Carnivore salarymen and herbivore males: <i>Kimi no Na wa</i> and the shift to the omnivorous person

ABSTRACT Concerns of gender equality and fluidity has been a long‐standing issue in contemporary society for decades, however, recently, the pressing issue surrounding media representations of gender has come to the forefront. The rise of feminist studies over the last few decades has led to a cornucopia of research on manga and anime in relation to femininity, but fewer examine masculinity or gender fluidity. This paper will expand the study of both femininity and masculinity but will mainly focus on masculinity, in the form of the Carnivore Woman and the Herbivore Man, with an argument towards the “Omnivorous Person.” The omnivorous person can be thought of as an extension and paralleling to gender fluidity. As a highly accessible medium, through fantasy and metaphor, anime and manga have the ability to display a collective consciousness of Japanese society. To further elaborate on these new gender trends within Japanese popular media, a textual analysis of the anime film Kimi no Na wa (2016) will be used as exemplar. It is impossible to conduct any in‐depth study that is truly representative of a genre, especially considering the magnitude and vastness of manga and anime, however, selecting a text that is “popular” can suppose some degree of cultural relevance.