"a franchise ostensibly meant for straight cis men"

And now I know not to click through and read this. https://twitter.com/AnimeFeminist/status/1334214289616490504

It's been nearly half a decade since it was acknowledged that about half the Japanese fanbase are women, with the biggest portion of fans been teenage girls, and in the west it's even more tilted towards women to where the multiple LL! events *I have hosted* rarely have any guys.

You can maybe argue it used to be "meant for men" but almost all of the time it spent as a male dominated series were in the early years where it wasn't even heard of in the west.

So to still present it with this angle ten years later is basically just conceding that we can't ever have the girl series we like even if we start to outnumber the male fans.

You can't have a discussion if you start with the audience already set in stone as "not women."

It's so insulting to all the female fans that make up at least half of the fanbase.

The Japanese gender ratio survey from 2015-2016. Something "ostensibly for men" don't have 44% female fans.

Unless you suggest that Dengeki, Sunrise and Lantis chooses to not cater to what those 44% wants because they're women, which there's no basis for.

If it was "ostensibly for men" then they probably wouldn't make the self-insert player character in the latest game, which was made after the female fanbase figures had exploded and been taken note of, explicitly a female character.

They would have done the same vague "logically the player should be a girl because girl school but we're just not going to mention it" shit they did in the first game or straight up go with a male protag *as so many other idol mobile games do*.

I'm so tired of the "yeah, this thing seems really gay and girly, but that just means it's for straight men" rhetoric which is always brought up without any actual hard data to back it up.

You know what this does? You know what framing these things as "ostensibly for cis straight men" does?

It makes queer women feel like they shouldn't like it, like they should stop liking it, like they're not allowed to.

Never mind that the character creator and novel/manga author of the first two Love Live! generations was Kimino Sakurako.

Kimino have not come out as wlw as far as I know, but she *has* said that when she created the popular Girls Love series Strawberry Panic! she channeled from her own experiences and feelings as a school girl.

That's who Dengeki, Sunrise and Lantis picked out to shape the IP.

Probably not a great that you call the IP evidently beloved by women *globally* and co-created by a woman who at the very least is in touch with wlw-esque feelings "ostensibly for cis straight men."

And the worst part is that WE YELLED AT ANIME FEMINIST OVER THIS BEFORE WHEN THEY LAST PUT UP A LOVE LIVE! ARTICLE THAT CLAIMED IT WAS FOR MEN.

There's definitely a discussion to be had about navigating an IP that still has a huge male following as a queer woman, there's plenty to be said there, but that headline alone ends the discussion.

Just... I'm so tired of this shit.

Also, for real?

We need to just stop being so quick to say something is "for men" or "for women" or what ever because it just harms the fuck out of trans fans who feel like something they like is now baggage from their assigned gender.

I got into Love Live! when I was still in the closet, late 2012. Headlines like this could have either kept me in there or had me swear the IP off had I seen them at the time.

The series is pretty fucking important to me, it's even how I met my girlfriend of almost 3 years.

And I met her through Love Live! because Love Live! has such a massive fucking female fanbase that we could literally organize Love Live! meetups at conventions with a fucking swarm of women showing up, in or out of cosplay.

We still hold those meetups, though obviously this year it hasn't happened, and it doesn't matter if we're in Sweden or Norway, in our local area or far off, it's always packed with women. Because the series targets women and targets them well.

Lots of non-binary people too.

Funnily enough, the article apparently gets this?

I didn't click through because of the headline, as I said, but others did, and it points out how in the survey they held a mere 18% of people identified as men.

But then it uses some major circular logic right afterwards. Saying that "to the public" it's still seen as "for men", citation needed, because of bad male fans, again - no correlation to public view cited, and that the series caters to men, once more - no citation.

"Mostly women like this, which is why this supremely successful franchise only caters to men."

By that logic the series would have crashed and burned and never made it 10 years.

Bleh. I'm done.

Here's a good thread from someone who did click through. https://twitter.com/JK_DarkSide/status/1334238538842460165

And yes, I am the person who literally made a lesbian Love Live! ship my legal middle name.

Now you don't have to dig that up and go "this you bruh" at me as if that somehow matters to this "discussion" outside of highlighting that Love Live! is clearly something I care about.

ALSO.

Japanese lesbians are so into Love Live! that in 2015 Ayase Eli was voted the ideal girlfriend by them.

Ayase Eli beat out Tenoh Haruka from Sailor Moon. https://sgcafe.com/2015/10/japanese-lesbians-choose-top-5-anime-characters-want-girlfriend-lover/

If it is so catering to men why have women been like "oh god yes, this is for me" *everywhere* for most of the IP existing?

Sounds like confirmation bias to me, except confirmation bias tend to at least have *some* data to try to back something up.

OH WAIT I AM STILL NOT DONE

Okay, so, if this series only caters to men because it has sexual art from time to time and doesn't cater to women at all then how come they took down an entire ad campaign and redesigned it because people complained it was too sexually drawn?

It was in 2017. The ad campaign started, had this really awkward "vagina-fold skirt" which got so much backlash that they took it down and redesigned it with the help of a local artist.

And while I think "sexy art = for men" is a terrible approach to thinking about things in the first place, this clearly falls under *not catering to men* in that case.