Reflection and Analysis

Sports Genre Isn't the Romance Genre (7/30/21)

This ties into my previous reflection which involved coming across a complaint regarding lack of LGB content in Sports Anime.

Another thing which bothers me about this complaint is that the main focus of the given genre is - well, the sport. There are at times subplots which involve romance, but more often than not romance is either non existent or something which takes a back seat to the slice-of-life of sports and the friendships formed.

Which in turn actually explains the lack of LGB content in Sports Anime.

1. As I've noted in other essays I've written in the past, adding LGB rep isn't the same as adding rep for women or rep for an ethnic minority. Both are things which can be physically represented, while LGB content isn't unless one is diving into stereotypes, some of which are damaging. As such, it makes logical sense for such rep to show up more in Romance series than not.

2. The focus is on friendships above romances. Sure, these friendships can be awesome shipping material for fanfic writers and fanfic artists, but attempting to push romance onto the genre defeats the main purpose of the genre.

Because if you really stop and think about it, there is a lack of het rep as well. Of course, here I'm referring to the type of ship and the fact there is a lack of shipping - and by this I mean romantic ships. As such, for those of us who are major fans of Sports Anime, seeing people complain about - GASP - shipping not happening just becomes more irritating than when it happens for other genre.

It's NOT the point of the genre. I'm not saying people shouldn't enjoy the series for shipping purposes, but what's going on is the expectation that those who write the genre should cater to a target audience the genre isn't attempting to target in the first place. Even more importantly, it is the fact there is this group of fans that mistakenly think they are the target audience of this genre when they're not.