Saori previously called last year's BanG Dream! It's MyGO!!!!! a yuri anime from the future, and I couldn't agree more. In a time where the likes of Lycoris Recoil and The Witch from Mercury are considered the pinnacle of lesbianism in anime, it is completely unthinkable that we could get a series about a polycule's catastrophic breakup, especially when it's so obviously inspired by modern Yurihime works such as Yuri Is My Job!. Of course, MyGO!!!!! is noteworthy enough on its own merits — but it speaks to how dire the yuri anime landscape currently is that it stood out to me not for those merits, but for how it was a show that managed to reach the heights that are already a common sight in manga.
That's right, yuri fans who only watch anime for some reason! We no longer have to put up with breadcrumbs such as "see, you can tell they're married because they're wearing matching accessories"! An entire new world awaits you in yuri manga, and it's filled with girls in friendly (?), romantic, horny, desperate, realistic, psychosexual, and even [CENSORED] relationships with one another! The future of the genre is looking quite good, I think.
Now, hearing that, you may ask yourself: if manga has so much more to offer than anime when it comes to gay girls, then could this also be the case for trans characters...? Well, you might be surprised to hear that the answer is...!!! No. Sadly, transness remains the exclusive domain of the Serious Story About Being Trans, and if you're like me... well, it's tiring to have these be all we get, right? Not that I dislike them; indeed, I greatly respect the frankness with which they'll talk about these topics, and some of them are even broaching entirely new ground within the subgenre, which I think is fantastic. It's just that I, personally, have been there and done that myself, so I'd like to see some stories that reflect my current experience. Sure, yuri featuring trans girls might not be completely unheard of...[1] but given the impossibly low frequency these appear in, you could hardly call it a trend. The chances of this situation improving aren't looking good, and something big would have to happen for things to change.
Hm? What's that? Something big did happen, just last year? And I even wrote some 5300 words about it? Ah, yes, I think I remember that. Alas, for as revolutionary as Onimai was in its depiction of gender euphoria through a fantastical premise, there's unfortunately only one of it. I do have the impression it achieved moderate success, at the very least, but it remains difficult to tell if it'll have any influence on future depictions of transness in commercial Japanese media.
I'd have to see a second work that dealt with the subject of gender in a similarily innovative manner before I allowed myself to get excited.
Hm? What's that? There is one such work, and it's being serialized right now? Well then — what am I supposed to do, if not write ~2000 words about it as well?
- cohost please make the default color for links on posts not... literally the same as the regular text, so i don't have to change it myself
- also let me change the style for the
:hoverpseudo-class as well - also what's going on with the readmores being broken lol
