There were times while growing up as a young gay boy in the 70's that I found myself attracted to certain cartoon characters. I know, we say animated now, but they're cartoons. Now first of all, animators back in the 70's seemed to have a limited range on what a good looking guy was to look like. It was either Alan M. from Josie and the Pussycats...
or the Super Friends.
Then one day, I happened across Battle of the Planets. The animation was different than I was used to. It wasn't basic like Saturday mornings and it wasn't quite fluid like Disney films. The odd thing was, I realized that the animation changed when they showed this stupid R2-D2-type character called 7-Zark-7.
But I'm getting ahead of myself, more on that reason later.
In the 80's, boys looked to He-Man for reasons other than mine, but his page-boy haircut killed it for me.
Then came She-Ra, Princess of Power. It wasn't She-Ra, but Bow who was the best looking from either series. What I didn't realize was that he is the type of guy I like from the 70's and 80's magazines I started collecting in later life. Did it start with Bow? He looked like a 70's porn star.
Years passed and animation changed. One day, I was looking at Anime DVD's and saw the characters from my childhood show, Battle of the Planets. For some reason it was called Science Ninja Team Gatchaman.
What I learned was that this violent and kind of adult show was heavily censored and edited for American television broadcast. They added the character of 7-Zark-7 to fill in the holes of the story that seemed to be cut out. The show is amazing now. I started watching them and buying more and more of the DVDs. There was something about the two lead guys that I still think looks attractive even now.
Maybe it was the hair in their civilian guise or the thigh-high boots in their heroic duds. Of course, the male characters had no nipples, just like men in American cartoons.
The villain that I thought always had wet lips, was actually a shape-shifting alien hermaphrodite. And they edited that out for American audiences? Why?
I guess his wet lips was actually lip gloss.
Well, now I was interested in these anime films. It seems that some were made for adults. I found one called Fake. It was about a couple of police detectives who were partners. Through circumstances, they ended up on vacation together and have a mystery to solve. Simple enough, but one of the partners seduces the other. Homosexual cartoons? What's this?
Well it builds from there. The next one I rented was My Sexual Harassment. It's about a young computer businessman, Mochizuki, who everyone (male and female) thinks is attractive.
His boss, Homna, decides to take him under his wing and seduces him.
Homna then pimps him out to other executives and clients.
Homna still treats Mochizuki with love and tenderness while Mochizuki starts to learn the business through Homna.
Eventually, he gets a new boss, Niimi, who takes their relationship too far.
Homna rescues Mochizuki and then teaches Niimi a lesson.
Let's just say that a Wild Turkey bottle and a corn-on-the-cob will never be looked at the same by me. The image was not graphically shown in detail, but the images you did see and the implications were enough.
I was later to find out that this is yaoi. Yaoi is created for a young female readership and there are female writers who write mangas (comics) for these young girls that include homoeroticism and homoromanticism. Who knew? Now, don't get this confused with "bara" which is gay manga. My opinion is that My Sexual Harassment is more "bara" than "yaoi", but I'm just learning this stuff.
Now here comes the big question...Has there ever been an animated character that you thought was hot? Some people I've talked to liked Butch Cassidy, Fred from the Scooby-Doo series, Mark from Speed Buggy, Rick Springfield from Mission: Magic!, etc...
