Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) themes have featured in anime and manga since at least the 1950s, when Osamu Tezuka's manga Princess Knight began serialization. Outside Japan, anime generally refers to a specific Japanese-style of animation, but the word anime is used by the Japanese themselves to broadly describe all forms of animated media there. According to Harry Benshoff and Sean Griffin, the fluid state of animation allows the flexibility of animated characters to perform multiple roles at once. Manga genres that focus on same-sex intimacy and relationships resulted from fan work that depicted relationships between two same-sex characters. This includes characters who express their gender and sexuality outside of hetero-normative boundaries. There are also multiple sub genres that target specific consumers and themes: yaoi, yuri, shoujo-ai, shonen-ai, bara, etc. LGBT-related manga found its origins from fans who created an "alternative universe" in which they paired their favorite characters together. Many of the earliest works that contained LGBT themes were found in works by dōjinshi, specifically written content outside the regular industry. The rise of yaoi and yuri was also slowed due to censorship laws in Japan that make it extremely hard for Japanese manga artists ("mangakas") and others to create work that is LGBTQ themed. Anime that contained LGBTQ content was changed to meet international standards. However, publishing companies continued to expand their repertoire to include yuri and yaoi, and conventions were created to form a community and culture for fans of this work.
History
Pre-1960s Scholars and manga artists generally agree that Osamu Tezuka greatly influenced manga. In Tezuka's work, Princess Knight, which began in 1953, the main character fluctuates between feminine and masculine identities. Sapphire, the main character of Princess Knight, was born female but was raised as a male to prevent the antagonist, Duke Durlamin, from inheriting the throne. Yuricon founder Erica Friedman stated that Sapphire had the hearts of a boy and a girl and that her character created the "Yuri trope of the Girl Prince." Tezuka was inspired by Takarazuka Revue, a Japanese all-female musical troupe that performs both feminine and masculine roles. Osamu Tezuka grew up in Takarazuka where the troupe is based. Some, like Friedman, stated that Nobuko Yoshiya's 1919 story, Yaneura no Nishojo, also known as Two Virgins in the Attic, was one of the earliest yuri works. She argued that the story established common tropes "used in Japanese girls' literature", including in Class S fiction, and influenced anime like Cream Lemon, Strawberry Panic, and Maria Watches Over Us in later years. Friedman also points to Otome no Minato in 1938, describing it as a Class S relationship novel and "proto-yuri."
1960s–today Media and related materials depicting young men in same-sex relationships started to materialize in the 1970s. These stories were primarily created and consumed by adolescent girls and women reading shoujo genre tales. Over time work that focused primarily on male to male intimacy was referred to as "shonen-ai", "yaoi" and "boy's love" (BL).
In the 1960s, a group of women mangaka called the Magnificent 24 or the Year 24 group heavily influenced the genre of shoujo manga by introducing philosophical and radical ideas, including themes focusing on gender and sexuality. The Magnificent 24 group referred to women mangaka who were born in the Year 24 Shōwa (1949) according to numerous scholars, and the exact membership is not defined. A few artists who were associated this group were Moto Hagio, Yumiko Ōshima and Keiko Takemiya. The mangaka in this period transformed the writing and drawing style within the genre, thereby creating a space for women artists in manga. The artists broadened the content of shoujo manga, adding science fiction, historical, and dramatic elements that changed how readers consumed the genre. Works from these groups contained the earliest examples of same-sex intimacy and relationships found in manga. Ryoko Yamagishi's Shiroi Heya no Futari (白い部屋のふたり) was credited as the first manga to portray a lesbian couple. Conversely, Keiko Takemiya's work, In the Sunroom (サンルームにて) is said to depict the first male-to-male kiss in shojo manga. The popularity of Year 24's works spurred interest in male-male romance narratives from the 1960s onward. Yuricon founder Erica Friedman would later say that "Shiroi Heya no Futari" was the "first" yuri manga, drawing from many conventions of same-sex romance and girls' literature created or used by Yoshiya Nobuko, and visually confied "yuri tropes," with a broad influence on other works in later years, such as Citrus.
Amateurs as well as professional manga artists shared their works in a public hall called Comic Market (コミックマーケット Komikku Māketto), a channel for distributing and sharing work outside publisher restrictions. The market primarily focused on buying and selling of doujinshi (self-published works), and in its early years some artists from the shoujo circle displayed work containing fictionalized same-sex relationships between their favorite musicians.
On September 25, 1970, Cleopatra, an anime fantasy film directed by Osamu Tezuka and Eiichi Yamamoto, was released. The film would feature various LGBTQ characters: Apollodoria, who is attracted to Cleopatra, and Octavian, who is attracted to a man named Ionius. Tezuka had previously written the Princess Knight manga, while Yamamoto had previously directed Astro Boy. Tezuka would later work on the anime based on the Princess Knight manga he had written. Later in the 1970s, Magio Moto would draw Heart of Thomas, which contained homosexual elements. This would be followed by Cutey Honey, which began as manga, with same-sex symbolism morphing into "sexually suggestive signals" with a female warrior who does not need men, and creating a "lesbian love story" that evolved and "survived over decades."
From September 1979 to September 1980, Rose of Versailles, directed by Tadao Nagahama (episodes 1–18), and Osamu Dezaki (episodes 19–40), aired on Nippon TV. The manga, which ran from 1972 to 1973, was famous for having the first "bed scene" in manga that was depicted by a woman, which has had a "profound impact" on female readers, including fan criticism of the adaptation of this scene to the anime. Thorn's paper was delivered at the Japan Anthropology Workshop at the University of Melbourne, Australia on July 10, 1997. Yukari Fujimoto has said that "for us junior and senior high school girls at that time, our concept of sex was fixed by that manga". The anime series earned high popularity on Japanese television and later in other parts of the world. Influenced by Princess Knight, which aired on Fuji TV from 1967 to 1968, In the anime, Princess Sapphire, would be introduced as a genderqueer character. She would be raised as a boy by their father since women are not eligible to inherit the throne, but would be born with both a male and female heart, and later fall in love with and marry Prince Frank. CBR would praise the anime for achieving the "cinematic extravagance and form that the lavish former Queen of France would approve of." This anime would also influence Revolutionary Girl Utena and Sailor Moon as noted by Yuricon founder Erica Friedman.
In the 1980s the term yaoi was primarily used to describe homoerotic works. The word is a shortening of "yama nashi ochi nashi imi nashi," or "no climax, no ending, no meaning" and was primarily focused on male-to-male relationships between two favorite characters. It is now an umbrella term in Japan that describes male to male homoeroticism.
Conversely, the term yuri described Japanese works featuring female-to-female intimacy. The actual term yuri is translated to "lily" which was symbolized as spiritual beauty and sexual purity. Yuri was first used to describe female-to-female intimacy by one of Japan's first gay magazines, Barazoku. The magazine featured a regular column called Yurizoku no heya (Room for the lily tribe) to address lesbian readership. Within the artist circles, the term Yurizoku was shortened to yuri to describe female to female intimacy. One series in the 1980s which featured yuri themes was a manga named Paros no Ken, focusing on a girl prince character who rejects romantic advances by men and loves a serving girl named Fiona, and explores same-sex relationships between women as a result.
In 1995, Rica 'tte Kanji!?, a Japanese yuri manga series, written and illustrated by Rica Takashima, was first serialized in the manga magazine Phryne, then in Anise in 1996, and licensed for English release by ALC Publishing, with the first volume released in June 2003. Takashima told Yuricon founder Erica Friedman that it was "lesbian-themed," while Friedman described the series as "a story about a young lesbian's life", it was her first publishing job, she made a lot of mistakes, and noted that the series also covers lesbian bar culture in Japan too. She also said in another interview that she created the series to have a yuri manga that was happy and about everyday life, unlike most yuri of the time, which typically ended in tragedy or were in a sci-fi setting.
During the 1990s, there would be series with predatory and possessive lesbians, like in the manga Futtemo Harettemo, and those with characters which were either bisexual or pansexual like Angel Sanctuary. Friedman also asserted that the boy's love market in the U.S. was built upon series like Gravitation, which began with fan subtitling. In 1991, the OVA series of Bubblegum Crisis would end, with her motorcycle serving as a symbol, in part, of how "she bonds with another woman."
In the late 1990s, the light novel series, Maria Watches Over Us would begin. It has later iteractions over the years, with light novel and manga series, an anime adaptation from 2003 to 2009, and live-action film. Although the popular series has roots in Class S, is genre-defining, and an enclosed "women's world," yuri expert Erica Friedman noted it is only "yuri-ish" with the protagonists only in relationships with platonic romance. Even so, this series was said to introduce an "entire generation of global yuri fans" to specific sisterly bonds between women, and influenced series with some similar themes such as Strawberry Panic! and Kannazuki no Miko. Friedman would describe Strawberry Panic!, which began as a light novel, then a manga, with anime and video game adaptations in the 2000s, as aimed at male audiences, with yuri stereotypes, and a "yuri parody" made for the male gaze, leading to an influence of fans looking for fan service in their yuri stories. She would further describe Kannazuki no Miko as "insanely popular" but based upon a comic made for men "that used Yuri as a fetish" while outwardly yuri and note that Pieta, which ran from 1998 to 199, would not depict a yuri relationship as stable or whole.
In Azumanga Daioh: The Animation premiered in April 2002. A storyboarder and episode director for Cardcaptor Sakura, Shigehito Takayanagi, would later be a storyboarder for the series. The series would feature Kaorin, who is implied to be a closeted lesbian.Azuma, Kiyohiko (July 2009). Azumanga Daioh: Supplementary Lessons. Monthly Shōnen Sunday (in Japanese). 3. Japan: Shogakukan. p. 119. Erica Friedman would later describe Kaorin as a "side character with an unrequited and unstated crush on a character of the same sex.". Takayanagi would also later direct Kanamemo. The latter series would have strong yuri overtones, and would be described as a romance between two openly lesbian protagonists: Yuuki Minami and Yume Kitaoka.