The Cartoons That Made Us Gay: Saint Seiya
Added 2024-04-25 19:15:06 +0000 UTCHave you ever heard of DEATH QUEEN ISLAND?
Saint Seiya is one of the most popular, most long-running anime series that American viewers haven’t heard of. Despite immense popularity in Europe, South America and the parts of North America that aren’t the U.S. or Canada, the series took forever to get to English-speaking territories, as Knights of the Zodiac, and it just never took off the way it should have. That’s too bad, because Saint Seiya is very good and very gay. In this episode, we’re diving deep on one of the strangest sibling relationships ever depicted in mainstream anime: that of effeminate, beautiful Andromeda Shun and his hunky “brother,” Phoenix Ikki.
These are the episodes we’re coving:
S1E5, “Miraculous Revival WIth Cosmic Friendship”
S1E6, “Phoenix: The Warrior Who’s Come Back From Hell”
S1E7, “Gold Cloth Gets Stolen”
S1E8, “Defeat the Shadow Army: Black Saints”
S1E15, “The Mystery of Ikki Is Now Unveiled”
Comments
Also, on the subject of Dragon Ball, I will try to prove Drew wrong by saying that as a queer kid I was personally enamored by many of the queer-coded characters and subtext in the series! There are a few suggestions I think would make interesting subjects/characters to explore if you were to cover the series in a future TCTMUG. General Blue - arguably the only Dragon Ball character who is explicitly gay, or is at least referred to as being gay by other characters. He has a lot of effiminate characteristics and is disgusted by “filthy” things, is appalled when he is hit on by a woman, and is smitten by a boy who helps fix his car (a problematic conflation of being gay = liking young boys). Note that you should watch the sub if you were to cover his episodes, as the dub writes around him being gay, including rewriting his infatuation with the boy who fixes his car to him instead thinking he’s found his “long lost brother” (which is amusing censorship considering the content of these Saint Seiya episodes you just covered). Episodes I’d suggest covering would be Dragon Ball episodes 52, 53, 56, and 57. Tien and Chaozu - Their relationship is extremely close and they spend all their time together when not with the rest of the group. They are both very protective of each other, to the point of Tien leaving Chaozu behind when going off to battle in later arcs of the series so he doesn’t get hurt. Both sacrifice themselves for each other in the fight against Nappa, with Tien giving up his life particularly to “be with him again.” Tien is also completely uninterested and annoyed the hot blonde woman who is infatuated with him, preferring Chaozu as his only company when he’s training. Recommended episodes would be either Dragon Ball movie 3, Mystical Adventure, which is an alternate reality take with Chaozu as an Emperer and Tien as his servant torn between his loyalty to him or his martial arts master who is planning to usurp the throne, or DBZ episodes 12, 24, & 25, which is their reintroduction episode in DBZ plus their fight against Nappa. (I wouldn’t recommend the Kai counterpart episodes, as they cut out/change too much that added to the queer reading of the original episodes). Zarbon - Another gay-coded effiminate villain who has a Smithers-esque loyalty to his boss, Freeza, as well as a “Beauty and the Beast” gimmick to his transformation that lends itself to readings about hiding one’s true self. Recommended episodes that focus on his character are DBZ episodes 52, 53, 56, and 57 or DBZ Kai episodes 24 to 26 The Ginyu Force - They are very campy characters and are introduced doing a role call with special poses with roses fluttering behind them, which makes Freeza blush in embarrassment. There’s some queer vibes especially in the interactions between Ginyu and Freeza, especially with the infamous “I want to caress them” and dance of joy scene in the Saban dub. Ginyu’s body swamp gimmick and coveting of Goku’s body also lends itself to queer readings. The fight with the Ginyu Force goes on for a long and unfocused stretch of episodes so I don’t know which specific ones I’d choose for sure without rewatching, but probably DBZ episodes 62, 65, 69, and 71, or DBZ Kai episodes 30, 32 to 34 Mr. Satan and Majin Buu - The episodes where Mr. Satan tries to befriend Majin Buu and basically becomes his househusband were some of my favorites in the entire show as a kid. They really do become like domestic partners, to the point of Mr. Satan cooking meals for Buu and even bathing him. They both get mad on each other’s behalf, and Buu’s turn to good is rattled when Mr. Satan is shot and all of his rage is vented out in the form of Evil Buu. Recommended episodes would be DBZ episodes 252 to 255 or DBZ Kai episodes 139 to 142 “Trunks the Bride” and The Para-Para Bros. - GT is probably not the first choice I’d recommend to explore queerness in Dragon Ball, but there’s a two-parter where Trunks has to crossdress and pretend to be the bride of a giant Catfish alien, and the minor villains who show up immediately afterwards, The Para Para Bros, are very queer-coded Jazzcercise-themed villains whose signature attack is a hypnotic dance excercise routine that slowly wears down their opponent. Recommended episodes are GT episodes 7, 8, 10, and 14.
LumRanmaYasha
2024-05-01 00:11:24 +0000 UTCGreat discussion! Saint Seiya is definitely a series that vibes a lot off of all its homoerotic brotherly love and bishonen aesthetics, which I think was a large part of its appeal and why it garnered such a passionate fanbase of girls and fujoshi in Japan during its heyday. The Saint Seiya dub you have dvds of/pulled clips from is the uncut ADV dub. They sublicensed the series from DiC and produced a separate dub from DiC’s edited “Knights of the Zodiac” version that aired on Cartoon Network. Ikki’s voice actor in this dub, Mike MacRae, really does have a great voice - which makes it all the odder that he doesn’t have many other major roles in other anime, the most notable besides Ikki being Gauron, the main antagonist of the Full Metal Panic! Series, and Buzz Lightyear in Kingdom Hearts 3 believe it or not. There were a few attempts to bring over and adapt/americanize the series in the early 90s. There was a live-action series attempt called Starstorm that didn’t get off the ground, and last year Youtube documentarian Ray Mona unearthed an american animated adaptation called Guardians of the Cosmos, which you can watch the full pilot of on Youtube! I actually really like the Guardians of the Cosmos pilot, definitely much more than DiC’s american Sailor Moon cartoon pilot, and I think there’s enough queer readings/reacharounds in it to make for a good GEE discussion in the future. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODTQZfysM9s If you want to know some more background on Saint Seiya’s localization in the 00s, particularly on the manga side, I interviewed both the english editor and translator of the Saint Seiya manga, Shaenon Garrity and Dr. Mari Morimoto, to discuss their work and thoughts on the series on the Manga Mavericks podcast a few years ago. Mari had been a huge fan of Saint Seiya since her childhood and played a part in convincing Viz to license the manga. We also discussed a lot about the series’s background, influence, themes, and explored the characters of and relationships between Ikki and Shun. - http://all-comic.com/2019/manga-mavericks-ep-102-saint-seiya/
LumRanmaYasha
2024-05-01 00:10:15 +0000 UTC
