There are, unfortunately, not very many trans, intersex, nonbinary, or otherwise non-cis characters in anime. However, this is not the same as there being none. In light of this, I’m announcing a new project: The Non-Cis Character Database, because “The Database of Non-Cis Characters Appearing in Japanese Pop Media — A Study in Representation” is too long and cumbersome.
The criteria for inclusion are as follows:
- The character must be transgender, nonbinary, intersex, or otherwise non-cisgender, as strongly supported by the text
Originally, the database excluded characters from media with a specific LGBTQ+ focus, mostly because I usually don’t find them very interesting to discuss — however, I realized it was kind of ridiculous not to at least include them on the list. Whether or not I actually wind up discussing series like Wandering Son and Our Dreams at Dusk remains to be seen, but they’re on there.
The goals of this project are:
- To create a reference for anyone looking for characters that fall under the above criteria, whether it be for personal, professional, or academic reasons
- To dissect the ways in which genderqueer characters appear in Japanese pop media through a series of case studies, and try to pick apart what exactly makes for “good” representation
Methodology
So. How to define “genderqueer” in the context of Japanese pop media.
The thing that makes this thorny is that there are a lot of characters who could be described as gender non-conforming — girls who dress as boys, like Tsugumi from Nisekoi; boys who dress as girls, like Bridget from Guilty Gear; characters whose genders are ambiguous, like Haku from Naruto or Ed from Cowboy Bebop. This is not necessarily the same as being genderqueer. In real life, yes, someone assigned male at birth who consistently presented female (or vice-versa) would most likely not be cisgender; however, this is often depicted primarily as fetish material, or as a plot necessity. Sometimes a character’s androgyny is just a quirk of the art style.
I’m going to be taking creator intent into account here as well — while there are examples of fairly tasteful genderqueer characters who I don’t believe were written that way intentionally (I’ve talked extensively about Satan from Devilman on this blog), for the most part, if the creator was thinking “boy in skirt hot” when they made a character, they’re probably not the most sensitive depiction. I’m going to try avoiding the term “tr*p” in these posts, as it is a slur, but it’s relevant to the discussion here.
For the sake of discussion, a line has to be drawn somewhere between characters that are gender non-conforming, and those that are genderqueer. Part of the purpose of this project is to figure out where and how that line is drawn, and to catalogue characters on both sides of it. However, the focus will primarily be on characters who are textually non-cis, as well as hard-to-define border cases, as they make for the most interesting discussion into what “textually” actually means in this context.
To be clear: there is nothing wrong with reading gender non-conforming characters as trans or genderqueer, even ones that are poorly written and/or intended as fetish material. Especially those, in fact. They’re ours now and we love them. But they’re not the focus of this project. Likewise, a character being “bad representation” isn’t the same as them being a bad character, let alone unlikeable — there are characters who are fairly terrible and offensive portrayals of genderqueerness who I personally adore. (Orochimaru, I’m looking at you.)
Qualifications
I’m going to do my best to stick to the same general criteria when ruling whether or not a character qualifies as genderqueer within the context of this project. This is for the sake of maintaining something resembling objectivity — if I allow too much weight to my own personal readings, it risks the line blurring between my headcanons and the media as it actually exists. The points I look at are as follows, in order of most to least significant.
- What the character says about their own gender. If they explicitly state “I’m a _______,” I will take it at face value unless there’s some overwhelming evidence against that being true. Anything short of this — for instance, referring to themself with gendered terms — is right behind it.
- What other characters say about their gender. This one is a bit tricky because it’s so conditional — there is a lot of misgendering, especially in media that handles trans characters poorly, and it will always be secondary to what characters say about themselves. However, in cases where the character in question doesn’t say anything about themself, and it’s clear the person speaking is doing so in good faith, it’s worth taking into consideration.
- Circumstantial evidence. Sometimes a character is just extremely trans-coded, to the extent that it’s apparent even if it’s never explicitly discussed by anyone. This can get a bit subjective, since what one does or doesn’t consider evidence or coding can vary — there are characters in the database who I’m not entirely sure qualify for exactly this reason.
- What the creator says about the character’s gender. I think the fact that I have this below “circumstantial evidence” about says it all. It can be useful to determine the perspective a character is being written from, but otherwise, I believe very firmly in “death of the author” in the context of this database.
Evaluating Representation
Personally, I hate attempting to quantify something as slippery and subjective as representation in any kind of concrete form. All things being equal I would much rather just give a detailed summary and analysis of the ways in which the character’s gender is depicted without trying to bring ratings into it. However, that would make for a less useful database, and that is at least partially the point of this project. So ratings it is. Please keep in mind that these are only my opinions, and this criteria itself is more a guideline than anything and subject to change at any time.
| Elements of Good Representation | Elements of Bad Representation |
| – The character’s gender is made clear to the viewer. – The character’s gender is respected by the narrative. – Any biological aspects discussed are factually accurate. – If the character is misgendered, it’s made clear that the person misgendering them is in the wrong. – The character’s gender is an aspect of their personality, but doesn’t define them. – The character’s gender is depicted in ways that are respectful and true to life. | – The character’s gender is depicted in ways that are extremely ambiguous or contradictory. – The character’s gender is treated as a joke. – The character is misgendered frequently and/or casually. – Factually incorrect information about the nature of transness/genderqueerness/intersex/etc. – The character is used as a stand-in for their entire demographic. – The character is defined wholly or largely by their gender. – The character is written with harmful stereotypes (i.e. predatory; fetish material). |
The database as it currently exists — including characters I intend to write profiles of, but have not yet gotten around to — can be found here. Barring complications, I will be posting a new profile every Monday. Due to the limitations of my own knowledge, the list is incomplete, so if there are any characters you think should be included, please tell me!
Allegory, Allegorier, Allegoriest 
Oh my gosh, thank you so much for creating this database! Non-cis rep in anime is something I’ve been thinking a lot about—my understanding & repertoire are both limited, so I’m excited to read through your posts and learn more about this topic. I’m also curious what you would think of Hanase Kaoru in Tamako Market!
By the way, do you have a ko-fi account? I’d love to support your work!
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I’m so happy to hear that, thank you! And I’ve only seen the first few episodes of Tamako Market back when it aired, but iirc (and from glancing at the wiki) Hanase IS very trans-coded — Kaoru is a gender-neutral name, she’s voiced by a male VA, etc. There’s another character in the database who I haven’t gotten to yet, Venus from Heaven’s Design Team, who’s very similar. Personally I think characters who are trans-coded without it ever being mentioned as such are a good thing, since it normalizes transness without othering it. Thanks for bringing her to my attention, I’ll add her to the list!
I’m so so grateful that you want to support the project! I don’t have a ko-fi yet, but check back in a few days c; I’ve been thinking about setting up something like that to help me get legal copies of media that isn’t available via some kind of subscription, so this is a good impetus to do that. Thank you so much!
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I love blogs like this. It’s so important to create a resource of lgbt characters because trying to find them in media can be a goose chase sometimes, especially with Japanese media. It’ll be so fun seeing how many characters get added.
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Thank you so much! It means a lot to know this project is appreciated, especially in the middle of hiatus.
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Is the database still available anywhere?
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The list, in its current form, can be found at https://sinclairaugusthome.wordpress.com/genderqueer-character-database/ — I haven’t updated it in a while, though, since the project is pretty much completely defunct at this point.
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Thanks!
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Hey this is strange but I am the person that goes by “Tripp” that commented on your Satan essay (not Ryo, Satan) and I read a few more articles and you’re very insightful! Please don’t think I’m a terrible person because of it, I’m someone who lets people have their own interpretations on a character, I’m not someone who goes on a rant about how others perceive a character. I had a few more thoughts about a few more articles too but didn’t want to comment too many times when I refuse to make a wordpress account if I’m only going to be using it one in a while. I think I understand more about at least the other side of the coin. I’m trans myself but I understand that the ftm and the nonbinary crowd has very difference experiences than what I did. I’m always fascinated by people drawing a confirmed cis character with a trans body solely to “show what their body looks like with the characters they love because it brings them comfort.” I would do that myself but I’m not comfortable drawing the naked body unless something other than clothes is covering them. It took me forever to even draw a guy shirtless lol. I’m always fascinated by characters who’s genders are unknown, sometimes even confirmed by the creators, and how people interprets them, such as Crona from Soul Eater, Nanchi from Made in Abyss, Halara from Rain Code.
With Crona, it feels like they use she/her pronouns in the manga, and he/him in the anime, only to be confirmed they’re up for interpretation. I hate feeling terrible for my interpretation of things even though I let others have their interpretations so I default to they no matter if I’m talking about the manga or the anime.
Nanchi is rumored to be female because of the Japanese text but implied male solely because Reg (I think?) doesn’t feel comfortable staring at Faputa’s chest as she’s clearly a girl but feels comfortable staring at Nanchi’s. It was also confirmed by the author that Nanchi’s “gender is unknown. Let’s imagine :)”
With Halaria, the game goes OUT OF THEIR WAY to make sure no one refers to them with pronouns and there’s nothing in the game that suggests what their gender is. However, on the Spike Chunsoft official website for the game, in the character introduction, it refers to them as “they/them” which does feel like a slip up overall, but its the only time Halaria is referred to any pronouns
It seems you haven’t made an article about any queer characters in a while though, which makes me sad. I learned a lot about representation in media and different ways different shows goes about it. From what I got in all your articles, it seems the best representation is usually in slice of life series or one-shot shounen. I’ve also had experience with genderqueer characters, not just the ones above, such as a handful of Fire Emblem characters. I would request you to write about them but like I said, it seems you didn’t update an article in a while and the only game character you’ve written about is Flea. Though if you’re interested in looking at them since you have a great understanding of the Japanese language as well, their names are Limstella (adding them here because fans of the series often praises Intelligent Systems for “treating them so well” and their VA in the mobile game also being nonbinary when they’re literally genderless through and through and not even the first genderless character anyway), Bramimond, Excellus, Arval and Kyza though they would all probably be in a single article due to FE benching characters that aren’t important to the story past their recruitment and lack of development from antagonists
Sorry for my rant though, I have so many thoughts about this project that I needed to blurt it out. You also just seem like a very chill person to talk to? And I want more of your insights XD
I even included a website you can talk to me through. Though you might need to make an account since I don’t know a lot of people who knows this particular social media site
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…wait, in one of your other comments you said “Of course as a cis-person myself, I don’t understand why Devilman was important to you.” So how exactly do you identify? I mean it’s your business either way, but I couldn’t help but notice.
Anyways, the database is defunct because I was increasingly A) concerned about propagating misinformation about queerness in Japan, B) disillusioned with presenting myself as any kind of an authority, C) in my own head about including every single piece of information that could possibly be relevant, which is just untenable after a while. That, and I’m kind of sick of “representation” as a concept? I’m much more interested in queer creators telling queer stories than mainstream media trying (and usually failing) to depict a queer person in a way that is neither offensive nor factually wrong. So I’m sorry, but I’m done here. Also, the main reason I didn’t write about more video games is that they can take a really long time to get through, and it’s harder to get screengrabs than from anime or manga, so I tended to gravitate towards media that was lower effort. I wrote about Flea mostly because I’d been looking for an excuse to play Chrono Trigger lol.
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Oh sorry its easy to forget since I fully transitioned so I don’t really remember until I watch some of my favorite Youtubers that helped me find my identity as they’re trans themselves. One of them reads Reddit stories sometimes that are usually LGBT+ themed (Idk how to say this, but it feels weird saying “themed” related to the topic) so I watch a few of his videos from time to time. I had his video in the background while writing the comment. I guess I find I’m comfortable in my own body and people not seeing me as trans anymore as confirmation I just feel cis you know? I hope other trans people can feel the same way as it was a long journey for me as well. VERY long to truly feel cis. I feel like I can give any young queer some advice myself and always feel great telling them about my experiences. A lot of this was still learning experiences too
Yeah representation in Japanese media is weird just because of complex it is where the same words but with different kanji can mean a whole numerous amount of times. I recently learned that Japanese people calls themselves as x-gender and I am always fascinated by the language. And all the video game characters from FE specifically are all from different games, some that requires emulators to get anyway or are super expensive because its a Wii game made by Nintendo. And Rain Code is also…pretty lengthy as you probably expect from the same creators from Spike Chunsoft. Thinking about them now, and how they go out of their way not to refer to Halaria by any sort of pronouns, it makes me wish you written an article about Nanchi and Crona as they’re their creators said have genders up to interpretation. I think also going into the authors’ intentions for how they represented the non-cis character was also difficult to do too since unless they have a well-known reputation, its hard to tell sometimes. Not sure how to naturally add this to my conversation either, but regarding Alice and To Strip the Flesh too, I think having obvious transphobes in stories aren’t necessarily a bad thing since it is more realistic and can make the character more relatable and familiar, though may be triggering to someone who hasn’t fully accepted themselves. I understand why having this where the trans character isn’t the main focus (like any sort of fantasy genre) and not a story based on a trans person’s experiences could be a bad idea. Like when it came to Elliot Page, the Umbrella Academy had one episode where his character comes out as trans and went on with their show like nothing happened and that’s how it should be. And it was briefly mentioned too
But yeah I feel like representation in media is kinda…dumb too? I never had strong feelings towards it before. Imo, its like, “oh cool!” when I see a trans character in media. Something I always felt was dumb though is that if that media is a Western video game or cartoon, they also advertise the voice actor is trans too. I don’t care about the VA’s personal life, I care if they’re good or not. Its nice to know so I’m not misgendering them, but I feel like its dumb to advertise anyway. And then there is a diverse character, they’re just a stereotype and their entire identity is based around that and they still get loved on for being a diverse character. Bad reputation is just damaging overall and reinforces stereotypes that were created from transphobes
Watch us go on long conversations and I still never make an account
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