I already announced that I’m making a return to writing here on Anime Solstice, and so it feels a little strange that my first proper post back is probably the most personal one I’ve written, and also the first one that is tied to my real life since my Madoka Magica obsession post way back when.
On August 01 of this year, I came out as aroace. It’s something that is very much misunderstood, and it is also something that raises a lot of eyebrows even amongst the LGBTQIA+ community, despite the ‘A’ most definitely meaning ‘asexual/aromantic/agender’. If people like Youtuber Jaiden (Jaiden Animations) and model/activist Yasmin Benoit were around when I was younger, I would likely have come out much sooner…although I personally believe the term ‘coming out’ isn’t really the right term to use.
For the most part, we’ve been taught that romance and sexual attraction is something that happens everywhere in the world and that it will happen to us. And so for people like me living in a society that is obsessed with talking about love, romance and sexual relationships, we often feel a real disconnect with the rest of the world. We can be mistaken for unemotional robots, and are often told that we just haven’t experienced it yet, or that we need ‘correcting’. Some of us can even be pushed into abusive relationships we don’t want to be in because our significant other believes they can ‘talk us out of it’ or ‘bring us around’. But we are not unemotional robots. We are people who feel very little to no romantic and/or sexual attraction to others, and instead prefer to find love and social connections through rock solid relationships with friends, family and found family.
(I just wanted to put in ‘found family’ because I really like that term a lot, and definitely suits the new community I am now a part of.)
Love and romance is also something that utterly dominates anime. High-school crushes are formed, opposites attract, tsundere characters admit their feelings, yandere characters take things one step too far, and so on. But what about characters who don’t feel romance? I’m hoping that writing a post like this will not only bring a spotlight to asexuality/aromanticism in anime, but help me also understand myself a little. Like I said, if I even knew about any of this stuff when I was younger, I would have a far better understanding of it all. Right now though, this is still a bit of a long road that I’ve just started driving on. What I will say though is that research into this was harder than I expected it to be, largely because love and romance is so dominant in anime, and has been for decades.
When I started drafts for this post, I didn’t really want to present any case studies or examples of aromantic/asexual anime characters, purely because it can be such a misunderstood topic, especially in such a broad medium like anime. Posts online would have topics like ‘top 10 characters that are likely to be asexual’, or ‘top 20 characters that share traits’, or something along those lines. I think that’s a little unfair for one big reason: because an anime character doesn’t have love on the mind and isn’t horny as heck, that doesn’t mean they are aro or ace (or both). I’m talking about characters like Saitama in One Punch Man who devotes their time to becoming stronger, or Umetaro Nozaki in Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun, who commits himself to his shojo manga and is oblivious to Chiyo’s crush on him. But I suppose if there is one person I would begin talking about, it would be Anzu Hoshino from Romantic Killer.
Anzu is someone I do not picture as aromantic by the way; instead she is someone who just sees no interest in dating, and finds more satisfaction in her video games, eating chocolate and doting on her cat. The show itself acts more like a reverse harem, with Anzu being put in the unusual circumstance of having her favorite things taken away from her and effectively pushed by a magical fairy to find someone to date. Over time, her antagonistic view of romance disappears, and I think the show itself is pretty decent, even with many people lambasting it for being in ‘Netflix jail’. The show also goes into deeper territory with its other characters, and touches on a couple of uncomfortable topics like stalking that perhaps some other conventional anime rom com shows would never do.
The reason I wanted to highlight Anzu is that I think it’s far too easy to pin aroace labels on anime characters who show no interest in romance or being horny in the story. As I brought up at the start of the post, there is this real idea that many people have that romance and sexual relationships are things that will happen to us eventually, and that it’s something we have to find over time. Viewers will ship their favorite characters regardless of how they really are in the shows. It doesn’t matter what genre the show is; if the characters exist, then they will be shipped together by someone, no matter what.
It’s fine enough to show more interest in hobbies/interests/work than dating, but what if you never held a crush at all or were repulsed by the idea of going to third base? Asexuality and aromanticism may be a part of the LGBTQIA+ umbrella, but it’s still a very misunderstood thing, largely because there has been very little representation of it until recently. More fictional characters have been labelled by their creators of being aroace now though, which is a good thing. The one I would highlight the most and think fits the mold a lot is Peridot from Steven Universe. Upon her introduction, she is portrayed as cold and calculating, but the longer she spends on Earth away from Homeworld, the more she is able to connect with Steven and the Crystal Gems. She remained someone who put logic and reasoning before emotion, but that did not make her apathetic. Unlike her fellow gems, she did not want to fuse (which in the show is represented as a romantic relationship), and even storyboard artist for the show Maya Petersen announced on her Twitter that Peridot was the show’s aroace representation. Now with the show over, the desire for more aroace representation is stronger, I think.
For the large part, the aroace spectrum is something anime and manga stories don’t really touch on, because of a number of reasons. I personally think the biggest one is that writers know that love sells. Viewers and readers enjoy watching and reading about relationships that their favorite characters have. And so this leaves very little room for experimentation in character design and their relationships with others.
(Perhaps experimentation is too harsh a word to use, but I honestly can’t think of anything else, so we’re going with that.)
There are many many characters who find a lot of comfort in their pastimes, and perhaps the story gives them romance over time. Having been into this gosh darn anime medium for over 20 years has meant I have seen a lot of love stories come and go. And while a good bunch of them are ones I find very sweet, there are just as many I find far too saccharine and cringeworthy. There was a time when I really got into the show His and Her Circumstances, but the deeper I looked into it, the more weirded out I felt about the two leads’ romantic relationship. To me, it felt like:
“Do couples really act like this when they do…you know…that? This all just feels weird, and a little creepy to me.”
(By the way, I don’t want to come out and just say that all romance is gross, because I don’t want to be that kind of jerk to people who really love being in close relationships.)
And so after years and years of watching anime characters fall in love and reading about numerous anime ships, the more apathetic I began to feel about it. Almost as if I knew that I will not find any satisfaction in being a part of a romantic relationship. So what comes up next in this post is something that is loosely tied to that, but is at the same time a very sweet love story.
Bloom Into You is seen as one of the biggest case studies in aroace representation in anime, despite it being firmly labelled as a yuri show. The relationship that Yuu and Touko have is very complex, and it is told extremely well in the adaptation. The lead protagonist first-year Yuu has a very unrealistic and romanticized view of love, largely because of her extensive shojo manga collection. She holds romance at a very high bar, and so when she meets second-year Touko in the Student Council, she feels conflicted because she does not feel those overwhelming emotions that her favorite shojo manga characters have. The feeling of love towards Touko isn’t sudden and enormous, like in her manga books, and these makes her feel torn on what to think.
“If I can’t feel the way about my senpai like the lovestruck girls in my manga can, then am I really in love with her?”
I should point out that the anime adaptation covers only the beginning of the manga, and does not touch on how Yuu’s feelings towards Touko develop and mature over time. In the final episode, the two get their stereotypical lesbian date at the aquarium, but then as the show comes to an end, we as the viewer are left wondering whether her feelings became any different over time. And while secondary character Maki is seen by many viewers as someone who is aroace, it could still be argued that he plays the role of ‘observer’ better, and chooses to ignore what he feels himself.
It hasn’t been long since my coming out as aroace, and I know I have a lot to learn too. Representation in media isn’t as open as conventional romantic characters are, but I know there’s a community for people like me, and I suppose the more the topic is talked about, the more people will think about themselves and how they truly feel about romance and such. Saying that though, it has left me feeling two different things that are complete polar opposites. I feel both empowered by this, and at the same time feel separated from the LGBTQIA+ community. Using a metaphor, it can feel like those of us on the aroace spectrum are on the lunch table in the corner with the rickety chairs and hard table with splinters. Maybe it is my natural lone attitude that is making me think this, and so finding a good community is something I really need. Books and podcasts and such are out there; I just need to be poked into finding them.
But as for aroace representation in anime, it certainly exists and it would definitely be great if there was more, but I don’t think it’s fair to simply label every character who isn’t interested in dating as 100% aroace. It’s far more complicated than people really think. More discussion definitely needs to be had here, and I welcome it.
Bloom Into You is available on HIDIVE and home video. Romantic Killer is available on Netflix.
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