When I first saw the trailer for the anime “How I Attended an All-Guy’s Mixer” (hereafter referred to as “All-Guy’s Mixer”) back in March, 2024, my interest was immediately piqued. Drag kings? Mspec representation? A misunderstanding-filled slowburn romcom? I am so ready; sign me up.
If you haven’t heard of “All-Guy’s Mixer” before, let me provide a quick synopsis:
University student Tokiwa gets invited to a mixer/goukon by one of his female classmates, Suo. Excited to attend, he invites his two friends, Hagi and Asagi to join him for the group date. However, the three are shocked when they arrive to find not three femme attendees like they expected—but three men! Or, so they think. It’s quickly revealed that Suo, Kohaku, and Fuji—the three women in attendance—work at a drag king café, and they just happened to decide to come to the mixer still in uniform. What follows is a misunderstanding-filled, sexuality-crisis-aplenty, slowburn romantic comedy between each of the pairs, Tokiwa x Suo, Hagi x Kohaku, and Asagi x Fuji.
When I say I was on the edge of my seat waiting to watch this show, that’s an understatement. I talked about it to every friend I knew who watched anime, not necessarily because I thought that they might want to watch it, but just because I was that excited about it. I ended up watching it with my two roommates as it was airing (October–December 2024) and we all had a blast.
But let me back up and confess something; I don’t typically like romance-themed media. Now, before you denigrate me, I want to say that it’s not for a lack of trying, AND, there are exceptions. For example, I really liked reading Lex Croucher’s young adult romance last year, “Gwen and Art Are Not in Love,” and I still really like watching “The Sound of Music” (1965) and “Pride and Prejudice” (2005).
What I don’t tend to like is a strict gender binary, an imbalanced power dynamic, or controlling men . . . especially not controlling men. I’ll keep it a hundred y’all; whenever a guy in a movie, show, or book says something like, “You’re mine,” in relation to his partner, my blood pressure starts to rise.
I’m not here to yuck anyone’s yum—everyone has a right to consume whatever media they want and not be judged for it. Media, however, is a reflection of society, and I think a lot of us can agree that the media we grew up consuming was not exactly welcoming to any kind of queer or non-normative romance.
This reluctance to challenge any gender norms goes beyond American television and the big screen; I’ll be one of the first to say that many Asian countries have even stricter ideas of gender roles, Japan being one. Now full disclosure: I’m Asian, but not Japanese, and there’s a lot of nuance regarding the difference in culture between Japan and America that I’m skipping over. Japan does not have the same strong historical ties with Western Protestantism and Christianity that America has, so there’s a lot that can be said about the expansion of Western powers being part of the cause of the staunch gender conservatism we see in Japan today (to say nothing of other parts of Asia).
The point I’m getting at is that Japan is still a very conservative society, generally speaking. And anime reflects that same conservatism—generally speaking. Look hard enough, and there are a surprising amount of anime series that question and challenge that binary. Some examples include “Revolutionary Girl Utena” (1997), “Wandering Son” (2011), and the recent “Senpai is an Otokonoko” (2024). The above examples are very overt and not subtle in the least about the characters not conforming to societal standards of gender roles. As we know, the dominant culture will often say one thing and those who protest it will utilize art as a means to do so.
“All-Guy’s Mixer” is not an anime whose characters outright claim any sort of queer or gender non-conforming identity. None of the characters ever state that they’re bi, pan, trans, non-binary, or queer. (There is an instance where one of the male characters wonders if he’s bisexual—no clear answer was mentioned.) However, I wish to posit that this isn’t a show that needs to outright state identities in order to act as representation; I don’t believe that that is the goal.
In my opinion, a lot of anime and manga that seem to show queer representation fall into—or dangerously close to—queerbaiting territory; some examples include “Free!” and “K,” shows that are clearly meant to pander to heterosexual women, without furthering any queer relationships on-screen. Moreover, even when an anime/manga does not participate in any queerbaiting, the queer characters in question are written in a way more akin to stereotypes or caricatures, rather than real people (look up the okama archetype). Finally, even when the above two cases do not apply, there is a tendency to only show stories of violence, persecution, and discrimination against queer, trans, and non-binary people. All these critiques are not anything new, and I could level the same comments against American media with just as much poignance.
“All-Guy’s Mixer” is not about persecution, and the characters are not stereotypes nor cardboard cutouts. (In fact, one of the guy characters goes through a very realistic sexuality crisis.) It is a slowburn romcom though, so it takes a long time for any of the couples to start to make progress—at the time of this writing, none of them have gotten together yet.
There is still a huge need for anime characters (and characters in American media!!!) to claim queer labels. Make no doubt about it; the more these labels become normalized, the less persecution will be accepted. In such an environment, however, I still believe that there is room for characters that don’t claim obvious labels—to be blatantly queer does not always equate to choosing a label.
So as the season of romance books and romance movies comes to a close, I hope that some of you give this show a watch. “All-Guy’s Mixer” is a fresh take on the standard romcom anime, and I think it has appeal for all my queer girlies. As for me—someone who doesn’t always go for a romcom, but also loves “Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun” (if you know you know)—this is exactly the kind of representation that resonates with me. Here’s to hoping that a few of y’all see what I see.
If you don’t watch anime . . . well what can I say? You’re missing out, dude.
