WARNING: A HUGE BATTLESHIP CODENAMED "EFFORT POST" IS APPROACHING FAST
also actual warning: unpleasant transphobic stuff
I've talked about this on the Discord a bit, but lately (and against my better judgment, honestly) I've been getting back into Fushigi Yuugi, the "reverse harem" isekai shoujo series from the mid-to-late 90s. I was way into this show when it first started coming out in the US on VHS back when I was 16-17 and still coming to terms with my own sexuality. It's a fun, charming series with a reasonably interesting quest plot (gather the seven celestial warriors and summon the god Suzaku to make your wishes come true), but while its main character is Japanese highschooler Miaka Yuuki, my focus was then, as it is now, on one of the said celestial warriors: Nuriko.
Nuriko's sexuality and gender identity are a bit complicated, an issue which is not helped by the stereotypical and unfortunate Japanese tendency to conflate gay men with trans women, and made especially fraught by later developments in her character arc, which I'll get to in a bit. While I realize now it's probably more accurate to view her as trans, when I was a teenager I saw a crossdressing gay man, probably because I'm gay myself and was desperately hungry for any morsel of representation in the media I consumed. In fact, Nuri was the first canonically non-cishet major character I had encountered in any fictional work up to that point, and thus she made a huge impression on me. (My IRC screenname for a few years was Nuriko, despite the fact that we're not very much alike at all.)
Her early characterization is a bit all over the place: when we first meet her she's jealous, petty and even a bit vindictive, prone to fits of anger and violence. But she quickly mellows out and becomes a trusted confidante and a valued member of the team, both for her superhuman strength and her keen wisdom when it comes to matters of the heart. She quickly settles into the role of being Miaka's queer best friend, and is portrayed as a kind and generous soul.
One of the show's many problems, though, is that while Nuri is generally respected as a person by her companions, her sexuality and gender identity become the butt of an endless series of immature and sometimes cruel jokes once she's outed. In one episode, her fellow warriors are being magically treated for their injuries, and one of the medics (whom she's never met before this) cheerfully offers "I'll cure your perversion!" and gets uppercutted through the roof. In the same scene, Miaka's getting a blood transfusion from two of her warriors, and Nuriko generously offers some of her blood as well; she's curtly told "Save it" with no further explanation. (Nuri muses "why do I feel insulted...?" and that's the end of the matter.) And on, and on, and on...
Despite the endless abuse, always played for cheap laughs, Nuriko's loyalty to her companions is unwavering, and as a teenager I was riveted by her story; every month I'd eagerly buy the new volume, interested in the continuation of the overall plot but mostly excited to see what my favorite character was going to get up to this time. Then the series ran me into a brick wall at full speed.
About midway through, we learn that Nuriko's beloved younger sister Kourin had been killed in an accident, and that she subsequently adopted Kourin's identity as a way of keeping her memory alive, even falling in love with the sort of man that she thought her sister would like. Nuri spontaneously decides that she can better protect Miaka "as a man," renounces her queerness, is heavily implied to be in love with Miaka, and then becomes the first of the heroes to die (killed by a shitty werewolf, the lowest and shallowest character on the opposing team of Seiryuu warriors.) In characteristic selflessness, she uses her last moments of life to shift an enormous boulder so the rest of her companions can continue on their way, then collapses and bleeds out. Everyone stands around and eulogizes her (including continuing to wonder out loud if she was a man or a woman), her image song plays over the ending credits, and then that's it. The story moves on. Back to Miaka's stupid quest.
I was devastated. Heartbroken. Betrayed. In the span of a couple of episodes, they turned the show's major queer character cishet and then killed her off. I quit the series right then and there. My friends who watched the show were also sad, of course, but they kept watching, and would inform me of later developments in the story, but I didn't care anymore. As with the other Suzaku warriors who would later fall in battle, Nuri was able to come back in spirit form for major events, and seemed at peace with her life and her death. But as a final insult, we learn late in the series that her unrequited love interest, the emperor Hotohori, went on to marry a woman named Houki... who looked exactly like Nuriko. Ugh.
Well, time heals all wounds, I guess, and some twenty years later I'm ready to give the series another shot. They did my poor Nuri dirty across the board, but some part of me has always been a little curious about how this story I was briefly so passionate about wraps up. (I know the broad strokes through osmosis, but not the details.) With my recent raise I ordered the DVDs off of eBay, and am watching the series on Crunchyroll in the meantime. I'm enjoying myself! There's something warm and nostalgic about 90s anime for me, and though the series has its problems both large and small, I intend to go the distance this time. I'll report back, maybe.
