His illustrated realizations and nuanced expressions can help a finicky audience process the material better. Tagame has that skill, exemplified by the prestigious Japan Media Arts Award he’s received for the series. “For that reason, I pay particular attention to the details of my characters’ moods.” “Complicated feelings that can’t be rendered into simple words can be expressed as a matter of fact through visual imagery (provided you have the artistic skills, of course),” Tagame said. “By staging a marriage with a family member of a straight character, I wanted the straight character to realize marriage equality doesn’t just affect gay or lesbian couples (i.e., the special circumstances by which marriage “equality” is defined), but that it’s an issue that affects all of society, including straight people.”īy their very nature, graphic novels enable an author to put into pictures what can’t easily be put into words. 'I started thinking about how I could make a straight audience more personally invested in a story about marriage equality, and I thought, Nothing could be more personal to a straight person than having a family member marry someone of the same gender,” Tagame told our “Queeries” columnist Karen Schechner last fall. And an all-ages manga could be just the digestif needed to process the meaty concepts of gay marriage and nontraditional family ties-no matter the geography or language.

The books were born from openly gay Tagame’s desire to create a series that would encourage a straight audience to engage in LGBTQ material. In tandem with his gradual affinity for Mike (an affection that Yaichi’s outspoken young daughter, Kana, exudes immediately), Yaichi grapples with both his insecurities as a father and his frustration with Japan’s cultural wall when it comes to LGBTQ acceptance. When his brother Ryoji’s white Canadian husband, Mike, unexpectedly knocks on the door, Yaichi is circumstantially nudged into confronting and combating his own homophobia. Framed within the narrative is single dad Yaichi, who has always perceived himself as accepting of his deceased twin brother’s sexuality.

At its manga core, Gengoroh Tagame’s two-volume graphic novel series My Brother’s Husband is a study in connections: ones that are broken, repaired, cultural, social, and unexpected.

Gengoroh tagame house of brute