#favorite bl male friendship duo

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Why do you think the writers of the Tsurune anime decided to tone down masamina and outright cut out kaisei while pushing for sei/mina instead? It's just so baffling to me why they would alter the canon content from the novels so much. Like, what was even the point?

I’ve answered this question quite a few times before, but I’m not sure if I’ve ever made the point entirely clear, so here we go one last time. Sorry that it turned out so long.

So, in novels and manga or any written medium, creators normally have more freedom to do what they want, but when it comes to TV series, animators have been developing the habit of toning down whatever they can. Most of them have this conviction that the viewers only want to watch calm and relaxing stuff nowadays. Other than this, we get adaptations of popular works that basically exist to promote the source material, most of which rush up towards the end like crazy. It does seem like the Japanese audience has an obsession with comfort animes now, since life in Japan gets more and more stressful with each passing year, but it’s not like they’ve abandoned other genres. This general belief that creators should water down the contents however they can is pretty much destroying the industry, and it’s probably what the animators of Tsurune had in mind when changing the novel’s events into a much less dramatic versions or just cutting them off. That’s issue number 1 with the anime.

Issue number 2 is that animators of adaptations tend to ignore the reader demographic in favor of making the series neutral to please all audiences lately. But that’s only when the majority of the readers are women and girls. If it’s guys, you’d rarely see alterations. It feels like the general conception is that making the contents less “cringy” for men means more people will be watching it and having a positive opinion. It seems to completely slip the staff’s minds that the fans they disappoint mostly won’t feel willing to buy the DVDs or merchandise. This is where most of these adaptations fall flat, by the way. It’s kind of really obvious to me that these series are more prone to succeeding if the studios animate what the readers fell in love with, because the originals are popular for a reason, and it’s that people liked them the way they were. I think it’s only the expected when readers are disappointed not to see animes live up to the expectations, and that whoever picks the source material will feel the difference as well. Still, if the anime isn’t a BL, there’s this unsaid rule that you can’t show too much gay between male characters unless you have an excuse for it. Normally, nakama power and rivalry is what does the trick. I don’t think I need to mention that this is the standard in sports animes.

In the Tsurune novel, most of the gay doesn’t have an excuse. Of course, it’s not officially gay unless canon states it, but the books not only don’t give any justification for it, they get rid of possible justifications, so while you can’t say it’s not fanservice, you can’t label it as just fanservice, either. For a studio that banks off fanservice like KyoAni, that’s a problem, especially since the novel is packed with heavy scenes and even heavier quotes.

I mean, in Masaki and Minato’s case, they don’t have the nakama power or rivalry elements, so one possible excuse for them being so close would be that they’re master and disciple. But Minato makes it clear quite early in the story that Masaki doesn’t have to be his master because just having Masaki’s company is enough for him, and all in all, the two of them have a much more affectionate relationship than the other teacher-student ones from the books. Another excuse would be the found family dynamics, but Masaki already shares that with Kaito, who canonically sees Masaki as the older brother he never had, and their relationship is unlike Masaki and Minato’s as well. Kaito also has a monologue in volume 2 about Masaki treating Minato differently from everyone else in the club, and the way he describes it denotes that Minato is Masaki’s favorite, and that Masaki doesn’t bother hiding it. Just as a cherry on top, Minato often loses his rationality when it comes to Masaki despite being a serious kid, and he’s very verbal about wanting to monopolize Masaki. Add fate to the mix and you have the perfect recipe for anything except an ordinary mentor-pupil relationship.

As for Kaito and Seiya, there was a lot going on between them since the beginning, but the nakama power excuse only starts applying late in volume 1, because they didn’t get along very well at first. And even then the nakama stuff hardly applies to their interactions, where Seiya often acts like Kaito has a thing for him, for no reason other than Kaito’s reactions being amusing. Their relationship also does some big strides in the middle of volume 1, and Seiya literally migrates to Kaito’s side at some point. They don’t seem to have a friendship as strong as the one between Seiya, Minato and Ryouhei, but it’s Kaito who Seiya interacts with the most in volume 2 and he’s also the one that Seiya leans on whenever he needs any sort of assistance. There’s other unexplainable things here and there, such as Seiya taking a peek at Kaito’s sleeping face when it’s just the two of them in the room, or him implying that Kaito is jealous of the motherly attention he gives Minato. It goes on as far as the novel does. There’s literally no scene with the two of them that doesn’t make it look like Kaito is really into Seiya and that Seiya owns his ass but he’s the last one to know.

Back to the main point, it’s really hard to animate all of this without giving people “ideas”. For KyoAni, any gay exists ultimately for the sake of fetishization, and they often follow the “ship whatever you want, even yourself with the characters” model. If being gay is canonically a character trait in the original, it’s out (Violet Evergarden is probably the best example of that one), and if the gay can’t be interpreted as something else, it’s either out or downplayed. In Seiya and Minato’s case, that’s perfectly feasible. Not only are they best friends, they also have a familial relationship where Seiya treats Minato like a son. Minato has sworn eternal friendship to Seiya in the novel, and both he and Kaito describe Seiya as something like a helicopter parent. There’s more than enough counter-argument to remind the viewers that, whatever happens between Minato and Seiya, it’s all a product of their childhood friend bond. Anyone is free to interpret it differently in fanon, but the viewers (at least the Japanese ones) are ultimately aware that the anime is in its “safe zone”, portraying a friendship. Nobody on the Japanese side of the fandom actually believed that there was romance going on in it. On the other hand, if you search in Japanese for people’s impressions of MasaMina, you’ll notice people often saying that the novel makes you wonder if Minato and Masaki aren’t actually dating, or if Minato doesn’t have a puppy crush on Masaki, at the very least. Basically, everyone seems to agree that what goes on between those two is hard to define, but whatever it is, there’s this very particular, “special” air about them that differs from the rest of the characters, which normally manifests when they’re alone together.

As you can tell, this overall view is the opposite of the animators’ ideal. If the novel had been animated the way it is, it would’ve probably felt like a BL for the people watching. Not only does it come with practically set ships, it also doesn’t give much space for the proverbial “ship even yourself with the characters” option. To put it bluntly, the animation went through those changes so that it could fit the mold. It gave us SeiMina and even some NanaKai (the latter being honestly disturbing, since they’re cousins), while either toning down or erasing the rest of the duo and trio interactions. It made Minato’s accident with his mom actually seem like Seiya’s fault and didn’t really take the burden off his shoulders but instead swept it under the rug. It also made Masaki seem like a two-faced bastard who only became a coach for the sake of revenge, which means he was using his students (actual 15/16-year-olds) for his own personal gains. Shuu and Minato’s friendship went down the drain, Ryouhei was pushed aside as if Seiya was Minato’s only childhood friend, Nanao was never depicted as his own person, and the girls didn’t even exist 90% of the time. So yeah, none of the changes served any good purpose for the characters’ images. All it did was (try to) fill a quota.

Personally, this whole thing feels like we’re being told to the face, “we’ve given you what you want, now give us your money”. It brings me back to interviews I’ve read featuring Stars Align director Akane Kazuki and his statements about the anime industry being in a pinch, specifically because animators nowadays keep trying to make a fool out of the audience for monetary ends. Seems clear to me that the staff thought the female viewers would latch onto anything as long as it looked remotely gay, and that’s why I was so angry back then. Being looked down on like this by people who expect us to consume their media is pretty offensive, in my opinion. I’m glad there’s at least one creator speaking up about this matter and using the exact same arguments as I have been for more than two years now.