LGBT – Page 5 – Wis[s]e Words

Amanchu Advance: what a waste

Published on June 24, 2018Leave a comment

I wasn’t quite sure why so many people who’d liked the original series were so down on Amanchu Advance until this happened in the penultimate episode:

Amanchu Advance: heteronormativity for the win

The original series was all about the blossoming relationship between Teko and Pikari. Teko was the shy, timid girl who had to leave her home town and friend behind as her parents had to move for their jobs, who found a new friend in the exuberant and outgoing Pikari, getting introduced to the wonderful world of ocean diving. The focus was firmly on their friendship, with a bit of a lesbian undertone to it that surely wasn’t just my imagination. It had a good supporting cast, but the centre remained Pikari and Teko.

Amanchu Advance: Kokoro-chan

Amanchu Advance changed that. It started off by introducing Kokoro-chan, a twelve year old girl as Teko’s rival for Pikari’s love, with a similar but slightly older girl as the same for Teko, though the latter featured much less. This in itself wasn’t bad, but it did eat up screen time that could’ve been spent on Teko and Pikari. What was worse was that for three episodes, both were completely ignored in favour of the story of Peter, a school ghost who on special nights would attempt to seduce a girl to join him in his dream. This was the same plot line that got me to drop the original manga and it wasn’t much better animated. And then, in the penultimate episode, it was revealed that Kokoro-chan was actually a boy and Teko immediately started rooting for him to romance Pikari. Again, something out of the original manga.

All of which means that all of the slow buildup of the first series and the first half or so of this one, all the little signs we’ve had about how Pikari and Teko felt about each other, didn’t matter. Because here is a twelve year old boy with a crush on Pikari, so let’s make sure the audience know that this is the approved relationship for her. What a waste. What a disappointment.

Why Precure is more mature than Graham Linehan

Published on June 17, 2018Leave a comment

When a children’s anime series is more kind and insightful than the whole of socalled “gender critical” Twitter put together:

Hugtto Precure: boys can be princesses too

It all started with episode eight of Hugtto Precure, with the introduction of Wakamiya Henri, an ice skating friend of Kagayaki Homare who likes to wear dresses and who described himself as “both a refined Japanese lady and a Parisian”. Little fuzz was made about this, the real conflict that episode was about Henri wanting to take Homare back to figure skating full time. At the end of the episode he decided he would hang around alittle bit longer and transferred into the Precures’ school, but so far little more had been done with him. Until episode 19.

Hugtto Precure: girls cannot be heroes?

Episode 19 also sees the return of this asshole, the brother of Aisaki Emiru, the Precure fan who likes to hang around with Lulu. Last time we saw him, in episode 15, he was telling Emiru she couldn’t play the guitar. This time he’s telling her that girls cannot be heroes, as well as getting shook by seeing Henri wear a dress. Basically, he is the voice of conventionality in these two episodes and in both he’s quickly proven to be wrong. Girls can be heroes, boys can be princesses. Now of course Precure doesn’t use words like genderqueer or trans to talk about Henri, but just seeing a cool, handsome boy like Henri comfortable in his dress, unbothered by the censure of people like Emiru’s brother, in fact convincing them they’re wrong, is a great example for the young girls (and boys!) that are Precure’s primary audience. Such a contrast to the carrying ons of Graham Linehan, once best known as the writer behind Father Ted, currently best known as a transphobic asshole:

Graham Linehan being transphobic on Twitter

That’s him talking about trans men getting top surgery, as if there’s a cabal of trans people out there that takes innocent little butch girls and forces them to become men. Reality is of course that getting any help with physically transitioning is difficult enough for an adult and almost non-existent for those under eighteen. Note btw that his original example was of somebody in their mid twenties, hardly a child. How different this hysteria is from the calm acceptance of Precure. And no, people like Linehan may wring their hands about “unnecessary” surgery, but they don’t condone more “innocent” forms of genderplay either. Men or trans women dressing in female coded clothing: must be predators. Women or trans men dressing butch: must be brainwashed. Anything that doesn’t strictly adhere to a binary worldview where there are only men and women is suspect.

Cervical screening (or the smear test) is relevant for everyone aged 25-64 with a cervix. Watch our animation to find out what to expect when you go for screening

Case in point: this innocent tweet by UK Cancer Research, calling on everybody with a cervix to get themselves tested. Oh, that got the transphobes out in force. Starting with Labour (!) MP Anna “dumb dumb” Turley asking why have you used the term ‘everyone with a cervix’ in this tweet please? Because god forbid we pay attention to trans men or genderqueer people who may have a cervix but aren’t women. Better to use women and ignore that not all women, not even all cis women even have a cervix and need this test. Maybe you’ve already had cervical cancer and had to have it removed. But either these people don’t realise this or they don’t care, because keeping UK Cancer Research tweets ideologically pure is much more important.

So yeah, if you’re looking for understanding and acceptance, don’t look to media personalities like Linehan, look to an anime series aimed at young girls.

A refined Japanese lady and a Parisian — Hugtto Precure

Published on March 26, 20182 Comments

In episode eight of Hugtto Precure Kagayaki Homare, the third Precure and super talented figure ice skater is visited by Wakamiya Henri, the Prince of Skating, who comes to take her back where she belongs. It’s not an unusual plot point for a Precure series. There’s always one extra special Precure who is the best at some sport or talent or other, who either gets an offer to go study abroad or gets visited by somebody like Henri, who wants her to stop faffing about and work on her career. Normally that’s good for one episode of angst and nothing more, the guys who visit being little more than good looking cyphers, but Henri is different:

Hugtto Precure: a refined Japanese lady and a Parisian

It may go too far to call Henri trans or genderqueer just for his willingness to dress up in female coded clothing, or for him to talk about himself as “a refined Japanese lady” (yamato nadeshiko), but he certainly seems comfortable being “girly”. There is of course a long tradition in amime of handsome boys being pretty enough to dress up as girls without censure; I liked how it was only the dumb hamster sidekick who mildly objected when Henri came out in a dress with nobody else was bothered. It goes to show how accepting a kid show like Precure can be, when nominally adult anime series can’t get past cheap tr*p jokes. Representation always matters, so to have this sort of thing in Precure, one of the most popular anime franchise in Japan is important. Also, this is interesting:

Hugtto Precure: maybe I will try to be a Precure too

Having Henri stick around as somebody who knows the Precure’s secret, who is portrayed as at least a bit genderqueer and who may want to be a Precure himself? That could be fun. Note that they’re still supposed to look out for the fourth Precure, so it’s not entirely impossible that it would be Henri. In the meantime, for a more general overview of why you should watch Hugtto Precure, watch this video:

I’m a woman, you know — Hakumei to Mikochi

Published on February 14, 20183 Comments

How to disappoint me in just two sentences.

Hakumei to Mikochi: asking whether they are a couple

Hakumei to Mikochi is an adorable, warm fuzzy series about two tiny girls living together in a magical forest full of talking, sentient cats and weasels and other critters. I’ve been enjoying it a lot, especially since it comes out early enough on Friday that it’s the perfect end of the working week wind down anime. Each episode has Hakumei and Mikochi going along their daily lives, going shopping in the big town nearby, going to work, etc. Throughout the series so far, they have been shown to care for each other and behave very much like a couple, though it’s never been explicitly stated that they are, just that they live together. It’s only in the latest episode, episode five, in the scene above that somebody asked outright if Mikochi was Hakumei’s wife. And I immediately had a bad feeling about it.

Hakumei to Mikochi: I am a woman

And I was right. Hakumei immediately responds with “I’m a woman, you know” which is the sort of denial that may leave open the possibility that they are in fact a couple, but which is pretty clear that officially, no, they’re not. A bit like having your gaybaiting cake and eating it. It was such a disappointment that it made me physically a bit ill. There are so few canonically gay couples in anime and it would’ve taken so little to make Hakumei and Mikochi one of them, even if only by never stating the question outright and just showing their lives together. But no, they had to make sure we know they weren’t a couple, just good friends living together or some such bullshit. I like the series and will keep watching it, but this still leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

Biff! Pang! Zoom! comics aren’t just for white dudes anymore!

Published on July 5, 2017Leave a comment

Howard Chaykin is the best example this side of Steve Brust of the nominally leftist guy who keeps showing his ass in public:

For the record, the cover depicts the horrific wish dream of some 45% of their fellow Americans. Perhaps if they spent a bit more time paying attention to the fact that the world they were born into is on the brink of serious disaster, they might have less time to get worked up about an image of genuine horror that depicts an aspect of that impeding disaster.

[…]

And of course, that left has evolved into a culture and community that feels that a white, cisgendered male has no right to tell stories of characters who are not white cisgendered males. Beyond its obvious and ridiculous limitations, this is just one more variety of fascism with a sympathetic and friendly face–from a left that still hasn’t figured out a cohesive way to save itself, the country and the world from the crushing monster that my country has become.

The mistake Chaykin makes here is thinking it’s still 1987 and you could pretend comics are read only by white male nerds. Chakyin wants to pretend he’s the voice of the voiceless enlightening an audience somehow ignorant of the plight of trans women or Muslims in Trump’s America, that just depicting atrocities is a courageous stand against injustice. And perhaps in 1987, what Chakyin is doing in The Divided States of Hysteria, when you compare it to e.g. Chris Claremont’s hamfisted lynching analogies in X-Men: God Loves, Man Kills, where “muties” stand in for Black people. But it’s 2017, not 1987 and you have to do better than that.

Because biff, pow, zap comics are not just for well meaning white dudes anymore.

Not that they ever were.

There’s a huge, diversive audience out there, some of which actually have first hand experience with the issues Chaykin writes about. So the bar is higher than if you are writing for a well intentioned, but largely clueless white nerd audience. Get things wrong and you will be criticised, even if you’re a Big Name Leftist cartoonist like Chaykin. And he fails at the first hurdle by falling right into the victim trap. Got a gay or lesbian character in your story? The victim trap has him dying of aids, her getting raped and all of it is oh so inspiring for their straight friends and the straight audience watching. Same of course goes for trans characters, whether or not they “power up” from their rape or abuse trauma and become angels of vengeance. Given that Chaykin has previous with regards to trans characters in Black Kiss — which wasn’t the most subtle of characterisations — it’s not suprising people won’t cut him slack with a new series that opens with the rape and assault of a trans protagonist.

It’s not that you don’t have the right to write characters other than white, cisgendered males — and didn’t John Byrne already complained about not being allowed to create anything other than white villains back in 1992 — it’s that you have to get it right. Don’t fall into the same victim narratives white male cis writers always fall in when writing about characters unlike themselves. And perhaps listen when people criticise your writing, rather than brag that you didn’t read it?