AniFem Round-Up
AniFem Fundraiser Update: November 2019
We’re almost at the finish line, both for the site redesign and perk delivery!
Channler Twyman dissects where DomeKano’s melodrama went wrong and the missed opportunity to tell a story about cycles of abuse.
[Podcast] Chatty AF 104: Neon Genesis Evangelion Watchalong – Episodes 21-26
Dee, Vrai, Isaac, and Lizzie bemoan the sidelining of the female cast and grapple with that infamous (first) ending.
[AniFemTalk] What’s your favorite anime of 2019?
It’s just about time to wrap up the year and see what shines.
Beyond AniFem
At Japan’s Most Elite University, Just 1 in 5 Students Is a Woman (The Asahi Shimbun (via The New York Times), Motoko Rich)
An examination of the contributing societal causes leading to Tokyo University’s gender disparity.
Men have little incentive to change. Campus advocacy is minimal. Even an investigation by the student newspaper about clubs that exclude Todai women did not identify the exclusive groups.
Women hesitate to speak out. Nakayama said she avoided activism that might be construed as feminist.
“It might have some repercussions for me,” she said. People “might think I’m acting too manly or too strong.”
In and outside class, Hayashi said, women tolerate a culture in which men make jokes filled with sexual innuendo or comment on women’s appearances. “You are expected to understand or communicate with these sexual jokes,” she said. “Otherwise you feel kind of left out.”
“You just have to understand,” she said, “and accept the male view.”
Babylon Has a Whore Complex (Anime News Network, Michelle Liu and Andy Pfeiffer)
Wading through the gender politics and strawman ethics arguments that the season’s strangest show has devolved into.
Micchy: Not to understate the show’s failure to deliver coherent philosophies or raise ethical questions that require more than two seconds to resolve, but it is worth noting that Babylon low-key uh, hates women. Of the two significant female characters in the show, one gets hacked to bits after doing next to nothing; the other is apparently the world’s most evil person specifically because her ASMR voice is dangerously sexy.
Andy: I’ll give “low-key” for the build up to the grand revelation of “Even if you legalize suicide no one would want to die… unless something made them want to… but what could… EXCEPT WOMEN.” The show was being kinda shitty towards women already, but the illusion that it came out of nowhere was instantly dispelled once I realized why the fuck this show is called Babylon. Which is that our horrifically sexy, evil, adopted child cum sexy teenager cum uber hot shape-shifting ASMR lady who has the power to make people O-Face to death because she’s just that god damn hot, Ai Magase, is the literal Whore of Babylon.
An entire Tokyo anime company has apparently disappeared, leaving artists unpaid for their work (SoraNews24, Casey Baseel)
Tear Studio has removed its online presence and is currently out of content, leaving many animators unpaid for their work.
Sato doesn’t mention whether he’s tried contacting Tear Studio via phone or email, or has been to the office to see if anyone is there, but the sudden, unannounced scrubbing of its online presence definitely makes it seem like Tear’s top personnel have fled into the night, leaving an unknown number of workers unpaid for their contributions to its anime productions.
It’s worth noting, in this age of Internet-organized boycotts, that while Tear was the production studio behind the above-mentioned anime series, it’s not the publisher for any of them. In other words, buying Blu-rays of The Royal Tutor, Why the Hell are You Here, Teacher!?, or Fragtime isn’t lining the pockets of on-the-run Tear executives, but is instead contributing to the bottom line of the companies that are publishing the completed works, who hopefully will find it in their hearts to help out any as-yet uncompensated workers.
Gainax President Arrested After Taking Nude Photos Of Teenage Girl (Kotaku, Brian Ashcraft)
Tomohiro Maki is accused of touching and taking topless photographs of an underage girl.
Studio Khara, which currently makes the Evangelion movies, issued a statement completely distancing itself from Maki, saying he is not involved with the series. Moreover, the statement pointed out that Khara head and former Gainax co-founder Hideaki Anno as well as former Gainax employee, current Khara member, and director of the upcoming Evangelion film Kazuya Tsurumaki have no connection to Maki, nor is he an acquaintance. Moreover, Studio Khara mentioned the legal battle that ensued with Gainax.
Holiday Reviews: KOMI CAN’T COMMUNICATE (Manga Test Drive, Megan D)
An intro review of the currently ongoing series about an anxious protagonist.
Indeed, most of the time the punchline isn’t Komi’s reaction to common social situations, but how others around her misinterpret her reaction. Much of the comedy comes from the extreme personalities around Komi and Tadano as they try to reach out to others. How successful this is depends a LOT on the character featured. Some are flexible and interesting enough to work well, like the genderfluid social butterfly Najimi. Others are just duds, like the easily flustered and openly, sloppily submissive Agari.
Yet there are moments of genuine sweetness between Komi and Tadano and those form the warm, beating heart of this series. This volume won me over in Chapter Five, where Tadano learns about Komi’s anxieties. He reaches out to her via blackboard, and she ends up not just explaining her condition but pouring out all the words she’s clearly want to say to someone. The two end up having a casual conversation via blackboard. The moments where Komi makes some incremental progress are legitimately sweet, and were enough to keep me reading even on the occasion that a joke didn’t work.
CONTRIBUTOR GUIDELINES (Anime Herald, Samantha Ferreira)
Friend of the site Samantha has recently opened up opportunities for contributors at Anime Herald.
Whether your article is accepted or not will hinge solely on the strength of your pitch, and the churn of the greater editorial process. We accept all viewpoints, including those that refute or challenge existing articles, or stories by our own team.
While we don’t put a firm limit on lower or upper word count, we encourage writers to aim for between 1,000 and 2,000 words. Moreover, we do request that all submissions be for one-off articles, we currently do not have the funding to support regular columns at this point.
Due to legal concerns, we will not accept any work that cites fansubs or scanlations. That’s not to say that we won’t accept works on unlicensed work. We just require that all of your images for such a project be your own translations, or a reasonable sample of panels from an official release. (In plain English, a few panels is fine, but we’re not going to be posting full pages)
VIDEO: Intro to a retrospective on gaming with Noir Caesar and #BlackGirlsAnime
VIDEO: Breaking down the etymology of “consumer” and its implications
TWEET: Announcement of a yuri magical girl visual novel
THREAD: Notes from the translator of Chivalry of a Failed Knight about pronoun choices for a trans character, because the fan translations were being The Worst about it.
AniFem Community
While Vrai would like you all to know that the Definitively Objectively Correct™ answer for AOTY is SARAZANMAI, y’all came up with some rad choices too.
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