Last Gender: Nanimono demo nai Watashitachi / Last Gender: When We Are Nameless by Taki Rei

I promised a return to smut, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to meet you halfway. There is a lot of nudity and sex in Last Gender: Nanimono demo nai Watashitachi / Last Gender: When We Are Nameless, but I’m not sure it counts as smut, per se.

I don’t know exactly what was happening in Japan in 2020-2021, but this is yet-another “gender and sexual minorities 101,” type of manga, but this one is fictionalized and framed around a sex bar in California where sexual minorities can meet and mingle.

SPOILERS

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I was actually able to get the first volume of Last Gender from the Saint Paul Public Library, but, if you follow the link above, you can read the scanlation of first two volumes (the series is complete in three.) It’s an interesting set-up because the stories get told in a serial manner, by which I mean, a person introduced in the first chapter will tell their backstory in the next, and on and on, through various sexual and gender identities.

Things that appear in this book that rarely get much attention include an aro character who is not also ace. I’ve had aro friends complain about this, and so I can imagine that it might be nice to find a sympathetic aromantic character who is sexually active. For myself I got introduced to lithosexuality (someone who does not want romantic and sexual feelings reciprocated), as well as greygender (which I’d had a sense of, but never seen dramatized in a story.)

For the most part, these characters get–if not happy endings, a sense of belonging. There is, generally, this attitude I really like that I’ve come across a number of times now, which is this idea that you are what you are RIGHT NOW. That a person does themselves a big favor by allowing that they might change (or they might not.) By accepting a label, that doesn’t mean it has to define you exactly or even all the time. And, in many ways, the challenge is not letting anyone define you–not even your own community–but yourself. You get to decide which parts fit and which don’t and it doesn’t make you “less queer” or “not queer enough.”

That’s a pretty wholesome message for such a smutty manga.

I also love Taki-sensei just assuming America has sex bars, like it’s no big deal. (Private sex clubs, yes. I mean, technically, that’s what this is. Our first story implies that you need a membership card, but later in volume 2 a student is just able to get in, as if he just walked in off the street. But, America has nothing like Japan’s host/ess bars.) I suspect Taki-sensei would be surprised by how Puritanical most Americans/American cities are.

At any rate, despite the mostly feel-good aspect of a lot of these chapter long stories, I should warn readers, however, that the second volume focuses heavily on a character who loses his lover to suicide, after to being outed against his will. Even the scanlation has a trigger warning for homophobia, bullying, and bigotry, as well as information about a hotline for suicide prevention. But, that story, as harsh as it is, is actually largely about internalized homophobia and working through it… at least to some extent–and, thus, has a kind of coming-to-terms ending. There’s a sense that that character is starting the road to recovery, at any rate.

There are a lot of naked boobs in this. The penises, of course, are invisible, whited out–even on the trans woman, which is telling? Like, we will rate a book R, so long as it allows the “male” gaze to see all of a woman it wants, and yet holds this double standard if the woman we turn our acceptable male gaze upon has a penis. Like, we get to look a her boobs, but not all of her. Because penises are supposed to belong only to men, and thus, if exposed, make this book IMMEDIATELY X-Rated. (It angers me? Not only for the obvious reasons, but also because the censorship implies that there is a part of this woman that is NOT a woman. If we are allowed to “male gaze” all of a women’s body in R-rated things, then her penis should be part of that! Full stop.) WTF. In a book about gender and sexual expression, this censorship is incredibly hypocritical.

But, I suspect the whiting out happened on the official English translation side. Again, it’s just something that I imagine would surprise and horrify Taki-sensei, who set this story in California, a place that they imagined to be some kind of sexual freedom paradise.

Anyway, despite my complaints, I highly recommend this. The sex is sexy and the characters all have fascinating stories of coming out and coming to accept themselves.

So, if this sounds up your alley, check it out. The third volume, which I have not yet read, though I plan to look for it at the library, seems poised to follow the mysterious club owner whom we know nothing about in terms of sexuality or gender.