; her epitome allows her to create an “atmosphere” barrier around her that burns anyone who gets too close too fast)

Daisy Fáinne

Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

Epithet: RING

(can create rings of energy of any length, width, or shape that can still be classified as ring-like, ranging from infinity loops to drills, that she can manipulate in various ways)

Chance Tucker

Alignment: Chaotic Good

Epithet: LIKELY

(can alter the probability of events in her favor, but must be conscious of doing so and the events cannot have a forgone conclusion)

Banzai Associate Justice Viktoria Impuls

Alignment: Neutral Evil

Epithet: MOMENTUM

(can manifest mass and velocity exponential to her calculated running momentum for 1/10th of a second, usually enough to “boost” through any opponents or defenses

Erik Endurtaka

Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Epithet: REPEAT

(can reset subjects in time, jump back ten seconds in time, or put others in time loops)

Azur Sin

Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

Epithet: BLUE

(can put others in a lethargic state of melancholy, or manipulate light to bathe the surrounding area in royal blue)

Charles Scathing

Alignment: Lawful Evil

Epithet: CRITIC

(can immediately deduce an Inscribed’s Epithet and it’s shortcomings, along with a passive analysis of the Inscribed’s personal flaws and insecurities)

Aqua Madison

Alignment: Chaotic Good

Epithet: WAVE

(can cause a mass of the same or related objects to fall in a large wave in a chosen direction, even if it is inherently illogical; her Epitome allows her to have high-level hydrokinetic manipulation over salt water)

Out of all of these, the ones that work directly against other people’s Epithets are my least favorite, but they still were kinda fun to come up with.

[bunnyadvocate]

Analysing Anime Fan Priorities

How much does the aesthetic of an anime influence how much you enjoy it? Does it matter more or less than the music? Subjective questions like these can seem unanswerable when applied to the fandom as a whole, but due to the way MyAnimeList splits its review scores into music/animation/story/character/enjoyment categories, we might be able to determine which of these is most influential. We can also see how different genres compare on these categories, and possible differences in how each gender rates anime.

Data collection

I collected 48,526 reviews from the 5752 most popular anime on MAL. To prevent a few super-popular anime from dominating the results, a maximum of 20 reviews were collected from each anime. I then collected any public demographic information listed on each reviewer’s profile page to determine their age and gender.

Category importance

When reviewing an anime, MyAnimeList allows you split your rating into 6 categories: story, animation, sound, character, enjoyment, and an overall rating. If you really care about one of these categories more than the others, then we could expect to see a link between the rating you give your favourite category and your overall anime rating.

So for example, if you really care about the stories in anime, those anime you give a high story rating to are also those you’re more likely to give a high overall rating to. Alternatively if you don’t care about a category, we’d expect that there wouldn’t be much of a link between them. So if you don’t care about animation, we could expect a mix of higher and lower animation ratings among your most highest rated overall anime.

The technical term for this link between categories is the Pearson correlation coefficient, which sounds intimidating but all you need to understand is that a result of -1 means there’s a negative correlation (i.e. you rate X in the opposite way to Y, so if you rate X high then you rate Y low). A result of 0 means there’s no connection between how you rate X and Y, and a result of 1 means that you always rate X in proportion to Y. So if you rate X high then you always rate Y high and vice versa.

If we apply this calculation to the MAL categories we get this...

Overall Male reviewers Female reviewers Story 0.847 0.843 0.863 Animation 0.657 0.667 0.649 Sound 0.697 0.707 0.690 Character 0.853 0.854 0.856 Enjoyment 0.894 0.896 0.898

As would be expected, all the correlations are positive, so if you rate a category higher you’re more likely to rate the overall anime higher, but what’s important is the ranking of the categories. We can see that for a reviewer’s overall score, their enjoyment is the most important factor, then character, followed closely by story, then sound, and lastly animation. This seems to make sense, as we typically associate what we enjoy with what we think is good, and anime is watched primarily for entertainment, so of course we care about that the most.

Both story and character ratings are almost equally as important as enjoyment, so plot really does mean more than “PLOT” for most reviewers. I was a little surprised that sound mattered more than animation for reviewers, as I view anime more as a visual medium than an auditory one, but seemingly I’m in the minority.

The third and fourth columns are the correlation results when we filter the reviewers by their gender. For sound, character, and enjoyment, there’s practically no difference. But men tend to have a higher animation correlation and women a higher story correlation. This might reflect the large amount of male-targeted fanservice in anime, so female fans focus more on the story while the male fans ogle the underage girls.

Complimenting categories

We’ve looked at how important each category is to the overall score, but we haven’t looked at how those categories overlap and are could be linked to one another. If we calculate the correlation coefficient between categories, we can see which categories tend to go hand-in-hand. The results are presented both in radar chart form (which is prettier but harder to read) and as a table.

Each coloured “flower petal” represents a category, with it reaching closer to categories it overlaps with. Each category always correlates most with itself.

Story Animation Sound Character Enjoyment Story x 0.578 0.634 0.821 0.804 Animation 0.578 x 0.699 0.605 0.611 Sound 0.634 0.699 x 0.661 0.658 Character 0.821 0.605 0.661 x 0.830 Enjoyment 0.804 0.611 0.658 0.830 x

The categories can be roughly sorted into 2 groups: the character, story, and enjoyment ratings are all closely linked, and then animation and sound are outliers who link slightly more to each other than anything else, but still less so than the other core 3 character/story/enjoyment categories do.

It makes intuitive sense that the story and character ratings would be linked, you can’t have a good story without good characters, and good characters can’t shine without a good story. Sound and animation also compliment each other well, as they both work on our senses directly and a studio that’s competent in one is probably more likely to be competent in the other too. 

Genre rankings

We can see how each genre ranks for each category by looking at the average rating anime in that genre got, so if you care about a specific aspect of anime, you’ll know which genre to find it in.

Story Animation Sound Character Enjoyment Josei Samurai Music Josei Sports Historical Thriller Thriller Sports Josei Thriller Josei Josei Historical Cars Sports Historical Space Slice of Life Historical Drama Space Historical Parody Slice of Life Space Slice of Life Mystery Samurai Kids Mystery Kids Cars Shounen Parody Kids Mystery Samurai Shoujo Thriller Military Hentai Sports Thriller Samurai Samurai Military Military Drama Shounen Slice of Life Drama Kids Comedy Space Shoujo Sports Drama Seinen Music Demons Music Psychological Kids Seinen Shounen Fantasy Slice of Life Mystery Comedy Police Mecha Shounen Adventure Drama Psychological Sci-Fi Mecha Demons Military Cars Police Adventure Music Shoujo Adventure Supernatural Game Space Mystery Seinen Psychological Sci-Fi Military Adventure Music Adventure Supernatural Romance Hentai Supernatural Cars Seinen Cars Police Romance Shounen Shoujo Game Demons Comedy Super Power Fantasy Shoujo Ai Shoujo Ai Game Shoujo Ai Parody Police Game Fantasy Action Magic Magic School Mecha Seinen Romance School Romance Sci-Fi Romance Police Supernatural Fantasy Magic Magic Super Power Fantasy Supernatural Parody Shoujo Action Hentai Mecha Action Demons Demons Super Power Magic Shoujo Ai Comedy Comedy Psychological Sci-Fi School Game Shoujo Ai Sci-Fi Psychological Super Power Parody School Action Super Power Shounen Ai School Hentai Mecha Action Horror Yuri Vampire Martial Arts Shounen Ai Vampire Vampire Harem Shounen Ai Yuri Hentai Harem Martial Arts Yuri Martial Arts Martial Arts Martial Arts Dementia Vampire Harem Dementia Ecchi Horror Harem Vampire Harem Dementia Shounen Ai Ecchi Horror Ecchi Horror Ecchi Horror Ecchi Yaoi Shounen Ai Yuri Dementia Dementia Yuri Yaoi Yaoi Yaoi Yaoi

This table is ranked with the genres having the highest average rating in that category at the top, and the lowest average genres at the bottom.

We’ve already proven that the ratings in each category is linked, so of course genres that tend to do well in one genre also do well in the others, but there are some interesting outliers, a few of which I’ll comment on.

Thrillers and mysteries tend to focus more on atmosphere, with good ratings for story, animation, and sound, but fall short on their characters and overall enjoyment. This is a shame as character motivations are vitally important to my enjoyment of these anime.

Porn genres tend to do well in terms of animation and enjoyment, but their “oops did I accidentally release a tentacle monster” plots leave something to be desired.

Superhero content seems to be quite superficial, doing better with their visuals and sound but poorly with story or enjoyment.

Sci-fi tends to do better in its aesthetics than it does in story. As a literary sci-fi fan, I’m disappointed at this. There are so many fantastic sci-fi plots out there.

Slice of content does well with its characters and enjoyment, but of course the plot isn’t anything special.

Helpful review biases

MyAnimeList allows users to rate which reviews they found helpful, and by default will show an anime’s reviews in order of those reviews that got the most helpful ratings. What kind of factors might influence what you consider helpful?

If we compare the overall rating reviewers gave an anime, we find the most helpful review tends to 0.35 higher than average. So being enthusiastic gets you to the top of the list. But if we look at the top 10 reviews they tend to be 0.18 lower than average. So that one enthusiastic review tends to be followed by more critical reviews, giving a fairly well-rounded set of reviews overall.

Another more contentious factor is the gender of the reviewer. On average, women are ranked 0.31 places lower than male reviewers. There are a lot of possible explanations, perhaps with male profiles outnumbering female ones 2-1 on MAL the male reviewers might be resonating more with the general audience than female ones do, or there might be a degree of sexism involved.

Criticisms

While I’ve had fun analysing the MAL reviews, it’s important not to take any statistic too seriously as there are always complicating factors. The typical person who reviews anime might not be reflective of the average anime fan, or fans may be less inclined to review anime they disliked so we might have a bias in the data. 

There’s also the question of whether we’re measuring reviewer’s anime tastes, or reflect inherent correlations in anime production. Studios that are good at animation might also tend to be good at sound design, so the correlation is more about the studio than how reviewers perceived the quality of the anime.

I hope you enjoyed the analysis. I plan to do a follow-up post in a few weeks with some wordclouds for the words that tend to come up more often in positive/negative reviews or specific genres. As a little teaser, here is an early result of which words female reviewers are more likely to use than male ones.

If you have any feedback or suggestions for future analyses, please let me know either in the comments here or on twitter.

[recentanimenews]

The Beauty of Takako Shimura's Queer Slice-of-Life

Fumi takes Sugimoto's hand

  When I was a teen, I wanted stories that “represented me.”

Or — let’s say it differently. I was growing up and my tastes were maturing with me.

I never really considered myself much of a fan of slice-of-life anime. To be honest, I didn’t see the appeal in watching characters do the same things I could in real life, right now. But that quickly changed when I became familiar with the work of Takako Shimura.

  Shimura’s manga mostly centers on the lives of LGBTQIA+ adolescents. Tonally, her work draws heavily from the slow burn of classic novels like Jane Austen’s Emma or Higuchi Ichiyo’s Takekurabe. Despite writing about children and teens, Shimura’s stories are rife with psychological richness and an acute attention for age-appropriate sensibilities. That’s to say that before I read any of Shimura’s manga, I didn’t see much value in stories that, on the surface, didn’t have any world-shattering stakes.

Nitori writes notes for Romeo and Juliet late at night

  Of Shimura’s manga, two have been adapted into anime so far: Sweet Blue Flowers and Wandering Son. Adapted in 2009, Sweet Blue Flowers is a yuri series following two teen girls as they navigate their feelings for each other and their peers. Wandering Son, adapted in 2012, is a coming-of-age story about two transgender adolescents in middle school. Shimura simultaneously published both manga series, with Wandering Son beginning in 2002 and Sweet Blue Flowers in 2004. Both concluded serialization in 2013.

What are the stakes in telling these otherwise mundane slice-of-life stories with queer characters? Under their pastel and watercolor aesthetic, I quickly learned both of these adaptations promised something far more fulfilling than pure warm fuzzies: realistic, and emotionally poignant portraits of a fully realized queer childhood.

“Heathcliff, it's me, I'm Cathy”

Sugimoto texts Fumi

  Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights is a classic novel all about tragic love. Sweet Blue Flowers is a similar story: sensitive and bookish Fumi Manjōme comes to the world-changing realization she is a girl who likes girls. And her dear childhood friend, Akira "Acchan" Okudaira, who attends the prestige Fujigaya Girls Academy, doesn’t have the slightest clue. Fumi is tall and has a soft voice; Akira is short and can be heard from miles away. Set in historical and beautiful Kamakura, Sweet Blue Flowers has a cozy literary vibe that reminds me of curling up with Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women as a kid. Literature itself is a recurring theme throughout the series — with Wuthering Heights and The Little Prince constantly referenced, it’s hard not to feel like this high school puppy love tale has something bigger to say about the world at large.

  Sweet Blue Flowers only covers parts of the manga, so you will have to read the series to find out how and if Fumi and Akira get together. But the anime wonderfully covers one of my favorite arcs: Fumi’s relationship with the heartthrob senior Yasuko Sugimoto, who is cast as Heathcliff in Fumi’s school play. For as much as the series is implicitly about Fumi and Akira, Sugimoto’s strenuous relationship with her family and her sexuality get lots of compelling screen time. The two have a dramatic kiss in the school library and lots of pining. But Sugimoto is hopelessly capricious and after Fumi falls for her, both get humiliated by Sugimoto’s family after she attempts to introduce Fumi as her girlfriend.

Sugimoto's sister chides her for relationship with Fumi

It’s a complicated scene. Fumi and Sugimoto are sitting while one of Sugimoto’s three sisters backtracks Sugimoto’s confession and asks if she really is a lesbian — if she really loves Fumi right now, really. Fumi is embarrassed and Sugimoto is scandalized, rushing up to her room to sulk and eventually breaking up with Fumi right then and there. It’s about as bad of a family introduction as you can get, and frustrated and confused, Fumi leaves and wonders what such a disastrous outcome could possibly mean for her romantic life.

To be honest, I was a little shocked. Rather than take the easy and escapist route, Sweet Blue Flowers isn’t afraid to take the reality of discrimination and family disapproval head-on. Thankfully, it isn’t so tragic that Fumi gives up on dating forever. We see real character growth from Fumi, who at a later point builds up enough confidence to tell Sugimoto that her behavior was wrong and that she’s much happier without her. There are even hints that Fumi and Akira might date. Shimura’s depiction of Fumi gradually becoming aware of her identity as not only a lesbian — but as a young adult capable of maturely advocating for her own needs — is one of the most exciting things I’ve seen in an anime about young LGBTQIA+ life.

  “What’s In a Name?”

Nitori accidentally runs into Takatsuki on a bridge after running away

  Wandering Son is sometimes clumped together with a genre called “gender-benders” — a story where the protagonist is a boy who becomes a girl or vice versa. That comparison has always been both funny and fascinating to me. Funny, because older series like Ranma ½ definitely have something to say about gender in their own roundabout way. But fascinating and true to the spirit of Wandering Son as well. This idea of one day “switching genders” is the only way young protagonist Shuichi Nitori can even begin imagining a future as a girl. It’s the wonderful opening of a door.

Unlike Sweet Blue Flowers, which draws from a well-established tradition of conventional yuri tropes, Wandering Son is an anomaly simply for being about transgender life in Japan. The anime adaptation picks off with Nitori and friend Yoshino Takatsuki, a masculine “girl who wants to be a boy” entering middle school. Early in the series, Takatsuki and Nitori have already made a habit of going on day trips into the next town over in clothes suiting their chosen gender identities. Takatsuki makes friends with Yuki, an adult trans woman who inevitably ends up becoming a mentor for both Takatsuki and Nitori. They shop for cute clothes, browse at gender-affirming underwear, and just hang out. Up to this point, the two middle schoolers are oblivious of the LGBTQIA+ community and innocently enough, frame their coincidental feelings as simply wanting to “switch genders” — a sentiment at odds with the realities of nearing puberty.

  "It's a play where you and I are the stars ... A play that represents my wish. Where a male Takatsuki and a female me live happily ever after with the people we care about."

  All the while, Nitori and classmate Saoirin are busy writing a "gender-bent" school production of Romeo of Juliet. This plot point is a loving reference to the Takarazuka Revue, Shimura’s love for literature, and Nitori’s colorful conceptualization of gender identity. I like to think this is a means appropriate for middle schoolers who don’t have an adult’s vocabulary to address the fantasy of “gender-bender” stories versus actual lived realities. It’s an incredibly smart way to simultaneously navigate the story from these character's ages, and to ask the older viewer directly: What assumptions do you make about gender and what do you take for granted about it?

  Even though Wandering Son doesn’t capture the entire scope of Nitori and Takatsuki’s adolescence, I think that’s okay. The real sweetness of slice-of-life anime is exactly what it says on the can. The series makes no overt gestures as to whether or not these kids will transition, leaving it ambiguous and open-ended. But besides that, it’s also a story about navigating temperamental middle school friendships, siblings, and getting into petty classroom fights. At the end of the day, Wandering Son is a deeply sympathetic but not overly idyllic or nostalgic depiction of childhood. For as much saccharine Nitori and Takatsuki have to offer, they are both anxious and afraid about what their future holds. They are learning just like us.

Dream A Little Dream Of Me

Acchan comforts Fumi

What can we get from shows essentially about doing homework, being in the school play, getting dumped by your first girlfriend, and going through puberty? Not some otherworldly enlightenment but something far more mundane: learning that most of us, regardless of sexuality or gender identity, are just normal people. Even more — that there isn’t anything inherently scandalous or “adult” about being an LGBTQIA+ youth. Everyone’s story deserves to be told.

Shimura’s world is exactly the kind of fiction I wish I had access to as a fed-up teen. Sure, there’s something widely liberating about seeing yourself depicted in the media, but it only begins there. Seeing protagonists like Nitori and Fumi gradually become more confident in themselves helped me realize the real stakes of slice-of-life dramas: even if we think we’re grown-up, we always have a little bit more growing to do.

    Blake P. is a weekly columnist for Crunchyroll Features. He likes old mecha anime, computer games, books, and black coffee. His twitter is @_dispossessed. His bylines include Fanbyte, VRV, Unwinnable, and more.

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