AniFem Round-Up
An Analysis of Magical Sex-Change (TSF) Manga
With not one but THREE anime this season featuring TSF elements, Chiaki explores how this enduring subgenre can be both fetishizing or gender essentialist but also a fantasy space for trans audiences.
Who is Allowed to Speak Their Pain? Demon Slayer, empathy, and Nezuko
Trevor Richardson asks why Demon Slayer‘s touching and empathetic approach to storytelling seems to fall short when it comes to exploring the internal life of its female lead.
Chatty AF 155: Soul Eater Rewatchalong – Episodes 40-51
Caitlin, Vrai, and Dee come to the end of their Soul Eater rewatch and talk about the controversial anime-original ending and their thoughts on the series as a whole!
What’s your big far-fetched dream for an anime adaptation?
Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer fans just got their wish, so let’s all dream big.
Beyond AniFem
Koshien ace pitcher goes to bat for women’s baseball in Japan (The Mainichi, Shiro Yamaguchi)
Opportunities for female players remain rare at the nationally-renowned level of Koshien.
Shimano, 17, has been selected as one of the first members of an all-female amateur club being started by the Yomiuri Giants professional baseball team.
“I appreciate the team taking a step in a new direction,” she said. “This is welcome news for women’s baseball.”
School clinched the national female high school baseball championship at Hanshin Koshien Stadium in Nishinomiya, Hyogo Prefecture, on Aug. 23. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)
The Giants announced on Dec. 8 that the women’s team will start playing in 2023 and named its first four members, including Shimano.
It was the third among Nippon Professional Baseball’s 12 teams to set up a female club after the Seibu Lions and the Hanshin Tigers.
Nezuko’s Adult Form in Demon Slayer Is Causing Quite a Stir About Sexualization (The Mary Sue, Princess Weekes)
On Nezuko’s demon design and when big boobs add versus detract from character design.
There is no problem with Nezuko’s adult body or adult form having large boobs. It’s just a bit boring that her body in that form exists only to look hot.
Especially when she doesn’t get to speak or be an active member of the story because she’s in the box a lot of the time. It would be really interesting if we got some more insight into how Nezuko feels about being in a child body all the time and not being able to grow up normally.
Plus, I don’t love that her having a mature, adult body also means that she is out of control. Part of the story is that being in this form, as of right now, means she out of control and bloodthirsty, and that is kind of a bummer.
People have brought up that series creator Koyoharu Gotouge has been revealed to be a woman (apparently, a Weekly Shōnen Jump employee disclosed this), and it is being used as a “gotcha” when people bring this up.
(1) Women can perpetuate sexism, (2) women can also simply just appreciate the aesthetics of big breasts, and (3) the juxtaposition of Nezuko with breasts in her adult form against her preteen form is also a design choice that makes the reveal more interesting and, therefore, that could just be the reason.
Symbol of Japan #MeToo movement again awarded damages in rape case (The Mainichi)
Ito was awarded damages in civil court this Tuesday—this ruling is in response to the second countersuit by her alleged rapist. NOTE: This article includes specific details of Ito’s assault.
In December 2019, the Tokyo District Court ordered Yamaguchi to pay 3.3 million yen in damages to Ito, recognizing he had sexual intercourse without her consent and that the plaintiff was “in state of intoxication and unconscious.” Yamaguchi appealed the ruling in January 2020.
“The court ruling which acknowledged that there was no consent means a lot,” Ito said in a news conference.
In a separate news conference, Yamaguchi said he is dissatisfied with the ruling other than damages awarded to him and plans to appeal to the top court.
The civil trial decisions sharply contrasted with the criminal procedure, in which prosecutors had decided not to indict Yamaguchi citing insufficient evidence after Ito filed a complaint with police.
Ito has said she believes Yamaguchi’s close ties with then Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, about whom he has written a best-seller, might have discouraged prosecutors from pursuing the case.
Hyakushō in the Arafura Zone: Ecologizing the Nineteenth-Century ‘Opening of Japan’ (Past & Present, Manimporok Dotulong)
Article about fishing communities and non-empire cultural connections that expands and complicates the narrative around the “opening of Japan.”
In the 1880s, ordinary fishers and other commoners who were intimately familiar with the seas left the Japanese archipelago in search of bluer waters. Ending up in South-East Asia and Australasia, these hyakushō used their local knowledge of nature to navigate unfamiliar ecological contexts and create ocean-spanning infrastructures capable of facilitating their everyday lives. The resulting transnational connections gave birth to the ‘Arafura Zone’, a largely non-state space where empires had little influence and mechanisms of the global marketplace met with both human and environmental friction. This article tells a new story of Japan’s nineteenth-century global connections. It shows how the so-called ‘Opening of Japan’ was not primarily characterized by the temporality of industrial civilization and the spatiality of an international community of civilized nation-states. Hyakushō developed a new understanding of time and space based on the monsoonal climate and the geographical distribution of marine biota.
Manga Recommendations for Otome Game Lovers (Blerdy Otome, Naja)
Short recs of a series of shoujo or otome-adjacent titles for fans of the genre.
From Far Away is one of my favorite classic shojo series, so I’ll find just about any opportunity to recommend it. But, with it’s immersive isekai story, strong lead, and engaging romance, From Far Away is a must read for otome fans looking for a new manga series to dive into. The whole series has a very Angelique vibe to it—high school girl is sent to another world to fulfill a prophesy/role and along the way finds love with a hottie. It’s not anything especially new, but this series holds up surprisingly well and I find myself giving the whole series a binge every couple of years!
The Japanese New Left, the Vietnam War, and Anti-Imperial Protest (Springer Link, Alex Finn Macartney)
Chapter in newly released book Protest in the Vietnam War Era.
Despite years of mass protests, confrontations with police, and even armed resistance to the U.S. war in Vietnam, Japan is rarely included in histories of the “Global 1960s.” Japan experienced major public protest, both in reaction to the violence of the conflict and in solidarity with the Vietnamese, but also because of the Japanese state’s entanglement with US military strategy in Asia. New Left protesters in Japan included a new kind of citizen peace movement as well as radical students calling for revolution. Rather than seeing themselves as isolated, protesters saw themselves as part of a global movement that sought and obtained many international contacts. Among protesters, a general sense of Vietnam as the focal point for a global imperial strategy—as well as the key to defeating that strategy—led many to see Japan not only as a lackey to U.S. imperialism, but a dangerous rising imperialist power as well.
VIDEO: Podcast chat with John E Bentley, best known as Barrett in Final Fantasy VII Remake.
TWEET: Upcoming presentation about LGBTQIA+ Rights in modern Japan; video will be streamed and archived.
TWEET: Newly released academic article about the history of anti-Black caricature in kawaii culture.
TWEET: NHK series ANIMATION × PARALYMPIC: Who Is Your Hero? Will receive two new episodes in February.
AniFem Round-Up
Wow, y’all had BIG feelings about this one.
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