Forum - View topicThis Week in Anime - Rainbow Days
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Exodus007
 Posts: 136 |
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Food Court is not Yuri. The manga isn’t and the girls aren’t anything more than friends. Please stop saying it’s a Yuri story.
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leetailor
 Posts: 41 |
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If the column had been themed around "the Summer 2025 anime that are more queer than you might expect" it would have made perfect sense to only vaguely reference the existence of the two or three yuri anime that are airing this season. This way, you're just implying that they are such worthless slop that they are not worth talking about at all.
I mean, I enjoy them and I consider them slop, but you guys still had a few sentences to spare for the show where a "lesbian lusts after her brother"! Why are you guys listing a shameless misrepresentation of lesbians (a lesbian who wants to fudge her brother! are you serious?) that really only exists as a fantasy for men to jerk off to, as an example of "queerness"? Meanwhile the yuri anime in this season don't even get a shout out! And the "more queer than you might expect" framing also would have made it less disappointing that half the column was spent on singing the praises of CotN and MDUD, two shows that apparently use a lesbian with an unrequited crush and some crossdressing boys as decoration but are otherwise very comfortably heterosexual. A lesbian pining for the female lead of a straight romance, a "lesbian" that wants to f**k her own brother. This is apparently the epitome of the "lesbian experience", and the stuff that keeps "fans of queer anime" well fed! Edit: had to censor the f-word because the forum otherwise displays it as "fudge"... Last edited by leetailor on Tue Aug 05, 2025 4:07 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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FishLion
 Crazy Fangirl Posts: 856 |
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I love the variety of anime coming out this season that references queer people. There are so many shows out this season that have an unexpected amount of queer stuff going on. The fact it is in well known series like Call of the Night and My Dress Up Darling makes me even more excited to see it around.
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Alphael
Posts: 70 |
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I don't want to be an armchair psychiatrist but I wonder if the phenomenon of people thinking two people just having basic human interactions is somehow a sign of romance can be linked to the increasing trend of people being shut off from each other and not having a lot of experience with interacting with people so they're unfamiliar with how to behave and can't pick up basic social cues especially post-Pandemic which seems to have increased it. |
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Raebo101
 Posts: 864 |
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...If you're into Yuri. From this big list of shows, there really is only one that focuses on queer men specifically, The Summer Hikaru Died, and judging from the title, one of those men are dead, so... yay? This season has a lot more to say (and show) about queer women than queer men, which... is pretty typical of anime, in my opinion. Speaking of queer men, uh, what happened to that Yuri on Ice movie that was supposed to come out? 
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Florete
Posts: 461 |
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This is true, and then they barely even gave a passing mention to the actual, legitimate yuri anime that are airing. There's certainly a place for a column that talks about queerness in otherwise not-queer anime, but that doesn't seem to be how this one was structured. |
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Pablo Pierna
Posts: 6 Location: Mexico |
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I think that just boils down to people being desperate for representation. The simple fact of the anime industry is actual LGBT anime is very few and far between. Unless people lower their standards and allow things like conventional yuri and BL which are aimed at a straight audiences or general crossdressing then there wouldn't really be much to talk about. Shows like Wandering Son or Star's Align that are actually about the LGBT experience get made once a decade it seems like. If people kept it to shows that specifically were about the LGBT community and presented as such people wouldn't have anything to watch or talk about most of the time. Presumably that might explain why I've noticed an uptick in the use of the word 'queer' rather than using "LGBT" recently. From what I'm gathering "queer" doesn't even have to involve being gay at all. Just being an outsider from society or feeling different is enough to be labeled as having "queer" themes without going into a person's sexuality. |
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ANN_Lynzee
ANN Executive Editor
 Posts: 3266 Location: Email for assistance only |
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No. Queer and LGBTQ+ are interchangeable. It's a word with specific baggage with the LGBTQ+ community and is being reclaimed by that community. It's not a signifier for "feeling different." Crossdressing is "queer" as it explicitly deals with gender presentation. Not all queerness is tied to sexuality. A trans person can be heterosexual. Regardless, Amane's story likely struck a chord with people across the gender spectrum, regardless of his own identity, because of how relatable it is.
You could make it less obvious that you haven't watched it. |
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FishLion
Crazy Fangirl Posts: 856 |
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I personally appreciate this kind of representation because my entire life isn't about being gay/trans/queer. Stories like Wandering Son are important, but only a specific part of my life was about figuring out existing as a gay and trans person in the world. It's true that being LGBT affects your entire life, but that doesn't mean everything that happens in your day to day life would make for a good piece of LGBT media. Most of it is normal stuff that wouldn't be interesting outside of a slice of life, so if you turned my life into an anime it probably wouldn't seem like good representation either. If some people think this doesn't qualify then they are probably using a very strict definition of representation. That boy who likes crossdressing in MDUD figured out he enjoys expressing himself outside of typical male ways, plenty of trans women start out thinking of themselves as men who are crossdressers before figuring things out. I'm not saying he is destined to be trans or something, I am saying that is an experience many trans people have on the way to figuring things out. I personally experimented with dressing differently for years before I could admit I was trans, so I don't agree with people who have a long checklist for what does and doesn't qualify as representation. If you want more specific and focused representation then that's fine, but I as a gay woman see myself in plenty of this yuri and I don't know why people can't ask for more without degrading what we have. |
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CreativelyFwrd
Posts: 99 |
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I can only speak for Watanare but I saw people dislike it because of Mai forcing herself onto Renako and it's general fanservicy nature of it. |
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leetailor
Posts: 41 |
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Representation for queer women (Summer 2025 anime):
2 non-human magical girls "almost kiss" in a dance routine (in the actual scene it's blink and you'll miss it) 2 female mascots in a relationship (?) 1 girl wearing a locket containing the picture of another girl 1 woman one-sidedly pining for her ex-gf, the female lead of a straight romance (they are shown in intimate scenarios but only in flashbacks I think?) 1 female lead dressing as a boy gets a kiss from a girl 2 deeply unserious yuri romcoms and 1 comedy with some yuri subtext #1 not bad on its own but idk what possessed the authors to list her as a lesbian and not bisexual, #2-4 are barely footnotes, #5 is great if you are a masochist, #6 is probably going nowhere but sounds at least a little interesting, #7 I like them just fine but the authors of this column did not bother mentioning any of them by title, so how important can they really be? Representation for queer men (Summer 2025 anime): The main characters of The Summer Hikaru Died, which is one of the most highly anticipated BL anime of the decade and the most gorgeous looking anime of the Summer 2025 season. There are probably more keyframes in it than in those three yuri romcoms combined. And obviously it's not as simple as one of the boys being "dead", otherwise there would be no story. This was not on my bingo card: the lovely folks of ANN make it look like this anime season is some kind of paradise for queer women, some readers take it at face value and end up complaining that the 'only thing' queer men got this season was The Summer Hikaru Died... I would be dancing in the streets if there was just one yuri anime in this season but it was as fascinatingly creepy and gorgeous as TSHD. |
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EmeraldSaucer
 Posts: 931 |
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A core part of Meroron's character is her unambiguous romantic interest in Purirun, it's in no way a "footnote" for one of the main characters of the show |
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Raebo101
Posts: 864 |
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Was it that obvious?  Well, I'm absolutely gonna watch it (this has been on my to read/watch list for a while), but I'm waiting for Netflix to get around to dubbing it.
My point still stands, tho. |
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leetailor
Posts: 41 |
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This argument might normally have a leg to stand on, but in this case the authors of the article did not have an issue with mentioning the "lesbian" that wants to bang her own brother, from a show that by their own decription sounds like mostly horny nonsense for straight men. Let's not act like the yuri romcoms were snubbed in the article because they were 'too problematic'. |
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leetailor
Posts: 41 |
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I don't disagree with any of this, but the way this article (and plenty of journalism in general) uses "queer" does make it sound like something that can be just a vibe: "Call of the Night was always at least thematically queer. It's about people on the outside fringes of society," Of course I understand the concept of allegory but when anime that are overwhelmingly cis and heterosexual are praised as "thematically queer" and those that only introduce queer themes later are praised for always having been "thematically queer", after a while it gets a little tiresome that queer allegory gets so much praise and attention even though it makes stories far less risky from the business perspective than actual queer characters. Like corporations try to sell and fandoms try to read anything and everything as a queer allegory: superheroes with a secret identity, half-human hybrids (KPop Demon Hunters), obligate carnivores (Beastars), whatever. I and many other people might use queer as a synonym of LGBTQ+ but I still feel like the meaning of the word has gone through some degradation in the way many of the public uses it. |
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