[ SECRET POST #4774 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #4774 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.
[World of Warcraft]



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02.
[Yuri on Ice and Sailor Moon]


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03.
[The Untamed, Jiang Cheng]


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04.


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05.


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06.


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07.


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08. [WARNING for incest]

[Annie]











Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 00 secrets from Secret Submission Post #683.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I think a lot of us see this show's fanbase and get tired of it being hailed to the skies as 'canon gay' representation, when we remember similar series like Weiss Kreuz or Yami no Matsuei which had plenty of subtext and ran on that, and the subtext was part of the fun. But nobody would call either of them BL. They were pretty much made to be subtext-heavy and geared towards fans who would ship and slash the pretty boys, without being bound by canon tops/bottoms or love interests.

If we didn't already have Gravitation, Patalliro(Way back in the 80's!) and other explicitly BL anime, I could have accepted it as 'Canon gay' the same way I see Lawrence of Arabia or Brideshead Revisited as canonically gay stories. As it stands, it's a subtext heavy show made for an audience that likes subtext and freedom to ship how they please(which is a feature, not a bug). It's not a show that I would rec someone looking for canon gay, as little as I would rec 'Bend it like Beckham' to someone looking for films featuring lesbian love stories.

[(Anonymous)]

Er. BL is a genre unto itself. All BL is gay but not all gay media is BL in Japan. YOI and YNM and probably even out-there media like Loveless include m/m romance without being BL. On the manga-only side of things, Sasaki to Miyano is a BL manga in everything but name, as the author is explicitly eschewing the label and lampooning the bad tropes while giving us a great slow, romance that’s finally paying off :)

[(Anonymous)]

Now hang on, you can't list BL anime as evidence of how Yuri on Ice wasn't explicit enough. BL has traditionally been its own genre - explicitly romance targeting women.

I agree there's some crossover of genre tropes in subtext-heavy anime. Whether it's because of a reasoning that "gay sells" to fangirls or a genuine intention to make nuanced, intimate relationships, who knows. Homoeroticism is especially prevalent in sports anime. A year or two before Yuri on Ice, Free! Iwatobi Swim Club popularly seemed ultra gay.

But Yuri on Ice just isn't on that level. It's simply way too explicitly intimate - if not explicitly visual - about the relationship between the characters. They kiss - even if it's semi-obstructed, it's obvious enough. The romance is far more clearly built into the narrative.

I agree that there are other shows out there that are way more clear about what's going on and don't hide behind metaphors. There are even a couple non-BL genre anime that do this. No. 6 and Shin Sekai Yori are ones that come immediately to mind, though it's worth noting canon gay relationships are still really rare in anime outside of BL. That being said, Yuri on Ice does extend beyond mere subtext and yaoi-goggles, and I don't think it's fair to downplay what it is in terms of a gay relationship.