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This Week in Anime - So, Is Sound Euphonium Queerbaiting or Not?

Cryssoberyl wrote:

If you think compulsory heterosexuality, the societal engine of conditioning, pressuring, and forcing people into a heterosexual lifestyle isn't a lived reality for women of all orientations, you need to re-examine your biases - and the conspiracy theories that have apparently arisen from them.

Good thing I never said any of that and you're proving my point at using the term to deny a bi reading of fictional cartoon characters.

residentgrigo wrote:

Joss Whedon and or Hannibal queer baited like mad but homosexuality exists in those worlds so it´s all a bit of a shrug.

Will and Hannibal confirm their (very twisted) love for each other at the end of the series, and showrunner Brian Fuller has said multiple times that the Hannigram ship is canon. So no, Hannibal isn't an example of queerbaiting.

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This is where I'm at, I really like shows where there is romantic tension and connection between many characters but without confirmation either way. Everybody gets to have their favorite pairs with no one left out....

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but the way Kumiko and Reina's relationship re: whether or not they're actually into each other is handled has always bothered me, so I'm not sure if I'll watch this current season. Naoko Yamada has said in an interview that she doesn't consider their relationship as "yuri" and "wanted to depict adolescence"...

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Thank you. As the bisexual female head of this department who had to read the whole thing first before deciding it was okay to publish, I get tired of constantly repeating my various statuses to prove something was valid enough to publish. We just did this a week or so ago about whether writers' opinions about a character's traits had merit based on whether they are neurodivergent or not. I'm kind of tired of having to trot it out or an expectation that the writers also must share this information in order to not be perceived as a cis/het default.

No, but I always think back to Bakemonogtari where Kanbaru just comes out and says "I'm a lesbian." It's that simple and it sure didn't hurt Bakemonogatari's mainstream appeal any. More like that, please.

This is what annoys me whenever I see people make up excuses like "Oh, they can't show this stuff in Japan, that's just the way it is". They absolutely can. The decision not to is 100% deliberate and intentional. I get Bandai doesn't want to focus on something like that in Gundam which is a male-focused franchise and can potentially turn away their consumers especially in foreign markets like China. Or how Yuri on Ice was a worldwide show that had to deal with the fact being gay is illegal in many countries where some of these figure skater characters come from so to represent the sport means you have to pull your punches for the sake of global sensitivities, but again these are all conscious choices. We've seen plenty of anime that explicitly have same-sex content and dialog.. Anime was doing this long before other countries were with their animation. If a character is meant to be gay then 99% of the time it's going to be confirmed no problem. Fans may argue against a creator like in Sound Euphonium's case but 99% of the time its not because the author's hands were tied and they were limited from showing it.

This is an extremely reductive (and largely inaccurate) portrait of how any kind of mass media like anime gets produced. When we talk about creators having their hands tied, it often means that somebody in charge of funding is making calls about what does or doesn't make it into the final product. To use Yuri On Ice as an example, the show's lead creators have said that they had to be as explicit as they were, and that things like obscuring Yuuri and Victor's kiss was a compromise with producers who wouldn't approve the episode otherwise.

Changes, edits, and compromises like that are pretty common, and they can vary from stuff as serious as minority representation to stuff as frivolous as "we want this character to have pink hair to be more marketable". Bringing up Monogatarai or other shows counterpoints doesn't really work because the people and circumstances for any project will vary greatly. You might get a production committee with relatively progressive or just hands-off executives who will let the showrunners do what they want. You might have the opposite, with producers basically running the show by proxy with the directors and scriptwriters only handling the on-the-ground work. This isn't like the Hayes code or the MPAA where it's a singular entity making decisions about what is or isn't allowed.

Nev999 wrote:

...Do girls have to have sex onscreen for you to think "that's gay"?)

No, but I always think back to Bakemonogtari where Kanbaru just comes out and says "I'm a lesbian." It's that simple and it sure didn't hurt Bakemonogatari's mainstream appeal any. More like that, please.

Vaisaga wrote:

Nev999 wrote: ...Do girls have to have sex onscreen for you to think "that's gay"?) No, but I always think back to Bakemonogtari where Kanbaru just comes out and says "I'm a lesbian." It's that simple and it sure didn't hurt Bakemonogatari's mainstream appeal any. More like that, please.

Less like that please. That's just bad writing. If you need exposition to explain everything, you're not doing it correctly.

ZiharkXVI wrote:

Vaisaga wrote: Nev999 wrote: ...Do girls have to have sex onscreen for you to think "that's gay"?) No, but I always think back to Bakemonogtari where Kanbaru just comes out and says "I'm a lesbian." It's that simple and it sure didn't hurt Bakemonogatari's mainstream appeal any. More like that, please. Less like that please. That's just bad writing. If you need exposition to explain everything, you're not doing it correctly.

"Having a character explicitly confirm they're LGBT is bad writing" is... not a take I ever expected to hear.

The Anime Binge-Watcher wrote:

ZiharkXVI wrote: Vaisaga wrote: Nev999 wrote: ...Do girls have to have sex onscreen for you to think "that's gay"?) No, but I always think back to Bakemonogtari where Kanbaru just comes out and says "I'm a lesbian." It's that simple and it sure didn't hurt Bakemonogatari's mainstream appeal any. More like that, please. Less like that please. That's just bad writing. If you need exposition to explain everything, you're not doing it correctly. "Having a character explicitly confirm they're LGBT is bad writing" is... not a take I ever expected to hear.

I know it's not a common one. I actually really liked this show and I wonder why not just leave it to the story itself? Do the 2 people actually in love need to state their preference? Maybe if you treat the romance as natural as it unfolds in the story, it truly won't matter if its explicitly stated (probably far more powerful actually). Then again, I enjoy ambiguity and the ability to interpret the complexity of the tale. Spelling everything out is boring, and I find terribly uninspired. It's like reading a series of webtoons where the main character immediately declares to the reader something like, "I'm gay". Okay. You probably didn't have to tell me that. I could figure it out from the story itself and the author can do better (perhaps they feel the need to rush the point?). Again, I feel like that's a horrible method of representing sexuality in media. I mean, if it's a webtoon, I'm not expecting much. But if you're going to spend time crafting an animated story, I just think it can be better.

ZiharkXVI wrote:

The Anime Binge-Watcher wrote: ZiharkXVI wrote: Vaisaga wrote: Nev999 wrote: ...Do girls have to have sex onscreen for you to think "that's gay"?) No, but I always think back to Bakemonogtari where Kanbaru just comes out and says "I'm a lesbian." It's that simple and it sure didn't hurt Bakemonogatari's mainstream appeal any. More like that, please. Less like that please. That's just bad writing. If you need exposition to explain everything, you're not doing it correctly. "Having a character explicitly confirm they're LGBT is bad writing" is... not a take I ever expected to hear. I know it's not a common one. I actually really liked this show and I wonder why not just leave it to the story itself? Do the 2 people actually in love need to state their preference? Maybe if you treat the romance as natural as it unfolds in the story, it truly won't matter if its explicitly stated (probably far more powerful actually). Then again, I enjoy ambiguity and the ability to interpret the complexity of the tale. Spelling everything out is boring, and I find terribly uninspired. It's like reading a series of webtoons where the main character immediately declares to the reader something like, "I'm gay". Okay. You probably didn't have to tell me that. I could figure it out from the story itself and the author can do better (perhaps they feel the need to rush the point?). Again, I feel like that's a horrible method of representing sexuality in media. I mean, if it's a webtoon, I'm not expecting much. But if you're going to spend time crafting an animated story, I just think it can be better.

Genuine question, do you think that gay people irl just... never tell other people "I'm gay"? Do you think they just keep it bottled up and hope you can guess their sexuality from spending time together?

Naoko Yamada has said in an interview that she doesn't consider their relationship as "yuri" and "wanted to depict adolescence", which unfortunately feeds into the idea that the intimacy of their relationship is just a phase that they're expected to grow out of.