A year of “Yuridemption”?: LGBTQ+ Representation in Animation in 2025 [Part 3]

In the last part of this series, I focused on series such as #1 Happy Family USA, Oh My God… Yes!, Maebashi Witches, Lazarus, Once Upon a Witch’s Death, There’s No Freaking Way I’ll be Your Lover! Unless…, and A Ninja and an Assassin Under One Roof, and films like Princess Principal Crown Handler Chapter 4. There was varying levels of subtext and direct yuri themes, along with other series centering on female friendship like Anne Shirley. The first part of this series centered on additional series. This post will talk about LGBTQ+ representation in animation from mid-September to the end of 2025, noting series such as Futurama, Knights of Guinevere (lots of queer discourse), This Monster Wants to Eat Me, Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake, and Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft.

On September 15, the tenth production season (and thirteenth broadcast season) of Futurama premiered. All episodes dropped the same day. Before its release, a preview clip showed Amy Wong outing herself as bisexual. In addition, when Amy was a centaur named Gynaecaladrial, in the 2008 film Futurama: Bender’s Game, she passionately kissed a centaur-version of protagonist Turanga Leela named Leegola. She also fought with Leela over protagonist Philip J. Fry in the episode “The Butterjunk Effect” and had a relationship with robot Bender Rodriguez, in episodes such as “Proposition Infinity.”

Some sites had, prior to this tenth season, classified Amy as “ambiguously bisexual.” At the beginning of the fourth episode, of the season, entitled “Numberland Gap,” she casually says she is bisexual, then continues on with her conversation, talking about the secret to make Baked Alaska. In the rest of the episode, no one ever brings it up. At the same time, no one says anything bad. This indicates that people accept her. At the same time, I wish they had focused on this part of her character more, as it is too much of a throw-away line. It reminded me of Steven declaring he is a vegetarian in the Steven Universe Future episode “Snow Day” but it never comes up again. Representation needs to be better and stronger than this.

A few days later, on September 19, the pilot episode of an animated mature psychological thriller, with a body horror, macabre, and sci-fi themes, entitled Knights of Guinevere premiered on YouTube. Produced by indie animation powerhouse Glitch, the pilot was co-created by Dana Terrace, John Bailey Owen, and Zach Marcus. Terrace is known for helming The Owl House for three seasons. Owen had been a writer and Marcus a director on the latter series. That series, as I’ve noted in the past, is known for its queer representation, with a bisexual Afro-Latine protagonist named Luz Noceda, and having characters who are asexual, lesbian, gay, transmasculine, or otherwise fall into the LGBTQ+ community.

This pilot hinted at the same, considering that Terrace is bisexual and is dedicated to queer representation. I pointed to this in my newsletter in mid-September, saying, in part, that the pilot will “presumably have some level of queer representation,” and added that the the voice cast includes “a trans woman…a demiwoman…and two additional queer women” along with a “Korean-American voice actor and YouTuber…[a] part-Filipino and part-Chinese voice actress…and [an] acclaimed voice actress.” In my review following the pilot’s premiere, I said that the voice cast is filled with queer people, as noted in this paragraph, from a trans woman (Kayleigh McKee) as Sparky, a demiwoman (Michaela Laws) as Frankie, and queer women (Zelda Khan Black and Erin Nichole Lundquist) as Andi and old Olivia Park.

The voice cast includes well-known actors like SungWonCho and Eden Riegel, known for their recent roles in KPop Demon Hunters and The Owl House, voicing Orville Park, and Gwen, along with Lauren Kong, who is part Filipino and Chinese American, voicing young Olivia Park. In the pilot itself, there are no directly stated queer characters, even as some speculated that the protagonists were intersex (Frankie particularly) or non-binary lesbians. One reviewer noted that Frankie is queer-coded, and a “butch woman,” or said that the relationship between her and Andi reminded them of queerplatonic relationships. That same reviewer, E.B. Hutchins of Comic Book, noted that after Terrace said that Frankie is not a transgender character, some fans criticized her remarks as “transphobic” because she disproved her headcanon. She added that creators who are from marginalized creators have a burden to make “good” representation and are discouraged from writing from identities beyond their own experience.

She noted while storytellers can be inspirational, they are not “saviors,” and pointed out that some fandoms have been kept alive with headcanons, whether Korrasami (Korra and Asami Sato) in Legend of Korra or Bubbline (Princess Bubblegum and Marceline the Vampire Queen) in Adventure Time. Jade King, lead writer for TheGamer, harped on similar themes, cautioning fans to not say Terrace is transphobic, noting that only the pilot has been released (it is too early to make conclusions as to where the story will go), that a “queer character and/or storyline” could appear in the future, and asked people to celebrate the pilot’s “incredibly diverse” cast rather than angrily spiraling in “chronically online” Tumblr posts.

By October, various series with yuri subtext had ended, including Turkey!, Ruri Rocks, and Bad Girl. Similarly, those with female friendship (Anne Shirley, With You and the Rain, Secrets of the Silent Witch, and Harmony of Mille-Feuille) ended, as did those which were directly yuri, particularly There’s No Freaking Way I’ll be Your Lover! Unless… Others, like You and Idol Pretty Cure, which had female friendship its core, continued airing, with one episode each week. This was the same month that ND Stevenson confirmed the worst fears of fans: the animated adaptation of Lumberjanes would not be continuing. I wrote about that series ending, in a post at the end of September, saying in part:

If an animated series had been created, it could have, as one writer once put it, boosted the yuri genre (if it became an anime). At the same time, the series itself had at least three queer characters. One of those was a trans woman named Jo….She would have been the first trans female protagonist in an all-ages animated series. The other two characters are Molly and Mal. Both either identify as lesbian or bisexual, and have crushes on one another. In an increasingly hostile environment for queer people, particularly trans people, the non-development of this animated series is a blow…this aligns with recent set-backs for trans, and otherwise queer, representation.

In the same article, I noted Disney’s recent soft/quiet cancellations of diverse series such as Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, Primos, Hailey’s On It!, and Iwájú, direct cancellations of Tiana, Neon Galaxy, The Owl House, and The Acolyte, and reportedly ending StuGo. I further noted that Disney did not air the Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur episode “The Gatekeeper,” removed trans and non-binary characters from Win or Lose. Disney also downplayed, through the Disney subsidiary Pixar, anything alluding to Elio’s queer sexuality, moments showing Riley Anderson being gay with Valentina “Val” Ortiz in Inside Out 2, and Priya Mangal’s queer moments in Turning Red.

The premiere of a yuri horror anime, This Monster Wants to Eat Me, on October 2nd, filled a void of sorts. It was joined by Ganzo! Bandori-chan, mini-anime series and spinoff from BanG Dream! Ave Mujica the same day. On October 3, the first part of the two-part film compilation of Girls Band Cry, entitled Rhapsody of Youth (or “Seishun Kyо̄sо̄kyoku” in Japanese) premiered in Japanese theaters, followed by the second part, entitled “Hey, Future” (entitled “Naa, Mirai” in Japanese). It premiered in Japanese theaters on November 14. This Monster Wants to Eat Me was described by Rebecca Silverman of ANN as in the “queer horror space” like The Summer Hikaru Died. The former series featured a carnivorous mermaid named Shiori, who meets Hinako, and wants to eat her flesh. The main voice actors are very capable, while the series hints at what humanity means, and adapting the “moody artwork” of the original manga, with the yuri themes coming through Shiori’s dedication to Hinako, rather than the other way around.

October continued with a bang. A yurish comedy anime, A Mangaka’s Weirdly Wonderful Workplace, premiered on the October 6, with yuri vibes clear from the previews which hinted at something more. The latter was clear from the first episode. The mangaka protagonist fantasizes about her boss doing things late at night (like going to clubs) and there is clearly some queer tension. Also, the third season of Spy x Family, continued, as did Ranma 1/2, into its second season, which began in October 5. Neither series had queer characters, but the former, more than the latter, had some queer themes. Additionally, series like Touring After the Apocalypse, with female friendship at the center, premiered on Crunchyroll. It took the place of Anne Shirley, which had focused on the romantic friendship between Anne and Diana.

At the end of the month, on October 29, the second season of Hazbin Hotel released on Prime Video. I previously said that the original pilot episode’s indie spirit had been chipped away and that I had mixed feelings about bringing Helluva Boss to Prime Video, as it could allow for the series to reach a bigger audience, but moves it away from indie animation. Even so, while watching the series on Prime Video, my viewpoint changed to becoming more positive, while retaining some criticisms. In positive developments, it was announced that Glitch Productions, the animation powerhouse mentioned earlier in this post as producing the Knights of Guinevere pilot, will be producing a full season of Lackadaisy. Even better, Olan Rogers will be a development executive/executive producer.

It was great to hear that Glitch will not only be producing its own shows under “Glitch Originals” but partnering with creators under the label “Glitch Presents.” I hope that some of those series are outwardly queer. At the same time, I have hope that this six-episode season will be full of queer characters, which are as prominent as the ones in Final Space did. After all, there’s already confirmation that in Lackadaisy, Dorian Zibowski is bisexual and once loved Mitzi, and was attracted to Wick. In the words of the official Tumblr, “he almost certainly would have followed through on the offer [to personally serenade] if Wick was amenable.”

The same Tumblr stated that Mordecai is asexual, with creator Tracy Butler saying that “Mordecai’s lifestyle is certainly asexual. Being ace and being gay are not necessarily mutually exclusive things, though. There are shades of ace that are aromantic, homoromantic, heteroromantic, biromantic, and so forth.” It was further confirmed that Serafine favors lady cats. One site said this “proves” that Serafine is bisexual, but I’m not exactly sure that is the case. I know there’s some apparent tension between the teams working on Spindlehorse series (Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss), and Lackadaisy, but people should put that aside.

Apart from the platonic life partners dynamic embodied in the two protagonists of Touring After the Apocalypse, the aforementioned second season of Hazbin Hotel and season 2 of Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake premiered in October. The series ran from October 23 to December 25. Previews made clear the season would have: Marceline the Vampire Queen and Princess Bubblegum (PB) together (a pairing fans have dubbed Bubbline), pansexual actress Ashly Burch as Huntress Wizard, bisexual actress Anna Akana (part Japanese, Filipino, Hawaiian, Spanish, and French), drag queen Jinkx Monsoon, possibly pansexual actress Kris Collins, and queer Mexican-American actor Harvey Guillén. Fionna had a crush on a trans male character named Hunter, voiced by genderfluid and non-binary Puerto Rican drag king Vico Ortiz. Marshall and Gary are in a gay relationship. Marceline and PB are in a romantic relationship.

The cast also featured trans female actress and comedian Patti Harrison, along with a Black actress, Roz Ryan, as Cake the Cat, Filipino-Chinese actor Manny Jacinto, and Pakistani-American actor and comedian Kumail Nanjiani. These voice actors are a talented bunch. I wrote about Burch herself some years ago, talking about her contributions to LGBTQ+ representation, saying that “in many ways, Burch is a queer icon” and highlighting her role as Ash in Hey Ash Whatcha Playin’ (her YouTube series), and voice roles as Enid in OK K.O.! Let’s Be Heroes, Ash in Final Space, Rutile Twins in Steven Universe, and Molly in The Ghost and Molly McGee (sadly not a canon queer character). I noted her many other roles, like Ridley in Glitch Techs and Cass Wizard in Bee and PuppyCat.

Otherwise, Anna Akana prominently voiced Sasha Waybright in Amphibia, who was confirmed as bisexual in the series finale, along with various other voice roles. This included a one-off role in Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur as Odessa Drake, a recurring role in Big City Greens (Gloria Sato), and a main role (Daisy) in the Magical Girls Friendship Squad: Origins series, and the improved series that followed it: Magical Girl Friendship Squad. As for Jinkx Monsoon, she voiced Emerald in Steven Universe, the first non-binary actor to have a voice role in that series, plus Martha and various characters in Helluva Boss. Harvey Guillén voiced Vassago in the same series and other characters, such as Dick Grayson/Nightwing/Red X in Harley Quinn.

Vico Ortiz voiced Hunter/Skater Y/Fern, as they did in season one, with Ortiz formerly voicing Tefé Holland for three episodes of Harley Quinn. Patti Harrison is a good addition as well. She voiced The Mushroominations in an episode of Magical Girl Friendship Squad and Stat in the spy comedy Q-Force which Netflix canned after one season. Roz Ryan voiced characters in Kim Possible, Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated (Gorgeous G), Summer Camp Island, and in other series. Manny Jacinto recently voiced Scott Denoga in Hailey’s On It! (quietly cancelled by Disney), Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur (Blue Streak/Brian Glory), Magical Girl Friendship Squad (Coffee Dude), and played Qimir/The Stranger in The Acolyte (cruelly canned by Disney after one season). Kumail Nanjiani has voiced assorted characters. This series served as the first voice role for Kris Collins (known as KallMeKris on YouTube) who has only done live-action roles before.

On October 29, the second season of Hazbin Hotel dropped on Prime Video, with various moments between Charlie Morningstar and her girlfriend Vaggie. There was some gay tension between Angel Dust and the bartender (Husk), and further gay tension between Vox and Alastor. In one episode, Charlie even calls a news anchor homophobic and states that she is bi, not gay. The anchor hurls slurs about the hotel, especially calling it the “hashbrown hotel,” which may be a dig at the show’s hatedom.

Apart from anime with direct yuri themes (This Monster Wants to Eat Me) or others with yuri subtext (A Mangaka’s Weirdly Wonderful Workplace) and female friendship (Touring After the Apocalypse), there was Ranma 1/2. Ranma is finally able to change forms freely from male to female, and win a contest, annoying Akane without question, as he does throughout the series. November was also when Lesbian Space Princess premiered on streaming platforms, which had bopped around from festivals to theaters throughout 2025. The film centers on a sheltered princess who is publicly dumped by her bounty-hunter girlfriend and has to leave her protected bubble so she can save her from possible death. In the process, she learns more about herself, falls in love with a free-spirited musician, and becomes more confident, rather than hiding away from everything.

On November 6, GLAAD released their yearly report, which was dismal for 2025, saying that “LGBTQ representation appears to be at a pace of two steps forward, three steps back…[with] more than 200 (41%) of those characters will not return, due to series cancellations, endings or limited series format…[and] 96 (20%) LGBTQ characters on shows that have not yet been renewed, their onscreen fates hang in the balance.” GLAAD said that “less than half of the LGBTQ characters counted appear on renewed series, and with their loss comes a loss of possibility for impact that continues for years with an audience, creating social change” and called for continued series to reflect authentic representation. I added more about this in my newsletter, in early December, saying that:

…The loss of these shows goes beyond bisexual, pansexual, lesbian, queer, non-binary, gay, and trans characters fading away as popular series like Arcane, The Dragon Prince, and Star Trek: Lower Decks, end. It goes hand-in-hand with rising anti-trans (and anti-queer) rhetoric…authentic queer representation matters. It can make clear to queer people that they matter, that they are seen. It is only one step toward a more just society. That is what makes the end, this year [2025], of Craig of the Creek (on January 25th) and Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur (on March 8th), just as heartbreaking. Those series had supporting, and main, trans female, gay, non-binary, agender, and lesbian characters. They centered on Black people, their experiences, and their stories…[the series which have been renewed and are continuing] are at the whims of execs at Warner Bros. Discovery, Disney, and Amazon. They could cancel these series at a moment’s notice or wind them down.

December was the end of various series with queer representation, including Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake and This Monster Wants to Eat Me on December 25. Also, Touring After the Apocalypse, with two female platonic life partners as protagonists, ended on December 20, followed by A Mangaka’s Weirdly Wonderful Workplace, with yuri subtext, on December 25. In the middle in the month, on December 11, the second, and final season of Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft premiered on Netflix.

I wrote about this season in a newsletter in late December, describing a “strong friendship between Lara [Croft] and Korean-American photographer Samantha ‘Sam’ Nishimura (voiced by Karen Fukuhara)…Fans have reveled in their close friendship (and dominate much of the fan discourse), seeing romantic ties between them in a semi-canon ship known as S.S. Endurance, larasam, or samlara. There are many cute moments between them. They deeply care about each other, and are both fierce fighters in their own way, with Lara even punching a shark in one episode. There’s…blushing, braiding each other’s hair, wearing clothing with each other’s colors, hugging, or wearing the same necklaces, to give a few examples.”

Unfortunately, this is only subtext, as it is never canonized. In contrast, the final episode of Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake had a happy ending for all the characters, whether Gary and Marshall in a loving relationship, or Fionna seemingly getting a girlfriend named Fennel, after ending her sort-of relationship with DJ Flame (voiced by Manny Jacinto). As it turns out, Fennel is voiced, in season 2, by Akana. As noted earlier, she is bisexual, and known for voicing queer characters in Amphibia (Sasha Waybright), Magical Girl Friendship Squad and Magical Girl Friendship Squad: Origins (Daisy), along with Odessa Drake in Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur.

In early January, the dark fantasy action yuri, Roll Over and Die, will premiere, on January 9, as will the romcom sci-fi yuri Does It Count If You Lose Your Virginity to an Android? (on January 10), and the second season of ‘Tis Time for “Torture,” Princess season 2, replete with yuri subtext, on January 12. In April of this year, the anime adaptation of Witch Hat Atelier will premiere, as will Scenes from Awajima, and Kamiina Botan, Yoeru Sugata wa Yuri no Hana. It is not known if the magical girl series, Magical Sisters LuluttoLilly will have queer characters, but probably not.

Furthermore, at some point in 2026, the boy’s love anime, Go for It, Nakamura!, which was delayed from 2025, will premiere. The same can be said for season 2 of the continually controversial Gushing Over Magical Girls, the yuri comedy-drama Young Ladies Don’t Play Fighting Games, season 2 of Batman: Caped Crusader, season 4 of The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder, season 2 of X-Men ’97, season 2 of Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, and part 2 of Ark: The Animated Series. The latter is a mature animation, with an Aborigine lesbian protagonist in love with another woman. Bocchi the Rock! will have a second season, which will be wondrous, to say the least. It is not known if season 3 of My Adventures with Superman or season 3 of Helluva Boss will premiere in 2026 or not.