No time and no place in Japan’s queer popular culture

With interest in genres like BL (Boys’ Love) and the presence of LGBT characters in popular series continuing to soar to new heights in Japan and abroad, the question of the presence, or lack thereof, of queer narratives in these texts and their responses has remained potent in studies on contemporary Japanese visual culture. In hopes of addressing this issue, my thesis queries these queer narratives in popular Japanese culture through examining works which, although lying distinctly outside of the genre of BL, nonetheless exhibit queer themes. Through examining a pair of popular series which have received numerous adaptations, One Punch Man and No. 6, I examine the works both in terms of their content, place and response in order to provide a larger portrait or mapping of their queer potentiality. I argue that the out of time and out of place-ness present in these texts, both of which have post-apocalyptic settings, acts as a vehicle for queer narratives in Japanese popular culture. Additionally, I argue that queerness present in fanworks similarly benefits from this out of place and time-ness, both within the work as post-apocalyptic and outside of it as having multiple adaptations or canons. I conclude by offering a cautious tethering towards the future potentiality for queer works in Japanese popular culture by examining recent trends among queer anime and manga towards moving towards an international stage