2023 Fall Premiere Digest
Let’s dive into the many offerings of what might be the biggest season ever!
Feature Category
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2023 Fall Premiere Reviews
All the summer premiere reviews in one easy-to-find place. We’ll update the chart as more series become available, so be sure to check back in the coming days for more!
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Queer time and the quarter-life crisis in contemporary yuri
Series that focus on queer adult characters open the door to a storytelling niche that’s still relatively underrepresented despite the rich narrative potential it offers: the post-adolescence queer coming-of-age story. Or, in other words, the gay quarter-life crisis.
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Lilies In Transition: The state of trans representation in yuri
As yuri continues to get queerer, the existence of trans people in these stories would be one way to provide validation for trans readers in their gender and sexuality while also helping cis people understand and internalize our long standing place in the sapphic community. Yuri works featuring trans characters do exist, though their history is complex and they remain relatively few.
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Queerplatonic relationships and found family in Buddy Daddies
Despite the lack of a love story between the protagonists, however, Buddy Daddies can still be read as a queer series. While queer relationships in mainstream media are often defined by romantic and sexual attraction, Buddy Daddies stands out because it examines queerplatonic relationships, which is rarely depicted even in LGBTQIA+ storytelling.
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On Nintendo’s reluctance to make Princess Zelda playable
Leading up to Tears of the Kingdom’s release, many fans of the franchise held out hope that perhaps this game would be the one to break the franchise’s cycle of Link being the only playable character. But, unfortunately, this was not the case.
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2023 Summer Three-Episode Check-In
Deeper themes are a little thin on the ground this season, but there’s still some very fun adventures to be had.
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You’re Already Doing Your Best: Healin’ Good Pretty Cure and chronic illness
In a season about environmentalism and illness, Nodoka is in remission from a years-long infection and doesn’t want anyone to suffer the way she did. While she’s not quite depicted as disabled or chronically ill in the show itself, her arc focuses on recovery from a chronic illness in ways that can be similar to managing one.
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2023 Summer Premiere Digest
While it can’t match spring’s bounty, summer has a few gems to offer.
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2023 Summer Premiere Reviews
All the summer premiere reviews in one easy-to-find place. We’ll update the chart as more series become available, so be sure to check back in the coming days for more!
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Working Out the Kinks: Deconstructing gendered expectations of sex in Ladies On Top
NEJIGANAMETA’s manga Ladies On Top is a cute, sexy josei romcom about the crushing pressures of heteronormative gender roles. I know, the emotional trauma inflicted by society’s narrow expectations about acceptable masculinity, femininity, and sexual desire doesn’t sound very cute or sexy, but trust me when I say Ladies On Top weaves these themes together effectively with its fluffy romance.
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Killin’ ‘Em With Kindness: The radical compassion of Kamado Tanjiro within the modern shounen landscape
Tanjiro’s got that moralistic determination trait/defect common in many of my Shounen Sons (™), but what makes him different is a clear and consistent decision to choose kindness toward others, with a pang of deep sadness and forgiveness that outlines it. When holding it up against the other leading boys in the same genre, this particular “brand of nice” feels different. But what is the difference in Tanjiro’s “nice” compared to other shounen protagonists—and why isn’t it more common?
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Akane-Banashi: Writing women protagonists using Battle Shounen tropes
Akane-Banashi, a manga about a young woman coming into prominence in the world of Rakugo, has one of the farthest possible premises from the shounen standard, and yet it uses the tropes of shounen effectively to convey the emotional stakes of the story.
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She Has Two Hands! Room For non-monogamous love in yuri
Yuri and the wider GL community has an increasing reach that seems to be growing each year, and it’s worth examining the ways in which the increased variety of yuri stories are representing different kinds of love and relationships. Love can be so many different things, after all, and it’s gratifying when fiction reflects that—not to mention how it opens new possibilities for storytelling and discussions of relationship dynamics.
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Sins of Her Fathers, Strength of Her Mothers: How Jolyne Cujoh inherited her foremothers’ legacy
Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure presents a very different attitude from the common story of patriarchal family lines. Not only does the Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure conclude with Jolyne, the first female protagonist of the saga, but it’s clear that her very survival hinges on traits she inherited from her female predecessors.
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Kiki’s Delivery Service: An empowering coming-of-age tale of self-discovery
More than three decades after its release, this sweet coming-of-age tale has not lost any of its charms, using its magical elements and the symbolism of the witch to weave a gentle but powerful story of female community and independence.
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2023 Spring Three-Episode Check-In
It’s a lovely season for surprises, mess, and surprisingly compelling mess.
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2023 Spring Premiere Digest
This is a season of meteoric highs and nightmare lows.
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2023 Spring Premiere Reviews
All the spring premiere reviews in one easy-to-find place. We’ll update the chart as more series become available, so be sure to check back in the coming days for more! Check out our merch store for shirts, stickers, and more! Use the code SPRING23 to get 10% off your entire order.
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Ugly Things Cannot Be Loved: Penguindrum and the dilemma of Yuri
Yuri’s assault on Ringo is emblematic of how the tensions and arguable flaws in Penguindrum point to larger tensions and unresolved questions in our movements for transformative justice, abolition, and queer liberation.
