🌱-Basil-🌱

How Kino’s backstory revolves around breaking away from a life lived entirely around a strict dichotomy after realizing they didn’t want to be on either side, and finding freedom in discovering a third option?

How Kino consistently rejects attempts to be categorized or labeled?

How Kino is AFAB but uses the masculine “boku” pronoun and is never once sexualized or even visually depicted as feminine outside of flashbacks?

How Kino chose their own name, and we never learn the one they left behind?

How BOTH of these conversations happened in the same episode, between two different people in different contexts, over ten minutes apart?

Notably: In that same episode Kino responded negatively to being called “little boy” (boya) and “Missy” (jo-chan), even when used with good intention, but didn’t react at all to being called the genderless “Kid/brat” (gakki) despite it being intended as an insult by the speaker. So it’s definitely not formality they were concerned with.

The subs that I watched also went back and forth on Mr. Kino and Miss Kino depending on whether the speaker used Kino-san or Kino-chan.

In conclusion:

🏳️‍⚧️ "The world is not beautiful. Therefore it is."