[Archon_Wing]

I was going to bitch about sexist characterizations, of especially younger characters, in anime but honestly we have too many threads on the issue. Instead, I'm going to do what 90% of OPs on issues like these fail to do in this particular subforum and point out concepts that anime does right for once. There's no point in aimlessly complaining about things when you can't even assess what is of a different mold. In other words, focus on what anime can do, instead of dwelling forever on what anime isn't doing and then writing 500 page rants about how today's anime doesn't suit your needs.

A few years ago, a friend told me to check out an anime called Aoi Hana. I wasn't too interested in it. My first thought thought is "this appears to be yuri, lulz, perv time". But honestly said anime did stand out in retrospect in that it treated its issues in a very natural and composed manner. Most of all, it treated what it was dealing with respect by approaching the topic as not of a source of fetishes, but to realize that these characters are actually people. So it wasn't just to do something such as simply be a consumable by the typically male audience that gets aimed at when 2 female characters are in a relationship.

A lot of you might know the same author better from Wandering Son, which was also intriguing, though other issues with the narrative prevented me from enjoying it fully.

Other examples of interesting gender portrayals include Evangelion, in particular towards the main characters in whereas not meeting expectations of gender roles lead to a rather polarizing reception of characters. And then we have stuff like Ghost in the Shell, where the Major is extremely sexualized, but then again she still comes off as a very inspiring presence.

So my question is which anime or characters have you seen that have presented portrayals of gender and sexuality that run contrary to what you typically see across the medium and other mediums?

I have more in mind, but let's just start with this.