He’s a big fan of Yuu and Shunsuke, the stoic athlete who loves Hello Kitty, but he doesn’t think that the show is “about” homophobia. Even if you don’t relate to the queer side of the show, the message about gender norms still hopefully connects with people.”Īnother fan, is a self-proclaimed fudanshi - a boy in the so-called “rotten” subculture of those who love anime and manga that feature implied and canon gay romances. “Even if they wrote a huge metaphor for coming out of the closet on accident, they still definitely wrote one,” says Overall, he says, “As a queer person, the ways this show depicts the internal and external struggles of coming out are pretty accurate, if a little melodramatic.” He hopes that, in the future, anime will face the issue of homophobia more head on, but that “it’s okay that they keep it ambiguous in this case. What really matters is how fans are experiencing it. In some ways, though, whether these theories and meanings are true or not isn’t important. She even claims that, going off scholar Jack Halberstam, that “queerness is constituted by its difference from conventional imperatives of time.” And if you want to give this a queer reading, their ownership of this childhood passion is in some ways a reclamation of queer time, which “offers an alternative to the notion that one ought to discontinue particular practices or behaviors simply because one has ‘aged out’ of them,” writes Sara Jaffe in an article for JSTOR Daily. In this case, they’re obviously the Sanrio products, but more traditionally, transitional objects are things like teddy bear bears and blankets that “allow for the emergence of a child’s inherent sense of self,” according to Colleen Goddard in Psychology Today.Īll the boys in Sanrio Boys developed their Sanrio attachments as kids, gaining ego, strength and comfort from them. Namely, transitional objects, or comfort objects. The parallels here to living in the closet and living outside of it are obvious, but there’s also something deeper and more rooted in psychology at play. In one scene, he confronts Ryou about his hate of the Sanrio Boys in a dramatic scene in which he holds the smaller boy close to his face and says, “People will only be honest when you’re honest with them!” And: “You have to face yourself properly!” That said, we get close to some actual romance between Ryou and his foil Seiichirou, the tall, handsome student council president and archery club captain. Like something was really irritating me deep down.” Kouta smartly observes, “Maybe it’s more that he hates himself rather than us. In fact, he goes as far as to call them “hentai,” which means something totally different in the U.S., but in this context is defined as something between a pervert and a weirdo. He hates himself, cuteness and anyone like Yuu who is so unabashed in their love for Sanrio. Ryou, the short beautiful blond boy who everyone thinks looks like a cute girl, inhabits the other end of the “outness” spectrum. She resents him for becoming so frivolous and flashy. Yuu is completely open about his love for My Melody (a bunny who adores almond pound cake and treasures the hoodie her grandmother made for her) but is still very “popular with both guys and girls” - except for his little sister (the only named female character in the show).
I’ve already mentioned Kouta, the series protagonist/audience surrogate, and his inner turmoil over Pompompurin, but the other main characters’ avowed or tacit love for Sanrio products lead to consequences as varied as the merchandise itself. So the closest admission we have is this still from the show’s ending theme where a rainbow appears between two characters who are often shipped together. And promotional material for the show put out by Sanrio, Sho-Comi (the manga publisher) or Pierrot (the animation studio) makes no hint toward the queer reading of the show. You can tell me many things but you cannot deny the fact that all the guys in Sanrio Boys are gay coded and also follow the seme/uke stereotypesĪndou Mai, the author of the manga on which the anime is based, has refused to speak to the media about Sanrio Boys, so we don’t know for certain.
Ok so is anyone else seeing a deeper meaning to Sanrio Boys or am I just crazy? I feel like the boy's liking Sanrio characters is symbolic for being gay and the main character being scared to admit it is an allusion to the fear of coming out? #SANRIOBOYS #SanrioDanshi /EmnthFau0c
Sanrio boys is literally a show about coming out and feeling welcome in a group of lgbtq friends but they replaced every mention of being queer with Sanrio products It aims to bring more and more boys into its kawaii cult.īut a third, perhaps an unintended consequence, is the incredible parallel that it makes to the experience of coming out as queer.It increases Sanrio’s footprint among middle school and high school girls.