To start off, this is positive and a little rambling, but I've been wanting to talk about it for a while, especially since it's pride month now. Much as I love Togame, Kiryu, and Mr. Homotron 3000 himself (Endo), Tsubaki will always be my favorite.
I'm a non-binary trans woman and the naunce with how they handle him is SO refreshing, affirming, and really good queer rep. And, look, Tsubaki is amazing - I would love for him to be trans, but that's not who he is and I love him for that and I love that for him. Do I wish Nii-sensei would at least explain if he's a cross dresser or gender queer or femboy? Yes. PLEASE. I want to know how he sees himself! But the answer is literally just, "chill girl, I'm just hot" and that's enough for me.
In the very rare instances when he's othered, everyone has his back, especially Ume in his backstory. Every single person just treats him as people, no waffling, confusion, or discomfort. All accepting, 100%. And no one pries to try and "understand" it when they're not likely to get it anyhow and would just make him uncomfortable. Hell, he even triggers Sakura's blush radar. And even though Ume doesn't seem to have the same feelings, he's still very supportive and doesn't distance himself at all. And his back story is handled with such delicacy that it actually gives the audience the exact sense of frightful anticipation when admitting to something that's an integral part of you but not socially acceptable- especially in the anime.
And, speaking of the anime, let's talk about the English VA for a second. I don't know if the VA lurks here, but if you do I really hope you see this. I wanted to be a VA, even went to college for it for a few years - that training let me do my own voice training when I realized I was trans without having to fumble throughit like so many trans women do. And I've been hurt so many times by queer rep pulling back at the last second. Whether it was queer baiting or caving to pressure or bad casting or whatever...
I was really worried about how they'd handle this voice. I was particularly scared the casting director wouldn't understand well enough the subtleties of complex gender expression and we'd end up with a voice that was a cishet dude faking a girl voice or, worse, that they'd play it 100% straight with kind of a beefy, normal dude voice. I had something very specific in mind with Endo and I'm still reserving judgement, and absolutely nothing against the VA, but it sounds almost like the standard kind of deep slightly rough-around-the-edges shonen protag Aleks Le tends to play and that choice had me sweating.
But Tsubaki's English VA blew me out of the &#^%ing water. It doesn't sound like it's a man who this is his first time putting on girl voice. It doesn't sound super straight. It also doesn't sound like a stereotypical campy gay guy. It doesn't even sound like a practiced drag queen's stage voice. One thing you learn when voice training becomes a survival skill is how to break down the differences in the way men and women speak as well as how certain subcultures might change that.
What I hear from Tsubaki's VA is someone who *gets* it. The performance knocks it out of the park. The consonants are softer, words flow together more, there's a breathiness and lilt to the voice. There are squeaks and slinks whenever he's gushing about someone, usually Ume, in ways that none of the aforementioned subcultures do. But it's also played with just a bit of that masculinity to convey that Tsubaki still sees himself as a guy, no matter what he likes or how he presents. The delicacy with which both the manga and anime handle his backstory is the same care with which they cast and directed Tsubaki's VA. It's so, so much more than I dared hope for and it's almost making me cry just to write about how much it means to me.
From the bottom of my heart, I want to thank the community for telling the 'phobes abd haters to gtfo. This is animated by cute-girls-doing-cute-things CloverWorks, y'all, did you expect Berserk?!
But also, how everyone says Suba'ki rather than Tsu-Ba-Ki? Okay, that one bothers me a little.
