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I love the variety in picks here! I've read so many of these, but personal favorites include The Bride Was a Boy, Nagata Kabi's works, Boys Run the Riot, Our Dreams at Dusk, and They Were 11! I'll also be picking up I Wanna Be Your Girll and Stop!! HIbari-kun! on release.

I would love for My Journey to Her to get a physical release, as I'm not really a digital person, and will second Steve on Bokura no Hentai.

Thanks for all your recs! I haven't read many of these so this will be a useful guide. It would be cool if there was a list of all the mentioned stuff at the end of these columns so we can reference it quickly if we forgot to note the name of one that sounds neat.

I read so many books on the Onimai to Inside Mari spectrum as a teenager, it is really wild coming back to stories like that when you're trans and finally understanding what drew you to them.

To drop some additional recommendations, in terms of being very LGBT-focused there's Love Me For Who I Am, which I quite enjoyed. For a more general recommendation in the yuri manga category, I would like to give a shout out to The Moon on a Rainy Night, which I love to bits - it's easily one of my favorite ongoing titles in general. Can highly recommend to any fan of yuri and/or high quality down to earth character drama. Also has an anime in the works, which I sincerely hope will turn out good.

Want to point out that Ryo being in love with Akira was first made explicit in the Shin Devilman spinoff from 1979, so that info was there loooong before Crybaby.

Claiming gay people are the only reason JoJo's Bizarre Adventure is popular in the west gives me the same impression of those people who say Team Fourstar is the only reason Dragonball is popular in the west. They were probably born in the 2000s and don't have the ability to speak a language other than English.

I can at least thank you two for not misgendering Dragona in an article that's about celebrating Pride Month. Although the fact no gender was said at all for him was probably an intentional choice so a bit of a side-eye there I'm afraid.

Rodem wrote:

Want to point out that Ryo being in love with Akira was first made explicit in the Shin Devilman spinoff from 1979, so that info was there loooong before Crybaby.

What spinoff, it was made explicit in the original manga itself! Right before the final battle, Ryo/Satan has a talk with Zenon where they openly discuss that Ryo is in love with Akira. Crybaby actually cut off that dialogue, so no idea why it's being called the more "explicit" version.

John the Dark Lord wrote:

Rodem wrote:

Want to point out that Ryo being in love with Akira was first made explicit in the Shin Devilman spinoff from 1979, so that info was there loooong before Crybaby.

What spinoff, it was made explicit in the original manga itself! Right before the final battle, Ryo/Satan has a talk with Zenon where they openly discuss that Ryo is in love with Akira. Crybaby actually cut off that dialogue, so no idea why it's being called the more "explicit" version.

You’re probably right actually! I haven’t read or watched anything Devilman related since around the time Crybaby was released so I completely forgot about that dialogue! Shame on me! I really should revisit Devilman because I’m specifically obsessed with well-written queer characters that are unhinged and/or not “good” people, and Ryo is such a monumental figure for that!! So ty for pointing that out!!!!

I do like Crybaby too but yea it def shouldn’t be credited for being the work that confirms Ryo’s queerness. (Glad we can agree on that!)

Wow... I've read about half of these. I wasn't expecting anyone bringing up Bokura no Hentai.

Daizo wrote:

To drop some additional recommendations, in terms of being very LGBT-focused there's Love Me For Who I Am, which I quite enjoyed. For a more general recommendation in the yuri manga category, I would like to give a shout out to The Moon on a Rainy Night, which I love to bits - it's easily one of my favorite ongoing titles in general. Can highly recommend to any fan of yuri and/or high quality down to earth character drama. Also has an anime in the works, which I sincerely hope will turn out good.

I second Love Me for Who I Am, and I need to check The Moon on a Rainy Night.

What I did read of F. COMPO, I remember being quite queer-positive. I also really want that to be licensed.

While it's a novel and not a manga, I cannot help but mention The Mimosa Confessions, my magnum opus in the very meager trans category ( we have plenty of Gender Bender series but i just can't considere them in the same category ) and without doubt in my current top 3 all kind of queer series with Shuu ni Ichido Classmate o Kau Hanashi and WATANARE. Seriously don't be stupid production commitees and just announce its anime already.

Count me in for the recommendations of "Love Me for Who I Am" and "The Moon on a Rainy Night." I've probably read all the otokonoko-type manga (another very rare category) and the majority of yuri out there, but those two certainly stand out. It would be nice if the current yuri series expansion, which has been ongoing for a few years, could spread to the otokonoko and trans girl categories; I would love to see more of them.

Also, while mainstream Manga Plus have some LGBTIQ+-esque? series:
Unfortunatelly, most of them in the premium plan:
- Blue Flag
- Hina Change
- Sui-tô! (only in Spanish)
- Ghostbuster Osamu (more subtext than text)
- The Pension life Vampire ("they were roomates")
- Abyss Rage (secondary characters, still, undeniable)
Probably I left some

And for a while, in the open "free" content:
- Proustian Moment

eyesonbea wrote:

Claiming gay people are the only reason JoJo's Bizarre Adventure is popular...

What was actually said:

Lucas wrote:

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure introduced an explicitly gender non-conforming protagonist in Part 9's Dragona. Despite this, the manga is a tentpole in the queer anime community and was partially responsible for me figuring out my relationship with attraction and gender expression.

Steve wrote:

I have seen people online get really upset at the implication that JoJo's is anything but the straightest of straight manga, and that is the funniest hill to die on.

Lucas wrote:

If you're reading this and you think JoJo is straight in the year 2025, I don't know what to tell ya, bud! Araki dropped a Dua Lipa shoutout within the first couple of pages of this latest part, and I'd be SHOCKED if it ended without at least one Stand named 「Pink Pony Club」. Queer fans were instrumental in getting the JJBA fandom off the ground internationally, and we'll never cede the series to meme lords who refuse to check out anything past Part 4.

"Queer fans were instrumental" =/= "gay people are the only reason."

I forgot "Stop!! Hibari-kun" got licensed. I remember their preview for it called Hibari transgender girl rather than a crossdressing boy despite the creator stating multiple times Hibari is a guy. Unless they have since corrected that mistake I anticipate another "I Think I Turned My Childhood Friend Into a Girl" situation pops up and people have to fight for a revised and accurate translation.

Nekbone wrote:

I forgot "Stop!! Hibari-kun" got licensed. I remember their preview for it called Hibari transgender girl rather than a crossdressing boy despite the creator stating multiple times Hibari is a guy. Unless they have since corrected that mistake I anticipate another "I Think I Turned My Childhood Friend Into a Girl" situation pops up and people have to fight for a revised and accurate translation.

These situations are complicated. On the one hand, we have the word of the author that Hibari was one thing. On the other hand, the way the author describes Hibari in interviews and in the plot would clearly describe a transgender girl in modern terminology. Especially Hibari constantly wanting to be seen as a girl and being upset or ribbing them when people perceive Hibari as a boy.

I don't know nor have I heard of anyone that uses the term "crossdressing boy" or "crossdresser" to describe who they are but is also upset to be perceived as a boy in the modern day. Modern audiences would not understand this person as a crossdressing boy, not because they are forcing modern identities onto a character but "crossdresser" commonly refered to trans people back in the day. So when the author says "crossdressing boy," they aren't necessarily excluding the possibility of Hibari being trans, they were just using an old fashioned term that meant something different when it was published compared to now.

The definition they probably intended was "a person that was assigned a male sex and now dresses contrary to that." That would fit with US lingo for trans people at the time at least, though I can't speak for Japan. I'd say that it's actually more inaccurate to leave an archaic term that is confusing than update terms, otherwise the plot makes no sense. It's like if a character said "that's cool" in Japanese literally but meant "that's ice cold" in American parlance (because cool isn't always bad here and can also signal agreement) and people were up in arms it wasn't translated literally even though it is clearly more accurate. Too bad for them, one is clearly conveying the story better. Good for those specific people that want the most literal and incongruous translation possible, but often times audiences would rather read a work that conveys the story properly than try to parse the implied meaning of literally translated Japanese phrases.

Besides the nuance of the terminology there is also the text of the work. Why does a boy care if people see him as a boy? The only way a boy would care about being perceived as a boy is if there is discomfort with the gender people associate with the person. Having discomfort with your gender expression and working to change it socially is the definition of a transition! There is literally zero reason for a crossdressing boy (in the common modern understanding of the term) to be upset with being seen as a boy, clearly there are other terms that work better.

Regardless, people will definitely cry accuracy or censorship no matter what. I have actually seen somebody claim that translating a text more accurately from Japanese that skips liberties made by the localizing crew was censorship. Censorship and accuracy have become meaningless terms because unless someone is a translator and shows you their work people will claim literally anything they dislike is either censorship or translator liberty.

I'm glad they just translated it in the way that is clearly most accurate to how the original author used the term and I'm especially glad they didn't insist on literalizing themselves into a contradictory text.

Before we round out Pride Month (which should be every month Smile

), I just want to thank Fishlion for your contribution to this thread. It goes without saying your support for LGBTQ anime fans is appreciated. You brighten this forum and make us feel a true part of the community even with the growing pushback and violence against queer folks in the world these days.

I also want to give a shout out to the ANN Editorial team and TWIA for even publishing this. It is so empowering to the anime community that this site is recognized as an inclusive, welcoming and nonjudgmental to anyone with a love of anime and manga (queer and non-queer alike).

One further comment is how it's difficult to find titles closely related to my own lived experiences as a nonbinary transperson. While more transgender representation and more authentic representation in manga is needed, this couldn't be more true for nonbinary and gender nonconforming characters in particular. I hope we can see more such works with even more sensitivity and realism or even the few existing ones made into anime.

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