Imagine you are back in middleschool at the start of the school-year. A boy walks into the room – wait, is that a boy? He – or she? – catches your eye because of the cute style in which his – or her – hair is worn. This person is short even for a middleschool kid, and their mostly slender frame has slightly wider hips. The kid feels your gaze; it seems you stared for too long. You fear a reproachful glance, but when the kid looks at you, they just give a quick, genuine smile before going about their business. So cute!
This kid is Nagisa Shiota, the main character of Assassination Classroom. Due to his unusual way of expressing himself, Nagisa is a great character to use in a discussion about gender. This article will explore the basic ideas around gender. It is important to go over this information because so many people are unfamiliar with the concepts and words.
After introducing the basic information, this article will explore Nagisa’s gender in particular. Following that is a discussion of some problematic ways in which gender is sometimes handled in Assassination Classroom.
Article outline
- Introduction to Gender Concepts
- About Nagisa: Background and Gender
- Problems with Gender Discussion in Assassination Classroom
- Closing Thoughts: Trans Comparison
- References
Introduction to Gender Concepts
What is gender? There are many definitions. For this topic, it’s not very useful to just cite an overly simplified, possibly outdated definition from a dictionary like Merriam-Webster or Oxford (though these dictionaries are generally good). However, in addition to standard dictionaries, there are definitions from science textbooks, science journals, medical and health organizations, and more. These may prove more helpful.
For the basic idea, I’ll use a medical science journal article by Elizabeth Barr, et al. (Reference 1). The introduction section explains the perspective of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) on the topic of gender. The article states,
“Gender is a multidimensional construct with multiple domains that influence human health: identity and expression; roles and norms; relations; and power.” It then goes on to describe those aspects, including gender identity (“a core element of a person’s individual sense of self”) and gender expression (“how a person communicates their gender to others through their behavior and appearance.”)
So, gender is a fuzzy set of elements related to how a person thinks of themselves, how they present themselves, and their place in society. Importantly, gender is not the same as sex. Although sex is a complex subject and not a true binary, we can generalize and say sex has two main categories: male and female. Gender is even less binary. It’s a fluid spectrum. Gender is usually interconnected with one’s sex, but there are many exceptions. See Reference 2 for a good, simple article that describes the difference between sex and gender.
Masculinity and femininity are important aspects of most genders. They are “multifaceted constructs” in the same way as gender. For example, the social expectations of being a man is one possible form of masculinity. But one also usually has an internal understanding of masculinity that one feels comfortable with. These ideas are complex, but to oversimplify, masculinity is the construct of manliness, while femininity is the construct of womanliness. These are not the sole dimensions of gender, but they are useful parameters that many people use to understand themselves.
The next part of this article will tie in this general information to our understanding of the character Nagisa Shiota. We’ll look at his gender identity, gender expression, masculinity and femininity. However, before that, here is a list of useful terms related to gender. Some of them may be mentioned in the following section.
~List of Terms to Know~
Sex: A collection of biological characteristics of individuals, including but not limited to gamete size, chromosomes, and reproductive organs.
Gender: The complex construct of how you identify internally, socially, and otherwise – exists on a spectrum – usually matches with your biological sex, but not always.
Gender identity: An individual’s internal conception of their gender – sometimes different from gender expression.
Gender expression: An individual’s way of behaving (speaking, dressing, gesturing) that sends social cues to others about their gender – sometimes different from gender identity.
AGAB (assigned gender at birth): The gender chosen for you by a doctor at your birth, typically entirely based on sex characterisitics.
AMAB (assigned male at birth): Someone who was classified as male at the time of their birth due to physical characteristics.
AFAB (assigned female at birth): Someone who was classified as female at the time of their birth due to physical characteristics.
Transgender: A transgender person is someone whose gender doesn’t match their sex. For example, they may be AMAB, but their gender is actually that of a woman. Trans people can be male, female, or nonbinary.
Nonbinary: A nonbinary person is someone whose gender is not binary – i.e. not strictly male or female. Nonbinary people are diverse, from bigender (both male and female) to agender (neither male nor female) individuals and more.
Gender-Queer: Someone whose gender does not conform to tradition – sometimes another way of saying “nonbinary.”
About Nagisa: Background and Gender
Nagisa is a boy with a rather feminine appearance. Those who watch a lot of anime were fairly sure of Nagisa’s gender right away due to certain cues. But for many new fans, it was difficult to tell. Some people assumed Nagisa was a girl, as he rarely states otherwise (especially early in the series). Nagisa is voiced by a female seiyuu, which can be confusing for those who aren’t used to this common facet of anime voice-acting. Casting Nagisa’s voice this way suggests he has a higher voice and a gentle, soft way of speaking.
As the initial uncertainty fades, it becomes clear that Nagisa is AMAB and that he is also a boy in terms of gender. He calls himself such at several points in the show. However, he seems to have some more “feminine” qualities – and/or a lack of over-the-top masculine traits like what most of the other boys have. Nagisa’s relationship with femininity is complex, so we need to be careful about whether we view him as “girly” and what the implications would be. We’ll discuss that next.
Nagisa’s mother, Hiromi Shiota, was emotionally abusive for most of the boy’s childhood. Having always wanted a female child, she blamed Nagisa for not being a girl. Perhaps worse than that, she would often treat him like a girl and demand that he take on feminine habits like keeping his hair long. Hiromi used her fierce anger to control Nagisa. Whenever he got attached to things deeply enough – like the E Class – she tried to take it away from him, fearing to lose her chokehold over his life.
Due to his time in the E Class, Nagisa grew happier and more independent from his abusive mother. Koro-sensei also helped him stand up to the deranged lady in a way that had lasting impact. But while it was happening, the emotional abuse left Nagisa depressed and stressed, leading to most of his issues in school. Being compared to a girl all the time and told he was not ideal must have been truly painful for a young boy who was just trying to be himself.
It’s obvious that Nagisa has a style of behaving and communicating in ways that seem stereotypically “feminine” compared to the other boys. But that doesn’t make him less of a boy. It’s also not something he needs to change to be validated in his personal masculinity. He dresses like a boy and uses the generally masculine pronoun, “boku,” to refer to himself. Though his social presentation shows high levels of femininity, Nagisa is definitely a boy.
Assassination Classroom was fairly bold to go outside the cookie-cutter shounen model and feature a male main character with more feminine attributes. However, this anime doesn’t handle every issue well. The following section will address two problems in the way Assassination Classroom generally deals with topics surrounding gender.
Problems with Gender Discussion in Assassination Classroom
(Note: Text shown in Italics was written by Mono’s good friend, Nat, who occasionally helps with blog posts.)
As a show marketed primarily towards young men, Assassination Classroom has a big roster of male characters that express themselves in a lot of different ways. The narrative gives them room to experience their emotions and form bonds. Remarkably, even though the plot is centered around a competition for a large sum of money that only one of the students can earn, Koro-Sensei heavily condemns aggressive actions between the characters, instead promoting actions that forge bonds and have educational value.
The show nurtures a spirit of collaboration between the members of its cast in the later episodes. Killing the planet-destroying monster becomes a fun group project that everyone gets to be involved in with their unique strengths. Because this anime features a large roster of characters, individuality is usually valued and celebrated. This extends somewhat into the topic of gender, which is where we get to speak about our favorite blue-haired, snake-aligned boy.
Nagisa performs manhood in a very soft-spoken and kind way that is very refreshing to see next to his peers, who are performing a more posturing, hard-boiled act to establish their manhood. Despite this, he is accepted by the class for the most part.
Note that Nat said “For the most part.” There are times when toxic masculinity comes into play and Nagisa is lowkey mocked for being “girly.” There’s also the related issue of what happened during the hotel infiltration toward the end of the first season. The team forced Nagisa to cross-dress and accompany the other girls on their mission. Nagisa is talented with using his femininity for disguises and missions, but it clearly makes him uncomfortable to do so when the other boys think of him as less of a man.
It’s bad enough that Nagisa had to endure this incident considering the gender-related emotional abuse from his mother. But even putting Nagisa aside, this plot-point was problematic in other ways. It was implied that the girls wouldn’t be safe and couldn’t complete their mission without a man present in their midst. The way this was written shows all sorts of casual and underlying misogyny.
To sum it up, the main issues are toxic masculinity and sexism. Fortunately, the broader narrative of Assassination Classroom doesn’t seem to intentionally push this type of thing. Overall, Nagisa is applauded for being his femboy self and asserting his identity.
Closing Thoughts: Trans Comparison
On the subject of Nagisa and gender, my friend Nat had one more interesting take.
As a trans person myself, I felt a strong kinship with Nagisa over his issues with gender and the pressure forced upon him to be a certain way. His situation is highly unusual. Being a cis person, he would normally not be facing the problem of gender dysphoria during his life – were it not for his psychotic mother and occasionally his classmates forcing him into a female role.
There is some good in this messy situation, behind all the bad jokes and fetishization. Nagisa’s rejection of someone forcing an unwanted identity onto him is genuinely is how a lot of trans people experience the world. He experiences dysphoria whenever he is misgendered. Because of this, I think Nagisa is a great example for unaffected people to help them understand the pressure and stress trans people face every day.
I heartily agree with this comparison between trans issues and the character of Nagisa. I love this character because, even though our situations are very different, I can empathize with him on several levels – including discomfort with gender norms.
Hopefully, this article has been helpful for understanding Nagisa as well as exploring gender ideas and terminology. Thank you so much for reading, and have a great rest of your day.
References
- Elizabeth Barr, Ronna Popkin, Erik Roodzant, Beth Jaworski, Sarah M Temkin, Gender as a social and structural variable: research perspectives from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Translational Behavioral Medicine, Volume 14, Issue 1, January 2024, Pages 13–22, https://doi.org/10.1093/tbm/ibad014
- What is Gender? What is Sex? Canadian Institutes of Health Research, https://cihr-irsc.gc.ca/e/48642.html
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