AniFem Round-Up
This season we’re going back to school with magical girls — plus quite a few shows about dealing with grief.
Anime Feminist Recommendations of Summer 2024
This is a season about love and the end of the world–sometimes in a metaphorical messy break-up sense, and sometimes extremely literally.
What’s on your Fall 2024 watchlist?
Now that everything’s out, what’re you watching?
Beyond AniFem
Iseri Nina From Girls Band Cry Is The Utopian Japanese Media Needs (Mimidoshima)
A character study of Nina and struggling with utopianism.
It’s an excellent episode that touches on several issues that plague the lives of teenagers, and it lands on an ending that’s obviously too neat, but still acknowledges the harm caused by the school and the family. Father and daughter have achieved a recognition of each other’s selves that isn’t complete, but it’s a great first step.
And I don’t want to take away from what this episode accomplished with some political arguments about abolishing the family or a need to take public education more seriously. That would be to miss the point of Girls Band Cry: despite the urban realist aesthetic it strives for, the show is a hopeless romantic. Instead, it advocates having impossible dreams: to reconcile with your family, to know that you’ve always done the right thing regardless of how society looks at you, and maybe you’ll get your own way, your own justice, like Nina.
I think those are nice dreams to have. Fiction is a great way to cultivate dreams for an unimaginable future. And the best episodes do that single-handedly: Nina is a monster who doesn’t want simple dreams, she demands the unrealistic, and everyone has to deal with it as much as they’re able to.
Girls Band Cry is a deeply idealistic show in every sense of the word. Its utopian optimism that everything will somehow resolve itself into mutual understanding is infectious.
I can imagine young people watching it being inspired to follow their creative spirits and ignore the arbitrary rules Japanese society has imposed on them. I’m glad this show exists, and it’s fun to marathon this show and think about what it’s trying to get across to people.
Blood on the Tracks Manga Creator Shūzō Oshimi Can’t Help But Get Personal (Anime News Network, Reuben Baron)
Interview with Oshimi during his first fan event in America.
What qualities were important to you when writing the character of Seiko, the mother in Blood on the Tracks?
OSHIMI: Even the illustration of Seiko, when I draw that character, is also drawn from how Seiichi, the main character, sees his own mother. I really wanted to express his vision in the art. I decided to try to draw her as beautifully as possible, as if it’s almost scary.
Much of your work deals heavily with gender issues. What keeps bringing you back to new explorations of these themes?
OSHIMI: That comes from my own experience of having some ambiguity about my own gender, and I wanted to express that in my work.
Many of your series are published in shonen magazines, even while dealing with very heavy subject matter some might consider “adult.” How do you target your approach in addressing topics of sexuality and psychological horror when writing for a shonen audience vs. a seinen one?
OSHIMI: Usually, whenever I draw a manga, I have this audience in mind, which was myself when I was 14. I hope that whenever a 14-year-old reader reads my work, I help them realize there’s a world outside of what they were told is the world. So I’m always paying attention to whether manga can have that role, and I aspire to make works that would have an impact on somebody’s life.
Netflix series explores women’s dreams in the body-slamming world of Japanese pro wrestling (The Mainichi)
The show is the first major acting turn for comedian Yuriyan Retriever.
The Netflix series, which began airing last month, tells the story of Dump Matsumoto, a real-life wrestling legend from the 1980s who grew up poor with a father who was often absent or abusive.
Matsumoto grew up angry, she said, and went on to create in her wrestling persona a ferocious, almost camp villain character, known in the sport as a “heel,” complete with outlandish Kabuki-like facial makeup, chains, sticks and a grotesque scowl. She loomed large as a symbol of fearless and defiant womanhood.
“I gave it my all to be evil,” Matsumoto said.
A hefty woman with a friendly smile, Matsumoto makes a point even now to adamantly deny that she was ever a nice person or acknowledge that many people in Japan, especially women, love her.
First-Ever Lawsuit Challenges Harassment in Japan’s Rakugo World (Unseen Japan, Saki Toi)
This will be the first lawsuit to challenge abuse in the apprenticeship system.
Because of the power harassment, he wanted to change his mentor within the Rakugo Association. However, switching to another master means starting over as a Zenza (opening act, the second phase of training).
According to the Rakugo Association, traditionally, an apprentice can transfer to another master if their current master allows it or expels them. Bajaku requested his mentor Enka to facilitate this. However, Enka was reluctant to comply.
After Bajaku was successfully expelled, he began working for a new master, Asama Yoshihara (75). This year, Bajaku confirmed that Asama would promote him to Shinuchi next year.
Asama says that, during his own apprenticeship, he witnessed several young apprentices give up their careers after their mentors beat them. Some were hospitalized.
“There’s been a longstanding culture of education and training that crosses the line,” Asama said. “It’s absurd to view power harassment as the norm.”
Witch Hat Atelier‘s Creator Shares Her Inspirations and Aspirations for Its Anime (Gizmodo, Isaiah Colbert)
The anime adaptation will air in 2025.
io9: Witch Hat Atelier is unique in that it’s not just a fantasy series about witches, but that it’s also a universal story about learning a new skill and the importance and dangers of one’s persistence in the pursuit of mastery. In what ways does Coco’s journey learning how to become a witch mirror your own in becoming an artist and mangaka?
Kamome Shirahama: I feel like, as an artist, I did put a similar kind of effort as Coco did to fulfill my dream to become an artist. In that sense, I feel like my effort was successful, and so I tried to project a positive perspective onto Coco in that sense. The reason why I used magic as a metaphor [for] creativity [is] that there are so many ways you can be expressing your creativity. Whether using TikTok or YouTube or anything that you post on social media is an expression. However, there’s a dangerous side to releasing these expressions into the world on the internet. I think expression always comes with a responsibility, and this is a point that I wanted to make in the series.
io9: Witch Hat Atelier sets itself apart from other fantasy series with its magic system being channeled by a witch’s artistic skill in drawing symbols instead of a traditional wand. How did you come up with Witch Hat Atelier’s magic system?
Kamome Shirahama: I wanted the readers to feel the difficulties of trying to master the artistry or the magic. Sometimes there’s a simpler way to do something. Those are the kind of aspects that I wanted to bring out in this worldview.
io9: Witch Hat Atelier has the distinction of being scored by veteran FromSoftware composer Yuka Kitamura, who worked on Elden Ring, Dark Souls, and other high fantasy video game projects. What was it like learning that she would be involved with the anime adaptation?
Kamome Shirahama: [Kitamura-san] produces a lot of really cool songs. She’s a great composer. A lot of her themes tend to lean towards the kind of a darker theme songs. But when I was provided was a demo tape for the music for Witch Hat Atelier that we use in the promotional videos, I thought this was really fitting to the worldview of Witch Hat Atelier. I felt like this creator is really very much talented and I was looking forward to listening to more music by her.
Good Enough To Criticize (BP Games, Bigg)
Vagren: Lustful Temptation, and when erotica passes the threshold from functionally to artistically driven from a critical perspective.
I think a lot of adult games fall below the threshold for criticism. This is partly for the reasons I outline above – a great many adult games are made by amateurs who do not have clear artistic visions or much in the way of budgets, and almost all adult games fall far short of any kind of public notability. Furthermore, porn games enjoy a certain level of resistance to criticism simply by virtue of being pornography. A pornographic work CAN be carried up to a certain point on the simple statement of “this is porn, it’s for cranking off to, you don’t need to think about it that hard” – a statement I think is perfectly valid! I fundamentally disagree with the notion that the things that make us cum have to be 100% internally-consistent or even especially tasteful, primarily because I think trying to seriously argue so places one on a slippery slope to full-throated Puritanism. So, for a porn game to be truly “good enough” to criticize seriously, I would argue that it not only needs to be a work of sufficient coherence, technical ability, and notability, but also that it needs to evince a creative mission BEYOND making the player cum with all possible speed.
To date, I’ve only publicly written one review of a porn game – Studio FOW’s Subverse. (An excerpt of said review can be found here, and the full review can be found in the second issue of the Adult Analysis Anthology.) However, this review wound up being pretty exclusively negative, and one thing I’ve brought up in my past writing on the dire state of porn game coverage is the idea that a robust body of critical writing about porn games should serve to IMPROVE porn games by making developers think more carefully about the decisions that they’re making. While a mostly-negative review can certainly contain actionable feedback, I worry about contributing to the perception that adult games exist solely for “serious” critics to laugh at, and further worry about contributing to the perception that engaging critically with an artistic work should only take the form of tearing it down.
Japanese Lingerie Brand’s Transgender-Inclusive Policy Faces Backlash (Unseen Japan, Ebony Brown)
The new regulations have been met with much transphobic handwringing about sneaking into dressing rooms.
The first is to ensure that aisles are more than 90 centimeters wide to accommodate wheelchairs and service dogs. The guidebook encourages the use of specific and clear-to-understand instructions. For example using right, left, and forward instead of less easily understood directives.
Reasonable accommodations should be made for those who are blind or deaf. These include writing down directions or reading things aloud. It also gives examples of how to respond to those with intellectual disabilities or the elderly who struggle with processing visual and vocal information.
The other points address gender bias and inclusive language for LGBT+ customers. Previously, employees only offered try-on services to customers they assumed were women. The new guidelines highlight that transgender customers may not look like their gender identity, so avoid assuming gender based on appearance.
Male-presenting customers should not be asked questions like “Is this for your wife or girlfriend?” Employees should practice discretion and take care not to “out” someone’s gender identity without explicit consent. The guidelines encourage listening to the customer’s needs first and then providing the appropriate help.
Japan police to introduce bodycams on trial basis to ensure appropriate conduct (The Mainichi, Masakatsu Yamasaki)
The card-sized cameras will begin trials in April 2025.
The main purpose of issuing them for community and traffic policing is to verify whether questioning and targeted crackdowns are being conducted appropriately. In principle, the cameras will always be on when officers are outdoors on duty such as during a patrol. This includes activities in public places such as train stations. On the other hand, recording will be paused when the police are receiving sexual assault consultations or entering private homes.
Recording for traffic policing will mainly last for the duration of a traffic stop for a violation. The footage may reportedly be shown to violators.
In security, the recorded data will be sent to the headquarters in real time to facilitate appropriate on-site command decisions.
The data will be stored for about three months for community and traffic policing, and about a week for security. It will be stored on a police station’s computer and elsewhere, and will be deleted when the storage period expires.
Deca-Dence: The Fight for a Better World (Anime Herald, Joshua Baron)
On the series’ exploration of ableism and overcoming apathy.
While the inherent potential of disabled people might not be recognized by many systems, fictional or real, they are nonetheless valuable. When they are allowed the accommodations they need to participate in a society that is not built for them, many are capable of contributing in precisely the ways they wish. Deca-Dence shows an argument for such accommodations in episode 3, when Kaburagi upgrades Natsume’s prosthetic. It improves her grip and enables her to fight the Gadoll with less risk to her life.
Still, this isn’t enough. “I can’t give up on my ambitions. It means I’d be giving up on life itself,” Natsume declares at one point. She refuses to settle for the monotonous existence that’s been thrust upon her. But as she soon learns, the freedom to choose her path in life isn’t the full extent of what it means to be free.
Natsume encapsulates one of the series’ defining messages when she muses, “Everybody needs stuff that makes them happy, like having a drink of milk with a friend. I don’t think you can even call it living if you don’t have any fun in your life. I mean, you’d just be circulating air.” The most important freedom to make life worth living is the ability to enjoy it. It’s that simple.
In a capitalist system, though, work is an inevitable part of life. There are mouths to feed, houses to build, and problems to solve. The humans in Deca-Dence know this as well as we do. But humans are not machines, and work is not the only thing that defines the human experience. Rather, people need a fair society that offers fulfillment from their work and an opportunity to live their lives outside the context of labor.
Actually realizing such a world can seem impossible, and in the show, we see this by the system actively discouraging people from trying to improve it, and in that process, encouraging apathy.
The Fall 2024 Manga Guide (Anime News Network)
Previews from staff for newly released manga, including a newly licensed Yazawa Ai manga.
Welcome to Anime News Network’s Spring 2024 Manga Guide! You may have seen one of our seasonal Anime Preview Guides, where a team of critics writes up each new anime television premiere as it airs at the beginning of a season. Now, doing something like that for manga is tricky – there’s no equivalent “seasonal” release schedule for new manga series, so here’s what we came up with: a survey across three months’ worth of manga releases with a focus on premiering series.
This is an ongoing guide. Every day we’ll be updating the guide. We also have a spread of the notable light novel releases from those months, publishing on Saturday!
This guide focuses exclusively on series premieres; we thought that would be the most useful thing to do. Please remember these are reviews of Volume One only – we’re not reviewing the whole thing or the digital chapters beyond volume one. If you’ve read ahead, please try not to spoil things for people in the forums. All reviews use the same rating scale: 1-5, with 1 being the lowest.
AniFem Community
Seemed like fun to check in on how y’all’s season is shaping up.
Magical girl fall for me w/ Acro Trip and Magilumiere, plus finally giving Magia Record a shot while i wait for Madoka Magica movie 4…
— Void <3 (@colourfulvoid.bsky.social) October 21, 2024 at 11:11 PM
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Unless I decide to drop something: 👽 Dan Da Dan 🤖 Mecha-Ude 💍 365 Days To The Wedding 🪄 Acro Trip 👑 I'll Become A Villainess 🧙♀️Girls Who Couldn't Be Magicians 👻 After-School Hanako-Kun 🏳️⚧️ All-Guys Mixer
— Kassandra (@polyphonetic.bsky.social) October 21, 2024 at 10:47 PM
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