Concluding the two-part series on homosexuality in anime and the otaku world, JP (Japesland), Kaze, Jack (R86), and Casey (CutsceneAddict) apply the Christian worldview and mindset as they understand it to the descriptions and arguments presented in part one last week.
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I’m glad you guys took two episodes to talk about this subject. It’s something I’ve contemplated for a while but have had difficulty organizing my thoughts about.
I think Japes was on point about paying careful attention to the reasons we consume certain media, and that we should choose what to watch/read based not on the content itself but on what we get out of it when we consume it. I believe it’s also worth noting that Christians (especially Evangelicals) seem to have made homosexuality into something of a “pet” sin that we complain about ad nauseum while giving a free pass to other, equally unbiblical (or at least not traditionally biblical) behaviors depicted in media. Again, that doesn’t mean we should avoid such works – only that we should approach them with awareness of our own motives.
On the subject of anime that examine queer themes in a mature manner, I can recommend AoiHana (which I actually discovered via a link on this site from a couple years back) and Revolutionary Girl Utena. Both of these shows do the “humanizing” work you talked about in this podcast, but they have other virtues to recommend them as well: AoiHana depicts a realistic, nuanced teen romance (that happens to be between girls) while also gently exploring some of the social and psychological tensions that such a relationship entails, and Utena is – well, harder to describe, of course, but it does use various same-sex relationships to explore aspects of sexuality, adulthood, power dynamics, gender roles, etc. Great stuff for discussion, in any case.
Yeah, I’m not totally sure why homosexuality has received the brunt of the Evangelical fury, comparatively speaking, but it is absolutely a real problem. I hope that we were able to dispel that in our podcast with some degree of success.
Thank you for the recommendations! I will absolutely need to check them out!