"You westerners" And yet you "frequent" japan, not live there, don't think I missed that distinction. If you weren't raised there, or don't live there full time now, your connection to that culture is a lot weaker than the supreme godlike authority you are presenting it as. I'm also going to guess when you talk about chatting with Locals, you're not talking specifically about queer communities, who would know better what the actual shape of queer culture and politics in Japan is than Hiroshi at the local Izakaya. So if you are someone with enough wealth to regularly travel to Japan without living there, no matter where you originally hail from, that does not rule out you being an Orientalist.
A story about a queer person and how they relate to the world is in some way about queerness in general, you claiming that a single queer person exists in isolation is fucking ridiculous when you yourself use LGBTQ, a term used to describe the Community we have with each other, even between different types of queer people. Hell, one of the supporting character's in this story, (the Senpai) is providing emotional support as an elder gay to the closeted gay, that is literally queer people being in community with each other, it also has a possibly gay, possibly bisexual character processing what she wants her relationship to be to be with the Main Lesbian so it does in fact involve more than one, singular isolated lesbian, you're just factually wrong.
I would never claim that the CoD games are anti-war... they are pro-war, this was a bad example for you to pick, because the switch to the Modern Warfare era and the consequent rise in popularity was a DIRECT response to 911 and the war on terror, it was a revenge fantasy for a wounded America against both the middle east and old enemies.
Lastly, no-one is claiming that this manga is talking directly about gay men or trans people, but there are some shared experiences that this story does talk about that are relevant to Lesbians AND Trans people AND gay men, and others besides, the fear of being rejected, the uncertainty of what you even are, trying to sacrifice your happiness to not inconvenience others, these are all incredibly common experiences in both queer stories and real-life lived experiences, so you are again, factually wrong when you say this story doesn't have queer themes.
Oh and by the way... when you say "transgenders" and not "trans people" you are engaging in the same kind of casually dehumanising rhetoric that is often used to describe People of Colour or Jewish people, removing "people" from that descriptor is no accident in the case of where you got that lingo from, whether that low-key disdain was your intent or not, it is definitely something you inherited from somewhere, and I suspect it is a symptom of the queerphobia you are trying (and failing) to disguise as something more "politically neutral".
this is what orientalist means: An "orientalist" is a person who studies the languages, cultures, history, or other aspects of the Orient, which traditionally refers to the regions of East and Southeast Asia, and sometimes also includes the Middle East and North Africa.
i copy pasted that from google.
by that definition, i don't fall into that category because i'm asian / middle eastern.
also, i specifically am interested in japan, japanese culture and how they handle day to day things differently compared to us.
they don't make grand assumptions and put their own ideas as factual objective truth like you do.
they don't put everything into a term or group everything by a certain definition like you do.
they don't make a lesbian lovestory and call it something else like you do.
they don't create something and alter their viewpoint to please other/ all groups that may or may not be involved like you do.
when i say locals, i mean locals.
i travel to different cities, i visit different places, it's always random, and my encounters are also random, but the people i meet and talk to, are people from those cities usually, so locals.
don't get me wrong, i don't like the LGBTQ community.
or rather, the people who have been supporting each other or have been struggling with their sexuality that veered from what society views as normal, lesbians and homosexuals, have been fighting for acceptance for such a long time.
many out there are still struggling just coming to terms with it, with themselves.
i dislike this shoehorning of multiple, vastly different groups into one unit.
so yeah, for me, drag queens and nonbinaries and transgenders are not the same as lesbians and gays, that fight is an entirely different one, and so is the struggle.
stop grouping them together and diminishing their significance, stop assuming so many things about people you don't know, and stop forcing your western values on the rest of the world.
i enjoy reading your posts in yuri manga but this was a very poor showcase.