Yuureitou

Yuureitou is a mystery adventure seinen manga that I honestly thought was really fun but with a few glaring flaws when it comes to its theming.

First, the art style was pretty nice but a bit sameface-y and the way the main character Taichi looked reminded me so much of the MC from Genkaku Picasso by Usamaru Furuya, it's kind of uncanny. Yes I know they're both short black haired characters with glasses, but it's something about those lips and eyebrows man... While the other MC, Tetsuo, looked exactly like Alois from that anime original second season of Kuroshitsuji lmao. I honestly didn't know what I was getting into when I started reading this manga outside of reading like the first two sentences of one review on MAL, that stated this manga has the best portrayal of "LGBT" characters ever. The moment I saw the LGBT instead of say, gayness or homosexuality I knew I was in for a (sexist) treat and oh boy... But more on that later.

The plot is really fun. It's not mind-blowing or anything, but it sucks you in because it's just a fun, edgy mystery. A lot of twists and turns, and the pace of the story keeps changing so it never gets boring. The art does a really good job of portraying the creepy moments. In that regard I think the story was well executed, it kept me highly entertained. I like how the setting changes multiple times, the characters really go through all kinds of places you wouldn't even think of they'd encounter on their trip to solve a mystery of a creepy clock tower labyrinth and get the treasure that resides within. They get stuck in isolated villages, on an island, the second half of the story turns into a race kind of, the ending of the story goes off the rails and so on. It's wacky, it's fun. The characters are colorful and I liked the fact that the main duo wasn't a pair of ultra moral people that always have to do what's right. They're pretty morally grey, willing to sacrifice others for their own gain and that opens up a lot of different outcomes and opportunities that you otherwise wouldn't expect. Also I have no idea what the age of the main characters is, even though they both look like teenagers the main character is at least... in his mid twenties considering he said the last time he saw his highschool crush was a decade ago, and the other main character was implied to be a 14??? year old yet that would have been improbable body development wise when we're shown flashbacks from 2 years back but maybe I misinterpreted a certain scene.

My main issue of the story was the whole running theme surrounding sexuality, and gender roles. First of all, the main character Tetsuo is actually a woman, not a guy. It's one of the main plot points in the story and we're supposed to "buy" how she actually has a "male soul" or whatever. Why does she have a male soul? Because as a teen she didn't want to wear dresses. She liked to go on adventures. She liked to play with toy ships instead of dolls! She feels inferior compared to males. She doesn't love the way a "woman" would love. I mean... seriously? She appears perfectly androgynous in her suits, but people do point out her beauty often. The way she gets treated in the story is the usual way pretty boys get treated in manga. You know, the youthful bishonens that look 12, vulnerable and rapeable. Despite this when her suit is off she's the simple most curvaceous and sexy woman you could ever imagine. And oh boooooy does the mangaka want you to be aware of that. Every single chapter and new volume cover out has her with her tits out, in extremely sexual poses. She also apparently takes hormones but it's only noticeable in her voice which sounds boyish I suppose - but when she stops taking the hormones her voice goes back to normal. Which we all know is not what actually happens but okay.

The context is also so important. She lives in 1950's Japan - a patriarchal society obsessed with female purity, during the post war period even... She wants to be courageous and confident and not have to worry about her virginity!!! Which obviously is not something that's expected of a woman, and it's not something that fits her idea of a woman in the period she was raised in - so I understand her reasoning on a certain level BUT, this still ends up perpetuating sexist stereotypes, no matter how much the overarching message of the manga wants to lead us to a different conclusion. From how I see it, she simply cannot imagine a world where such a woman could exist so the logical conclusion is to think of yourself as a male, that makes sense, but I simply do not understand how this is a "good" trans character. It's like when people say Balkan sworn virgins are cool trans rep as if they're not women forced into a male role and have to give up so much just to acquire the same freedom men have (which they receive by the virtue of being born male!) just to protect their families. Or when people talk about various feminine male identities in all kinds of cultures that got exiled for being feminine or homosexual - but you see they're the third gender you guys that's so queer and #progressive even though they always got treated as subhuman trash (or a slight step above - women), even before the evil colonizers arrived. When people in these situations want to be the other sex - isn't that just sad and depressing? Isn't it just a sign of how society should change, and not these people? I'm fine with this all being, well, a story about a character but coupled with everything else going on it gives me a big ick. At the end of the day, this manga was written by a man, and men are infamously incapable of seeing masculine women as human. I have never in my life been as invisible to men as I was when I looked and dressed like a straight up boy EXCEPT to a dude that happened to see me in a swimsuit and how big my ass was, oh from what moment on you bet I was a prize. This is why Tetsuo's only option was either "live your life as a prepubescent looking pretty boy" or "live your life as a voluptous woman object for everyone to ogle at". There was never any honor in the second option, so obviously we are supposed to be impressed by Tetsuo's noble decision and male soul. Anyway, no such thing as a male or female brain. I hate mind body dualism aaaa.

On the surface this manga does have a pretty progressive message. One of the first instances you'll notice is a female journalist mentioning wanting to break through a male oriented society as a succesful journalist, or the main male character having empathy for women - but this inevitably ends up getting him sorted in this pseudo gay/trans woman/crossdresser box, as implied by multiple characters during various dialogues. He is also treated as if he also is "different". "People like us" is also a big running phrase. The closeted gay character dreams of being accepted into society and wants to open his own publishing company in order to portray "people like him" positively. But you know who the only gay character is? A dude that's into young boys. Not your usual homosexual but a true and honest pederast. He too, deserves a happy life, the story tells us. Despite the "progressive" message towards.. queer people, women are often made out to be over-emotional, pathetic etc. in this manga. A lot of women resort to using cheap manipulation tactics and get shamed for it, or are basically the bad guy. So the MC really stands out as someone that actually respects women and emphatizes with them, but I still side eye the mangakas choice to make every "traditionally" female character behave the way they did.

Finally, we have one of the main antagonists - a male public prosecutor that sexually abuses his daughter, but wait he's actually a good guy because he never inserted his penis into her so therefore he protected her virginity and purity! And actually he hates rapists and always punishes them the most in his job because they subjugate women! Yet the criminal he symphatized with the most was a man that followed a woman, strangled her, cut her into pieces and proceeded to live with her for weeks! You see - he actually CARES about women! As nothing but mere posessions, of course, but nobody cares to point that out. And without spoiling anything, it only gets worse later on, yet we're still supposed to be kind of symphatetic towards him.

Anyway... If this is the type of stuff that gets praised for being good LGBT representation then I have no words. I feel like people need to take a good deep look inside themselves and examine why they feel what they feel. Not conforming to a societies idea of a woman or man doesn't make you the opposite, or third, sex. You just end up conforming to gender roles hardcore lol.

I guess what pisses me off the most is the whole "people like us" narrative. The weird, the different, the unaccepted. But somehow, women that don't conform to gender stereotypes (and possibly lesbians, since Tetsuo implies she's not reeeally into men even though I'd say she's bi) aren't even on the list, they're completely skipped over by the author in favor of "transness". Maybe I'm looking into it too much and the author just made Tetsuo trans because it's the more "exotic" choice out of the two, and on the surface is more controversial, but the fact that there's 0 women who don't perform femininity outside of Tetsuo in the whole manga, I'm led to believe otherwise.

One last thing, as I mentioned in my CSM rant, Denji is often praised as a new and modern male protag that's a pervert but actually respects womens boundaries, and how it's something never seen before. Well, based Taichi did it a decade earlier, and he did it better, in my opinion. He respected Tetsuo no matter what, managed to get over his unga bunga natural urges, which is the one thing I can say is actually commendable when it comes to this whole gender role/identity conversation.