Magic Academy Light Novels/Anime owe nothing to Harry Potter.

I know that sounds absurd at first, but it really isn't.  

Otaku Media is a niche subculture in Japan, and their relationship with taking influence from the west is complicated. In the formative years of the subculture in the 70s and 80s a lot clearly was taken and that's why Star Wars and Superman references never feel out of place in Anime.  But by the late 90s the culture started becoming increasingly insular, the thing Miyazaki said that got mistranslated and misquoted as "Anime was a Mistake" was all about how annoyed he is at modern Anime refusing to be influenced by stuff other then prior Anime.

Harry Potter did not invent the concept of fantastical magic themed Schools or using one as the setting for a Fantasy story.  Western Fantasy Novels with such a concept can be traced back to the 50s.  The late 90s saw an increase in such concepts because using even normal school as a setting only became it's own genre in the prior decade.

But since some of these Magic Academy Anime are technically not Magic at all but nominally some sort of SciFi ability, I could add the X-Men comics to the list of things that were this Genre long before Harry Potter.

The one Anime that I do view as maybe explicitly Harry Potter influenced I like is, Little Witch Academia, but maybe not even LWA since two of the Pre-Potter magic School franchises from that video were about specially all Female Witch Schools.  Still LWA is distinct from the LN trend I'm principally talking about.

My agenda here is NOT about trying to destroy the legacy of Harry Potter because of the now exposed bigotry of She-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named.  I'm not even a fan of this genre of Anime, I've yet to get through a full cour of a single show where this is it's main genre.  However I will recommend while on thar subject Chivalry of a Failed Knight since it has an explicit Trans character. 

Rather the agenda of mine this post does fit into is my desire to draw attention to how much modern Anime has it's roots in a lot of obscure forgotten 90s Media that was popular within this subculture in Japan but didn't get localized for the West or directly adapted into Anime till 10-20 years later if at all.  Like YU-NO: A Girl Who Chants Love at The Bound of This World.  

And while I still am far from an expert on that subject I've already found one such piece of hidden Otaku Media that is in fact a Magic School setting before Harry Potter.  Lunar: Sanposuru Gakuen (Lunar: Walking School) released in Japan in January of 1996, almost a year and a half before the first Harry Potter book was published.  This instalment didn't get a Western Release but it was part of an already popular series.

Even before that there was a Shoujo Manga/Anime series called Akazukin Chaka.

However these kinds of hidden pieces of the puzzle of Anime History are not of interest to Mother's Basement when he makes multiple videos on this genre calling them "Anime Harry Potter knockoffs" for clicks.  He's even aware of the differences like the Academy and Magic's existence not being an in-universe secret, and the lack of anything like the house sorting system.

However there is another piece of this puzzle that even these more Normie observers of Anime have less of an excuse to have missed.  Final Fantasy VIII released in February of 1999 but was in production already before Final Fantasy VII was even fully released yet and thus also before Harry Potter.  And just look at it's early Cut Scenes.  It's a Fantastical Academy and the unforms are clearly way more similar to what we've come to expect from Magic Academy Anime then the more generic Harry Potter robes.  

Meanwhile the Japanese Translation of the first Harry Potter boos wasn't published till December of 1999, Final Fantasy VIII was almost a full year earlier.

Update July 30th:  Low and behold like right after I made this Reign of The Seven Spellblades starts airing, a show seemingly calculated to make this post age poorly.  But it really only proves my point more, that's what Anime actively trying to evoke Harry Potter looks like, it exposes how not like HP at all the swarm of shows preceding it truly are, all while still managing to be better then Harry Potter in the way only an Anime version of it's premise could be.

Wedding Peach had an All Star writing staff

 I've already talked at length on this blog about the head writer Wedding Peach shared with the first 3 seasons of Sailor Moon and the 2 writers it shared with Pokémon from the same studio.

But what about it's 4th Writer who isn't part of either of those connections?  Well what's interesting about Kenji Terada is that he did some other Anime but he's most well known for his contributions to  Video Games.  

He wrote the stories for the first 3 Final Fantasy Games, and though his Wikipedia Page doesn't mention it he apparently wrote the Instruction Booklet Story for The Legend of Zelda, the original on the NES.  I just did a blog post where I drew attention to that original story, and yeah I can see how the author of that story would be a good fit for Mahou Shoujo.

Maybe this is exactly why Shigeru Miyamoto in interviews is never helpful for timeline clarification.  The Premise of Zelda was his vision but never the actual story.  Now as far as I know Terada was involved in that one first Zelda game and so probably doesn't have any ideas on the timeline either.

But it's fascinating how this writer was a pretty big player in getting the Fantasy Genre started in Video Games, yet also winds up writing for this obscure forgotten Magical Girl Anime commonly unfairly dismissed as a Sailor Moon clone.

Zelda is the title character for a reason.

Here's the in-game opening story description for the original NES Legend of Zelda.

LONG AGO, GANON, PRINCE OF DARKNESS, STOLE THE TRIFORCE OF POWER. PRINCESS ZELDA OF HYRULE BROKE THE TRIFORCE OF WISDOM INTO EIGHT PIECES AND HID THEM FROM GANON BEFORE SHE WAS KIDNAPPED BY GANON'S MINIONS. LINK, YOU MUST FIND THE PIECES AND SAVE ZELDA.

And here's the more detailed version in the Instruction Manuel.

A long, long time ago the World was in an age of Chaos. In the middle of this chaos, in a little kingdom in the land of Hyrule, a legend was being handed down from generation to generation, the legend of the 'Triforce'; golden triangles possessing mystical powers.

One day, an evil army attacked this peaceful little kingdom and stole the Triforce of Power. This army was led by Gannon, the powerful Prince of Darkness who sought to plunge the World into fear and darkness under his rule. Fearing his wicked rule, Zelda, the princess of this kingdom, split up the Triforce of Wisdom into eight fragments and hid them throughout the realm to save the last remaining Triforce from the clutches of the evil Ganon. At the same time, she commanded her most trustworthy nursemaid, Impa, to secretly escape into the land and go find a man with enough courage to destroy the evil Gannon. Upon hearing this, Ganon grew angry, imprisoned the princess, and sent out a party in search of Impa.

Braving forests and mountains, Impa fled for her life from her pursuers. As she reached the very limit of her energy she found herself surrounded by Gannon’s evil henchmen. Cornered! What could she do? … But wait!

All was not lost. A young lad appeared. He skillfully drove off Ganon’s henchmen, and saved Impa from a fate worse than death. His name was Link. During his travels he had come across Impa and Ganon’s henchmen. Impa told Link the whole story of the princess Zelda and the evil Ganon. Burning with a sense of justice, Link resolved to save Zelda, but Ganon was a powerful opponent. He held the Triforce of Power. And so, in order to fight off Ganon, Link had to bring the scattered eight fragments of the Triforce of Wisdom together to rebuild the mystical Triangle.

If he couldn't do this, there would be no chance Link could fight his way into Death Mountain where Ganon lived. Can Link really destroy Ganon and save the Princess Zelda? Only your skill can answer that question. Good luck. Use the Triforce wisely.

What you'll notice is that while the player plays Link you are on a mission from Zelda, you are attempting to carry out her plan.  This is why even from the very first game in 1985 she had agency that Princess Peach Toadstool did not.  Now today Peach has become a character with as much agency as Zelda and that's great, I don't wanna a start a Catfight between Zelda Simps and Peach Simps.

In Adventure of Link this aspect of Zelda's role is gone but it's back in A Link to The Past where while you can read a backstory about both the distant and recent past, actual gameplay begins with the Player as Link responding to Zelda's call to adventure.

However in Ocarina of Time Zelda isn't who sends link on his quest and when you do get a mission from her it winds up being the McGuffin Delivery Trope which I hate when it's done for Video Games, I don't want to be told things would have been better if I did nothing.

I like every Zelda game ultimately, but the reason why I consider OoT overrated in the story department is because I care little about how much more cinematic things are like now in 3D if it lessens one of my favorites aspects of the classic games.

Skyward Sword's extreme linearity may be the opposite of the original NES Game in how you play but it was the first game (at least in the main series) since ALttP to bring back this aspect of it, Link is carrying out Zelda's plan, well you could get pedantic and say it's Hylia's plan but they are ultimately the same Entity, and Zelda proper is playing her part in getting the ball rolling.

And then Breath of The Wild is also very much back to the original premise.

Dystopian Science Fiction only reinforces the real world Status Quo

They establish the Evil Government or Empire in question as being obviously Evil to the audience by having it be nakedly and obviously oppressive in a way no current First World Nation is.  It doesn't matter how many Bread Tube Video Essays go on for hours about how it's a perfect allegory for the real world's problems, nor does it matter if that's what the author intended, the average viewer is at best going to see it as a ?cautionary tale".

And that's the problem, scaring the public with the variety of different ways things could be worse creates hostility to the very concept of change.  In most of these stories the better freer society the rebels are fighting for is Liberal Democracy, the real world status quo.  The official full name of the Rebellion in Star Wars is "The Alliance to Restore The Republic", that does make it technically speaking a Reactionary Revolution not a Progressive one, the kind Edmund Burke would call a Reformation rather then a Revolution.  

We see how broken The Republic always was in The Prequels and Clone Wars, yet because The Empire is so blatantly worse people long for The Republic and are not even considering the idea of trying to build something new, or question the very concept of having a Galactic Government in the first place.  The only value I ever saw in writing more Star Wars post ROTJ is attempting to address this.  Instead the overarching narrative we're getting is that the New Republic's mistake was demilitarizing and refusing to take quick harsh action against the rising First Order, even though the message of The Prequels was that militarizing is exactly how The Republic became The Empire in the first place.

Andor is the first Star Wars project to actually really be this Genre.  Star Wars may have "always been Political" but the politics was set dressing and framing devices. The Empire was something our protagonists were under the threat of but never living directly under.  Andor is the first Star Wars project to be perceived as some groundbreaking Political Manifesto, but it's not.  The character in the second arc who's supposed to be the ideologue of the group never says a damn thing about the kind of society he wants to create, just a bunch of philosophizing about how highly authoritarian systems like the Empire inevitably destroy themselves, which isn't even true, Rome lasted Centuries.

Breadtubers really love to argue that every fictional Dystopia is either Fascist or Capitalist or both and the Right Wingers interpreting them as being in any way Socialist are simply not getting them.  Unfortunately most Hollywood writers are relatively Centrist Liberals who do view Communism and Nazism as two sides of the same coin.  I like Divergent, I only saw the first movie but I found it more engaging then The Hunger Games.  However the society it depicts can't be viewed as Capitalist nor does it contain any of the things that animate actual Fascist movements.  Even watching it as a Communist I see it as what it looks like when Communism is tried but goes wrong, or at least what Liberals think it looks like when Communism is tried and "inevitably" doesn't work.  Of course when I first watched it I wasn't the Communist I am now as you can probably guess from my first post mentioning it on this blog.

Classic CyberPunk is often alleged to be where Capitalism will inevitably lead if we don't change course.  The problem is most viewers won't see it that way not because they are stupid but because CyberPunk is stupid, it is a fundamental misunderstanding of Capitalism to think it would ever benefit the Capitalists to get rid of the Government.

Here's an informative YT video on George Orwell.

https://youtu.be/2Gz0I_X_nfo

The Anime 86 is more interesting then many other Dystopian shows because the Republic of San Magnolia actually claims to be a Democracy.  

I have now watched the Anime Psycho-Pass (only season one for now which I'm pretty sure was originally meant to stand on it's own).  And I'm going to Spoil it.

Princesses can outrank Queens

 So there's a YouTube Vidoe that fully breaks down the History of the title "Prince of Wales".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_AP3Z6KvkM&pp=ygUeaGlzdG9yeSBvZiB0aGUgUHJpbmNlIG9mIFdhbGVz

And one thing I realized is this is largely the origin of the use of the English Word Prince as we know it entirely.  And one major point is when certain Welsh rulers started using the Title it was due to it's connection to the Ancient Roman Imperial title of Princeps viewed as outranking the title of King.

On the show The Tudors set well after all that history you'll notice that a King can also be called a Prince even while they are a Ruling King.  Machiavelli's book titled The Prince was always intended to be about a status equal to that of a King not inherently lesser.

Princess is the feminine form of Prince, even though we all know that we fail to think of it the same since Reissuance Germany and Italy never had any ruling Princesses, all the states called Principalities always had male rulers. 

Yet at the end of Shakespeare's Anthony and Cleopatra the Queen Cleopatra is called a Princess by her handmaiden.  This was based on a quote taken from Plutarch's biography of Marc Anthony.

When translating The Hebrew Bible into English multiple words get translated "Prince", most notably Sar, Nagyim and Nasi, and the only uses of "Princess" in the KJV are the feminine form of Sar, Sarah.  However the use of "King" in these translations is more consistent always being a form of Melek.  Yet I remember being told once that at least Assyrian Sources definitely thought of Sar as being a higher ranked title then Melek.  In fact the oldest version of "King of Kings" seems to Sar Sarrani, the Melek version came later.  And none of these Prince words are ever used in The Bible with the meaning of "Son of a King".

And yet because Princess in modern dictionaries gets defined as meaning only a Daughter of a King/Queen or Wife of a Prince, lots of Internet Nerds get all pedantic about certain Nintendo characters being called Princess when they are also clearly presented as being the ruling Monarch.  Princess Peach/Toadstool, Princess Zelda in some eras of the "Timeline", Princess Daisy.  And I think we even see it beyond Nintendo in some other Video Game Franchises like Final Fantasy.

A lot of this could be read as just making fun of Nintendo's very make it up as they go world building.  The NES Games never thought about about how the world works beyond the handful of Sprites we actually see, and then later games with more needed worldbuilding didn't want to make the female leads of these franchises subordinate to someone else.  But I also think it's a little influenced by Star Wars where Leia was still called a Princess after her Parents were dead.

But occasionally someone says this with a more serious criticism in mind, that it demeans or infantilizes these characters who are actually Queens to call them the same title we do Disney Princesses.  But I say just remember how the English word Prince originated.  I would rather not see Zelda or Peach or Daisy ever demoted to being a mere Queen.

Sailor Moon has been very influential

Now you may be thinking, "Why are are you making thar the title of a post as if it's even remotely controversial, of course a show that founded a Genre and was one of the 90s' big three was influential".  But I think Sailor Moon's influence is wide enough that it's still underappreciated, that it has had an influence on Anime that are not at all the kinds of shows you'd expect to have Sailor Moon homages in it.

Take for example my favorite Anime Noir.  Noir is a show about professional assassins, it's a fairly dark show inspired by Film Noir and Luc Besson films.  One of the pivotal pillars of the Girls With Guns genre.  Not a show you'd at all think would have any reason to make overt homages to a show made for little girls in the prior decade.

Well it has a meta reason, Mireille Bouquet is voiced in Japan by Kotono Mitsuishi the voice of Usagi Tsukino/Sailor Moon herself.  But she's had a very prolific career actually so I don't expect casting in-jokes to be part every Anime she's in.

Now I have a unique history with Anime, Sailor Moon is one of the few Anime I'd already partially watched even before I watched Noir.  But the emphasis there is on partially, I don't think I'd properly watched the actual first season finale of Sailor Moon till I was already using MAL.  And that's the thing, that first season finale has the Sailor Moon moment that I suspect Noir was referencing in it's penultimate episode.  So when I finally completed the Dark Kingdom saga, I watched a certain scene play and was instantly reminded of Noir. 

So since I'm talking about such late in the story developments, I have to put a Sailor Warning here before going further.

Mystery Box Storytelling can be good, J.J. Abrams is just bad at it.

Now I know the first response is gonna be that Abrams coined the term so how can he be the one doing it wrong?  Did he identify a type of storytelling but not fully understand it?

I myself in the past have sometimes gone along with those saying Mystery Boxes are inherently bad because that's how you get Disney Star Wars.  And I still agree that it shouldn't have been the approach taken to Star Wars, that the Original Trilogy was Absolutely not Mystery Box storytelling.  Abrams problem seems to come from him seeing it everywhere.

But since I think this particularly is done badly by it's very name it's perhaps necessary to define it.  It's not any Mystery at all, it's certainly not twists where we weren't expecting there to be one, nor even any twists where we were expecting there to be a twist, and it's not anytime a character isn't named in the very first scene they appear in.  

A Mystery Box is something the story presents as being an unanswered question early on.  But I also would argue it only truly exists in serialized storytelling and not a question both asked and answered in one self contained Episode or Movie.

I feel bad about claiming I agreed with Mystery Boxes being inherently bad in the past because I've absolutely loved plenty of TV Shows and Anime that Absolutely did this, and specifically enjoyed engaging in that mystery speculation.  And that includes ones where the answer to the Mystery can be considered disappointing because it was either very obvious or not something I had a fair chance at solving in advance.  Because I truly believe in the adage that it's about the journey rather then the destination.  But the thing is I can hold the view that the answer to the mystery doesn't really matter and still enjoy engaging in all that speculation and coming up with theories of my own anyway because it simply is fun.

There is no actual tangible rule that explains what the Mystery Box stories I like did differently from Abrams.  The closest I could come to is saying the good ones don't have that as the only thing going for them, they are stories where I was actually invested in the characters and so the investment in the Mystery is about how the Answer is relevant to them, or at least they think it is.

But the thing is that's subjective, plenty of the shows I'm about to talk about loving are hated by others, and plenty of people like Abrams's Star Wars Movies, even Rise of Skywalker, I know because depending on my mood I've been one of them.  Yes I just admitted that the last part of the title of this post is Subjective, in fact it's a subjective opinion I have based on very limited information because his Star ____ movies are the only Abrams things I've seen, I haven't watched any of Lost.  Maybe it's really more Abrams being bad at explaining it in that Ted Talk people meme on then actually bad at doing it, artists are like that sometimes.

My favorite Live Action TV show and my Favorite non Japanese TV show was Pretty Little Liars, it's Mystery is ridiculously convoluted and ultimately doesn't hold up under scrutiny, and I don't care, I enjoyed every stop of the ride to get there.  It means way more to me then any Star Wars does, even The Prequels.

But the Mystery Box approach is also core to Twin Peaks and Game of Thrones going back to it's books.  Deliberately withholding information is Absolutely vital to what they were doing.

But what I'm most into is Anime.  Right now the most well known Mystery Box style Anime is Attack on Titan, and I enjoyed the first "Three" seasons of that show.  I stopped enjoying it during the "Final" season but not because I found any reveals bad or disappointing, everything about the show had changed basically which isn't inherently bad but I just wasn't into it anymore.

However my personal Favorite Anime of all Time is Noir.  And it too had a Mystery Box, who killed Mireille's parents and why does Kirka have their Watch.  If you think you've solved that mystery from just the information I provided you in that sentence you are correct, the answer is that simple and obvious but it didn't matter, I still love the scene where it was revealed and love that they pretended it wasn't obvious.

Witch Hunter Robin, Madlax, El Cazador de la Bruja are other fairly obscure 2000s Anime I enjoy in part for their Mystery Boxes.

Even Revolutionary Girl Utena and Neon Genesis Evangelion are Mystery Box shows, the objection you may make to why they are not, are equally applicable to The Force Awakens as far as the people who still like that movie are concerned.

Astolfo is Masculine actually

The post I made about Astolfo in early 2018 is still the most viewed post on this blog, and that’s unfortunate because there’s a lot I don’t like about it, things I said I don’t stand by anymore and may even be completely reversed but what I shall say here.  Or at the very least what I might still agree with wasn't expressed well.

Astolfo is one of a number of AMAB Anime characters where the Discourse surrounding them has been arguing whether they count as actual Trans representation or are merely an androgynous Cismale Crossdresser.  However I’ve come to view Astolfo as, in the context of his own time and culture, not Androgynous or a Crossdresser at all. 

But first so that my motives are not misunderstood, let me state my positions on some of those other Anime characters at the center of this discourse.  Bridget is Trans, Lily from Zombieland Saga is Trans, I don’t know or care enough about Re;Zero to have a strong opinion on it’s relevant character.  I want more explicitly Trans characters in Anime, and more attention given to the more obscure ones who haven’t been made the center of this discourse like Kiyo from Magical Girl Site or the ones in Twin Angel Break and Gankutsou.  And I favor Trans-Feminine readings of a number of Gender Bending Anime like Onimai and Kashimashi Girl Meets Girl and even a certain character from the Spider Isekai.  My personal bias is for Trans-Feminine readings of as many AMAB characters as possible because I have increasingly come to suspect I may be Trans Feminine myself, so I’m going against my personal inclinations here.

Gender is a Social Construct, but the details of how Gender is constructed do vary between different cultures and even the same culture across different eras of its history.  And I think Astolfo is the perfect Anime character to explore that concept with, to read him as a Paragon of Carolingian Cismasculinity who winds up looking like a teenage girl when plopped into the 21st Century because of how things have changed.

But he is fortunately pretty free of Toxic Masculinity.  The Weeb Revolution Youtube channel in their video on Bridget discussed the weird Toxic Masculine of some of the Cis Femboys who feel like Bridget coming out took something from them, and alluded to the Astolfo Monster energy drink meme.  I’m not talking about that either, this isn’t about the size of his sword or how many people he’s impaled with it.  It’s about how I feel you could make an Astolfo AMV to the only song people actually remember from Mulan and it would fit perfectly.

One last qualification, this is an analysis of Astolfo as originally presented in Fate/Apocrypha specifically, if Grand Order is indeed taking the character in a more Nonbinary direction then that’s cool, but I don’t play Gatcha games and Apocrypha's LNs did come first.

In Fate/Apocrypha Astolfo spends very little screen time in contemporary female clothing, he’s mostly just wearing the same presumably 8th Century wardrobe he was summoned in.  And there was once a Meme floating around Twitter showing how every aspect of that look moderners read as being inherently Feminine coded has been coded as Masculine in the past.  

When he does need to wear contemporary Civilian clothes it looks to me like he just chose some that are close to what he’s used to and they happened to be girl’s clothes.  And that pink Sailor Fuku School Girl Uniform most popular in the fanart and doujins isn’t in Apocrypha at all, Apocrypha isn’t even set in Japan.  In fact Grand Order isn't mostly set in Japan either, so I don't think it's really Canon there but just a silly DLC bonus costume.

Now I’ve heard that Astolfo explains why he dresses the way he does by saying he likes to wear “cute” things.  This didn’t make the Anime for Apocrypha but even assuming it is from the Light Novel I assume the word used in Japanese was Kawai.  Even outside the context of debating the identity of crossdressing Anime characters there has been some discussion of how “cute” as the standard English translation of Kawai is kind of problematic.  For example when I watched the second Gundam Thunderbolt movie (which I mostly didn’t like nearly as much as the first) it played a song that said Kawai a lot, but in this case the Subtitles didn’t translate it as Cute but either Beautiful or Pretty.  And even leaving translation aside, English words like Beautiful, Pretty and Cute being thought of as inherently meaning attractive in a Feminine way is itself a modern distortion of their original meaning.  Like I get why so many Queer Tolkien fans want to use Tolkien describing the Elves as Beautiful to prove he envisioned them as androgynous, but that’s not actually what Beautiful meant to Tolkien or Lewis, to the Inklings and to the Ancient Greeks masculine manly macho men could also be Beautiful.

It’s not just how Astolfo looks that can reflect the changing nature of gender standards.  I remember years ago reading a Cracked article that discussed how even the notion that "Real Men" aren't supposed to Cry is actually very modern, that a lot of the Manliest characters in Classical texts are constantly crying even over trivial things.  So yes even how often Astolfo cries is not something his 8th century contemporaries would have told him to Man Up over.

And then there is Astofo’s Bisexuality.  He only has a male love interest in the present narrative but the Lore does not seem to be ignoring that he was a Ladies man in his original legend.  His ability to be attracted to men is Canon, when Jeanne asks if he’s in love with Seig he says “I don’t know” not "I'm straight" or “we’re both dudes”.  

In modern society the notion exists that any Same Sex attraction for a Male at all is a reason to forfeit their Man Card.  But it’s somewhat well known that in a lot of older societies it was only ever being the Bottom that carried the risk of undermining one’s masculinity while a true Alpha Male Giga Chad was expected to be willing to screw anyone.  However when you dig even deeper you’ll learn the ideal Athenian Erastes/Eromenos relationship was meant to strengthen masculinity even for the Bottom. you see you’re more likely to be a responsible Top if you’d been the Bottom in the past.

But that last point wasn’t even necessary here since I see no indication that Astolfo is someone who tends towards being a Bottom.  Quite the contrary his incompatibility with his original Master seems to in part be because he isn’t into being a Sub.  Maybe you could try to theorize he’s like that quote said about Julius Caesar and he likes to Top with women and Bottom with men, but I don’t see Seig being much of a Top with anyone.

A lot of Astolfo’s vibes and energy really make him seem the most like a conventional Shonen Manga/Anime Protagonist of any character in the Fate/ Franchise.  

But this isn’t a Shonen franchise and it turns out in the context of Otaku media the traits of Astolfo that are Masculine even by contemporary cultural standards fail to really stand out in a genre that gives action hero traits to hyper feminine characters both Cis and Trans all the time, so much so that it fails to even register as even mildly subversive anymore to Feminist critics of the medium.  Even just within this show Astolfo isn’t the only character who’s relationship to Gender isn’t what fans of their original myths would likely expect.  

But still I think it is worth remembering that being a Paladin (it still annoys me that the Netflix Dub refused to use that word) is traditionally a Male role, one that in real world Carolingian history it would be someone Assigned Female At Birth who would need to Cross-dress and hide their real anatomy to perform.

Those of us who view Gender as a Social Construct don’t really like to hear this, but one of the few things that is pretty universal across all cultures about gender norms is Men usually being the ones who do the fighting when necessary.  The What Is Politics Youtube channel has a series on Historical Materialism and episode 7 among other things talks about the origins of Patriarchy.  And it’s shown that even in the most gender egalitarian primitive communist societies that exist gender stereotypes still associate masculinity with aggression and being the defenders and protectors, and that the rise of Patriarchy begins when a society’s material conditions require them to prioritize self defense.  I’m not pointing this out to defend having any absolute gender norms, today women have many options to be the defenders when they want, and no males should be shamed for lacking the ability to do so.

But I think it's interesting that just about the only non-negotiable quality of Masculinity is one Astolfo exemplifies, he is very protective of those he cares about and brave in situations that would scare me senseless.  He fights for what he believes in but is never a bully.

Even the very scene that confirms he is indeed Assigned Male at Birth.  Casually walking out of the shower naked making no attempt to cover up is another thing Anime depicts a lot of very feminine Cis Women doing but is in normal society generally thought of as a more masculine thing to do.

Not to mention how Muscular he looks once we finally see him shirtless.  He’s not like a Jojo character or anything but compared what I generally expect of an Otokonoko/Femboy Anime character is clearly quite fit. 

The only thing that kinda undermines my argument is that Astolfo is voiced by female Seiyuu in both the Japanese and English Dub.  But lots of Cis male not even crossdressing characters get voiced by female voice actors in Animation. It's often to help someone sound young, and Astolfo does also look like his Heroic Spirit form simply manifested younger then all the more Masculine voiced Heroic Spirits.

And I have to say as someone who is a very vocal Dub VA defender, this particular job is one the Japanese Seiyuu usually do better.  I watched Fate/Apocrypha Subbed as it aired and never even thought about how plausible Astolfo’s voice sounded.  But when the Dub finally went up on Netflix I went, yep that’s a girl voice.

Lady Oscar and Gender

The premise of the Manga/Anime The Rose of Versailles is that an Aristocratic Nobleman in 18th Century France had a daughter but chose to raise her as a son because he wanted a son, that daughter is the character known as Lady Oscar.  And this isn’t a secret in the story, everyone knows Lady Oscar was actually assigned female at birth but just goes along with it.

That is a premise that didn’t and would never actually happen, a society like 19th Century France would not be nearly open minded enough about Gender to tolerate that as much as they do in the story.  That isn’t a criticism, I think it would be very boring to limit fiction to only depicting what could have happened, and trying to make everything else pretty authentic around a random absurdity can be an interesting way to explore ideas, in this case the idea of Gender.

It does mean that Lady Oscar can not be considered an actual authentic 1 to 1 representation of any real unconventional Gender experience, yet her and her story could prove valuable to many.  Lady Oscar is usually discussed either in the context of Yuri or as a potential Trans Masculine character like another character in a different Manga from the same author.  

The value in a Trans Masculine reading of Lady Oscar is largely as a wish fulfillment fantasy, someone assigned female at birth but presenting this masculinely without it being a problem.  And some may see her as aspirational in terms of how she looks as an AFAB person dressing in Masculine attire.

The take I want to share today however is that actually relating to Lady Oscar’s situation and struggle is actually more plausible for Trans Feminine viewers.  She is living this Masculine life not because she chose it but because her father imposed it on her, just as much as if he’d made the more predictable decision to raise her as a daughter or if she’d been assigned male at birth.

The reason why some might have trouble seeing this is because she generally doesn’t seem like she’s uncomfortable with it, she seems to accept it and even kind of enjoy it.  But not all Trans People feel intense dysphoria, for some it’s more muted.  I have for the past few years increasingly come to think of myself as someone who would be happier if I was born a girl or if I could afford to take Estrogen, yet I still live my daily offline life dressing and presenting as a Cis Male and am not actually all that unhappy about it.  And so it’s through that perspective I see the potential Trans Feminine reading of Lady Oscar.

There are occasional hints at Lady Oscar having a Feminine side she wishes she didn’t have to suppress.  The principal manifestation of this is her relationship with Fersen, particularly the time she does wear a dress and doll herself up to dance with him.  I don’t know whether anyone has ever expressed dislike for that part of the story, I haven't really dug that deep into the history of Lady Oscar discourse.  But I can certainly understand why it might bother those fans seeking to interpret her either as a Lesbian or as Trans Masculine.  The Het Romance with Andre is possibly more tolerable because it is much more part of the main plot and because you can imagine it as BL.

But the thing is the Oscar/Fersen dynamic you can also pretend is BL in the context of how the Yaoi tag on the main website I read Hentai Doujins on includes some with characters who are arguably if not explicitly Trans Women or at least involve crossdressing.  Sometimes specifically a wealthy prince like Seme feminizing his Uke.  The Trans Women who are into those Doujins could potentially get the same appeal out of Oscar/Fersen.

I know that some (not all) Trans People will before physically transitioning have no sexual attraction to the gender they were assigned at birth but after at least getting hormone treatment will become more fluid in their sexual orientation.  And that’s where thinking about my own interest in Oscar/Fersen gets me thinking about my own Sexuality.  Right now I have a firmly Gynephilic orientation, I’m attracted to feminine features and characteristics, to women, males who look like women, and various kinds of androgyny where the feminine aspects are arguably more pronounced then the masculine ones.  However, even back when I thought of myself as just a Cishet Male I was, in the context of Anime especially, always more aroused by Shoujo Erotocism then Shonen/Seinen Eroticism.  So my interest in this ship is fairly abstract, it’s something I like to watch but I don’t really project myself onto either of them.  I do have enough of a Masculine side (I currently identify as Fluid in my Twitter Bio) that I can project onto males at least during Erotic scenes, but not Fersen really.

But maybe if I ever did get to take Estrogen in the future, I would become even more fluid and find myself absolutely saying that I want a Handsome Bishounen Prince to call me Oujousama and carry me off to his castle.  Who knows.

Let’s backtrack now to the original point of the Trans Feminine reading of Lady Oscar.  Because 21st Century Anime has had the gender flipped counterpart of Lady Oscar’s premise multiple times.  Assigned male at birth characters being forced to present as women by whoever is raising them or in some other way wielding power over them.  Most notably that was the original premise behind the character of Bridget from the Guilty Gear franchise.

Now among the people who have been upset about or in denial of Bridget definitively identifying as a Girl in the latest Guilty Gear Game I haven't noticed anyone saying it’s because they’re Trans Masculine and so relate to Bridget as a person who had Femininity imposed on them against their will.  If they exist they are firmly drowned out by the people who are just being Reactionary Transphobes and/or Cismale Femboys who liked the original premise of Bridget for some reason.  It seems to me like Cismale Femboys should relate to Trans Women more than a character who actually hates dressing like a girl.

Regardless however, if there was a new Rose of Versailles media that retconned Lady Oscar into a more definitely Trans Masculine character I wouldn’t feel like anything was taken from me, the 70s Anime is still there for me to watch the way I watched it before and her story was completed so I didn’t really need anything more.  So I would be happy for those who get something valuable out of the new take.

But part of the point in bringing this topic up here is that I would like to know if there are any Trans Masculine Anime Fans who’ve related to this type of Anime in that context, in parallel to my reading of Lady Oscar?