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This New Anime Featured an Important Conversation About Gender & Sexuality
In a recent episode of I’m in Love With the Villainess, the characters have a timely and important discussion that fans still aren't used to seeing in anime.
The new anime seriesI’m in Love With the Villainess broke boundaries last week when one of the main characters admitted to being gay and had an entire conversation about sexual identity and gender with her friends.
While this may be commonplace in American animated TV shows (well, more commonplace than in years past), it can still be hard and rare to find LGBTQ+ characters in anime who talk openly about their queerness. Most of the time, queer characters and relationships aren’t spoken of out loud and are relegated to being subtext — this is even more true when it comes to shows featuring a lesbian love story.
I’m in Love With the Villainess is an “isekai” (i.e. an anime where a character is transported to another world) about Rae Taylor, a girl who dies from being overstressed and ends up in the world of her favorite dating game, but instead of lusting after the prince, Rae tries to woo the game’s rival Claire Francois as the two attend a prestigious academy.
In the second episode of the first season of the series, Rae is put on the spot when another girl asks her if she’s gay. The other girls in the group are stunned and tell her not to ask questions like that, but Rae pipes in, saying, “I don’t mind talking about it.”
“I probably am, yeah,” she continues. “I’ve never been in love with a guy before.”
This response sends Claire into a gay panic, but immediately one of the girls jumps in to point out that Claire being fearful of Rae because of her sexual orientation is showing “prejudice.” The small group of girls then have a fairly nuanced conversation about why Claire’s viewpoint is wrong and what role gender plays in love.
“Gender doesn’t matter when it comes to love,” one girl says. “The one you fell in love with just happened to be a woman, right?”
Rae then elaborates on what she means when she says she is gay. “Logically speaking, it may be correct to say gender doesn’t matter if you love someone, but at the very least I’m never going to fall for a man.”
Not only is it fairly rare for an anime to have two women fall in love, but it is almost unheard of for there to be characters who speak so openly about gender and sexuality. Hopefully, this is a sign of positive changes to come in anime at large!
I’m in Love With the Villainess is currently streaming on Crunchyroll with new episodes dropping on Tuesdays. Watch the official trailer below.
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Ariel Messman-Rucker is an Oakland-born journalist who now calls the Pacific Northwest her home. When she’s not writing about politics and queer pop culture, she can be found reading, hiking, or talking about horror movies with the Zombie Grrlz Horror Podcast Network.
Ariel Messman-Rucker is an Oakland-born journalist who now calls the Pacific Northwest her home. When she’s not writing about politics and queer pop culture, she can be found reading, hiking, or talking about horror movies with the Zombie Grrlz Horror Podcast Network.
