Weekly Round-Up, 19-25 March 2025: Yumeiro Patisserie, Wandering Son Rewatch, and Why Men Should Watch Shoujo

AniFem Round-Up

Folktales, gender and transformation in Where the Wild Ladies Are

Aoko Matsuda’s short story collection remixes traditional folklore about monstrous women as a way to explore and comment on gender roles in modern Japan.

Higurashi, subversion of moe, and the birth of the modern yandere

With Ryukishi07 writing the new Silent Hill f, it’s a good time to look back at his massive influence on anime and manga in the 2000s.

Chatty AF 224: Magic Knight Rayearth Rewatchalong – Part 3 (WITH TRANSCRIPT)

Caitlin, Colleen, and Megan return to complete their rewatch of the Magic Knight Rayearth anime!

What series has a perfect final episode?

It’s harder to pull off thank you might think.

Beyond AniFem

Osaka High Court rules gay marriage ban unconstitutional (The Arahi Shimbun, Issei Yamamoto)

This makes it the fifth prefectural court to find the ban unconstitutional.

Three same-sex couples living in Kyoto, Kagawa and other prefectures initially filed a lawsuit against the Japanese government seeking a total of 6 million yen ($39,900) in compensation.
The high court’s decision strikes down the Osaka District Court’s prior upholding of the Civil Law and Family Register Law’s provisions that limit marriage to heterosexual couples. However, Honda dismissed the appeal for compensation.
Although it is the fifth high court to condemn the ban, the Osaka High Court’s ruling has attracted attention as it is the only instance of overturning a district court’s decision of the six similar lawsuits filed at five district courts nationwide.
Sapporo, Tokyo, Fukuoka and Nagoya’s high courts previously handed down rulings on the issue.

Draw, Natsuko! Zenshu’s Tale of Perishing (AniWire, Adam Wescott)

A spoiler-heavy discussion of one of our favorite shows this year.

The parallel between Natsuko’s struggles as an artist and the apocalypse haunting Tale of Perishing is clear. All you can do in the face of total collapse is to keep fighting together with your friends.
This is a nice message that has the benefit of being true. After all, we live at a time when organizing your peers is more important than ever. Yet that message can’t help but frustrate me considering the context. As Alicia Haddick writes for scrmbl, Zenshu never once puts Natsuko’s creative struggles into a wider context. Sure, people burn out. But why? We are influenced not just by our own psychology but by the systems in which we live. Animators in Japan (and across the world) have suffered under these systems for as long as the medium has existed.
I don’t believe that Zenshu had a responsibility to make its studio, MAPPA, the final villain. Art has a right to exist beyond the purpose of propaganda. Also, I suspect that Yamazaki, Ueno and company wanted to speak to something larger than just the anime industry’s woes. They wanted to give hope to everybody. Why not believe in something bigger and better than yourself when the world around you is a garbage pile? That’s where Shirobako, my favorite anime industry sitcom, also landed when it aired back in 2014.

Hate speech bringing unwanted focus on Japan’s Kurdish community (The Mainichi)

Stories of hate crimes targeting Kurdish communities have been growing in frequency over the past year.

For many years, the Turkish government has pursued a policy of assimilation, forbidding the Kurds from using their language and engaging in their unique cultural practices.
Since the 1990s, when the oppression intensified, more and more Kurds fled to Japan, but the Japanese government has granted refugee status to very few, perhaps to maintain friendly relations with the Turkish government.
Trucks used by Kurdish demolition workers are a popular trope in online hate posts, referred to as illegal “Kurd cars.” Users take pictures of the trucks piled high with scrap wood from demolitions.
“There are some people who load the trucks in strange ways, people who don’t do it properly,” conceded Mamo, who has worked in the industry for years. “But not everyone is like that — and in some cases, the photos aren’t even of Kurdish people’s trucks.”
Mamo said the community is less concerned about the vitriolic effect on adults, however. “It’s different for the kids, for them it’s traumatic to see people discriminating against them. We worry how it will affect them growing up.”
In a bid to divert young Kurds’ attention from hatred on screens to constructive pursuits, the community established FC Kurd, a soccer team of about 60 school kids from elementary to high school, in December 2024. It offers hope to Kurdish parents struggling to raise children in Japan.

Is This Sex Offender Map in Japan Legal? (Unseen Japan, Jay Allen)

Japan’s existing national database is available to employees who work with children but not parents.

It seems clear Amyna can make a case that it’s protecting children. However, says Itakura, a court would also have to weigh whether Amyna was properly handling and vetting sensitive personal information. Without firm verification processes in place, for example, it runs the risk of falsely identifying someone as committing a heinous crime.
Itakura notes that there are many cases, for example, where charges are sent to prosecutors, but they decline to prosecute. Most of these dropped cases go unreported in the news media. That disconnect could lead to inaccurate labeling in a database like Amyna’s.
Another wrinkle is domestic violence cases. Identifying an abuser who still lives with their victim could disclose the victim’s information by proxy.
In the end, Itakura believes that Amyna could be found to promote harassment of individuals, as well as accused of “profiting” off of personal information via its donation/subscription system.

Japan child abuse cases hit new record 225,000 in FY 2023 (The Mainichi)

There are currently 234 child welfare centers across Japan.

The total rose 5.0 percent, or 10,666 cases, from fiscal 2022, marking the 33rd consecutive year of increases since records began, according to the revised figures compiled by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare and the Children and Families Agency.
Psychological abuse consultations accounted for 59.8 percent, or 134,948 cases, of which 78,914 were domestic violence taking place in front of children.
Physical abuse made up 22.9 percent, or 51,623 cases, followed by 36,465 cases of neglect and 2,473 sexual abuse cases.
More than half of cases reported to child welfare centers came from the police, followed by neighbors and acquaintances at 9.8 percent of the cases, family and relatives at 8.5 percent and schools at 7.4 percent.
“We take the results very seriously and intend to improve the child welfare center system to protect children’s lives,” said an official at the agency, launched two years ago to oversee the government’s child policy.

VIDEO: Josee, the Tiger and the Fish Discussion (with Shoujo Sundae)