Growing up Yurijin: My Childhood Experience with Lesbian Anime and Manga Part IThis article is the first in a two-part personal essay about my childhood experiences growing up around Yuri in an environment where LGBTQ+ identity and culture were normalized. The article was original released exclusively on Patreon in February 2019. You can read Part II on the YuriMother Patreon.I was recently reading an article by one of the people I admire most in the world, LGBTQ+ manga tastemaker and lesbian icon, Erica Friedman, a person who, in my hubris, I sometimes compare myself to, qualitatively, of course, their achievements far exceed my own. In the essay I was reading, Friedman describes their struggle to find literature that reflected their queen identity in the 1980s. At this moment, it also occurred to me the Friedman had previously spoken about how they discovered anime and manga, which included lesbian elements, more commonly known as Yuri, in adult life, and found an affinity with the genre. Friedman went on to become one of, if not the pioneering individuals in the world of Yuri. As I reminisce on these facts about a person who I so deeply admire and am lucky enough to consider a friend, it occurred to me that, while they adopted the Yuri, I was born into it. Although, funnily enough, my existence as a Yurijin (lit. Yuri Person, an inclusive term for Yuri fans) likely would not have been possible if not for Friedman’s support and love of Yuri, more on that later.I am rather young. Depending on who you ask, I am either one of the last Millennials or one of the first members of Generation Z, although, like most labels, I find using either one of these titles arbitrary. However, I am always aware of how immense of a blessing my youth is. Yes, being young is fun and dandy, but I am referring to my upbringing’s social implications. From a very early age, since before I could even talk, I was exposed to homosexuality as normalcy. I did not think anything of it until I started to grasp the more significant history and circumstance around terms such as “gay” when I was about nine years old. My godmothers are gay women, as are my brother’s. I remember attending their second wedding in 2004, shortly after same-sex marriage was officially legalized where we lived, and I thought nothing of it.As previously implied, around late elementary school, I discovered that being gay was a distinct identity and had a more serious and complex history around it, one which I learned about but never experienced. I think more than anything, my blessed lack of conflict around sexuality has been my greatest asset. Growing up in a progressive era and the late ’90s and early 2000s, I was never harassed, bullied, or attacked for being queer or talking about LGBTQ politics and media. To this day, I still never “came out” because there was no need to, although I admittedly have never been much of one to put labels on my sexuality. I was always just, queer, and there was never an assumption otherwise. On a side note, there is no possible way for me to express the breadth of my gratitude to the generations who fought for LGBT rights.The reader needs to understand that, just as I was fortunate to grow up in a bubble that treated where homosexuality normally, so too was I luckily able to experience Yuri at such a young age. By 2010 we were well into Yuri’s third major movement, a period I often refer to as the “Current Era” of Yuri, although “S Revival” may be a more apt description. Sailor Moon had already dominated both Western and Eastern culture (a craze I was ever too slightly young for), brought Yuri into the independent comics market, and exposed audiences to one of the first positive portrayals of a lesbian couple in Yuri.Additionally, Revolutionary Girl Utena had smashed its way into the anime world, cementing itself as one of the most acclaimed and influential anime works of the 1990s and legitimizing lesbian storytelling in the medium. Most importantly for me, Oyuki Konno’s Maria Watches Over Us light novel series revived the Yuri genre’s earliest tropes, known as Class S. Elements of S fiction, such as all-girls catholic schools, piano duets, and temporary lesbian-ish love would permeate the genre for the coming decades. These themes were eventually adopted and intensely exaggerated in the work that set me on the path of Yuri and transformed me into the “Holy Mother of Yuri.”Furthermore, when I was in the early stages of life, Yuri was beginning to make its way Westward slowly. This expansion was thanks to the publishing arm of Erica Friedman’s organization Yuricon, ALC Publishing. ALC was founded in 2003 and started to publish the first Yuri manga in America, including the Yuri Monogatari series and Takashima Rica’s Rica’ tte Kanji!? A few years later, Seven Seas Entertainment started to published Yuri manga, such as The Last Uniform and Kashimashi: Girl Meets Girl. Around this team, thanks to the internet and anime’s growing popularity, anime and manga were more accessible than ever. Although Western Yuri publishing did not take off until the late 2010s, there was just enough of it readily available to create the perfect storm for my Yuri infection.Shortly after I started to gain awareness of LGBTQ+ rights, identity, and… existence, I was exposed to my first Yuri, although I did not recognize it as such. My middle school library had an extensive collection of manga, including the Tokyopop adaptations of Strawberry Marshmallow. I never read them, but a friend did and talked with me about them. Curious, I went home and searched the title online and found that there were anime videos uploaded to YouTube, with each episode separated into three parts (this event was before I was aware of what piracy was and how harmful it is to creators). I watched all of them with my brother, and we had an absolute blast. To this day, Strawberry Marshmallow is one of our favorite series to watch together and have a huge laugh at.Although Strawberry Marshmallow had subtle Yuri elements (this was before the 2009 OVA, which contained an actual kiss), I did not recognize them. However, this series led to my brother and I showing each other different anime series, in one of which I was very clearly able to see lesbian representation. I do not remember the exact year, but it must have been about 2010 when, sitting in our mother’s office waiting for her to finish with meetings, my brother pulled up an episode of Studio Madhouse’s Strawberry Panic anime and changed my life forever.Part II of “Growing up Yurijin” is available to read as part of The Secret Garden series. The Secret Garden is YuriMother’s exclusive series of monthly articles, available only for Patrons. If you want to access it and help support Yuri and LGBTQ+ content, subscribe to the YuriMother Patreon.
Apr 1, 2021 • Subscribe
Girl Meets Girl, Maria Watches Over Us, Sailor Moon, Strawberry Marshmallow, Girl Meets Girl
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