Outside the Box: Gender Essentialism, Manhood and the work of Shuzo Oshimi 

I've stumbled onto this unlisted video in your Essay playlist, in case it was meant to be private! just wanted to say. Also love it

My take on Inside Mari is totally different, in that I think the conclusion works to cut AGAINST gender essentialism. After all, we were totally willing to accept that the Isao inside Mari must really be Isao because he keeps leering at women, longing to be like them, etc: traits we would associate with men and with almost a cartoon version of male sexuality. But when the "Isao" inside Mari turns out to just be another part of her, then implicitly we have to reframe all her "male" attitudes and behaviors as coming from her, a person who was assigned female at birth and who largely identifies as a woman. So if THAT person can so convincingly feel all those "male" feelings, then those feelings can't actually be restricted to any gender or type of person, can they?

genders are like cardboard boxes and we are all cats trying to sits in the one we fits. but sometimes what we really want is to lay out in a sunbeam or tear up the carpet. the box can be comforting, but freedom lies in learning to jump out of it when you want to.

That feeling of feeling a strong disconnect with the gender you were born with but not having any desire to transition into the opposite gender outside of escaping the roles assigned to your birth gender is so incredibly relatable and I never hear anyone talk about it!

I remember the very first concept I had about gender is around when I was 5, I said something I now think is quite profound for a 5 year old, just randomly when I was preparing for a shower or something, I got naked, looked at myself in the mirror and told my mom: "I want to let go of my pp, so I am just human and go to space" of course back then a penis is hardcore associated with the male identity having grown up in China, I never even really percieved the concept of gender queerness until highschool age, but I'm glad to remember that I always is just human deep down inside. It makes dysphoria, anxiety, performantive socializing that I can't let go of, and everything else a little more bearable. I asked myself the "trans question" many times as a high school boy, I went to a therapist by myself, I never told anyone around me, and I almost started hrt, but I ran away. I don't know if I was scared, concerned or anything, but I thought I needed a deeper examination of myself. My huburis is the belief that I can fix and solve everything, something that was contributed by my male upbringing and my child hood familial trauma, but the benefit is that I really did think that I can be what the world looks at in awe, and not follow the currents of fanaticism. I tried to eliminate the very concept of gender from my head, I try to disassociate pronouns from social role and everything from everything, and for a while, I was the man whom has abandoned being a man. But then, it didn't completely fix it, because dysphoria for me is a body horror. The very first time in middle school when I realized the growth of hair on my face and my legs, I was so scared, I took a rusty one bladed shaving knife and tried to cut away at them, shaving everyday has become a habit, and constant cuts from carelessness is present all throughout my life till now, but I would rather have scars. As an artist, I have a soft spot for biomechanical nightmares, the likes of Ginger's Alien and Scorn, because body is such as grotisc thing on my, yet I find them beautiful, a gothic love where I blend a deep traumatic horror with my admiration for love and affection. For a time, I didn't know what I wanted, except I didn't want this, jumping around different communities, where once again identity is attached to my body when I once have seemingly eliminated it, for that now I am initiating a change in the status quo, if everything before can happen just in my head, now I must stand physically in the world, and look at the horror of my flesh, and learn to love it, like I've loved so many others, to be excited about its shapes folds, and the connectivity of muscles, to feel its texture, the light bounce it has, when I press into my skin. And I've decided that mtf hrt is for me. I am going to be transitioning into a girl. Now I am once again thinking about eliminating the transwoman or transgirl identity from my head again, if I am to be consistent in my love of the flesh and my love of humans, then I must think and think again about the implications of my words. Though mtf transition is not a fetishization of womanhood, but womanhood is very much a fetishization of being a woman, it carries a religious ferver, no less toxic or beautiful than masculinity. At times, such changes from he/him to any/all to she/they to any/all would be called phases and inconsistency in the trans ideology, but to me, they carry weight and thoughts, every step is my attempt to achieve what it truly means to live and exist as a person, it shares the same passion as discovery and knowledge, and just like discovery and knowledge, perhaps it will be never ending, or perhaps I can one day find something that is truthful to me and speak of it like the proponents of varying philosophies in the not so long distant past. (Sry for writing so much in a comment, I got passionate hh)

i think the phrase "Josephs Stalin's female digit ratio" is going to haunt me in my nightmares great video!

I don't know if I feel bad for Oshimi or I relate to his struggles to fight his way out of his own box, but I hope he finds peace with it all someday.

this was an amazing example of gender essentialism and how it can make even cis people feel trapped. thank you for the video.

Were you inspired by "The Incel to Trans Pipeline and Inside Mari" for this? If not, I think you should watch it! Its another wonderful video covering this topic.

I don't know weather it will be interested for anyone, but I want to share my story. From early childhood I had got really annoyed every time when I heard phrases like ''Math is not for girls'' or ''All boys have stone hearts'' or ''don't cry your are a boy''. My parents, my grandparents, my teachers and my classmates say such things and I can't understand why so many people believe that gender predestination is normal thing. Maybe it's because I myself was an ''exception from the rule''. I didn't like many of ''boyish stuffs'' and on the other hand I liked some of ''girlish stuffs''. I didn't like football, basketball, fighting games and so on. And I liked flowers, romantic stories, cute things and so on. I hated brutal masculine gender role called in my country "настоящий мужик" (true muzhyk). When puberties began I realized that I had a desire to be born as a girl, I thought that if I could be a girl it should be easier for me to be that person who I am. I even had some fantasies about how I turn into a girl. But lately I realize that it's not my fault that I don't enough boyish or that I like some girlish stuffs but it's society is wrong because it force people live in ways that they can't choose only because there gender. I decided that I shouldn't be a girl to love what I love and live how I want. I'm sorry for mistakes in English.

I think what I got most out of this was the line (paraphrasing) "nature doesn't create hard boundaries, including the one between trans and cis". As you said, it really would've been obvious if I'd ever stopped to think about it, yet somehow I never did. Which is weird to me, because phrases like "real man" are everywhere and yet literally only make sense if "man" is itself a spectrum. I'm taking this as a humbling reminder that having thought a lot about something for a long time doesn't mean I've looked at that thing from every possible angle.

I think now I've realized that inherently one definition of manhood, womanhood doesn't have any weight over another because it's a figurative line deemed important by someone either way.

This essay had me getting a little misty eyed. I'm going to have to check out his work, I 100% feel that struggle and have had similar thoughts myself. It's not that I'm not a man, it's that I'm not meeting societies demands and expectations of a man and I'm weighed down by my own guilt of disappointing them by being myself. I'm glad I've grown enough to shed most of that guilt. I hope Shuzo gets far enough along to find joy and not just peace.

In recent years I've been really interested in the idea of questioning one's gender without any intention of changing the body they're in so I really enjoyed seeing some exploration of that part of the spectrum here. I'll definitely have check out Oshimi's work, thank you for this great video.

As I see it, Mari kind of was learning to be a woman. She was in a bad place, and when she became Isao, she needed to learn femininity over again because she never really felt like a woman in the first place. Isoa was a break to create her identity anew, instead of continuing to just act out a role that was assigned to her before she could have began to reflect on it. I think Inside Mari as a story written by a man(?) is still kind of anti-essentialist because of the way it kind of deconstructs men's view of women as a different species who live on a different plain of existence from them. Mari is not an angel, she doesn't have a perfect, pretty life that she never needs to question, and she's capable of all sorts of messy freaky-ness. It's not Isoa's transition into Mari that subverts gender at all, but Mari's transition into Isoa.

I grew up with gender effectively not existing, there were adults and there were kids. Small class of 9, 7 boys (so the girls acted just like the boys), and my mom, who was not at all a stereotypical woman, raised me (she's very unemotional, a trained electrician and a painter, her biggest hobby while I was growing up was firing ceramics in a kiln). Movies and shows weren't censored for me as a kid, so I watched a large mix of things. High school (different town, 100 students in my class) and college were a blur, I was respected by everybody (all genders) but not friends with anyone, really. Spent most of my aware time alone. High school especially, every single student was a little broken because our town had an incredibly disproportionate percentage of divorced parents (would genuinely not be surprised at all to find it's among the highest percentage of divorces in one town in North America-it's like the stars aligned to ensure all rocky marriages were ended in our town and the family got financially stuck there). So though I wasn't friends with anybody, there was a common sense of equality and comradery between me and my peers. Then after college, suddenly when I'm alone with other men they're making nasty jokes about women, and constantly talking about going to the gym to get a girl (nothing to do with health). Sexist jokes, sharing pictures of acquaintances they'd "like to bag", etc. Not every man by any means, but too many. And when I'm alone with women they're apparently not at fault for anything in their lives. Everything wrong with their life is other peoples' fault, men's fault or their parents fault or their friends' fault. Way too often I hear a trauma response along the lines of "all men are ugly on the inside", "men are incapable of controlling themselves", etc. Again, not every woman by any means, but too many. So now I'm acutely aware of the fact that I'm a man and I'm truly not sure whether I hate being a man, hate society (which isn't really fixable in my lifetime), or maybe I just want to be a woman or nonbinary. I don't really know. I never cared about my gender or anyone else's growing up, and now I really do care but wish I didn't, or at least that I didn't have to. Gender essentialism wasn't even an idea in my head growing up, certainly it didn't exist, and now I don't know whether it exists or not. I feel as if an AFAB person would statistically be simultaneously better on speaking about this (likely spent their whole life with gender being brought up) and also worse (most of their gender opinions might be societally taught with very little room for wholly independent thought about the topic). I wish someone could just tell me resolutely with data whether it's a real thing or not. I will say I do distinctly remember being around 6 years old and our small town music teacher told me "that's not how boys cross their legs, you need to do it like this" and I hated her from then on bc I had never before been accosted for something based purely on the fact that I had a penis. I never got over how arbitrary and stupid she was to enforce that.

Ya wanna know what boils my blood about gender essentialism? The deeply-ingrained, centuries-old traditions in myth, legend and storytelling (mostly in the Western literary canon, but I digress) that associate "The Masculine" with strength and heroism, while "The Feminine" represents evil and weakness. We've all seen it, because this stuff goes back really, REALLY deep in Western culture- Pandora's Box. Adam and Lilith/Eve. Samson and Delilah. Decades upon DECADES of male movie-villains we KNOW are villains because of "queer-coded" effeminate mannerisms or visual signifiers. This isn't news. Bells should be ringing. A really obvious example would be the film-adaptation of "300..." our hero and villain are both men, but Leonidas Of Sparta is coded "Masculine" to be the good guy, while Emperor Xerxes Of Persia is coded "Feminine..." Leonidas is so macho, he's basically jellied testosterone squeezed into a man-shaped sausage-casing. But what is Xerxes like? He's preening, leering and mincing. He's syrupy and saccharine. He's touchy-feely, and loves his jewelry and pageantry and finery... and from the looks of his private pleasure-tent, he's Not Straight to say the least... hell, Zack Snyder even slipped in a scene of Leonidas gettin' it on with his queen Gorgo just to let ya know who wears the penis in this conflict. Eh, but that's Frank Miller and Greek mytho-history. You expect "Masculine Good, Feminine Evil" there. What's REALLY telling is how it shows up in "The Hunger Games," despite its lionization as a battle-standard of modern young-adult feminism. Our protagonist Katniss Everdeen isn't so much a "tomboy" as she is John Rambo in a sports-bra. She's so macho, she hates the cat and has to be TAUGHT to wear a dress and chew with her mouth closed! Of course, there's nothing inherently wrong with "Male Character, Now With Boobs" as a character-design template. But then, we have President Snow and the villains of the Capital... more queer-coding. More mincing. More preening. They gorge on wine and chocolate. They wear makeup and spray-tans and frilly costumes and dye their hair funny colors. They even take diuretic drugs to induce vomiting so they can gorge on MORE wine and chocolate! Snow himself is even described in the books as "smelling of blood and roses!" This is a franchise bending over backwards to be inspiring to women and young girls, and it STILL manages to code "Masculine" as heroic and "Feminine" as villainous. That's how insidious, residual and dug-in-deep this kind of cultural programming is! And this, friends, is what REALLY gets my dander right up... dipshits online have turned "Masculine Good, Feminine Evil" into a cottage-industry. Andrew Tate springs immediately to mind, as do white-supremacist polished turds like The Golden One and Bronze Age Pervert.

The image at 31:21 of the woman in pain missing parts of herself struck a deep cord in me. It's so beautiful and painful to look at.

I can't help but imagine if I'd had access to Shuzo Oshimi's work (especially Welcome Back Alice) when I was in high school, not wanting to be my AGAB but not be the "opposite" gender either... I think I wouldn't have felt so alone. Whatever decisions or discoveries Oshimi makes about his own gender, I hope he finds parts of himself that bring him joy. I hope he can embrace those parts of himself. I hope navigating himself and his world gets easier. I wish that for all of us.

hbomberguy directly shouted you out as a recommendation for queer youtubers in his newest video!!!!!! ;___; i'm so so glad more people will look into your channel, your videos are so fucking interesting and well done!!!!

It's amazing to me how you managed to put in such an easily-digestible format answers to questions that took me so long to even ask in life, let alone get an even a rough-draft of a conclusion to. Binary thinking is quick and efficient- and humans love categorizing things into little boxes and giving them labels, but it can be all too easy to re-read those labels later and try to refit our world to better match them or feel discomfort when we see the flaws in those labels. I loved your video on gender horror and Inside Mari too, and if this is the quality of content your channel is about, I'm honored to be a subscriber. What I'm trying to say is thank you.

I love your paraphrasing of "the only constant is transition"! 🧡🧡🧡

I just finished your essay on body horror, and now this one and I have to say.. I didn't expect to weep this morning. These are absolutely fantastic, and you've gained a new subscriber.

I love Shuzo Oshimi's works, really touches me deeply on the perception of one's self and also impress me how sincery he is on his works, he is one of my favorite authors along with Hideo Yamamoto, cant wait to see the how you explore it this video :D

As part of a plural system (someone with DID) I think I have to disagree that the conclusion of Inside Mari breaks the exploration of gender differences. Our male members do not feel like a girl at all. They literally had to have this experience of being in a girl's body and not knowing how to use it, so to speak. And not knowing how to behave as a girl, and not succeeding in it even when they figured it out. It just still feels icky to them. So when you say 'she was a girl this whole time', well, I'd say that following gender deconstructivism and the lived experience of DID, I would not agree. A male alter in a DID system can have 'lived' a life as a man in the headspace (the imaginative space) since childhood, only assimilating male rolemodels, and even imagining his body as that of a real man. Our male members have not internalised 'girlhood', not in thought, preferences, or even motor skills that you would think are part of 'muscle memory' (like putting on eyeliner!). It's complicated, haha. We appreciate your video!!

The only constant in life is transition, it's always about looking for a different way. I feel like one of the most interesting characteristics of people is that no matter how someone is, they must have adopted some (I would guess many or most) of their characteristics from people who are different from them; in this way everyone aligns with an internal concept for how they are internally now, while constantly looking for different ways to be in others, and transitioning towards an image that more closely resembles an idealized version of the self. Honestly loved the video, hope to see more in the future.

I'm not sure if I've ever been "kicked in the gender" before but like. Hey, first time for everything. Phenomenally thought provoking! Thanks for sharing.

This is such a good essay and dayum, you even listed all the papers. I love how horror media and specifically psychological horror can spark so much self-analysis and search for identity. I wish people would look at the world with more nuance generally, but this was great. Also love your voice!

The last thing I expected from this video was Jean Valjean: Werewolf Hunter

This Mangaka's work always makes me emotional. His writing is so human.

I love the work of Oshimi先生, so it was a really nice treat to find this video. I don't think I ever subconsciously noticed the lack of internal narration from the character's own mind, but it makes a LOT of sense to me. One of the things that drew me to these stories was how I was able to identify with characters, despite the fact that I never really feel connected with the characters in most other stories. I guess it was because the author left enough room for my mind to fill in the blanks, rather than creating a character that was too different from my own way of thinking (as most people/characters are)

honestly stumbling across you as a creator is one of the best things i’ve done this year. i love the works you’ve introduced me to and your videos, they feel well researched and like you actually care about what you talk about. thank you :)

look at all that beautiful citation in that video description

I vehemently disagree that the ending of Inside Mari ruins it. I am struggling to put this into words but i will try. As someone socialized as a girl/woman from birth no other piece of media has more poignantly displayed the specific horrors of growing up. Especially as a trans person; the disassociation with your body, viewing it through a presumed male perspective, and then sexualizing it from that perspective in order to cope (like "i am deeply uncomfortable living in my body but it has vaule to men as a sexual object so if i veiw it through that lense than its okay"). In order to survive in a fundamentally misogynistic world people perceived as girls and women already have to have a Double Consciousness; the you of yourself and the you that youre allowed to be and is safe. So for Mari the reality of living as a girl is so impossibly hard that it easier to break her mind entirely and just become what she think the male gaze is. Hope this makes sense

This was really really good and it made me think a lot. Id never heard of Shuzo Oshimi before until the other day when I watched one of supereyepatchwolf's videos about Jinji Ito that mentioned Inside Mari. This community seems pretty welcoming so idk I'll leave this over personal blurb here hoping maybe someone has felt similarly before. I'm a cis woman, but seemingly like Oshimi i have a really complicated relationship with gender. There is nothing more I want in the world than to be a woman. I have a lot of body dysphoria bc my PCOS creates certain issues which make me look more masculine. Plus I had a breast reduction surgery which only served to complicate my feelings on the whole issue. Using different pronouns or dressing differently doesnt relieve those feelings. I dress not exactly masculine I'd say androgynous maybe? But it's because I feel so unconfident in myself. I just don't look like the woman I wish I was. I love dresses, but the moment I put one on it just makes all the sharper parts of me stand out, so I don't bother. I get along with guys better than girls, so much so that most of my guy friends refer to me as "one of the guys". I hate it. It only reaffirms that the me I am can never be a good enough woman. The female friends I do have always refer to me as a tomboy, or treat me like I'm a guy. It makes me feel like a guy, not understanding other women. And I'm bisexual but I don't date men because I haven't been able to convince one to give me a shot. And I don't date women because I always get forced into a masculine role. It all only makes me feel worse and I find it's better to be alone than deal with that. I understand some of the way I am phrasing this is probably not the best. I'm still learning my way around how to best explain how I feel without invalidating others. To use Oshimi's example, it feels like even though I am a cis woman somebody made a mistake and put me in the male boat. And now the options are to simply suffer here or drown trying to swim to the female boat. I wish I could wake up and be in a woman's body, or to be like Kei and give up being a man. But I am in a woman's body, and there is no man to give up.

This deserves more views! Very informative and delivered in a clear and understandable way

I really needed something new to listen to at work and this really hit the spot. I can’t wait to see your other videos.

I really enjoyed how you presented your views and the editing. Also thank you for creating this video, i feel i gained a lot of awareness of topics from a cis stand point that I hadn't been thinking about (in-depth). The struggles with affirmation that someone who is cis is spoken about differently then someone who is trans maybe? Like for a trans person its clear and precise being called dysphoria. For a cis person however, its not called that even when it IS. Like you said the checklist society gives you in what makes you a man or woman. I really liked that part with Yui and Yo where you said she was just a means of affirming his own manhood. These are things cis people do that is affirming and fights against DYSPHORIA. Like how boys will be seen as "Losers" for not having a girlfriend when its not the fact of having a girlfriend that is the good thing. Its that you as a man "winning" and getting a girl to show that you are a MAN and if you can't do that you are lesser -- a loser. Anyway ill stop here I just finished the video and immediately wanted to comment to show my thanks and enjoyment of the video. Haven't really thought properly so my comment is messy sorry about that XD im trans and glad i found another queer channel doing interesting video essays, will be subscribing hope you do more content like this. Amazing video! :D

I really love flowers of evil and I enjoyed this analysis on his body of work! Thank you for your time

Let me just say that I found your channel recently and I've come to adore every single one of your videos. They come from such a place of love and understanding. I haven't been able to stop thinking about this one in particular. It helped put into words the feelings that I have been struggling with my whole life, and I sincerely thank you for that. Every now and then I keep thinking that if I had only been born a woman I could actually be me without being scared. It's a notion that I've entertained, yet the impulse to transition has never been strong enough for me to do it or even consider it seriously. I don't suffer from body dysphoria either. I believe I'm happy being born how I was. This video made me realize that I do not hate being a "man". But all of the societal expectations imposed on me simply because I was born with a penis. It's almost liberating being able to put that feeling into a coherent sentence after so long.

this is one of those videos that make me rethink my perspective on life, especially after watching ceicocat’s video about inside mari. thank you

I still think Oshimi Shuzo needs to get force femmed for their own good, if only for a week. I really enjoyed all of Shuzo's works that I read, the psychology just drips from the page in the depictions of the characters. And I really enjoyed this video of yours. But I have to be curious about your thoughts and feelings towards The Self Harm Chapter of Welcome Home, Alice, if only for the brutality of it and it being the lowest point Yo reaches.

The timing for that Shopenhaurer quote was incredible.

another fantastic video, thank you for your hard work! i hadn't realised inside mari was by the same author as aku no hana somehow, i had noticed the themes of gender and societal expectations in his works but didn't know the breadth of it until this video. it's really nice seeing oshimi's ideas and thoughts on gender changing over time, i really admire him taking the time to mull over the topic as much as he has!

Thank you for this beautiful video essay. I feel less alone

Thank you for making this

There’s no bigger indictment of the RU-vid recommendation system that I, an Oshimi devotee, was somehow never shown your videos. Fortunately hbomberguy stepped in where RU-vid failed. Solid video. The Okaeri Alice afterwords and basically all of Inside Mari demonstrate how autobiographical these stories are in nature. Like you say, Oshimi is a middle-aged married father, so perhaps through his art he’s trying to reckon with an early development that he never saw through. I’m a cis guy so I can’t claim personal experience here, but those Okaeri Alice afterwords struck me like the exact thoughts of someone early on in the transitioning process. At the risk of coming off as racially or nationalistically essentialist in a video decrying gender essentialism, I must say I’ve always struggled w/ Okaeri Alice as an LGBT work and wonder how much of that owes to Japan’s lagging in social progressivism. The story frames Mitani as an antagonist and Kei as a quasi-positive force on Yo’s development, yet Kei outright SAs Yo twice and is never critiqued for it since Yo ends up liking it. Moreover the characters never grapple with their identities in LGBT terms - Yo never wonders if his feelings for Kei make him gay or bi, and Kei’s whole self-image is left for fans to fiercely debate whether he’s trans or NB or male/female (even which pronouns to use aren’t clear - your reasoning for they/them is sound but I stick with he/his since Kei uses the masculine “boku” and says at one point he “isn’t a woman”). Perhaps Japanese LGBT subculture is less focused on these kinds of terms, or maybe the story was never about sexual orientation and only the masculine-feminine gender identity spectrum. I wish there were more accessible sources on the state of LGBT issues/legality/pop culture rep in Japan to get a better sense of how Oshimi fits in. (Perhaps it’s also true that Oshimi, for as transgressive an artist as he is, isn’t very progressive…his troubled depiction of women is a pretty resonant theme throughout his work. His early stuff like Devil Ecstasy and Yuutai Nova just come off as edgy nowadays. Even some of his newer works like Miss Kusakabe and Lily depict women in abused, frankly pornographic manners lacking in any thematic purpose…could be revealing of his feelings on matters not directly tied to his own identity, idk.) What else…I notice you mention his reputation for downer endings. I’ve read all his manga minus his most obscure of early works, and while he consistently writes dark and challenging stories, I can’t think of any outright downer endings. At worst (Inside Mari, Chi no Wadachi) they’re bittersweet, most typically (Okaeri Alice, Happiness, Aku no Hana, Drifting Net Cafe) they’re outright happy. Maybe your choice of the word “reputation” (i.e. a false one) was deliberate! Aw FUCK I just got to the part where you say he announced his retirement following Okaeri Alice and Chi no Wadachi. I had never seen this…my disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined. Do you have a link to this interview? Let’s hope he just needs a break and will come back, since he’s pretty young and surely has a lot left in the tank. His absence would be an immense loss for the medium. Onto the Body Horror vid! Can’t wait to see what else is in store.

Wow!! The amount of research done in this video makes me so happy and this was all so well done. Great work :]

I'm pretty surprised that your videos have so few views. I'm loving your long form vídeo essays

I was worried I was gunna lose track of your channel, but i'm glad I found it again so i could subscribe

Why aren’t more people liking this? I found this video to be incredibly insightful

I absolutely love Welcome Back Alice. Reading it felt voyeuristic, yet simultaneously like looking into a mirror. I don't think any other author has described my experiences and desires as accurately as Shuzo Oshimi. I'm currently struggling with a lot of internalized transphobia, and reading WBA was very soothing in the sense of taking myself out of the conception of gender. It feels like the ultimate form of self actualization, ascending beyond "man" or "woman". As much as I wish Kei would be the trans-femme icon I crave, I love the uncompromising self-love they represent for me (specifically at the end of the manga).

Wow, that was an incredible video. As someone who has been struggling with their gender and ideas if what is masculine and feminine within me, i took a lot from this video. This is the first time ive come across your channel and i cant wait to work through the rest of your work.

This is a great video! Thanks for making it. Very well done!

I feel that the Eastern concepts of Yin and Yang are more nuanced and a better fit than gender essentialism. So there's a certain comfort in knowing that even Eastern artists can struggle with this issue as well. It does suggest that there is sometthing universal in the longing to conform. Just as a person is not "Yin" or "Yang", they are "more Yin" or "more Yang", a person is not a "man" or a "woman" they are more masculine or more feminine. There are men who are more feminine and women who are more masculine and unless you are a gender essentialist that is okay. I have grown up believing that, and it has made me happy with my gender because I choose what being a man means to me. I reject the idea of "being manly' because I don't care what society thinks "manly" is supposed to be. I haven't yet decided if that is the definition of "genderqueer" or not. Probably not, but I'd rather just think of myself as a cis man who can understand anyway.

Here from Hbomb's video, I really enjoy listening to your presentation style, subbed!

I don’t know why but the lack of exploration of nonhetero sexuality in these works makes me sad. Like, I'm a cis gay man and I suppose that may influence my relationship to gender but it truly seems like he gives way too much stock to sex with women in the defining traits of manhood, to an even greater degree than I even see on Western media. I don’t give much thought about manhood but it seems like he could explore in himself asexual or even gay possibilities, at the very least talk to people with asexual, gay or generally queer experiences as it may help his soul searching. However I'm aware that there is cultural distinction between Japan and our Internet culture

I literally just skipped and saved another video because it got me interested in “inside Mari” and now you’re talking about it. Guess I’ll go read it

Fuck yeah, I’m happy to see more video essays from you!

I personally enjoyed the addition that Maris experience was just a dissociative episode . Reading Inside Mari, as a trans man , i didnt necessarily interpret Mari as trans or not trans. but I did relate to her dissociation from her made up persona. How womanhood felt like a performance. How gender felt like a performance. How her persona , Mari , felt like a performance that she kept up with and put up on a pedestal. For society. How uncomfortable it felt to perform as Mari in the beginning but how she was good and skilled at her performance of That role. How she found her true self, Komori, disgusting and revolting and how she could never measure up to her idealized self , Mari, she was performing for the world .

i think it's vital to my reading that Mari is into women. she projects her revulsion with her own attraction to women onto isao, and taking his persona as an introject allows her to distance that attraction from herself while still being present in those feelings and getting to do the things she wishes she could do. while isao's expression of his attraction to women is considered perverse (and thus relatable for Mari), it is fundamentally acceptable in a way mari does not see her own attraction as being--isao could grow up and date a woman his age and stop reading hentai, but mari feels like she cant stop being a woman who is attracted to women. Her lesbianism makes her essentially not a woman, a failure at being a woman, because a woman is a person who will marry a man. And i think that she could just forget all the femininity she had learned and then presume herself a man speaks a lot to how learned all those behaviors are. honestly i think theres a lot of potential in a transmasculine read of mari too, and i related a lot on that level. shes at this point in her life where she feels so boxed in by her mother and friends expectations of who she is, and what does she fantasize about being to escape that? some guy. she couldve fantasized about being some super feminine heterosexual woman, but she chooses a random guy that she related to deeply. and ultimately being just some guy was a more attainable goal than being a heterosexual woman for mari

I really like your style of video essay. The visuals are nice and minimalistic. Its refreshing when so many people just try to become contra clones

Wow I relate so much to the things you included from Oshimi. Where can I find his work to read? I've been feeling a need to explore my gender exploration in my art instead of just in my head anymore. Thank you for this ❤

I watch these videos when I finish my sociology class and it’s amazing

Yes, another video about this lets goooo

Amazing video, thank youtube algorithm for this one ❤

I'm gonna return to this when i finish the series of Oshimi that i haven't yet :)

Thank you for making this vid and recc'ing White Note Book I'll get to reading it!

i really love this video and everything it had to offer, it gave me a lot of new perspectives and a desire to create works like this. that said, as an intersex person myself, when referring to intersex people (people who's chromosomes, gonads, natural hormones and/or genitals don't align with the social bimodal framework of sex) use variation rather than condition. we aren't illnesses

thank you for your videos! they are pretty great and i will be saving them in my little playlist for "if i were to explain gender how would i do it with videos" :3

i am transmasc nonbinary and this really resonated with me. thank you

this is a great video. i think alot of people could learn something from this.

I attend a gender diverse support group and wow... a few weeks ago I said that I felt like "I missed the boat" when it came to my chance to see myself as a woman. That I did not get to have the experiences of growing up as a girl and becoming a woman. I have since "abandoned ship" of that boat of masculinity because it was taking me further and further from where I wanted to be. I am now adrift, floating through life as a (feminine aspiring) non-binary person. Time and time again I find myself connecting to the shared thoughts of Shuzo Oshimi.

"Nature doesn't create binaries. It creates spectrums." I love that line! 💚

Great video thank you

Amazing video as always, I don't usually comment on RU-vid but I wanted to thank you for introducing me to welcome back alice, which ultimately played a big part in me realising I'm non-binary, so thank you and keep up the good work, lots of love ❤

This and the Queer Horror video are in my forever watch list for incredible gender revelations and re-examining gender assumptions even though I've been out for several years now

oh do i LOOOOOOVE Shuzo Oshimi

Well well well, sometimes the algorithm is right on spot. Great work on the video, has given me a lot to think and something different to read as well :)

i started reading he's stuff and it one of the most unique stuff i read, also how he played with the horror genre is much more diferent. for example, the shining is mostly for making you fell fear and dread and less of a happy conclusion. but the flower of evil, Even blood on the track has really mess up stuff that make you fell nervous of our existence and are own self, but with some confort and mayby an understanding of dark nature. it's surprisingly it not just scary or anxious thing i read but also most beautiful stuff underneath it.

ohmigosh a queer take on one of my favorite mangaka, ilysm!

I've been staring at the event horizon of taking action about my dysphoria for nearly a year since I let myself acknowledge it. It's terrifying and videos like this and the body horror one make me feel less alone in these anxieties and panics I'm stuck swirling in.

This was another beautiful essay(? I guess, whatever im gonna call it that) it's always incredible to see analysis of topics relating to gender because it hits so hard for me as a pretty young trans girl who has yet to fully start her transition. Thanks, and I hope you continue to enjoy making this type of content for a while because it's the type of content that's pretty melancholy in tone but also like that's a good thing (catharsis I guess). Have an amazing day, and I hope you get to make more amazing and insightful analysis.

Hey I wanna say that your analysis and overall path of reasoning fucking rocks. The ability to connect all these complex ideas along with an analysis of 3 different stories and tie them to together with a strong conclusion is amazing. And with the topic of gender identity, I can strongly agree with your hot take. While queer people have the experience of going through a troubled relationship with their gender, a lack of focus on the people who don’t go through that is damaging. Also the idea of a cultural checklist, that comes with assigned gender male, that pushes a relationship with women rather than a healthy connection, was really eye opening. But I love this video and I plan to check out the rest of your channel.

Flowers of Evil is the most terrifying Manga/Anime I've read/watched. It's insanely good.

amazing work

haha I just saw another video of yours and commented that I wished you talked more about 'aku no hana' and here you did!! interesting analysis of Kasuga btw I agree that everyone had a different takeaway from Oshimi's works esp Flowers of Evil

A great video! I do have to say I liked the plot summaries but at the same time I can't say it felt like they were missing. This felt complete as is. I look forward to the possible white notebook video

great video again

all i can say is, i *really* resonated a lot with yohei, especially towards the end where he attempts to self-mutilate prior to starting to medically transition, my sexuality felt like hell, i abused pornography a ton to cope with the intense dysphoria (that i wasnt even aware of then haha) and only once i had been on hormones for a couple weeks and started to notice that my libido had fully flatlined was the time i felt comfortable in my own skin i dont really know where im going with this, but seeing how much oshimi shuzo struggles with sexuality and identity, i cant help but share my own struggles that feel SO similar to what is conveyed through the text, as a transgender woman myself really hope shuzo gets to figure stuff out for himself (no matter what direction), i wish him all the best great video by the way ajsakldjasdk

RICKI THIS MODEL IS SO CUTE also the video was good too

Your video had put me in a good mood,

haven't watched yet ( I will! ) But I actually just recently began an essay on gender in shuzo oshimi's works

This is going to be my first birthday watch today lol.

Well, it was announced a few days ago that Oshimi will start a new work named Chii-chan in 2024 (it's a spin-off of a horror movie)

Nature does not create spectrums. Humanity creates spectrums. Nature creates a network of disparate and connected traits of varying degrees. Humans and Society create the classifications of traits as well as the binaries that they fit into. Fundamentally there is no binary, but if you follow that logic to its genuine conclusion there is no spectrum either, because the classification of whether a trait pushes you either way along the spectrum are arbitrary and human made as well. Completely subject to the civilization, country, society, culture, community, household and the individual. If the binary is problematic because its utility is undermined by the myriad of exceptions and inconsistencies in terms of the classifications of people, creating oppressive categories based on essential traits, I don't think a spectrum fundamentally addresses the issue. The binary isn't just a problem because of lack of mobility between the binaries, it's a problem because those binaries were completely destructive and oppressive on the face of it. I just don't see how people, even trans people, can just stop there.

You didnt mention it but Blood on the Tracks reverses the whole overprotective dad trope with a toxic mom son relationship exposing how wild it is for ANY parent to act like that.

idk what youtube did with the mighty algorythm but whatever it was it led me to such interesting creators like you.

Carl Jung came up with 3 concepts that apply to gender: The shadow, the collection of all of our traits that we repress, whether they are good or bad; The anima, the collection of the desires and attributes of a man's personality that are deemed by society to be too feminine for men to express; and the animus, the collection of the desires and attributes of a woman's personality that are deemed by society to be too masculine for women to express. Since the anima and animus are repressed, they end up being part of the shadow, along with all the other things we repress. The problem with the shadow is that these parts of ourselves constantly struggle to be expressed, and we constantly struggle to deny and suppress them; when the pressure gets too great, they can escape and be expressed, often with destructive consequences. Jung wrote that men and women must explore their anima and animus in order to achieve a more balanced and integrated personality. What is considered masculine and feminine varies from culture to culture (they are literally a cultural construct), but humans are born with personality traits that exist on a spectrum, and the personality traits we are born with do not always (or rarely) line up with what our culture says we should or shouldn't have. It was bad enough when we had to deal with the expectations of our family or village, but at least neighbors and family members are usually willing to accept a person's eccentricities. Now we have the internet, and a video camera in everybody's pocket ready to record us, and we compare ourselves daily to people we don't know. We are bombarded with messages of how men and women should and shouldn't be, and and the pressure to conform with societal expectations can leave us feeling suffocated when we have to push too much of ourselves into the shadow.

As a non-binary high school junior, the feeling of people being put into gender boxes is still so prevalent in my environments. It feels really good to see a video like yours here, one that has both introduced me to a relatable story and shown light on insight I didn’t even think about myself. Heh, it’s easy to not stop and think, is it? Anyways, I did watch to the end, and I felt obligated to comment something, because I really appreciated this, as well as the body horror video! Thank you, I’ll tune in to your stuff again in the future :3