AniFem Round-Up
Thinking Outside the Circle: Accessibility and education in Witch Hat Atelier
If you’ve been hearing the buzz on the upcoming adaptation of Shirahama Kanome’s fantasy hit, here’s a handy primer on her thoughtful, inventive worldbuilding.
“The Courage to Speak”: Mental illness and recovery in Natsume’s Book of Friends
The long-running shoujo parallels between seeing yokai and living with mental illness, and how the narrative centers self-acceptance and healing.
Chatty AF 216: Revolutionary Girl Utena Watchalong – Adolescence of Utena
Vrai, Cy, and Chiaki gather to talk self-actualization and automobiles for the final episode of their watchalong!
What’s your favorite absurdly high-drama popcorn series?
“Good” and “compelling” aren’t always hand-in-hand.
Beyond AniFem
Mirage Noir—A detective otome VN focused on found family (Kickstarter)
The game includes four planned romance routes.
When Yunie graduated from college, she believed she had her whole life ahead of her. Returning to her hometown with a shiny new dream job, it seemed like nothing could stand in her way.
However, two years later, not much has changed. She hasn’t made any new friends, isn’t allowed to investigate anything worthwhile, and feels like she’s stuck in mud, moving in place.
So when an unexpected opportunity arises, she doesn’t hesitate to take it. The case is a weird one, but it introduces her to an eccentric team of people she immediately connects with, and she decides that no matter what, she won’t regret getting involved.
Even if it means crossing paths with a serial killer.
Iboshi Hokuto: The Legacy of the Ainu Poet-Activist (Unseen Japan, Alyssa Pearl Fusek)
Iboshi was only 28 when he died in 1929.
After a two-day train journey, Iboshi arrived in Asagaya in February 1925 and met with Nishikawa and his wife Fumiko, herself a writer and feminist activist. When he wasn’t working at the Tokyo Market Association, Iboshi assisted in editorial work for Jidou Dowa.
Soon after his arrival, he connected with the Ainu scholar Kindaichi Kyosuke. Kindaichi introduced Iboshi to a wider world of Ainu writers and activists, notably Japanese-Ainu translator Chiri Yukie and Ainu poet Batchelor Yaeko. Iboshi was reportedly deeply moved by Chiri’s work translating yukar, the Ainu heroic chants.
Kindaichi invited Iboshi to the Tokyo Ainu Conference, where he gave lectures and met Iha Fuyu, a pioneer scholar in Okinawan studies; folklorist Nakayama Taro; and publisher Okamura Chiaki, who’d published Chiri’s collection of yukar.
Between work, writing, mingling with scholars and socialists, and attending mountain retreats with his Jidou Dowa cohorts, Iboshi’s life in Tokyo was full and largely free of the discrimination he’d faced in Hokkaido. Yet disillusionment soon began to set in. He realized his special treatment by academics was predicated on the assumption he was part of a dying race.
If Iboshi truly wanted to help his people, he couldn’t do it in Tokyo. Neither could he leave the preservation of his people to scholars. “It must be an Ainu who revives the Ainu people,” he later wrote.
In a letter published in Ibungaku, he resented the idea that the Ainu were synonymous with “a dying race” and “ignorant and apathetic.” “Someone from the Ainu must go forth to research our people,” he wrote.
2 Tokyo wards to list gay couples like de facto marriage for registry (The Asahi Shimbun, Masashi Kisanuki and Eiichiro Nakamura)
Nine other municipalities are purportedly introducing similar systems.
However, the Nakano and Setagaya wards hope to advance LGBT rights by allowing same-sex couples the same resident registration that opposite-sex common-law married couples have.
“We have conducted a thorough study and determined that there are no obstacles,” Nakano Ward Mayor Naoto Sakai said at a news conference. “I hope that the central government will tackle this issue head-on.”
Setagaya Ward Mayor Nobuto Hosaka said, “There is no misidentification or confusion” with heterosexual common-law marriages.
HOW TO REGISTER
In Nakano Ward, the new system will be available to ward residents who have completed the Nakano Ward partnership oath, which officially recognizes lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender couples and others, or the Tokyo metropolitan partnership oath.
The ward’s oath system will introduce electronic applications on Nov. 1 for ease of use.
My Journey to Her Manga Review (Anime News Network, Rebecca Silverman)
Nonfiction manga about the author’s medical transition journey.
Although it is not the point, there’s a lot in Hirasawa’s discussions of her first weeks as a vagina owner that may resonate with cisgender women. Aftercare involves dilation, the insertion of a rod so that the new vagina (regarded as a wound by the body) remains intact. The pain Hirasawa describes sounds horribly familiar, like a terrible pap smear or any gynecological procedure if you have a tight hymenal band or another hymenal condition, some of which are treated with dilation. Hirasawa also describes some of the urinary issues she experiences, which may be at least a little familiar to cis women who have had postnatal urinary retention. Although the cause isn’t the same, the discomfort is, and it’s important to talk about these issues, no matter whether you’re cis or trans, not only medically, but because it helps to realize that we’re all just people and that bodies can be weird and painful.
For some readers, the sheer invasive nature of what Hirasawa is required to go through to be legally recognized as a woman will be upsetting. She is required to undergo multiple genital examinations, not as part of her actual surgery, but to confirm that she does, in fact, have female genitals. She needs two separate diagnoses of gender dysphoria, still (as of the book’s writing) commonly referred to as gender identity disorder in Japan, which pathologizes gender identity. While everyone she meets in Thailand is supportive of her, she briefly notes that people in Japan are not, although her siblings and sister-in-law all go out of their way to let her know that they love her and support her decision. Even though Hirasawa glosses over these issues, choosing instead to focus on clinical details and her happiness with her choices, they are still present in the text. This leads her to ask, at the end of the book, what gender even is, and to wonder why society places so much value on it, specifically in a binary sense.
Ex-prosecutor admits to sexual assault of drunk colleague in 2018 (The Asahi Shimbun, Kazutaka Toda and Tetsuaki Otaki)
Following investigation, the perpetrator said he would not contest the charges.
Kitagawa is accused of sexually assaulting the drunk subordinate at his then official residence in Osaka between late on Sept. 12, 2018, and early the next morning after drinking with her and others at a restaurant.
Earlier this year, the woman reported the incident to senior prosecutors.
The female prosecutor said at a news conference in Osaka on Oct. 25 that she had suffered for around six years since it occurred.
“Why didn’t he admit his guilt sooner? If he had done so earlier, I could have started a new life,” she said.
The woman explained that she held the news conference because, “I want to stand by victims who cannot speak out and those who have found the courage to come forward.”
“I want to convey the truth of my experience and the pain I’ve endured due to the secondary victimization,” she added.
Companies have men ‘experience’ menstrual pain to boost empathy (The Asahi Shimbun, Akihiro Nishiyama)
The sessions were prompted by survey responses calling for the possibility of menstrual leave.
A 30-year-old male employee said he participated in the program because his wife seemed to be suffering from menstrual cramps and he wanted to experience them for himself.
“I could actually understand the pain,” he said. “I want to try to imagine other people’s pain and treat them with compassion.”
On Oct. 16, Panasonic Connect Co. held a similar training event with about 50 employees–both male and female–participating.
Yasuyuki Higuchi, the company’s CEO, experienced the pain himself and said, “In many companies, most executives are male, so it is important to understand the feelings of women, who are in the minority.”
At the company, while employees are allowed to take leave for menstrual cramps, Higuchi said, “It is also important to have a workplace culture that makes it easy to take (leave).”
According to Linkage, a Tokyo-based company that provides the training program, in the most recent year, training sessions using the Perionoid have been conducted at more than 100 companies.
The training program has been held at companies regardless of the industry type or the size, including predominantly male workplaces, Linkage said.
Keyframes: Summer – A college based slice of life VN (Kickstarter)
Complete cost breakdowns are available at the link.
The game as projected will span nine total seasons of your life, spent not only with the trio but also with your best friends, Cameron and Deja. The demo focuses on the Spring Semester of your second year and includes an estimated 280,000 words, with more than 200 variations that depend on your choices and your personality type (determined by a fun quiz at the start of the game).
This Kickstarter focuses on the funding for the next season (Summer) only.
The reasons for this are elaborated on in the project’s FAQ, but long story short: we wanted to be mindful of how much we asked of our prospective players with only our demo to support our credibility as a new studio. Ideally, we will not need to launch another campaign after completing the First Summer, but regardless of what may lie in wait for us after this campaign, we will update everyone with our next steps!
You can play the First Spring Season of Keyframes on Itch.io. (Also coming soon on Steam!)
VIDEO: Accessibility options in the Silent Hill 2 remake.
VIDEO: Check in on animator working conditions in 2024.
VIDEO: On the recent renaissance of magical girls.
AniFem Community
It’s so wrong that you can’t all watch Samurai Flamenco right now.
YU-NO: A Girl Who Chants Love at the Bound of this World Is not only an adaptation of a 90s PC98 eroge, but also just beyond wild in "where it goes" with 2 episodes of set up, in 21 episodes of "WHAT THE FUCK?" and then 3 final episodes of "OH, FUCK YOU." This is all the same anime.
— Chiaki Mitama 🐾🌭 (@terrible.moe) October 28, 2024 at 9:02 PM
[image or embed]
My Hime is still a fun time
— cctakato.bsky.social (@cctakato.bsky.social) October 28, 2024 at 11:03 PM
[image or embed]
Comments are open! Please read our comments policy before joining the conversation and contact us if you have any problems.