Plural Representation

This page documents the various different pieces of media with significant plural representation that we've found and think are cool. If you don't see a particular piece of media you like here, that doesn't mean we don't think it's cool, it just means we haven't seen it!

For ease of browsing, we've organized them by the medium through which they're told, and alphabetically within those categories. Each series is also listed with a rating out of five stars, the level to which plurality is explicitly referenced in the story – explicit, intentional, unintentional, etc. – and a short synopsis that includes the reasons we see it as being plural representation.

Anime / Manga

• Birdy the Mighty (MyAnimeList)
  Unintentional, ★★★☆☆
  Content Warnings: Occasional censored/implied nudity
  

  Tsutomu, a formerly normal high school boy, finds himself caught in the crossfire between a criminal and the alien supercop Birdy. After accidentally killing Tsutomu when the criminal used him as a shield, Birdy merges his soul into her body in order to save his life until his body can be repaired, and the two begin adjusting to their new double life, as they must now juggle maintaining Tsutomu's daily life as well as Birdy's missions.

• I Can't Pick Between My Childhood Friend(s)! (MyAnimeList)
  Unintentional Parallel, ★★★☆☆
  

  High schooler Suzukaze Yuu unexpectedly reunites with his childhood friend and crush, Machihashi Karin, only to find that his repeated wishes to meet her again had been granted... by splitting her into multiple people! Now faced with a choice between which one of the Karins should remain and which should disappear, Yuu refuses and chooses to love each of them equally, and so begins a romantic comedy of errors following his relationship with an ever-growing cast of Karins.

• My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! (MyAnimeList)
  Unintentional, ★★★★☆
  Content Warnings: Romantic interest between step-siblings

  After bumping into her crush and being knocked out by the fall, young noblewoman Katarina Claes remembers her past life and realizes she's been reincarnated as the villainess of a dating sim she had played, and resolves to avert her character's doomed fate. Any time Katarina has to make a difficult decision, particularly ones related to avoiding her original doom, her thought process is represented by a recurring cutaway gag of a council of five chibi versions of herself with distinct personalities.

• The Capitol's Disappointing Alchemist (MyAnimeList)
  Unintentional, ★★★★☆
  Content Warnings: Dormancy , brief discussion of abuse

  A young noble girl named Daisy is born in the same body as the soul of a reincarnated former baroness. After being granted the class of alchemist rather than a mage like the rest of their family, the five-year-old Daisy begins to spiral due to the baroness's memories of being abused for the similarly unsatisfactory class of maid, which prompts the baroness to willingly go dormant in order to block off those memories, though Daisy's fear of those memories repeating themselves turns out to have been unfounded.

• The One Within the Villainess (MyAnimeList)
  Maybe Intentional, ★★★★★
  Content Warnings: Dormancy 

  Afflicted by a terrible fever during her childhood, the future villainess Remilia finds herself replaced by the reincarnator "Emi", regaining consciousness in a dark void with only a window through which to view her replacement's life. While initially frustrated by this, Remilia comes to love Emi through viewing her memories and actions, and when Emi is framed and betrayed by the story's heroine and goes dormant in despair, Remilia resurfaces to take revenge and make the world a better place for when Emi returns.

Live Action Shows

• Moon Knight (Disney+)
  Explicitly Stated, ★★★★☆
  Content Warnings: Medical mistreatment of DID  systems, amnesia, extreme intrasystem conflict, abuse, graphic violence
  

  Mild-mannered museum custodian Steven Grant is down on his luck, constantly tired, and finds himself "sleepwalking" regularly... or so he thinks, until he wakes up one morning in an entirely different country, on the run from paramilitary forces. This sends him tumbling down a rabbit hole, as he is swept up into the life of a superhero by the other alter in his system, the mercenary Marc Spector, who fights against a worldwide cult as the superhero Moon Knight, the avatar of the Egyptian god Khonshu.

Video Games

• Celeste (Official Site)
  Probably Unintentional, ★★★★★
  Content Warnings: Severe mental health crises, panic attacks, dissociation, persecutors 
  

  A game about climbing a mountain, well known for its transgender protagonist Madeline, inspired by developer Maddy Thorson's own struggles with gender identity and mental health. While climbing Celeste Mountain, she experiences various supernatural phenomena, and is repeatedly impeded by a doppelganger called "Part of You" (nicknamed Badeline by the game's fans), who tries to discourage her from continuing the climb.

  Click to reveal story spoilers

  At the end of Chapter 5 of the game's main story, Madeline attempts to reason with "Part of You", but misunderstands her as a malicious side of herself that should be grown out of, which angers "Part of You" and causes her to throw Madeline off the mountain, where she lands in a cave below the mountain's base.

  Chapter 6 then sees Madeline working her way out of the cave until she encounters her friends Theo and "Granny", who encourage her to embrace "Part of You" instead of rejecting her, and suggest that she may simply be overprotective and expressing it in a toxic way. With her mind changed, Madeline chases a sulking "Part of You" deeper into the caves, eventually reconciling with her and aiming for the peak together.

Bad Plural Representation

The entries listed below this point drastically misrepresent plurality and related medical conditions, and contribute to spreading misinformation and prejudice. They are not here as recommendations, but rather as warnings, and most if not all of them are terrible to the point of their summaries needing content warnings, let alone the actual piece of media itself. If you believe you may react badly to extreme misrepresentation of systems as violent, psychotic, or otherwise "evil", please do not read the summaries of these entries, or engage with the pieces of media they describe.

• Split (Movie)
  Explicitly Stated, ☆☆☆☆☆
  Content Warnings: Medical mistreatment of DID  systems, portrayal of systems as dangerous and psychotic, portrayal of DID as a path to unlocking supernatural abilities, extreme intrasystem conflict, persecutors  portrayed as evil or malicious, pedophilia, abuse, kidnapping, graphic violence
  
  Click to reveal potentially disturbing content

  The story of Split follows Kevin Wendell Crumb, a DID system who kidnaps and imprisons three teenage girls. Several members of the system worship a malicious system member they refer to as The Beast, which displays enhanced physical strength, extreme healing capabilities, and animalistic tendencies. Said members conspire to deny the more reasonable system members access to the front in order to allow The Beast to manifest and cleanse the world of the "impure" who have not suffered, and when their plan succeeds, The Beast kills the system's therapist and two of the kidnapped girls, before noticing the third's scars from being abused by her uncle and leaving her alive.

  Split is the second in a trilogy of movies by M. Night Shyamalan, and the system it follows also appears in the third movie, Glass, as a primary antagonist who has been used as an experimental test subject in an attempt to weaponize the enhanced abilities of The Beast. While Glass is slightly less blatantly gross in its representation as Split, it still carries many of the same content warnings.