So few good manga for us the Bi !!!
There's a lot of manhwa and manhua with bisexual characters, even ones that aren't in villain roles. Love triangles are a common theme with bisexual protagonists, though, but it isn't like lesbians don't have their own tropes in fiction (lesbians often get pulled out of relationships they have forced themselves to accept, as an example).
One manhwa with a bisexual protagonist that I enjoy is The Third Party. It is stereotypically Korean (i.e. expect corporate espionage, betrayals, etc - all the staples of K dramas), but I don't mind that. It is a refreshing change of pace from the dozenth high school manga.
On that note, I think there's a few reasons that bisexuality is rare in manga:
1. Because manga tends to feature teenagers more often than not, who are extremely unsure of their sexuality to begin with.
2. Eastern fiction in general tries to avoid labeling sexuality.
3. You often just don't have enough information to determine a character's sexuality. These types of stories are about just tiny snippets of our characters' lives focused around a relationship or two. We only get the information the author wants us to have (which as point 2 addresses is rarely sexuality).
As an example of that, let's look at say... Akko, from the classic manga Girl Friends. She is probably bi or pan, as she shows interest in men before showing interest in Mari. However, she never uses those terms, so how we do know that she wasn't just presenting heteronormative behaviors and is actually a lesbian? We don't. In fact, the word 'gay' comes up once in the entire 34 chapters (and is the only LGBTQ+ label that does), when Mari stutters and says she isn't gay (ironic considering from what we know of her character, she is).
On an unrelated note, this manga is fairly similar to another manga about a backpacker who came home every once in a while to her 'friend' who had feelings for her. I forget the name of that one. It was a originally a 1-shot but it got a couple follow-ups, and the entire set of them was published in an anthology.
Edit: https://sevenseasentertainment.com/series/the-conditions-of-paradise/
last edited at Aug 18, 2022 2:54PM
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