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Booming LGBTQ Representation in Animation in 2021 [Part 2]

Continued from part 1

Reprinted from Pop Culture Maniacs, my History Hermann WordPress blog on Jan. 15, 2023, and Wayback Machine. This was the seventh article I wrote for Pop Culture Maniacs. This post was originally published on January 5, 2022.

Other streaming platforms, like Paramount+ had animated series with LGBTQ characters. For example, the Rugrats reboot, a gay single mother named Betty DeVille, voiced by openly queer actress Natalie Morales, is a character. More prominent, however, is Star Trek: Lower Decks, fulfilling on Mike McMahan’s commitment to explore the identity of Beckett Mariner, who is voiced by Tawny Newsome. In the episode “We’ll Always Have Tom Paris,” Mariner tells Tendi, “I’m always dating bad boys, bad girls, bad gender non-binary babes, ruthless alien masterminds, bad bynars,” with a reviewer saying that Mariner affirms that “she is essentially pansexual.” In another episode she reveals she spent time on a space station and notes one of the nature preserves they are going to is where she went on a date, not specifying whether the date was male or female. She also calls Boimler, her male friend and colleague, her “number one.” Andy Billups (voiced by Paul Scheer), the ship’s chief engineer, is implied to be asexual as he has no interest, in the episode “Where Pleasant Fountains Lie,”of sleeping with the male or the female guard, and he is not shown participating in any sex acts in the “Naked Time” simulator in the show’s following episode. Whether the series follows up on this in an expected third season is anyone’s guess. At the same time, Star Trek Prodigy, also on Paramount+ includes Zero, who is a Medusan, with Medusans as genderless aliens who use they/them pronouns.

Hulu and Peacock also featured LGBTQ characters. In March, the series creators of Solar Opposites, Justin Roiland and Mike McMahan confirmed that Korvo and Terry are a romantic couple in a committed relationship. Another Hulu series has two LGBTQ characters, one of whom is bisexual (Melissa Tartleton) and another which is gay (Gary Garoldson). Furthermore, in the a Pride-themed episode of the children’s animation, Madagascar: A Little Wild, an okapi named Odee Elliott appears, who is non-binary. Odee is voiced by Iris Menas who said the episode’s biggest takeway is “acceptance and love and celebration” while GLAAD’s director of entertainment media, Jeremy Blacklow, said the episode comes at a time that “LGBTQ inclusion in kids and family programming is rapidly growing,” and stated that DreamWorks Animation is partners with GLAAD to “ensure that all families are represented on-screen.”

A late comer is the Crunchyroll coming-of-age series High Guardian Spice, created by a trans man, Raye Rodriguez, who was a character designer for Shadi Petosky’s Danger & Eggs animated series. This series featured trans and lesbian characters, with one of the trans characters voiced by Rodriguez himself! The other character, Snapdragon “Snap”, was voiced by a trans woman, and is on the road to transitioning to being a trans woman by the end of the series. The lesbian characters included two cousins of Sage, one of the story’s protagonists. They are named Aloe and Anise, her wife. The person who voiced Anise is a lesbian actress and she voiced two other characters in the show, meaning that those characters could be arguably lesbian coded. Furthermore, Sage showed an attraction to Snap and her friend Rosemary, meaning that she is presumably a lesbian, and Rose may be as well. Thyme, one of the show’s other protagonists, shows an attraction to a mermaid in one episode, while her roommate Parsley is very close with her. At the same time, another voice actor is openly gay and a person who voices a character named “Slime Boy” is ambiguously queer.

At the same time, terrestrial broadcast networks had their share of LGBTQ characters. This included gay men Crispin Cienfuegos and Ham Tobin in The Great North, voiced by Julio Torres and Pauli Rust respectfully, an implied lesbian woman named Frankie (voiced by Naomi McDonald) in Cartoon Network’s Elliott from Earth, and a queer man named Jerry Smith. Craig of the Creek, another Cartoon Network animated series currently airing features non-binary, lesbian, gay, and agender characters. Nickelodeon’s Blue’s Clues & You! featured an alphabet song which featured multiple Pride flags, Jessie Juwono, a supervising director of the now-ended Big Hero 6: The Series, confirmed Globby and Felony Carl, as a gay couple, and storyboarder Sam King said, two days after the series finale of Disney’s DuckTales, that she would permit fans to “assume I think every character except, like, Lunaris, is LGBTQIA+ in some shape or another.” On the other hand, Nickelodeon’s still-airing The Loud House features lesbian, gay, and bisexual characters. Another series, Tuca & Bertie, the new season of which began airing on Adult Swim in June 2021, on Netflix for season 1, featured various LGBTQ characters as well. This included a bisexual Toucan named Tuca, and a female seagull, Kara, who is a former love interest of Tuca.

The ongoing Cartoon Network series, Victor and Valentino, features a character who is implied to be a lesbian: Xochi Jalapeno, voiced by Cristina Vee. As I wrote in November 2020, she has a clear romantic interest in another woman, Amabel, and her lesbianism is “heavily implied by her never showing romantic feelings for male characters and often blushing when she is around Amabel.” Sadly, in May of 2021, it was announced that The Venture Bros was ending. The series featured various LGBTQ characters such as the openly gay Colonel Horace Gentleman, a lesbian character named Virginia “Ginnie” Dunne, and a gay couple: The Alchemist and Shore Leave. Luckily, it was later announced the series would have a direct-to-video film continuation at some point.

Some shows aired on actual television channels and on broadcast networks. One such show was Final Space, with the show’s final season premiering on Adult Swim first, then later HBO Max and Netflix (for international broadcasts), from March 2021 to June 2021. The show’s cancellation was confirmed by show creator Olan Rogers. Final Space had previously aired on TBS. In December of 2020, I wrote that “if rumors are true, then the third season of Final Space will have LGBTQ characters” and that turned out to be be true! This was manifested in a humanoid alien by the name of Ash Graven voiced by Ashly Burch. She had previously voiced a bisexual woman in OK K.O.!: Let’s Be Heroes named Enid, a non-binary Gem woman in Steven Universe named Rutile Twins, a lesbian woman named Laney in The Loud House, and currently voices Molly McGee, a Thai-American protagonist of the series, The Ghost and Molly McGee.

In Final Space, however, Ash was shown to be a lesbian character in the eighth episode of the show’s final season, as she holds hands with a genderless being, Evra, voiced by a biracial queer actress, Jasmin Savoy Brown, and she had previously hated a man who had rejected her in a previous season. In a podcast about the episode, Rogers confirmed that Ash was lesbian and noted that his co-writer, David Sacks, pushed for an episode about Ash, while he had wanted to do another character. He also stated, at the time, that if the show were to have another season he would expand on the relationship between Ash and Evra. Sadly, he never got the chance to do this due to the show’s cancellation. The show also included recurring LGBTQ characters like Clarence Polkawitz (voiced by Conan O’Brien), a selfish man, as bisexual, and the gender-flipping possibly genderfluid Tribore Menendez (voiced by Rogers), while Rogers himself said that he would have pushed for Little Cato as a gay character in another season.

Other examples of shows airing on television and streaming platforms were Duncanville and HouseBroken, which aired on Hulu and FOX. Duncanville features a recurring genderfluid character named Mia Abarra (voiced by Rashida Jones), a kiss between one of the protagonists, Annie, and another woman, Sandra, and features background characters mentioning they are in gay relationships in several episodes in the show’s newest season. LGBTQ characters were throughout HouseBroken, whether a gay trans male cat named Chico, a bisexual mixed-breed terrier Diablo, and the owners of Tabitha, Stelios and Brett, as a same-sex couple. In November, in an episode of The Simpsons, a FOX series which has been running since 1989, Smithers was shown with a new boyfriend who was named Michael de Graaf.

More prominent is The Owl House, the first half of the second season which aired on the Disney Channel from June to August, then was added to Disney+ later. While it is aimed at pre-teens, the series is a “deep story with a simple premise” as one reviewer described it. A second season canonized the semi-canon feelings between a bisexual Afro-Dominican/Afro-Latina young woman named Luz Noceda (voiced by Sarah-Nicole Robles) and a lesbian young woman named Amity Blight, which fans dubbed “Lumity.” It also introduced a new non-binary character named Raine Whispers, voiced by Avi Roque, a non-binary actor, and confirmed that Eda Clawthorne (voiced by Wendie Malick) is queer because she had feelings for Raine, who she previously dated before breaking up, and previously noted she had ex-boyfriends. Furthermore, Mae Whitman, who voices Amity, came out as pansexual. The way forward for The Owl House beyond Season 3 is uncertain, as showrunner Dana Terrace stated in early October. Unlike previous Disney shows, which featured LGBTQ actors who generally did not voice LGBTQ characters, The Owl House features LGBTQ actors voicing LGBTQ characters, such as Mae Whitman. [6] Another currently airing Disney series, Big City Greens, featured two gay characters: Alexander and Terry.

Other Disney shows seemed to feature LGBTQ characters as well. In one episode of Amphibia there were two women who were coded based on the bisexual and pansexual flags, according to the show’s art director, named Jess and Ally. The latter was voiced by Latina comedian Melissa Villaseñor who is of Mexican descent. In another episode, a man was shown proposing to another man. As Jade King pointed out, there is a possibility of confirmed representation between two of the show’s protagonists, Anne Boonchuy and Marcy Wang, while there is “chemistry between Yunan and Olivia…teasing…a full relationship between the two.” There was even an episode which a song by Rebecca Sugar, creator of Steven Universe, was shown.

In two episodes of The Ghost and Molly McGee, a lesbian character named Ms. Roop, who is voiced by Jane Lynch, a lesbian woman, is shown. In the episode “Mazel Tov, Libby!”, she is slow-dancing with a woman and in the next episode she is shown to be a lesbian. The woman she dancing with is her wife, Pam. Samantha C. King, a director for the show, said that Roop is a “lesbian who always talks about her wife” and added that Pam and Roop aren’t the only LGBTQ characters, but that there will be “more significant rep later on.” Others have even argued that Molly McGee herself is bisexual, claiming that during a musical sequence in one episode, a bi flag-colored sticker can be seen on Molly’s motorcycle helmet, but this is only a unconfirmed theory. One of the show’s creators, Bob Roth, one of the show’s creators stated as much, urging fans to let the representation “unfold naturally.”

One indie animation put many of the series on streaming platforms and broadcast television to shame. Helluva Boss, at the head of the indie animation boom, continued to air on YouTube. Apart from the established LGBTQ characters like Blitzo (pansexual), Moxxie (bisexual), and Stolas (gay or bisexual), voiced by the openly gay Brandon Rogers, Richard Steven Horvitz, and Bryce Pinkham respectfully, the episode “The Harvest Moon Festival” introduced a trans female character named Sallie May (Millie’s sister), who is voiced by a trans woman, Morgana Ignis. Even two male-presenting characters, Blitzo and Stolas shared a kiss at the end of the episode “Truth Seekers.” The series can be described as having a tenor of morbid humor and being “unlike any other animated series, indie or mainstream, that has ever been created or has appeared on any platform,” unique in its own way. The series also featured, in the next-to-last episode of the show’s first season, Blitzo and Stolas going on a date together, although it did not work out for either of them, as Stolas can’t spell out why exactly he loves Blitzo, with both leaving each other behind. This series is prominent in the indie animation scene and one of the few queer female-led series, unlike other series which have wonderful representation but are not headed by queer people.

Otherwise, My Life is Worth Living, a series which is meant to use “relatable teen stories to teach suicide prevention strategies.” It includes stories which cover “LGBTQ+ issues, substance abuse, sexual abuse, and physical injury” and has aired on YouTube since September 2021. LGBTQ characters include Scott, a public speaker revealed to be gay in Dante’s Story and Dante, a high school football player who has struggled to come out. On October 11, the newest episode of Nico Colaleo’s series, Ollie & Scoops, premiered on YouTube. In the episode before that, which aired on October 22 of 2020, it centered on the history of a teacher, Binnie, who is “anxious and nervous to tell another teacher, Wendy, that she likes her,” with Colaleo promising that there will more of both characters in future episodes.

Many anime led the way when it came to representation. For instance, the original net animation, Assault Lily Bouquet: Fruits, based on Assault Lily Bouquet, had homoerotic focus, while the ongoing series My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! featured a bisexual harem of men and women who pin after the protagonist, Catarina Claus. In 2021 five series with LGBTQ characters began. High-Rise Invasion featured two protagonists who begin as a friends but become romantically involved with one another, while Otherside Picnic centered on two women who have feelings for each other. In the latter case, however, their feelings are only implied as they never kiss or even directly say they love each other, leading some critics to say that they can’t think of the show as anything more than “just another generic supernatural anime.”

Trans characters appeared in So I’m A Spider, So What? and Wonder Egg Priority. A non-binary character appeared in the series, Blue Period, who is misgendered and mocked by her classmates, and yuri content was present in both Sailor Moon Eternal movies, with two lesbian characters having a role: Sailor Neptune and Sailor Uranus. The series Komi Can’t Communicate includes a character with an ambiguous gender and another character, a woman, who is infatuated with the series protagonist. Some reviewers pointed to yuri coding in other series, like Vlad Love, Blue Reflection Ray, Kiniro Mosaic, Vivy, YuYuYu, Zombieland Saga: Revenge, and Battle Athletes, while noting the final season of Kobayashi-san Chi no Maid Dragon S, calling the latter the “one of the most ridiculous and entertaining yuri-ish anime…in some time.” There are also implied yuri tensions between the protagonists of The Aquatope on White Sand with one reviewer for Anime News Network saying that they are considering the series “to be a yuri series” and calling it “yuri-coded right from the start,” while another saying they are setting their “yuri expectations…fairly low” for the show, but are still planning on watching it anyway.

January of this year will see the premiere of the new season of Princess Connect! Re:Dive, along with Luminous Witches and Love Live Superstar!, all of which may have yuri subtext. In early February 2022, The Legend of Vox Machina, an adult animated fantasy series based on a Critical Role campaign, will begin airing on Amazon Prime. It will include two bisexual siblings (Vex’ahlia “Vex” de Rolo and Vax’ildan “Vax” Vessar), and two queer characters (Keyleth of the Air Ashari and Scanlan Shorthalt).

There are a number of animated series with LGBTQ representation that are either scheduled to air or presumed to air in 2022. This includes the reboot series The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder, which will have an interracial gay couple (Barry and Randall Leibowitz-Jenkins), part 4 of Disenchantment, and the fourth season of The Dragon Prince. The latter show has featured supporting characters who are gay, non-binary, and lesbian. Arcane may also be coming back for another season sometime in 2022, although the exact date is not currently known, as will, presumably, Volume 9 of RWBY.

It is also expected that Dead End: Paranormal Park, previously named DeadEndia, will premiere sometime this year as well, after it was pushed back from its original premiere of October of 2021. Dead End: Paranormal Park, when it premieres, will break barriers with a trans male protagonist, Barney, with series creator Hamish Steele hoping it would get “more trans creators getting their chance to tell their stories” while hinting at other LGBTQ characters in the show apart from Barney. Steele also, in a thread on Twitter, described overt trans representation as important to him for a number of reasons, but due to the show being a UK production since UK broadcasters had rejected his previous trans storylines, and hoped that the series can be “one production taking a clear stand against the normalisation of transphobia in this country [the UK],” with the series having, in his words, “multiple trans cast and crew.” Hopefully the series will continue to increase positive queer representation in kids animation.

There are indie animations in development which will likely begin or continue this year. This may include new episodes of Nico Colaleo’s series, Ollie & Scoops, the premiere of S.A.L.E.M.: The Secret Archive of Legends, Enchantments, and Monsters, [7] and a new season of Hazbin Hotel on A24. Colaleo has already stated this, saying there would be “much more” Ollie & Scoops, while Hazbin fans were annoyed at much of the pilot cast not returning in the animated series which seems all but guaranteed to premiere this year.

HBO Max’s Lumberjanes, an animated adaption of the comic of the same name which ended in December 2020, will likely not air this year, but it is possible the litany of indie animations will air. This will not include Rain: The Animated Series as it was cancelled in September 2021 before the series premiere in a re-upload of one the show’s animations for unspecified reasons. The creators of the indie series, The Descendants, said they will pitch their series this year, with the show creator declaring that people need to create their dreams.

However, there are indie series moving forward, with no sign of cancellation. Indigo, with its development presumed after a previous cancellation, Wild Card, which has an openly bisexual protagonist, Jack, based on the show’s bisexual creator, Alex Bahrawy and Sheepish, with a non-binary protagonist, are only a few of many indie series with LGBTQ protagonists which are currently in development. [8] Wild Card seems to be moving closer and closer toward premiering the pilot, at least, as does Far Fetched Show.

I hope that Mika A. Epstein of LezWatch.TV is right in arguing that in terms of representation, this year, “things will get better” and fandoms will develop as ways to express the love people have “for a story or a movie of a TV show,” with shows which take risks, are daring, an tell diverse stories of various types.

Notes

[1] This was also clear in GLAAD’s 2020-2021 “Where We Are on TV” report (counting characters which premiered on primetime cable TV from June 2020 to May 2021) which noted characters in BoJack Horseman (since cancelled), The Owl House (p. 15, 40), Carmen Sandiego (p. 19), Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts (p. 19, 40), Steven Universe Future (p. 40), DuckTales (p. 40), She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (p. 40), Harley Quinn (p. 42), Young Justice (p. 42). Let’s not forget that as Mike A. Epstein of LezWatch.TV pointed out, “while GLAAD does look into some international shows, it’s very skewed American.”

[2] 2021 was the fourth year of the awards show. In 2020, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power won for the “Outstanding Animated Series” category (the runner-up was BoJack Horseman and other nominees were: The Owl House, Steven Universe Future, Harley Quinn, and Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts). Also She-Ra was nominated for the “Best TV Episode With LGBTQ+ Themes” category, for the episode “Heart Part 2” while Adora and Catra in the same show won the “Fan Favorite Couple” award. In 2019, Steven Universe‘s episode “Reunited” was nominated for “Outstanding Individual Episode with LGBTQ+ Themes” and She-Ra won “Outstanding Animated Series” category (runner-up was Steven Universe and other nominees were: Love, Death & Robots, Bojack Horseman, Adventure Time, and Tuca & Bertie). In 2018, Rebecca Sugar, the showrunner of Steven Universe, was a runner-up for the “Outstanding LGBTQ+ Director / Producer / Showrunner” category, Steven Universe was one of the nominees for the “Most Groundbreaking Representation” category, and Steven Universe won the “Outstanding Animated Series” category (runner up was Adventure Time and other nominees were: Danger & Eggs and Loud House).

[3] Apart from these series, Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, Recorded by Arizal (implied that future story could have LGBTQ characters), and Onyx Equinox (with bisexual characters) ended in 2020. The hinted Astur’s Rebellion series by Sara Eissa was posed in 2020, but likely will not return. Additionally, the third “season” (as Peacock called it) of Cleopatra in Space, as I wrote about in December 2020, aired on Peacock on January 24, but had no more rep than the two moms of Akila which appeared in “School Break” which aired in November 2020.

[4] The other series are produced by a smattering of companies like Shadow Machine (Final Space; Tuca & Bertie), SpindleHorse Toons (Helluva Boss), Liden Films and Felix Film (Otherside Picnic), TNK (Redo of Healer), Millepensee (So I’m a Spider, So What?), The ULULU Company and Rough Draft Studios (Disenchantment), Zero-G, Inc. (High-Rise Invasion), Skybound Entertainment (Invincible), Asahi Broadcasting Corporation (My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!), P.A. Works (Aquatope on the White Sand), and Titmouse (Star Trek: Lower Decks).

[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIjX9rGvUmk, at 41:40-44:24). A few months later, an animator for the show said that they were “given explicit directions” to make Le Chevre and El Topo, in their scenes together, “romantic and intimate.” (https://scepterno.tumblr.com/post/642230247631323136/wait-i-can-finally-talk-about-how-i-was-given). This confirmed what GLAAD said in their report: “…Netflix includes queer characters in the animated series Carmen Sandiego” (p. 19)

[6] Other LGBTQ actors who did not voice LGBTQ characters include Matt Lucas as Benny in Romeo and Juliet, Rosie O’Donnell as Terk in Tarzan, Joshua Rush as Bunga in Timon & Pumbaa, Jane Lynch as Sergeant Calhoun in Wreck-It Ralph, Harvey Guillén as Funny in Mickey Mouse Funhouse, Auliʻi Cravalho as Moana in Moana, David Hyde Pierce as Francis in A Bug’s Life, Raven-Symoné as Monique in Kim Possible, Jack Dylan Grazer as Alberto in Luca, Sara Ramirez as Queen Miranda in Sofia the First, Graham Norton as Moonwind in Soul, Miley Cyrus as Penny in Bolt, Billy Eichner as Timon in The Lion King (2019 remake), Nathan Lane as Timon in The Lion King, Ellen DeGeneres as Dory in Finding Dory, Jonathan Groff as Kristoff in the Frozen films, Patti Harrison as Chief of Tail in Raya and the Last Dragon, Sean Hayes as Terri Perry in Monsters University, Alyson Stoner as Isabella in Phineas & Ferb, and David Ogden Stiers and Ian McKellen as Cogsworth.

[7] In this series, Salem, protagonist, is non-binary and pan, while Oliver is gay, and Petra is asexual.

[8] Others include Dirt: The Series, Romancing Roslyn Cherry, Howdy Cloudboy, Gadzooks and the Cryptoid Kids (a series by two gay men with LGBTQ themes), Roads to Rome, Succubus Cop, Starmakers, Cabiria Intermezzo, and Long Way From Del’Arte.

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