Forum - View topicWhat's So Gay About Yuri!!! on Ice?
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chaccide
Posts: 295 |
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Source that this is coming out of a BL background? Because it absolutely is not. This is an original story by a creator who writes about adult relationships that include a variety of sexualities. So what of the story is about star ice skaters and not dudes trying to live day to day? So what if they're good looking and the show embraces that? It's a mainstream anime, written for a mainstream anime audience. You can't call it BL just because you think it is. And you cannot say that the relationship isn't a realistic gay relationship when a number of LGBT anime fans are embracing it is as just that. |
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EmperorBrandon
Encyclopedia Editor
Posts: 2213 Location: Springfield, MO |
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That's because episode 4 has it, with the character that was mentioned by others in this thread. Though I was sure there were already some yuri antics from her in the first episode, and going back and looking, I'm not mistaken.
Though I actually did already realize I forgot to mention that show, and felt bad about that. All of the main girls are established as couples pretty quickly, and that episode is definitely very yuri. |
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lebrel
Posts: 374 |
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First of all, the "mainstream anime audience" contains a lot of fujoshi, and consequently quite a lot of "mainstream anime" contain a lot of BL subtext. BL itself is not mainstream, but being mainstream doesn't mean a show can't contain a mountain of BL tease. Second of all, please show me how YOI is less fujoshi-targeted than No. 6 or Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu (the source manga of which was by an author who writes a lot of BL - some is available in English as e-books if you would like to check it out - and ran in a josei magazine that runs a fair amount of full-on BL). Yuuri and Victor fit into a quite standard seme-uke dynamic (despite Jacob's claims otherwise), and the ways in which those relationship dynamics play out are coded with BL signals (as is the character design, for that matter). Look at the clips shown in the post itself, the body language and facial expressions, and compare them to actual BL on the one hand, and gay men's manga on the other hand; there a very strong correlation to one and not the other. A manga adaptation of YOI could run in Gush! or Citron or Craft with no modifications and fit in perfectly (as long as they end up canonically together at some point...). Third of all, I've seen quite a lot of BL that has been very well received by gay readers. For instance, Saika Kunieda's Future Lovers (not to be confused with Super Lovers), Fumi Yoshinaga's Ichigenme… The First Class is Civil Law, Narise Konohara & Tomo Ootake's About Love, etc etc. No one has ever claimed that these works are therefore not BL. A story can feature relatable characters and a compelling relationship and even GBLTQ social issues (all of the above titles deal with gay marriage to some extent) and still be BL. TL;DR: The fact that you don't like BL does not mean that a work is not BL just because you happen to like it. YOI wears its BL influence on its sleeve, and, put very bluntly, if you can't see that you are either not familiar with the range of BL (which is understandable, as most non-fans aren't) or you are in denial. |
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Random 21
Posts: 198 Location: Nottingham, United Kingdom |
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The problem with a lot of BL works are not the fact they are BL. Jacob even listed Doukyuusei as a positive example, a movie which is literally straight up BL. If YOI ends with Victor and Yuuri dating then yeah, I guess you could call it BL. What separates Rakugo, No.6 and YOI from regular BL to me is the focus. From the BL series I've sampled, the relationship is the main focus of the story, it's what the story is based on. For the aforementioned series, this isn't the case, it's obviously a big part but it's not THE focus. Maybe there are regular BL series similar to this in manga form but as far as anime goes, I can't think of anything.
Also where the seme/uke thing is concerned, yeah Victor and Yuri do fall into the dominant/passive roles sort of, but the difference here is a) Yuri does not seem particularly uncomfortable with his situation, sure he's taken aback a little at first but I see this more as surprise at his situation (His idol is suddenly here flirting with him) rather than like, discomfort, even taking a more active role himself in recent episodes, and b) The relationship isn't saddled with the same awful tropes that make the typical Seme/Uke relationships so awful (read: rape). It doesn't feel like one party is just having a horrible time, both of them are consenting fully, and it therefore feels more balanced. Doukyuusei is another situation where yeah, they do fall into the Passive/Dominant roles, but they both seem perfectly happy with their relationship. That's the key difference that separates the two. I mean besides, this article is very specifically about anime depictions, not manga depictions. I'm 100% confident there are some great BL works out there, but if we're looking at it from an anime perspective, the pickings are a lot slimmer
I'd disagree about Izetta being anywhere close to YOI, I found Izetta to be way more subtext than actual text. I would agree with Flip Flappers though, I feel like that's similar to YOI in that it could very easily go into actual text. I still think YOI is way closer to crossing that line than Flip Flappers, but Flip Flappers could potentially cross that line too. Not sure if it will, but I would certainly like to be pleasantly surprised. On the topic of Free! and Eupho, I think tone is important here. Free! has a very light tone overall, and the way it presents it's teasing is very firmly tongue-in-cheek beefcake. There's no mistake that Free!'s undertones are for nothing more than just playfulness, which is fine! Completely fine. Difference with Eupho is that it is not firmly tongue in cheek, Eupho is going for proper drama, and it's baiting follows suit. It's not as campy or ridiculous like Free! is, it's serious. I honestly feel like if Eupho actually committed to it's central relationship, it would be better off, and my feelings for it would be way more positive. The fact that both girls, despite having such great romantic chemistry, are instead paired off more explicitly with other guys, takes what could be fantastic representation and instead makes it more hollow baiting. That I would say is my main gripe with Eupho compared to Free!, in a campy show like Free! it's baiting feels more tongue-in-cheek and silly, in a show like Eupho it feels out of place and hollow. I would feel the same for a campier yuri-baiting show, and I would feel the same with a more serious yaoi-baiting show. Hope that makes sense. |
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NearEasternerJ1
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Polls suggest that the Japanese are either uncaring or hostile towards homosexuality. Why does it rarely cause a commotion? In Canada and the USA, shows with homosexuality can cause issues despite the fact that both countries are more likely to accept homosexuality than Japan.
It's strange. Not like that's a bad thing. As a gay dude from a conservative Yemeni family, Japan is pretty left-wing on homosexuality. |
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whiskeyii
Posts: 2266 |
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Because sometimes (or even oftentimes), authors create unintended implications in their work. Easy example that's pretty well agreed upon: Twilight. The author thinks she's created the most compelling love story ever about a beautiful and perfect couple. Others have well documented textual evidence that the main love interest is controlling and abusive; trying to control who the heroine sees, trying to physically stop her from seeing the rival love interest, etc. That doesn't mean you can't read it as romantic, especially if you buy into the "crazy jealousy = madly in love" trope, but it's very obvious that the controlling, abusive, and often creepy behavior was not something the author intended, even though she wrote it. She writes it off as him being "overprotective". Edited for clarity; I was in a hurry when I first posted. Last edited by whiskeyii on Thu Nov 03, 2016 5:22 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter
Posts: 24034 |
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So I have now watched the first four episodes of Y!!!OI. Yep, this show is super gay. I like the story, characters and humour. The animation, relative to a lot of other anime, is pretty good. Sadly, anime's low frame just will never do figure skating justice. With the low frame rate, you are still going to get herky-jerkiness which is the absolute antithesis of figure skating's smooth motion.
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Ambimunch
Posts: 2012 |
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This is funny, ANN once again is taking a controversial topic (which in all honesty isn't) and adding fuel to the fire to get that clickbait ad cash. Even funnier are the people who take this seriously and start arguing.
There really isn't an issue, and there is no controversy, nothing more than the same thing we got with Free! and countless other series that have a similar target demographic. It's funny how these sites provoke fans, and funnier is how the actual fandom reacts. |
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lebrel
Posts: 374 |
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True, but that's largely a product of market structure. Raguko and No. 6 leave things implicit, so they can be published in josei and shoujo magazines (respectively), which have much larger circulation and can support long serialized stories (there's more shoujo/josei magazines than BL magazines, they typically have longer page counts, they have more frequent publication schedules, etc.). BL is a much smaller market (like 20% the size of shoujo), which means BL magazines have a much lower capacity for long-running series, which in turn means most BL is one-shots and short series. Since the genre by definition must include a romance plot, most works don't have enough room for other major plot elements.
First of all, " the typical Seme/Uke relationship" does not involve rape; coersion has nothing to do with seme/uke coding. There's tons of light fluffy BL with fully consensual relationships, tons of low-key slice-of-life BL with fully consensual relationships, and for that matter there's a lot of angsty moody BL with fully consensual (although possibly very f'd-up for other reasons) relationships. It doesn't have anything to do with dominance either; it is perfectly possible for the uke to be the dominant partner. The most basic distinction is that the uke has one or more of a conventionalized set of relational-role elements that conventional gender roles normally assign to female characters. (And no, that does not mean he's a coded woman, thank you very much.)
I'm not really seeing the article make a distinction between "BL anime" and "BL in general".... As to the second point, I think the situation is as I said in my first post; more women in decision-making positions in the anime industry mean that there is now greater potential for more sophisticated, explicitly adult-female-targeted material, that would normally be considered unacceptably financially risky, to actually get into production. |
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zrnzle500
Posts: 3768 |
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On what basis do you say it is not an issue? Here you have people in the LGBT community , both commenters and the author himself, expressing a desire for more representative depictions of people like them in media, specifically anime. Maybe it isn't an issue to you but it certainly is to them. Who are you to say that it isn't? And is starting a discussion a bad thing? Maybe if it were polarized and thoughtless arguments, but as far as I've seen that isn't the case. If you find people having a reasonable enough discussion of the issues risible, don't expect people to take your opinions seriously. Yeah the title is a bit clickbaity, but that doesn't invalidate the opinion put forward in the editorial. Facile cynicism like this is not a substitute for a substantive critique. |
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Random 21
Posts: 198 Location: Nottingham, United Kingdom |
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That's probably true yeah, I can understand why authors may want to maybe downplay the BL so that it can run in larger magazines. As I say, I'm positive there are even more great BL anime out there, but sadly they aren't the ones being adapted just yet. I'd still happily take the more downplayed but still thoughtful takes over the Junjou Romantica's of the world any day (I do hope we get more Doukyuusei's though I can't stress this fact enough)
I keep mentioning Doukyuusei because it is exactly what you're describing, it IS a fluffy, fully-consensual BL movie. As I mentioned before, I'm going into this from an anime-only perspective, I'll be the first to admit I am not knowledgeable on BL manga, my experience with the various tropes firmly comes from anime depictions, your Junjou Romantica's, your Super Lovers', your Love Stage's, you get the idea. The Seme/Uke relationships are very clear in these, the Seme is the more handsome, dominating one, the Uke is the more feminine, (generally) submissive one. I'll concede that the rape issue is it's whole other problem, it's more of a side-effect than a direct relation, if you get what I mean. I feel like it may be due to, again, the kinds of BL that gets adapted that causes these issues. I mean in Yuuri's case specifically, he never really struck me as necessarily submissive, maybe at first, but as Yuuri started getting used to Victor and becoming more confident as a performer, he gradually moved past that and is becoming more of an equal.
To be fair, manga isn't even mentioned once in the article. The article sticks strictly to anime examples of LGBT representation, so assuming that it is based on anime portrayals seems a fairly natural assumption to me. And yeah, I really hope we get more of the stronger portrayals. Doukyuusei's huge success, combined with what you said about more women getting into decision-making decisions, seems to point to this being the case. Only time will tell, so hopefully strong portrayals will only become more common from now on. |
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Stuart Smith
Posts: 1298 |
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There's a difference between being hostile towards something and merely be disapproving of it. Not everyone who is against homosexuality is some redneck shotgun-toting southerner. It's entirely possible for people to not accept homosexuality but otherwise have no qualms with them. Gay marriage might not be recognized in Japan like in America, but gays in Japan also don't have to worry about being assaulted or murdered in nightclubs like they do in America. I think trying to push the narrative that America is accepting of homosexuality is a bit questionable. All that can be said for sure is that it's accepted via being recognized by legislation. Public opinion though? Very debatable. -Stuart Smith |
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zrnzle500
Posts: 3768 |
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It's not just a narrative that homosexuality is more accepted in America. Looking in particular at the issue of gay marriage (Gallup, Pew Research Center) significant majorities of Americans approve of gay marriage (61% and 55% respectively). And those majorities get even larger when you look at young people (~70%). Maybe you would argue that they are fine with them being allowed to marry but still find it morally wrong, but polling on the moral acceptability of gay and lesbian relations is almost exactly the same (60% in Gallup) so that doesn't seem to be the case. Is there a significant minority that does not approve of it? Yes, but they are the minority i.e. most Americans approve of it. Also slight nitpick, gay marriage was legalized via court order for the most part not legislation but I know what you were trying to say. |
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meiam
Posts: 3442 |
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Hum no, it's actually literally the exact opposite of that. Death of the author just says that the author is just another person that can give his interpretation of the work but that ultimately the only authority on the work is the work itself. So if the author give one interpretation of the work that actually clash against what's written in the work then the author is in the wrong and if a regular fan of the work has an explanation that doesn't clash with any of the text, then he's more right than the author. Author very often write stuff that they don't actually understand, often just creating great work trough luck rather than skill or intent. Also many work are the results of multiple people, and the main author might not have realized that some of the other people have change the author original intent (sometime in way that makes the work much better against the author wish). |
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NearEasternerJ1
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Japan is much, much less violent as a whole than the US. Some say it's race; others say culture; others say lack of guns, but nobody knows for sure. But having said that, Sweden has infinitely stronger women's rights than America and more support for feminism but has more rape per capita and much harsher abortion laws than Texas, let alone some Western American states. So contradictions can occur. Contradictions doesn't mean that Sweden has a worse record on women's rights than America as a whole or Texas. It just means that people TALK about the contradictions. |
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