Last week for our Pride Month history series, we looked into the past of the Stonewall Uprising and how it helped launch the queer comics movement into what we have today. Now, we'll take a look at queer manga, LGBTQ+ representation, and now to navigate the space with some core genres and demographics. Navigating queer and LGBTQ+ manga is a bit harder due to the different terminology and the stigma being queer has held in Japan. For this article, we'll also be featuring The Flower That Seems to Truly Dance by Tokyopop from their Love x Love line, and a manga I discovered only recently, NOIR by NOIR.

When compared to the United States or the United Kingdom, Japan has been pretty lax with the criminalization of homosexuality. However, as mentioned above, it still contains a stigma and is complicated when looking at Japan's past.

One of the first notable queer creators making manga for queer readers was Yoshiya Nobuko (1896 - 1973), who brought us titles like Flower Tales, Two Virgins in the Attic, To the Ends of the Earth, Ladies of the Heiki, and many more. Her works predominately featured romantic friendships and relationships between lesbian women. While Yoshiya was never "out" in the modern sense of the word, she was in an open relationship with another woman.

Starting in the 1970s, manga featuring same-sex or queer relationships began to achieve mainstream commercial success within the shōjo demographic. Female manga artists created a new type of shōjo manga characterized by beautiful artwork, complex storylines, and romances between same-sex couples, as well as characters challenging gender or sexual identities.

The Year 24 Group, a collective of female manga artists born around the same time, produced some of the most popular shōjo manga of that era. Despite working separately, they revolutionized shōjo manga, and their impact is still evident today. In 1978, Riyoko Ikeda, an unofficial member of the group, produced Claudine, one of the first commercially successful manga with an explicitly transgender protagonist. While early LGBTQ+ manga like Claudine (shown above) and The Heart of Thomas often ended tragically or featured excessive abuse, they paved the way for more diverse and positive representations in modern LGBTQ+ manga, leaving a lasting legacy.

Queer mangaka have published their works through small presses, underground publishers, and queer manga magazines for decades. Many of these publications were produced in limited quantities by small publishers that frequently went out of business, making them hard to find. International readers face difficulties accessing these works due to language barriers and the high cost of translation, which is typically reserved for commercially promising titles. As a result, English translations of mainstream shōjo manga from the 1970s are more common than those of gay romance manga from the 1980s.
 

In recent years, Tokyopop has released a Love x Love imprint, featuring manga with many LGBTQ+ creators, stories, and characters. I've been taking some time to read them and one that really stood out to me was The Flower That Seems to Truly Dance. This manga set in 1941, during the 16th year of the Showa era and features Soutarou Kuramoto, a guy from a prestigious family who comes back from studying abroad with something weighing on his mind. When he was a child, he told his best friend Haroumi Asuma that he hated the way he danced, and now he wants to apologize. But when Soutarou goes to see Haroumi, who’s now a famous dancer, Haroumi does his best to avoid him and his feelings.

It's a dramatic story, but it's not inherently focused on sexual encounters as yaoi or boy's love has been known to become over the years. It's more of a "will they - won't they" kind of story, and has the feeling of a telenovela or a soap opera in the emotions and drama it expresses. It's enjoyable to find something more subtle, for my tastes. For others it might not be quite what they're looking for. Within the Love X Love line, there's a wide variety of titles, with all kinds of different themes, relationship status, and sexualities and identifies. I strongly suggest anyone looking for LGBTQ+ titles to take a look at their manga.

With that in mind, queer manga is a complicated subject, namely due to the differences in terminology meaning depending on region. Some of the more famous categorizations of queer manga we'll include are yaoi and shōnen-ai, yuri and shōjo-ai, and bara and geikomi. There's a lot of nuance between the themes and focus of the stories (romantic vs explicit vs both), however, it should be noted that usually only bara has a target demographic of gay men. Of course, that's not saying that gay men can't enjoy any of the above listed, but the audience in mind when these works are created are typically adolescent or young adult women.

However, over the years, a debate about whether LGBTQ+ people and relationships have been fetishized rather than focusing on accurate and realistic representation. Some claim that it's innocent and escapist in nature, though, I think that's best left to the individual. Not everyone will have the same definition of what feels accurate or acceptable, so that's a grey area best left to the readers to discuss.
 

NOIR is an independent manga that I came across earlier this year. I love the artwork, a sort of sepia or raw umber monotone color. It's a beautifully drawn manga with a trio of main characters and is described as:

In a cozy corner of a narrow street in a northern French town sits a little wine bar called "Noir". It's where the destinies of three people meet together, turning their peaceful life into a complex love triangle, entailing significant changes in their lives.

Currently, we've just caught up to all the main characters in the second release, the moment they meet. I'm insanely curious to see where this one goes, but after taking a look at the creator and their work in other places online, I'm excited to see what it will become. It feels similar to our previous title, The Flower that Seems to Truly Dance, in that it's more about the dynamic relationships between the characters, versus the explicit relationship between them. Though we are only two chapters in, so only the mangaka knows where this is going. I'll be reading the new updates!
 

To this day, many dōjinshi small press, circles, and individuals continue to make LGBTQ+ and queer manga, host them online, and/or sell them at conventions. In Japan, Comiket and Comitia are popular for dōjinshi, and often feature 300,000 attendees over the course of a weekend! It's one of the premier places to find this type of manga in person. Many bookshops in Japan exist for indie and second hand, so make sure to check any bookshops if you're traveling there. France and Germany also boast two of the largest manga markets outside of Japan. As mentioned before, many of these manga are in low circulation numbers, or few survived, so you might get lucky!

NOIR is only one of many LGBTQ+ manga by indie creators that we have on the platform, and there are many amazing titles. Make sure you check them out here. You can also sort any browsing session by our LGBTQ+, Girl's Love, or Boy's Love themes when looking for something new to read.

In conclusion, the queer manga industry has a lot of options for queer readers of manga. The amount of fair and accurate representation is ever-growing with the internet. If you have any favorite LGBTQ+ titles on GlobalComix, let us know which comics or manga you've enjoyed.

If you'd like to read the comics featured in today's article, you can find The Flower That Seems to Truly Dance by Tokyopop and NOIR by NOIR on GlobalComix.

Please check these sources for today's information as well as to learn more about queer manga.

• How LGBTQ+ stories have evolved and flourished in manga

• A Beginner's Guide to LGBTQ+ Manga
• The Legacy Project: Nobuko Yoshiya - Nominee
• The Sabukaru Guide to Queer Mangas

• On Queer Representation in Anime

See you again soon, and Happy Pride Month 2024 from all of us here at GlobalComix.