Hey, do you know what I mean by ‘this user can say it?’
I want to say it’s a cohost meme but the idea is that there are some words that get treated as cursed or slurs or dangerous magical words that are reclaimed slurs, in the mouths of people who can reclaim them. Simply put, if I, a bi dude, want to make a joke where I use the word faggot, fuck off telling me I shouldn’t. And this led to the joke that ‘This User Can Say It’ was a flag that signalled that whether or not an individual wanted to out themselves in any specific way, they had the rights to use particular terms.
But I’m not here to talk about slurs I’m here to talk about anime. It should be no surprise to anyone who pays attention to the trends on this blog (so, Tab, gotyaoi, me) that there’s a low key anxiety about doing too much on this blog about too many anime. It wasn’t intentional but I’ve just been watching more this year and that means more of this year has been talking about anime.
Here then is a list of anime that won’t show up in the Story Pile, but absolutely Can Say It.
Birdie Wing
Yugioh Golf Lesbians. It’s Yugioh Golf Lesbians. I can’t believe that’s a useful summary of a real anime that exists and that it’s actually good, but believe it or not, Yugioh Golf Lesbians is a real thing, it really exists and it’s really enjoyable. The characters have crushes on one another, they are awkward about that relationship, they want to be around one another and tease each other and oh and also someone assassinates a golfer with a bazooka.
This series is silly in so many ways. Birdie Wing was going to be a June Story Pile. I wound up bumping it, not because it wound up being unworthy of being a Pride Month series, but just because it’s currently ongoing and if it’s a good two-season anime I’d rather watch them all at once and make a single unified block of it. Also, when I have as many possible options in front of me as I do, even a modest reason like ‘do both seasons at once’ is a good reason.
Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury
See also Birdie Wing. I really like Witch from Mercury! I think it owns bones! It has some truly heroic moments and the action is beautifully constructed and intense and oh my god I love these characters so much, and I love the setup for the second season that the first season left hanging, particularly because I can see a lot of a familiar experience in Suletta.
No, I was never a lesbian mecha pilot, I’m sorry.
Still, everyone gets a favourite Gundam I think and god damn if Witch From Mercury might be mine. Or 0080, I gotta finish that one. It’s also just so exquisitely good looking. I’m used to mecha anime having some fuzziness or sloppiness depending on when they show up. Late 90s mecha anime often relied on blockiness of the mecha to cover for animation errors, and mid 00s often were relying too much on 3D models that stood out. Whatever they’re doing in Witch From Mercury looks so good on its own.
I really look forward to seeing if this one has a coherent, solid throughline. But if it’s got a tragic end I don’t want to cover it in a Pride Month because we have time enough for queer tragedy the rest of the year. Let Pride Month be things that are cool and rule, and I hope that next year, that will include Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury.
Also, I get to double dip and maybe it’ll be a smooch month series because so many smooch month series fail to hold my attention because they don’t have sick ass mecha battles.
The Executioner And Her Way Of Life
If you watch the opening of this series and think hey does this get gay, let me assure that yes, yes it does, this is an anime that can say it, and will say it, and offers you its hand as it leads into a light novel series that gets not only canonically and repeatedly gay, but it’s gay in a way that I think resonates pretty hard with say, anyone who’s had a long distance relationship over the internet.
I think this series kinda rules! It will get an entry, you will be able to see it sometime this year! But also, it feels like this anime is set up to put every piece in place and explicitly outline a queer kiss, and it’s a very enjoyable narrative with a really enjoyable set of pieces all being positioned around one another…
and then slams the book closed before the relationship progresses. You get to see a queer yearning, a queer plan, a queer crush… but not queer love. Not queer life.
You do get to see a giant centipede monster girl though.
Do It Yourself
For reasons that make more sense when it happens, I already covered Do It Yourself. This is a series that Can Say It, but also doesn’t, which is a bit of a bummer considering the series is otherwise very wholesome and very sweet. It still owns an interesting spot in history which means it needs to live alongside another article.
It’s been written, it’s in the scheduler, it’s going to happen in time.
Princess Connect: Re-Dive
I don’t imagine I’ll ever write about Princess Crincess Rincess Dincess. I got it because the game attached to it shut down and I thought it’d be interesting watching an anime tie-in and see what you can assume or extrapolate about the game based on that. That idea didn’t wind up working out, because Redive Of A Princess Connection is just a pretty sweet, middlingly funny unimpressive anime, which means, eh, nah, not gunna bother talking about it. If you like cute girls that get thirty seconds of screen time each and the same four jokes each episode, then yeah, that’s this.
However, as a Pride anime, it does have a metatextual thing. See, Connection of A Princess and Her Redived Life is a sequel series to a game subplot, and it’s explicitly about the world resetting from a point in the game, changed in a way that means the villain kinda wins.
In the game, that villain is a dude. In Princess Connect But The Pryncess is Gwyn, the same villain with the same name is not a dude.
Trans girls will literally defeat the hero and reboot the world to get nice hair, and I think that’s admirable. It certainly sounds easier than putting up with the way doctors dole out the support.
My Master Has No Tail
I really liked My Master Has No Tail, which is a fun little anime about a Tanuki Girl who learns how to perform Rakugo theatre from a disillusioned kitsune pretending to be a human. This series kind of rules and it’s got this ongoing thread through it about people sustaining illusions about who they are, about how they interact with the world, and how they engage with art. Simply put, this is an anime that wants to be about how people are fooled and how we like to be fooled.
Unsurprisingly, this shows up in Tricks Month.
My Master Has No Tail doesn’t say it, but it absolutely could.
There! A bunch of stuff! If you’re just looking for queer anime to check out, and maybe if you want to see if you’re into them the way my articles wind up shaking out, you should check them out!