In episode 8, “Girls’ Day Out,” the ClassicaLoid ladies take some time off to unwind and open up. With humor, subtlety, and a dash of vinegar, their time together becomes an exuberant exploration and celebration of what it means to be a girl—and their answer turns out to be a happily inclusive one.
BBK/BRNK is not my favourite anime of the year. It’s not even in my top five. But as far as I’m concerned it has the strongest premiere of any brand new series this year. Let’s look at why.
In many ways, Kiss Him, Not Me is a perfect series for a feminist blog to explore: it does some things very well, some things very badly and inspires strong, mixed feelings. This is especially true in the way it handles physical contact, consent, and assault.
I was expecting Your Name to be a fluffy, gender-bending rom-com, and I got that. What I wasn’t expecting, though, were the progressive and fantastical twists that breathed new life into the exhausted body-swapping subgenre.
In episode 7, Yuri on Ice directly connected Victor to famous gay skater Johnny Weir. Meanwhile, members of the anime fandom are digging their heels in about whether Victor throwing himself lips first at Yuri was actually gay.
One common element in series that successfully employ fanservice is consensuality. When fanservice is fun, all parties involved are enjoying themselves.
While they take place in very different settings, Rakugo Shinju and Yuri on Ice both challenge cultural expectations about how men should or shouldn’t act, and show why it’s important to cast aside restrictive gender roles and play to our own strengths.
There’s a misconception that feminists believe any and all fan service is always bad. But in this feminist’s opinion, fan service goes wrong when it interrupts the mood of the show.
In recent years, women’s sports anime hasn’t been able to grasp the same popularity it did during the intense shoujo showdowns of the ’60s, leaving female-driven sports anime lacking in quantity.
