In case it's not blindingly obvious, all pics here are from HanaKimi by Hisaya Nakajo and not by me. In my dreams.
The 2000s were a different time (kind of). On Friends, queerness was played for laughs, and homophobia always seemed to win out.
Hanakimi was different. In Hanakimi, homophobia was played for laughs, and queer dignity always seemed to win out.
I watched Umeda roll his eyes at all the homophobes, completely nonplussed. I saw him drily nudge them into line after homophobic outbursts. I saw him razz them with their own homophobia to make a gentle point, or perhaps just for his own mild amusement.
He was a three-dimensional character. I saw him... have an actual personality of his own. His dry sense of humour, his mildly jaded manner, his love-avoidant dating style, his big brother/mentor role with the students, flashbacks to his high school days, his family relationships.
I saw camp cliches of westernised gay men on 2000s Queer Eye or Will & Grace: frivolous, unthreatening, comical, ditzy. "It's okay if we're gay," they seemed to say, "because we're only here to make your girlfriend look fabulous. And gay sex is funny." Perhaps I am wrong, totally wrong, but they sometimes came across to me as... self-deprecating.
I mean, hey, nothing wrong with gay guys having a few laughs. Nothing wrong with being camp or lighthearted. I'm just saying, I needed some broader representation beyond that.
Umeda was dignified and droll. He took himself seriously. He took space - then let go of it, cos he was more interested in getting on with other things.
Hell, he even seemed to satirise the campness that might have been expected of him. (I mean, I don't know. What would I know about stereotypes of gay men in 2000s Japan?)
There were a couple of other extracts I wanted to put in here, but I don't have them on me.
Also, I very much want to respect copyright. I figure this is well within fair use rules, but even so, if the publisher/copyright holder wants me to take this down, please just say the word! Just forgive me if I'm not on here very often.
I do also want to talk about Hanakimi, binders and Ashiya's cross-dressing being the best and closest thing I had to transmasc representation in the 2000s. I realise that Ashiya's character was very much a cis-het girl, and not at all a trans man. Transmasc representation was sparse in the 2000s, okay? Another time.
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