I know I’m going to regret making this post, but fuck that, it’s rant time!
Listen up you No. 6 fangirls, who will never amount to anything, I’m talking to you! Let me dispel some idiotic myths about this series. No, I don’t need to tweet Asano to make the following statements with an air of authority because these are just statements about the text in general (eg. “x has never been mentioned where are you faggots getting this from?”) and if you can read and put the fujoshi goggles down for two seconds these are perfectly logical conclusions anyone would come to. Anyway, I’m not in the mood to discuss any of this, I’m just putting it out there to satiate my rage as a survival strategy, take it or leave it––HERE WE GO:
1. No. 6 is not a romance and it is not “BL.”
“Romance” and “BL” are genre labels. I know this concept is beyond most of you, but it’s pretty plainly apparent that the story is not first and foremost about romance (if it is at all, but whatever)––whether you think it’s good SF or not and whether you think the only redeeming factor of the series is the relationship between Shion and Mouse is entirely beside the point. No. 6 is an SF adventure story with some BL fanservice/elements.
2. Neither Shion nor Mouse are “gay characters.”
They could come straight out next chapter and admit that they’re in love with each other and it still wouldn’t necessarily make them “gay characters” (unless that actually became a thing, but it probably wouldn’t). No. 6 has included 0 treatment of homosexuality so far (I guess you could argue Mouse’s “lol, actually, we’re gay” to the prostitute counts, but that’s such a common trope it probably has it’s own tvtropes page, plus there was insufficient reaction to draw any conclusions about anything, other than the fact that Shion clearly doesn’t identify as gay). Sexuality in general is only briefly touched on in the notion that children in No. 6′s elite are clearly not taught shit about sex and seem to be kept pretty ignorant about it. We spend most of No. 6 inside Shion’s head and not once has he had a sexual or sex related thought (outside of being confused/flustered by Safu).
Now, of course, this doesn’t preclude them being gay with or for each other in the single-target-sexuality anime “pure” romance sort of way (not saying there’s anything wrong with that). Honestly, I don’t care so much about this part. I don’t know why everyone’s so hung up on it either. If you think they’re in love (whatever that means exactly––I’m not gonna get into it here but “love” can mean a lot of different things), cool. If you think they’re bros, cool. If you just want porn of them, cool. Whatever man. Idk why everyone gets so butthurt and defensive about this. Just stop pretending this is some profound “treatment” of homosexuals in SF, because it really isn’t. Wandering Son is a serious treatment of gender and sexuality, No. 6 is not.
3. The inner social workings of No. 6 have not really been touched on in depth at any point, so stop making shit up.
I don’t know where this “No. 6 is a progressive society so they must accept gay people” thing came from. What book have you been reading? If anything, it sounds like homosexuality would be expressly discouraged since it seems like you need a license to have sex and only to have children (at least among the elite based on Safu’s whole I-wanna-bone-you speech). They may have robots and weather control, but everything points to a profoundly repressed and regressive society. If you’re going to make societal arguments anyway, why not actually look at the effects of No. 6′s social structure on Shion––he has no friends (except Safu), sex is something you only do with a license to make a baby, and it really doesn’t seem like people engage in many physical expressions of affection in No. 6 normally (especially among the elite).
P.S. I wrote all this before I saw that interview snippet. It doesn’t contradict any of this. plz2be keeping the shipper faggotry off this blog, I don’t care if you think they want to fuck.
