#ranpokitanshipping

[last-rampo-kitan-blog]

I feel like Ranpo Kitan doesn’t get enough credit for having unambiguously gay male content.

Sure, there’s anime that are specifically yaoi genre, but not a lot of anime that focuses on something else (ie. action, mystery) and still has an unambiguous gay male attraction that isn’t solely played off for laughs.

And even less of those anime aren’t targeted towards women specifically (nothing wrong with that - but the fact that Ranpo Kitan isn’t a shoujo or josei feels like something special to me).

Hashiba is unambiguously attracted to his male best friend Kobayashi (and by the end of the anime it’s implied that Kobayashi has feelings for Hashiba). There’s ample room for interpretation that Akechi and/or Namikoshi hold romantic feeling for each other. TWO gay romances for the price of one anime!

Honestly I’m just absolutely surprised? There seems to be a big problem in the yaoi genre where it in someway glorifies/justifies/excuses some form of rape and yet something more pure like Ranpo Kitan gets brushed over.

Even if you removed all of the shipping aspects from the anime, I would still greatly enjoy it, but it having genuine mlm moments is something important to me.

I’m jealous that I wasn’t aware of this anime when it had actually initially been airing or had just been dubbed, now discussions have really dried up. A resurgence of discussion/fanbase is highly unlikely but damn I’m hoping it’ll happen.

[last-rampo-kitan-blog]

Ranpo Kitan: Too Gay

Along with people just not expecting the dark humor of Ranpo Kitan, I’ve also noticed a number of people who mention how the amount of gay and crossdressing in the show when they say how they don’t like the anime.

And this coming from the dudebro types who are inclined to assert that close male friendship does not equal gay. They still think Ranpo Kitan is super gay.

The show is unapologetically gay. And unapologetically cool with crossdressing.

Ranpo Kitan doesn’t come with the romance or yaoi genre labels slapped on it, so dudebros are going to be blindsided by the two gay couples in the anime. And the boy (Kobayashi) who doesn’t give a fuck about gender roles and wears dresses because he wants to, damnit.

Now granted, Akechi and Namikoshi are less obvious than Hashiba and Kobayashi but given that the anime canonically has gay romance in it, it’s not hard to see Akechi and/or Namikoshi possibly being in love with the other.

A critical piece of context that people often seem to miss when watching Ranpo Kitan is that it’s an homage to mystery writer Edogawa Ranpo and his works.

And who was Edogawa Ranpo and what he did he write?

Edogawa wrote gay male characters in his stories. Edogawa himself was possibly gay, as he wrote of having had romantic love for other boys in his youth, and feeling incapable of truly loving women. Either way, Edogawa researched homosexuality and wrote both fiction and nonfiction about it.

And Kobayashi is based on one of Edogawa’s characters who is a detective who crossdresses.

So in other words, having gay guys and crossdressing in Ranpo Kitan is part of the homage and is not at all “forced” as some uninformed viewers may have alleged.

It may even be arguable that not having any homosexuality in the anime would diminish it as an homage to Edogawa.