The Crunchyroll Anime Awards: I’m rooting for everyone ace!
The Crunchyroll Anime Awards are coming up this month (May 25th) and there are many great anime, voice actors, directors, artists and more nominated, with a major award being Anime of the Year. Dan Da Dan, Delicious in Dungeon, Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, Kaiju No. 8, Solo Leveling, and The Apothecary Diaries are up in this category and all are heavy hitters.
While these anime are great for many individual reasons, the main two I am rooting for are The Apothecary Diaries and Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End.
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These two anime not only focus on strong female protagonists and are extraordinarily well written, but also highlight ace and ace-coded characters. Positive uplifting Asexual representation can be tough to find in the media, and having two powerful examples in Maomao and Frieren, and having either of their Anime win Anime of the Year would be incredible for the ace community.
Maomao from The Apothecary Diaries is a young intelligent apothecary who works in the imperial palace as a servant after being kidnapped while out looking for medicinal herbs. It is eventually revealed to her new employer that Maomao is very intelligent and previously worked as an apothecary in the pleasure district, resulting in her superior, a eunuch naked Jinshi promoting her to make use of her knowledge of poisons and high level of deduction skills to help solve mysteries that occur throughout the palace.
Maomao’s ace coded-ness becomes apparent the more we learn about her throughout the series. She expresses much neutrality to the idea of consummating and does not often have heightened reactions to anything sex-adjacent. This could be a result of growing up in a brothel and seeing the ‘act’ as transactional and a mix of her lineage (which is complicated and would touch into heavy spoilers).
She is very matter of fact when it comes to activities that happen in the brothel where she grew up and when teaching about the act to others she sticks to facts and does not react overtly nor seems embarrassed like others around her do. The ‘frog scene’ (and a few others down the line I will not mention due to heavy spoilers), shows that there are times that even Maomao may have some slight attraction or interest in physical things but it’s not constant. Conversations of sex positive, neutral and averse arise often within the ace community, and Maomao comes across as a gray asexual who is neutral about the act itself.
Frieren is the main protagonist of Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End and is the last living member of the original Hero’s party who defeated the infamous demon king. Frieren is an elf and powerful mage with a very long lifespan, which is why she not only outlived the other members of the original hero party and majority of all the people she is connected to. Frieren’s journey is balanced between flashbacks and current time, showing her connections to others, especially Himmel in the past and how she has grown to understand the value of life, time and precious moments.
In season 1 episode 7, Frieren describes why the elf population is dwindling, explaining that elves do not have ‘romantic urges’ or ‘reproductive instincts’; directly describing aromantism and asexuality. This is accepted and understood amongst Frieren’s friends, and no one pushes her to be anything other than who she is. Himmel the Hero had romantic feelings towards Frieren but knew his feelings would not be returned, ultimately never confessing his feelings, settling for unrequited eternal love until the end of his days, with Frieren never being able to identify how he felt while he was alive. Himmel and Frieren’s friends never tried to ‘fix’ her aromantic & asexual nature, but through a platonic connection, helped her develop much-needed emotional intelligence and life experience.
Frieren moves at a pace that makes sense for the story that is being told. It is detailed, layered with all main characters getting their shine at some point. Most side characters receive decent screen time that adds significant depth to their stories adding to the robust world of Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End world.
In anime, often when it’s put there that a character is ‘strong’ usually it refers to literal physical strength, or how many enemies the protagonist can beat. But physicality is not the only lane where strength can exist. Both The Apothecary Diaries and Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End are brilliant examples of great storytelling that have the bonus of being very much centered on many strong, well-written female characters. Frieren is a strong mage, but her true strength, I believe, comes in her acknowledgement that even though she is an elf who has lived for over 1,000 years, she is still willing to learn, grow, change, and take accountability when she’s harmed someone. Maomao, an ordinary human, has strength not only from her genius level of intelligence but also from her creativity, willingness to help others, and ability to use her logic to create better situations for those around her. She is never cruel, without reason, has a thirst for knowledge, and has zero issue enforcing her boundaries.
While I did enjoy most (definitely not all) of the anime in the Anime of the Year category for the Anime Awards, many of them rely on the same regurgitated formula of storytelling, tropes, and themes. The Apothecary Diaries and Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End highlight anime that not only has great representation but also excellent world-building, writing, acting, and pacing. If you do not believe me, even the flowers have great writing and storytelling in both anime that can leave you in tears.
Voting has ended, but tune in to see who will win in all categories of The Anime Awards, May 25th on Crunchyroll!
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