OWLS Blog Tour Pride | My Brother’s Husband – Through The Eyes of a Child

Welcome my friends, followers, and readers to the next stop on the June Blog Tour for OWLS, if you are following along you would have already read the lovely post from Zoey over at Let’s Talk Anime. If this is your first time here on Yaoi Playground, you can call me Mistress of Yaoi and I am your expert on all things yaoi and boys love! I have something extra special for the conversation this month. This is because this month’s theme is something that hits very close to home for me that being Pride!

In honor of “Pride Month,” we will be discussing the word, “Pride” and its meaning. We will be exploring pop culture characters’ most satisfying and joyful achievements or skills that they possessed and whether or not these qualities could be seen as a positive or negative aspect in their personal lives and/or society

For this theme, I knew right away what manga I was going to cover, a modern masterpiece in not just the manga world but also when it comes to LGBTQ+ media as a whole. First published Monthly Action magazine from November 2014 to May 2017 the story spans four volumes that have an English release of two omnibus volumes from Patheon Graphic Novels and was penned by the legendary Gengoroh Tegame, who I wrote about in a previous post. My Brother’s Husband is the first all audiences manga released by the homoerotic artist who up until releasing this story had worked exclusively on hardcore bara titles and when I say hardcore I do mean very very hardcore BDSM bara titles. My Brother’s Husband tells the story of single father Yaichi, his daughter Kana (who will be the focus of this post) and Mike Flanagan who is the husband of Yaichi’s estranged and recently deceased brother.

This is a story that tackles a lot of powerful themes for the LGBTQ+ community. These include family acceptance and estrangement, coming out, attitudes towards the LGBTQ+ community within Japan and self-acceptance. Yaichi never really accepted his brothers choices and through meeting Mike learns not just about his brother but also about what it means to be gay and that there is more to being gay than having sex with someone of the same gender. When Mike first arrives at his doorstep he does not know how to treat the man and is very standoffish to put it politely. Like many he see’s this stranger as a deviant because of his lifestyle. Kana on the other hand just see a cool new person to meet and the more she learns about Mike and her uncle she loves him like family.

It is not until the mother of one of her friends says her friend cannot meet her cool Uncle Mike that Kana begins to see the stigma towards people like Mike and her reaction is one of confusion. Why would someone who has never met Mike hate him? They don’t even know him! She sees him with such innocence, love, and curiosity. She does not hate Mike or finds him disgusting. Her reaction to this is just so pure that it made my heart melt, she simply did not get why someone would hate someone they don’t even know.

Hatred towards others is something I feel a lot of the time is taught to children and this can be a very sad reality. I child is not born hating someone just because they are different. They see how those around them treat others or are sadly taught by parents, teachers, and guardians in there life that ‘these people’ are bad because they are different. I know I am oversimplifying a big issue with society, but just maybe instead of hating people because they are different we could do more to learn what we have in common with each other like Kana does with Uncle Mike and see that just because someone is different it does not mean they are a bad person and that you should get to know someone before you pass such harsh judgement on someone just for one aspect of what they are; whether that being gay, straight, male, female and everything in between.

Thank you for taking the time to read my post on this months blog tour! Next up we have the wonderful Zel over at ARCHI-ANIME and I very much look forward to reading their post! Till next time let’s all love and respect each other!

Advertisement