If you watched the the show for Re zero you wouldn't see what I'm talking about but it extremely clear in the web novel that Subaru is just a trans woman.
I plan on making a detailed post about this later and even a youtube video but just as a small thing;
in the very first volume of the web novel Subaru rants about how he misses being a kid because of how feminine he was, his long hair made everyone treat him like a girl and he then explicitly says that this was before puberty ruined his life.
then later when we get his back story its explained that he started high school cross dressing felt like his "real self" for the first time and was happy until his voice outted him as cross dressing.
His tragic back story is literally male puberty.
Im saying this mostly because how Subaru is written becomes really sad when you read some of ther Q and A stuff the author is on record saying.
Tappie the author of re zero was be on record saying (and this is paraphrased "I wrote Emila to be naive and child like because to me childhood and innocence represents people being their true selves, after puberty people are forced to give up their true selves to fit into society and this goes doubly so for men its my to me the ultimate expression of being who you really are can only be experienced by women"
"Subaru cross dressing has nothing to do with them being gay, Cross dressing is a normal thing guys like doing Subaru is just really good at it, their wont be any lgbt relationships or characters in re zero"
Like I understand this might just be a thing where it sound way worse because this is not the original japanese but just the general idea is still crazy.
All this added with the fact that his two biggest projects are pretty on the nose representations of dysphoria especially VIVI and them writting only female protaganists outside of subaru who himself is constantly said to be more like his mom than his dad.
i dont know it just feels like so many japanese mangaka are have these half way to being trans characters
In the new anime the dad says something similar to that. He made it clear that it’s horrific to watch the transformation. I only watched a few episodes, but the plot is unbearable to me. The only thing I liked in the first episodes was Akane (excluding reactions to Ranma)