I'm here for the gay (the LGBTQ+ anime/manga discussion thread)

BL or GL?


  • Total voters
    235
Well, now I'm curious. And that synopsis is kind of vague. What's the hook?
Average middle school dude has his childhood crush/friend sniped by his handsome Chad best friend, Chad disappears for a few years only to show up at their school again after having had transitioned to a girl named Alice, whose incredibly loose with her sexuality. A bunch of incredibly uncomfortable scenarios ensue, including but not limited to Alice openly seducing the main character into from the word go, casual transphobia, and the childhood friend girl entering a relationship with the main character just to spite Alice for becoming a girl (though this motive is only implied). It's the kind of thing that makes me wince every other page, which is expected from a Shuzo Oshimi work.

The main character is essentially torn between the trans girl whose less emotionally closed off and sexually available but with an unenviable stigma and a pretty cis girl with no such stigma but is more socially conservative (closer to the "no sex till we're married type) and demanding overall. It's really meant to be a work that makes you reexamine the idea of heterosexual attraction, as in whether or not someone is inherently more attractive for being of the "correct" sex or if the perceived idea of femininity is what matters most, or more simply/crassly put the "are traps gay" dilemma.
 
Last edited:
Average middle school dude has his childhood crush/friend sniped by his handsome Chad best friend, Chad disappears for a few years only to show up at their school again after having had transitioned to a girl named Alice, whose incredibly loose with her sexuality. A bunch of incredibly uncomfortable scenarios ensue, including but not limited to Alice openly seducing the main character into from the word go, casual transphobia, and the childhood friend girl entering a relationship with the main character just to spite Alice for becoming a girl (though this motive is only implied). It's the kind of thing that makes me wince every other page, which is expected from a Shuzo Oshimi work.

The main character is essentially torn between the trans girl whose less emotionally closed off and sexually available but with an unenviable stigma and a pretty cis girl with no such stigma but is more socially conservative (closer to the "no sex till we're married type) and demanding overall. It's really meant to be a work that makes you reexamine the idea of heterosexual attraction, as in whether or not someone is inherently more attractive for being of the "correct" sex or if the perceived idea of femininity is what matters most, or more simply/crassly put the "are traps gay" dilemma.
...Well...now I'm kind of sorry I asked. Can't say what sounds like a pretty transphobic manga would be a fun read.
 
Fangs is a pretty so-so bl manga one volume in, but it also delivered me this absolute gem of a minor character -

E9M5mKJXoAE_N-w

Sexy shorthaired suit-wearing lady vampire who prefers other sexy lady vampires and also not buttoning her shirt up all the way, yes please.

It is a continual trial to me that I keep finding the sexiest female characters in bl manga, which by definition is almost certainly going to be lacking in said female characters getting girlfriends in any significant on-page way.
 
Fangs is a pretty so-so bl manga one volume in, but it also delivered me this absolute gem of a minor character -

E9M5mKJXoAE_N-w

Sexy shorthaired suit-wearing lady vampire who prefers other sexy lady vampires and also not buttoning her shirt up all the way, yes please.

It is a continual trial to me that I keep finding the sexiest female characters in bl manga, which by definition is almost certainly going to be lacking in said female characters getting girlfriends in any significant on-page way.
...Just gonna put that on the Want To Read list real quick...
 
So not anime/manga, but I just remembered that Camelot 3000 (translated to Norwegian) is probably the first media product I engaged with as a kid which had LGBT+ themes.
It wasn't perfect and did stumble on the trans theme in the end, but it's still noteworthy how the queer characters get a happy ending.

While at the time when I was, what, 6-8 years old when I first read it, I didn't even know being transgender was a thing in real life, so I didn't exactly have a big "eye-opener" moment then and there. But I now realize this series helped equip me better to understand gender dysphoria when I was introduced to the concept IRL.
 
So not anime/manga, but I just remembered that Camelot 3000 (translated to Norwegian) is probably the first media product I engaged with as a kid which had LGBT+ themes.
It wasn't perfect and did stumble on the trans theme in the end, but it's still noteworthy how the queer characters get a happy ending.

While at the time when I was, what, 6-8 years old when I first read it, I didn't even know being transgender was a thing in real life, so I didn't exactly have a big "eye-opener" moment then and there. But I now realize this series helped equip me better to understand gender dysphoria when I was introduced to the concept IRL.
You mean Sir Tristan? If my knowledge serves me correctly, he wasn't trans. He was just reincarnated as a woman. Like that one human from So I'm A Spider.
 
Last edited:
You mean Sir Tristan? If my knowledge serves me correctly, he wasn't trans. He was just reincarnated as a woman. Like that one human from So I'm A Spider.
Literally a male soul in a female body. It's a trans narrative, albeit one sonewhat flubbed at the end by practically making it a lesbian narrative.
 
Biggest surprise of my day: vol 6 of Knight of the Ice, which is a fun (straight) figure skating romcom manga with a very tiny subplot about the male lead having a fiancee arranged for him as a child, straight up made said fiancee a trans guy who is absolutely without a doubt not going through with a wedding to anyone but his girlfriend. A+ resolution to that subplot, plus it felt well-handled and potentially plot relevant in multiple ways later, do endorse.

More characters casually made queer, please!
 
Well hey, D_Cide Traumerei doing something unexpected there. An episode about a gay dude.
3798498bbedce04a31fd4375439fb55686351018.png

5db220896a27889e80b2293740c52a4d297abdbd.png
No gay panic jokes or nothing. They treated it like a regular dude having a regular crush, like they should. The only punchline there was Ryuhei wording it poorly to make him think he had a shot, and he very quickly cleared it up.

...He did go a little Yandere at the end, but you know, small victories.
 
Back
Top