A Random String of Bits

You can watch the episode here.

Spoiler Warning

This episode deals mostly with Shūichi forming a romantic relationship with Anna (and the resulting fallout). It is told in an interesting nonlinear fashion; we see the two of them interacting, but not the beginning of the relationship. The story then cuts to someone teasing Anna (who is older than Shūichi) for dating him, which causes the other characters present to react with surprise. This is clever, because it aligns the character reactions with the audience reaction – it is as much a surprise to us as it is to them. This is a very effective use of closed narrative, and it manages to drop a surprise reveal into a fairly straightforward story.

Puberty sucks for nearly everyone, I suspect, but being trans at puberty is its own special form of torture. So, here we have a continuation of that narrative: Shūichi gets a zit, and wants it gone. Shūichi’s concern over having a zit seems to be markedly (socially unacceptably) feminine, to the point that he has to debate and work up courage to ask anyone what to do about it. And when he does manage to ask someone, it is his sister’s friend, whom he hardly knows – probably the distance between them makes it easier to broach the subject without feeling weird.

So, Shūichi and Anna’s relationship blooms from Shūichi asking her for advice about skin care. Anna, counter to Shūichi’s concerns, seems to take this in stride; she doesn’t appear to think that there is anything wrong or deviant about Shūichi having these concerns. The social conventions that Shūichi is concerned about violating here are ones I came up against repeatedly in my own childhood, to the point that before I was Shūichi’s age I had already internalized the idea that any beauty regimen beyond the bare minimum of showering was unacceptably feminine, and was careful to cultivate an attitude of wanting nothing to do with any of it. But Anna doesn’t seem to care, casually accepting his behavior and not remarking on it at all. Given Shūichi’s trepidations, this doesn’t seem to simply be a cultural difference – Anna just seems to have a worldview slightly askew of the cultural norm.

This episode is the first time we see one of our gender variant characters (other than Yuki) dating someone (or showing any interest in someone) who doesn’t know about their gender variance, as well. There are a lot of topics this brings to mind, but for now I’d like to give a sense of what it feels like to date someone while struggling with gender identity issues. To put it bluntly, being trans ended one relationship for me and dramatically altered another. So, let’s switch gears from Shūichi’s narrative to my own.

I have been in very few relationships. Depending on how you count, I’ve been in 2, 3, or 5. A comparatively small number. At any rate, I’ve only had two long-term (> 2 years) relationships, and those were both touched by my struggles with gender identity. In the first case, I dated a girl throughout high school. I struggled with depression the entire time, which I now recognize was repressed gender dysphoria. I used the fact that I was in a relationship with a heterosexual girl to help me invalidate the feelings of wrongness that were getting stronger over time. Eventually this led directly to me ending the relationship. At the time, I didn’t really understand why I felt the need to end the relationship – certainly I knew that the fact that I felt like I couldn’t tell her I liked to dress as a girl was a major factor, but looking back on it, the only justification I had for that feeling was that she was straight. I recognize now that I was already unconsciously identifying my gender variance as not “cross-dressing”, but a more fundamental difference between my assigned gender and my gender identity.

The next relationship was more complicated. She was bisexual, and somehow this made me feel more comfortable telling her about my gender variance (the reasons for this are more obvious in retrospect). As it evolved (I eventually spent a lot of time introspecting and decided that I must be genderfluid. Looking back, I can see this had nothing to do with any actual masculine feelings, but was completely about me being afraid of change, since it let me confine my femininity to my private life), she was understanding and accepting. There were certainly problems, though – the biggest is probably the fact that we were married, and had planned to have children together. Adapting to the idea of not having children with me was tough (although being polyamorous was a real boon there). But on the whole, our relationship got better as I got less depressed.

My latter experience here is not necessarily common; I have heard many trans narratives in which bitter breakups come from coming out to partners. This, then, has to hang over Shūichi’s head. Mixed in with the happiness and trepidation and hormone-fueled irrationality that comes with a first relationship are complex fears and nagging doubts: Will she understand if I tell her? Will she freak out, turn on me, out me to everyone, to my parents? Is dating even worth it, when I have this complex and taboo secret?

Can anyone possibly want me once they really know me?

You can watch the episode here.

Spoiler Warning

When I transitioned, I took all of my men’s clothes, put them in trash bags, and gave them away. This was a very cathartic experience – the moment I left the lie behind forever. I’ve noticed that a lot of trans women are sentimental like that.

So, when Yuki puts on a men’s suit to attend the play, it struck me as odd – keeping that kind of reminder of my past life around is something that I actively avoid, and I know the same is true for many trans women. This is, then, a great example of the fact that everyone’s experience is different. Exactly what being trans means to Yuki probably doesn’t match what it means for Shūichi, or Mako, or Yoshino. Or me. The show has been pretty good at conveying that already, actually, but this really drives it home for me.

This episode gives us several examples of the thing that this show does the best: presenting an understanding and empathetic portrayal of trans people without feeling heavy-handed or contrived. It is a glimpse into the lives of several trans people, how they think and feel and how they deal with navigating in a world of uncertainty. It’s the genuine sense of empathy here that keeps the show from feeling sensationalizing – the focus is often on the trans experience of these characters, sure, but it also takes great pains to ensure that the characters feel like actual individual people and not just something to gawk and giggle at. In other words, even though the show is explicitly about gender issues, it never feels like it’s all about gender issues.

Our first example is the one we already discussed above: Yuki feels the need to cross-dress to go back to her old school. This is something that I refer to in my own head as the Double Life Problem. See, the problem is that even a successful, pretty, fully transitioned trans woman can find herself buried by self-consciousness and doubt about her ability to pass the moment that history enters the picture. Obviously this is not a universal truth – see “everyone’s experience is different”, above. But for many of us, I suspect, our lives are divided into two sections: before we transitioned and after we transitioned (and of course, there’s the liminal phase of “during transition”, but that is, we hope, as brief as possible). And so our social circles can likewise be grouped into ‘people who met us before we transitioned’ and ‘people who met us after we transitioned’.

So when Yuki decides to dress as a man when going back into a group of people (her schoolteachers) that haven’t seen her since she transitioned, it’s safe to assume it is out of fear that she might be recognized. People in general will often go to great lengths to avoid embarrassment, and added to that is the dysphoria that would accompany someone excitedly calling you by your old name and then asking why you’re dressed like a girl. Yuki appears to have decided that it’s better to endure a little known dysphoria than to chance the possibility of a larger amount of dysphoria coupled with public embarrassment. This is not the choice I would make, personally – I refuse to pretend any more, no matter the situation. But that works well for me; obviously Yuki prioritizes differently. Either way, this is another insight into what it means to be trans on a very real and human level. The story is very clearly about these individuals and their experiences, instead of claiming to be about trans people as an entire group – yet at the same time it finds a way to hit on a lot of widely shared aspects of trans experience.

The next example we get of the show’s empathy and insight is a subtle part of a larger scene. Yuki comments that it’s “too bad” that Shūichi won’t be Juliet in the play. Mako, who is playing Juliet and who has gender identity issues of his own, is standing nearby and holding the dress he is going to be wearing. When he hears Yuki saying it is ‘too bad’ that he won’t be playing Juliet, Mako clutches the dress to him slightly. The camera lingers on this for just a moment, but it is the most expressive scene in the episode. This is very effective visual storytelling, evocatively highlighting Mako’s own gender identity issues, and the way they consistently take a back seat to Shūichi’s.

This moment is also the first time all four of the show’s gender variant characters are in the same place, and the gesture underscores the fact that they are all in different places with accepting and embracing their gender identities. We have Yuki, the role model of successful transition and passing as cisgender (ironically cross-dressing for the first time in years). Shūichi and Yoshino are both in a place where their gender identity is largely accepted (if not fully understood) by their friends, and are slowly becoming more vocal and confident about it. Mako, on the other hand, is still struggling to articulate his feelings. He isn’t as confident as Shūichi, to the point that he hasn’t even expressed to his friends how much having the role of Juliet means to him. His friends (well, Shūichi, at least) know that he enjoys cross-dressing, but they don’t have any clue about the extension of that into gender dysphoria (which, as we’ll see in a bit, Mako does seem to have). In addition, Mako feels that he is not “pretty enough” to be a girl, as he has explicitly mentioned in the past when contrasting himself with Shūichi.

At the opening of the play itself, Mako freezes, and he says (in internal monologue) “everyone is staring at me”. This is the first time Mako has ever dressed as a girl in public. He is duly shocked. Despite the social acceptability of this particular gender variance, Mako is very self-conscious. And this is a feeling I understand deeply. Being trans is often something that takes a long time to accept (that is to say, it gets heavily repressed and undoing that takes a long time), and that acceptance is an incremental process. Some (possibly many) trans people, myself included, identify as cross-dressers for some amount of time. Cross-dressing (although the term becomes a misnomer when you later find that you are trans) is typically a very private thing; it is something that social stigma drives us to do in private. So, to dress as a girl and then be seen in public is like having a deep and shameful secret suddenly exposed. Even if it is in a socially acceptable context, or if no one recognizes you. Getting over that internalized idea – that dressing like a girl was something I should only do in private – took a concentrated act of will. And it took time. Mako, on the other hand, hasn’t had any of that time to adjust. So he freezes.

Speaking of the play, let’s talk about its context within Japanese education system. Bunkasai (文化祭) means ‘cultural festival‘, and is an aspect of Japanese culture that has no analogue in US culture. So, the trappings and conventions here are a bit unusual to a Western audience. It is basically a sort of show-and-tell to the world, where students can provide some entertainment of cultural merit for friends and family. It’s not optional – all students are expected to participate as a requirement for graduation, although I get the impression that it isn’t graded per se. Bunkasai are held from the elementary level through university, although at the university level they are no longer mandatory. Plays are a fairly common choice for classes to present.

Another notable thing about the play is the way that it uses gender; all of the actors are intended to have the gender roles reversed, including the trans characters. In other words, Juliet (a trans girl) is meant to be played by a cisgender boy. Likewise, Romeo is played by a cisgender girl. This is a subtle nod to the validity of trans people’s gender identity. If a girl had been cast to play Juliet, it would have implied that Juliet was a male character; by putting a (ostensible) boy in the role, it suggests that the characters involved have no problem accepting Juliet’s gender identity as valid and true. That this choice goes unremarked throughout the show may imply an unrealistic world (in which trans acceptance is far more advanced than it really is), but it’s a welcome, validating nod all the same. After all, the show portrays plenty of social backlash at other times, so it’s nice to establish the play firmly as a narrative victory on this issue.

After the play, we get our first real sense that Mako is decidedly gender dysphoric as opposed to just a cross-dresser. He laments to Saorin that “all I wanted was for someone to see me as Juliet”. Shortly thereafter, Saorin does what may be the first genuinely nice thing the character has done: she gives Saorin some flowers (that had been given to her earlier), and lies, telling him that she was told to give them “to Juliet.” When he is then predictably flustered, she says “All that matters is that someone saw you as Juliet.” This explicitly acknowledges both that Mako has dysphoria and that Saorin knows it (and acknowledges his evolving gender identity as valid). This contrasts sharply with her refusal to acknowledge Shūichi’s gender identity, which just adds more evidence that she was simply being spiteful and jealous in her previous tirade.

While he’s still very much a background character, this episode gave Mako both definition and character development. And Mako resonates strongly with me, because his experience is a reasonable match for my own experience around that age, particularly the feeling that it isn’t worth trying to be a girl if you don’t already look feminine enough; that thought was one of the strong motivators that kept me from transitioning much, much earlier than I did. I’m glad that they gave this character more of a voice here, although unfortunately he will fade into the background again for the rest of the series.

This post was originally posted in February of 2011 here. It has been updated substantially.

You can watch the episode here.

Spoiler Warning

This is the first episode that made me cry.

Sure, each of the other episodes made me get teary-eyed at least once, but this one actually gave me a need-a-tissue, tears-streaming-down-my-cheeks crying fit. It did this by being painfully sweet. But we’ll get to the scene that made me cry a bit later. First, I want to talk about swimming.

I fondly remember the days when throwing on a bathing suit and going swimming was straightforward, or even possible. As my gender dysphoria increased, and I started shaving the hair from areas that gave me the greatest bodily dissonance, swimming slowly became more and more awkward, until it was basically impossible for me to comfortably go swimming in public. Now that I have transitioned, swimming is still awkward. It is difficult for me to find a bathing suit that doesn’t make me feel exposed, and even then my body’s shape makes me feel very uncomfortable when it is that obvious. So when this episode opened with the cast swimming at school, I winced inwardly.

The scene is used to show more of Shūichi and Yoshino’s dysphoria. Shūichi is visibly envious of Yoshino’s figure, and Yohsino is distinctly self-conscious when she is complimented as looking ‘womanly’. And this leads us to another aspect of trans experience that this show portrays very correctly – the unknowingly harmful comment.

Speaking for myself, as always, I know that as I began transitioning, offhand comments directed at me while I was dressed as a boy could often hurt, even when there is no ill intent (or special knowledge) on the part of the speaker. A good example occurred when I was at the bank. The teller attempted to compliment me by saying “Your hair is so cute! Girls must be jealous of it.” While it is good to know my hair is cute, the way the comment put me solidly on the ‘boy’ side of the line stung. (Edit: Luckily, this is no longer a problem for me. It remains, however, an experience common to many trans people.)

The episode gives us another example of this, too. When Shūichi gets out of the bath, his sister comments “A boy shouldn’t take such long baths.” In this case, though, it is possible the comment may be more intentional. Even given only the evidence seen so far in the series, Maho would have to be pretty oblivious not to suspect that her brother is gender variant at this point. However, the show hasn’t really given us any indication that she is aware of Shūichi’s struggles, and actually implies an active lack of empathy towards him. When Maho’s friend Anna* makes Shūichi cry, Maho’s response is “It’s fine, he does that all the time.” This is both callous and suggests that Shūichi is suffering from depression, likely caused by dysphoria.

We also see a little more of the show’s fourth trans character, Yuki, in this episode. Yuki is a grown trans woman who has befriended Yoshino. She has a boyfriend (Shi), whom she has known since childhood, and he was “the only one who never bullied [her].” Yuki comes across as a very warm and genuine person, as well as being pragmatic. She also represents a trans success story – she is a successful, confident, attractive woman who survived being teased and bullied. She’s a representation of the It Gets Better narrative, which has been criticized (rightly) for being naive. But where the It Gets Better campaign feels like it is encouraging a complacent ‘just wait, and everything will be alright’ attitude, Yuki’s character doesn’t bear that connotation (she doesn’t strongly oppose it, either – we simply don’t know enough details about her story for that to be any part of the narrative here).

The touching scene in this episode (the one that made me cry) comes when Yoshino and Shūichi are alone and talking to each other. Yoshino offers Shūichi her name, in exchange for his. The impact of this hinges on another thing that is fairly unique to the trans experience. Names are important things for a lot of trans people. We cast off our birth-assigned names when we cast off our birth-assigned genders. This is a deliberate act, and choosing a new name also has to be a deliberate act. Here, Yoshino is offering Shūichi a name. I have been in something similar to Shūichi’s place, here; my name was given to me by someone I hold dear (although it was not offered as an exchange). Even so, Yoshino’s actions here made me realize just how precious that gift really is. I felt like I had taken it for granted, when I should be treasuring it.

So, that scene made me cry, for deeply personal reasons. And now that I was good and tearful, though, the next part of the scene just fed the cry fest. So, moving on…

Shūichi tells Yoshino that he wants her to be Romeo in the play, and for him to be Juliet. He says “I want you to see me as a girl… because I see you as a boy.” This seems to be both his way of giving Yoshino a gift in exchange, as well as an attempt to tell her how he feels. “I see you as a boy.” I remember the first time someone said to me, “You are a girl.” The words came at exactly the time I needed them. Simple words; to cisgender women, it is a statement so obvious as to be not even worth saying or hearing. But every time I feel bad, every time I feel too much dysphoria and I’m trying not to hate myself, I remember those words. “I am a girl” is easy, for me. But knowing that someone else sees me the way I see myself… that helped immeasurably. That simple second person pronoun makes all the difference.

When Shūichi returns home, he repeats to himself “Boku no namae wa Yoshino.” He is still using the masculine pronoun ‘boku’, despite the fact that he is clearly starting to come to terms with his identity as a girl. This makes sense, though – it takes time to clear all of culture’s gender essentialism out of your brain. I still misgendered myself, in my own thoughts, for quite a while when I began to transition.

The other scene worth commenting on from this episode is a meeting between Saorin and Shūichi. Saorin asks him to come over, ostensibly to talk about the play. That is where it starts; Shūichi added to the play the idea that Romeo and Juliet could give each other their names, and Saorin offers Shūichi her own name. On learning the origin of the scene in the play, Saorin feels slighted, but Shūichi explains to her that he doesn’t want to become a girl for Yoshino’s sake, but for his own. Saorin responds with a selfish tirade that includes a lot of gender essentialism. She equates GRS with gender, saying “[without an operation], becoming a girl is impossible… It’s all just an act.” She also says that she doesn’t want Shuuichi to become a girl, because she is in love with him (presumably as a boy).

At this point, Saorin has very little to redeem her character. She contradicts herself a lot (and this seems intentional, as she seems very confused about her own feelings). She is consistently portrayed as selfish. She seems to fetishize Shūichi’s gender variance on the one hand, and be terrified of it on the other. She seems, in short, to be deeply cissexist, but her feelings for Shūichi make her willing to encourage his dressing as a girl. When the idea of it being more than that, however – when the idea of Shūichi actually being a girl comes up – she reacts with defensive hostility.

* So, as a character shares my own name in the show, I feel obliged to comment on that. I really want Anna to be a good character! She seems to have the potential to be; at least, she felt remorse after making Shūichi cry.

This post was originally posted in February of 2011 here. It has been updated substantially.

You can watch the episode here.

Spoiler Warning

In this episode, it feels like the show is finally reaching its stride. It combines the strengths of the previous episodes; the pacing is as good as the second episode, and the overall emotional impact and thematic cohesion is on the same level as the first episode.

So, like the episode, let’s start by talking about bras. For a young and not-so-budding trans girl, bras occupied an odd position in my mental landscape. I was consciously envious of the cis girls around me that were developing breasts. At the same time, though, I had already developed a knee-jerk defense mechanism against anything with a feminine connotations (at least in public). We’ll come back to this in a bit.

In the episode, though, the character contemplating supportive undergarments is Yoshino, who expresses terror at the thought of having to wear one, and asks Shūichi if he has ever wanted to wear one. This leads to both of them admitting envy of each other’s bodies. This is a touching scene, and seems to me to be deeply insightful about a very particular part of trans experience. Here the characters deal with it awkwardly, but that makes sense – the characters are still very unsure of themselves and still discovering their identities.

Near the end of the episode is another scene where Yoshino tries on the bra she bought. It ends with her throwing it off in disgust, and hugging her boy’s uniform to her chest, sobbing. This is an utterly heartbreaking moment, and it is so well portrayed that I felt slightly embarrassed, as if I had accidentally walked in on someone at a private moment. It is also a very powerful scene, and it nearly made me cry. As a trans woman (as opposed to a trans man), I can’t pretend to understand exactly what that moment is like, but the show succeeds in evoking empathy, which is quickly becoming its basic mode of operation.

Continuing on the theme of approaching puberty, Mako (Ariga Makoto) points out to Shūichi that their voices are going to change soon, which is upsetting to both of them. He further suggests that they record their voices “before it is too late.” This is also used as a pretext for them to dress up as girls together. This solidifies the subtle hints in the last episode that Mako is also gender variant. He seems much more excited to dress up, and seems to view it as a social activity, a way to bond with Shuuichi over a shared experience.

Anyway, I am describing this scene because it gives me a chance to talk about Japanese language and gender. When Shūichi begins recording his voice, he begins “Boku no namae o…” (My name is…). Mako stops him, saying “be more feminine.” He starts over, this time saying “Watashi no namae o…” (My name is…). The difference here is in the first person pronoun used, and it is something English doesn’t have an equivalent construct for. ‘Boku’ is an example of a masculine word – not masculine in the sense that words in some languages have gender (the Romance languages being readily available examples), but in the sense that it is a word typically only used by men. ‘Watashi’ is considered gender-neutral, but my suspicion is that, since ‘boku’ is used so predominantly amongst boys, ‘watashi’ is probably viewed as feminine by comparison. Unfortunately, this distinction is not caught in the subtitling.

Everything I’ve discussed so far are the sub-plots of the episode, and the episode’s core is worth remarking on as well, which centers around a play that the characters’ class is planning for the school’s cultural festival. Saorin suggests that the class do a ‘genderbender play’*, or a play in which the boys play the girls’ roles, and vice versa. This idea is enthusiastically accepted by the rest of the class.

Saorin submits a script idea that is a modern adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, while Shūichi comes up with the idea of writing about boys who want to be girls, and girls who want to be boys. This seems to be a huge leap forward in Shūichi’s thought process – he is, in a way, openly admitting that he wants to be a girl, not just dress like one. Whether or not he will eventually consider the distinction between wanting to be a girl and the idea that he might already be a girl remains to be seen; so far, the show has kept to the potentially gender essentialist language of “a boy who wants to be a girl”**. Shūichi’s words here mirrors my feelings and understanding of myself at his age, actually; having never really encountered the idea of gender variance, that was the way I framed the thought, when I wasn’t running away from it at full speed.

After the play is announced, there is a scene where the girls from the class are talking excitedly about the idea. They see it as a simple way to break social rules, and talk animatedly about it. The three trans characters, however, are all visibly uncomfortable. Here we have yet another interesting insight into trans experience. When I was a teenager, whenever someone mentioned cross-dressing, or any kind of gender variance, I felt a mixture of embarrassment and shame. This even extended to topics that were stereotypically feminine but without the gender variance context – any conversation that mentioned makeup, nail polish, or women’s shoes was likely to make me blush. As a result, I spent a long time actively avoiding anything feminine, even to the point of harboring a deep aversion to the color pink.

At the time, I didn’t even know why I felt embarrassed. I recognize now that it was the same thing I see in the characters in this scene – they are afraid that if they show too much enthusiasm, someone will know. That they will see into your soul and find the truth you’ve tried to hide from both them and yourself.

Shūichi and Saorin’s teacher suggests they combine their scripts, and at Shūichi’s suggestion, the play becomes a version of Romeo and Juliet with the lead characters both being trans. What is more interesting, though, is Saorin’s behavior while they work on the script together. She invites Shūichi to come work on it at her house, and he agrees after she promises “not to do anything weird this time.” However, she immediately breaks her promise, and gets very excited about the idea of Shūichi wearing one of her dresses.

Saorin’s behavior here feels very creepy, and it certainly borders on chaser behavior. What’s more, it is clear that she has done this before. Shūichi is obviously uncomfortable with her taking such an enthusiastic interest in his gender identity, and yet she persists. Whether this behavior is an attempt to create a bond similar to the one Shūichi has with Yoshino, or whether the behavior drove Shūichi away from Saorin (and towards Yoshino) in the first place is uncertain.

Saorin also notes the parallel between their play’s Romeo and Juliet, and Shūichi and Yoshino. She suggests casting Shūichi as Juliet, and Yoshino as Romeo. Her suggestion is tinged with bitterness, but she seems to have a moment of genuinely wishing for Shūichi’s happiness. Interestingly, this casting upholds the original point of the play (which was to reverse the gender roles of the actors relative to their characters) in a surprising way: it casts Shūichi as a trans man, and Yoshino as a trans woman, so that they are still playing, functionally, the opposite gender.

* The translation ‘genderbender play’ didn’t really sit well with me, so I did some checking. Luckily, Shūichi writes down the phrase during the episode, so I was able to find the kanji: 倒錯劇 (tousaku geki). The dictionary meaning of this phrase would be ‘inversion play’ or ‘perversion play’, which don’t really convey the subtitled meaning at all. My assumption was that this is a particular phenomenon in Japan, but the only results I can make any sense of on a google search for the phrase are related to Wandering Son. If anyone with more knowledge of Japanese culture can confirm whether this is a cultural thing I am missing, I would be grateful.

** I am aware that some trans people see themselves as having been their birth-assigned gender before transitioning, and this complicates the language I use when I talk about this element of the show’s dialogue choices. My personal experience is that I was always a girl. Society’s gender essentialist memes convinced me otherwise for a very long time, and this leaves me with an unfortunate reflex reaction that tries to categorize phrases such as ‘I am a boy who wants to be a girl’ as cissexist. However, giving in to this reflex would be erasing of trans people whose experiences do not match my own, so I am trying my best here to use language that doesn’t do that.

This was originally posted in February of 2011 here. It has been updated substantially here.

You can watch the episode here.

Spoiler Warning

This episode switches gears and focuses mostly on Saorin. It also gives us a much-needed flashback that provides the backstory on the relationship between Shūichi, Yoshino, and Saorin.

Near the end of the previous episode, Shūichi runs out of his house, distressed, after an encounter with his sister. I didn’t get around to talking about that scene in that entry, so let’s touch on it here. When I was still struggling to understand my gender identity, I mis-identified the desire to be a girl with the concept of cross-dressing (as did a number of other trans people that I know). So, for years, I cross-dressed when no one was around (the fact that this is an amusing phrase in light of my current understanding of my gender identity does not escape me – I eventually realized that ‘cross-dressing’ was what I was doing when everyone was looking at me). And like Shū, fear of discovery was a huge thing. I waited, always, until I was home alone, or the rest of my family was asleep. I always feared a sudden knock on my door. I think Shūichi’s flight is best viewed in that context, in the mixture of shame and fear that is hard to escape when you feel like you are doing something deviant, something that your loved ones would disapprove of.

In his haste to escape his sister, Shūichi leaves half-dressed in only an undershirt and a skirt, and runs into Yoshino on a bridge. Yoshino offers her hoodie, commenting that Shūichi looks like a girl with a hoodie and a skirt on. This marks a reparation of their friendship. Which leads us to Saorin.

Saorin, up to this point, has only been seen briefly, and was then depicted as mostly quiet but emotionally unstable and prone to violent outbursts. In the first episode, she assaulted a classmate who insinuated that Shūichi and Yoshino had a relationship at one point. In this episode, we learn that she harbors a lot of resentment toward Shuuichi and Yoshino because of a love triangle that imploded at some point before the narrative picks up. Some time ago, Saorin expressed interest in Shūichi, only to find that Shūichi had already expressed interest in Yoshino. Saorin confronted Yoshino about it, and they both ended by expressing hatred for each other. Your basic love triangle story. I’d suggest maybe this is poly-fixable, but I’m pretty sure Saorin is way too unstable for that. More implicitly (and more importantly for our purposes), Saorin also seems to feel that she had already been left out because Shūichi and Yoshino had their trans experiences in common, and had bonded over them until Saorin felt like a third wheel.

Saorin comes across, in this episode, as fundamentally unsympathetic to the viewer. At the beginning of the episode she calls Shūichi and Yoshino ‘filth’ as she passes them in the hall. She also nearly assaults Chii’s friend Shirai Momoko (Momo), and when Yoshino expresses that they should perhaps set their differences aside, Saorin refuses.

Despite this, the episode ends with Saorin tentatively making peace with the rest of the group, after Sasa Kanako (Sasa), who has been trying to remain friends with both Saorin and the others, gets angry at their bickering and refuses to speak to them. So, it requires the coercion of her only remaining friend for her to stop being an asshole to the rest of her former friends. Like I said: unsympathetic.

The premise of the episode, though, seems to be that we should sympathize with Saorin. Ariga Makoto (Ariga) sums it up thus: “She’s got a rough life”. However, when juxtaposed to the issues the other characters are facing, Saorin (as portrayed so far, at least) comes across as whiny and privileged by comparison.

So, enough about Saorin, then. We don’t have time for whiny privileged girls who hold grudges. Let’s talk about Ariga, whom we just mentioned for the first time. He plays a slightly more prominent role in this episode, and seems to be Shūichi’s only (or at least closest) male friend. We also get a suggestion that he is also gender variant; Shūichi gives him a clover hairpin to match the one he bought in the first episode. In the same scene, they spend time chatting about private matters – notably, about the fact that Ariga feels he may be attracted to boys. This is the first explicit mention of sexual orientation on the show. Leaving aside gender variance (since all of the gender variant characters are still discovering their identities in this regard), Ariga thinks he might be gay. The line is a throwaway – we don’t dwell on it at all, but rather move on. Presumably, we will return to this later in the series.

On the subject of Shūichi and gender, the first relevant moment in this episode comes when Shūichi is called ‘a little girl’ as an insult by one of his male classmates; his response (unnoticed by everyone except Ariga) is to blush and then smile broadly. A similar scene happens when he takes his lunch to his older sister; one of her classmates says “he looks like a girl”, leading Shūichi to repeat the phrase, “I look like a girl”, with a happy look on his face.

These scenes, more than anything we’ve seen before, really work to differentiate Shūichi as being solidly transgender (as opposed to, say, a cross-dresser in the common understanding of the term). His response to being called a girl is joy, and I suspect it is stemming from a sense that it is the correct thing for him to be called.

On the whole, this episode is much more solidly put together than the first one – it has more cohesion between scenes, and the pacing is better. However, emotionally, it comes across as weaker. The first episode used a effective narrative repetition, with the ‘What are little girls/boys made of’ motif repeated through the episode, and the scene early on where Shūichi and Yoshino each narrate the phrase ‘I/we have a secret’.* The music and the dialogue are still top notch, but the overall narrative feel of this episode did not have as powerful an impact on me.

* The subtitles translate the phrase ‘We have a secret’, but since pronouns don’t indicate number in Japanese, it could potentially be translated ‘I have a secret’ as well. Or ‘I/we have secrets’, for that matter. I certainly think the translators chose well here, though.

This was originally posted in February of 2011 here. It has been updated substantially here.

Spoiler Warning, and possible Trigger Warning for description of internalized transphobia

After watching the first two episodes of Hōrō Musuko (放浪息子, “Wandering Son”), I have decided to start a running review/commentary of the series here. This post will review the first episode. You can watch the episode online at crunchryroll, and I highly recommend watching the episodes before reading the review, because otherwise you’re likely to be a bit lost. They’re about 22 minutes each.

First, personal background – I’ve long been a fan of anime. However, my understanding of the nuances of Japanese culture is somewhat lacking. I am white. I am native to the US. So, while I will try to avoid ethnocentric creep, there may be some in these reviews. If anyone sees problematic spots and wants to point them out to me, I will be most appreciative.

I am also a trans woman, currently in the midst of transition (edit: I completed transitioning socially in April 2011). So, this story is very relevant to my interests, and I am particularly interested in the way that gender variance is presented.

A note on pronouns: I am defaulting to masculine pronouns for Shūichi and feminine pronouns for Yoshino. The characters themselves, as they are still struggling with their identities, probably still associate with these pronouns (it has not come up so far). At any rate, the characters in the show consistently give them these pronouns, so it is also a concession for ease of mapping the review to the story.

The title of the episode, “Onna no Kotte, Nande Dekiteru?”, translates to “What are little girls made of?” So, right from the beginning, we’re not pulling any punches. The title echoes the struggle with identity in the face of gender essentialist preconceptions that I (and, I am certain, many other trans people) have to deal with both internally and from others. What is gender? What does it mean to be a boy or a girl? The series jumps straight into these questions with very little build-up.

The episode opens with a voiceover from a character we will shortly know as Nitori Shūichi*, who delivers the title line. This line will be repeated several times throughout the episode at introspective moments. We then move on to a scene with a still camera pointed at Shūichi, while he shifts uncomfortably in his seat and describes the discomfort he feels in his new school uniform. He is clearly trying to look happy, even though he is out of sorts. This is all delivered over a haunting, melancholy piano piece.

At the beginning of the episode, we have powerful, evocative storytelling. Visually, this is very compelling, and the narration is characterization at its best; I am already getting a strong sense of who this person is, and I am starting to empathize deeply with him. The music is stirring, and precisely on-point for the emotions the show is trying to evoke. It underscores the fact that this character (and, subsequently, all of these characters) are less happy than they are trying to seem.

The next sequence felt a bit jumbled to me the first time I watched it. We are introduced to most of the characters as they head to their first day of school (6th grade for most of the characters). Even before we have enough exposure with the characters to identify them readily, we establish that most of these characters already have relationships with each other. The show gives us the feeling that we’ve been dropped right into the middle of their lives with no exposition. Which, of course, is exactly what has happened, both diegetically and in a production sense (more on that in a moment). Several past events are alluded to, including a close friendship between Shūichi, Takatsuki Yoshino, and Chiba Saori (Saorin), that ended abruptly after some sort of unspecified romantic drama occurred.

This sequence also alludes to the fact that Yoshino is also transgender. She is clearly uncomfortable when someone says she looks cute in her uniform, and envious of the fact that Chii (who we will come back to in a minute) is wearing a boy’s uniform. Now, these factors could easily be observational bias on my part, but the show validates my theories: as the episode progresses, a friend buys Yoshino a boy’s uniform, which makes her ecstatically happy.

So, the show begins with interpersonal tensions already in place, but it leaves it up to the viewer to infer more information about those tensions. This is unsurprising, since the manga actually begins with the characters in 5th grade; the anime has chosen to start later, but include all of the omitted story as part of its background (as far as I can tell – actually, after reading the manga I think it may just include some of the broad strokes, and rework some of that material into its own plot). This is an interesting choice from a storytelling standpoint, and has the opportunity to fail miserably. I certainly felt a bit lost during the first half of the episode or so. But this seems to be intentional; as a dramatic piece with a fairly serious tone, this sudden burst of information makes us feel like we are intruding on someone’s life, and left to pick up the context ourselves. By the end of the episode, it is clear who all of the characters are, and most of their relationships are established. As a slice of life piece, it works very well; we really get the impression that we’ve just come in at an arbitrary point in the characters’ lives.

As the episode progresses, we meet Sarashina Chizuru (Chii), an extroverted and impulsive girl who wears a boy’s uniform to school just ‘because she feels like it’. In a story about gender identity, it is interesting to see that we also have a character clearly treating gender as presentation. Unlike Shūichi, Chii has the privilege to do this without the nervousness, shame, guilt, and embarrassment that often accompanies actually struggling with a transgender identity. Whether and how the series will treat with this privilege disparity remains to be seen.

The episode had a few stand-out moments for me. The first came during a scene where Shūichi dresses in a girl’s uniform after school, and spends some time wandering around town on his own. Narration by Shūichi establishes that he has never done this before, and usually only dresses up at home. During this outing, a girl in a shop suggests Shūichi buy a hairpin because, she says, “You’re cute, and this will flatter you”. This scene depicts such a small thing – having someone treat you as the gender that feels right to you. This is something that cisgender people experience every time they interact with someone – it is so commonplace that it goes completely unnoticed. But if you’re trans, this is often something you have gone large portions of your life without ever experiencing.

I clearly remember the first time that I was treated like a woman by a stranger, completely and without hesitation. It was a wonderful moment for me, validating and uplifting. I may have been projecting, but it seemed to me that Shūichi’s reaction was similar. It is important to note here that the writer of the original manga, Shimura Takako, is a cisgender woman (to the best of my knowledge). But (and this is assuming the anime follows the manga fairly closely) she has written an amazingly accurate and empathetic portrayal of what it feels like to live as a trans girl. She gets the little details right, and the animators and voice actors deliver here too – Shūichi’s character is imminently believable to me.

The other stand-out moment in this episode is at the end. Shūichi wakes up from sleep with a shock, to discover he has had a wet dream. He delivers in voiceover – “What are little boys made of? Snakes and snails…”, a bitter refrain of the episode’s title. The story is set as the characters enter puberty, and this is a visceral example of how puberty, for many trans people, is a time when our bodies turn against us. I know that puberty, for me, felt like my very physiology was denying a truth that I already felt ashamed of. I was constantly disgusted by my body, and it was the only time in my life I thought seriously about suicide. I didn’t really understand all of that at the time; that is, I didn’t connect the feelings that I should be a girl with the disgust I felt about my body. Mostly, I think, because I had buried the former as deeply as I could, and thought about it as little as possible.

This conflict of gender identity with puberty is a thematic trend I expect will be fundamental to the show as it progresses. I remain hopeful about this show – it is a narrative with a lot of potential to help cisgender people understand the perspective of trans people a little better.

* a hopefully correct extended footnote on Japanese names: Japanese names are written (and spoken) surname first, given name second. It is common for someone to be referred to by their surname by everyone except their closest friends and family. For the purpose of clarity here, especially since the show has multiple members of the Nitori family represented, I will introduce characters with their full name, and then only use their given name unless the show gives them a clearly more recognizable nickname. Confusingly, this conflicts with how the names are presented in the show. Anime subtitles are inconsistent from one show to the next about how they choose to translate names. Some shows get subtitled with the given name always used, others with the surname always used, and that’s not even getting in to honorifics. I believe Wandering Son has been providing the name as spoken (sans honorific) instead of converting consistently to the given name. Also, the subtitling is inverting full names when they are spoken, so if someone says “Nitori Shŭichi-san”, it gets subtitled as “Shūichi Nitori”. Which is fair enough, but it forces me to make a decision about how to transliterate here. So, there it is.