Two children, both alike in identity, in fair Japan, where we lay our scene. From ancient tradition breaks to new mutiny, where an errant confession tears old bonds asunder. Once the closest of friends, these two star crossed dreamers... One born male, wishing to possess the eternal beauty of a maiden, and one born female, wishing to possess the guile and power of a lord... Find themselves lost between the carefree days of old and several romances that shall never be. Whether together or apart, Shuichi Nitori and Yoshino Takatsuki share one common dream... To abandon the genders they were assigned at birth, and be accepted by others in the way that they see themselves, even as the ever-present threat of adolescence encroaches upon them. As they embark upon this journey, however, they’ll need to support each other through the trials and tribulations of being transgender youths, for the path that awaits them may be far more cruel than they could have expected.

I wouldn’t go as far as to say Wandering son has a unique look to it, but it definitely has an uncommon one. Half the time, the visuals in this anime feel really soft, from the outlines of the characters to the slight blur of the backgrounds, kind of like the sort of artwork you’d find in a children’s picture book. There’s also a really pleasant watercolor effect, especially in the hair and clothes of the characters, and for the most part I think it all looks really beautiful together, but where it kind of loses me is the constant white blur around certain shots, especially in the daytime when the kids are at school, like everything is surrounded by a thick fog, and if I’m being honest, I don’t really like that. This kind of aesthetic is usually employed to create a sense of nostalgia in the viewer, and for such an emotionally honest series, this is the one element that kind of slips into manipulative territory. I find it pretty distracting over-all, especially with just how jarringly different it is from how the backgrounds look the other half of the time, where they can be so richly detailed that they seem almost photorealistic, especially with exterior shots at night.

It’s a shame that the art style is so inconsistent, because other than that, the animation in this series is drop dead gorgeous. I barely noticed any budget shortcuts throughout the run time, and I’m usually pretty sensitive to that kind of thing. The character animation feels constantly natural, with a ton of extra effort going into the way each individual character moves, as whether walking or just sitting and talking, each character carries themselves in a unique way. The character designs are soft and slightly cartoony in their faces, but everything about the way they move feels natural and realistic. Director Ei Aoki has never really had much of a voice or style of his own in his work, but he has always been really talented at picking up the tone of the projects he works on, and figuring out the right overall vision to present them through. I was especially impressed with his use of blocking and framing to communicate information about character dynamics to the audience, most notably with Nitori’s early interactions with Anna. By his own admission, he mainly focuses on adapting works that speak to him in some way, and it shows.

I can kind of relate to that, because I usually focus on reviewing anime that speak to me in some way, for better or worse, and I feel like Wandering son is the kind of anime that has the power to speak to everybody, but none more so than the community that are at the center of the story, the transgender community. A community that I am very demonstrably not a part of, which is why I initially felt a little hesitant to write this review. I don’t want to be that outsider who tries to offer their approval or disapproval over material that they are not qualified to comment on. The other day, I saw someone on Facebook criticizing Disney’s portrayal of queer characters by presenting a list of queer anime couples that they said ‘did it right...’ Even though half of the couples on the list were either NOT queer, like the main protagonists of Dirty Pair; Completely one sided, like Tomoyo and Sakura from Cardcaptor Sakura... Or one sided and deeply problematic, like Misaka Mikoto and Kuroko Shirai. I don’t want to be like that, appropriating an experience that I didn’t have and frankly do not understand to make some biased point.

I may be asexual, meaning I do know what it’s like to grow up differently than the majority of my peers, but there are very specific things about gender dysphoria that I will never be able to wrap my head around. Like, one of my biggest influences as a reviewer was the former youtube reviewer Jesuotaku, who was a pretty big deal at one point. Well, in 2014, he came out as transgender, and as part of his video revealing this, he mentioned that he’d been skinny all his life... Not because of an extra healthy diet or anything, but just because he had always had difficulty swallowing and getting food down. This difficulty finally began to disappear the day he said, for the first time, “I am a man.” Which goes to show, gender dysphoria can manifest in any number of seemingly unrelated ways. It’s not just depression, or a lack of comfort in one’s own skin, it’s so much more complex than that, and I don’t know if I could ever understand this kind of experience well enough to judge how accurate or respectful an anime based on the topic was able to portray it.

Still, you don’t have to understand someone in order to respect and empathize with them, and that’s where this story truly wound up resonating with me, by having a cast of likable, believable, and sympathetic characters. I will say, though, it’s kind of hard to talk about them, because I feel sorely compelled to refer to them as transgendered, and call them by their proper pronouns, but the show weirdly doesn’t seem to like treating them this way. Rather than Nitori saying “I am a girl,” it’s constantly phrased as “I want to be a girl,” implying that without growing up and receiving reassignment surgery, they are male by default. I can’t really blame the story for that, since it was released way back in 2011, and probably took place way earlier, especially in Japan of all places. I genuinely don’t know whether or not the people who made this anime had ever heard of the concept of using peoples’ preferred pronouns, as evident by Nitori being referred to exclusively as a male throughout the series, so I don’t know if this is the right way to approach things, but I am going to go ahead and use everyones’ preferred pronouns for the rest of this review.

Wandering son is the story of two transgender preteens attempting to explore their identities while dealing with both internal struggles and external reactions from their families and classmates. Some of the people around them are judgmental, and some of them are supportive, even if it’s only to a certain point. I was particularly impressed by the level of nuance to these reactions, as nobody ever felt like a strawman, and it never felt like anybody was being used as a mouthpiece to make a point. Everyone feels believably human, and while I feel like the amount of bigotry these characters face feels unrealistically light, I do acknowledge that going too far with this side of things would have made the story feel too mean-spirited. Even characters who present the most opposition to Nitori... The bullies at school, his aggressive and unaccepting sister... They never feel like some cackling antagonists, they just don’t have the benefit of spending time in Nitori’s headspace and seeing the world the way she does, like we do.

From the perspective of the audience, it’s hard not to feel sympathetic for these kids who are going through the most confusing time of their lives while struggling to just be themselves. The very idea of just being a transgender person while going through to physical changes of puberty is terrifying enough(I’m pretty sure that’s what killed one of the Zombieland Saga girls) without adding the inevitable teasing and social stigma of a building full of immature voices who are already just looking for something to pick on you for. We’ve all had some kind of experiences related to bullying and feeling ashamed of something we wanted desperately to be proud of. We’ve all been judged, ostracized, and treated unfairly. We all know how precious a single moment of solitude can be, away from the eyes of the world. We all know how frustrating it is to have that peace shattered by an intruder, but we also(hopefully) all know how gratifying it can be when you find people who you can share that solitude with without fear of rejection. Even if you will never understand the feeling of gender dysphoria there will surely be something in this story that you can relate to.

One thing that spoke to me personally, and this is going to be kind of a spoiler, is that when Nitori finally decides to go to school in a female uniform and under a long haired wig, she faces consequences that Takatsuki and another female student did NOT face when they came in wearing boys’ uniforms, and this reflects an issue that has always bothered me... The fact that it’s far more acceptable for girls to have masculine interests than it is for boys to have feminine interests. When girls are into sports, or video games, or comic books, they’re considered cool, but when boys are into dolls, fashion or pretty much anything seen as ‘girly,’ they’re considered weak, and called pussies or homophobic slurs. I’ve always kind of seen this as the backbone of toxic masculinity... The idea that the more manly something is, the more admirable it is. I’m not trans, I want to be clear about that, but I will admit I’ve had difficulty accepting the label of “man” before, not because I don’t consider myself male, or a guy, or a dude, but because I don’t want to be bound to the societal expectations of a ‘real man.’

You may think that entire paragraph had nothing to do with Wandering son, and I do just generally have a tendency to lose myself in unhinged rants in the middle of my reviews, but I feel like this also illustrates what works the most about this anime... Even if you’re not a part of the transgender community, this is a powerful, thought provoking anime that will in fact inspire you to question the world around you, from your own personal beliefs to the conventions of society. This is the kind of show that digs it’s claws in your brain, and forces you to think long after the fact, not just about the themes and subject matter it presented you with, but so much more. Again, I don’t know for certain if this anime ‘does it right,’ presenting an accurate and respectful portrayal of the transgender experience, but I feel confident in saying it does so without any hint of artificial or forced emotional manipulation.

Wandering Son is not available stateside, and the original manga is out of print from Fantasmagraphic books.

Wandering Son is a thoughtful series with a slow and gentle pace that goes the extra mile of humanizing it’s main characters by placing you in their headspaces, so that even those furthest removed from the transgendered spectrum can learn to empathize with them, having been granted a front row seat to the way they see the world. The ending was unfortunately cut off, as is usually the case with LGBT manga adaptations, but I still believe the anime ends on a satisfying and optimistic enough note, and unlike a certain anime that I could name, you can look up the manga’s ending without ruining your entire day. The main reason I think this anime works, however, is that it isn’t just an LGBT anime, or a transgender anime, it’s a very human anime in general. And, at the end of the day, we are all human.

I give Wandering Son a 9/10