Nothing in the pink and flowery opening title sequence or key art implies that Love Stage is a story about sexual abuse.
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It’s part of a sub genre of anime called shounen-ai or “boy love.” Crunchyroll, and other anime streaming services are full of these shows, and they all have similar names: Love Stage, Super Lovers, World’s Greatest First Love. Popular shounen-ai titles: Love Stage!!, Super Lovers, World's Greatest First Love HERO ACADEMIA HARDCORE GAY HENTAI FULL On the surface, boy love anime are presented as flowery love stories about young men discovering their feelings for one another, but all too quickly these stories take dark turns.
Nearly all shounen-ai anime has the same issues and problems, thanks to their reliance on tropes.Īnime fans are well aware of how prevalent tropes are. They’re in every anime, from Dragon Ball Z, to My Hero Academia, to Yu-Gi-Oh.
Īnime tropes can be benign, like high school students running with toast in their mouth. Oftentimes they’re somewhat problematic fan service, like magical girl costume changes.
Romance anime has its own set of tropes, prevalent in straight and gay stories alike. And in the case of shounen-ai, these tropes become deeply troubling instances that present a warped and dangerous view of gay relationships. So let’s break down these common themes and why they’re so damaging to queer representation. One of the most obvious and apparent tropes in boy love shows are that the main couple have a substantial age difference. There is always a distinct seme (top) and uke (bottom) in the relationships, which creates a distinct power dynamic. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this, but in boy love anime the uke character is often presented as VERY young. They may technically be an adult, or likely a teen, but they have the body of an early pubescent boy. This is often spelled out clearly, that this 16 year old boy looks like a 12 year old. Haru and Ren in 'Super Lovers' have a significant age difference that is noted as taboo in the show. There’s a damaging and untrue stereotype that gay men are predators, on the prowl for younger boys. The term “recruiter” is used to describe older gay men that lure otherwise straight boys into a life of perversion, and the relationships in shounen-ai perpetuate this perceived dynamic. It also reinforces the intrinsically misogynistic stereotype that the bottom in a gay relationship is the “woman.” The uke character is frail, too weak to resist the advances of his seme. He is almost always soft skinned, effeminate, and sometimes even voiced by a woman. In addition to this being an extremely narrow and increasingly incorrect portrayal of gay dynamics, it’s also a very boring way to think about gay characters. You don’t have to get very far in any shounen-ai anime before there’s a scene of sexual assault. In every one, the seme character has physically pinned the uke against something and is forcing themselves upon them. Oftentimes this results in a scene of violence that’s played off as a gag, and almost always the assaulted character flees the situation, only to come back the very next episode.Įven if the character is traumatized by the experience, other characters offer no support. In Love Stage, Izumi’s own friends and family brush off his assault because nothing actually happened, and they liken the experience of Izumi being forcibly stripped and overpowered as “no worse than a mosquito bite” which is both ludicrous and infuriating. Look, if your romance story starts with attempted rape… you’re telling a very shitty love story. It’s painful to watch a character describe the man who assaulted him as his true love, and it sets an incredibly bad example for impressionable gay youth. It sends the message that people should go back to their abusers, and that if the victim loves the abuser enough, then the abuse will be replaced by love.