You don’t have to get very far in any shounen-ai anime before there’s a scene of sexual assault. In every one, the seme character has physically pinned the uke against something and is forcing themselves upon them. Oftentimes this results in a scene of violence that’s played off as a gag, and almost always the assaulted character flees the situation, only to come back the very next episode.Įven if the character is traumatized by the experience, other characters offer no support. In Love Stage, Izumi’s own friends and family brush off his assault because nothing actually happened, and they liken the experience of Izumi being forcibly stripped and overpowered as “no worse than a mosquito bite” which is both ludicrous and infuriating. Look, if your romance story starts with attempted rape… you’re telling a very shitty love story.
It’s painful to watch a character describe the man who assaulted him as his true love, and it sets an incredibly bad example for impressionable gay youth. It sends the message that people should go back to their abusers, and that if the victim loves the abuser enough, then the abuse will be replaced by love.
