There was a musical movement in the 70s and 80s that took great pride in blurring the lines of gender expression. It was known as glam rock—and throughout the 80s as glam metal—and acts such as David Bowie, Queen, Kiss, and Twisted Sister became well-known for adopting a flashy, androgynous style to pair with their music. This style was seen as an act of rebellion, a way to distance from the revolutionary rock of the 60s by ushering in a sound of decadence and vapidity and a look that was a performance of gender fluidity.
This is also something that we see in the 2021 anime film INU-OH. This is no surprise, as the film’s major focus is how traditions are broken and changed as societies and people progress. The two main characters, Inu-Oh and Tomona, are men on a mission to tell stories of warriors outside the shogunate’s approval. They’re aiming to break the curses of the…
