LGBT Under the Radar: Icons from Japanese Animations

Thought animations were just for kids — and so sexuality is a big taboo therein?

While this might be true depending on the social and/or pop culture to which you belong, it is not quite so — as far as Japanese animations are concerned.

Here are my top LGBT icons from some of the most controversial all-time classics:

James from Pokemon

Seriously, maybe a more gender-neutral variation like “Jamie” would go with James’ not-really-all-that-covert homosexual orientation better. This one and only male member of the evil trio from Team Rocket not only comes across as being surprisingly vulnerable and sentimental like the opposite sex (see the picture below), but apparently also has a love of gender-bending cosplay — not to say an allegedly smoking hot female-like (??!!) figure…

3 Responses

  1. amy says:

    Sailor Moon was LGBT too, wasn’t it? Was it Sailor Neptune and Sailor Jupiter? I remember I read about it being changed to “cousins” in the English dub, though. LOL

    But I DO remember Shun and Hyoga. Looking back on it, I don’t think I ever registered it as LGBT… it just sort of was. I mean, Shun’s color was pink… so there was that. I had a natural aversion to the color pink back then… so when I played Saint Seiya with my cousins, I was Hyoga. LOL

    • mirella says:

      @amy, Kunzite and Zoisite were also the gay (male) couple of Sailor Moon. Although the dubbed voice of Zoisite was done by a woman, I, as a kid, caught on pretty quickly it was a guy because of his body shape. I argued a lot with my friends about it but the time will make me right after internet appeared and I could yahoo that shit (no google back then XD)

    • mirella says:

      Although I was older than the kid I was when I watch those three you mention, I also remember Touya and Yukito from Card Captor Sakura.

Leave a Reply to amyCancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.