Sapphire Sapphics

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🦋Arcane: Season 1 + 2

🎪The Amazing Digital Circus

🚪The Backrooms

The main character is Gojo. As a young boy he visited his grandfather’s Hina Doll store and fell in love with how beautifully crafted the dolls were. But then a girl told him “boys aren’t allowed to like girly things” and that essentially traumatized Gojo into becoming super repressed and introverted. He still aspires to be a Hina doll maker, but he keeps his interests to himself out of fear of being teased and mocked again. His character arc is all about learning that it’s okay to have your special interests and that there are people out there who will support you. That you should never be made fun of for doing something that you love.

Marin is Gojo’s bubbly classmate. She’s super attractive and does modeling on the side, so Gojo doesn’t think she’d be the type of person to even talk to him. But when she discovers that he makes Hina dolls and can sew, she begs him to help make her cosplay outfits. The two of them are the main characters and a lot of the story revolves around Gojo trying to figure out how to make Marin’s cosplay outfits as they get more and more absurd.

Marin herself is in love with many female characters from Anime. Her first big cosplay (and her most favorite character) comes from an adult dating sim game who has massive boobs. She loves this character so much she has tons of merch plastered around her room, including a body pillow, and she even celebrates the fictional characters birthday. Anytime Marin is around other female cosplayers she can’t help but fawn over them and give them compliments and get excited when they dress up as the characters they love. Her bubbly supportiveness is a huge reason why the show works, but her absolute adoration of female anime characters does hint at her possibly being bi or pan.

One of the other cosplayers they meet is Amane Himeno, a male university student who cross dresses as a girl. Amane had a super supportive family who helped him enjoy the experience of cross dressing, including his mom who gave him makeup tips. When he got a girlfriend in university and the girlfriend was disgusted by the cross dressing, Amane dumped her on the spot. This story resonates with Gojo because of his traumatic experience as a child and shows him he shouldn’t let people who have negative opinions of his interests ruin his life.

What’s cool about Amane is that at no point does anyone in the show think it’s weird for a guy to dress as a boy. There’s no messed up shenanigans with stumbling in on him and getting freaked out or anything. Everyone treats it not only as super cool and awesome, but they all are immensely impressed by how good he is at passing as female. There’s even an arc where Marin cosplays as a man, and a big focus on that is how other women are attracted to her in her male cosplay.

Another cosplayer is Akira Ogata. She was bullied by her mother into giving up enjoying manga as a child. She, like Gojo, was super repressed and feared she would be teased for enjoying manga. But then some fellow college students catch her using a toy capsule machine and freak out over her interests and befriend her on the spot. Opening her up to the possibility that you should be allowed to enjoy whatever you want no matter your age. She acts all cool and collected, but she is also absolutely CRAZY for Marin. She’s scared that Marin will find her creepy if she ever finds out how much stuff she has of Marin’s face. Marin, of course, isn’t freaked out at all and absolutely reciprocates and loves that she is someone’s favorite girl.

I hope by now you’re starting to see a pattern forming. The message of this show is very much “be whoever you want to be, your interests and hobbies matter to you and you should take pride in them. Not everyone will support you, but there are groups and communities that will. It doesn’t matter what gender you are, you should be able to enjoy everything including stuff not associated with your gender, and by extension no one should make fun of you for it.” If those aren’t some serious queer coded messages then I don’t know what are.

Now this is a show about dressing up, so there absolutely are a lot of fan service moments in it. However, these feel much more natural to the story and aren’t excessive or overused. Episode 2 is probably the worst because the entire plot is Gojo needs to take Marin’s measurements. He’s trying to be respectful of Marin’s body while she’s flaunting it off and making him uncomfortable. It’s a fun episode, but if fan service isn’t your thing then if you can get past that episode it gets a lot better. Especially by season 2 it gets a lot more focused on the relationships of all the other cosplayers than it is about fawning over Marin’s body.

That’s another thing. This is a very short series. It’s two seasons of 12 episodes each, so a grand total of 24 episodes total. It’s also not the end of the story, as a third season has been in “indefinite hiatus” for a few years now. But don’t let that stop you from enjoying the fun and getting the warm fuzzies with how supportive the characters are of each other. Despite the two main characters being “straight” it definitely doesn’t feel like the way other straight anime characters are portrayed. Everyone is super supportive of each other, and no one feels gross or weird about liking characters of the same gender. Gojo’s love of girly dolls and repressed nature is analogous to being in the closet, while Marin’s unashamed love of big boobed women feels very openly gay. Both of them enjoy cross play and encourage others to dress as male or female characters regardless of their gender. It really does feel like the show is trying to encourage fellow closeted viewers to start embracing their sexuality and it uses cosplay for confidence boosting to come out of the closet.