#nasiens

You see, I was watching a video talking about the anime and myself drawn to and intrigued by Nasiens' character, enough that I was considering watching myself to get to see what his deal is (which is wild cause I never imagined dealing with any of 7 deadly sins' source material on my own). But then near the end of the video, the creators finally acknowledged that Nasiens has canonical feelings for the male main character. That of course piqued my interest even more, cause of course as a queer individual, I enjoy getting to not onyl just see canonically queer characters but especially when they're my favorites.

Here's where I made a mistake (or perhaps not cause its what made me then go acrually see for myself in the manga): I checked the YouTube comments to see what people were saying.

It was in these comments that it was spoiled that 'actually it isn't gay cause the author retconned it and made Nasiens a genderless spirit that turns into the opposite gender of the one they love', which is just, such a wild concept and put in such a negative way that I just HAD to go see for myself what actually happened (I'll be honest I did not trust the author with what I was hearing - also someone literally described it was being 'forcefemmed', which, is NOT at all what happened).

So here is how Nasiens' story plays out. We meet Nasiens as a 16 year old boy who was found abandoned as a baby and adopted by an apothecary named Ordo who raised him and Nasien's adopted older sister Dolores as his adopted grandchildren. For the first several volumes of the manga, Nasiens is presented and known as male, albeit with some minor moments that suggest there's something he's hiding (for context the anime is 2 seasons in and Nasiens is still male). It's not until after a 2 year timeskip while in the fairy realm that we learn what it is: Nasiens does not have a biological gender. He's struggled with this, how he is clearly different from other humans in this regard and it makes him insecure, only exacerbated by the fact he presents as male, has romantic feelings for another male character, while being biologically genderless. It's here that he learns that actually isn't strange for fairies and there are even fairies that change gender to the opposite of the person they love. I want to note here that when the idea of someone becoming a woman when in love with a man comes up, Nasiens is interested and does not seem upset or scared by the concept. And this is all relevant because it's found that Nasiens IS a fairy, having been switched out with a human baby as an infant. And so Nasiens, who has spent their who life as a male in presentation but with a body that does not match that presentation and seems insecure, learns that they are actually very normal for what they are, and when faced with the possibility of becoming a biological woman, does not at all seem upset at the idea, just a bit shy when talking about it to others. Though, note that other characters continued to refer to them by masculine pronouns from then on only until the more recent chapters, mainly because they didnt know, but now other characters have switched to calling them a girl and referring to them with shs/her. The only reason Im using they instead is because we havent actually gotten any confirmation as to what they actually identify and so Im gonna hold out calling them she/her until we get confirmation for that. Oh, they also are now in fact in a relationship with the male main character and actually in a poly one with the other female love interest as well (AND SO ANIME WAS FIXED FOREVER).

I found while engaging with this story that I actually really liked this concept. When I saw it described in the comments, it sounded way worse and like one of those 'sudden nonsense reveals just to have your gay cake and eat it to and be like 'oh it's not actually gay cause he is actually a girl!', but that's not how it is at all. Nasiens' feelings about themself and their gender and relarionship with others is built up quite a bit and it's something that's treated with a surprising amount of respect and sensitivity. Definetly not perfect, mostly in the way that people are now assuming that just because Nasiens' has a female body that they identify as female, but it's a unique story about gender identity that you dont always see in mainstream media. Also, people who act like it came completely out of nowhere jjst arent paying attention. Lots of volumes of manga often come with extra comics showing some extra interactions with characters, usually silly though they can be serious. And if people read the extra comics, it actually becomes quite obvious that there is something going on with Nasiens' gender, whether that be that theyre acrually a girl pretending to be a boy or transgender, it's not clear until the reveal.

I dunno, as much as I like it myself, seeing a lot of people's reactions to it has actually been really gross and disappointing. From people tearing it down cause it's 'not gay anymore now that Nasiens is a girl' (listen yall, I get its disapointing to loose what you thought was gonna be explicitly gay rep, but let's not knock getting rep for even lesser represented identitys) to having seen quite a bit of fanart that just goes all in on making them very feminine in presentation even though Nasiens really hasn't presented that way (I'd argue their current style is much more androgynous than feminine) and like just a completely normal boring cookie cutter girl.