What’s it about? Tokiwa’s classmate Suo invitations him and two pals to a mixer, however when the boys come to the restaurant, as an alternative of the three cute women they have been anticipating, they discover three ridiculously good-looking males in fits. It seems is Suo and her pals come straight from work to a fancy dress cafe the place they carry out in drag. Decided to not make issues awkward, Tokiwa and the boys attempt to benefit from the night as regular.
This comedy has a case of gender. That could be a impartial assertion and (at the moment) not a judgment of any sort. The one from final season Senpai is an Otokonoko had a case of Gender and a considerably messy starting, however (as we’ll talk about quickly within the season-ending podcast, I am positive) the present advanced into one thing very candy and nuanced. Can I make the identical promise about All-Guys Mixer? Nicely…by no means say by no means, however there are positively some messy components on this premiere that I am cautious of.
The emotional battle and foremost supply of comedy on this episode are the boys’ sophisticated emotions in regards to the women who appear like boys with whom they spend the night. The boys are torn between being interested in the butler women and having their masculinity threatened by them. It looks as if the drag kings are a lot better at being good-looking, cool males than the cis males in each approach. I really feel like there’s an underlying No Homo impulse at play of their confusion and reluctance, however the majority of the jokes are actually in regards to the dudes’ concern that that may’t probably compete. They fall to their knees and lament how lovely these princely ladies are. They blush and internally shout that they can not probably be subsequent to one another in a photograph as a result of the girl within the go well with will outshine them. If gender is a efficiency, the Kings carry out it so effectively that the male leads really feel like they have been kicked off the stage.
A part of me fairly likes this, and fairly properly. To begin with, drag kings are a really underrepresented group in common tradition, so it is good to see a few of them as foremost characters in a light-hearted rom-com; it is also uncommon to see M/F romances the place she presents as masculine (outdoors of the so-called ‘tomboy’ archetype in fact). In All boys mixer, the artists are by no means demonized or appeared down upon for his or her work. In truth, they’re offered as extremely cool and likable, way more so than the male leads. Girls in fits are a really highly effective power – this can be a common truth, though not all the time depicted in TV anime.
The concern of emasculation of the three male leads is on the coronary heart of the episode, however in a approach that does them within the butt of the joke. However on the similar time, Tokiwa and the boys are our POV characters and anchor within the story, so to some extent the viewers is unquestionably purported to relate to the boys and their nervous headspace. That in itself frames the beautiful ladies as irregular, complicated, and a wacky comedic battle to navigate moderately than being characters themselves. Positive, all six foremost characters are fairly superficial at this early stage, however the ladies are primarily framed as quirky archetypes to reply to.
The episode additionally hinges on an unlucky double normal about drag, the place the beautiful ladies who intentionally act as males are impossibly cool, however the one time a person clothes as a girl – when Tokiwa has to put on a schoolgirl costume as punishment for dropping a karaoke contest – it is as a result of he’s pressured and it’s deeply embarrassing. The sequence could unpack this because it goes alongside and delve deeper into the tradition of drag efficiency, however from this primary episode on it simply reproduces an all-too-common “haha, have a look at that ugly man in a gown” joke. which in the end stems from and reinforces transphobia. That is horrible in itself, in fact, however it’s additionally a shocking and tonally unusual twist away from the enjoyable and largely constructive approach the episode in any other case handled drag.
The opposite factor that must be highlighted is the… effectively, I wish to say the fetishization of homosexual males, besides that this solely occurs within the summary. One of many women, Fuji, appears to be continually planning her personal BL initiatives and needs to make use of each her costumed colleagues and the boys she simply met ‘for reference’. Her good friend Kohaku complains that Fuji has taken approach an excessive amount of photographs of her in butler drag, and there is a joke (?) the place she has to pull Fuji away earlier than following the boys into the toilet (for what nefarious functions, I am undecided, however hey, one other second of transphobic jokes and figures of speech (on this case, the determine of the toilet cross-dressing frequent in fear-mongering).
Later, two feminine classmates see Suo (dressed for work) leaving with Tokiwa and get red-faced and squealing on the concept of them being collectively. I would say this present is an instance of M/M relationships being fetishized for comedy, however… not one of the {couples} concerned are literally between two males, they’re between women and men or two ladies at the moment dressed as males are. “Does that make it higher?” is a query too massive for this submit about first impressions. There are lots of questions and matters too massive for this primary impressions submit.
You’ll be able to completely make jokes about gender, drag, and attraction with out getting into awkward transphobic (or transphobic-adjacent) tropes, and should you can, truthfully, All-Guys Mixer might be cute. At this early stage I don’t know the way it will navigate all of the concepts it is enjoying with, so it is value watching three episodes to not less than see the way it dances by way of the potential minefield it is openly wandered into.
