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Honda Tohru and the Strength of Nurturing
Female characters who put their energy into caring for others, rather than standing up and fighting, were dismissed as passive doormats who exist only for the male cast’s development. One such character was Honda Tohru. The first part of the remake has made it abundantly clear that Tohru is plenty strong. However, since her strength comes in the form of traditionally feminine roles such as nurturing and protecting those dear to her, audiences tend to disregard her strength because of how these roles are devalued.

Featureby Caitlin Moore May 21, 20210 Comments
Idols Gone Viral: How Hololive VTubers both subvert and reinforce expectations of idol femininity
Contemporary virtual YouTubers are often characterized by a mix of conventional femininity and “unladylike” behavior. Yet, while the most prominent creators are able to explore more varied and even subversive topics than traditional idols, they are in many ways still beholden to a set of rules and expectations for what an idol “should” be.

Featureby Katie Gill May 19, 20210 Comments
She’s Fighting for Him: Black Clover and battle shounen’s male-centrism
Women in shounen battle anime and manga have traditionally been sidelined, even as it became more and more common to include women as fellow fighters. When the guys go in to fight the final boss, the girls stay behind to help with some B-plot battle no matter how competent they may seem. In a new era of shounen, we’ve seen some of these tired tropes be turned on their heads. However, even when series like Black Clover make some strides, they still end up repeating tired cliches.

Featureby Alise Miller May 14, 20210 Comments
The Feminist Potential of the Lolita Fashion Subculture
While it may appear on the surface to be an overtly feminine, traditional fashion, Lolita’s history and present iteration are rooted in rejection of the male gaze and societal expectations for women, as well as the building of women-centric community spaces. Of course, these things don’t make it feminist outright, but the result is a subculture well-positioned for the potential to embrace feminist ideals of choice, self-empowerment, and autonomy.

Featureby Sarah Alexander May 12, 20210 Comments
The Spell of Self-Assurance: How Howl’s Moving Castle challenges myths about youth and beauty
By presenting a complex female lead with a beauty that is more than skin deep, Howl’s Moving Castle shows that beauty does not die with age. Instead, it increases with wisdom. In this way, the movie challenges ageism as well as the limited roles women can play in a hero’s story.

Featureby Nicci Attfield May 5, 20210 Comments
Non-Binary Orochimaru and the homophobic legacy of queer-coded villainy
From their first appearance disguised as a young woman to their dangly earrings and lilting English dub performance, Orochimaru carries many of the unfortunate hallmarks of a queer-coded antagonist, one whose most terrifying power includes the ability to inhabit the bodies of others in a bid for eternal life. Their portrayal, already mired in queerphobia, is complicated by the franchise’s later decision to portray Orochimaru as a character with a non-binary gender identity, the first canonically LGBTQ+ character in the franchise.

Featureby Danny McLaren March 17, 20210 Comments
We need more licensed doujinshi
I often want to share a cool story after reading it, but, as an avid reader of doujinshi, I find few outlets where I can share that passion. For all the interesting work indie publications can harbor, they are largely inaccessible to non-Japanese markets, making it difficult to share my passion with English fans.

Featureby Chiaki Hirai March 10, 20210 Comments
Chainsaw Man’s beautiful depiction of platonic relationships
Chainsaw Man, a Shonen Jump series by Fujimoto Tatsuki, has its main character, Denji, realize the value in having a strictly platonic relationship with the leading female protagonist, Power. How Denji reaches this conclusion is incredibly messy and more than a little frustrating in places; which is to say that it epitomizes the uncomfortable struggle of navigating platonic relationships with someone you have the potential to be attracted to, a common aspect of growing up for many, and it’s both heartwarming and validating to see a character experience this part of life in a shounen manga.

Featureby Lucas DeRuyter February 26, 20210 Comments
ADHD as Investigation: How Hyouka’s Chitanda carves space for herself as a leader
ADHD is often maligned as strictly a lack of the willpower necessary to concentrate, or a simple inability to ignore distractions. But through her investigations, Chitanda exhibits behaviors characteristic of ADHD that contribute to, rather than hamper, her ability to lead herself and others.

Featureby Zeldaru February 19, 20210 Comments
You Don’t Have to Kick Ass to Be Kickass: Shoujo fantasy and the value of the noncombatant hero
Over the years, the number of lady action heroes has slowly but significantly risen. And this is a good thing… for the most part. But the ability to enact violence shouldn’t be the only way we define our heroes, regardless of gender.

Featureby Dee February 12, 20210 Comments
1122: For a Happy Marriage explores how prescribed gender roles can damage marriages
1122: For a Happy Marriage examines two different married couples that are pressured to adhere to gender and allonormative roles within marriage, which ultimately damages their marital relationships.

Featureby Jessie H February 3, 20210 Comments
Misato Katsuragi lives an existential millennial nightmare
Evangelion takes place in the year 2015. Misato, 29 at the start of the anime, would have been born in 1986. With this knowledge, both American millennials and the members of Japan’s Lost Generation who came of age following Japan’s economic recession in the ‘90s may joke about how Misato is a millennial stereotype. However, this goes beyond a meme and into a message about processing pain, pressure and grief.

Featureby Anthony Gramuglia December 25, 20200 Comments
“Black Should Sound Black”: The inherently racist politics of anime dubbing
There are a lot of assumptions packed into the belief that the best voice actor always gets the role. The statement alone implies that we live in a true meritocracy, which is false. FUNimation, easily the biggest producer of English anime dubs, routinely casts from an extremely small and extremely white pool of voice actors. The idea of “casting the right person for the role” is precluded by insidious biases and practices such as lazy casting, where voice directors will rely on a few go-to voice actors they prefer to work with in lieu of seeking out a wider pool of talent.

Featureby Bracy December 23, 20200 Comments
Anime’s Glass Ceiling: what keeps women out of the director’s chair?
The popularity of women authors like Itagaki, Takeuchi, Takahashi, and Arakawa led to their work being adapted into similarly successful anime. But most of these anime, if not all of them, were directed by men.

Featureby Adam Wescott December 18, 20200 Comments
Rise of the Villainess: How the reborn bad girls of otome games are defying shoujo stereotypes
In the past few years, the villainess has seen something of a renaissance. Rather than being the subject of ridicule or comeuppance, she’s being celebrated, given the opportunity to come into her own as the subject of an emerging theme in an ever-expanding field of light novels, manga, and anime. Today I’d like to talk a little bit about these ojous: who they are, where they come from, and why in the 21st century their success demonstrates an alternate world where being smart, hard-working, and kind gets you far.

Featureby Kyle T. October 28, 20200 Comments
No Rest for the Wicked: Criminality and justice in Psycho-Pass
Psycho-Pass’ villains are heinous in their own right, but they exist to also criticize the larger failure of a deeply flawed justice system.

Featureby Luisa Aparisi-França September 11, 20200 Comments
Discordant Tones: Oversimplifying music as resistance in Carole & Tuesday
Carole and Tuesday are just two girls dreaming of becoming musicians. While the series initially follows the girls’ rise to stardom, the focuses shifts to examine how music can fight back against oppression, but leads to a simple and unsatisfying ending.

Featureby ThatNerdyBoliviane September 9, 20200 Comments
Your Lie in April: An Oedipus Complex and a Manic Pixie Dream Girl have a meetcute
Your Lie in April has high ratings on almost all of the major anime databases. Unfortunately, I, the Feminist Killjoy, am here to say that Arima has an Oedipus complex and Kaori is a Manic Pixie Dream Girl.

Featureby Caitlin Moore September 4, 20200 Comments
“What If Our Greatest Pain Speaks to Us?” Using the supernatural to explore mental health in Bunny Girl Senpai
If I feel invisible, then I turn invisible. If I feel conflicted about myself, I split into two people. If I suffer from verbal bullying, then I wake up with cuts and scrapes all over my body. This is Adolescence Syndrome, the key concept behind Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai, which the series uses to explore various social anxieties and mental health issues that can affect young people but which often go unnoticed.

Featureby Yasmine Maher September 2, 20200 Comments
Tower of God’s Rachel Problem: Fandom, female antagonists, and the risks of overly vague writing
While Rachel did do many things wrong, and this is definitely not a defense of that (especially as she is coded as a blonde white woman in the art), her character’s depiction can open a larger discussion about portrayals of female antagonists, and patterns of online fandom misogyny.

Featureby Olive St. Sauver August 28, 20200 Comments