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This Week in Anime - So, Is Sound Euphonium Queerbaiting or Not?

...Do girls have to have sex onscreen for you to think "that's gay"?)

Also I haven't seen Liz and Bluebird but according to the director she didn't intend it to be gay, so that's not a great defense for the team being pro-yuri.

I've seen enough of hollywood acting like it's trying to "appease" angry queer people and meet queer representation quotas. Make good queer shows and movies so we can praise them. I sincerely hope the popularity and love for positive steps like Yuri on Ice and G-Witch open the way to encourage more anime to go down that road and innovate.

The Shuuichi hate genuinely baffles me, given that he’s arguably the biggest victim in the entire series. He’s just a slightly boring dude with a crush that the narrative decided to do dirty the entire way through.

First you have season one, where Kumiko’s main reaction to him is either “urgh/geh” or just completely not recognizing his existence, with season two being barely an improvement (there’s a few scenes where Kumiko grumbles about her troubles to him in passing). Then we go from 26 episodes covering an entire year to a single movie covering the next, where his confession is dropped in the cold open, almost like a joke. Now suddenly we’re expected to believe Kumiko also shares feelings towards him, despite every bit of textual & visual imagery exclusively focusing on her intense, almost visceral fixations towards Reina & Asuka.

The poor guy has basically been forced into a romance subplot, despite every piece of information the show presents us depicting something else entire. Like, even now in his supposedly higher role as vice-president, he barely has a shot in the OP & nothing in the ED. The kid’s been royally screwed over by the narrative he exists within.

From what I understand the original book also presents Kumiko's fascination & pining towards some of her peers as pretty intimate, but as you’ve said, Kyoani’s direction under Yamada takes it to a whole other level. It’s hardly the first time she’s done this, with A Silent Voice & Heike Story also spinning the narrative in favour of her particular fixations, to the detriment of the original text (well, mostly with Voice), & when it’s done this aggressively it actively undermines parts of the original text, while over-emphasising others. So now the new staff are effectively left having to continue legacy content that has reframed & muddled up all the central character relationships.

Personally my head cannon is that Kumiko is absolutely gay (still not convinced about Reina tbh), but is trapped within the narrative, like a marionette being puppeted by invisible strings, to believe she isn’t. So after the show ends she & Shuuichi will date for like 6 months before the realisation hits her like a bolt of lightning. Then she’ll go on to find true happiness, while Shuuichi will throw a dried dog turd at Yamada’s front door for wasting everyone’s time. The end.

But those two shows are also prime examples of being wishy washy and refusing to be committal for the sake of plausible deniability for the mainstream audience.

...Do girls have to have sex onscreen for you to think "that's gay"?)

The obvious solution is Kumiko and Reina are bi.

fathomlessblue wrote:

The Shuuichi hate genuinely baffles me, given that he’s arguably the biggest victim in the entire series. He’s just a slightly boring dude with a crush that the narrative decided to do dirty the entire way through. First you have season one, where Kumiko’s main reaction to him is either “urgh/geh” or just completely not recognizing his existence, with season two being barely an improvement (there’s a few scenes where Kumiko grumbles about her troubles to him in passing). Then we go from 26 episodes covering an entire year to a single movie covering the next, where his confession is dropped in the cold open, almost like a joke. Now suddenly we’re expected to believe Kumiko also shares feelings towards him, despite every bit of textual & visual imagery exclusively focusing on her intense, almost visceral fixations towards Reina & Asuka. The poor guy has basically been forced into a romance subplot, despite every piece of information the show presents us depicting something else entire. Like, even now in his supposedly higher role as vice-president, he barely has a shot in the OP & nothing in the ED. The kid’s been royally screwed over by the narrative he exists within. From what I understand the original book also presents Kumiko's fascination & pining towards some of her peers as pretty intimate, but as you’ve said, Kyoani’s direction under Yamada takes it to a whole other level. It’s hardly the first time she’s done this, with A Silent Voice & Heike Story also spinning the narrative in favour of her particular fixations, to the detriment of the original text (well, mostly with Voice), & when it’s done this aggressively it actively undermines parts of the original text, while over-emphasising others. So now the new staff are effectively left having to continue legacy content that has reframed & muddled up all the central character relationships. Personally my head cannon is that Kumiko is absolutely gay (still not convinced about Reina tbh), but is trapped within the narrative, like a marionette being puppeted by invisible strings, to believe she isn’t. So after the show ends she & Shuuichi will date for like 6 months before the realisation hits her like a bolt of lightning. Then she’ll go on to find true happiness, while Shuuichi will throw a dried dog turd at Yamada’s front door for wasting everyone’s time. The end.

I don't know how he's represented in novels, but I remember that form the first episode I disliked the guy, look, you fucked up as a kid and now your ex-friend moved on and doesn't want anything to do with you, just accept the L and move on as well, instead of trying to enter the same river again like nothing happened. And, again, dunno about novels vs anime, but I can't believe that Kumiko's interactions with him and his problems could be really captivating compared to enormous and beautiful drama with Reina, so I find it hard to criticize anime director for deciding to figuratively throw him to the wolves, I never could care about him at all. I agree with you about making own head-canon with Kumiko ditching him later. I dropped the series midway in second season, I started to get bored of the constant weird drama, despite enjoying it when it was Kumiko and Reina's stuff, so I can't really say much about how it was handled later.

As for baiting, I can understand feeling betrayed by the narrative, given how much better
the gay stuff is, even if over-emphasized by anime, but after learning that hetero romance was in the original source, do people here who dislike queer-baiting here think they should just never put emphasis the gay stuff between two female leads in the first place? I don't know, I think anime was better for re-framing that from source by "gaywashing" and giving us those hot scenes, despite obviously resulting controversy, then again I'm not gay myself.

There is also the point raised by some people, that some of the "queer-baiting" in anime/manga is less about representation but more about throwing fanservice to shippers, be they gay or straight, who want to make their own head-cannon and smutty fanfics. It's not that different from those ecchi yet chaste harem anime, where you have ton of girls competing for male MC, lucky pervert moments, and fandom split over best waifu wars and marriage fanfics, yet male MC is shown as totally dense and not interested in the romance at all. The relationship stuff in anime is sometimes purposefully directed at fans with the understanding that it's they're supposed to play as they like with own non-canon fiction, and I think Japanese fans may be more "in" on that and feel less betrayed, but that's only my guessing.

EDIT: I'm sure I've seen hetero manga with hand-holding, confession in last chapter, then time-skip to marriage without any kiss scene - if we get anything after confession at all - so that can just be unfortunate but relatively normal thing in manga, where stuff like "indirect kiss" with shared water bottle is more important and blush-worthy than actual kiss, and love confession is akin to marriage vows.

Cardcaptor Takato wrote:

The obvious solution is Kumiko and Reina are bi.

Also why are 2 men discussing this DURING LESBIAN VISIBILTIY WEEK

Kaylee Smerbeck wrote:

Cardcaptor Takato wrote: The obvious solution is Kumiko and Reina are bi. Also why are 2 men discussing this DURING LESBIAN VISIBILTIY WEEK

Oh please, let’s not start that discussion.

Also why are 2 men discussing this DURING LESBIAN VISIBILTIY WEEK

Kaylee Smerbeck wrote:

Also why are 2 men discussing this DURING LESBIAN VISIBILTIY WEEK

1) Same-sex couples who are women aren't always lesbians.
2) At least one of the collumn authors mentioned they are bi.
3) Queerbaiting is an issue for all queer people.

I personally think the collumn authors demonstrate a pretty clear understanding of the topic and the issue plaguing the show's romantic themes. Euphonium just started up again, and as such, so has this topic in the fandom. I don't think it makes sense to hold out another week just to avoid somehow stepping on our toes.