Binary Representation in “Land of the Lustrous” Anime

Land of the Lustrous is a cool anime for a lot of reasons, but today we’re going to talk about representation. It has BOTH a female character AND a male character. With binary people so starved for representation, having two in the same show is a pretty big deal.

Of course, it’s not perfect. They never explicitly say “I am female” or “I am male” but they call each other “sister” and “brother”. They’re also not super central characters, especially the male one. They also have weird, alien, “othering” appearances.

In addition, Ventricosus, the female one, also refers to herself as “King”, and Aculeatus, the male one, is kind of androgynous. Between all of that, there are probably going to be a lot of people insisting that they both aren’t binary. But given the amount of representation binary people tend to get, anything is a good thing.

