…taste the rainbow, am I right?
Tune of the post: Born This Way by Lady Gaga (YouTube, Spotify), because…well, why not? *shrugs*
It’s Pride Month…soon! As non-committal as I may be to the whole “are the straights/hets (etc.) okay?” attitude of the LGBTIAQ+ community at large, I have become a much louder ally in the past few years, even if only in the “trawling my library for books with representation in them” department.
Which brings me to the listicle. Admittedly, I have my preferences and access, so I can’t vouch for every series I’m listing here (which is why I’m not monetising this post – these recommendations are mostly through hearsay and the like).
Lesbian/Gay
Back in 2018, I knew this wasn’t my department, but times have changed. These days, it’s a lot more common to see lesbian and gay relationships in SFW work which isn’t from the fandom and for the fandom, which certainly makes my job easier.
- For BL specifically, I would recommend Given and Sarazanmai: Reo and Mabu (which is best consumed in tandem with, or with previous knowledge of, the anime). I’d also recommend My Brother’s Husband, which is a good starting point if you don’t quite get what’s going on in this post, and HanaKimi for a depiction of exploring homosexuality when it was still more of a joke punchline than anything (it still has some value to understanding the LGBTIAQ+ community as a whole and the progress that’s been made for them in the past decades).
- I’m still no expert in GL, but I’ll namedrop Eclair (a yuri anthology).
Bisexual/romantic or Pansexual/romantic
Bisexuality is also not a thing I admittedly understand very well, because most characters who identify as bisexual tend to be painted as either “gay/lesbian” or “straight” even though they are both (see, for example, how Nick from the Alice Oseman series Heartstopper is almost 100% known as a pair with Charlie and there’s only brief evidence he’s bi at all). The way I see it, you can assume it is almost the opposite to asexuality, with pansexuality being the true opposite and the two merely being matter of interpretation/semantics.
- I haven’t talked about it here in much depth, but I’d recommend Bakarina (My Next Life as a Villainess), since that’s the series that gets bandied around the most when you ask about “bi harems” in my experience. Personally (from my position having finished the first season of the anime), I see Catarina as more interested in food, gardening and avoiding death flags than romance…but maybe that’s just an ace interpretation of her.
Trans
For a while, trans people didn’t have a lot of good representation that was known in the English-speaking world. These days, there’s several series in wide circulation and there’s always room for more stories where it counts (such as what the bookish community calls #OwnVoices, which is, in this case, trans people writing trans stories).
- Wandering Son was the biggest title for this for a while, but now there’s Boys Run the Riot, Bright (by the same mangaka as Boys Run the Riot and included in the latter’s final volume) and To Strip the Flesh.
- For some outdated depictions of trans people (which are still valuable for understanding how far trans rep has come), see Ouran High School Host Club and Otomen.
Asexual/romantic
Japanese has an odd semantic issue with this category – when they say “asexual” (無性愛), they mean “aroace” (no sexual attraction, no romantic attraction). This means a certain amount of nuance can be lost by not pointing out people who are asexual and heteroromantic (like myself, except I’m demiromantic) exist, depending on what is trying to be achieved in the work.
- For this category, I would recommend (but haven’t personally read) I Want to Be a Wall, Mine-kun is Asexual and Is Love the Answer? (the latter two by Uta Isaki).
Other
- I don’t think I’ve ever seen a manga with an intersex character that wasn’t overly fantastical and/or posed as antagonistic, like in Jigokuraku. That said, I may have merely never read a manga with a more positive depiction, so feel free to namedrop in the comments.
- In terms of gender diversity, Shimanami Tasogare/Our Dreams at Dusk is probably the best bet. That said, I am only basing this upon hearsay and not through actually reading it, so please keep that in mind.
So…was I totally off with the recommendations? This post proved I surely have some work to do if I want to call myself a specialist in this niche.
Keep seeking the magic,
Aria. (<- Yes, I changed the sign-off again to streamline my branding somewhat. Hopefully, this is more consistent from now on. *sweatdrops*)