Ask John: Why Are Cross-Dressing Male Characters Becoming More Common?

Question:
What is with the recent explosion in popularity of male cross-dressers in anime? While they’ve been an occasional feature in anime for some time, there are at least three shows (H20 ~ Footprints in the Sand, Minami-ke, Shugo Chara!) currently airing in Japan where a male character frequently or always dresses as a girl. Also, how can Shugo Chara!, a series targeted at young girls, get away with such a thorny issue?

Answer:
Cross-dressing, as in male characters wearing female clothes and female characters dressing as males, has been a staple of anime for generations, dating back to at least 1967’s Ribbon no Kishi television series. However, the prevalence of males dressing in female clothing and assuming female roles and identities has become noticeably more common recently within titles like H20 ~Footprints in the Sand~, Minamike, and Shugo Chara, as well as Moyashimon, Himawari!, Love Com, Genshiken 2, Shion no Ou, You’re Under Arrest: Full Throttle, and the upcoming Kamen no Maid Guy. Potemayo and Hayate no Gotoku also merit mention for including male characters that occasionally wear female clothing but don’t adopt female identities. This new trend is actually not limited to just anime and manga. The recently launched Akihabara maid café “Hibaritei,” is staffed by attractive men that dress in frilled and ribbon adorned female maid outfits.

The increasing popularity of effeminate and cross-dressing males may be a result of the slowly increasing popularization of otaku culture in Japan. Within the past decade or so, Japanese otaku culture has emerged from its shadowy, cultish status and become a proud and forceful community. Otaku culture has transformed the Akihabara electronics district into a predominantly otaku district, and partially claimed the Ikebukuro ward. The publication of “Hitori Nakano’s” 2004 novel Densha Otoko brought otaku into the mainstream Japanese spotlight. Author Toru Honda’s 2005 best seller “Denpa Otoko” promoted the otaku lifestyle as an ideal that its adherents should be proud of and aspire to. While the children that grew up with anime and manga during the 1970s and 80s are now affluent adults, receptive to anime, fringes of mainstream Japanese media and entertainment are beginning to acknowledge and even praise otaku, leading to the maturation and popularization of the otaku phenomena.

As a result of Japan’s otaku community becoming more enfranchised, two things seem to have happened. Trends and characteristics within anime and manga which were formerly marginal, including yaoi, cross-dressing, and the fetishization of precise objects such as glasses, French maid outfits, school swimsuits, and various character personality types, have all become more pronounced and obvious. And an emphasis on satisfying the interests of teen and young adult women otaku has become prominent. Shugo Chara, an anime series targeted primarily at young Japanese girls (although it’s apparently quite popular among young adult Japanese men also) doesn’t need to “get away” with including a male character that poses as a girl because this element is included precisely because the show is targeted at young Japanese girls.

Effeminate male characters appeal to Japanese female audiences for the same reason that yaoi is popular among female viewers. Male characters that embrace a soft, delicate, feminine side are attractive and romantic. These characters also indulge a feminine aesthetic to groom and manage a man into a refined, beautiful, androgynous being. In older examples of males adopting female roles, such as Ranma Saotome physically transforming into a female, or I My Me! Strawberry Eggs’ Hibiki Amawa cross-dressing to gain a teaching job in an all-female school, the transformation of male into female was emasculating, and done for comical effect. However, in more recent examples such as Moyashimon, Potemayo, and Love Com, the transformation from male to female is presented as a liberating, fulfilling change in which the man explores or unleashes his own feminine characteristics. Cross-dressing is no longer emasculating or comically absurd; it’s a means of discovering and embracing one’s own true personality.

I think that the evolving acceptance of the otaku lifestyle has made otaku concepts and interests more public, more accepted, and more acceptable. While cross-dressing was once almost exclusively a plot device used for comedy in anime targeted at male viewers, it’s now becoming more common as an instance of narrative character development in anime for female viewers. While Americans may continue to perceive cross-dressing as a controversial, shocking, or possibly even offensive plot device, I think we’re beginning to see it emerge in Japanese anime culture as an appealing concession to the liberal and progressive otaku philosophy.