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Best LGBTQ+ Characters of 2019


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Shaterri



Joined: 03 Jan 2008
Posts: 173
PostPosted: Wed Jan 01, 2020 2:37 pm Reply with quote
This is a really good list all around, and a good characterization of the characters involved. I'd certainly be curious to see your respective 'worst representation of 2019' list (Kabuki-cho being the first thing that comes to mind, certainly) but maybe that's best left in 2019...
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coolkidpiccolo



Joined: 19 May 2013
Posts: 31
PostPosted: Wed Jan 01, 2020 2:48 pm Reply with quote
Sporadic? It felt pretty forced. I don't mind any LGBTQ+ stuff, but I feel like it should not be a focus point (unless it is intended) anymore, but rather a norm.
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gacha



Joined: 03 Mar 2018
Posts: 74
PostPosted: Wed Jan 01, 2020 3:12 pm Reply with quote
Expected a real thought-out article, got a weird attempt to paint characters gay... because they have a few fujoushi-aimed fan-service scenes? Even for ANN this article is incredibly low quality.
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El Hermano



Joined: 24 Feb 2019
Posts: 450
Location: Texas
PostPosted: Wed Jan 01, 2020 3:16 pm Reply with quote
coolkidpiccolo wrote:
Sporadic? It felt pretty forced. I don't mind any LGBTQ+ stuff, but I feel like it should not be a focus point (unless it is intended) anymore, but rather a norm.


It's sporadic because most of this list is either stuff aimed at straight men/women as fanservice, or unofficial fanships. Examples like Stars Align, with actual characters that are played straight and meant to portray the topic in a non-fetishizied or jokey way are virtually non-existant. You can find more examples in manga, but those rarely get anime adaptions. Anime usually only goes for the "these two cute girls/boys act/are gay to sell lots of merchandise" route. Which makes the exclusion of Carole and Tuesday odd. It might not be the best, but at least it's actually genuine in its portrayals
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Takkun4343



Joined: 19 Jul 2007
Posts: 1493
Location: Englewood, Ohio
PostPosted: Wed Jan 01, 2020 3:19 pm Reply with quote
Shaterri wrote:
I'd certainly be curious to see your respective 'worst representation of 2019' list (Kabuki-cho being the first thing that comes to mind, certainly) but maybe that's best left in 2019...

Please don't encourage them, Kabukicho gets enough undeserved (yet perfectly understandable) hate already, that would just be rubbing salt in the gaping wound.
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ErikaD.D



Joined: 09 Jun 2019
Posts: 658
PostPosted: Wed Jan 01, 2020 3:19 pm Reply with quote
Off topic, although it's good to see LGBTQ representation, but I'm sad to see there are still no characters with disability in animes, including those with autism(like me). I would be pleased to see disabled people, including an autistic people in animes. I feel like people with disabilities are ignored and forgoten. Like in all of countries, people with disabilities are exist in Japan but not in many animes.

Last edited by ErikaD.D on Wed Jan 01, 2020 3:32 pm; edited 1 time in total
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ThatMoonGuy



Joined: 13 Oct 2017
Posts: 364
PostPosted: Wed Jan 01, 2020 3:30 pm Reply with quote
Nice to see the reading of Waver as a gay character being listed among the best. Sure, it's not confirmed canon but it feels like its a pretty easy to make case and given how he's one of the most important characters in what turned out to be one the biggest franchises from the last fifteen or so years, it's really significant.

I do find it kinda sad that a lot of time this kind of thing gets more implied than anything even in anime or just gets treated like in that one mecha series from last year. Cases like the ones in Ikuhara's work are pretty rare outside of works intentionally focused on certain publics. Which is another peeve of mine, really. I do like that there's a lot of space for queer characters in works directed towards yaoi ao yuri fans but the same does not happen very often in works aimed at a more general public. Case in point, I have a bit of a hard time recalling any important LGBT+ character in a major shounen manga that is not a villain.

ErikaD.D wrote:
Off topic, although it's good to see LGBTQ representation, but I'm sad to see there are still no characters with disability in animes, including those with autism(like me). I would be pleased to see disabled people, including an autistic people in animes. I feel like people with disabilities are ignored and forgoten. Like in all of countries, people with disabilities are exist Japan.


It's a bit rare, yes, but there are some interesting works. There's Real, by Takehiko Inoue, which is about wheelchair basketball. Last year we had Dororo which kind of was about a disabled character. Koe no Katachi was a pretty big movie about this topic, as well. I also remember seeing quite a few disabled characters in a few manga and anime, including big ones like World Trigger (Nasu), Kimetsu no Yaiba (Himejima), Fate/Apocrypha (Fiore) and Kara no Kyoukai (Fujou Kirie, Asagami Fujino).
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Key
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Joined: 03 Nov 2003
Posts: 18135
Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley)
PostPosted: Wed Jan 01, 2020 3:46 pm Reply with quote
ErikaD.D wrote:
Off topic, although it's good to see LGBTQ representation, but I'm sad to see there are still no characters with disability in animes, including those with autism(like me). I would be pleased to see disabled people, including an autistic people in animes. I feel like people with disabilities are ignored and forgoten. Like in all of countries, people with disabilities are exist Japan.

The upcoming season has Breakers, which focuses on para-athletes, and as another poster noted, the relatively recent Fate/Apocrypha did have a wheelchair-bound character. I wouldn't get your hopes up about autism, though. Unless the series focused primarily on solely on that, it could too easily get mistaken for some common anime tropes.
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Angel M Cazares



Joined: 23 Sep 2010
Posts: 5406
Location: Iscandar
PostPosted: Wed Jan 01, 2020 3:55 pm Reply with quote
2019 had a good amount of LGBTQ+ representation in anime. With the exception of Waver, all the obvious examples were mentioned in the article.
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BodaciousSpacePirate
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Joined: 17 Apr 2015
Posts: 3017
PostPosted: Wed Jan 01, 2020 4:07 pm Reply with quote
ErikaD.D wrote:
Off topic, although it's good to see LGBTQ representation, but I'm sad to see there are still no characters with disability in animes, including those with autism(like me). I would be pleased to see disabled people, including an autistic people in animes. I feel like people with disabilities are ignored and forgoten. Like in all of countries, people with disabilities are exist in Japan but not in many animes.


The producer in Action Heroine Cheer Fruits - a "Love Live but tokusatsu theater instead of idols" show from 2017 - was a paraplegic high school girl. There was a major plot arc about her and her twin sister, an up-and-coming pop idol whose handlers attempted to pressure her into exploiting her sister's disability in order to gain sympathy from fans.


Last edited by BodaciousSpacePirate on Wed Jan 01, 2020 4:09 pm; edited 1 time in total
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all-tsun-and-no-dere
ANN Reviewer


Joined: 06 Jul 2015
Posts: 604
PostPosted: Wed Jan 01, 2020 4:09 pm Reply with quote
ErikaD.D wrote:
Off topic, although it's good to see LGBTQ representation, but I'm sad to see there are still no characters with disability in animes, including those with autism(like me). I would be pleased to see disabled people, including an autistic people in animes. I feel like people with disabilities are ignored and forgoten. Like in all of countries, people with disabilities are exist in Japan but not in many animes.


I've made a lot of use of headcanons in this arena, by looking at how the characters behave and act rather than textual confirmation. I think of Haru from Free! and Mafuyu from Given as autistic, Osaka from Azumanga Daioh has ADD, Yuri from Yuri on Ice has an anxiety disorder, and so on.

Mental disabilities are hard to write, because there's a lot of ignorance, and unless the characters are very well-developed it can come across as a caricature. On the other hand, even if Osaka wasn't specifically written as having ADD, I see a lot of my symptoms and tendencies in her, and so it makes me feel good to think of her that way.
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Nosferatox



Joined: 31 Dec 2019
Posts: 3
PostPosted: Wed Jan 01, 2020 4:10 pm Reply with quote
My honourable mention goes to spoiler[O-Kiku] from One Piece. spoiler[She's a fun and badass character. The reveal wasn't a big deal or anything, just casually mentioned.]
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Freyanne



Joined: 06 Nov 2014
Posts: 216
PostPosted: Wed Jan 01, 2020 4:56 pm Reply with quote
El Hermano wrote:


It's sporadic because most of this list is either stuff aimed at straight men/women as fanservice, or unofficial fanships. Examples like Stars Align, with actual characters that are played straight and meant to portray the topic in a non-fetishizied or jokey way are virtually non-existant. You can find more examples in manga, but those rarely get anime adaptions. Anime usually only goes for the "these two cute girls/boys act/are gay to sell lots of merchandise" route. Which makes the exclusion of Carole and Tuesday odd. It might not be the best, but at least it's actually genuine in its portrayals


Yeah I was surprised that Carole & Tuesday wasn't included, considering how I remember one episode had a character that was iirc LGBT (even before the 'external influence' happened to them). I could be wrong and may need to rewatch that episode again.

And as someone who barely knows anything about Promare, other than a lot of people like Lio and it was apparently a very good movie, are the two leads actually 100% a couple in the movie and not just a fanservice tease? I only ask because I hadn't heard about the leads being LGBT before this article, despite all of the fanart I've come across of them (and not seeing anyone mention that they were a legit couple).
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all-tsun-and-no-dere
ANN Reviewer


Joined: 06 Jul 2015
Posts: 604
PostPosted: Wed Jan 01, 2020 5:01 pm Reply with quote
Freyanne wrote:

And as someone who barely knows anything about Promare, other than a lot of people like Lio and it was apparently a very good movie, are the two leads actually 100% a couple in the movie and not just a fanservice tease? I only ask because I hadn't heard about the leads being LGBT before this article, despite all of the fanart I've come across of them (and not seeing anyone mention that they were a legit couple).


There's a thin veneer of plausible deniability, but there's a lot of visual language indicating that yes, they have a romantic connection, including a cute little heart-shaped puff of smoke around them!
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JennLegacy



Joined: 12 Oct 2013
Posts: 105
PostPosted: Wed Jan 01, 2020 5:28 pm Reply with quote
I'm pleased to see the LGBT reading for Lord El-Melloi II Case Files, but I'm surprised there isn't at least a quick mention of F/GO Babylonia too. Gilgamesh and Enkidu already have built in homoerotic implications from the original text they come from and Fate seems to be going for a nonbinary approach to Enkidu.
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