A short webcomic by Isaki Uta explores, with
remarkable sensitivity and realism, the difficulties that can arise in
relationships between allosexual and asexual people, inviting us to question
amatonormativity, compulsory sexuality, and our own understanding of love.
There are works that impress us with the complexity of
their plots, others with the depth of their characters, and others simply with
the honesty with which they portray a human experience. Mine-kun is Asexual,
by Isaki Uta, belongs to the last category. It is a very short webcomic, almost
a sketch of ideas that the author would later develop much more extensively in Is
Love the Answer?, but its simplicity does not prevent it from leaving a
deep impression. Quite the opposite: precisely because it avoids lengthy
explanations and chooses to show rather than theorize, it manages to portray an
experience that rarely finds representation in fiction with remarkable
naturalness.
The story revolves around Mine, a young man who openly
explains that he is biromantic but asexual. From the very beginning, it becomes
clear that he does not consider himself incapable of love; rather, he
experiences love in a way that differs from what society expects. He sees
himself as someone who is missing something, someone who cannot quite feel
“normal” because he does not experience romance or seek sexual intimacy in the
way everyone else seems to. This sense of alienation from oneself, so common among
many asexual people before they fully understand their identity, is portrayed
with admirable sensitivity.
However, the work does not turn asexuality into an
explanatory discourse. Mine already knows who he is, even though he is still
trying to understand himself better. In fact, there is a particularly
meaningful moment when we see him reading philosophy precisely for that
purpose: to understand himself and to better understand Murai, the girl who has
fallen in love with him. To Mine, it feels almost miraculous that someone would
want to date him, and when he expresses this, Murai is deeply moved to realize
that he considers her feelings for him something extraordinary. It is a simple
but deeply touching scene because it shows that both of them are trying to
reach each other from very different emotional worlds.
One of the greatest strengths of Mine-kun is
Asexual is the way it raises interesting questions without offering
definitive answers. What really distinguishes a friendship from a conventional
romantic relationship or a QPR? The work does not explicitly use the latter
term, although it is clearly present in the background of many of their
conversations. Mine argues that love consists of the bond between people, and
that neither sex nor kissing is essential to that bond. This idea has a
profound impact on Murai and, probably, on the reader as well, because it forces
us to question many of the assumptions we usually take for granted about
relationships.
The manga also portrays quite effectively the social
pressure surrounding any form of love that deviates from the norm. One of
Murai’s friends even suggests that Mine is probably gay and simply using her to
appear “normal.” Later, the same pressure reappears when she discovers that the
couple have been dating for several months without kissing. The surprise does
not stem so much from a lack of affection between them as from an inability to
imagine that a relationship can develop at a different pace or according to
different needs.
And yet Mine and Murai do build a relationship. They
go out together, have breakfast, go to the movies, spend entire afternoons
watching films, talk for hours, and genuinely enjoy each other’s company. There
is a particularly telling scene in which Murai interprets an invitation to
watch movies at Mine’s home as a possible beginning of greater physical
intimacy. The reality, however, is much simpler: they simply have a good time
together watching the entire series of films. Nothing else happens. On another occasion,
while Mine is hugging a pillow, Murai jokingly asks whether she can take its
place. He says no. These small, everyday moments delicately illustrate how
affection can exist even when certain forms of physical contact are
uncomfortable for one of the people involved.
Precisely because of its realism, the story hurts.
What struck me most about the work was seeing just how
convincingly it portrays a relationship between an allosexual person and an
asexual person as something entirely possible. This is not a story that turns
their difference into a permanent source of conflict, nor does it portray
asexuality as an insurmountable obstacle. Quite the opposite: Mine and Murai
genuinely love each other. They respect each other. They enjoy being together.
Their relationship could have lasted.
And precisely because of that, the ending is so
painful.
At one point, Mine tells Murai that she can break up
with him whenever she wants because he feels that he will never be able to give
her what she needs. He believes that he is not enough to make her happy as a
romantic or sexual partner. Deeply affected, Murai then proposes one final
condition: that he kiss and hug her just once, and then they will break up. He
agrees, although he is visibly uncomfortable. The kiss finally happens, and for
her it becomes a moment of absolute happiness. Yet it also marks the end of
their relationship. Before they part ways, Murai tells him something that is
probably the true heart of the entire work: that there is nothing wrong with
him, that he is not lacking anything, and that she fell in love precisely with
the person he was. They thank each other for having fallen in love and go their
separate ways.
Later, Murai reveals that she entered another
relationship and lost her virginity, but admits that she still remembers Mine
and still feels that ache in her chest when she thinks about him.
The story affected me deeply. I felt that Isaki Uta
portrays a genuinely beautiful relationship between two people, one that really
could have lasted. It hurts me that everything ends because of a kiss. It hurts
because this is exactly the kind of situation that can happen in real life. Not
because allosexual people are selfish or cruel, but because amatonormativity
and compulsory sexuality have become so deeply ingrained that, at times, they
turn certain expectations—the kiss, sex, or a particular form of physical
intimacy—into conditions that are considered essential for a relationship to be
satisfactory. There are even cases in which an allosexual person stops
considering a relationship altogether as soon as they discover that the other
person is asexual, simply because they assume that sex should occupy a central
and non-negotiable place within a relationship.
Perhaps this is precisely where Mine-kun is Asexual
makes its most interesting contribution to works about asexuality. In contrast
to the much more extensive, explicit, and educational treatment found in Is
Love the Answer?, Isaki Uta focuses here on one very specific question: can
a relationship work between an allosexual person who needs a certain degree of
physical intimacy and a biromantic asexual person who feels uncomfortable with
that same kind of contact? The answer is neither optimistic nor pessimistic. It
is simply realistic. The relationship works for a while. There is love. There
is respect. But there are also different needs, and those needs do not always
find a point of balance.
That is the work’s greatest strength: it forces us to
ask uncomfortable questions. How can a kiss—or everything that kiss represents:
the need for physical intimacy, sexual desire, or certain romantic
expectations—end up destroying a relationship built on mutual affection? Is
sex, or even kissing, genuinely so essential to some people that it can become
an absolute dealbreaker? To what extent are many people using sex to
fulfill other emotional needs that might instead be met through deeper
communication, different forms of intimacy, or alternative relationship
structures?
I do not think the manga directly answers these
questions. Nor do I think it intends to. What it does achieve is to invite
readers to question certain assumptions that normally remain invisible. If we
stopped assuming that a healthy relationship necessarily requires sex,
conventional romance, or constant physical contact, perhaps we would discover
that there are far more ways of loving each other than we tend to imagine.
Perhaps we would also learn to respect each other’s needs more fully, establish
boundaries together, and build relationships determined less by social inertia
and more by communication and mutual care.
For all these reasons, I would recommend Mine-kun
is Asexual to almost any reader, although it will probably be especially
meaningful to those who are already familiar, even to some degree, with
asexuality. For many ace people, it may become a mirror in which they recognize
themselves; for others, it may serve as a starting point for reflection. It is
a short, realistic, thoughtful, and deeply emotional work that demonstrates
that you do not need many pages to raise some of the most important questions
about love, intimacy, and the ways in which we choose to relate to one another.
Administrator of ACE Post-Sexuality
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