Tag: Shonen

Content Notes: Spoilers For Black Butler and Discussion of Child Death, Mutilation, Sexism and Transphobia

I am a massive Black Butler fan. It was the first anime I ever watched, it is one of the few mangas I keep on top of and the series has been somewhat of a preoccupation since I was a teenager. The unapologetic zaniness is captivating to me, whilst still being stylistically gorgeous and allowing for profound moments. But one character, more than any, has had a immense influence on me. So, let’s discuss Grelle Sutcliff and her many shades of red.

A Brief History of Black Butler

Black Butler is an ongoing manga that began in 2006, created by Yana Toboso.^[1] The story is set in Victorian London, following the escapades of Ciel Phantomhive, a 12 year old Earl, tasked with solving the supernatural crimes that no one else can. Alongside him is his butler, Sebastian Michealas, a demon he has secured a contract with to seek revenge on those who murdered his parents.

As much as I would like recapping the entirety of Black Butler in excruciating detail, I will gather us to the focus of this essay. First introduced in Chapter 6 Page 7, Grelle is the seemingly male butler of Ciel’s aunt, Madame Red.^[1] They are both introduced to us when Ciel visits London, on the orders of the Queen herself to investigate the serial killer de jour himself, Jack The Ripper.

Madame Red is shown to be a somewhat of a vapid socialite, despite being a medical doctor. Although she exhibits a ferocious protectiveness for her nephew. In contrast, Grelle is a bumbling foil of a butler to Sebastian’s hyper competence.

Their investigations, including a madman Undertaker with a love of jokes, lead to Ciel and Sebastian setting up a sting for The Ripper. And they are revealed to be none other than…Grelle Sutcliff!^[1] And also Madame Red. It is at this point Grelle’s design changes from hapless butler boy to fabulous scarlet women.

She is also revealed to be a Shinigami, a Japanese folkloric figure meant to carry the dead into the afterlife. In Black Butler, the duty of Shinigami is to look at a person’s Cinematic Record that showcases their entire life. And to intervene should they have died too early or in an otherwise unacceptable fashion.

The sanguine duo had been killing sex workers for marginally different although similar reasons.^[1] Madame Red was driven mad by the death of her sister. As well as suffering in all senses from an accident that killed her own husband and child, on top of rendering her sterile. In her capacity a doctor, she consulted for sex workers seeking hysterectomies, which infused her with jealous spite that boiled over into murderous rage.

Initially, she was alone in slaying these women and taking their wombs as a form of prize. However, this rampage captured the attention of Grelle, who had been assigned to these murders and became sympathetic to Madame Red. For she too could not bear children due to the inconvenience of her natal male biology.

Madame Red eventually backs out when confronted by Ciel, unable to execute her own nephew, resulting in Grelle executing her former assistant. Sebastian then promptly defeats her and the crimson delight is taken away by another Shinigami^.[1] That is the only arc so far to truly focus on Grelle to some degree, but she does appear in other sections.

In Chapter 54 she makes a return on the luxury ship Campania, which is being overrun by zombies. Ostensibly created by Rian Stoker (yes it’s not even subtle), Ciel and Sebastian are pursuing the company behind Rian that sponsored the technology, whereas Grelle is trying to discover how the dead are still walking.

It is revealed that our comical Undertaker is the puppetmaster behind the living dead.^[1] Sebastian and Grelle try apprehending the Undertaker but both fail. They then escape the sinking Campania separately.

The final section of note that Grelle appears in is Chapter 124. Sebastian and Ciel are investigating people stealing blood through the Victorian version of k-pop idols; I swear I cannot explain it more succinctly than that.^[1] They run into Grelle once more who is researching people who were predestined to die of renal failure but manage to delay their deaths. Grelle mysteriously intimates to Sebastian that they will see each other soon. And then in Chapter 128 she does.

To explain the scene a little before I reveal the panels, since Chapter 14, there has been recurring pair of characters.^[1] The naïve but cheerfully effervescent Prince Soma of Bengal and his sober but ever loyal butler Agni. The pair are foils to Ciel and Sebastian respectively, showcasing more innocent but also kinder personalities. They remain beloved staples in the fandom. Yet in Chapter 128, Agni dies protecting Prince Soma from attackers. And above it all, Grelle appears recording his death.

Remember these panels they’ll become significant later.

Grelle does briefly appear later in Chapter 141 and 142 to try an apprehend the Undertaker but there is little of note for my purposes.^[1] And I don’t feel like dissecting the Ciel twin reveal here. But what is important to further analyse is a curious question of Grelle’s gender identity. More specifically, if she is designed as a transgender woman?

Meta-Textually Transitioning

There has been a long debated topic in the anglophone fanbase as to whether or not Grelle Sutcliff is really transgender. No academic articles on this topic exist and through my own research it seems Toboso herself has never explicitly used queer terms for Grelle post 2014.

So a little interpretation is required and I am relying on amateur sources. Though I do trust their translations as I have separate corroboration that they are not veering wildly from the text.

The earliest examples of meta-textual gender references is a 2010 blog post by Toboso. In it she states, as translated by user akumadeshitsumon:

“ Yes, Grell is a man, but has the heart of a maiden. […]Women understand that sort of thing, right~ Grell is a boy, but has the heart of a maiden (laughs)”^[2]

This alone suggests Grelle is trans in Yana Toboso’s eyes. As she is employing extremely similar terminology to the common cisgender narrative surrounding Japanese discouse. There was a very strong emphasis on the “sex of the heart” akin to the idea of a woman trapped inside a man’s body.

Therefore any reference to Grelle being a boy could be more to do with her assigned gender at birth than her authentic identity. However, this does get more complex with the following quote from Toboso’s blog in 2014, again translated by akumadeshitsumon:

“I think this time (actually not only this time but on other occasions, too), this okama[referring to Grelle] has benefitted most, don’t you think so as well!!?? (lol)”^[4]

In addition there is the following 2010 image drawn by Yana Toboso.

So there are direct referrals to okama, which many believe to indicate that Grelle is meant to be seen as a homosexual man. I did try to obtain a focused history of the word okama. But the only paper available to me was written by someone who’s bigotry kept leaking out of the essay.^[5] Consequently, I believe the best way to precede is to present you a slightly more piecemeal but less biased account.

Okama as a phrase has its origins in the late Edo Period (1600-1868), being used as a catch all term for any effeminate sexual deviants.^[6] It is slang for buttocks, deliberately alluding to anal sex and meant to also evoke a passive femininity to the bearer of the word.

It continued to be routinely used in the 1960s and 70s as a title for effeminate kinksters and sex workers.^[6] As well as being used by transgender women and gender non-conforming men as a self-identifier. It is a very messy word.

Although in 2010 the label used by Japanese mass media was Eidōitsuseishōgai (Gender Identity Disorder) common self-descriptors for transgender women remained nyū-hāfu (New Half) and okama, amongst others.^[7] Moreover, there had been relatively recent move by sexual minority activism groups like OCCUR, to distance gay people from the label okama. In 1993, OCCUR won a harassment case against a governmental hostel where they cited receiving homophobic slurs including okama.^[3]

More broadly, homosexual male activists had tried to move past terms like okama because they were infused with ideas of effeminacy, deviancy and sex work.^[3] I’m not saying this is a prudent move. But rather that, by 2010, gay people weren’t really using okama as a phrase to describe themselves in an effort to be seen as more socially acceptable.

It was a title reserved for the effeminate and especially those who were transgender or otherwise gender nonconforming. As a result, it’s feasible to say that Toboso was using this term to refer to a transgender woman rather than a homosexual male. But it is hard to tell her specific intentions and how up to date she really was.

However, there is some more recent evidence to back up a trans reading of Grelle, such as a 2018 Twitter post by Toboso, translated by akumadeshitsumon:

“[…] I had a request to Grell’s actor Mr. Uehara. “Could you please [play her] as a strong woman”, […] So I asked  [Mr. Uehara] to please portray her as a career woman in front of her kouhai (younger colleague)”^[2][8]

The terms applied here are specifically gendered, and Toboso even states Grelle and Madame Red are like sisters in another twitter post.^[2] All things considered, the most reasonable interpretation is that she views Grelle as a woman and at worst, utilised outdated terminology to speak about her.

It seems unlikely for a writer to meta-textually reference a sex of the heart and to call someone a woman, in order to get across that a character is an effiminate gay man. However, it is likely for a cisgender person to call transgender people more ambigious terminology, which is why I was often called a cigarette/delicious British dish for wearing feminine clothes. That and the fact I—

Transitioning In Glasses

If you have engaged with the English translations of the series, you have likely gained the impression that Grelle is gendered as male. This is not to start a protracted debate about the validity of translations on canon. But I think its fair to say that we should at least examine how she is gendered in the original version. And that is, barely at all.

Japanese is a subject null language, that means it can work deftly without the necessity for direct referrals to individuals, unlike English.^[9][10] We have to use subjects, that is to say, we require explicit reference to the thing that a sentence is about. This is ordinarily achieved through nouns or pronouns. However, Japanese doesn’t need to. As far as I can tell, in the native version, no one genders Grelle as male. In fact, she explicit refers to herself as female.

Chibimyumi argues these four panels show how Grelle genders herself.^[9] The first uses Atashi, a feminine first-person pronoun usually employed to explicitly call attention to the speaker’s femininity. Additionally, she calls herself a joyuu (女優), a literal actress and not the more gender neutral yakusha (役者) . The second literally is just her calling herself a lady ( レディ), plain and simple.

The third is her describing herself as an otome (乙女) meaning maiden.^[9] Huh. So that’s why they’re called otome games? They’re for virgins! Finally, bringing on the camp as all transgender people should, she refers to herself as a daijoyuu (大女優) or a great actress. Grelle constantly, explicitly, self identifies as a woman.

And those around Grelle never explicitly challenge this or misgender her. The sole example that would come close is the Undertaker referring to her with the honorific prefix -kun.^[11] Although this is often used as a male honorific, it is equally implemented to women in the workplace. And the Shinigami are clearly business orientated in aesthetics and manner, hence the idea of Grelle as a business woman.

So, it could be seen as a modernised gender neutral term, meant to reflect the aesthetics of the Shinigami as a whole rather than a deliberate misgendering. There is still some misogyny because -kun is used for all women in industry regardless of position.^[11] As a result, this is essentially sexist trans affirmation.

If you want to explore this further, I recommend the deep dive linked here by akumadeshitsumon, but overall, no-one textually misgenders or questions Grelle’s femininity. She is explicitly positioned as hyper-feminine, on par with Madame Red, a cis woman.

So despite what I would deem transphobic renditions by Yen Press and Funimation, rightly known for totally 100% accurate translations, Grelle is meant to be a trans woman. But even if she is trans. Is she good transgender representation?

Murder Most Camp

To ask what makes good transgender representation or indeed what is good representation of anything is to invariably reveal your own taste. It is effortless to point to things which are bad portrayals. Such as Silence of The Lamb’s Buffalo Bill, a psuedo transgender woman who skins women to enact transforming their gender.

But, if you ask the type of character someone enjoys, that causes them feel seen, it is personal to their own journey and identity. So keep in mind this analysis is somewhat contingent on my own tastes.I want to start with the negatives because it is critical to highlight the failures of Grelle as representation before mentioning the parts which appeal to me.

Firstly is the…well murderous lunatic of it all. Grelle does conform to a Buffalo Bill stereotype, murdering cis women for the crime of having wombs. An act of lunatic barbarity that, at least to Western audiences, fits a trope meant to insinuate that to be transgender is to have a detachment from reality. To be an outcast and dangerous to the innocent frail cisgender heterosexual women.

Now, I am not outright defending this. But this genre cliche is less relevant to Japanese audiences than it is to UK and US audiences. Stereotyping for Japanese transgender women leans less onto them as psychotic and more as forms of comedy.^[7]

Nyū-hāfu and Blue Boy as terms for trans women (amongst other gender identities) that were literally founded by entertainers.^[3][7] There is a long, long history of Japanese effeminate gay bars being used by heterosexual audiences as forms of amusement, as a lesser that soley exists for cis people to laugh at.

Additionally, the deliberate paralleling of Madame Red and Grelle, makes me feel like this is less a lazy stereotype and more of an interesting dichotomy.The two are not treated equally in their traumatic reaction, Madame Red is portrayed as more sympathetic. But she is the beginning of the murder spree, she is the instigator, and that means you can’t really view Grelle as uniquely a transphobic caricature. Because she is dyadically paired in goals and action to a cis woman.

Futhermore, there is something hauntingly powerful to me about the representation of transgender pain that frequently isn’t seen. I don’t witness many transgender women characters or even media figures discussing the sorrow you feel at always being incomplete.

It is not something that preoccupies my mind too much in this specific regard, I’ve never wanted kids nor to be pregnant. But having known transgender women for who that reality is agony. The portrayal of this as equal to that of a cis woman is undeniably beautiful in a torturous manner.

To have accidental sterilisation and sterilisation by genetic whim as equals in motive is a daring comparison. To highlight the shared experience of helplessly watching your body continue to betray you each day. It really could have been something uniquely poignant.

But the beauty of this horror is rather undercut by the stereotypical portrayal of Grelle. She is often relegated to a comedic side character, who although powerful and malevolent, is lacking in substance. I adore her campiness, but it feels like she is never allowed to be serious for longer than a fleeting moment. Leading to her initial impression being both a comedic transgender failure and a murderous psychopath.

This is exacerbated by her being the only openly transgender character in Black Butler. There are moments of gender deviancy, like Ciel dressing as a girl, as well as general effeminacy from the male characters. But Grelle is the only one who could be argued to actually identify outside of cishet ideals.

Although she identifies as a woman Grelle is, nevertheless, gender deviant in how she acts. The shinigami is loud, uncouth, wildly sexual and very unlike other female characters such as the tragic socialite, Madame Red.

I cherish this about her. But because she is the sole transgender character, all of the good and bad of her ends up feeling extrapolated as part of her gender identity. We don’t get to see variance in the portrayal of transgender experiences. Though it would be deceitful of me to pretend I only see the bad.

Here, Queer and In The Clear

You know that scene I asked you to remember. The two page spread. That is why I ended up loving Grelle. Because in this scene, she showcases depth and seriousness. There had been glimpses previously in the Campania arc, but here it is in full view.

She’s smiling, but with bitterness. Her eyes are down and slightly squinted as she leans against her chainsaw scythe. The rain drips down as even the Heaven’s themselves weep. And there is no joke. There is no comedy. Just the haunting acknowledgement that she knew this was coming and that nothing could have prevented it.

The scene genuinely tears me up even now. My eyes started misting up re-reading the chapter. And the first time I read it, the twist devastated me like a freight train. It’s still one of the most impactful moments of Black Butler in my eyes.

And yes, whilst the focus is on the death of Agni, the allowance for Grelle, a literal drama queen to be this serious is genuinely touching. It shows that Toboso did genuinely enjoy her as a character, a narrative person, and not just a stereotyped cluster of transphobic cliches.

But adding to this, more than anything, I like Grelle as she’s pretty unique character. Not merely due to her ties to Japanese queerness and gender deviance. Not only because she is one of a select few of fantasy shonen trans women. But because, at least in my experience of media, she is one of the only transgender women who gets to be continuously happy.

In his excellent academic review of Wandering Son, Kieren Wiley argues that one of the most pivotal parts of transgender representation is trans joy.^[12] So many stories portray the horrors of being trans, our pain at our bodies, families, society, and more. But so very few allow for the glee of new clothes, of medical care, of love and community. And even less demonstrate the joy that Grelle showcases.

The joy of extravagant queerness.

If we see transgender joy it is ordinarily through the assimilation to the cisgender framework. The idea that trans women are happy when wearing a dress or applying makeup. When they are akin to a stereotype of cis women. But Grelle constantly showcases a level of overwhelming personality that is not afforded to the other females in Black Butler. She’s not just a woman; she’s The Woman. The most feminine, flirtatious, effervescent personality to ever exist. She quite literally outdoes everyone on femininity with effortless ease.

To me, that is a valuable form of transgender representation and joy. That even if Grelle endures the pain of her biology, she is still self-confident, dazzling and artistic to a fault. She loves herself so completely and adores who she is even without medical care.

And Grelle isn’t afraid of her masculine past, relishing in a level of gay queerness reserved only for the campiest of men. She remains an iconoclast of femininity and manifests a degree of self-love, confidence and happiness that I enviously aspire to. It’s difficult to overstate how much this height of radical acceptance touches my heart.

And how time and again I have found it comforting to embody such characteristics.

Becoming Ourselves

In the reading for this essay, the conclusion of Kieren Wiley’s dissertation struck me:

“I remember crying underneath my blankets as I watched the first episodes of the Wandering Son anime as a closeted transgender junior high student…It spoke to me like nothing had. I also cannot forget the betrayal I felt with Yoshino – the disappointment that he decided never to go to school in a men’s uniform again.”^[12]

This is a pain I remember all too well when watching Fruits Basket, seeing Momiji and Ritsu both return to their natal gender expression. The triumphant self-congratulatory reversal stating that to be truly whole is to deny any form of deviant gender manifestation.

It was a crushing blow for me as a transgender teenager, to see how other people viewed my own actualisation. But with characters like Grelle, all I feel is spoken to.

It has been onerous to be someone like Grelle in the UK. To be campy, queer, and incredibly gay. Even more so when seeking to medically transition, which requires you to hide away any part of yourself that doesn’t conform to an idealised form of a cisgender heterosexual. But I don’t have to suppress that now. And quite frankly I can’t be bothered anymore.

As a dear friend once informed me, the more I transitioned the more androgynous I became. This wasn’t deliberate to be honest with you. I just became free; able to live outside of binaries. To transcend conformist notions of what it is to be an achillean man or a sapphic woman. Because I’ve been both. I’ve loved as both. And I don’t want to get rid of either part, even now when I identify as non-binary and asexual. Transitioning isn’t solely for transgender people in my experience.

As people explore shifts in their identity, it feels like there is internal communal pressure as well as external societal compression, to relocate from your old sexuality to your new one. A gay man realising they also like women must cast aside their old community and transform into The Bisexual.

But with characters like Grelle, you get to see continuity. Although undeniably a woman (as I am undeniably agender), there is a continuation of the femininity only seen in gay men. A sense of brash queerness that cis women often avoid, but that I relish in.

Even if it wasn’t deliberate, I want more characters like her. Trans and gender non-conforming people in media who aren’t afraid of their past. Those who love their past and themselves in every form. There is nothing more queer, more transgender, more transgressive, than a joy born from a love of your entirety and whole.

Although I have witnessed this in real life and in research, it is desperately difficult to find in media. Sometimes because cisgender writers fear getting it wrong. But I think the primary reason is because if we embrace parts of us that were male or female, or anything else, then transgender people can’t assimilate into cisgender identities.

We become something more than that simplistic conceptualisation of humanity. A beautiful complexity unable to be captured by any binary or form of language. Something unique to ourselves, born of us and changing as we do.

We become ourself. And nothing less.

Thank you all so much for reading. I will be back to discuss video game addiction and online gambling. Until then, I wish you all the happiness in the world. And stay queer.

References

1. Toboso, Y.(2007-2025) Black Butler (Vols.2,3,12-14, 22-28) Square Enix Translation by Yen Press.
2. :akumadeshitsumon. (2019). Hey everyone, I’d like to drop a quick side note about Grell Sutcliffe, as I’ve had a couple of questions about her by now. Retrieved From: Tumblr
3. Hitoshi, I., & Takanori, M. (2006). The process of divergence between ‘men who love men’ and ‘feminised men’ in postwar Japanese media. Intersections: Gender, History and Culture in the Asian Context, 12.
4. Toboso, Y,. (2014) Archived Blog. Retrieved From:Web Archive
5. Lunsing, W. (2005). The politics of okama and onabe: Uses and abuses of terminology regarding homosexuality and transgender. In Genders, transgenders and sexualities in Japan (pp. 97-111). Routledge.
6. McLelland, M. (2004). From the stage to the clinic: changing transgender identities in post-war Japan. In Japan Forum (Vol. 16, No. 1, pp. 1-20). Taylor & Francis Ltd.
7. Dale, S. P. (2012). An introduction to X-Jendā: Examining a new gender identity in Japan. Intersections: Gender and sexuality in Asia and the Pacific, 31.
8. Toboso, Y,. (2018). あ、でも今回は脚本完成時、グレル役植原[…]. Retrieved From: Twitter
9. Chibimyumi (2021). Man!Greller Debunking Series Retrieved From: Tumblr
10. Tsubomoto, A. (1989). Null subject phenomena in Japanese: Incorporation, null expletives, and topic-agreement. English Linguistics, 6, 130-149.
11. Chibuyumi. (2019) I have a question about THE TOPIC. How is Grell being referred to by other shinigami in the original manga? Retrieved From:Tumblr
12. Wiley, K. (2024). Wandering Son’s Negative View of the Transgender Experience: An Emphasis on Pain and the Marked Absence of the Transition. Minnesota Undergraduate Research & Academic Journal, 6(1).