Based on a novel series, No. 6 presents a dark dystopian world where class divides are extreme, even deadly, and easily lost. Shion, a boy raised in the elite and privileged environment of the city of No. 6, doesn’t sound the alarm when a boy named Nezumi (or “Rat”) breaks into his home on the stormy night of his twelfth birthday.
The consequences of this are almost immediate and forever intertwine the lives of Shion, who falls from grace, and Nezumi, who tries to protect him the whole time. When wasps begin killing members of the seemingly idyllic community of No. 6, it reveals a new host of horrors, as well as the desolate lands outside its guarded walls. Shion and Nezumi try to uncover the truth and grow into lovers in the process.
In the anime and manga world, there have been countless debates on whether, No.6, a series by Atsuko Asano, is considered to be BL. BL, or boys love, is a genre of stories that depict romantic and sexual relationships between men.
But although No.6’s main characters are both male, and they engage in acts that may be considered homosexual, Asano adamantly refuses the BL label. In her attempt to pull the series away from the charged label BL, Asano opens up the possibility of seeing it as queer. No.6 is a queer text because of its rejection of paranoid reading and exploration of nonsexual romance between men.