Forum - View topicThe Girl Called Prince: How In the Clear Moonlit Dusk Asks Who Gets to Decide Your Gender Performanc
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A Mystery
 Posts: 1962 Location: Netherlands |
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If the anime was like the article described, I would love it. I can tell the writer loved the story and loves writing.
But I don't think the anime does the genders or romance justice. - That scene where Yoi lies in the school infirmary bed? Kohaku steps into her bed against her will. She said NO. And that is not the first and certainly not the last time he's been a pushy man not respecting any boundaries. The girl has to accept it. We women have been told that too many times. - Or the time where he was jealous because of the presence of a pretty coworker. Not cool. Not romantic. - The premise of Yoi figuring out what she wants to be, girly, manly, just herself, is terrific. But the friends around her keep spouting gender conforming nonsense. The story doesn't actually question what femininity or masculinity actually is and to what extent those concepts actually exist. Is a skirt really feminine? Pink? Make up? Demure behavior? Or are these just social constructs? |
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Duck Du Normandie
 SubscriberPosts: 74 |
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I came here to say exactly what A Mystery said perfectly. The manga has been on my to-read list for a long time, because I want it to be that questioning of gender roles the article author describes.
But the anime has honestly disappointing me. It touches on the questions but then immediately undercuts itself and runs to the safety of the usual shojo tropes. I am left questioning if the manga goes into the topics and depth that I am hoping for, or will I be just as disappointed. But the author makes a compelling argument for the manga, so I'll keep it on my to-read list for now. |
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kgw
 Posts: 1536 Location: Spain, EU |
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I agree with the previous comments. It'd be great if 'In the Clear...' were that manga, but it's not. From my point of view (which is not within the magazine's target demographic), it's just another version of the 'hot guy courting the "ugly duckling" girl who feels she has no right to be loved' trope. All the old tropes are there: he's a bit of a bad boy — pushy and unwilling to listen to the main character when she says no — but she's still attracted to him. Because "girls love bad guys, right?" The fact that shôjo magazines are still telling these kinds of stories from the '70s onwards says a lot.
Just one question, why the pics from the Brazilian edition of the manga? Not criticizing, simply surprised, EDIT: Brazilian edition. Last edited by kgw on Thu Feb 26, 2026 7:34 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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EmeraldSaucer
 Posts: 936 |
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Going to add on to the chain of comments about how this is definitely not the manga/anime to look to hoping for Gender Trouble. I still enjoy the manga for what it is (which tbh comes down a lot to the art more than anything it does on a writing level), but its exploration of gender absolutely stays on the level of aesthetic gimmick (a hook for prospective readers, as socially provocative as the chain of shojo about potential romances between new step-siblings), especially as the proceedings move forward with Yoi and Ichimura as a couple
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nvallabk
Posts: 6 |
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Hi, I'm the author of the article.
First of all, thank you for the thoughtful engagement—genuinely. But I want to clarify a few things about what the article does and doesn't argue. I never claimed the anime resolves the questions it raises, or that Kohaku is a model romantic partner. I explicitly compare him to Domyoji, call his behavior "the aggressive male lead that shoujo has been trafficking in for decades," and describe his pursuit as "possession dressed as passion, pursuit framed as devotion, the insistence that her discomfort exists to be overcome instead of respected." The critique is in the piece. I named it. On the infirmary scene specifically: I didn't ignore the invasive dynamic. I wrote that the threat Yoi feels there "lives not in violence but in visibility"—which is a reading of what that moment means for her as a character, not an endorsement of his behavior. On the argument that the series doesn't truly question gender constructs: I never said it offers answers. I said it raises questions, and I spent several paragraphs sitting in the ambiguity—"maybe she's genuinely comfortable with masculine presentation. Maybe it's a cage she's learned to call home. Maybe the question itself is wrong." A work doesn't need to resolve what it proposes for a reading of it to be valid. Critical analysis doesn't require the work to be politically impeccable. It requires reading what's actually there—including the tensions, the contradictions, and the ways the story both opens and closes doors. That's what I tried to do. And to answer the question about the Portuguese edition: the manga images are from my own copies. I'm Brazilian. |
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Joe Mello
 Posts: 2559 Location: Online Terminal |
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I can definitely appreciate the level of effort you took in crafting the article. Like others, my main takeaway is the anime is unworthy of the level you have elevated to, but I view that as a fault of the anime and not anything you did or wrote; however, I understand if you feel differently. I think the problem with Moonlight is it fits perfectly within a wish-fulfillment stereotype seen in female-targeted romance--that of an non-ideal girl becoming the object of desire for a boy of higher status--and has no intention of altering that fit. The only novelty is that instead of being a nerd or clumsy or a brat or from another world (literally or metaphorically) or a non-believer of Christmas* or any other number of flaws that would make a girl seem lesser than, Yoi's flaw (in the eyes of the story) is that she presents as a boy. One could even argue that Yoi's predicament isn't novel at all because being a tomboy is also a recurring protagonist flaw, and she's just a more extreme example. Either way, it's hard for me to engage in any philosophical topics Moonlight might present seriously when the anime shows no interest in thinking too hard beyond the typical "how to get boy in girl's pants". *-"This is an edit or two away from being a Hallmark movie" is an actual thought I had in my own head. |
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nvallabk
Posts: 6 |
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Thank you for the thoughtful response—this is genuinely the kind of engagement I was hoping the piece would generate.
I want to push back a little on the "elevating" point, though. The article is explicitly a critical reading of what the work proposes, not an assessment of how successfully it delivers on that. Those are different projects. I'm not reviewing the anime; I'm mapping the questions it raises, even when it fumbles the answers. On the "flaw girl" framework: I think it's a valid observation, but it misses something crucial. The difference between Yoi and every other "flaw girl" isn't the nature of the flaw—it's that Yoi's supposed flaw isn't actually hers. A clumsy girl is clumsy. A girl from another world is from another world. Yoi isn't masculine. She's read as masculine. That distinction is the entire point of the Butler analysis in the piece, and it's what separates Moonlit Dusk from straightforward wish-fulfillment: the story is at least gesturing toward the violence of imposed identity, even when the anime's execution doesn't always honor that. There's also a scene I find particularly striking that didn't make it into the article: Yoi and Kohaku in a park, being read by passing children as two boys together—a gay couple. Which reminded me immediately of a similar moment in Princess Jellyfish, where Tsukimi and Kuranosuke are read as two lesbians by children walking by. Both scenes are doing the same thing: showing that gender misreading cascades into assumptions about sexual orientation—that strangers don't read gender in isolation, they read the whole picture relationally and contextually, inferring who you must be attracted to based on who they think you are. Yoi alone is already read as a boy. Yoi next to a boy becomes half of a gay couple. How others read her sexual orientation shifts depending on what surrounds her. That's not aesthetic gimmick—that's Butler in practice rather than theory. On the "Prince" trope: I'd also distinguish between Moonlit Dusk and the works I explicitly named in the piece as genuinely revolutionary. Princess Knight, The Rose of Versailles, Revolutionary Girl Utena—those works used the Prince figure as a hook, interrogated what it meant, built entire worldviews around it, and left the genre permanently changed. I made that distinction clearly in the article. I'm not making that claim for Moonlit Dusk. What I'm saying is that it's working within that lineage, however imperfectly, and that the questions it inherits are worth taking seriously even when the execution falters. As for the trope proliferating: I've been reading The Guy She Was Interested In Wasn't a Guy at All. The protagonist there leads a completely split existence: at work she's read as masculine and that's where her schoolmate develops a crush on her, reading her as a boy. At school, she's read as herself—until she acts chivalrously toward her crush and classmates crown her "Prince" for exactly one week. It's a situational, fleeting label, not a permanent skin. Which makes Yoi's situation starker by comparison: she has never had the option of stepping out of it, not at school, not at work, not anywhere. I'll also be honest about my own relationship with the work, since I think it's relevant: I'm watching the anime and reading the manga simultaneously, and there are moments—especially around volume three—where I genuinely want to throw the whole thing across the room. There are scenes where Kohaku seems to see Yoi less as a person and more as a different kind of object, a novelty rather than a human being. That frustrates me. I also have a deep, visceral irritation with the way the story treats her physical space as available to him without her consent—and Moonlit Dusk is far from the worst offender. Hana-Kimi genuinely shocked me though: there's a sexual assault attempt against Mizuki Ashiya that the anime builds carefully and visually—the confinement, the physical invasion, the unambiguous intent—and then simply discards. The adult responsible fires the attacker quietly—offscreen. No police, no accountability, no naming of what happened. Mizuki herself deflects it into a joke about how strange it must be to be attacked as a boy. The narrative sees the violence, acknowledges it, and then chooses to sweep it offscreen as if it were nothing. In 2026. That's not a fumble. That's a choice, and it's an inexcusable one. All of that said, I do think critically about everything I watch and read, especially as a woman, because these questions don't land the same way for everyone. They land on me. That's not a bias that compromises the analysis—it's what makes the analysis worth doing in the first place. |
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