Weekly Round-Up, 14-20 August 2024: Hyperfeminine Expectations, Kimi ni Todoke Season 3, and Lowered JET Salaries

AniFem Round-Up

Show Time!: Mixing erotica, sex positivity, and TV idols

Its goals are simple, but it’s worth discussing how this short series uses its erotic elements to explore issues and humanize actresses in a way those other shows for general audiences cannot.

Redemption and Retribution: Female antagonists in Final Fantasy XIV Stormblood

Digging into how the Stormblood expansion villainous ladies and their (mis)handling, and exploring the game’s notoriously variable translations along the way.

Chatty AF 212: 2024 Summer Mid-Season Check-In

We’ve got a lot of mess this season, both good–relatable trash girls! vampire Youtubers!–and…not so good.

What’s a weird piece of trivia about your favorite series?

Lay out your favorite accumulated tidbit for the world.

Beyond AniFem

Animated Femininities, Queer Discontent: An Interview with Colin Armistead and Phoebe Chan (Journal of Femininities, Patrick Galbraith and Megan C. Rose)

Interview with an animator and an idol/Vtuber about the relationship between moe, hyperfemininity, and how online transfemmes respond to it when constructing themselves online.

With the globalization of anime opening from a trickle in the 1970s to a virtual torrent at present, Japanese cute visual cultures have spread worldwide. Under this umbrella is the genre of magical girl, which tells sentimental and powerful stories of young hyperfeminine heroines who, through love, friendship and superpowers, solve global-scale problems. We interview Colin Armistead, a filmmaker located in California in the United States, and voice actress Phoebe Chan, who together tap into this genre as part of their queer short-film project, Angelic Kitty Miracle-chan . Central for our interviewees is moe , which today in global circulation means cute or anime cute, but in Japan refers to an affective response to any character. We discuss concepts of hyperfemininity in anime, its excess and boundless potential and what this can mean for those negotiating trans-feminine identities.

Kasumi Deserved Better in Persona 5 Royal (Siliconera, Stephanie Liu)

Discussing the rerelease-exclusive female characters and where the framing let them down.

Beyond Maruki, something that bothers me about Persona 5 Royal is what Atlus did (and didn’t do) for Sumire’s personality and design. As a character, Sumire is fine. But my feelings about Sumire never extend beyond how I feel about Haru. They’re both inoffensively pleasant and sweet, with enough depth that I know their basic goals and motivations, but not enough that I can connect with them like I can with Ann or Yusuke. The game did not dedicate nearly enough time to them and this is likely due to the lack of fluff in Persona 5.

Haru did get more scenes and chances at characterization in Royal, and I don’t mind her social link as much as I disliked Makoto’s. But I wish we got to spend more time with her as a person before the Phantom Thieves’ situation became so dire that Shido and Yaldabaoth took up the story. It’s the same thing with Sumire.

Even worse is her Phantom Thief outfit. When we only knew what she looks like as Violet, some people theorized that Persona 5 Royal would be like Persona 3 Portable and let you play as a girl. That’s how similar her outfit is to Joker’s. Though the game does kind of give an in-story explanation as to why they look like each other, I don’t understand why Sumire can’t have gotten another outfit after she regains her true self. Even in the Metaverse, we can’t see who Sumire really is as a person because her spirit of rebellion takes cues from some dude. Is that power limited to Wild Cards or something?

Yuri Cafe Research Project (Okazu, Erica Friedman and Willow Nunez)

Part mini-history, part interview with the owner of a famous Nichome yuri café.

WN: Can you tell us how the Café was created? Did you come up with the idea on your own, or was it a group effort? What was your goal in creating the café?

C: There’s a bit of information listed online, but basically: 2005 was the first version of Anchor. It wasn’t in the place it was now, but in 2010 it moved here. “I see…. How come the name Anchor was decided upon, out of curiosity Well, anchor means the same as the Japanese word “ikari”. When you’re on a boat, once you lower an anchor into the sea, it becomes a place you can relax and take it easy. A boat makes its
home with an anchor. Laughter It makes us sound like pirates a little! The owner at the time when Anchor was established was actually a gay man, different from the person who owns the current Anchor.

Anchor was something called a “Gay-mix” bar/cafe. At the time in 2-chome, there were lots of gay bars that only men could go to – conversely there were lots of lesbian bars that were women- only. Gay-mix places were rare, and Anchor was one of them. It was also one of the first cafes here, rather than strictly being a bar. After that, cafes began popping up here and there in 2chome. After moving it was quite busy. Lots of people would come, especially after the club next door’s events finished. Drag queens, lesbians, and all sorts of people would come here
afterwards to eat together and relax! Later on, we were looking for some sort of special feature to make this place stand out. The current owner really was troubled by what sort of theme we could make the place.

She was living in Singapore at the time, coincidentally at the same time Ayumi, another person who helped this place come to life, was. She started Yuri Times (A website with bilingual English/Japanese information for yuri manga) because she loved yuri, and her way of thinking is that when she has something loves, she wants to help preserve it in her own way… In her case, with her background in business. She talked to the boss and me, and we decided to make the new “Anchor” a place for yuri as well. We soft-opened the new “Yuri Cafe anchor” in 2020 – right about when Covid-19’s quarantine was about to happen. We were delayed, but were able to prepare a little more as a result. The layout was a bit different at opening. We were also talking with a few different Yuri authors (Inui Ayu, Namaniku) when making this cafe. It was a team effort.

A lot of the books were recommended/sent by a famous yuri-related website’s owner. Yuri authors were also consulted on what books would be good to have around the store.

WN: Is there something that you like best about the Café?

C: We’ve created a place where people who like yuri, regardless of gender or country, can come together. “You know, until now, BL cafes and other manga cafes were in places like Ikebukuro and Akihabara. This alone is in Shinjuku 2-chome” Yes! And I’m really glad it’s here in 2-chome…

WN: “So I guess this isn’t just a community of yuri likers… It has more of a…”

C: Yes, that’s true. I’m a lesbian, someone who likes the same sex. So yes. I suppose there is more meaning in the location.

The ANN Aftershow: Navigating Toxic Fandom Discourse (Anime News Network, Lynzee Loveridge and James Beckett)

Available in video and audio formats.

00:02:30 – So you wrote something that made people mad
00:06:00 – Why are we talking about this now?
00:10:00 – Social media promotes de-personalization
00:14:00 – Para-social relationships and agency
00:17:00 – Audience interactions with art are basic interview questions
00:25:00 – Conflating personal identity with your media consumption
00:33:00 – What has worked for us when being dogpiled
00:41:00 – The internet has a reactionary-hate problem
00:50:00 – You never know what you’re going to get in an interview
00:56:00 – Is your fandom toxic?
01:03:00 – Critique and harassment are different

Foreign students spotlight Utoro history, ethnic Koreans in Japan (The Mainichi, Mei Kodama)

The museum records stories of anti-Korean discrimination in Japan, told by residents of the Utoro district.

Foreign students at Ritsumeikan University have been enlisted for support at the Utoro Peace Memorial Museum to relay the stories of the district, where Korean laborers and their descendants were recruited to build an airfield during World War II. Many survived despite discrimination and faced prejudice after the war.

The museum staff welcomed the students, saying, “This is a great opportunity for Utoro residents to interact with people of many different nationalities.”

On June 23, a day when the Utoro Cafe inside the museum was open, residents mixed with foreign and Japanese students while they tucked into Korean food and other dishes.

“I had a tough life. Now I am happy to see so many people coming to the museum,” Han Gum Bong, an 85-year-old woman who immigrated to the district with her family, said with a smile.

The museum opened in April 2022 to commemorate the history of Japan and the Korean Peninsula, and pays homage to the so-called zainichi Koreans who have long resided in Japan’s Utoro district.

Kimi ni Todoke – From Me to You Season 3 (Anime News Network, Rebecca Silverman)

The return was dropped on streaming with minimal fanfare, but the content of the series acquits itself very well.

Rather than being a ten- or twelve-episode series, the ONA comprises five long episodes, plus a puzzlingly numbered “episode six,” which should be watched first. Episode six is a fifteen-minute recap of the major points from the first thirty-eight episodes, so if you’re feeling like you need a refresher, that’s where you ought to start. (Although I should mention that both seasons one and two are streaming on Netflix as of this writing.) Episodes one through five are the actual third season and, somewhat bafflingly, are all about one hour and six minutes long, with one clocking in at an hour and twelve minutes. If you’re a binge-watcher, this is tailor-made for you, but if you prefer watching an episode here and an episode there, the longer runtime can feel onerous, forcing you to take breaks at awkward times in the story’s runtime. On the plus side, each episode’s ending theme imagery is unique, and it’s clear that a lot of resources were devoted to making this as good as possible.

The story is striking, not just for its sweetness but for the way it doesn’t make any attempt to update things. It’s still 2011, and the plot unfolds in a style of shoujo romance that feels a little old-fashioned today. That’s a good thing since series fans are unlikely to react favorably to any attempts to modernize only a third season, but it’s also pleasantly nostalgic in genre terms, especially since the original manga was, I suspect, many readers’ first introduction to this brand of shoujo romance. It allows the innocence of the story to be preserved, with little details like kisses and unbuttoned top buttons taking on outsize importance, and a scene of Kazehaya and Sawako agreeing to use each other’s first names achieving dangerous levels of cuteness. There’s an adorable innocence that we don’t see as often now, and even viewers without warm and fuzzy feelings about the first two series may find themselves feeling those things with this one.

Japan health ministry to start 1st survey of war trauma among ex-servicemen, families (The Mainichi, Naohiro Koenuma)

The survey will analyze records of those who sought treatment after the war with the National Hospital Organization.

It had been noted since World War I (1914-1918) that war triggered mental illness among some servicemen, caused by such factors as the harsh realities of the battlefield and acts of aggression. In Japan this was called war neurosis. The symptoms are considered similar to what is now called war trauma. However, the Japanese military, which emphasized mental toughness, denied the existence of such patients. For a long time after the Pacific War, the patients and their families did not talk much about the problem because of their strong sense of shame.

Some medical records from the Kohnodai Army hospital (now the Kohnodai Hospital, National Center for Global Health and Medicine, in Chiba Prefecture), where some 10,000 servicemen who had developed mental illnesses were hospitalized, are preserved in the prefecture. Based on these materials, research has emerged in recent years to reexamine the reality of the situation.

In addition to PTSD, war trauma also manifests itself in the form of alcoholism and domestic violence. A group of families of demobilized servicemen became active around 2018. Members discussed their experiences of domestic violence and the inability to build good parent-child relationships, and demanded that the government look into the realities of such families.

English teachers in Japan left in near poverty by paltry pay (The Asahi Shimbun, Junichi Miyagawa)

One interviewed teacher was unable to afford food outside of his daily meal at the school and experienced pay cuts even with the aid of collective bargaining.

The percentage of ALTs dispatched by private firms had hovered between 10 and 19 percent until fiscal 2018, but in fiscal 2021 they surpassed JET teachers to form the largest demographic.

This shift toward hiring ALTs from private companies has been fueled by local governments’ measures to reduce costs.

A nationwide survey conducted between 2022 and 2023 by the General Union received about 600 valid responses from ALTs working at public schools, and showed that the average annual income for those dispatched by private companies stood at 2.47 million yen.

The figure for ALTs directly hired by local governments was 3.48 million yen.

The figure for JET teachers was 3.75 million yen, meaning that those working through dispatch companies only earned about two-thirds of JET teachers’ salaries.

Toshiaki Asari, chair of the labor union based in Osaka, pointed out that an increasing number of local governments are facing fiscal difficulties, and it costs less for them to employ dispatch workers because private firms handle the costs of recruitment, managing employees and so on.

When municipalities select staffing agencies through bidding or other methods, companies with cheaper rates usually win out.

VIDEO: How Witch Hat Atelier tackles a spectrum of issues and builds an inclusive world.

VIDEO: Yuri and BL’s roots in classic shoujo manga.

AniFem Community

This feels like one that could go on forever, honestly.

I love how in episode 11 of Evangelion everyone is super cute-looking because Studio Ghibli guest-animated it.

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— Komm, Süsser Todd (@klookloo.bsky.social) Aug 19, 2024 at 10:20 PM

The old theory that Yu-Gi-Oh 5Ds 2nd Season was reworked to remove any Cult like elements like Yiliaster's OG background and the Arcadia Movement due to the Roma Sophie cult in Japan were proven to be falsified the only connection the cult affected 5Ds is from Carly's JP VA who was a victim

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— Shana_Reviewer (@shana23.bsky.social) Aug 19, 2024 at 11:16 PM