One notable flaw in the analysis is that it blindly examines Cob from Tales of Earthsea in the context of Ghibli instead of in context of Ursula K. Le Guin (the author).

Le Guin’s Left Hand of Darkness features a nonbinary race and was published in 1969. A good chunk of her work includes critique of gender and queer themes.

So it’s inane as hell to complain that “It’s unfortunate then that one of Ghibli’s very few unquestionably evil roles is also one of their only transfeminine characters” when Cob is transfeminine in virtue of Le Guin’s original material and decidedly not the only trans* character in her body of work.

However, a valid critique is that Ghibli never goes beyond allusion to queerness with the exception of an adaptation of another’s work. Yeah, Japanese culture/media yadda yadda but someone needs to have some nerve and practice prefigurative politics already.