Kageki Shoujo!!

Episodes 11-12

After the school sports festival, Episode 11, “4/40” ushers in a graduation show of epic proportions. It's yet another grand Kouka-style festival, only this time… the second-year students aren't getting center stage to celebrate their seniors. The first-year students are taking front and center as they'll get the chance to perform on the first day of the festival. It's a literal fifteen minutes in the limelight, spread across two segments: ten minutes of acting, and the five minutes of a chorale.

Naturally, there's a caveat: only four out of forty students will get to take center stage as Romeo, Juliet, Tybalt, and Juliet's Nurse respectively. Thus begins an earnest competition between classmates because Andou-sensei won't be deciding things. It'll be a true competition, with auditions starting a fortnight from the episode's beginning.

Oh, and the first years will be voting on who does best. For the drama, you know?

As such, the bulk of this episode is about each girl trying to figure out the role that's right for them, how to play them right, and how to execute their portrayals successfully enough to clinch one of the four available openings. It's also Sarasa struggling to decide between playing Romeo and actually...maybe playing someone else, which she ultimately does decide to do in the spirit of healthy competition. And honestly, it's executed really, really well, thanks to the dynamic growth of Sarasa's character, the tablesetting happening with Ai and Sarasa's friendship, the voice acting, and the stellar localization work.

And for as much drama as there is, there are also a lot of solid gags in episode 11: Sarasa goes through multiple iterations of Tybalt, ranging from “egoist” to “smart” to whatever works and makes her stand out. It's utterly relatable, which is why Sarasa has carried this so well: she really does feel like a very authentic fifteen-year-old just… trying her best. All this makes for a good set-up ahead of episode 12.

Episode 12, “Surely Someone”, both continues the auditions and features a lot of love stories crashing into one another, whether that's through reminiscing or through confessions with Ayako. This sweet, tender child has been one of my favorite characters in the background, and it's nice that we finally get to spend a good amount of time with her before we get to the rest of the auditions.

But first, I want to touch on a different topic: queerness in Kageki Shojo!!, or more specifically, Ayako's previous experience with queerness, which is done through a series of flashbacks. Now, Ayako, herself, is heterosexual, but as a tender youth, she had a friend, Asuka Yano, who is explicitly sapphic, though she hides her sexual orientation by dating a lot of her male classmates, which has made her something of the bane of all her classmates.

Her confession isn't a “I like you, but like… only as gal pals.” It's not even, “I like you like how I like guys.” It's flatout “I'd go out with you right now, if you wanted” in the sense of being wholly romantic and very, very explicitly queer, both in terms of a queer platonic friendship and queer romantic yearning. You might not read it that way, but the elements that lend to such an interpretation are undeniably there. It's very very gay, and as sapphic as Sappho herself.

It is this love that gives Ayako strength: this passionate, queer platonic – and even romantic – love that gives us one of the best performances of this series thus far, brief as it is, as well as one of the best episode arcs. I suppose, in so many ways, that's the beautiful strength of being queer: it's the crashing, overwhelming yet repressed desire that spurs sapphics to pour out their hearts. And while Ayako isn't written as being sapphic herself, she's still able to harness that love to truly shine, and more than earn that top four spot for the graduation performance. When her voice breaks in the most pitch-perfect way, I felt this ball of emotion in my chest that only grows and flexes and tightens right to the very end of episode 12.

And actually, one of the things that I've been meaning to touch on is the latent atmosphere of queerness in the series. While I personally don't ship Ai and Sarasa, I do think that they have a queer-platonic relationship in which they love one another deeply, but not necessarily in a romantic sense. Even though the music played behind a lot of their interaction lends them to romantic interpretation, what's ultimately clear is that these two young women need one another, and love in a very specific way that, while undefined in Ai's heart, is no less powerful. Sarasa is the moon, and Ai is shooting for her, and even if she lands amongst the stars… well, isn't that still beautiful in the end?

That said, some of Kageki Shoujo!!'s characters are coded as actually, visibly queer, which is something that I haven't missed, but just haven't had the room to write about in depth. So, I figure in this meaty, double-episode review, I'd like to take a moment and explore that. Mind you, a lot of my thoughts here have been encouraged by Kageki Shojo!!'s translator Katrina Leonoudakis' recent twitter thread which made me realize that I really need to use my articles to discuss this.

As Katrina says, there's at least two gay men in the faculty: definitely Onodera-sensei, and from my POV, probably Taichi Narita, Ai's uncle. I'd certainly say that the series has leaned into the subtext that him being non-het is partially why Ai has felt safe with him: she knows he's not a predator in the way that well… a cishet man was. While you could certainly go with, “Well, he's her family”, Ai's also clearly not safe from family, since her mother not doing her job as a parent. (Alternatively, it could, indeed, be Andou-sensei who's gay. The “who” isn't as important here as the possibility of that reading on a multi-textual level.)

And of course, in episode 12, we have the scene that's really inspired the bulk of my thoughts on the episode:

All of this is done without sexualizing anyone, which is remarkable because… queer bodies are often sexualized simply for existing. To exist as a queer person is to have your sexual agency twisted into sexual mockery. You're deviant, you're disgusting, you're without ethics and morals. You're a risk for children, you're a risk to children, you're a risk, point blank. And yet, in the world of Kageki Shojo!!, if you're not het, then… well, that's fine; that's you. It's this beautiful iteration of a world where your sexual identity matters, but isn't some sort of discomforting talking point. It's natural, it's right, and it's as it should be on this beautiful blue marble, you know?

In the end, both of these episodes are strong reminders of why Kageki Shojo!! continues to be a fantastic series. It not only successfully portrays the intense, heightened drama that already latently exists in high school, but centers that between young women (by this, I mean anyone who is socialized female, and definitely mean maginalized genders), most of whom experience some level of queer, non-romantic sapphicism in their friendships. These episodes echo the feelings that tangle as femininity blossoms and blooms. It's largely what makes the series so engaging and enjoyable, though like… once again, shoutout to Katrina Leonoudakis, who wordsmiths Japanese into American English gold, and then some.

It's hard to imagine next week being the final episode of Kageki Shojo!!, and yet… here we are: nearing the final week of our time with Ai, Sarasa, and the rest of the Kouka students. I certainly look forward to continuing their story with the manga, and truly hope that Kageki Shojo!! will take center stage again in a second season.

Rating:

Kageki Shoujo!! is currently streaming on Funimation.

Mercedez is a JP-EN localization editor & proofreader/QA, pop culture critic, and a journalist who also writes for Anime Feminist, where she's a staff editor, and But Why Tho?. She's also a frequent guest on the AniFem Podcast, Chatty AF. When she's not writing, you can find her on her Twitter or on her Instagram where she's always up to something.