Do you think there's much lgbt representation in Tokyo Ghoul? I know we have characters such as Nico (gay) and Mutsuki (trans) but I didnt know if there were any more.
I think there’s a pretty sizeable cast of LGBT+ characters in Tokyo Ghoul, actually - I just also happen to think the representation is pretty bad and that there’s a lot of negative coding. I’ll try and keep this short but here’s who I can think of off the top of my head:
→Mutsuki is a trans man and his struggle with his gender identity is tightly woven into his entire storyline in a lot of disturbing ways i.e. it’s a device used to reflect his mental instability and violent inclinations. He’s also in love with Haise, which is written as, uh, a little unhealthy.
→Big Madam is a trans woman who seemingly projects her own dysphoria onto her ‘loved’ one (Juuzou), a child that’s been snatched from his family and is forced to disembowel others for entertainment; she wants him to remain a feminine ‘doll’ so she castrates him. She was always abusive but some of that is anchored specifically in her relationship with gender.
→Juuzou’s gender is brought up a lot - after he’s taken in by the CCG, he’s registered as ‘sexless’ and ridiculed by other investigators (not that this is presented as good or fair). He’s constantly infantilised throughout the story as a result, and it becomes a running gag.
→Kanae (afab) lives as a man - personally, I think they do so out of social obligation and want to live as a woman - it’s their dying wish to be recognised as Karren, not Kanae, in their final moments with Shuu.
→Rikai, unlike Yusa and Shio, is never assigned a gender in their character profile. I think they’re the only character in the story whose gender is never specified?→Tsukiyama is blatantly in love with Kaneki - again, his sexuality is (frustratingly) never really confirmed in canon but I think you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who believes his feelings are platonic. That love is completely warped and deviant through Shuu’s whole goal of consuming Kaneki; negatively coded.
→Nico, I’ve talked about before - I had always read Nico as non-binary but people who are more familiar with LGBT+ culture in Japan suggested otherwise; that he’s a fairly accurate representation of many gay Japanese men, so I’ll defer to that reading since mine was very Eurocentric! Either way, his gender and appearance are also running gags, and his interest in men is super creepy and predatory (especially wrt Ayato).
→Yamori? A lot of people of people don’t consider Yamori to be LGBT+ but I’ve always read him as gay. I think his relationship with Nico was probably sexual but, even if it wasn’t, Nico is definitely presented as sexually gratified by Yamori’s abuse.
→Urie is implied to have romantic feelings towards Mutsuki. I feel like there’s a lot of queer baiting with Urie in particular; to offer so many hints about his feelings and not follow through with them was really... eh.
→Hsiao is also strongly implied to be romantically interested in other women - Saiko.
→Matsuri is gay; he has no interest whatsoever in his wife, and he’s very open about his feelings towards Urie. He’s also a lot older than Urie, which I find pretty dodgy, and he’s super creepy and predatory towards him.
→Yomo... is maybe bi/pan? He tells Nico he likes women in an omake but his internal thoughts when he’s talking to Touka in the same omake suggest he’s open to men too. I don’t think his relationship with Uta is purely platonic and I was frustrated by the end of the manga that it wasn’t explored properly, although I never really expected it to be anyway.
→Uta tells Urie that girls are cute and also that Urie is sexy - he’s presumably bi/pan. Again with the Yomo/Uta queerbaiting, it’s predominantly Uta whose written as having a lot of Big Gay Feelings so to not have those explicitly explored is... womp womp. From subtext, he’s similar to Tsukiyama in that, if romantic feelings do exist, they’re totally corrupted and scary and fucked up.
Obviously there’s a little more nuance but, yeah, I think a lot of harmful stereotypes are reinforced and, where there is potential for honest and interesting discussions, Ishida trails off and doesn’t commit to representing them.
