Hello! I don't see a lot of content about LGBTQ+ people in japanese pop culture and when I see people represented it's not always in a healthy/respective way or it's always romantic underground content which is good but doesn't get much attention. Do you know of any case of like popular fantasy work or something like that with LGBTQ+ people?
hi there,
it’s 5 months later that i’m finally responding to this ask… i’m really sorry about that. i don’t know that this is even something that you’d still like answered, but…
in recent years there’s been an increasing amount of mainstream media with canon LGBTQ+ characters / real-life LGBTQ+ people—both for better and for worse. i don’t have an exhaustive list of such media, but i have randomly blogged* about instances that i personally have come across in the past…
[manga/anime] Yagate Kimi ni Naru
[manga] Miss Kiryu Doesn’t Know What Love Is
[reality tv] “adventures in Japanese TV: “Gathering of 13 Trans Women””
[reality tv] “gender non-conformity sure does make for good entertainment for cis people, huh Japan?“
[news] “spotted: LGBT 101 on Japanese TV”
[tv drama] “Ie Uru Onna Gyakushuu S2E3: “A home that is accepting of all [kinds of] love?!”“
[reality tv] “transphobia & non-binary erasure in Japanese media”
[news] “spotted: same-gender marriage feature on Japanese news”
[docu series] “NHK Heart Net TV to air feature on non-binary people“ (see: 2017 episode featuring non-binary people in JP)
i think that it’s been within the last two years or so that i’ve noticeably been increasingly caught off guard by Japanese mainstream media randomly including queer-coded or even canonically gay (always gay) characters as a means of random-plot-twist (click), comedic relief/plot driver (fucking Ossaannnn ughhh click-click), or queerbaiting (click), but i haven’t always gotten my feathers ruffled by it enough to pointedly take note of it in the form of a blog post or Twitter rant, so…
while i hope the above helps answer your question, i’m sure that Google-sensei could provide you with much more helpful information. posting this publically just because i know others may be interested in this inadvertent linkspam.
*note: because Japanese media outlets are ridiculous about leaving past content intact, some links to Japanese websites included in the above posts will no longer work.
