Of course, if you go for a Revue Starlight transfem interpretation, Daiba Nana is the most obvious pick.
There is, of course, the tall girl + punny name on a superficial level, but to dig deeper, it’s about her isolation from the others.
The way she’s constantly performing a particular sort of unthreatening femininity, even repressing her own brilliance, to feel accepted by everyone else. The only thing that stirred her to actually go against the other is the threat that all of this is going to end sooner or later. She’s so incapable of imagining a future beyond it where she isn’t alone again that she would rather replay those years again and again for all eternity.
The only time when she allows herself to lean into her meaner side is when she feels that the curtains are about to fall. When the time loop risks being destroyed or when the final performance is coming and she has to make the wake-up call before the end. Or when she decides to go full scorched earth on a relationship… (Hi Junna !)
Anyway, I think that’s something that resonates with a lot of us and our experiences.
But then, on the opposite side of the coin, I think you also have Itsurugi Futaba.
Futaba is in many ways the polar opposite of Nana, the shortest and more masculine-looking girl of the 99th class, she has never been alone, always stuck together with her childhood friend. And yet…
Okay, so to explain, first I must remark that, of course, not all trans women lean into femininity like Nana. What makes her easily readable as a trans girl is not merely her femininity but the way it’s constructed in relation to the rest of the girls. In the same way,
taba’s “boyishness” (her look, her interest in motorbikes…) are not interesting in themself but in the way they shape her relationship to others.
And on that point, if Nana acts as caretaker for all of her class, it should be noted that Futaba has a similar role to Kaoruko. She certainly complains a lot more about it and tries to push to become more self-reliant, but she’s nonetheless the one massaging her, drying her hair, driving her…
This is described as a sort of arrangement between them. The deal being that if she sticks with Kaoruko, she will be the closest to see her shine.
I think I should point out that there is a definitive class element here, Kaoruko being the heiress of Senka-ryu while Futaba, despite having a mum actress too. Their dynamics have the shade of Rich Girl/Reluctant Servant relationship where the rich kid, despite her overbearingness, also serves as a door toward the world of the upper class.
I won’t get too much into the class dynamics inside Seisho (though I would note that both top students are pointedly nepo-babies), but it suffices to say that class line can also be interpreted here in terms of gender line. Seisho is a school for Stage Girls, after all.
And I don’t think it’s a coincidence if Futaba is presented as barely getting accepted. Of course, it’s not as if she’s here to get to the top; she’s just here to help. It’s okay that she would never be something as brilliant as a traditional dance heiress. She can be just behind. People find her so cool and reliable. This is fine.
Or so she thought. Because now she is surrounded by all of these girls shining so brightly, and she’s getting frustrated. On her skills, on her body. She wants to get better, she wants to get taken seriously and she wants her partner to stop taking her for granted and realise that she is part of the competition.
And so they end up clashing, multiple times, until they can find a more equitable partnership.
Tis, obviously, a very summarised analysis of the characters, but I think they’re useful enough to make my point.
If Daiba Nana, as a trans girl, can be seen as an example of isolation that creates and perpetuates conformity to norms of femininity, Futaba can be seen as what it feels like to be on the marge of them and how personal relationships with cis girls can act as both an access and an obstacle to it.
But then, of course, they could have it worse. They could be a girl forced by her family relationships into a particular sort of femininity, lost in the brilliance of every girl around her and incapable of seeing her own, despairingly grounding herself in the hope that maybe she could form a relationship with that girl who doesn’t really seem to see her…
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