History of LGBTQ characters in animated series: 1990s

In the 1990s, more LGBTQ characters began to be depicted in animated series than in any of the years before. While some Western animation like Futurama, South Park, and The Simpsons would include such characters, a few anime stood above the rest in terms of their representation: Sailor Moon, Cardcaptor Sakura, and Revolutionary Girl Utena. The latter anime, one of the most important anime of the decade,[1] would have a lasting influence for years to come, even influencing Rebecca Sugar, who later became a storyboarder for Cartoon Network's Adventure Time in the 2010s and the creator of the series Steven Universe.[2] It would also influence series in the 2000s.

For a list of LGBTQ+ animated characters, see List of animated series with LGBTQ+ characters. For history of homosexuality in U.S. film, see History of homosexuality in American film. For the history of anime, see History of anime. For media portrayals of bisexuals, see Media portrayals of bisexuality. For media portrayal of lesbians, see Media portrayal of lesbianism.

To see the list of LGBTQ+ characters in the 1990s, please read the Animated series with LGBTQ characters: 1990s page, which is subdivided into pages for 1990-1994 and 1995-1999. For fictional characters in other parts of the LGBTQ+ community, see the lists of lesbian, gay, trans, bisexual, non-binary, pansexual, asexual, and intersex characters.

Sailor Moon, Utena, and the anime boom

The popularity of anime continued to rise in the 1990s, with the early 90s known as an "anime boom."[3] Huge conventions were hosted while the yuri, BL, and related genres began attracting fans outside Japan, including in Hong Kong and mainland China.[4][5] A devoted fan base blossomed in the West as channels such as Cartoon Network airing anime in program blocks.[6][7] At the same time, Japan had another so-called "gay boom" with some Japanese lesbian activists feelings silenced and ostracized within Japanese feminist circles.[8][9]:50–1, 60 Although anime programs began declining after the "collapse of the bubble economy" in 1992 and an economic slump during the 1990s, anime continued to explore complex concepts.[10] Examples of this exploration included Dragon Ball, Sailor Moon, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Cardcaptor Sakura, and One Piece,[11] three of which had longstanding LGBTQ+ characters, one of which had LGBTQ+ moments (Neon Genesis Evangelion) and another which had very little representation (Dragon Ball).[12]

While anime like One Piece and Jojo's Bizarre Adventure had LGBTQ+ characters, and the 1995 anime film, Ghost in the Shell inspired "transgender interpretations,"[12] two anime series stood apart: Sailor Moon (1992-1997) and Revolutionary Girl Utena (1997). Both series were directed by Kunihiko Ikuhara, while Junichi Sato and Takuya Igarashi directed specific Sailor Moon seasons. The first of these series featured the lesbian couple of Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune (introduced in 2000).[13] The dubbed version presented on US television networks portrayed Neptune and Uranus as cousins as did European networks.[14][12] [15] Although years later this was amended, other networks at the time also chopped out "gay content" in the dubbed version of Cardcaptors.[16][12] The relationship between Uranus and Neptune would become one of the best known yuri relationships in history,[17] with some describing the relation between them as butch-femme.[18] The show also featured other LGBTQ characters like Fisheye, Zoisite, Kunzie, and Sailor Star Fighter.[19] Neptune and Uranus, as the Sailor Starlights, acted like men in their civilian forms, transforming into women when they battled villains.[20][21] Broadly, the gender of the show's characters was irrelevant to their personalities, attitudes, or behaviors, with oft-blurring of gender characteristics, "traditional roles," and identity itself.[22]:6, 8, 11–12 The show gained a following among male university students,[23] spreading in popularity thanks to the Internet.[24]:281 Some praised the show for empowering its viewers[25] while others saw it as expressing characters who acted in a "traditionally male" manner, or less than feminist in the case of Sailor Moon herself.[26] This representation came at a time that anime was beginning to establish a strong foothold in "American geek fandom,"[27][28] even as they still reflected the values of Japanese society.[22]:10–11

A few months after Sailor Moon ended, another fan favorite, named Revolutionary Girl Utena, began on April 2. The show contained many LGBTQ+ characters since Ikuhara tried to express queer and feminist themes in the series, leading some to call the series "groundbreaking."[12][29] Some characters are lesbian, like Juri Arisugawa, and others are bisexual, like Utena Tenjou, a crossdressing prince and her friend (and love) "Rose Bride" Anthy Himemiya.[19] The latter two characters were argued to have one of the best LGBTQ+ relationships in anime by Carlos Cadorniga of Crunchyroll.[30] While some argued that the show isn't for first-time anime viewers, others said it bends the "boundaries of reality and science fiction," with a storyline about punishing and emotional obstacles in the lives of characters.[31] While some believe that Ikuhara was inspired by The Rose of Versailles,[32] he stated that the show's concepts came from Sailor Moon Super S: The Movie.[33] One of the show's scriptwriters. Yōji Enokido would later write scripts for Neon Genesis Evangelion, FLCL, and Ouran High School Host Club episodes. Utena became one of the most important anime of the 1990s, alongside Serial Experiments Lain, Cowboy Bebop, and Trigun.[1] One Maryland teenager, Rebecca Sugar, watched the show, distributed in the U.S. first by Enoki Films USA (which renamed the show Ursula's Kiss[34] and Central Park Media, the latter which released it under the same name in 1998, 2002 and 2003.[35] The show strongly influenced Sugar, would impact LGBTQ+ animation in the 2010s with her work on Adventure Time and Steven Universe. In a July 2017 interview with Shamus Kelly of Den of Geek[36] she would describe how the show affected her:

[Utena] was an epiphany for me. The way that it plays with the semiotics of gender. I was a bisexual teenager watching a show like Utena. It was stunning, I related to it in a way that I had never really felt before and it really stuck with me...I love that she (Utena) decides that after being saved by a prince that she wants to be a prince, It’s great!...(Utena) is so extreme that it’s funny. That was a huge influence on me as well, that something could be so dramatic and so, beautiful, but also wacky. Akio will flip onto the front of the car, or the way that (the student council members) want to shatter the world. It’s so extreme that it’s powerful and almost even funny, it’s really exciting. I saw them do Guys and Dolls, which is one of the greatest things I have ever seen. And there’s huge, huge Takarazuka theater influence to Steven Universe, I feel like I got a chance to see some of the deepest source material for that whole genre, and it was hugely inspiring.

New LGBTQ+ characters appear in U.S. animation

Apart from Utena and Sailor Moon, other anime with LGBTQ+ characters appeared. This included RG Veda, Osamu Dezaki's Dear Brother with Dezaki as the one who had directed episodes 19-40 of The Rose of Versailles, and Katsuhito Akiyama's Ai no Kusabi, a yaoi series, with Akiyama directing the first four episodes of Bubblegum Crisis (1987). In the early 1990s, a few U.S. shows featured LGBTQ+ characters: Gargoyles[37][38] and The Simpsons.[39] These characters were often secondary, with a nighttime soap opera, Melrose Place even pressured into removing a "brief gay kiss" in one of their 1994 episodes.[40] It wouldn't be until the late 1990s that LGBTQ+ characters appeared on more U.S. animated shows. While some claimed the villain of Powerpuff Girls, Him, was transgender, or otherwise LGBTQ+,[20][41] some shows had openly LGBTQ+ characters. On February 16, 1997, the episode Homer's Phobia of The Simpsons aired, featuring John Waters, an openly gay filmmaker, as a gay man who helps Homer Simpson confront his homophobia.[42] The episode also pokes at general homophobia in U.S. society as a whole.[43] The episode, which aired two months before Ellen DeGeneres came out as a lesbian on her sitcom, Ellen,[44] came during a time there were unspoken limits on what LGBTQ content could be shown on TV.[43] It was an improvement from Simpson and Delilah in October 1990, which featured a stylish assistant, Karl,[45] who helped Homer, whose sexuality is never mentioned even though the person voicing him (Harvey Fierstein) is an openly gay playwright. Some argued that "Homer's Phobia" did more, in terms of awareness and exposing intolerance, than "any live action show at the time."[46] The same year, Superman: The Animated Series featured two lesbian characters: Maggie Sawyer and Toby Raynes, although they were secondary or tertiary to the story.[47]

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender characters appeared in anime throughout the later 1990s, in shows such as Leena Dirty Pair Flash,[48] Nuriko in Fushigi Yûgi who initially dresses and acts as a woman named Kang-lin,[49] and is one of Hotohori's concubines because Kang-lin was his twin sister who died and he wanted to keep her memory alive as shown in the episode, "The Seven Stars of Suzaku."[50] He enjoys cross-dressing, as indicates in the episode "Even If I Die...," and is in love with Hotohori, but later also grows to love the main heroine Miaka as indicated in the episode "Brief Parting."[51] A few shows on U.S. broadcast networks featured LGBTQ+ characters. Some were only confirmed years later, like Eugene Horowitz in Hey Arnold!,[52][53] and other characters in the show like Robert Simmons, Eugene's fourth-grade teacher,[54] whose gay identity was confirmed almost 18 years after the episode, "Arnold's Thanksgiving", aired. In 1997, South Park, created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, began airing on Comedy Central. The show's fourth episode, "Big Gay Al's Big Gay Boat Ride" featured a flamboyant homosexual man who ran an animal sanctuary with gay animals.[55] In the course of the show, Big Gay Al would openly display his homosexuality and be an open advocate for gay rights. Despite this array of characters,[20] the show made it clear that cartoons are not only for kids, like The Simpsons, but it did not counter the idea that it is "inappropriate to expose kids to the existence of queer people."[12] The latter would only be blown away by shows like Steven Universe and The Loud House in the 21st century.

While Family Guy repeated tropes[56] often associated with LGBTQ+ characters, as did South Park,[57] SpongeBob SquarePants avoided that, with the protagonist, Spongebob, described multiple times[58][59] by series creator Stephen Hillenburg, as an asexual character.[21] In other parts of the world, the UK show Crapston Villas had openly gay characters[60][61] while a French show, Space Goofs (known as Les Zinzins de L'Espace in French) had a character named Candy Caramilla, an uptight homosexual neat freak who gets in touch with their feminine side by sometimes disguising themselves as a woman, and flirts with men, is implied to be transgender.[62] This implication is confirmed by the game, "Stupid Invaders" with Candy planning a gender reassignment surgery with the best specialist in the universe.

gollark: (technically it also has some code to force it to respond to an instant-lose/instant-win situation)
gollark: It is funny that people keep losing to a fairly trivial piece of code which just decides how good a move is by playing 100 *entirely random games* starting from it and seeing how many it wins.
gollark: Okay, I am now decreasing my estimate of your programming competence.
gollark: I don't know if there's a general strategy. The main thing to exploit is that the AI can't really respond to two threats at once.
gollark: I don't think you saw the number I just posted.

See also

References

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