Anime Feminist

Sound! Euphonium drew an audience of sapphic women due to the heavily implied romantic relationship between its two leads, Kumiko and Reina, but the show’s endgame saw them drifting apart as Reina confesses her love to an older male teacher and Kumiko becomes dedicated to her upperclassman friend Asuka.

The subtext between the characters has been enough for a small fandom to sustain itself for years, but the actual show ultimately failed to deliver. Years later, however, the spin-off film Liz and the Blue Bird, centered around side characters Nozomi and Mizore, provides audiences with the explicit queer representation many Euphonium viewers found themselves lacking.

Sound! Euphonium premiered in April 2015. Produced by Kyoto Animation, it exploded in popularity after a ship between the two female leads garnered attention online. The series is told through the eyes of Kumiko Oumae. A somewhat directionless young woman when we meet her, she is haunted by the final competition of her middle school band, when she unwittingly insulted a fellow classmate. The series follows her joining the newly rejuvenated concert band at her new high school and rekindling a connection with Reina Kousaka, the girl she drove to tears in middle school.

Content Warning: Discussion of sexual harassment, queerphobia, transphobia

Spoilers for the I’m in Love with the Villainess light novels

Inori’s I’m in Love with the Villainess series offers a delightful queer twist on the “reborn as the villainess” genre. Office worker Ohashi Rei is reincarnated as Rae Taylor, the protagonist of her favorite otome game—however, Rae has no interest in romancing any of the male love interests. She’s head over heels for the game’s snooty villainess, Claire Francois, and makes it her mission to stay by Claire’s side, protecting her from the tragic fate she knows lies at the end of Claire’s storyline in the game. Claire, for her part, is horrified that the target of her bullying is now not only infatuated with her, but openly enjoying said bullying.

I’m in Love with the Villainess starts out as a silly isekai romance but grows into a story that earnestly advocates for queer people, taking on complex subjects like homophobia, transphobia, and classism. However, the story’s reliance on messy tropes can sometimes muddle its messages.

Content warning for discussion of queerphobia and heteronormativity

Minor spoilers for Catch These Hands! and Doughnuts Under a Crescent Moon

Historically, the tropes and traditions of yuri have been anchored in the school setting, meaning that the recent uptick in titles starring adult characters has been exciting and worthy of note. There’s an increasingly varied platter of yuri with post-high school protagonists, from college stories like How Do We Relationship? and I Don’t Know Which is Love; to workplace romances like Still Sick and I Love You So Much I Hate You; and even into the realm of genre fiction with titles like Otherside Picnic and SHWD. All these series do the valuable work of demonstrating that while schoolgirl yuri is surely going to remain a beloved mainstay, yuri can also function effectively outside the walls of the school setting and outside the structure of adolescent romance. Series that focus on adult characters also open the door to a storytelling niche that’s still relatively underrepresented despite the rich narrative potential it offers: the post-adolescence queer coming-of-age story. Or, in other words, the gay quarter-life crisis.

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