As much as I love anime, especially shonen, there are things about it that eat at me sometimes, and one of those things is the way that it depicts gay men. I’m neither an expert nor a critic, but rather a devout (read, “obsessed”) fan who finds herself really annoyed by this aspect of the thing I love. Annoyed enough to write.
So usually, homosexual men and homosexual acts in shonen are jokes, e.g., Naruto and Sasuke’s unintentional kiss in Naruto, Freed’s unrequited crush on Laxus in Fairy Tail, etc. (By the way, I’m focusing on the guys here, by the way, because while there’s plenty to discuss regarding lesbian and queer relationships in anime, I need the space of a whole ‘nother essay if I’m going to pop those topics open). Anime is bawdy in general, so it’s not like heterosexual sex isn’t also a subject to ridicule, but those jokes are balanced out by straight couples whose romance is meant to be taken seriously. In the cases where they aren’t meant to be laughed at, gay relationships come off as sort of empty and lascivious, as pandering to female fans. In these scenarios, the characters aren’t necessarily homosexual, either, but rather they happen to be hanging out in these ambiguously homoerotic situations (Free! and Haikyu are the most cited example of this, though I’ve seen instances of this in many other shows). And that’s cool. I’m comfortable with ambiguity. But after a while, I start to think, are there any male shonen characters that are just into characters of the same sex? And could they be more than comic relief?
