41:T13dc,\This post and its associated comments were originally published on [Cohost.\] Now that I’m semi-regularly writing reviews for the Okazu site, I thought I should be a little more systematic in the way I rate things. I happened to stumble across the rating systems Robert Christgau has used for his consumer guides to music — one for music prior to 1990 and a second for music since then — and thought they might be worth adapting my own purposes. Below is my attempt to harmonize these two schemes and adapt them to a 10-point scale. As always, any score I give will be a personal opinion expressed in the moment of my reviewing something. Howver, my goal is to score works such that when I look back at a given work, having reviewed more new works in the meantime, I would adjust my previous score by no more than one point either way. In the list below I’ve included in parentheses the corresponding ratings that Christgau employs in his earlier and later reviews. Most of the phrasing is Christgau’s, modified to be more general. 10 (A+ / A+). A masterpiece of sustained beauty, power, and insight that should be experienced at least once by anyone even vaguely interested in the medium, and can be revisited repeatedly with pleasure by fans of it. I have not given a score of 10 to anything I’ve reviewed for Okazu, and I would be both surprised and delighted if in future I found something that deserved it. 9 (A / A), A great work that offers enduring pleasure and surprise with minimal moments of dullness or drops in quality; anyone who calls themselves a fan should experience it. I gave an overall score of 9 to volume 2 of _Monthly in the Garden with My Landlord_. I vacillated between an 8 and a 9, but ultimately decided on a 9 because the manga is consistently excellent. 8 (A- / A-). A very good work, at least half of which provides intense and consistent satisfaction to anyone open to its aesthetic. I gave overall scores of 8 to season 2 of _Blank: The Series_ and to _23.5: The Series_; both have issues here and there, but for the most part are very good. 7 (B+ / B+), A good work that is remarkable and of lasting interest in parts but also flirts with the humdrum or the half-assed. I gave overall scores of 7 to season 1 of _Blank: The Series_ and to _Chaser Game W_; the former I marked down for the subtitles (among other things) and the latter for the rushed and somewhat unsatisfying ending. 6 (B / *Honorable Mention). An enjoyable work that fans of the particular style or artists may treasure. I haven’t rated anything 6, 5, or 4, but will likely do so in future reviews. 5 (B- / *Honorable Mention). A competent or mildly interesting work that fans of the particular style or artists may enjoy. 4 (C+ / Honorable Mention). A possible failed experiment or pleasant piece of hackwork that fans of the particular style or artist(s) may still like. 3 (C / Neither). A work that may impress in one or two parts with consistent craft or an arresting moment, but not elsewhere. I gave an overall score of 3 to the six episodes of _Show Me Love_ that I watched. Heidi Amanda Jensen’s scenes were the only interesting parts of that show to me. 2 (C- / Choice Cut). A work worth consuming only in the form of an isolated scene on YouTube or a humorous meme. 1 (D+ / Dud). A work so bad that it’s not worth more than a moment’s thought, and then only to emphasize how bad it is. Christgau’s first scheme includes even lower ratings, for example for works that “are frequently cited as proof that there is no God.” But I am not a cruel person, and I doubt I would ever review something that I’d score lower than 3. * Still Enjoying Manga ([@StillEnjoyingManga][]) - 2024-07-05 18:34 The way the wording for the definitions of the numbers is formulated doesn’t seem like it’s really in terms of someone rating things according to their personal tastes. Frank Hecker ([@hecker][]) - 2024-07-05 20:26 Personal taste comes into play in determining what is good and bad in a particular work. Chaser Game W is a good example. Because of traditional “kill/fridge/separate the gays” practices in TV shows and movies, a lot of people prefer happy endings to lesbian romances like that in Chaser Game W, and react negatively when that doesn’t happen. I’m cognizant of that, but I also value consistency and artistic unity in a work, and I thought the ending of Chaser Game W was (depending on your perspective) either not consistent with previous plot developments or not adequately prepared for. So I gave it a lower score where others might have given it a higher one. Still Enjoying Manga ([@StillEnjoyingManga][]) - 2024-07-06 02:47 Right, presumably you are rating according to your values. Different people would rate differently. The problem is that those descriptions imply something else. [@StillEnjoyingManga]: http://web.archive.org/web/20241221015038/https://cohost.org/StillEnjoyingManga [@hecker]: http://web.archive.org/web/20241219224313/https://cohost.org/hecker32:["$","$L31","at://did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat/site.standard.document/3mpfmmvclu72n",{"publication":{"href":"https://frankhecker.com","pubRecord":{"url":"https://frankhecker.com","icon":{"ref":{"$link":"bafkreihigwt3ctchlaoquojtitibuj2kozeritm3vzutgbrpvmtbldhk2q"},"size":2091,"$type":"blob","mimeType":"image/png"},"name":"frankhecker.com","$type":"site.standard.publication","createdAt":"2026-06-29T04:07:04.993Z","description":"Frank Hecker’s personal blog","preferences":{"showComments":true,"showMentions":true,"showPrevNext":false,"showFirstLast":false,"showInDiscover":true,"showRecommends":true},"theme":"$undefined"},"uri":"at://did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat/site.standard.publication/3mpfmfpu4u72n"},"ownerDid":"@frankhecker.com","contributors":[{"did":"did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat","handle":"frankhecker.com","displayName":"Frank Hecker"}],"documents":{"comments_on_documents":[{"count":0}],"document_mentions_in_bsky":[{"count":0}],"recommends_on_documents":[{"count":0}],"data":{"path":"/2024/07/05/toward-a-consistent-rating-system/","site":"at://did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat/site.standard.publication/3mpfmfpu4u72n","tags":["Okazu","yuri","Thai GL","ratings","Robert Christgau","Cohost"],"$type":"site.standard.document","title":"Toward a consistent rating system","description":"I try to explain how I review manga and TV shows for Okazu.","publishedAt":"2024-07-05T21:43:20.000Z","textContent":"$41","canonicalUrl":"https://frankhecker.com/2024/07/05/toward-a-consistent-rating-system/","theme":"$undefined","preferences":"$undefined"},"uri":"at://did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat/site.standard.document/3mpfmmvclu72n","sort_date":"2024-07-05T21:43:20+00:00"}}] 42:T787,\This post was originally published on [Cohost. Where linked-to Cohost articles were not archived, I’ve updated the links to go to non-Cohost copies.\] We’re well into March now, but it’s never too late to highlight @Goyavoyage’s Februaryuri reviews. I have some comments to add to her review of _Goodbye, My Rose Garden_: First, like @Goyavoyage I will point you to Dee’s _Anime Feminist_ article about _Goodbye, My Rose Garden_, which I think is a shining example of _Anime Feminist_ at its best: review articles that combine stylish writing with rigorous sourcing and insightful analysis — like a good academic paper but without the academic stuffiness and obscurantism. Second, a major virtue of _Goodbye, My Rose Garden_ is that its characters actually think and act as one would expect of people living in that time and place. In a lot of manga and other works featuring historical and semi-historical settings, the protagonists come off as people of modern sensibilities isekai-ed into the past and cosplaying as natives. Like typical isekai protagonists, as characters they’re unrealistic at best, smug and annoying at worst. On that note, if you want to get a good feel for the sorts of queer-coded fictions created by contemporary writers of that era, I strongly recommend checking out Sarah Orne Jewett’s story “Martha’s Lady,” referenced in the manga. It’s a lovely story in its own right, and also a good example of how a premise like that of _Goodbye, My Rose Garden_ might have played out in real life. Finally, if you’re inclined to write your own historical fiction on queer themes, you could do a lot worse than to consult the various articles Heather Rose Jones has created as part of her _Lesbian Historic Motif Project_, which collects and presents information “that would be useful in grounding a fictional lesbian character in the context of historic human experience.”33:["$","$L31","at://did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat/site.standard.document/3mpfmmvobux2n",{"publication":{"href":"https://frankhecker.com","pubRecord":{"url":"https://frankhecker.com","icon":{"ref":{"$link":"bafkreihigwt3ctchlaoquojtitibuj2kozeritm3vzutgbrpvmtbldhk2q"},"size":2091,"$type":"blob","mimeType":"image/png"},"name":"frankhecker.com","$type":"site.standard.publication","createdAt":"2026-06-29T04:07:04.993Z","description":"Frank Hecker’s personal blog","preferences":{"showComments":true,"showMentions":true,"showPrevNext":false,"showFirstLast":false,"showInDiscover":true,"showRecommends":true},"theme":"$undefined"},"uri":"at://did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat/site.standard.publication/3mpfmfpu4u72n"},"ownerDid":"@frankhecker.com","contributors":[{"did":"did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat","handle":"frankhecker.com","displayName":"Frank Hecker"}],"documents":{"comments_on_documents":[{"count":0}],"document_mentions_in_bsky":[{"count":0}],"recommends_on_documents":[{"count":0}],"data":{"path":"/2024/03/18/goodbye-my-rose-garden/","site":"at://did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat/site.standard.publication/3mpfmfpu4u72n","tags":["Goodbye, My Rose Garden","yuri","manga","Cohost"],"$type":"site.standard.document","title":"Goodbye, My Rose Garden","description":"I add some thoughts to Goyavoyage’s review.","publishedAt":"2024-03-19T03:12:52.000Z","textContent":"$42","canonicalUrl":"https://frankhecker.com/2024/03/18/goodbye-my-rose-garden/","theme":"$undefined","preferences":"$undefined"},"uri":"at://did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat/site.standard.document/3mpfmmvobux2n","sort_date":"2024-03-19T03:12:52+00:00"}}] 43:T4227,[](/assets/images/frieren-mage-and-demon-queen.jpg) \This post and its associated comments were originally published on [Cohost.\] Recently in an online forum I frequent there was a discussion about the currently-airing anime _Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End_. The gist of the discussion is that some people began watching _Frieren_ intrigued by the first few episodes and their themes of the transience of human lives versus that of the long-lived elf Frieren. In subsequent episodes they were then confronted with, and repulsed by, Frieren’s attitude toward the demons who are positioned as humanity’s enemy. The essence of their complaint was that Frieren (the character) was advocating that genocide be committed against the demons, that by implication _Freiren_ (the story) was excusing genocide in the real world, and that (again by implication) those who enjoyed watching or reading _Frieren_ risked becoming apologists for such genocide, and potentially complicit in it. One might be tempted to quickly dismiss this argument (“this is fiction, not reality”), but I happen to think their concern is a serious one worth addressing. This post is my attempt to address it. Note: This post contains spoilers through the most recent episode 26 of _Frieren_ the anime (which corresponds to chapters 54 and 55 of the manga it’s based on), as well as spoilers for the entire run of the webcomic _Mage and Demon Queen_, a work I contrast with _Frieren_. _Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End_ _Frieren_ the anime (and manga) is set in a typical fantasy world inhabited by humans, elves, dwarves, and demons. Frieren the character was a member of the “heroes’ party” that defeated the Demon King. After a brief introduction, the story proper begins fifty years after that event, as Frieren begins a new journey with a new set of companions. In that journey they encounter more demons. Frieren kills them (sometimes with the aid of her companions) in a business-like manner, shows no remorse whatsoever after the fact, and flatly states her opinion that all demons should be killed likewise. In the context of the story, demons are characterized as sentient monsters: they can talk like humans, but they have no human-like feelings. They do not have families as humans do, and are portrayed as extreme individualists whose relations with other demons are based solely on power. They show no gratitude to humans who help them, they lie freely, and their word cannot be trusted. They view humans solely as prey. What is one to say about this? First, demons are clearly based on the common stereotype of a human psychopath: a person who views others solely as objects to be manipulated, tricked, exploited, and (potentially) killed. According to the common stereotype such people cannot in any way be rehabilitated; at best they must be imprisoned for life, at worst they should be executed, judicially or otherwise. Likewise for demons as envisaged in _Frieren_. Second, while an individual demon may be plausible (like an individual human psychopath), a whole society of them is much less so. If they know nothing of family and family ties, how could they ever be socialized into such a society? If they are so staunchly individualist, how could they ever organize themselves into a society that could rival and threaten that of humans? Great apes and other animals have dominance hierarchies based on brute strength, and demons could do likewise, but such societies are no match for humans, who are adept at cooperating with each other when they can jointly advance their mutual interests. That I think is a key theme of _Frieren_: that the long war with the demons has driven human to band together and find more effective ways to fight them, learning how to use magic and how to turn the demons’ spells against them. And given that the story has “stacked the deck” in the way that it characterizes the demons as implacable and irredeemable antagonists, it implicitly endorses any measures humans (and elves like Frieren) might take in that war, up to and including total extermination of the demon race. _Frieren_ thus echoes in fiction the grim reality of human history, from prehistoric times onward, as organized societies found cause to attack and conquer other societies, often wiping them out entirely. We ourselves are the descendants of those successful conquerors. (For the most part the conquered left none.) We are heirs to their genetic and cultural legacy, one element of which is the tendency to characterize our enemies (real or imagined) as less than human and undeserving of mercy. _Frieren_ and Frieren are uncomfortable reminders of that. _Lord of the Rings_ Is _Frieren_ the only work of fantasy that takes such an uncompromising position toward an entire race of beings? I would say, not at all. In fact, I claim that _Lord of the Rings_, one of the most important influences on modern fantasy (not excluding _Frieren_ itself), is guilty of this. Yes, as someone in our discussion pointed out, the wizard Gandalf, portrayed as one of the most wise and noble characters in _LOTR_, is not a straightforward advocate of genocide. Among other things, he praises Frodo’s decision to not kill Gollum: “Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. . . . I have not much hope that Gollum can be cured before he dies, but there is a chance of it.” It’s a heartfelt speech to be sure, but does Gandalf---or, for that matter, any of the other “good guys” in _Lord of the Rings_---apply its lesson to the orcs, the closest _LOTR_ equivalent to the demons of _Frieren_? I don’t recall that being the case. Instead the orcs are portrayed solely as beings hostile to humans, elves, and dwarves, and large sections of _LOTR_ are devoted to fighting them in battle. I don’t remember anyone showing mercy to orcs individually, or attempting to negotiate a peace settlement with them collectively. They are viewed as creatures of Sauron, no more and no less, and the preferred approach to dealing with them is simply to kill them. _Lord of the Rings_ also prejudices the reader against orcs in a way that is very similar to the way _Frieren_ treats demons. We are not shown any elements of orc society apart from their armies: no orc couples or families, no innocent orc children, no orcs peacefully farming or following a trade, no orcs mourning the death of their friends and comrades. Indeed, orcs are depicted as being just as individualistic and untrustworthy as the demons of _Frieren_: in one of the few scenes where individual orcs are portrayed, when Frodo is held captive in the Tower of Cirith Ungol, they quarrel amongst themselves and ultimately kill each other in their zeal to take Frodo’s shirt of _mithril_ mail. The ultimate resolution of the story of _Lord of the Rings_ also resembles that of _Frieren_: the leader of malign forces is overthrown, his armies are defeated, and eventually humans come to rule the world in the Fourth Age, with elves, hobbits, and dwarves having faded away, and the race of orcs presumably having been completely exterminated. Yet _Lord of the Rings_ is not typically seen simply as a tale of genocide, and its fans are not typically accused of being advocates and apologists for genocide. Why does it for the most part escape the criticisms being leveled at _Frieren_? I don’t have a completely satisfying answer to this, but I offer a tentative one below. _Mage and Demon Queen_ But before I do that, I thought it would be interesting to consider the webcomic _Mage and Demon Queen_, a work that is a polar opposite of _Frieren_ in its attitude toward demons, and indeed can be seen as going out of its way to cater to present-day sensibilities. _Mage and Demon Queen_ is a relatively light-hearted romantic comedy, which helps account for some of that, but I think not all. First, the demons of _Mage and Demon Queen_ are not depicted as inherently and irredeemably evil. Velverosa, the demon queen herself, is imperious and hostile to humans, including the adventurer Malori who’s infatuated with her, but she is shown to have good reason for that hostility. And over the course of the series she softens that attitude, to the point of eventually succumbing to Malori’s charms and becoming her lover. This is a particular example of a general trend in modern fantasy, in which beings traditionally viewed as unrelievedly evil---demons, vampires, servants of Satan, etc. — are “de-fanged,” as it were. For example, contrast C. S. Lewis’s Screwtape, who is entirely sincere in his desire to tempt humans into sin and condemn them to eternal torment, with Crowley of the novel and TV series _Good Omens_ or Dewiela of the manga _Eniale and Dewiela_. The latter demonic minions are portrayed as much more benign than Screwtape, even to the point of causing fans to ship them with their angelic counterparts. _Mage and Demon Queen_ also continues the trend toward the “gamification” of modern fantasy, that is, carrying over tropes from video games into other works. _Mage and Demon Queen_ does not go so far as to put stat screens above the characters’ heads, but it does feature the common trope that one can escape death simply by respawning in a different location. Others may differ, but I think one effect of this is to trivialize death and the suffering that accompanies it; in the opening chapters of _Mage and Demon Queen_ Malori dies multiple times in her quest to get Velverosa’s attention, but is never shown to be traumatized by the experience. Another gaming-related issue is not present in _Mage and Demon Queen_, but arose in our discussion: one person opined that _Frieren_ disturbed them because the killing of demons was featured so prominently, and that they were more comfortable with games in which killing orcs and demons was much more of a background element, just another task needing to be completed in order to win the game. Here I have to ask: assuming that art can influence life at all, what sort of work might be more likely to make someone indifferent to genocide: a work like _Frieren_ in which the protagonists know the names of their enemies and kill them face to face in single combat, or a work in which nameless NPCs are summarily dispatched at the roll of a die, or in a frenzy of button mashing? In the final arc of _Mage and Demon Queen_ the bodies do in fact pile up by the scores---but, again, no worries, since the people they belong to will all be soon resurrected. In the meantime we’ve had the satisfaction of seeing the demons fight back against humans in a worthy cause: the demons are ultimately shown to be an oppressed and marginalized minority, who wish only to live in peace (and in fact do live in peace with one group of humans). But unfortunately they’ve been attacked by humans eager to displace them from their land, of which they now occupy only a tiny fragment. Thus _Mage and Demon Queen_ completely upends the traditional place of demonic beings in fiction: it purges itself of the racial essentialism that many find so distasteful in traditional fantasy works, and in the process turns demons into (or reduces demons to, some might say) humans who just happen to have horns and other unusual physical characteristics, who are more oppressed than oppressors, and whom one can find fulfillment in both saving and romancing. A far cry from _Frieren_. A tentative conclusion So to return to the question I asked above: why does _Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End_ offend people in ways that other works like _Lord of the Rings_ apparently do not? And what should our attitude be toward it? Perhaps it’s because _Frieren_ the work is so upfront and unequivocal about the stance Frieren and other characters take toward demons. Unlike _Lord of the Rings_, readers and viewers cannot point to fine speeches advocating mercy within the work, or to material outside the work in which the author in effect says, “no, mass murder even of orcs is not okay.” The choice in _Frieren_ is stark: though demons may be a minority, as in _Mage and Demon Queen_, they are shown to be aggressors against humankind, aggressors whom it’s impossible to make peace with. The real choice presented in _Frieren_ is not between making war and making peace. It is between finding meaning and fulfillment in the continued fight against demons (the elf Serie appears to be in this camp) and wishing to conclude it as soon as possible in complete and total victory (as Frieren does), even if that means killing the enemy to the last being. That’s an unpopular position to take in the present day, even in fiction, given how much it reminds people of real-world events. I can understand why some people might be repulsed by it, and I do not think less of them for that. Nevertheless I do not share that feeling. The author of _Frieren_ has indeed manipulated its audience into applauding the extermination of sentient beings (just as the author of _Mage and Demon Queen_ has manipulated its audience to different ends). But I’m under no compulsion to do the same in real life. And in fact I think _Frieren_ may subvert its own message, whether it knows it or not. As I noted above, the world of _Frieren_ echoes in many respects human history and prehistory, an endless cycle of conquest and genocide, driven by innovation in ways to organize societies to better attack and defend. Would killing off all demons really bring lasting peace to Frieden’s world? Far more likely, I think, is that having gained the power of magic and successfully used it against demons, humans would then turn it against each other, seeing their enemies (real or imagined) in the same way they once saw demons, as wholly evil and deserving of death. Thus to me _Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End_ has an inevitable air of tragedy about it, beyond the themes of transience, remembrance, and building connections that first attracted people like me to it. To my mind that adds to, rather than detracting from, its appeal as a work of art. * maddie ([@ninecoffees][]) - 2024-03-09 19:10 A good read, also Mage and Demon Queen is a good recommend if anyone’s looking for some more light-hearted yuri hecker Frank Hecker ([@hecker][]) - 2024-03-09 19:55 I second the recommendation for Mage and Demon Queen. I was somewhat unfair in positioning it against Frieren, but it was relevant to the point I was making: that Frieren is in many ways a throwback to traditional fantasy works in its treatment of demons, while Mage and Demon Queen is a more acceptable modern version. WallaceCrow ([@WallaceCrow][]) - 2024-03-10 11:56 I find it interesting how Frieren interrogates the the idea of humanoid creatures that are fundamentally different from humans. Many Lord of the Rings inspired fantasy works inherited the concept of humanoid creatures that are “evil” and therefore fine to kill without interrogating the concept. Identifying that this parallels the dehumanization of groups of people in real life, many modern fantasy works will depict humanoid creatures as similar to humans but with different socialization. This makes humanoid creatures less of a monolith (“evil” creatures can be raised in a “good” society) and reframes “good” vs “evil” as a clash between societies. Spoiler for Frieren chapters 77+: The El Dorado arc keeps the idea that demons are fundamentally different from humans, but explores how the demons’ experience differs from humans. The demon Macht recognizes that “guilt” and “malice” are emotions that humans feel. However he does not experience those emotions, despite active attempts to do so, and thus cannot comprehend their meaning. Rather than viewing humans as objects, Macht recognizes humans as sentient and seeks coexistence. Despite these intentions, the conflict in how demons and humans experience the world results in a lack of understanding of violence. He cannot understand how coexistince and killing are mutually exclusive ideas. This approach feels more like Le Guin than Tolkien to me. The reader empathizes with the other despite our fundamental differences. The El Dorado arc is a tragedy, not a story of “good” overcoming “evil.” Frank Hecker ([@hecker][]) - 2024-03-10 16:11 Thanks for stopping by to comment! I haven’t read the manga past where the anime is now, but I’m sorely tempted (and I didn’t mind being spoiled in this case). Based on your description I’m looking forward to this arc. (However, I suspect it will have come too late for the folks who already noped out of the anime.) [@ninecoffees]: http://web.archive.org/web/20241223041125/https://cohost.org/ninecoffees [@hecker]: http://web.archive.org/web/20241219224313/https://cohost.org/hecker [@WallaceCrow]: http://web.archive.org/web/20240104230718/https://cohost.org/WallaceCrow34:["$","$L31","at://did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat/site.standard.document/3mpfmmvt3772n",{"publication":{"href":"https://frankhecker.com","pubRecord":{"url":"https://frankhecker.com","icon":{"ref":{"$link":"bafkreihigwt3ctchlaoquojtitibuj2kozeritm3vzutgbrpvmtbldhk2q"},"size":2091,"$type":"blob","mimeType":"image/png"},"name":"frankhecker.com","$type":"site.standard.publication","createdAt":"2026-06-29T04:07:04.993Z","description":"Frank Hecker’s personal blog","preferences":{"showComments":true,"showMentions":true,"showPrevNext":false,"showFirstLast":false,"showInDiscover":true,"showRecommends":true},"theme":"$undefined"},"uri":"at://did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat/site.standard.publication/3mpfmfpu4u72n"},"ownerDid":"@frankhecker.com","contributors":[{"did":"did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat","handle":"frankhecker.com","displayName":"Frank Hecker"}],"documents":{"comments_on_documents":[{"count":0}],"document_mentions_in_bsky":[{"count":0}],"recommends_on_documents":[{"count":0}],"data":{"path":"/2024/03/09/demonic-controversies-and-other-considerations/","site":"at://did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat/site.standard.publication/3mpfmfpu4u72n","tags":["Frieren","Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End","Sousou no Frieren","Lord of the Rings","Mage and Demon Queen","genocide","yuri","Cohost"],"$type":"site.standard.document","title":"Demonic controversies and other considerations","description":"In which I contemplate fictional attitudes toward demons and other monsters.","publishedAt":"2024-03-10T00:02:40.000Z","textContent":"$43","canonicalUrl":"https://frankhecker.com/2024/03/09/demonic-controversies-and-other-considerations/","theme":"$undefined","preferences":"$undefined"},"uri":"at://did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat/site.standard.document/3mpfmmvt3772n","sort_date":"2024-03-10T00:02:40+00:00"}}] 44:T6cf,\This post was originally published on [Cohost. Where linked-to Cohost articles were not archived, I’ve updated the links to go to non-Cohost copies.\] Once again I am doing a time-delayed share of a @Goyavoyage yuri recommendation. To add to what she said about _Even Though We’re Adults_: In addition to featuring adults only (I don’t recall any teenage characters in the manga, though maybe I missed one), it’s relatively unusual in having a male character who is treated somewhat sympathetically, not as either a villain or as a mere speed bump on the road to the main characters’ happy ending. Regarding _Sweet Blue Flowers_, @Goyavoyage is correct that there are problematic aspects; however teacher-student relationships are not one of them. Never in the manga does a teacher (or any other adult) approach a student in an inappropriate way. And in each and every case where a student approaches a teacher that they have a crush on, the teacher quickly and unambiguously rejects them. Whether Shimura consciously intended this or not, the manga’s treatment of these incidents supports my theory that a major theme of _Sweet Blue Flowers_ is a rejection of relationships based on a hierarchy of some type (e.g., senpai-kohai or teacher-student) in favor of relationships based on equality between individuals. Finally, if anyone does want to check out my book on _Sweet Blue Flowers_, I’ve created a web version so that you can easily check out individual chapters — many of which started out as Tumblr posts. For example, see my discussion of _Maria Watches Over Us_, a series that I think, unlike _Sweet Blue Flowers_, very much advocates for and celebrates relationships embedded in an age-based hierarchical order.35:["$","$L31","at://did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat/site.standard.document/3mpfmmvuj3x2n",{"publication":{"href":"https://frankhecker.com","pubRecord":{"url":"https://frankhecker.com","icon":{"ref":{"$link":"bafkreihigwt3ctchlaoquojtitibuj2kozeritm3vzutgbrpvmtbldhk2q"},"size":2091,"$type":"blob","mimeType":"image/png"},"name":"frankhecker.com","$type":"site.standard.publication","createdAt":"2026-06-29T04:07:04.993Z","description":"Frank Hecker’s personal blog","preferences":{"showComments":true,"showMentions":true,"showPrevNext":false,"showFirstLast":false,"showInDiscover":true,"showRecommends":true},"theme":"$undefined"},"uri":"at://did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat/site.standard.publication/3mpfmfpu4u72n"},"ownerDid":"@frankhecker.com","contributors":[{"did":"did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat","handle":"frankhecker.com","displayName":"Frank Hecker"}],"documents":{"comments_on_documents":[{"count":0}],"document_mentions_in_bsky":[{"count":0}],"recommends_on_documents":[{"count":0}],"data":{"path":"/2024/02/07/even-though-we-re-adults/","site":"at://did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat/site.standard.publication/3mpfmfpu4u72n","tags":["Even Though We’re Adults","Takako Shimura","yuri","manga","Cohost"],"$type":"site.standard.document","title":"Even Though We’re Adults","description":"In which I comment on Takako Shimura’s latest manga series.","publishedAt":"2024-02-08T04:29:47.000Z","textContent":"$44","canonicalUrl":"https://frankhecker.com/2024/02/07/even-though-we-re-adults/","theme":"$undefined","preferences":"$undefined"},"uri":"at://did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat/site.standard.document/3mpfmmvuj3x2n","sort_date":"2024-02-08T04:29:47+00:00"}}] 45:T77a,{{< youtube tuG7sUdfkFM >}} \This post was originally published on [Cohost. Where linked-to articles were not archived, I’ve updated the links to go to non-Cohost copies.\] Once again I’m sharing a @Goyavoyage post with one of her yuri manga recommendations, because I think these are great and deserve a wider audience. I like to add a bit to what she writes, so . . . I’ve embedded above the 5-minutes-plus-credits “Kase-san and Morning Glories” video that @Goyavoyage mentioned. You can think of it either as a teaser trailer for what later became the Kase-san OVA or as a music video that stands alone. Either way it’s a lovely video, and you can tell that the people who made it really love the manga and put their hearts and souls into animating it. I’ve embedded the official Pony Canyon version, which I’m pretty sure won’t disappear. Unfortunately it doesn’t have English subtitles; here’s one that does. One thing that is a virtue of the Kase-san series that I think eventually becomes a weakness: the series has a bright and rose-colored view of the world that is very endearing and inspiring. Pretty much everybody loves Kase-san and Yamada, both within the story and without. So whatever conflict and angst exists arises primarily from internal sources, e.g., Yamada’s fears and jealousies. This works well while their relationship is being established, but once they become a couple for real and the story moves to them attending university (i.e., in the _Kase-san and Yamada_ sequel) it gets to be a bit contrived and repetitive. It might have been better if Takeshima had turned the manga into a pure slice-of-life rather than trying to periodically inject fresh doses of drama into it. But that’s a minor quibble. Overall the entire series is one of the best (if not _the_ best) examples of “wholesome yuri.” (I mean, even the sex scenes are wholesome!)36:["$","$L31","at://did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat/site.standard.document/3mpfmmvvyx72n",{"publication":{"href":"https://frankhecker.com","pubRecord":{"url":"https://frankhecker.com","icon":{"ref":{"$link":"bafkreihigwt3ctchlaoquojtitibuj2kozeritm3vzutgbrpvmtbldhk2q"},"size":2091,"$type":"blob","mimeType":"image/png"},"name":"frankhecker.com","$type":"site.standard.publication","createdAt":"2026-06-29T04:07:04.993Z","description":"Frank Hecker’s personal blog","preferences":{"showComments":true,"showMentions":true,"showPrevNext":false,"showFirstLast":false,"showInDiscover":true,"showRecommends":true},"theme":"$undefined"},"uri":"at://did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat/site.standard.publication/3mpfmfpu4u72n"},"ownerDid":"@frankhecker.com","contributors":[{"did":"did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat","handle":"frankhecker.com","displayName":"Frank Hecker"}],"documents":{"comments_on_documents":[{"count":0}],"document_mentions_in_bsky":[{"count":0}],"recommends_on_documents":[{"count":0}],"data":{"path":"/2024/02/06/kase-san-and-morning-glories/","site":"at://did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat/site.standard.publication/3mpfmfpu4u72n","tags":["Kase-san and Morning Glories","Kase-san and Yamada","yuri","manga","anime","Cohost"],"$type":"site.standard.document","title":"Kase-san and Morning Glories","description":"I add some thoughts to comments by Goyavoyage.","publishedAt":"2024-02-07T03:52:28.000Z","textContent":"$45","canonicalUrl":"https://frankhecker.com/2024/02/06/kase-san-and-morning-glories/","theme":"$undefined","preferences":"$undefined"},"uri":"at://did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat/site.standard.document/3mpfmmvvyx72n","sort_date":"2024-02-07T03:52:28+00:00"}}] 46:T53d,\This post and its associated comments were originally published on [Cohost. Where linked-to articles were not archived, I’ve updated the links to go to non-Cohost copies.\] I’ve been sick and not able to comment on these before now, but @Goyavoyage has a really solid list of recommended yuri titles and is doing a great job of highlighting them. _How Do We Relationship?_ in particular I would easily put in the top three of yuri titles currently being serialized. And here’s something @Goyavoyage didn’t mention: if you live in the US or Canada and can afford $1.99 a month (in the US) for a Viz Manga subscription (not to be confused with a Shonen Jump subscription) then you can read new chapters of HDWR as soon as they're published in Japan (currently up to chapter 114). (The Viz Manga site is missing chapters 84-93, corresponding to volume 10, so you'd have to buy that separately.) * Voyage ([@Goyavoyage][]) - 2024-02-06 01:21 I wish you a quick recovery! Also-- thank you. Your words mean a lot. And you’re right! I learned of that simultaneous publication thing super recently when seeing people commenting chapters beyond vol. 10. I’m realizing just now that it’s North America-restricted though. Bummer. (Well, I have vol. 9 and 10 to catch up to anyway!) [@Goyavoyage]: https://goyavoyage.bearblog.dev37:["$","$L31","at://did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat/site.standard.document/3mpfmmvyg3x2n",{"publication":{"href":"https://frankhecker.com","pubRecord":{"url":"https://frankhecker.com","icon":{"ref":{"$link":"bafkreihigwt3ctchlaoquojtitibuj2kozeritm3vzutgbrpvmtbldhk2q"},"size":2091,"$type":"blob","mimeType":"image/png"},"name":"frankhecker.com","$type":"site.standard.publication","createdAt":"2026-06-29T04:07:04.993Z","description":"Frank Hecker’s personal blog","preferences":{"showComments":true,"showMentions":true,"showPrevNext":false,"showFirstLast":false,"showInDiscover":true,"showRecommends":true},"theme":"$undefined"},"uri":"at://did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat/site.standard.publication/3mpfmfpu4u72n"},"ownerDid":"@frankhecker.com","contributors":[{"did":"did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat","handle":"frankhecker.com","displayName":"Frank Hecker"}],"documents":{"comments_on_documents":[{"count":0}],"document_mentions_in_bsky":[{"count":0}],"recommends_on_documents":[{"count":0}],"data":{"path":"/2024/02/05/how-do-we-relationship/","site":"at://did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat/site.standard.publication/3mpfmfpu4u72n","tags":["How Do We Relationship?","yuri","manga","Cohost"],"$type":"site.standard.document","title":"How Do We Relationship?","description":"In which I add some comments to a review by Goyavoyage.","publishedAt":"2024-02-06T04:59:45.000Z","textContent":"$46","canonicalUrl":"https://frankhecker.com/2024/02/05/how-do-we-relationship/","theme":"$undefined","preferences":"$undefined"},"uri":"at://did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat/site.standard.document/3mpfmmvyg3x2n","sort_date":"2024-02-06T04:59:45+00:00"}}] 47:T20bc,{{< figure caption="Left: Minutemen in concert: Mike Watt (bass), D. Boon (guitar), and George Hurley (drums). Right: Promotional art of the band MyGo!!!!! from the anime Bang Dream! It’s MyGo!!!!!: Soyo Nagasaki (bass), Taki Shiina (drums), Tomori Takamatsu (vocals), Rāna Kaname (lead guitar), and Anon Chihaya (rhythm guitar). Click for a higher-resolution version." src="/assets/images/minutemen-itsmygo-embed.jpg" link="/assets/images/minutemen-itsmygo.jpg" alt="Left: Two black and white photographs of three young men playing bass guitar, lead guitar, and drums. Right: a film still of CGI-generated images of five young girls drawn in a typical anime style, three of them holding guitars." >}} \This post was originally published on [Cohost.\] I suppose I should start by confessing to an act of musical blasphemy. As those of a certain age and musical taste will recall, “Our band could be your life” is the famous first line of the song “History Lesson, Part 2” by the punk rock band Minutemen. The contrast could not be greater with the _BanG Dream!_ project and its _MyGO!!!!!_ subproject: On the one hand the musically and politically uncompromising hardcore group, famous for their low-rent aesthetic (“We jam econo”), unsuccessful in their only attempt at making a more commercially accessible record (“I got it! We’ll have them write hit songs!”). On the other hand a media-mix property comprising manga, anime, live concerts, recordings, and mobile games with micro transactions, altogether yielding tens of billions of yen of annual revenue---the real “Project: Mersh.” And yet . . . I don’t watch many seasonal anime, and _BanG Dream! It’s MyGO!!!!!_ was well off my radar. But as episode after episode aired, the folks in a discord I participate in kept saying good things about it, and I finally decided to take the plunge. At first glance the show seemed unpromising: yet another variant on “cute girls doing cute things,” this time with a musical twist, starring a CGI cast distinguished mainly by their hair styles and colors, and with an _in media res_ beginning that had me quite confused about what was going on. But I gradually caught on, became invested in the characters and their stories, was surprised to find that episode 10 was one of the best episodes of anime I’ve ever watched, and after completing the show went back and binged all 13 episodes again. Then I thought to write down my thoughts on the show, and for some reason a band came to mind that I hadn’t listened to or thought about for many years. _Our band could be your life._ It’s a line that admits of multiple interpretations, but the one intended by Mike Watt, bassist for Minutemen, was that it was directed toward younger members of the hardcore scene: that “there’s not a lot of difference between us,” that what Minutemen had done as a band they could do too, and make a life of music just as Watt and his bandmates D. Boon (guitarist) and George Hurley (drummer) had done. It’s a saying that could apply just as much to high school girls in Tokyo as it did to the punk bands of Southern California. You could also change one of the pronouns: “your band could be your life,” coextensive and coterminous, as was true of Minutemen: the band disbanded after D. Boon’s death in an auto accident at the age of 27. That’s the meaning Tomori echoes in episode 4, as she contemplates joining another band after the implosion of CRYCHIC: “Let’s do it our whole lives.” While Soyo hesitates (“Our whole lives?”) and Anon protests (“Do you know the average lifespan?”), Taki signs on immediately (“If it’s with you, Tomori-chan, . . .”). By the end of the series, even though some members still express lingering doubts, they’ve committed to each other for the long haul: “layering lots and lots of moments like that . . . I think it will become a lifetime.” _Punk rock changed our life._ Tomori is the emotional core of both MyGO!!!!! the band and _MyGO!!!!!_ the series. After the end of CRYCHIC she retreats into her room and into her shell, obsessively writing notes to herself, trying to make sense of what her life has become and what it might yet be. Those notes become the lyrics of the songs created by the embryonic band that finally births itself as MyGO!!!!! The music itself isn’t really punk---as one redditor commented, they basically reinvented emo---but the angsty music the band creates is an perfect match for the angsty lives of the teenagers who created it, and the raw lyrics are as punk as they get. Tomori becomes the engine that pulls the other members of the band out of the ruts they’ve fallen into: Taki jumps at the chance to play with Tomori again, Anon wins back her self-respect after washing out of school in England, Soyo begins to move past her mourning for CRYCHIC, and Rāna finds people to take her in and provide her a (musical) home. “Changed our life,” indeed. _Me and Mike Watt, we played for years._ Mike Watt and D. Boon met when they were both 13, slightly younger than the girls of MyGO!!!!!, and learned to play music together. “I wasn’t even a musician,” recalled Watt, “I just wanted to be with my friend.” They played in several bands together before forming Minutemen. Someone once wrote that no man ever loved another man more than Mike Watt loved D. Boon. When Boon died he was grief-stricken, by his own admission not even able to listen to Minutemen’s music until many years later, when a filmmaker created a documentary about the band. Now in his sixties and still making music, every recording Watt has released since Boon’s death has been dedicated to his memory. Those who read, watch, or play girl-centric manga, anime, or games often indulge themselves in shipping the girls together in romantic pairings. Fans of _BanG Dream! It’s MyGO!!!!!_ are no exception to that. But as someone who’s read a lot of yuri manga and watched a number of yuri and quasi-yuri anime, I detected few if any signs of deliberate “yuri baiting” in _MyGO!!!!!_: no flirtatious dialogue or gestures, no blushing at touching of hands or indirect kisses, no implied “_doki doki_.” It’s clear though that the various members of MyGO!!!!! have closely bonded together, and hold special feelings for each other: Taki’s protectiveness toward Tomori, Tomori’s admiration of Anon, Anon and Soyo’s mutual recognition (and apparent forgiveness) of each other’s lies and scheming. If love is what we should call it (and I think we should), it’s a platonic love that---like that of Mike Watt for D. Boon---does not entail a romantic dimension, but is no less real and meaningful for that. _Real names’d be proof._ Another ambiguous line, the second line of the song. The folks at Genius.com think that it means that “Minutemen are real people and not fake rock personas, hence they use their own names.” The girls of MyGO!!!!! do likewise---but not the band that appears in the final episode of the anime, the next entrants in the ongoing _BanG Dream!_ franchise. The members of Ave Mujica hide behind masks and stage names: “Oblivionis,” “Timoris,” and so on. Dressed in elaborate costumes (a far cry from the hastily thrown together outfits of MyGO!!!!!), the band’s conceit is that they are discarded dolls given brief life for the space of their performance. Off stage, some of the members’ motives are revealed as base and mercenary: restoring lost wealth, gaining new fans and followers. Could there be a more apt metaphor for what the girls of _BanG Dream!_ really are? Empty shells assembled from millions of polygons, their limbs moved by unseen hands, their lines spoken by unseen voices, their songs written and played by unseen musicians---all in the service of Bushiroad corporate OKRs. And yet . . . From seemingly unpromising elements in a thoroughly commercial endeavor, those who created the series _BanG Dream! It’s MyGO!!!!!_ created a heartfelt and emotionally affecting work of art. Whether they can capture lightning in a bottle once more is an open question. Perhaps, as the last scene of episode 13 foreshadows, the sequel will simply descend into melodrama or even (as a discord acquaintance speculates) into high camp. But whatever happens, I’ll be there to watch.38:["$","$L31","at://did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat/site.standard.document/3mpfmmwj2d72n",{"publication":{"href":"https://frankhecker.com","pubRecord":{"url":"https://frankhecker.com","icon":{"ref":{"$link":"bafkreihigwt3ctchlaoquojtitibuj2kozeritm3vzutgbrpvmtbldhk2q"},"size":2091,"$type":"blob","mimeType":"image/png"},"name":"frankhecker.com","$type":"site.standard.publication","createdAt":"2026-06-29T04:07:04.993Z","description":"Frank Hecker’s personal blog","preferences":{"showComments":true,"showMentions":true,"showPrevNext":false,"showFirstLast":false,"showInDiscover":true,"showRecommends":true},"theme":"$undefined"},"uri":"at://did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat/site.standard.publication/3mpfmfpu4u72n"},"ownerDid":"@frankhecker.com","contributors":[{"did":"did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat","handle":"frankhecker.com","displayName":"Frank Hecker"}],"documents":{"comments_on_documents":[{"count":0}],"document_mentions_in_bsky":[{"count":0}],"recommends_on_documents":[{"count":0}],"data":{"path":"/2023/09/23/our-band-could-be-your-life-some-thoughts-on-bang-dream-its-mygo/","site":"at://did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat/site.standard.publication/3mpfmfpu4u72n","tags":["BanG Dream! It’s MyGO!!!!!","BanG Dream","Bandori","Minutemen","MyGO!!!!!","yuri","Cohost"],"$type":"site.standard.document","title":"Our band could be your life: some thoughts on BanG Dream! It’s MyGO!!!!!","description":"In which I compare a group of anime girls to a classic punk group.","publishedAt":"2023-09-23T21:59:08.000Z","textContent":"$47","canonicalUrl":"https://frankhecker.com/2023/09/23/our-band-could-be-your-life-some-thoughts-on-bang-dream-its-mygo/","theme":"$undefined","preferences":"$undefined"},"uri":"at://did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat/site.standard.document/3mpfmmwj2d72n","sort_date":"2023-09-23T21:59:08+00:00"}}] 48:T6192,\I originally published this post on Cohost under the title “[Notes toward a unified theory of yuri.” I’ve retitled it here to better reflect what it actually is, have revised it to reflect reader comments, and have integrated some additional material from a follow-up post.\] Following up on some off-the-cuff comments I made on the Okazu discord about _Yuri Is My Job_, here are some half-baked and incomplete thoughts trying to tie together the various strains of yuri (mainly manga, with some anime mixed in) in a semi-coherent way. My aim is _not_ to do a TV Tropes/“database animal”-style collection of common yuri tropes, but rather to try to account for the historical evolution of yuri in its various incarnations, and relate them to the Japanese social, cultural, economic, and political contexts in which yuri works were created. (I omit discussion of yuri outside of Japan, although it’s very interesting to see how non-Japanese yuri and “GL” content is both influenced by and differs from Japanese yuri.) That is, it attempts to address why particular forms of yuri arose in particular environments and became popular, how they can be grouped into larger categories (e.g., how magical girl, _isekai_, and SF yuri like _Otherside Picnic_ can be considered “species” within a higher-level “genus”), and how they underwent “descent with modification” and even occasionally went extinct in response to changing environments (like S literature post WW2). I think this can help us understand what elements are essential in the evolution of particular forms of yuri and which are “accidental,” as it were. Thus, for example, one can imagine something like S literature without Christian iconography (lilies, crosses, etc.). However I don’t think one can imagine it arising or thriving without the combination of ideals of romantic love, all-girl schools, and universal early arranged marriage. I think this also leads to interesting questions for further research. Here are two I can think of off the top of my head, to which I have only partial or fuzzy answers: - What factors in past and present Japanese society account for the historical popularity of tales involving transformation, including transformations involving gender nonconformity? - What factors in contemporary Japanese society account for the particular forms, plots, themes, etc., of _shakaijin_ yuri? “Moar reseach needed!” as they say. Anyway, please consider this an opportunity to poke holes in my arguments and highlight important factors I totally missed. And with that, let’s get to it . . . The five ages of yuri I see the historical progression of yuri and its various forms as proceeding roughly as discussed below, with four major creative eras and associated literary forms, and one interregnum after World War 2: - S literature (1900s—1930s). - Post-war fallow period, with only isolated proto-yuri works (1950s through 1980s). - Magical girl yuri and (later) _isekai_ and SF yuri (1990s on). - Class S yuri and schoolgirl yuri (2000s on), bookended by - Class S revival / revision: _Maria Watches Over Us_ (circa 2000); - Deconstructed Class S yuri: _Yuri Is My Job_ (2010s–2020s). - _Shakaijin_ yuri and queer yuri (2010s on). Note that the three later eras are still ongoing, with works in all three categories continuing to be published. Also note that I use the term “S literature” to refer to early 20th-century works like _Hana monogatari_ and reserve the term “Class S” for later---and in my opinion entirely different---works like _Maria Watches Over Us_ and its successors. S literature The creation of what we can consider to be proto-yuri works. Timeframe: Early 20th century (late Meiji / Taishō / early Shōwa eras). Key work: Nobuko Yoshiya’s _Hana monogatari_ (with Yoshiya’s _Yaneura no nishojo_ being a special case, escaping the bounds of typical S literature). Central theme: Young Japanese women have deep and emotionally rewarding, but time-limited, relationships with (female) partners whom they freely choose, relationships ended by separation due to arranged marriages or death (sometimes by suicide). Cultural influences: Christian iconography and ideals, Western ideals of romantic love. Background context: - Education of girls becoming an explicitly-stated part of Meiji modernization, with young middle-class women educated in mission-run girls’ schools and (later) similar state-run schools. - Young women being near-universally compelled into arranged marriages at relatively early ages. - Growth of a publishing industry catering to girls and young women and featuring their submitted contributions. - Export-driven economic growth of Japan based on mass employment of working-class girls and young women in the textile industry. - Education of middle-class girls and young women and employment of working-class girls and young women both made possible by relatively low cultural preference for female seclusion (in contrast, for example, to India and the Middle East). Additional comments: Unlike many later “Class S” works, S literature was rooted in the lived experiences of Japanese schoolgirls, many of whom participated in S relationships at school and some of whom (including Yoshiya) wrote stories about S relationships. The post-war fallow period The post-WW2 decline of S literature and the rise of _shōjo_ manga. Timeframe: 1950s through 1970s and 1980s (mid to late Shōwa era). Background context: - Introduction of coeducation and promotion of romantic love by the American occupation authorities. - Decline of arranged marriage throughout the 1950s and 1960s. - Increasing popularity of manga and (later) anime. - A still-entrenched patriarchical system despite occupation-sponsored measures to promote gender equality through legal and other measures. Additional comments: In the postwar period, S literature was first replaced entirely by _shōjo_ manga, and then _shōjo_ manga were revolutionized by the first generation of mangaka who had grown up reading them. S works featuring relationships between girls and young women were succeeded by BL works, with early proto-BL works (e.g., _The Heart of Thomas_) featuring similar themes of doomed love within a restricted school environment. Works in this period thought of as yuri or proto-yuri are either similar to S and proto-BL works in their themes of doomed love (e.g., _Shiroi Heya no Futari_), feature themes of gender nonconformity and transformation that look forward to the next group of works (_Rose of Versailles_), or both (_Dear Brother_, _Claudine_). Magical girl, _isekai_, and SF yuri I treat all these as related due to the similarity of the central themes. Timeframe: 1990s and beyond (Heisei and Reiwa eras), down to the present day. Example works: - _Sailor Moon_, _Revolutionary Girl Utena_, _Puella Magi Madoka Magica_ (magical girl). - _I’m in Love with the Villainess_, _The Magical Revolution of the Reincarnated Princess and the Genius Young Lady_, _The Executioner and Her Way of Life_ (_isekai_). - _Otherside Picnic_ (SF). Central theme(s): Girls and young women are transformed into new forms (magical girl yuri) or translated into another world/time/dimension (_isekai_ and SF yuri) and thereby gain new powers, form homosocial and sometimes romantic relationships with other girls and young women, and fight various enemies. Cultural influences: Takarazuka Revue, _Princess Knight_, _Rose of Versailles_, _shōjo_ manga in general, _tokusatsu_ series. Related themes in manga and anime: cross-dressing, genderswapping. Background context: - Increased empowerment of girls and women in the cultural sphere but a still-entrenched patriarchal system. - Rigidity of gender roles both in school (e.g., mandated uniforms) and afterward. Class S and schoolgirl yuri I consider these to be related due to the similarity of their central themes, with two _sui generis_ works bookending the beginning of this genre and the present day. Class S inspiration: _Maria Watches Over Us_ In the Heisei era new tropes arise that echo (but are only indirectly influenced by) tropes of Meiji/Taishō-era S literature. Timeframe: Circa 2000 (Heisei era). Central theme: A young woman-centered age-ordered hierarchy that through love and kindness supports and nurtures disparate personalities and prepares them for life. Cultural touchstones (not necessarily direct influences): Catholic girls’ schools, S literature, Yoshiya’s comments on relationships between younger and older girls being critical to developing “a beautiful, moral, social, and non-self-centered character.” Background context: - Continuation of private Catholic girls’ schools as middle- and upper-class institutions. - Japan’s “lost decade” of economic stagnation. - Exposure of the emptiness of the promise of lifetime employment and “corporation as family” for anyone other than a minority of men. - Increased employment and empowerment of women, but a still-entrenched patriarchal system. Additional comments: A commenter on the original post claimed that _Maria Watches Over Us_ was not directly influenced by S literature, but rather by the author’s experiences in an all-girl school. However, that school environment arguably _was_ greatly influenced by the environments of the original girls’ mission schools of the Meiji and Taishō eras. In line with the comment noted above, _Maria Watches Over Us_ is distinguished from S literature by having a different central theme and a setting much more removed from its typical audience than S literature was from its. It is also distinguished from the works it inspired by their ignoring the moral and didactic aspects of relationships between girls and focusing much more on the emotionally affective, entertaining, and (at times) prurient aspects. Post-_Marimite_ Class S and schoolgirl yuri The popularity of _Maria Watches Over Us_ leads to the creation of a flood of works reusing and reworking its tropes to various different ends. Timeframe: 2000s on (Heisei and Reiwa eras), down to the present day. Example works: - _Strawberry Panic_, _Kiss and White Lily for My Dearest Girl_, many others (Class S yuri). - _Whispered Words_, _Girl Friends_, _Kase-san_ series, many others (schoolgirl yuri). Central themes: - Schoolgirls enter into relationships with each other that can range from “passionate friendship” to actual sexual relations but are not explicitly lesbian (schoolgirl yuri), sometimes in a hermetically-sealed all-girl Catholic-tinged environment from which men are entirely absent and excluded (Class S yuri). Cultural influences: _Maria Watches Over Us_, _shōjo_ manga in general. Background context: - Increased visibility of lesbians, but primarily considered as objects for entertainment. - Appeal of _moe_ characters. - _Kawaii_ aesthetic. - Rigidity of Japanese gender roles and social limits to accepted male behavior possibly driving male interest in yuri. - Creation of _Comic Yuri Hime_ and other magazines dedicated to yuri manga and related works, serving an all-genders audience. Additional comments: I see _Sweet Blue Flowers_ and _Bloom Into You_ as being edge cases here: they both can be considered “schoolgirl yuri” (with _Sweet Blue Flowers_ also reusing Class S tropes), but both prominently feature girls who are explicitly characterized as being obligate lesbians (Fumi and Sayaka respectively) and both feature adult lesbians who serve as role models and advisors to the younger girls. Deconstructed Class S yuri: _Yuri Is My Job_ Yuri interrogates itself. Timeframe: 2010s on (late Heisei and Reiwa eras), down to the present day. Central theme: Young women explore themselves and their emotional and potentially romantic relationships with other young women via the performance of Class S tropes. Cultural influences: _Maria Watches Over Us_, Class S yuri in general, academic and fan works of yuri criticism, maid/butler cafes, cosplay, and related phenomena. Background context: - Yuri as a genre mature enough (in both senses) to interrogate itself and its audience. - Lesbians acknowledged to exist but not fully accepted into society, still excluded from marriage and other socializing institutions. - Cosplay as identity construction. - VNs, _otome_ games, maid/butler cafes, etc., as structured training in social interaction for people ill-equipped by nature or experience for unscripted real-life interactions. _Shakaijin_ and queer yuri Yuri grows up as an adult medium. Timeframe: 2010s on (late Heisei and Reiwa eras), down to the present day. Example works: - _I Married My Best Friend to Shut My Parents Up_, _Doughnuts Under a Crescent Moon_, _Catch These Hands_ (_shakaijin_ yuri). - _Even Though We’re Adults_, _How Do We Relationship_ (queer yuri). Central theme(s): Women enter into romantic and (sometimes) sexual relationships with each other at university or in the workplace, often explicitly identifying as lesbian and sometimes entering into marriage-like arrangements (or actual marriages in an imagined alternative/future Japan). Cultural influences: Western and home-grown LGBTQ+ fiction and activism. Background context: - Increased LGBTQ+ visibility and political activism. - Prefectural initiatives toward marriage equality thwarted by LDP intransigence at the national level. - Increasing postponement of (heterosexual) marriage, including a substantial fraction of women experiencing “unplanned drifting into singlehood” due to ambivalence about marrying. - Persistence of gender pay gap, driven by restriction of life-time employment to male workers as an corporate incentive to ensure their continued loyalty and hard work. - Housing market oriented toward traditional heterosexual couples and their children, with housing for singles often of lower quality, and with some emerging options for alternative living arrangements (e.g., shared houses). - Aging population, with an increasing number of people who will never marry. Related themes in manga and anime: nonbinary/X-gender, asexual, transgender, and other GNC identities. Additional comments: Like S literature, _shakaijin_ yuri and queer yuri often reflect the lived experiences of many of their readers. Relationships sometimes seem to reflect a desire for companionship more than explicit romantic attraction, at least on the part of one of the parties, but it is common for the parties to move into together and enter into marriage-like arrangements. Sources and further reading Almost all of the following references are from the bibliography to my book, but I‘ve added a few new ones. - Bacon, Alice Mabel. Japanese Girls and Women. Rev. ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1919. https://archive.org/details/japanesegirlswom00baco_2. Status of girls and women in the Meiji era. - Dollase, Hiromi Tsuchiya. Age of Shōjo: The Emergence, Evolution, and Power of Japanese Girls’ Magazine Fiction. Albany: SUNY Press, 2019. S literature and the emergence of a distinct _shōjo_ culture in the early 20th century. - Evans, Alice. “How Did East Asia Overtake South Asia?” The Great Gender Divergence (blog). March 13, 2021. https://www.draliceevans.com/post/how-did-east-asia-overtake-south-asia. Low preference for female seclusion as driver of Japanese economic growth. - ---------. “Why are Gender Pay Gaps so Large in Japan and South Korea?” The Great Gender Divergence (blog). August 25, 2023. https://draliceevans.substack.com/p/why-are-gender-pay-gaps-so-large. Gender pay gaps as a result of corporate incentives to male workers. - Frederick, Sarah. Translator’s introduction to Yellow Rose, by Nokuko Yoshiya. Background to and discussion of one of Yoshiya’s stories from _Hana monogatari_. - Friedman, Erica. By Your Side: The First 100 Years of Yuri Manga and Anime. Vista, CA: Journey Press, 2022. General history of yuri. - Fujimoto, Yukari. “Where Is My Place in the World? Early Shōjo Manga Portrayals of Lesbianism.” Translated by Lucy Frazier. Mechademia 9 (2014), 25-42. https://doi.org/10.5749/mech.9.2014.0025. Replacement of S literature by _shōjo_ manga. - McLelland, Mark. Love, Sex, and Democracy in Japan during the American Occupation. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Promotion of romantic love and discouragement of arranged marriages by the American occupation authorities. - Maser, Verena. “Beautiful and Innocent: Female Same-Sex Intimacy in the Japanese Yuri Genre.” PhD diss., Universität Trier, 2015. https://ubt.opus.hbz-nrw.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/695. Academic discussion of yuri and its history and themes. - National Institute of Population and Social Security Research. “Marriage Process and Fertility of Japanese Married Couples / Attitudes toward Marriage and Family among Japanese Singles: Highlights of the Survey Results on Married Couples/Singles.” Tokyo: National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, 2017. https://www.ipss.go.jp/ps-doukou/e/doukou15/Nfs15R_points_eng.pdf. Post-war decline of arranged marriage. - Pflugfelder, Gregory M. “‘S’ Is for Sister: School Girl Intimacy and ‘Same-Sex Love’ in Early Twentieth-Century Japan.” In Gendering Modern Japanese History, edited by Barbara Monoly and Kathleen Uno, 133-90. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2005. https://doi.org/10.1163/9781684174171_006. S relationships. - Raymo, James M., Fumiya Uchikoshi, and Shohei Yoda. “Marriage intentions, desires, and pathways to later and less marriage in Japan.” Demographic Research 44 (January 12, 2021), 67--98. https://doi.org/10.4054/demres.2021.44.3. “Unplanned drift into singlehood.” - Robertson, Jennifer. “The Politics of Androgyny in Japan: Sexuality and Subversion in the Theater and Beyond.” American Ethnologist 19, no. 3 (August 1992), 419-42. https://doi.org/10.1525/ae.1992.19.3.02a00010. Takarazuka Revue and its influence. - Ronald, Richard, and Lynne Nakano. “Single women and housing choices in urban Japan.” Gender, Place and Culture 20, no. 4 (2013), 451-469. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2012.694357. Housing options for single women. - Shamoon, Deborah. Passionate Friendship: The Aesthetics of Girls’ Culture in Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2012. S literature and relationships. - Suzuki, Michiko. Becoming Modern Women: Love and Female Identity in Prewar Japanese Literature and Culture. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2009. S literature and relationships. - ---------. “The Translation of Edward Carpenter’s Intermediate Sex in Early Twentieth-Century Japan.” In Sexology and Translation: Cultural and Scientific Encounters Across the Modern World, edited by Heike Bauer, 197-215. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2015. Nobuko Yoshiya’s promotion of relationships between older and younger girls. - Tsurumi, E. Patricia. Factory Girls: Women in the Thread Mills of Meiji Japan. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990. Working-class girls and young women as drivers of Japanese economic growth. - Welker, James. “From Women’s Liberation to Lesbian Feminism in Japan: Rezubian Feminizumu within and beyond the Ūman Ribu Movement in the 1970s and 1980s.” In Rethinking Japanese Feminisms, edited by Julia C. Bullock, Ayako Kano, and James Welker, 50-67. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2018. Origins of lesbian activism in Japan. * Thaliarchus ([@thaliarchus][]) - 2023-09-03 10:26 Since it’s mostly implicit I might be wholly barking up the wrong tree here, but I think I’d sum that theory up as what we might call a ’strong social model’ of yuri content and theme, in which currents in Japanese society fundamentally drive what happens in yuri material and what that material thinks it is itself about. I won’t say whether or not I think this is right, but it strikes me as at least useful, because fans (and not just fans of yuri) so often default to non-social ideas of a lineage of works which might influence each other but lack ties to their different historical moments. I hesitate over the idea of genre maturity, which doesn’t map comfortably onto my sense of how such things work in some other areas, but I’m not nearly well-read enough to produce (say) S literature counterexamples that might trouble it. Frank Hecker ([@hecker][]) - 2023-09-03 10:45 Thanks for stopping by to comment. To be honest, I was using the term “unified theory” very much tongue in cheek, as an ex-physics major it was irresistible. As you note, it’s really more a chronology, or I would argue, a description of yuri’s evolution (since a "chronology" could simply be “one d----d thing after another”). You are correct in that what I was really interested in was how the themes and core plots of yuri arise out of both Japanese society and previous works, what you call a “strong social model”. I set this against an account that focuses only on cataloging yuri tropes, or that focuses only on “texts” in isolation.’ And now that I think of it, if I were a biology major I would have called this “notes toward an evolutionary theory of yuri”, since what it really addresses is why particular forms of yuri arose in particular environments and became popular, how they can be grouped into larger categories (e.g., how magical girl, isekai, and SF yuri like Otherside Picnic can be considered species within a higher-level genus), and how they underwent “descent with modification” and even occasionally went extinct in response to changing environments (like S literature post WW2). Still Enjoying Manga ([@StillEnjoyingManga][]) - 2023-09-10 04:42 MariMite wasn’t inspired by S literature. Konno said in an interview with Eureka that she hadn’t heard of S until after she had created her series. She was inspired by BL LNs and real life. To me, it’s wrong to use the label "class S" for series that focus on romance, such as StoPani and AnoKiss. While MariMite was very influential, what it mostly inspired was works catering to people who enjoyed the surface features but would have enjoyed it more if Yumi and Sachiko had become lovers. I’d go as far as to say there hasn’t been a series after MariMite that made a genuinely soeur-like relationship its focus. The close thing to the underlying substance of such a relationship is found in A Tropical Fish Yearns for Snow. Shakaijin yuri and also queer yuri was getting made before 2010. I’m not even sure it’s proportionally more common now. Love My Life started in 2000. Octave and Ohana Holoholo were among the earliest yuri manga to reach 6 volumes. Early Yuri-Hime was doing things like Conditions of Paradise and Apple Day Dream. Frank Hecker ([@hecker][]) - 2023-09-10 10:01 Thank you for commenting! (I learn so much from these comments.) “Maritime wasn’t inspired by S literature...” This confirms my theory that S literature went totally extinct post-war, and that the idea of same-gender relationships in a single-gender school setting was instead carried forward by BL. (But certainly S literature was rediscovered post-Marimite, e.g., we see Takako Shimura referencing Yoshiya and _Hana monogatari_ in _Aoi hana_ in the mid 2000s.) “What [Marimite] mostly inspired ...” The way I would put this is that the downstream influence was really from Marimite doujinshi rather than Marimite itself. Regarding the term “Class S”, that’s a label that (Western) fans seem to apply to pretty much any work that features all-girls schools and lily-style imagery. I agree that it’s overused and misapplied, but I’m not sure the toothpaste can be put back in the tube. “Shakaijin yuri and also queer yuri was getting made before 2010.” I was thinking of the recent trend of seeing such works get licensed English versions. But you’re absolutely correct that we see such works in the 2000s, really as far back as the 1990s (if I remember correctly). Thanks again for stopping by! [@thaliarchus]: http://cohost.org/thaliarchus [@hecker]: http://cohost.org/hecker [@StillEnjoyingManga]: http://cohost.org/StillEnjoyingManga39:["$","$L31","at://did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat/site.standard.document/3mpfmmwlqb72n",{"publication":{"href":"https://frankhecker.com","pubRecord":{"url":"https://frankhecker.com","icon":{"ref":{"$link":"bafkreihigwt3ctchlaoquojtitibuj2kozeritm3vzutgbrpvmtbldhk2q"},"size":2091,"$type":"blob","mimeType":"image/png"},"name":"frankhecker.com","$type":"site.standard.publication","createdAt":"2026-06-29T04:07:04.993Z","description":"Frank Hecker’s personal blog","preferences":{"showComments":true,"showMentions":true,"showPrevNext":false,"showFirstLast":false,"showInDiscover":true,"showRecommends":true},"theme":"$undefined"},"uri":"at://did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat/site.standard.publication/3mpfmfpu4u72n"},"ownerDid":"@frankhecker.com","contributors":[{"did":"did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat","handle":"frankhecker.com","displayName":"Frank Hecker"}],"documents":{"comments_on_documents":[{"count":0}],"document_mentions_in_bsky":[{"count":0}],"recommends_on_documents":[{"count":0}],"data":{"path":"/2023/09/02/notes-toward-an-evolutionary-theory-of-yuri/","site":"at://did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat/site.standard.publication/3mpfmfpu4u72n","tags":["yuri","yuri manga","yuri theory","evolutionary theory of yuri","yuri history","lesbians","LGBTQ","Cohost"],"$type":"site.standard.document","title":"Notes toward a evolutionary theory of yuri","description":"I attempt to briefly describe the key themes and trends in Japanese yuri manga over the past century.","publishedAt":"2023-09-02T22:01:08.000Z","textContent":"$48","canonicalUrl":"https://frankhecker.com/2023/09/02/notes-toward-an-evolutionary-theory-of-yuri/","theme":"$undefined","preferences":"$undefined"},"uri":"at://did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat/site.standard.document/3mpfmmwlqb72n","sort_date":"2023-09-02T22:01:08+00:00"}}] 49:T38c8,[](/assets/images/kin-bright-greeks-gwitch-small.png) \This post and its associated comments were originally published on [Cohost.\] \[I’m doing something a bit awkward here, reviewing a work by someone whom I follow on Cohost, and who follows me in turn. It’s overall a positive review, but I’ve tried to be objective about places where I think it comes up short.\] Anachronisms in a literary work are often held up as flaws, but they can have their own charm---for example, translations that introduce some modern vocabulary for dramatic effect (Maria Headley turning _Beowulf_’s initial “Hwæt!” into “Bro!”), ancient tales recast in wholly modern language (Christopher Logue’s reworking of the _Iliad_ in _War Music_ and _All Day Permanent Red_), or present-day stories that echo ancient ones (Derek Wolcott transplanting the Trojan War and the voyages of Odysseus into the Caribbean in his _Omeros_). Or, in the case of _Cosmic Warlord Kin-Bright_ by @Thaliarchus, stories set in the far future that reuse and evoke elements and works of the distant past. If you were reading closely, you will have noticed that all the examples I gave were poems, and that is true of _Cosmic Warlord Kin-Bright_ as well. In the past I was an avid reader of science fiction, and somewhat later became an avid reader of poetry. I would occasionally come across poems in an SF context---whether standalone efforts or embedded within a short story or novel---but I found them to be unsatisfying at best and cringeworthy at worst. What then are we to make of _Cosmic Warlord Kin-Bright_, described by its author as a “yuri mecha epic poem,” and claimed to be inspired by “_\[Space Runaway\] Ideon_, UC Gundam, the _Aeneid_, the Alliterative _Morte Arthure_, _Simoun_, and a good steeping in both classic mecha anime and 1300 years of English verse”? In my case I’ve read the _Iliad_ (multiple translations), the _Odyssey_, _Beowulf_, and parts of the _Aeneid_ and _Paradise Lost_, as well as lots of poetry in English. I’ve also watched _Neon Genesis Evangelion_ and _Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury_, plus a few episodes of the original _Gundam_ series. With that as background, I found _Cosmic Warlord Kin-Bright_ to be an interesting, fun, and often compulsively readable attempt to tell a mecha story in verse. (I’ll leave the yuri aspect for later discussion.) Rather than have me blather on about _Cosmic Warlord Kin-Bright_ (serious literary criticism not being my forte), it’s best to experience it for yourself. Here’s an excerpt from “Burning Foldspace,” the first section (or “book”, as the author calls it) of the poem, as our protagonist pilots her mecha (“armour”) in the vanguard of her people’s fleet: {{< poetry >}} She’d risen to the crest of one great wave of Fold, the strange and undulating sea between, beneath, beyond all real space, the stretched elastic membrane of the true, and with her armour skimming at the ridge, her naked eye could see behind outspread the vanguard squadrons in the trough, a-hunt for subfold ships or other threats. Beyond, the god was slicing down the facing slope, advancing to conform with earlier call. {{< /poetry >}} Many authors have compared outer space to an ocean, and many have imagined an alternative dimension as a way to enable faster-than-light travel. This is one of the best examples I‘ve read of combining those in a single striking image. (Incidentally, the “god” here resembles the EVAs of _Neon Genesis Evangelion_ and the God Warriors of _Nausicaä of the Valley of Wind_: an enormous constructed (?) being of fearsome power and otherworldly aspect.) Some of the lines in this first book also remind me of the demonic images in Milton’s _Paradise Lost_ and Dante’s _Inferno_: {{< poetry >}} A broad, ungainly silhouette up-rose atop the facing crest, with fighter cloud attendant: generator vast, below a set of edges horned and points grotesque, the weaving gear for tying Fold to space, with ship constructed round to bear it forth. {{< /poetry >}} Note how putting the story into (competently-executed) verse elevates it from a conventional telling in prose, and the iambic pentameter (claimed as the most natural meter for English) propels the reader along. Book I is a bravura tale of a battle between Kin-Bright’s people and an attacking fleet, in which Kin-Bright and her co-combatants are rescued by the appearance out of nowhere of a newfound ally, a nomadic group of spacefarers and their queen, fellow mecha pilot Qwerthart. If you read nothing else, read this part. If you then don’t want to read more, _Cosmic Warlord Kin-Bright_ is simply not for you. Book II, “The Gods Depart,” I found less satisfying. This is partially because it turns away from the present to tell the backstory of how Kin-Bright’s people came to flee Tar, their native planet, and thus risks turning into an exposition dump. However, my main complaint is that it reuses a plot element that I thought clunky even in the original, made clunkier here because the author has to do extra work to paper over obvious objections and make it even superficially plausible in context. Things pick up again in Book III, “A View from Cliffs,” which to my mind makes two key improvements over the tale told in the _Iliad_. First, it describes urban combat, an inherently more interesting setting than the thin strip of sand over which the Greeks and Trojans fought. Second, the combat itself is more interesting. The dirty secret of the _Iliad_ is that large stretches of it are relatively monotonous, like a video game with an endless series of near-identical mini-boss fights and an impoverished combat system: one warrior will take a spear in the throat, the next in the groin, and there’s not much more variety than that. Unlike Homer, Thaliarchus can and does take advantage of the full panoply of possible mecha weaponry, as in these lines in which Kin-Bright describes piloting her mecha “Caprice of Prickthorn” against an opponent: {{< poetry >}} Caprice descends, by fate or judgement fine, direct onto her armour—her usual steed, the Fane Tormenting—and I with scream Caprice’s drills unleash: a set of four flexible arms unrolls; they whip and catch from different points oblique, and when they land the drill-bits howl and shriek for falling Tar, and inwards work. Some muffled shock I hear on open comms before I mute the link. {{< /poetry >}} Now that’s the way to do it! Book IV, “Family Resemblance,” sees Kin-Bright’s people reach their original home system and attempt to reestablish themselves on one of its planets. Throughout _Cosmic Warlord Kin-Bright_ Thaliarchus includes various extended similes, in homage to their use in other epics. Most of these are based on nature (albeit an alien nature, as the author notes and a careful reader can discern); however, the following, one of my favorites, is from the world of technology: {{< poetry >}} At once the fleet the proffered course pursued, and thrusters through the gathered ranks out-flared in groups, that each and every ship might keep to station same when fiery burn was done; as when a power-field that drinks from star its myriad panels turns to heaven’s view, when solar farmer knows the cleaning done— the line of shifting planes as ripple runs in half a minute’s span before the eye, each panel straining cells the light to suck, the energy from falling rays to wring— just so, the nation-fleet to void-road turned. {{< /poetry >}} (“Void-road” is a nice touch here, incidentally, echoing the use of “whale-road” for the ocean in _Beowulf_.) A major theme of Book IV is the “first contact” between Kin-Bright’s people (not to mention Qwerthart’s) and a people living under a form of representative democracy. This is a favorite topic of mine, so I’ll briefly rant: If we view things objectively, the heroes of epic poems---Achilles, Odysseus, Aeneas, Beowulf, and their fellows---were basically glorified thugs running a “force-and-fraud exploitation-and-extraction system” (as the economist Brad deLong has characterized it). The same is true of Kin-Bright, as Thaliarchus notes in their afterword (downloadable from the main CWKB page): > Kin-Bright is not presented as a model: she is a terrible warrior-aristocrat who lords over other insiders and kills outsiders. . . . At root, she is someone who exploits the great mass of the Taru population for her own comfort and in order to kill her enemies. We look past this, however, as we look past the thuggery of Achilles, Odysseus, et al. As Thaliarchus also notes, > Risks would lie in writing about terrible warrior-aristocrats if other ways offered themselves, but I’m not so sure that they do. A story becomes anti-egalitarian as soon as one starts handing out names. Readers want their protagonists to have real agency, and such agency is hard to come by if the action is primarily driven by nameless bureaucrats and parliamentarians. So in reading _Cosmic Warlord Kin-Bright_ we unconsciously come to view things from the perspective of Kin-Bright and Qwerthart, thugs though they may be, and when they feel disrespected and dishonored by the treatment they receive at the hands of this new people’s government, we can’t help but share a bit of their contempt ourselves. Of course, if Kin-Bright’s people were to act on their feelings and in future wage war on this democracy, then if history is any guide it’s quite likely that, though they might achieve some initial victories, they would ultimately be crushed in the same manner as were the Confederacy, Imperial Japan, and the Third Reich. But no one wants to read an epic poem about the military superiority of an advanced democratic society with mass conscription and a robust industrial base. On to Book V, “Among the Tents.” In this book Kin-Bright and Qwerthart re-enact an episode from _Beowulf_, albeit with a happier outcome, and a coup begins to be plotted. Since _Cosmic Warlord Kin-Bright_ is still being written, Book V isn’t a conclusion but rather setting the stage for events yet to come. How many events? The _Iliad_ has 24 books and over 15,000 lines, while _Cosmic Warlord Kin-Bright_ in its present state is about a fifth the size in both number of books and number of lines. So depending on the author’s ambition and stamina we could be reading about the adventures of Kin-Bright and Qwerthart for some time to come---a happy prospect. Thus far I’ve discussed _Cosmic Warlord Kin-Bright_ as epic poem and as mecha tale. Unfortunately, I think the third aspect of the work, namely yuri, is not as strong as the other two, for two reasons: First, there hasn’t been a lot of development in the yuri relationships. Kin-Bright’s first companion is encountered only briefly in retelling the story of the fall of Tar, and unless I missed something in my reading I don’t recall her relationship with Qwerthart advancing that much since Book I. To the extent that there’s a romance embedded within the overall plot, it’s a relatively slow burn. Whether and how that changes in the upcoming books is an open question. Second, _Cosmic Warlord Kin-Bright_ poses a puzzle: The society in which Kin-Bright lives appears, like those in many series set in the future (e.g., _Dune_), to be modeled on past European societies of the “dark” and “middle” ages, with future versions of peasants, clans, minor and major nobility, and monarchs. Given that, it’s difficult to imagine Kin-Bright fighting as a warrior and being (previously) married to a woman. It seems more likely that, lesbian or no, she would have been married off to a man on orders of her family’s patriarch, in order to cement some sort of political alliance. One could claim that Kin-Bright is “special,” as (say) Jeanne D’Arc was special, but that simply provokes the question, “what makes her so?” One could also claim that this particular society is special, and in fact Thaliarchus does just that in the afterword (linked to above), providing an explanation of sorts regarding how Kin-Bright’s people view gender and sexuality. But to be candid I found it to be a bit hand-wavy, and (more important) I don’t recall that explanation being embedded in or emerging from the poem itself---which is really the only text that matters. I know this is a poem and not a treatise, but I would have liked at least a bit more comprehensive explanation rooted in the history and nature of Kin-Bright’s society. (To compare _Cosmic Warlord Kin-Bright_ to _The Witch from Mercury_: the latter is set in a society that can be interpreted as a plausible evolution of our own, some centuries in the future. Given the increasing acceptance of LGBTQ+ individuals in today’s developed countries, it’s easy to believe Miorine when she tells Suletta, “that sort of thing is commonplace here.”) My final judgment: despite the quibbles I expressed above, overall I found _Cosmic Warlord Kin-Bright_ to be an entertaining read. It’s well worth trying out if you’re a fan of epic poetry curious about how it might be used to tell a tale of the far future, or a mecha fan open to reading a genre story cast in a different form. If you’re a fan of both, you’re definitely in for a treat. On the other hand, the yuri I consider a bonus but not essential to the experience, like sprinkles on ice cream. If I were rating it on a five-star scale I’d rate it as four stars out of five: not perfect by any means, but well worth reading. I look forward to enjoying future installments. * Mightfo ([@Mightfo][]) - 2022-12-07 22:31 [@Mightfo]: http://web.archive.org/web/20241220042856/https://cohost.org/Mightfo This is so awesome, thanks for sharing! VOID-ROAD thaliarchus ([@thaliarchus][]) - 2023-07-22 11:27 [@thaliarchus]: http://web.archive.org/web/20241218012617/https://cohost.org/thaliarchus This is a really generous and thoughtful review—thank you! Thoughtful and thought-provoking: I shall have to see if I can work up some kind of fuller exploration of some of these thoughts. But if I do, it won’t be like a defence or a rebuttal, only a further line of conversation! Frank Hecker ([@hecker][]) - 2023-07-22 12:21 [@hecker]: http://web.archive.org/web/20241219224313/https://cohost.org/hecker You're quite welcome. I really liked the poem, so I tried to put some thought into the review.3a:["$","$L31","at://did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat/site.standard.document/3mpfmmwpzxh2n",{"publication":{"href":"https://frankhecker.com","pubRecord":{"url":"https://frankhecker.com","icon":{"ref":{"$link":"bafkreihigwt3ctchlaoquojtitibuj2kozeritm3vzutgbrpvmtbldhk2q"},"size":2091,"$type":"blob","mimeType":"image/png"},"name":"frankhecker.com","$type":"site.standard.publication","createdAt":"2026-06-29T04:07:04.993Z","description":"Frank Hecker’s personal blog","preferences":{"showComments":true,"showMentions":true,"showPrevNext":false,"showFirstLast":false,"showInDiscover":true,"showRecommends":true},"theme":"$undefined"},"uri":"at://did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat/site.standard.publication/3mpfmfpu4u72n"},"ownerDid":"@frankhecker.com","contributors":[{"did":"did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat","handle":"frankhecker.com","displayName":"Frank Hecker"}],"documents":{"comments_on_documents":[{"count":0}],"document_mentions_in_bsky":[{"count":0}],"recommends_on_documents":[{"count":0}],"data":{"path":"/2023/07/22/the-epic-anachronisms-of-cosmic-warlord-kin-bright/","site":"at://did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat/site.standard.publication/3mpfmfpu4u72n","tags":["Cosmic Warlord Kin-Bright","epic poetry","poetry","mecha","yuri","Cohost"],"$type":"site.standard.document","title":"The epic anachronisms of Cosmic Warlord Kin-Bright","description":"I review an epic poem about giant robots piloted by lesbians.","publishedAt":"2023-07-22T12:16:22.000Z","textContent":"$49","canonicalUrl":"https://frankhecker.com/2023/07/22/the-epic-anachronisms-of-cosmic-warlord-kin-bright/","theme":"$undefined","preferences":"$undefined"},"uri":"at://did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat/site.standard.document/3mpfmmwpzxh2n","sort_date":"2023-07-22T12:16:22+00:00"}}] 4a:T38e9,[](/assets/images/that-typo-of-girl.jpeg) \This post and its associated comments were originally published on [Cohost.\] Today is the one-year anniversary of my publishing my book _That Type of Girl: Notes on Takako Shimura’s_ Sweet Blue Flowers. As it happened, about a month ago someone who read the book sent me a nice note about it. That prompted me in turn to revisit the book and reread several chapters in it, and in the course of doing that I discovered one typographical error in the English edition and a missing footnote in both the English and Japanese editions. (Hence the title of this post.) Fortunately I still had about three days left on the license for the software I used to create the print versions, so I was able to make the changes and push the revised versions out to my own web site and to the various online bookstores I used for commercial distribution. I suspect that these will be the final changes I make, and now that it’s been a year since publication I thought it was also a good time to post my final thoughts on the book itself and the process of creating it. Even if you’re not interested in this particular book, if you’ve ever thought of writing and self-publishing a book yourself then this may be of interest. Why write a book? Writing a book takes an order of magnitude or more time than writing a blog post, or even a series of blog posts. So anyone thinking about doing it needs to answer the question, “why do I want to do this?” In my case I had already done a series of Tumblr posts about _Sweet Blue Flowers_, so I had to justify to myself why I should put in the effort to turn it into an actual book. The first reason is that I wanted to explore in more depth some of the questions that came to my mind while writing my Tumblr posts. Some of these were questions about the historical background of the yuri genre: Why were so-called “S” relationships between schoolgirls, and “S” literature about such relationships, so prevalent in Japan in the first half of the twentieth century? Why did those relationships and that literature almost completely disappear in the second half of the twentieth century? And why did “S” literature seemingly reappear in the early twenty-first century in the form of _Maria Watches Over Us_ and its successors, including _Sweet Blue Flowers_? Others were questions about _Sweet Blue Flowers_ itself: Why does it start the way it does? Why do Fumi and Akira act the way they do? What about Yasuko and Kyoko? Is there any special significance to the plays that Shimura features in the various school years and, if so, what is it? And my personal favorite: Why are there so many scenes relating to urination and incontinence? I was able to come up with plausible (at least to me) answers to almost all of my questions. In some cases, as with questions about the rise and fall of S literature, I rediscovered or recapitulated answers already put forth by academics (including Yukari Fujimoto in particular), but I tried to add some additional context. In other cases, including questions about _Sweet Blue Flowers_, I haven’t seen my proposed answers echoed anywhere else---which of course could equally mean that I’m clever or a fool. I won’t comment any more here on my proposed answers; you can read the book if you’re curious. The second reason I decide to write a book was because I wanted to explore the process of creating and publishing a book in more depth. I had previously written and published a book of purely local interest, but only as an ebook. I wanted to create an actual paperback book with better typography and cover art, and go through as many of the steps of “real” publishing that I could, within the constraints of my time and budget. Note that I did _not_ write the book expecting anyone to read it, much less pay me money for it. I wrote it for myself, and anything beyond that is a bonus. Researching and writing the book Prior to writing the book I was generally familiar with the history of the yuri genre and its “S” literature predecessor, but had huge gaps in my knowledge about Japanese history and society relevant to that history. And, of course, I didn’t then and still don’t know Japanese at all. Fortunately there is a small but fairly active group of academics who have published extensively in English on topics relevant to the book, and I took as much advantage of their expertise as I could. I now have more than twenty books on my bookshelf that I bought in the course of researching my own book, and several more that I bought in Kindle format. Other books had open access copies available, made available either by the authors or the publishers, and a few were available on the Internet Archive for temporary borrowing. Academic papers were a separate issue. A lot of papers are paywalled and are available from journal publishers only at extortionate rates ($20 per paper or even more). (It’s often cheaper to buy a book that’s an edited collection of papers, even if only a couple of papers are of interest.) Fortunately, as with books, many authors and even some publishers make copies available at no charge. Some judicious Internet searching in various places found the few remaining ones I needed. When it came to the actual writing of the book I wanted it to adhere as closely as possible to academic conventions, including doing formal citations and a full bibliography. My guide to doing that was the Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition), which I highly recommend. It’s available online as a subscription service, but I recommend getting the hardcover book; it’s handier to use if you consult it often, and you can sometimes find it available at 50% off during sales at the publisher’s website. The good: The Internet and all the services it supports (Google Scholar and general Internet search engines, the Internet Archive, Amazon and Abebooks, etc.) put doing research like this within reach of the typical interested person, especially if you’re willing to spend a little money. The bad: academic publishing is a rip-off, and it’s no wonder that many people (including academics themselves) are turning to pirate sites to get copies of papers. Formatting and publishing the book As I noted previously, my first book was published as an ebook only. Because I wanted to learn how ebooks worked at a low level, I actually hand-coded the entire book in (X)HTML. That was not an option for this book, since I also wanted to create a PDF version that I could use to publish a paperback version. But I still wanted to work with a text-based format, so I could put the book under version control in a source repository, as opposed to creating Microsoft Word documents---the typical format used by self-publishers today. Fortunately I was able to find an almost free solution in the Electric Book software suite, built on a variety of free and open source software products. The only software I had to pay for was the Prince XML software used to create the PDF version, and the image processing software I used for the cover art (see below). The Electric Book software enabled me to write in Markdown format, which I also use for my blog, while still having fairly tight control over the formatting of the book in both PDF and EPUB3 versions (although for the most part I went with the default look). I was also able to leverage a set of high-quality typefaces available for download at no charge. The only downside is that the software was (and presumably still is) somewhat fragile, being based on an older version of Jekyll and various node.js modules, and requiring me to run an outdated version of Ubuntu. The cover art proved to be a harder challenge. I had early on decided that I was not going to use any of Takako Shimura’s art either within the book itself or on the cover. I thought it would be difficult to impossible to get official permission to use it, and I didn’t want to risk a copyright dispute if I didn’t have such permission. As a result I went looking for Creative Commons-licensed or public domain art that I could use for a cover. I went through at least three different cover designs (all featuring blue flowers of one sort or another) before concluding that none of them worked for me. I finally went to a commercial service (iStock, by Getty Images) and found a very nice piece of art that I could license for commercial use at a very reasonable price ($12). (The fact that it was a watercolor illustration was an unexpected bonus, since Shimura herself typically uses watercolor art in her own book covers.) I used Pixelmator Pro to create the cover art itself, including the back cover, which I needed for the print version. The one major issue I had was with handling the colors for the print copy. My first attempt looked like crap when I had a proof copy printed, so I spent some time reading about CMYK colors (used for printing) vs. RGB colors (for online use), and ended up renting a copy of Adobe Photoshop for a couple of months in order to do the needed color corrections and conversions. Between the book files themselves (PDF and EPUB3) and the cover art, I had almost everything I needed to publish. I decided to take the extra step of paying for ISBN numbers for myself, so that I could publish the book on platforms other than Amazon. (Amazon will assign you a so-called ASIN, but it’s usable only for Amazon itself.) I used Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing to publish the Kindle and paperback versions, and the Draft2Digital service to get distribution of the ebook version on all other platforms (Apple Books, B&N, Kobo, etc.) The good: The PDF version of the book came out looking well in terms of cover art, typography, and general formatting, and the quality of the print-on-demand paperbacks produced by Amazon was pretty high---not a whole lot of difference from a typical trade paperback. The bad: I’d probably do it again just on general principle (to oppose the Amazon monopoly), but realistically there wasn’t much point to publishing on non-Amazon online bookstores; I think I sold maybe one copy on those platforms over the entire year. The Japanese translation A truly unexpected bonus of publishing the book under a Creative Commons license was having a pseudonymous blogger, Konsuke (a Japanese scientist working in the US), translate the entire thing into Japanese. A fan of Takako Shimura, he saw a tweet from Shimura mentioning the book (after I sent her a complimentary copy), took advantage of the book’s Creative Commons license, and started publishing translated chapters from the book on his blog. I should state for the record how amazing and gratifying this was to me. Konsuke’s English was reasonably but not perfectly fluent (though he’s been actively working to improve it), and no one has yet read the translation and given me an opinion on its quality. But even a low-cost commercial translation of a nonfiction book of this size (about eighty thousand words) would have cost several thousand dollars. In addition, Konsuke also found a number of typographical errors that remained after my own editing, discovered a number of places where the English translation of the manga was debatable or outright incorrect, created a new appendix listing the probable sources of all the chapter titles in the manga, and helped me learn about Japanese typefaces and typesetting practices, all of which improved the final editions in both languages. The good: I have a complete Japanese translation, available in the same format and from the same sources as the English translation, and a significantly improved English edition as a side effect. The bad: I haven’t gotten any feedback on the quality of the translation from someone truly fluent in both languages. If you want to write a book Writing _That Type of Girl_ took a lot of time (two or three years), a lot of work (probably at least a couple of hundred hours total, if not more) and a fair amount of money (probably around a thousand dollars all told). But I’m very glad to have done it: it was a great experience, I learned a lot about _Sweet Blue Flowers_, Japanese society and history (especially with regard to LGBTQ+ issues), and book production, and I even got a few readers as well. So if you’re thinking that you have a book in you, I encourage you to let it out. You can save a lot of the money I spent by using only FOSS software (like Bookdown) or using a self-publishing site that is free or low-cost. If you want to make the book available for sale as a paperback or ebook, I recommend sticking to Amazon, monopoly though it may be. And if you want to encourage other people to translate or other build on the book, I suggest that you release the book under a Creative Commons license, and make the underlying text source publicly available. Giving away the book or its source for free will not harm any book sales, which will likely be approximately zero in any case. A final thought: If you’ve read my book and have thoughts about it, good or bad, please feel free to email me or leave a comment. Positive feedback is always gratifying, and constructive criticism about how the book could be improved is always welcome. * Renkon ([@renkotsuban][]) - 2023-03-15 12:08 This was a super enlightening read on self-publishing, thank you so much for sharing! Frank Hecker ([@hecker][]) - 2023-03-15 12:51 You’re welcome. Thanks for stopping by! Mightfo ([@Mightfo][]) - 2023-03-15 10:59 Thanks for sharing all this! I hadnt thought of using source control for books but thats probably something id want too, heh. Really interesting to hear about Konsuke and also the paperback color issue. Frank Hecker ([@hecker][]) - 2023-03-15 12:55 Yeah, using git for this was invaluable, even if no one else ever uses the repository. Konsuke and I went through a lot of revisions on the translations, where he would send me stuff to change. I’d then file an issue, create a branch, make the change, merge it back, then send him a copy of the diffs to confirm that the change had been made correctly. Since the book was first published I filed almost a hundred issues for stuff like this, both for the Japanese and the English editions. [@renkotsuban]: http://web.archive.org/web/20241216213413/https://cohost.org/renkotsuban [@hecker]: http://web.archive.org/web/20241219224313/https://cohost.org/hecker [@Mightfo]: http://web.archive.org/web/20241220042856/https://cohost.org/Mightfo3b:["$","$L31","at://did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat/site.standard.document/3mpfmmxtrja2n",{"publication":{"href":"https://frankhecker.com","pubRecord":{"url":"https://frankhecker.com","icon":{"ref":{"$link":"bafkreihigwt3ctchlaoquojtitibuj2kozeritm3vzutgbrpvmtbldhk2q"},"size":2091,"$type":"blob","mimeType":"image/png"},"name":"frankhecker.com","$type":"site.standard.publication","createdAt":"2026-06-29T04:07:04.993Z","description":"Frank Hecker’s personal blog","preferences":{"showComments":true,"showMentions":true,"showPrevNext":false,"showFirstLast":false,"showInDiscover":true,"showRecommends":true},"theme":"$undefined"},"uri":"at://did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat/site.standard.publication/3mpfmfpu4u72n"},"ownerDid":"@frankhecker.com","contributors":[{"did":"did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat","handle":"frankhecker.com","displayName":"Frank Hecker"}],"documents":{"comments_on_documents":[{"count":0}],"document_mentions_in_bsky":[{"count":0}],"recommends_on_documents":[{"count":0}],"data":{"path":"/2023/03/12/that-typo-of-girl/","site":"at://did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat/site.standard.publication/3mpfmfpu4u72n","tags":["That Type of Girl","Takako Shimura","Sweet Blue Flowers","Aoi hana","yuri","manga","books","self-publishing","Cohost"],"$type":"site.standard.document","title":"That Typo of Girl","description":"I look back on when I self-published a book about a yuri manga.","publishedAt":"2023-03-13T01:39:48.000Z","textContent":"$4a","canonicalUrl":"https://frankhecker.com/2023/03/12/that-typo-of-girl/","theme":"$undefined","preferences":"$undefined"},"uri":"at://did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat/site.standard.document/3mpfmmxtrja2n","sort_date":"2023-03-13T01:39:48+00:00"}}] 4b:T1388,\This post was originally published on [Cohost.\] I finished watching the final episode 12 of _GAP: The Series_ a couple of days ago. Here are some final thoughts on the show. (WARNING: This includes spoilers for episode 12 in particular.) There are others better placed than me to do a comprehensive review of _GAP_, so I’ll just say that I enjoyed the show and looked forward to watching it each week. I have to confess though: I see a lot of fans commenting as if _GAP_ were the greatest yuri/GL/lesbian series ever. I don’t normally watch live-action LGBTQ+ series, so I really can’t do an intelligent comparison, but this seems more than a bit overblown. I mean, what are they comparing it to? In any case, I see _GAP_ as an interesting hybrid: on one level it’s a glossy romantic drama (with some comedy sprinkled in) that bears more than a bit of resemblance to soap operas, telenovelas, Kdramas, and (the Thai equivalent) _lakorn_. But it was also consciously designed to promote a political message, albeit in a low-key suitable-for-the-mainstream way. See in particular the very interesting comments by Saint and P’Chen of IdolFactory, the production company that created the series, in which Saint claims “Every time I create a series . . . I see it as building/improving the \[LGBTQA+\] community.” _GAP_ follows a playbook for promoting LGBTQ+ equality that’s familiar from the US marriage equality campaign, but with a Thai-specific twist. There is the act of coming out, and having pride in oneself and those one loves; as Sam says in episode 9 (after Mon frets about what others might think of a public display of affection), “I just want to hold my lover’s hand.” There’s also the classic “love is love” message, delivered by Saint himself in the final episode, when as “Sir Phoom” he drops in to pay his regards to Sam’s grandmother after she tells Sam to live her life as she chooses: “Love will always find a way. It transcends gender and sexuality.” And, finally, there is the impact of having someone who was previously in opposition---namely Sam’s grandmother, and to a lesser extent Kirk---change their mind and endorse what they previously condemned. (In a US context, see Barack Obama’s endorsement of marriage equality, which people have claimed helped win the Black vote in the 2012 referendum in Maryland, where I live.) _GAP_’s political message is adapted to Thai sensibilities. I’ve seen some people online protest that Sam won her freedom only because others permitted it, i.e., through Kirk’s change of heart and his intervention with Sam’s grandmother. Where is the righteous rebellion against heteronormativity and those who enforce it (men like Kirk, but also women like Sam’s grandmother)? Well, that occurred at the end of episode 11, in the form of Neung’s epic rant. But though cathartic for the audience (and perhaps for Sam herself), it was not the key that freed Sam from her fate. That instead came about because Sam was a dutiful and loving granddaughter and showed her filial piety in the most extreme way possible, choosing to bury forever her chances for happiness in deference to her grandmother’s wishes. Prompted by Kirk’s comments, her grandmother then behaved as an elder should behave in a hierarchical family system (but often does not), taking note not only of her granddaughter’s obedience but also her unhappiness, and deciding to release Sam from her familial obligation in order to promote her ultimate well-being. The result is to my mind the most dramatic moment of episode 12 (even more dramatic than the wedding), as Sam drops to the floor and kowtows to her grandmother, then hugs her while on her knees before finally standing to face her. Her grandmother then reciprocates by attending Sam’s wedding to Mon, sitting in the front row to bear witness to their vows and---by her presence---publicly endorse their relationship. Sam and Mon’s story is thus not a story of rebellion against society’s strictures, but of society recognizing the desires of some of its children and evolving its attitudes to acknowledge and accommodate them. This is reinforced by Sir Phoom’s conversation with Sam’s grandmother, in which he seeks to calm the concerns that Sam’s grandmother has, and in particular emphasizes that his own aristocratic parents know about Sam and Mon’s relationship and are happy to see them together. Is this the much-sneered-at “respectability politics”? Why, yes, that’s exactly what it is. It’s an approach that Saint and his colleagues presumably thought was most likely to be successful in the context of Thai society: to emphasize the loyalty of LGBTQ+ Thais to that society and its traditional norms of respect and deference, and to ask in turn for themselves to be recognized as full and equal members of society. And from Saint’s public comments it seems that _GAP_ was created in large part to be a means to that end.3c:["$","$L31","at://did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat/site.standard.document/3mpfmmxzacy2n",{"publication":{"href":"https://frankhecker.com","pubRecord":{"url":"https://frankhecker.com","icon":{"ref":{"$link":"bafkreihigwt3ctchlaoquojtitibuj2kozeritm3vzutgbrpvmtbldhk2q"},"size":2091,"$type":"blob","mimeType":"image/png"},"name":"frankhecker.com","$type":"site.standard.publication","createdAt":"2026-06-29T04:07:04.993Z","description":"Frank Hecker’s personal blog","preferences":{"showComments":true,"showMentions":true,"showPrevNext":false,"showFirstLast":false,"showInDiscover":true,"showRecommends":true},"theme":"$undefined"},"uri":"at://did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat/site.standard.publication/3mpfmfpu4u72n"},"ownerDid":"@frankhecker.com","contributors":[{"did":"did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat","handle":"frankhecker.com","displayName":"Frank Hecker"}],"documents":{"comments_on_documents":[{"count":0}],"document_mentions_in_bsky":[{"count":0}],"recommends_on_documents":[{"count":0}],"data":{"path":"/2023/02/20/the-end-of-gap/","site":"at://did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat/site.standard.publication/3mpfmfpu4u72n","tags":["GAP: The Series","yuri","GL","Thailand","LGBT","LGBTQ","LGBTQ+","Saint","IdolFactory","Cohost"],"$type":"site.standard.document","title":"The end of GAP","description":"I summarize my final thoughts on GAP: The Series.","publishedAt":"2023-02-20T18:20:49.000Z","textContent":"$4b","canonicalUrl":"https://frankhecker.com/2023/02/20/the-end-of-gap/","theme":"$undefined","preferences":"$undefined"},"uri":"at://did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat/site.standard.document/3mpfmmxzacy2n","sort_date":"2023-02-20T18:20:49+00:00"}}] 4c:Ta4e,[](/assets/images/more-yuri-manga-recs.jpg) \I originally published this post on [Cohost as a follow-up to a Cohost post by @saralily, but I thought it was worth publishing on its own.\] I’ve read all of the ones @saralily recommends that have been released in English, except for _A Tropical Fish Yearns for Snow_, and agree with her comments. Here are some of my own recommendations, in no particular order: _Bloom Into You: Regarding Saeki Sayaka_ light novels. This takes a character who was given somewhat short shrift in the main _Bloom Into You_ manga, and tells her story in her own voice. It may be blasphemous of me, but I prefer this to the manga. _Goodbye, My Rose Garden_. A story set in the late Victorian era that is realistic about the barriers society placed in the way of lesbian relationships. _Yuri Is My Job!_ Starts out as an affectionate parody of yuri schoolgirl tropes as exemplified by _Maria Watches Over Us_, but then gets increasingly serious (and lesbian) in later volumes. (Some people apparently hate this change; I think it’s great.) _How Do We Relationship?_ This reverses the usual course of yuri stories: the protagonists meet and sleep with each other, then figure out what to do after that. _I Can’t Believe I Slept with You!_ A dubious (consent) premise redeemed as the story evolves. (And now that I think of it, it also reverses the usual yuri plot sequence.) _She, Her Camera, and Her Seasons_. This features a love triangle in which one of the vertices is a high-school boy, and some yuri fans may reject it for that reason. But it’s really well-done, and the way photography is woven into the story and the characters’ lives is quite interesting: it‘s so important to the two main protagonists that they take pictures of each other even in---really, _especially in_---their most intimate and vulnerable moments. _Otherside Picnic_ light novels. I’m not generally a fan of horror, but I love these. Like the _Regarding Saeki Sayaka_ light novels, they benefit tremendously from being told in the first-person. It’s worth noting that this is one of several works that trace their heritage back to the Strugatsky Brothers’ SF novel _Roadside Picnic_, a group that famously includes Andrei Tarkovsky’s film _Stalker_ as well as the video game _S.T.A.L.K.E.R._ _After Hours_. Another adult yuri work, about an interesting subject, namely DJing. (It even has a couple of panels that name-check contemporary Japanese bands and DJs.) Like _How Do We Relationship?_ and _I Can’t Believe I Slept with You!_, it starts with sex and then moves on to more interesting things.3d:["$","$L31","at://did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat/site.standard.document/3mpfmmyck6a2n",{"publication":{"href":"https://frankhecker.com","pubRecord":{"url":"https://frankhecker.com","icon":{"ref":{"$link":"bafkreihigwt3ctchlaoquojtitibuj2kozeritm3vzutgbrpvmtbldhk2q"},"size":2091,"$type":"blob","mimeType":"image/png"},"name":"frankhecker.com","$type":"site.standard.publication","createdAt":"2026-06-29T04:07:04.993Z","description":"Frank Hecker’s personal blog","preferences":{"showComments":true,"showMentions":true,"showPrevNext":false,"showFirstLast":false,"showInDiscover":true,"showRecommends":true},"theme":"$undefined"},"uri":"at://did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat/site.standard.publication/3mpfmfpu4u72n"},"ownerDid":"@frankhecker.com","contributors":[{"did":"did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat","handle":"frankhecker.com","displayName":"Frank Hecker"}],"documents":{"comments_on_documents":[{"count":0}],"document_mentions_in_bsky":[{"count":0}],"recommends_on_documents":[{"count":0}],"data":{"path":"/2023/01/24/a-few-more-yuri-manga-recommendations/","site":"at://did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat/site.standard.publication/3mpfmfpu4u72n","tags":["manga","yuri","yuri manga","Bloom into You","Goodbye, My Rose Garden","Yuri Is My Job!","How Do We Relationship?","I Can’t Believe I Slept with You!","She, Her Camera, and Her Seasons","Otherside Picnic","After Hours","Cohost"],"$type":"site.standard.document","title":"A few more yuri manga recommendations","description":"In which I recommend some yuri manga titles of note.","publishedAt":"2023-01-25T01:12:13.000Z","textContent":"$4c","canonicalUrl":"https://frankhecker.com/2023/01/24/a-few-more-yuri-manga-recommendations/","theme":"$undefined","preferences":"$undefined"},"uri":"at://did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat/site.standard.document/3mpfmmyck6a2n","sort_date":"2023-01-25T01:12:13+00:00"}}] 4d:T145b,\This post was originally published on [Cohost.\] Everyone does it, and I will too: Some quick year-end thoughts on things I read, watched, or listened to this year, and liked well enough to write about them here. Where appropriate I’ve included links to the official source material. (I avoid scanlation sites because as a practical matter I want to encourage publishers to translate more works into English and distribute them as widely as possible.) I don’t do rank ordering or numerical scores, these are just in semi-random order, starting with my top 5 yuri manga: - _Yuri Is My Job!_ (10 volumes in English, ongoing). This started out as a parody of class S tropes as filtered through _Maria Watches Over Us_, but has become deeper and more interesting over time, both as a story and as metatextual commentary on the yuri genre. It will be interesting to see whether the upcoming anime adaptation does it justice. - _How Do We Relationship?_ (7 volumes, ongoing). Unlike many yuri works, this manga doesn’t end when the main couple gets together; in fact that’s just the starting point, and now the main couple isn’t even a couple any more. - _Even Though We’re Adults_ (5 volumes, ongoing). The most adult yuri manga around, not in the “adult video” sense, but in the “adults having problems only adults have, and working through them as adults” sense. This is Takako Shimura’s best work published in English thus far. - _I Can’t Believe I Slept with You_ (3 volumes, complete). Another work which considerably transcends its (somewhat dubious) premise. - _She, Her Camera, and Her Seasons_ (5 volumes, complete). One of the better depictions of a love triangle around, and one which avoids a pat resolution. It also deftly uses photography as a running theme: taking photos is so central to two of the main characters’ lives that they do it even in---really, _especially in_---their most intimate and vulnerable moments. Other non-manga yuri works worthy of note: - _Otherside Picnic_ light novel (7 volumes, ongoing). What really sells this work is the narration by and interior monologue of Sorawo, one of the two protagonists. I watched one episode of the anime, which was unexceptional, and am skipping the manga. - _Yurizen! Salon---Shirayuri’s Comforting Food Therapy_ super-light novel (23 volumes, complete). This is another entry in the genre of yuri works involving food, here made more interesting by featuring traditional Chinese medicinal recipes. - _GAP: The Series_ live-action TV series (6 episodes, ongoing). This Thai production features a rather clichéd trope---romance between an overbearing and emotionally cold boss and her younger naïve but spunky subordinate---but it’s more than redeemed by the incredible chemistry between the two co-stars. I wrote about this one as an example of the growing creation of yuri/GL works outside Japan. (There are several more upcoming yuri live-action series from Thailand, although Thai GL works are still far outnumbered by Thai BL works.) - _She Makes My Heart Flutter_ live-action web series (5 episodes, complete). This Korean work is a sweet “love comes late” story, featuring two generations of lesbians and their different perspectives. Finally, some other things I enjoyed this year: - Anime: I watched all episodes of well over a dozen series this year. These were my top 5, in no particular order: _Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury_, _Akiba Maid War_, _Birdie Wing_, _Kaguya-sama: Love Is War_, and _My Dress-Up Darling_. - Film: _Everything Everywhere All At Once_. Unlike some, I didn’t think this was a masterpiece, but I enjoyed it well enough, and it’s good to see Michelle Yeoh get more recognition. - Music: This was the year of DJ Sabrina The Teenage DJ. According to Spotify I listened to over 125 hours of DJ Sabrina tracks (including over 80 replays of “Lose Myself”), and I probably listened to that much or more on the Apple Music app after I bought all her albums on Bandcamp. - Books: Almost all of my reading was done as research for my book. Other than that I don’t think I read an entire book “for fun” all year, which is rather unusual for me. However I’ve started reading poetry in earnest again; right now I’m halfway through H.D.’s _Selected Poems_. Finally, while (unlike some) I won’t do a “worst of 2022” list, I did want to mention two works that I found disappointing, and for which my opinion is somewhat of a minority one: - _I’m in Love with the Villainess_ light novel. If this series had ended with volume 3, I would have been perfectly happy (well, except for the stupid and unnecessary incest subplot). The last two volumes felt like the author was writing to satisfy the expectations of fans and the publisher for more material. I thought the conclusion of volume 5 in particular was an ass-pull that for me at least strained my suspension of disbelief to the breaking point. - _Spy x Family_ anime. There’s nothing inherently bad about this series, but I found myself continually putting off watching the latest episode, until finally I dropped it. Thanks for reading, and here’s wishing you a Happy New Year!3e:["$","$L31","at://did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat/site.standard.document/3mpfmmz5qby2n",{"publication":{"href":"https://frankhecker.com","pubRecord":{"url":"https://frankhecker.com","icon":{"ref":{"$link":"bafkreihigwt3ctchlaoquojtitibuj2kozeritm3vzutgbrpvmtbldhk2q"},"size":2091,"$type":"blob","mimeType":"image/png"},"name":"frankhecker.com","$type":"site.standard.publication","createdAt":"2026-06-29T04:07:04.993Z","description":"Frank Hecker’s personal blog","preferences":{"showComments":true,"showMentions":true,"showPrevNext":false,"showFirstLast":false,"showInDiscover":true,"showRecommends":true},"theme":"$undefined"},"uri":"at://did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat/site.standard.publication/3mpfmfpu4u72n"},"ownerDid":"@frankhecker.com","contributors":[{"did":"did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat","handle":"frankhecker.com","displayName":"Frank Hecker"}],"documents":{"comments_on_documents":[{"count":0}],"document_mentions_in_bsky":[{"count":0}],"recommends_on_documents":[{"count":0}],"data":{"path":"/2022/12/26/year-end-recommendations-yuri-or-otherwise/","site":"at://did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat/site.standard.publication/3mpfmfpu4u72n","tags":["manga","anime","music","books","yuri","poetry","film","recommendations","Cohost"],"$type":"site.standard.document","title":"Year-end recommendations (yuri or otherwise)","description":"In which I recommend some yuri and other works I enjoyed in 2022.","publishedAt":"2022-12-26T23:37:01.000Z","textContent":"$4d","canonicalUrl":"https://frankhecker.com/2022/12/26/year-end-recommendations-yuri-or-otherwise/","theme":"$undefined","preferences":"$undefined"},"uri":"at://did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat/site.standard.document/3mpfmmz5qby2n","sort_date":"2022-12-26T23:37:01+00:00"}}] 4e:T1d2a,[](/assets/images/gap-the-series.png) \This post and its associated comments were originally published on [Cohost.\] The genre we call “yuri” originated in Japan, but some of its most interesting manifestations are in other nations in East and Southeast Asia, where it is typically marketed as “GL.” One recent example is the live-action Thai television drama _GAP_, also known as _GAP: The Series_ (to distinguish it from the novel on which it is based), _Pink Theory_, and other names. _GAP_ is currently being broadcast weekly on Thai TV Channel 3, and then afterward being made available on YouTube with English subtitles, starting with episode 1, part 1. It’s an example of what’s sometimes called “shakaijin yuri”: yuri stories featuring adults doing adult things. In the series, one of the two main characters, Mon, starts her first job at a small media company run by the other main character, Sam, an older woman whom Mon has idolized ever since she was a child. However, Sam does not remember ever meeting Mon (or at least doesn’t admit to it), and their relationship gets off to a rocky start before love starts to blossom. It’s a pretty good series overall, and well worth watching if you’re a yuri fan. I’m not going to attempt a review; Erica Friedman already posted one on the Okazu blog, and I basically agree with her assessment. Instead I wanted to comment on some other aspects of the series and how it came to be. (Warning: This will contain some minor spoilers for the first two episodes.) First, while for some time now Thailand has been cranking out live-action BL series, _GAP_ is apparently the first yuri/GL series produced in the country. It was created by a relatively new production company, Idol Factory, headed by 24-year-old Suppapong Udomkaewkanjana (nicknamed “Saint”). Saint became famous starring in the 2018 Thai BL series _Love by Chance_, produced by GMMTV (the 800-pound gorilla of Thai BL production companies), and then went off on his own to found Idol Factory. Idol Factory’s first production was the popular BL series _Secret Crush on You_. That series, set in a high school, featured a side couple played by Sarocha Chankimha (“Freen”) and Rebecca Patricia Armstrong (“Becky”). _GAP_ features the two in the lead roles, with Freen playing Sam and Becky playing Mon, with other actors in the Idol Factory stable playing various supporting roles. It’s a credit to Saint and Idol Factory that they followed up their first BL series by taking a chance with a yuri series. That bet has apparently paid off, at least with international viewers: the first two _GAP_ episodes have each racked up between one and two million views on YouTube, comparable to the two to three million views for each of the episodes of _Secret Crush on You_ (which has been out at least seven months now). Second, it’s interesting to see the mix of yuri tropes and social commentary in the series. The setup is reminiscent of _Maria Watches Over Us_, albeit translated to an office setting: a younger and relatively naïve but spunky young woman (our Yumi equivalent) meets an elegant and seemingly emotionally cold older woman from a very wealthy family (species designation _tsunderensis sachiko_). Meanwhile the older woman’s family disregards her own desires and expects her to enter into an arranged marriage with a man who presumably will take over her firm. In _GAP_ the main antagonist is Sam’s grandmother, who has given Sam a deadline of one year to make her business successful or quit it in favor of marriage. The grandmother has already interfered with the lives of Sam’s two older sisters. Sam’s fiance Kirk appears to be another antagonist. He is a co-owner of Sam’s firm, but does nothing except drop by occasionally to hand out snacks to the employees and curry their favor. He seems to be positioning himself to take over full control of Sam’s firm, but is going about it in a low-key way that suggests that this is just the natural order of things. (See also the scene in the second episode where Sam offers to drive Mon home, and Kirk ends up taking the wheel of Sam’s Porsche Carrera, relegating Sam to be a passenger in her own car.) A side character worth noting is one of Sam’s friends, someone whom in the West we’d characterize as a butch lesbian. But I presume that in Thai terms she’s actually a “tom” (for “tomboy”); I mean, her nickname is even “Tee.” The relationship between toms and their partners (“dees,” for “lady”/“ladies”) doesn’t necessarily conform to the Western butch/femme stereotype; for a fascinating discussion of the differences, see the paper “The Romance of the Queer: The Sexual and Gender Norms of _Tom_ and _Dee_ in Thailand,” by Megan Sinnott, included in the book _AsiaPacifiQueer: Rethinking Genders and Sexualities_. The final thing worthy of note about _GAP_ is how it applies to yuri/GL live-action series a common marketing strategy used in Thai BL productions, that of the _khu jin_, or “imagined couple.” The basic idea is that instead of fans shipping idols on their own initiative (with production companies then possibly responding to that), Thai production companies (in a strategy pioneered by GMMTV) create idol couples already “pre-shipped.” In other words, production companies encourage fans to think of the idols as couples on-screen and off- from the time that they debut. For a good introduction to this phenomenon see Thomas Baudinette’s talk “Boys Love Media in Thailand: Celebrity, Fans, and Transnational Asian Queer Popular Culture” and his forthcoming book of the same title. In the case of _GAP_ the _khu jin_ is Freen and Becky. They have very good chemistry on-screen and off-screen as well---although the point here is that there is no such thing as “off-screen,” since even seemingly unrehearsed interactions (many of which can be seen on YouTube by searching for “freenbecky”) have to be seen in the context of an Idol Factory marketing strategy to promote them as the company’s star GL couple. If _GAP_ is successful (and it appears to be so far) then we can expect to see a lot more of Freen and Becky in future Idol Factory series. Other Thai production companies are dipping their feet in the yuri ocean as well: GMMTV has a schoolgirl yuri series _23.5_ debuting in 2023, starring Pansa Vosbein (”Milk”) and Pattranite Limpatiyakorn (”Love”); like Freen and Becky, they previously appeared as a side couple in BL productions before getting their own GL series. (You can find them on YouTube by searching for “milklove”). There are other Thai GL series announced and on the way as well. It remains to be seen whether Thai production companies can create a “GL machine” to match the current “BL machine” (as Thomas Baudinette refers to it), but it will certainly be fun to watch them try. * Mightfo ([@Mightfo][]) - 2022-12-02 12:15 Fascinating! Also, I had no idea that Thailand made a lot of BL and yuri! Thanks for sharing this. Frank Hecker ([@hecker][]) - 2022-12-02 12:19 You’re welcome! Thailand is actually the biggest producer of BL live-action series in all of East and Southeast Asia; Thomas Baudinette notes in his talk that in 2022 there were over a hundred Thai BL series produced, and that Thai BL series have now achieved widespread popularity in Japan, the country where BL was born.3f:["$","$L31","at://did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat/site.standard.document/3mpfmmzdula2n",{"publication":{"href":"https://frankhecker.com","pubRecord":{"url":"https://frankhecker.com","icon":{"ref":{"$link":"bafkreihigwt3ctchlaoquojtitibuj2kozeritm3vzutgbrpvmtbldhk2q"},"size":2091,"$type":"blob","mimeType":"image/png"},"name":"frankhecker.com","$type":"site.standard.publication","createdAt":"2026-06-29T04:07:04.993Z","description":"Frank Hecker’s personal blog","preferences":{"showComments":true,"showMentions":true,"showPrevNext":false,"showFirstLast":false,"showInDiscover":true,"showRecommends":true},"theme":"$undefined"},"uri":"at://did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat/site.standard.publication/3mpfmfpu4u72n"},"ownerDid":"@frankhecker.com","contributors":[{"did":"did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat","handle":"frankhecker.com","displayName":"Frank Hecker"}],"documents":{"comments_on_documents":[{"count":0}],"document_mentions_in_bsky":[{"count":0}],"recommends_on_documents":[{"count":0}],"data":{"path":"/2022/12/02/thailand-closes-the-yuri-gap/","site":"at://did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat/site.standard.publication/3mpfmfpu4u72n","tags":["GAP: The Series","yuri","GL","Thailand","BL","LGBTQ","Thomas Baudinette","Megan Sinnott","AsiaPacifiQueer","Freen","Becky","FreenBecky","MilkLove","Cohost"],"$type":"site.standard.document","title":"Thailand closes the Yuri GAP","description":"With GAP: The Series, Thailand creates a GL show to rival its BL shows.","publishedAt":"2022-12-02T05:11:05.000Z","textContent":"$4e","canonicalUrl":"https://frankhecker.com/2022/12/02/thailand-closes-the-yuri-gap/","theme":"$undefined","preferences":"$undefined"},"uri":"at://did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat/site.standard.document/3mpfmmzdula2n","sort_date":"2022-12-02T05:11:05+00:00"}}] 4f:T2086,{{< figure src="/assets/images/handsome-stewardess-embed.png" link="/assets/images/handsome-stewardess.png" alt="Scene from the film Handsome Stewardess" caption="In a scene from the film _Handsome Stewardess_, the eponymous stewardess tells her girlfriend that they can now get married in Taiwan. Click for a higher-resolution version. Image © 2019 Harvest Production and GagaOOLala." >}} \I wrote this as a pseudonymous Twitter thread back in 2020 and then published it as a [Cohost post in 2022. Given the ongoing discourse about China and Taiwan, I thought it was worth publishing it on my own site. I’m a total newbie when it comes to China, Taiwan, and international relations, so consider this as published for amusement purposes only.\] A while back I watched various films and dramas on the Taiwanese LGBTQ streaming service GagaooLala. If I were an academic and actually knew something about this topic, I’d write a paper “The Geopolitical Uses of Lesbian Romcoms: Zero Chou’s Six Asian Cities Rainbow Project as Taiwanese Soft Power Projection.” But I’m not, so this post will have to do. As of 2020 when I originally wrote this, Zero Chou’s project consisted of two films and two TV series featuring ethnic Chinese across East Asia: _We Are Gamily_ (“Gamily” presumably from “Gay Family”) (2017, filmed in Chengdu in Sichuan), _The Substitute_ (2017, Beijing), _Handsome Stewardess_ (2019, Singapore), and _Wrath of Desire_ (2020, Hong Kong). I watched the first three of these on GagaooLala. These films were “advised by” the Taiwan Ministry of Culture, and I believe partially funded directly or indirectly by the Ministry of Culture as well, along with a wider Taiwanese LGBTQ media ecosystem (headed by entrepreneur Jay Lin) that includes GOL Studios, the GagaTai and LalaTai websites, and GagaooLala itself. Why would the Taiwanese government do this? The answer presumably lies in geopolitics, and specifically in Taiwan’s fraught relations with China. Some claim that Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party envision not only an expanded China restored to greatness, but a world remade to China’s liking. In this vision, Western powers like the US and the EU would be sidelined, and other powers would acknowledge the superiority of (and seek to emulate) China and the CCP (which would be seen as one and the same). This goal would be accomplished via political, military, economic, and cultural means: ensuring internal order within China, following up the absorption of Hong Kong by annexing Taiwan, alternately overawing and subsidizing China’s Asian neighbors, winning the cooperation of Western businesses in exchange for access to the Chinese market, and attempting to influence Western culture and politics through various means. Presumably the CCP wishes that the ascendance of China and the identification of China with the CCP be seen as desirable by as many people and powers as possible. But if that is not always possible, the CCP presumably wishes the rise of China to be seen as inevitable: that there is _and can only be_ “one China,” with the CCP seen as the only true and correct ruler of China and the Chinese people, wherever they might live. Because of its much smaller population and economy, Taiwan cannot match the People’s Republic in most spheres. However, in its sponsorship of GagaooLala and similar ventures, the Taiwanese government can be seen as pursuing an asymmetric strategy to “queer” the (for now, metaphorical) battlefield: promoting an alternative that is culturally Chinese but open to other cultures and ethnicities, and that respects and even celebrates differences. For example: in _We Are Gamily_ a Chinese lesbian in a marriage of convenience with a gay friend works under a CCP member who repeats bland slogans about social harmony. The young lesbian has internalized these slogans, but after falling in love with her husband’s sister she opts for truth to oneself over “harmony.” Taiwan is not mentioned in _We Are Gamily_. The only non-PRC influence is in the form of her husband’s white South African lover, who discusses same-sex marriage in his home country. However the Chengdu setting may be a tell: not only is Chengdu supposedly a relatively friendly city for LGBTQ people, the city was the last redoubt of the Chinese Nationalist Party before fleeing to Taiwan in 1949. _Handsome Stewardess_ goes to one-party-ruled Singapore, as a Taiwanese lesbian joins an airline based in the city-state and proceeds to agitate against harassment and company policies. Her girlfriend claims that Singapore’s rules promote “stability,” but at the conclusion of the series ends up siding with her Taiwanese partner. Both these series foreground family: In _We Are Gamily_ the LGBTQ siblings’ desire to live true to themselves is ultimately accepted by their mother, while in _Handsome Stewardess_ the titular character’s parents encourage her to find a nice girl and marry, now that Taiwan law permits it. (However, her mother does have to remind her that the current law permits such marriages only if both individuals are citizens of jurisdictions with marriage equality.) Finally, _The Substitute_ features cross-strait relations, as a Beijing judo star is bested and seduced by a Taiwanese exchange student, is set to double for her in an action film, then becomes a star herself upon the other girl’s disappearance. The finale sees them reconciled in Taiwan. In sum, the “Six Asian Cities Rainbow Project” presents a vision of “liberal democracy with Taiwanese characteristics,” one that is rooted in and respectful of tradition (see also Chou’s earlier film _Splendid Float_). This vision is compatible with “family values,” but also allows for individual freedom and differences. The presumed goals are multiple: First, to heighten the perceived differences between Taiwan and the PRC, and position Taiwan as a potential model for young Chinese people to emulate. If even 2% of China’s 1.4 billion people are LGBTQ, they would outnumber the entire population of Taiwan; presumably they are a key audience for Taiwanese cultural outreach. There is also a large population of young people in China who are fans of LGBTQ-related (or at least LGBTQ-adjacent) content, like _danmei_ novels. Second, to promote a positive image of Taiwan among young people (Chinese or otherwise) living in countries in Southeast Asia that are potential allies of Taiwan. Again, we can see this effort as in part targeted to the large BL and (to a lesser extent) yuri fan communities in countries like Thailand and the Philippines. And finally (aided by GagaooLala’s global expansion), to give Westerners more knowledge of Taiwan and reasons to care about its fate (as, for example, many in the West---and in Taiwan itself---now care about the fate of Ukraine). We now come to Stalin’s famous question: How many divisions does GagaooLala have? If the CCP decides that force is the only way to “unify” China, will the people of Taiwan be able and willing to do the things necessary to defend their country, including reorganizing the Taiwanese armed forces to be more effective? Certainly some have questioned this. But political will follows popular will. If Taiwan’s autonomy is to be defended, its people---and its young people in particular---must see it as worth defending. And if Taiwan’s army is disadvantaged by being seen as the past enabler of authoritarian rule, then it must evolve to become an institution seen as the guarantor of Taiwanese democracy and freedom---including the freedoms celebrated in Chou’s films and TV series. Taiwan may never be truly sovereign and independent, but a combination of cultural change, military reform, and support from the US and other nations may enable it to survive as a country unto itself, and not as a mere province of an expanded China. As Adam Chen-Dedman asks, “Might Taiwan’s embrace of democracy and respect for human rights---as a radical people-centered form of ‘warm’ power---offer a way to decolonize its own ‘inevitable’ extinction at the hands of its neo-imperial neighbor?” The answer remains unclear, but the question is a critical one for the future of Taiwan, Asia, and the world.40:["$","$L31","at://did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat/site.standard.document/3mpfmmzkeli2n",{"publication":{"href":"https://frankhecker.com","pubRecord":{"url":"https://frankhecker.com","icon":{"ref":{"$link":"bafkreihigwt3ctchlaoquojtitibuj2kozeritm3vzutgbrpvmtbldhk2q"},"size":2091,"$type":"blob","mimeType":"image/png"},"name":"frankhecker.com","$type":"site.standard.publication","createdAt":"2026-06-29T04:07:04.993Z","description":"Frank Hecker’s personal blog","preferences":{"showComments":true,"showMentions":true,"showPrevNext":false,"showFirstLast":false,"showInDiscover":true,"showRecommends":true},"theme":"$undefined"},"uri":"at://did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat/site.standard.publication/3mpfmfpu4u72n"},"ownerDid":"@frankhecker.com","contributors":[{"did":"did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat","handle":"frankhecker.com","displayName":"Frank Hecker"}],"documents":{"comments_on_documents":[{"count":0}],"document_mentions_in_bsky":[{"count":0}],"recommends_on_documents":[{"count":0}],"data":{"path":"/2022/11/05/taiwan-and-the-geopolitical-uses-of-lesbian-romcoms/","site":"at://did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat/site.standard.publication/3mpfmfpu4u72n","tags":["politics","yuri","Taiwan"],"$type":"site.standard.document","title":"Taiwan and the geopolitical uses of lesbian romcoms","description":"Why is the Taiwanese government funding LGBTQ films and TV series?","publishedAt":"2022-11-05T23:00:00.000Z","textContent":"$4f","canonicalUrl":"https://frankhecker.com/2022/11/05/taiwan-and-the-geopolitical-uses-of-lesbian-romcoms/","theme":"$undefined","preferences":"$undefined"},"uri":"at://did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat/site.standard.document/3mpfmmzkeli2n","sort_date":"2022-11-05T23:00:00+00:00"}}]

Tag: yuri

First Post!

Toward a consistent rating system

Goodbye, My Rose Garden

Demonic controversies and other considerations

Even Though We’re Adults

Kase-san and Morning Glories

How Do We Relationship?

Our band could be your life: some thoughts on BanG Dream! It’s MyGO!!!!!

Notes toward a evolutionary theory of yuri

The epic anachronisms of Cosmic Warlord Kin-Bright

That Typo of Girl

The end of GAP

A few more yuri manga recommendations

Year-end recommendations (yuri or otherwise)

Thailand closes the Yuri GAP

Taiwan and the geopolitical uses of lesbian romcoms