Written by: Therese-Åsa Karl
Finding good LGBT anime is hard. There are, for sure, a lot of LGBT anime’s with same sex relationships and romantic love, but few feels written for the LGBT community. From an asexual point of view they feel mostly written for hetero-men to fantasize about.
So, what’s a good LGBT anime? Well, I got really happy when I first watched Bloom Into You, a Shoujo ai, Slice of life anime about two school girls struggling with their emotions of romantic love and what they feel for each other.
Yuu, a first-grader in a new school, is waiting for someone to “sweep her off her feet”, the feeling of romantic love that she reads about in her manga.
When she gets a confession (asking for a date) from a boy she’s known for years, she’s trying hard to find that feeling for him but his confession leaves her feet solemnly on the ground. She declines in the end, feeling that any relationship isn’t worthwhile.
When she meets Nanami, a third-grade student in the same school club as her, and watches her decline what is the last in a long row of confessions from different people with the words “I don’t intend to go out with anyone no matter who they might be”, Yuu realizes that she’s not alone. Later Nanami confesses that “she’s never felt excited over a confession before”, further helping Yuu understand that she’s not the only one to feel like that.
As the series goes on we get to understand more about Yuu’s conflicting feelings and how she struggles with fitting in.
Because not only does she have a very clear understanding of what romantic love should feel like (“being swept off the ground”), she also dismisses any potentially budding feelings towards Nanami with “we’re both girls, so that can’t be it”. And I get the feeling that same-sex relationships really are alien to her (despite her family bringing it up during dinner).
At the same time she hears about how romantic love should look like during a meet-up with friends. One of the girls got her confession declined from the boy she was interested in and the others assure her that hope isn’t lost; “you just need to wait long enough and the other person will fall in love with you”.
Yuu tries hard to understand if that’s really true and somehow can’t fully believe that idea. All the while waiting for the feeling of love that will “sweep her off her feet”.
As a whole the series is very much an exploration of love, romantic love and what it means to have feelings for someone else.
And as an asexual and demisexual myself, I really fell in love with that angle and found it so refreshing from any “normal” love stories.
I believe that many demisexuals and aromantics can recognize themselves in Yuu. We get bombarded with how romantic love should look like and what we should feel, and when our own feelings don’t match up we get confused.
Because what about when you don’t feel that romantic love towards someone? Or that it doesn’t “behave” as you were taught? Does it mean you don’t love? Or are there other ways of loving someone deeply without reverting to the norm?
All of these questions and watching LGBT anime’s like Bloom Into You have helped me understand more about my demisexuality and asexuality. And I heard of someone who understood they were demisexual by watching Bloom Into You. If that isn’t powerful then I don’t know what is.
Furthermore, stories like this become the representation we as a community so sorely need to understand our own experience. And they become a relief from a society that tells us that what we’re feeling is wrong.
It’s not wrong, it’s just not allo-sexuality.