I often see people point to Class S as an example of Japanese lesbophobia and talk about it like it's "pseudoromance" or some pure, fleeting phase of life that teenage girls are expected to grow out of. Frankly, I think this viewpoint is ignorant at best, and more often a form of Usamerican cultural chauvinism. "Our out and proud lesbian stories" vs. "Their homophobic lesbian stories" type deal.
Cultural differences in romantic and sexual expression aside (more on that later), Class S is unambiguously a form of lesbian storytelling. Hanamonogatari is essentially the foundational Class S text. The short stories in it date from 1916-1924. The author, Yoshiya Nobuko, was a woman who resisted the socially conservative expectations of a well-to-do family to get married off. She effectively had a common-law wife from 1923 until her death in 1973, and even formally adopted her as a daughter in 1957 to share many of the medical and legal privileges that a marriage would have granted them. Another one of her works, Two Virgins in the Attic, ends with a pair of schoolgirls explicitly deciding to live together as a couple. If you're going to tell me that a lesbian pioneer was actually lesbophobic, I am going to tell you that you are full of shit.
The truth of the matter is that Class S takes an oblique approach to lesbianism because of prevailing social conservatism and publishing censorship when the genre was developing. Take a moment to ask yourself why a lesbian author might focus on the ephemerality of lesbian relationships in boarding schools. It's not lesbophobia, it is getting your heart broken over straight girls treating you as practice, the cruelty of having your love denied as "just a phase" by school administators, the expectation that even something real will eventually be crushed by the social and financial pressures to marry. Thematically, it is attempting to treasure the beautiful moments in an otherwise soul-crushing adolescence.
What's more is that throughout the 1920s, it slowly became effectively impossible to write about lesbian relationships in a direct manner. Though Hanamonogatari was published during the (relatively) liberalized Taishō era, there was still a deep fixation on public morality, especially concerning womens' social roles. Schoolgirl relationships were a popular theme through the 1920s, and its popularity meant they stories increasingly attracted blame for lovers' suicides between schoolgirl couples. As such, the stories were often subject to formal obscenity/moral censorship and editorial interference aimed at discouraging these relationships in the first place.
Modern Class S is sort of cast in the mold of Maria-sama ga miteru (Marimite), which began serializing as a light novel in 1998. It follows many of the same conventions as Class S, though the author Konno Oyuki was apparently unaware of the genre until well after she started publishing. Instead, it was conceived as more of a counterpoint/parody of all-male casts in BL fiction, though I suspect Kanno eventually began incorporating some of the genre's themes into her work as the serialization went on. The relationships in Marimite, much like in Class S, range from girls' school situationships to mutually-reciprocated lesbian relationships. Marimite proved to be an incredibly popular franchise, and a lot of those working in yuri novels and manga today are influenced by it. Importantly: many, if not most, of those creators are women, writing about lesbian and queerplatonic relationships primarily for an audience of other women.
The idea that these stories were intended to highlight lesbian relationships as just a phase is taking a heterocentric interpretation/explanation of them at its word. And I suspect the reason this extremely general "explanation" finds traction is that projects Usamerican cultural values about what queer relationships and the stories about them should look like onto another culture. To a Usamerican, "authenticity" must actively reflect and affirm specific identities and relationship dynamics.
You see this attitude reflected in reductive purity tests that Western fandom tends to apply ("it's not a lesbian relationship if they don't kiss!"), debates over whether "subtext yuri" is "real" yuri, or wholesale transplanting of specific Usamerican lesbian relationship dynamics into a different culture with statements like "Japanese authors don't write enough butchfemme yuri". And when these supposed criteria for a "real" lesbian story aren't met, it is held up as an example of Japanese (internalized) lesbophobia. In reality, it is just wearing Usamerican cultural blinders.
If you actually read these stories, you will find that the writers are simply following a different set of storytelling conventions and have a different focus on which parts of a relationship they find compelling. It might be more subtle or require a closer reading of character interactions, but it's usually there, plain as day. If you need additional reassurance, that's a failure of your imagination, not theirs.
Am I going to argue that Japan is free from homophobia or that Class S or yuri is uniformly pro-lesbian? No. (Internalized) lesbophobia is everywhere. Corporate hets will trade on subtlety to deny a lesbian relationship exists. Writers, especially hets who are adapting a lesbian or queerplatonic work, can bring homophobic attitudes to the table with them. But distinguishing which is which requires you to at least make the effort to understand another culture's own standards before you filter them through your own. You cannot and should not make sweeping generalizations about a culture when you've put the barest minimum of effort into understanding it.
you might know that class s relationships and related 20th century girls' stories were the progenitor of the yuri genre. for the first time ever more than one of these stories has been translated into english: 12 chapters of the manga adaptation of nobuko yoshiya's famous hana monogatari. they are beautiful and bittersweet and full of queer longing, but not exactly romance or yuri. i highly recommend them on their own merits but also if you want to know more of our history. i've been waiting for this for a very long time.
A manga adaptation of a selection of Nobuko Yoshiya's classic short stories about relationships between high school girls.
@cd-call-critical-blog (possibly?) compares Class S relationship with how Disney treated the relationship between Raps and Cass. via this post: https://www.tumblr.com/cd-call-critical/778159136866222080/this-is-a-thing-with-yuri-and-girls-love-anime-in
Spoilers for near end of novel a guide for background characters to survive in a manga
There's such a big difference between Su Bei in the beginning who's like, "Looks like my death was the best. After all, I have no family left. No one would grieve for me."
To at the end where he fake dies where the whole Class S mourns for him and Su Bei tells only Class S that's he's alive because he's worried they'll be sad and distracted by his death.
Below the cut is part 1, which goes into the literary background informing the sapphic subtext between Akane Osaki and Hikaru Koragi (3.7K words)
part 2
part 3
Akane-banashi and The Inherent Homoeroticism of a Shojo Theatre Rivalry
People have talked about Akane-banashi‘s “(homoerotic) shonen rivalry with women” but I really want to emphasize how cool it is that Akahika hits the typical shonen narrative beats AND plays into established yuri and shojo dynamics. While Akane-banashi is known to make direct references to shonen tropes(see: rakugo-quest gag), it would be short-sighted to assume the story is not informed by the history of shojo and/or yuri. We are in an era where shonen and seinen stories are sometimes indistinguishable from a "typical" modern shojo manga (why this is the case is a whole other discussion)! To examine the depth of the Akahika character dynamic, it is ESSENTIAL that we fall back to the legacy of shojo and yuri.
I will briefly give historic context on the queerness of a shojo manga rivalry, them dive into how Takarazuka theatre has influenced the queer themes explored in mainly (but not exclusively) shojo, and finally illustrate how Akane-banashi embodies both legacies through the rivalry between Akane and Hikaru.
Historians Would Call Them Shojo Rivals
There’s a long history of shojo that features rivalries between two young girls, similar to shonen manga and rivalries between two young boys. The intensity and intimacy of shojo rivalries can and often are read as homoerotic by the audience, such as the main girls from Glass Mask. Furthermore, explicitly homoerotic yuri center rivalry dynamics like Shiro to Kuro: Black and White, I’m in Love with the Villainess (inspired by historic fantasy shojo), and one series literally called Shojo Manga Protagonist x Rival-san (you can't really get more on the nose than that).
As you can imagine, yuri and shojo have a lot of overlap. This makes sense, given they also share similar origins. Anime/manga about intimate/emotionally complex relationships between two girls can be traced back to the Class S genre of the early 1900s. Class S literature (not comics. novels) usually consisted of a tragic sapphic high school romance between an underclassman and upperclassman at an all-girl's school. Girls could fall in love within, but only for that brief period of time of their youthful school years. These relationships were considered "test runs" that would be dissolved once the girls "grew up" and became real women with real husbands. While Class S eventually fell out of fashion, it went on to strongly influence future works. Influential yuri series Maria Watches Over Us has been considered the spiritual follow up to Class S, even though it began serialization in the 90s, decades after the peak of Class S. Now, nearly a century later, we still feel the influence of Class S in how queer intimacy between women is written in light novels/manga/anime.
The way that Class S made space for intimacy between women is an exercise in visualizing a more free reality for all women. Put in other words, simply allowing girls to connect with each other outside patriarchal expectations can be read as queer. This is much of the appeal of the Class S all-girls school’s setting: a contained social environment with your peers where women are not faced with the expectation to become wives and mothers just yet.
We can feel this legacy of exploring womanhood and queer gender/sexuality, hand in hand, through the modern viral "old woman yuri" manga series Hanamonogatari (2022). Hanamonogatari shares a title with one of the most influential Class S works to be published, which was written by openly feminist and lesbian author Nobuko Yoshiya. Hanamonogatari discusses womanhood in the context of a sapphic romance, but also the importance of intergenerational solidarity between women, women forming relationships outside of the institution of marriage, and other forms of intimacy between women. Furthermore, the original Class S Hanamonogatari collection is the apparatus guiding the protagonist’s self realization of these feminist themes. The intersectional nature of Hanamongatari's depiction of feminism and lesbianism highlights how a supposedly niche genre is not any different from other stories that center women’s perspectives.
With this in mind, perhaps it is only expected that shojo magazines, which developed to be known as written "by women, for women," published early yuri manga. Popular shojo magazines like Ribon, Margaret, or Princess from the 1960s-1990s would release explicitly homoromantic stories about women with the caveat that their relationship would fail or fizzle out (in typical Class S-esque fashion). Most notable out of this type of retro shojo/yuri would probably be Dear Brother, made by the creator of Rose of Versailles.
Unsurprisingly, what was much more common in shojo was to release stories that were littered with sapphic subtext, but not enough to really be considered textually romantic. Echoing the kouhai/senpai peer dynamic of Class S, classic shojo rivalries typically feature two young girls in the same field where the protagonist is the new, odd, up-start girl who admires her rival, a girl who usually is upper-class, considered more refined, and has an established reputation among their peers. Refined senpai might take on a mentor/older sister role with kouhai protagonist while simultaneously thwarting her progress. The protagonist is viewed as a threat to the popular girl's status/reputation, but is resolved by both girls acknowledging each other as worthy opponents. Kouhai matures in the process, senpai learns to let go a little.
The homoerotic intimacy of the shojo rivalry comes from two girls who are the only ones who seem to truly understand each other among their peers. The refined girl seems perfect on the outside, but has her own problems that are unexpectedly soothed by connecting with the new girl. The new girl is insecure about her inexperience and considered naive, but she is able to find inner strength when she is challenged by her rival, and begins to acknowledge her own worth because she is someone who can challenge their rival right back. They envy their rival, but strangely enough, feel like they can show their rival their more vulnerable moments, and perhaps even most shockingly, want to always make sure their rival brings their best selves to the competition. If the girls are rivals in both love and their careers, their respect for each other as colleagues usually trumps all else--they literally care about their relationship more than the relationship with their potential love interest. Add this in with being hyper-aware of each other's beauty, some classic "do i want to be her or stand next to her" emotional gray zone, and yeah. You get the sapphic-coded shojo rivalry.
Whether the battlefield is in love or their next career opportunity, this specific character dynamic is consistent across different story genres and time periods in shojo history: retro dramas like Candy Candy (Candy and Flanny), modern high school romance like From Me to You (Sawako and Kurumi), magical girl like Sailor Moon (Usagi and Rei) or Little Witch Academia (Akko and Diana), sports like Aim for Ace (Hiromi and Reika), or theatre like Glass Mask (Maya and Ayumi). Obviously, this isn't the case for all shojo, especially since the “love rival who exists to tear down the protagonist” character role is also very popular. The key point to grasp is that this specific rivalry dynamic continues to bring queer subtext to the forefront of shojo to this day.
There is obviously overlap with shonen rivlaries and how I'm trying to define a "classic" shojo rivalry, but there are also important distinctions ie gender roles, historic connection to exploring themes about gender/sexuality leaning into exploring queer themes, trajectory of character arcs, art language, etc that are distinct between the two demographics. Even if you don't agree with my claim that Akahika's dynamic builds off of this legacy of shojo rivalries, I want more people to start considering how simple story concepts change in execution depending on if a story is catered to male or female audience, and why those differences might exist.
Enter Stage Right, Takarazuka Revue
Shojo/yuri fanatics reading this might have noticed I side-stepped a pretty big factor that ties together Class S, yuri, and shojo, and that's the Takarazuka Revue.
Takarazuka Revue is a prestigious all-female Japanese theatre troupe known for extravagant dancing and singing performances where women are casted into strictly male or female roles. The troupe originated in the early 20th century and was founded as Japan began to adopt the cultural influence of Western theatre. Traditional kabuki theatre was already well established, but women were banned from participating (which is so crazy because kabuki was originally popularized by all-women's troupes but that's a whole other topic). Similar to how actors in kabuki troupes played both male and female roles, so too would the all-women troupe. Do not mistake this for feminist origins, however: Takarazuka Revue was established by a rich man and continues to be run by primarily men to train students for a niche entertainment industry. It is meant to be palatable and profitable, and the strong adherence to male/female dichotomy reflects this.
Perhaps not-quite-so coincidentally, both Class S literature and Takarazuka Revue rose to fame at similar time points. Their popularity was so loud among young girls that they helped establish young girls as a viable target audience for marketing in popular media. In a similar vein the revue productions, Class S literature balanced depicting queerness in a way that was palatable to society (definitely less palatable than the theatre though. Class S was temporarily banned from being published for approx a decade). Furthermore, the training school established for Takarazuka girls relies on a kouhai-senpai mentorship dynamic, which naturally bleeds into the same romanticization of the underclassman/upperclassman dynamic seen among Class S school girls, modern yuri, and shojo (this isn’t to say any kouhai-senpai dynamic is gay lol but that in certain contexts, it has sapphic subtext. I also don’t want to imply causation between Class S and Takarazuka Revue because that is simply not the case. I only mean to highlight how they both impacted the cultural consciousness).
Despite attempts to emphasize the Takarazuka Revue as totally not queer, by nature of the gender-crossing acting roles, it has undeniable queer subtext. The most popular figures from Takarazuka Revue performances are specifically the actresses placed in exclusively male lead roles. Feeding into the genderqueer identity, they are expected to perform masculinity on and off the stage. The fantasy of a celebrity actress who is able to perfectly embody the "ideal" feminine and "ideal" masculine became iconic in Japanese pop-culture, especially with young female audiences (aka target shojo demographic).
The “girl prince” and/or bishonen character trope in shojo is inspired by the Takarazuka male leads. The first shojo manga, Princess Knight, features a literal girl-prince protagonist, and the author, Osamu Tezuka, cited inspiration from the revue performances he would watch with his grandmother. The legendary Rose of Versailles is another acclaimed shojo manga that based its own girl-prince character, Lady Oscar, on the Takarazuka Revue. In a whirl of serendipity, the Revue’s adaptation of Rose of Versailles would rise to be their most successful work to date, even prompting sequel productions. The adaptation would not only elevate Rose of Versailles into a franchise, but cement the Takarazuka Revue’s reputation as a prestigious entertainment company. More recently, Takarazuka Revue released a stage musical adaption of the highly acclaimed shojo manga Boys Over Flowers in 2019. Through the last ~50 years or so, the popularity and profits of shojo manga and Takarazuka Revue continue to build off of each other.
We see the influence of the Revue show up again in famous yuri relationships like Sailor Uranus (girl-prince type)and Sailor Neptune (princess type) in Sailor Moon, whose creator has also expressed inspiration from Takarazuka Revue. Another influential yuri shojo work that features inspiration from the Revue is Revolutionary Girl Utena (RGU), with again the girl prince/girl princess sapphic romance coupled with the story’s theatrics resembling a stage production. “Girl-prince” characters are also common in shojo romcoms like Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun and Kiss Him Not Me!, albeit as gag characters. Basically, any iteration of the pretty-boy-girl type you see in anime and manga is a downstream product of Takarazuka Revue.
The influence of Takarazuka Revue can be broadly felt across shojo covering theatre settings. On top of RGU’s girl prince/girl princess couple, there's an all-women’s theatre club that performs an interlude in nearly every episode. More recent stories like Revue Starlight (not published as shojo but had obvious shojo influences) and Kageki Shojo essentially recreate a fantasy Takarazuka Revue training school environment that’s set up as a modern take on Class S dynamics and homoerotic shojo rivalries (Revue Starlight leans more to the rivalry, Kageki Shojo leans more to the plausible deniability of Class S). Expanding the scope of theatre shojo, we can also observe classic rivalry dynamic from ballet shojo like Princess Tutu or Swan. Ballet shojo manga is actually it's own distinct shojo sub-genre that blew up starting in the 70s. Even a modern seinen (targeted to young adult men) series like Oshi no Ko develops a classic shojo theatre rivalry dynamic by having two actresses face off in a live stage theatre production, even though both of them usually act for recorded productions like movies or TV shows! That is all to say, we likely would not have the theatre rivalries between fictional women we know today without the Takarazuka Revue popularizing the idea of the stage as an ideal setting for women to explore complex relationships with each other.
Shojo-banashi
We’ve established that there is a strong precedent for sapphic-coded theatre rivalries between young women in primarily (but not exclusively) shojo manga. Where does Akane-banashi fit into all this?
To make this easy to digest, let's break down how Akane and Hikaru's dynamic compares to elements of a shojo rivalry mentioned in the first section of this post:
Senpai-Kouhai Dynamics: What's so fun about Akahika is that they are both the senpai/kouhai for different elements of rakugo. Akane is obviously more experienced in the art of rakugo, but Hikaru is more experienced as someone who is older and has an established acting career. Hikaru knew how to cater to her audience from the get-go. She came into the field already hyper-aware of how she presents herself to others. Knowing this, I think it's especially interesting how Hikaru selectively tells Akane not to use honorifics with her, but demands the opposite from Karashi. It shows that she is making an effort to be more open with Akane than her other rivals (you could argue that she does this to mess with Karashi, but again, this would show she has more of a teasing relationship with Karashi, which is distinct from her dynamic with Akane). If we are talking surface level, however, yes, Akane and Hikaru match the typical spunky young kouhai and fancy mature senpai in shojo manga, which I go into in item 2 below.
Naive Protagonist vs Refined Senior: Akane is our protagonist, and also characterized as someone who is reckless, shameless, rowdy, impulsive, etc....but notably NOT naive, which makes her distinct from the "normal girl" shojo protagonists meant to represent young femininity. Regardless, she has more youthful energy in contrast to Hikaru, who is not only older, but maintains an elegant fashion style and a professional, princess-like persona. Of course, except when she doesn't. A fun layer to Hikaru's character is that she's petty, ambitious, and competitive! Despite her appearances, she's not the type to walk off and pick the high road. Isn't it heartwarming how Akane brings out that side of her? Furthermore, despite all appearances, Akane has a sensitive side to her, as seen when she starts crying alone while grieving her loss to Hikaru/inability to win with her father's rakugo. In fact, it is because Akane inspired Hikaru to be commit to rakugo (therefore becoming Akane's senpai), and Hikaru prompts Akane to be more vulnerable, that their dynamic fits in with other Naive Protag vs Refined Senior shojo pairs, the caveat being there are many facets of their personality that exist outside of their dynamic.
The New Girl Shakes Your Worldview: Similar to point 1, this kinda goes both ways, because they are both kinda the "new girl." Hikaru immediately scopes out Akane as her competitor by accurately perceiving her strong rakugo background before even seeing her perform. But Akane doesn't truly become a rival until Hikaru has realized that Akane was on a higher rakugo level than her. It triggers her deep dissatisfaction with the trajectory of her career, but in a deeper level, reminds her of times she felt dissatisfied in her youth when people would underestimate or exclude her for being a girl. Emboldened by a fundamental desire to prove herself, she decides to commit to becoming a rakugoka. Akane, on the other hand, doesn't really perceive Hikaru as a threat until Hikaru declares her own intent to beat Akane, followed by Akane experiencing her first major loss because of Hikaru. Losing to Hikaru helps cement in Akane's mind the lesson she gained during her performance, which is that it's not enough to chase her father's shadow. Both girls are able to change how they view themselves and their core goals because of their interactions with each other. While Karashi also decided to pursue rakugo because of Akane, Akane has not had her view of herself shaken by Karashi. Only Akane and Hikaru have this degree of reciprocity.
Value Rivalry Over the Guy/Love Interest: Granted, I don't think Karashi was ever going to be a love interest for either of them. That said, it's interesting how the the story goes out of their way to highlight how Hikaru and Karashi COULD be seen as a couple, but they definitely most certainly are NOT because Hikaru said, and I quote, "I only have eyes for you, Akane!" Hikaru prioritizes her rivalry with Akane over the perception she could be attracted to Karashi. If you haven't noticed yet, all these "classic shojo rivalry story elements" I've listed so far tend to neatly fit Hikaru more than they fit Akane (i love akane. but she definitely doesn't' act like a typical cutesy energetic kohai who needs help from her mature gorgeous senpai and cries a lot), so I also find it interesting Hikaru is so vocal about this in particular.
Next, we can examine Akahika in the context of Takarazuka Revue’s influence on yuri and shojo:
Girl prince/girl princess: I'll be frank: the bishonen character of Akane-banashi is Kaisei, and he doesn't even have anything close to the noble personality traits of a girl-prince LOL. Neither Akane nor Hikaru fit the girl-prince or girl-princess archetypes very well. However, when it comes to rakugo, the story does present them with contrasting gender presentation. Akane, inspired by her dad, proudly wears a men's kimono to every performance. When tasked with being in touch with her more "seductive feminine" side for the Fetching Tea arc, she realizes that doesn't suit her at all and adjusts her interpretation to both fit the story and her nature. This isn't to say that Akane isn't feminine, but the story repeatedly goes through lengths to show she, personally, doesn’t adhere to traditional femininity, and she doesn't have to. Hikaru, on the other hand, show a preference for more traditionally feminine things, but also seems to struggle with the pressure to always seem dignified. She's a bit of a clumsy princess. This is most apparent when Akane and Hikaru first meet, where Hikaru as a lop-sided obi knot in her women's kimono that Akane fixes for her. Akahika may not fit the glamorous Takarazuka male lead/female lead dichotomy, but their failure to do so adds to their dynamic and personal relationship with gender, so I still wanted to bring it up.
Empowered by the Character You're Cast As: This one is unique to theatre shojo and more indirectly tied to the revue. An example of how this works would be two ballerinas training to perform "Swan Lake" where one is the Black Swan, Odile and the other the White Swan, Odette. The Black Swan role pushes the dancer to be more bold, while the White Swan role pushes the dancer to be more gentle (this is also basically what happened in Yuri on Ice, a story that, wait, incorporates theatre....is gay...has bishonen men...it's almost as if-). What is important is that these roles not only prompt character growth, but present the shojo rivals as two sides of the same coin. Rakugo is obviously different since actors don't play as just one character. Still, Akane-banashi uses the stories Akahika select to build up their rivalry and character arcs during the Changing Time arc.
Basically every rakugo story in Akane-banashi does something to prompt character growth in the performer, so that's already covered. What makes Akahika mirror each other in Changing Time is subtle, but no less effective at tying them together. Hikaru picks the story "Hanami Revenge," which includes the setting of watching cherry blossoms bloom. It's almost like she's stealing the "blooming cherry blossoms" in Akane's family name, Osaki, in order to pursue her revenge for the Karaku Cup (this is directly pointed out in the narration). Furthermore, Hikaru picks a story that allows her to push her voice actor training to the next level--it's a story that suits her specialties as a rakugoka. It's a story that fits her nin, which is a rakugo principle we're introduced to during this arc. Akane, on the other hand, actively chose a story suited to her father's nin, which works against her own. However, her story of choice still empowers her because it helps her connect with both her and her father's rakugo essence on a deeper level. Akane loses to Hikaru not just because she couldn't maintain audience engagement, but because as Kaisei says, "the stage isn't the place to find yourself." The Changing Time arc might not connect Hikaru and Akane as cleanly as a Black Swan/White Swan dichotomy, but I would say it accomplishes something as similar as possible for a rakugo story.
I mentioned this briefly, but it’s also important to acknowledge that Akane and Hikaru’s rivalry is written to be very distinct from Akane and Karashi OR Hikaru and Karashi. Hikaru bemoans about her chance to face Akane “in the heat of battle.” Meanwhile, Karashi begrudgingly finds himself casually hosting training events with BOTH of them, separately. Karashi spends more time outside of rakugo with Hikaru than Akane, but Hikaru shows blatant favoritism by only letting Akane refer to her without honorifics. Karashi and Akane/Hikaru are rivals who give each other advice and challenge each other to grow, yes, but they don’t create dread in each other the way Akane and Hikaru do. They don’t addrress each other’s life perspectives like Akane and Hikaru do. They don’t have the same senpai-kouhai like dynamics that Akane and Hikaru do. And, ironically enough, they don't have male lead/female lead dynamics with each other the way Akane and Hikaru do. Karashi, frankly, has way more (one sided) tension with a random side character who showed up for one chapter than he does with Akane or Hikaru. It’s very likely that side character exists just to show that he will never to have that kind of relationship with either of these girls.
Karashi fills a needed role in the girl's lives that an intimate rivalry isn’t going to give them. As someone closer in age to both Hikaru and Akane than the rest of the cast, he forms a casual intimacy with the girls that they can't get from their mentors or fellow zenza. Akane is listed as “Jugemu girl” on Karashi's phone the way an older sibling affectionately teases their annoying younger sibling. When he meets up with Hikaru, he teases her about her professional photoshoot for work. He can rile up Hikaru to the point her Fukouka accent slips out in front of him. The camaraderie Karashi has with the girls resembles what I’d expect from a secondary rival character, but lacks the theatrics (haha. theatrics) of a PRIMARY rivalry in a story. Make no mistake, Karashi is absolutely third wheeling whatever Akane and Hikaru have going on. There are in-text jokes about this.
Be honest with yourselves. When was the last time you saw all these story elements in a shonen manga rivalry with the main protagonist*? Full-stop, when was the last time you even saw a shonen manga about theatre**? You haven't, because theatre is not typically associated with shonen manga, and emotionally complex rivalries between women are also not typically associated with shonen manga. Meanwhile, theatre has appealed to shojo audiences since before shojo manga was even a thing. Intimate rivalries between women in theatre are well established in shojo manga. Shonen manga is not the only inspriation for the Akane-Hikaru dynamic! It's historically, distinctly shojo! Isn't that exciting? I think it's exciting.
That said, I have barely even BEGUN to address just how gay Akahika is in comparison to stories that ACTUALLY have sapphic romance. This is covered in part 2.
* The closer answer I would say is in Marimashita Iruma-kun. A story that also has...you'd never guess...shojo and yuri story elements…wow what a surprise...
**We don't need to mention what happened to Act-Age....And I know there's Dance Dance Danseur. But guess what. THE AUTHOR HAS WRITTEN MOSTLY SHOJO MANGA. In addition, both of these are fairly new stories from the last 10 years, which reflects how uncommon it is to talk about any form of theatre in shonen. Also that popular series about rakugo? From a josei magazine. So my point still stands.
Once upon a time, before girls could kiss each other in daylight and still trend on Pixiv, there was Class S.
Sounds like a wholesome tea club that occasionally got emotional, right? That was the point. In early 20th-century Japan, emotional intensity between girls was fine so long as it ended before marriage. You could adore your best friend, write her poems, swear eternal devotion under the wisteria... just don’t stay too devoted once a man shows up.
Enter Yoshiya Nobuko, the mother of refined yearning. Her 1910s–1920s collection Hana Monogatari (Flower Tales, and no, not the sixth installment of Nishio Ishin's insanely popular series) basically invented the template: two schoolgirls, a secret friendship bordering on love, a farewell at graduation, and the tragic promise to never forget each other. Society applauded, safe in the knowledge that the girls would grow up, marry, and forget anyway. Nobuko, however, didn’t forget. She spent her life with her partner, Monma Chiyo, in what newspapers politely called a “friendship.” The closet had curtains back then.
The term Class S (for sisterhood or shoujo) was the euphemism that made all this possible: intense, spiritual, pure, temporary. The whole thing was a cultural hall pass for queer longing, valid only until graduation. The girls were allowed to feel, but not to last.
By the 1960s and 70s, the mood shifted. The postwar Year 24 Group looked at that fragile framework and decided it needed more melodrama and fewer rules. The Heart of Thomas and The Rose of Versailles turned repression into European tragedy: boys who looked like girls, girls who dressed as princes, love so aesthetic it almost passed for religion. Desire left the dormitory for the cathedral.
And somewhere in all this, the word yuri sprouted. Literally “lily,” it started as code in Japanese magazines, used to tag stories of women’s love and to contrast with bara (rose), the label for gay men’s content. The flowers were metaphors: lilies for feminine purity, roses for masculine passion. Both bloomed where they weren’t supposed to.
Then the 1990s arrived and subtlety died a fabulous death. Revolutionary Girl Utena exploded the genre with swords, roses, duels, and queerness that looked you dead in the eye. Utena wanted to be a prince but also wanted to burn the whole fairy-tale system down. It was the moment yuri stopped being about “innocent friendship” and started interrogating who gets to define innocence in the first place.
The 2000s and 2010s kept the revolution spinning. Maria-sama ga Miteru revived the Catholic school aesthetic with delicate guilt and hidden vows. Strawberry Panic! made melodrama a spectator sport. Citrus dragged yuri into soap-opera scandal, and Bloom Into You (personal favourite? yes please, thank you) stepped quietly into realism, asking what happens when someone simply doesn’t fit any label at all.
Then came Yuri is My Job! where the fantasy finally ate itself. It’s a story about girls pretending to love girls for customers who want to believe in purity, while real feelings creep in through the cracks. It’s performance art about the performance of affection, a mirror held up to a century of Japanese audiences who loved the aesthetic of yuri but got squeamish about its reality.
This is, at best, a surface-level walk through a field that scholars spend entire careers cultivating. There’s so much more: doujin culture, publishing politics, Western import cycles, fan lexicons, the slow evolution of censorship itself. But the broad arc remains the same. From Class S purity to café roleplay irony, yuri has always been Japan’s favorite controlled burn, how far can desire go before someone calls it a phase again?
And, since this is my blog, I’ll end with a shameless plug. While Slippery When Wet isn’t tehnically yuri, it is the dropout cousin who lights a cigarette at the reunion and laughs at the word “pure.” But it carries the same heartbeat that started in Yoshiya’s pages a hundred years ago: what if the feeling does not fade when it is supposed to?
