The Anime Antidote to Gender Essentialism?
As we’ve detailed many a time at JGG, Japanese media can be less shy about discussing the lines between gender, and where they can become blurred, changed, or transcended. While this can often be the case for the main character, though, side characters don’t often get the same level of care or attention given to them.
However, in the first three episodes of Marriagetoxin, a new anime with fresh episodes coming every Tuesday on Netflix, we discover a sympathetic, charming queer character who, while not the protagonist, supports the lead who, in turn, shows from the start that he is a queer ally. Let’s see how engaging Marriagetoxin really is!
情节概述
消息来源 Marriagetoxin
Hikaru Gero is the Poison Master: the greatest of the Posion Clan, a family of expert assassins who use — what else? — poison to take care of their targets. Due to his solitary life as a killer, however, he has resigned himself to not being able to meet a nice woman and settle down, and has rejected his grandmother’s attempts to set him up an arranged marriage with an eligible member of another clan.
However, all this changes when his grandmother makes plain that, since he will not give her an heir, the responsibility will fall to his sister, Akari, a lesbian in a committed relationship with another woman. Hikaru cannot bear to think of his sister breaking up with her girlfriend, and so swears to find a bride himself, but insists on choosing her himself. It’s at this point that he proposes to his latest mark, Mei Kinosaki, who has been marked for death by another gang for swindling money out of men by charming them into parting with their cash.
Mei, however, rejects Hikaru, and so he comes up with an alternative: she has been able to trick dozens of men into proposing to her, so teach him some of her techniques, and he’ll let her live. With this new deal struck, Hikaru is taken aback when Mei reveals that they are not, in fact, a girl. A professional scammer, they reveal that they wear women’s clothes to trick men, and men’s clothes to trick women, and that although they were assigned male at birth, “it’s more fun when you can go both ways.”
So begins their adventures of trying to stay out of the sights of underworld ne’er-do-wells, while Mei helps Hikaru get closer to wedding bells.
What is an Ally?
So, for many, this may seem obvious, but for the sake of completeness, let us describe the term “ally” in the LGBTQ+ context. An ally is someone who is not part of the LGBTQ+ community — i.e., they are cisgender and heterosexual — who supports and advocates for LGBTQ+ rights, dignity, and happiness.
Marriagetoxin’s Hikaru demonstrates his allyship early on, through choosing to make his life more complicated and difficult to save the happiness of his sister and her partner, telling Akari, “Meeting someone you can love and build a life with is about as close to a miracle as you can get. So you ought to live with your girlfriend.”
Additionally, while he was initially surprised by Mei’s gender identity and expression, after he hears their explanation, it never comes up as an issue again, and he never badmouths or reveals anything about their identity to other people.
Mei Kinosaki: Gender Fluid Icon?
This might be a little contentious, but stay with me on this. When they reveal that they are AMAB, Mei describes themselves as a man who wears women’s clothing. That being said, Mei is very rarely shown outside of feminine attire or expression during the initial three episodes, and outside of the narrative, is given a spotlight as the star of the ending song animation — a trope which is other romance anime is often given to the leading lady and love interest.
I would posit, therefore, that it might be fair to describe Mei as being gender fluid, both in expression and interaction (such as when, at a shark-themed seafood restaurant she simultaneously seduces two servers, one a man, the other a woman), or non-binary.
This brings us to a leading fan theory: are Hikaru and Mei endgame? The manga has yet to be completed, but many fans are ardent shippers of “Gerosaki,” a pairing of our dynamic duo — and even other characters in the show comment on how close they seem to be. This is naturally yet to be confirmed, but the fan enthusiasm (and the compelling evidence that all the things that Hikaru seems to want from a relationship are being or can be fulfilled by Mei) means that this is a ship that is ready to sail.
What Do We Think?
One thing that we’ve not touched on yet is how the story progresses. Marriagetoxin is, broadly, an action/comedy/romance manga, and I don’t think it’d be going to far (at least going by these initial episodes) to say that if you imagine One Piece, but substitute Devil Fruits with bloodlines, sailing the oceans with dating apps, and a quest to become King of the Pirates with a mission to become a rizz God, then you’re like 86% of the way there.
The character designs are lovely to behold (and I think it’s fair to say that Mei got the most attention in this regard), and the animation is very slick: loose and “choppy” when it needs to be funny, and dynamic and fast when it comes to action, such as when Hikaru comes against another assassin master.
The voice acting is also charming and makes it easy to go along with the moment-to-moment and scene-to-scene storytelling: the good guys have consistent, clear voices, the bad guys have arrogant and quavering voices. The music is pretty solid throughout, and there were a few times where I wasn’t taken out of the story, but remarked to myself, “wow, this tune’s pretty good,” and the OP theme ‘Kill or Kiss,’ while not an all-timer, is definitely solid enough.
I would say: so far, so good. I’ll be tuning in every Tuesday, and I recommend that you do, too!
