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This official art really messed me up tho

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aniki shitpost compilation pt.1

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Misaki Saito finished her illustration and congratulates Sarazanmai for its 1st year anniversary

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How Can I Connect to You? Breaking out of toxic masculinity and capitalist ideologies in SARAZANMAI

Spoilers for SARAZANMAI

Content Warning: Discussion of torture, toxic masculinity, ableism

A young person on the cusp of adolescence is running on the edge of a river. The camera flashes to the barren streets, the water below, and his miçanga, the symbol of his connection to others. All he can hear is his own thoughts: “Those connections can be easily lost,” he says to himself, as his brother calls out his name. “I know that better than anyone.”

To watch the opening scene of SARAZANMAI is to be pulled into a world of queer masculinities, a world of aching desire to love another person, even as you are told you both should not and cannot. Watching this, I could feel something rustle within me. This image of a child alone and afraid, told by society that that is the way of masculinity, spoke to my soul.

How can queer men resist the loss of love and connection which masculinity so thoroughly inscribes upon our souls? Masculinity, as defined by heteronormative society, is a prison. It is a trap, researcher Niobe Way has described, set through constant policing towards certain norms of behavior and thought: reduce women to sexual objects. Center yourself. Above all, do not care for another person. “You are an individual,” it says to men. “Do you want to be weak and dependent on others, or encourage that weakness in other people?” Friendship, the caring for the other, is not allowed. (This framework has been shown to not just exist in Western Cultures, but also in many East Asian cultures too.)

The boxes that Kazuki and Toi are trapped in are intertwined, and the way they both first emulate then escape toxic masculine roles can serve as a model for our work in undoing toxic masculinity. The roles each play seem diametrically opposed, with Kazuki basing himself on the idol Sara Azuma, hyperfeminine and designed to sell you an item a day, and Toi basing himself on his brother Chikai, hypermasculine and happy to kill to survive.

However, both emerge from similar circumstances of capitalism, oppression, and the hypermasculine coping mechanisms they’ve been given to deal with the pain of that oppression. It is only through learning to care for one another—and learning that they can care for one another—that they can both be free.

Read it at Anime Feminist!

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