The Transition of Lady Kayura. A Queer Interpretation of Anubis from Ronin Warriors
A series I really enjoyed and got into as a child was a little remembered series called Ronin Warriors. It, like Sailor Moon, was some of the little bit of anime I got the chance to see growing up since I was limited to what shows came on local television networks at the time. (As a side note, I’ll be using the terminology from the English dub since this is what I grew up with.) One of my favorite characters from the series was a villain turned hero named, Anubis. Formerly the Dark Warlord of Cruelty, this owner of the armor of the ogre became an ally to the Warriors and fought against his former master. I thought he and the character that didn’t appear until the second arc, Lady Kayura were so interesting. Now that I’m older, I’m seeing a lot of queer coding this character had and though I’ve transitioned, I can still connect with him and his eventual successor. From a queer perspective Lady Kayura succession as the bearer of the armor of the ogre is Anubis’s transition into womanhood.
I’ll begin with giving a basic summary of Ronin Warriors. Ronin Warriors is an animated series produced in Japan originally as Yoroiden Samurai Troopers. The series begins with Tokyo being taken over by an evil demon who was banished to the Nether World a thousand years ago by a mysterious monk who is only referred to as the Ancient One. The Ancient One had prepared for Talpa’s return by taking five young orphans and training them to use mystical armors so that they can defend humanity and defeat Talpa. To combat these Warriors, Talpa uses four humans he recruited through the ages who had their own set of mystical armors. They are referred to as the Dark Warlords. With the Dark Warlords and Talpa’s Nether Spirits and other demon minions, he wages a war against humanity and attempts to fully return to the human world once again. Another aside fact about this show worth mentioning is that it is a mostly male cast with very pretty men who have magical transformation sequences. A number of queer themed fanfics revolve around this.
Since this series wasn’t made or written in the US, it’s hard to say if the Hays Codes had any influence on it. In brief, the Hays Codes were a list of moral guidelines for film and TV in the US that were made in the 1930s. While the Hays Codes is no longer in place, it still has influence on film and TV today. One element of the Hays Codes is that queer romance and gender expression had to be portrayed as something negative. Many villains in children’s media are shown in ways that connect queerness with being evil. While this may have not influenced the character design, it certainly influenced how I, a person who grew up in the US, saw the characters in this series. Anubis was my second introduction of men with long hair in animation, my first being Kunzite from Sailor Moon. While he is drawn to be about 16 years in age, his youthful features coupled with his hair gives him a very effeminate or androgynous appearance. While he looks very masculine in his armor, he doesn’t look as such in his sub armor or when he is dressed as the ancient one.
While on the subject of his armor, a key feature of all the Dark Warlords in the early portions of the anime is that the heroes have no clue that the Dark Warlords are human. It isn’t until Anibus’s helmet is destroyed in a battle that they learn that these evil generals are mortal. Talpa’s army is composed of spirits from the neither world that fed on human suffering and fear, so the idea that these evil generals were human was unfathomable to them. While this breaking of Anubis’s helmet was symbolic of him breaking free of Talpa’s control, this helmet is also symbolic of him breaking free of his forced masculinity. We now see an antagonist who is designed much more androgynous having a tough and stereotypical manly build due to the armor but a soft and ruddy face with flowing hair. This is a stark contrast with the image he has presented to heroes up until this this point.
After being freed from Talpa’s control, he’s forced with the choice of what to do now. His reasons for joining the Evil Dynasty were two fold. He was ambitious and wanted power for himself and the guiding virtue of his armor is loyalty which pushes him to be loyal to whoever he serves.
Anubis fought along side of Ryo when Talpa first got his body back and made a heroic sacrifice to allow Ryo to continue fighting. After Talpa’s eventual return, we are see that the Dark Warlords have returned and new character has entered the scene filling Anubis’s role. Her name is Lady Kayura. She’s an enigmatic person we have not seen up until now but Talpa has always had her in reserve. With Anubis gone, she is now the unofficial leader of the Dark Warlords. As for Anubis, he’s now taken the role as the new Ancient One eschewing his former role as a Dark Warlord.
Toward the end of the series, the heroes launch an assault on the Talpa’s palace. During this time, Kayura after fighting with Anubis and the Warriors begins to question her loyalty to the Dynasty and begins to remember that she herself is a descendant of the Ancient One’s clan. Talpa has a spirit possess her to keep her under his control and greatly increasing her strength. She’s able to capture the Warriors leaving only Anubis left to fight. As he is about to fight, the staff that he’s been using to fight with lifts in the air and falls back down as the destroyed helmet from the Armor of the Ogre. He takes this as a sign that he is to fight again using it and dons it once again.
Anubis struggles to fight against her and is nearly defeated however at the last moment, Anubis asks for strength from the Ancient One and is able to absorb Lady Kayura’s attack and redirect it back to her. To keep her from avoiding it, he holds her in place and absorbs the attack as well. The attack freed Lady Kayura of the evil spirit’s control and passed on the Armor of the Ogre to her as well but Anubis was killed as a result. After being released, she resumes and fills the role that Anubis once had.
Anubis’s death and the passing on of his armor to Kayura can be seen as Anubis transitioning into Lady Kayura since they both fill so many of the same roles and how she’s interchangeable with Anubis. She assumed Anubis’s role in the Dynasty when she served Talpa and when she was free from Talpa’s control she continued where Anubis left off. Lady Kayura not only assumes the Armor of the Ogre but also as a successor to the Ancient One, like Anubis was. After Talpa is defeated, she stays behind in the nether realm with the Warlords to rebuild and fight any rouge demons wishing to fill the power vacuum that Talpa left.
While Anubis and Lady Kayura are different characters, it’s not hard to see a connection between them and see a transgender interpretation of them. Anubis’s death and passing on his role and armor to Lady Kayura is representative of a transition in which the trans person’s passes on the life and mantle of their dead name’s live on to their truer self. Their truer self may choose what do from it from there. While transition is typically depicted as a metamorphosis, this only looks at transition from purely physical level ignoring that transition is more than a wardrobe and hair change. Transition is psychologically and socially messy. For those that are repressed, it’s an examination of the construct the transgender person has created and figuring out which aspects of the construct are aspects of themselves and which are aspects created to cope or defense.
The series starts with Anubis and then as Anubis fades out, Lady Kayura comes in and resumes in Anubis’s place. Again these are separate characters taken together, they can be a metaphor for transitioning. While the dominate narrative in popular media concerning transgender people is that they are in the “wrong body” however this is an outsider perspective looking in and not the only transgender story. Creating an image that has to fill in until you can take the reins is part of trans narrative that we don’t often hear. Anubis filled the role he need to until Lady Kayura could take over. This transitioning of Lady Kayura allowed the Warriors and Warlords to fight together and defeat Talpa. In the end, it is Lady Kayura who is continuing the story of rebuilding the netherworld. For us trans people it is our transitioned selves that continue the story of our lives.
