AniFem Round-Up
Is it Hot in Here? Consent, communication, and boundaries in Sweat and Soap
This sweet and sexy manga pairs its kink with a story about two adults learning how to build a healthy relationship together, Sam H. explains.
AniFem sat down with the fantastic, eloquent Yatco at this year’s Otakon to talk about sketch comedy and JJK manga feels.
An extremely by the numbers shounen, from orphan boy heroes to played-for-comedy groping.
Chatty AF 146: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Rewatchalong – Episodes 7-12
Vrai, Mercedez, and Alex return for the 2nd half of Madoka to talk about Madoka’s character arc, the aggravating entropy twist, and how the TV finale still resonates.
What’s the most expensive anime set you’ve ever bought?
Go ahead, y’all. Show off.
Beyond AniFem
“Anime was a safe space”: On magical girls, damaged villains, and trans adolescence (AV Club, Willow Maclay and Cressa Beer)
Reminiscence from two trans artists about the anime that resonated with them growing up.
Willow Maclay: Neon Genesis Evangelion is a favorite among certain sects of the trans community, to the point where it’s an inside joke among us that Shinji Ikari is an egg [a closeted trans person]. His closed-off-ness, his discomfort in his own body, and his frustration at being excluded from the love of his own father in favor of teenage girl Rei—they all give this reading ammunition. I’m hesitant to say that Evangelion is a text about transness, because there’s nothing to suggest as much in the actuality of the show. But it is a series about mental illness, and by and large, a huge portion of the trans community deal with those problems in one way or another.
I think it was that aspect of the series that I was drawn to as a teenager, and like you, Cressa, I loved Asuka with all my heart. She’s volatile, makes incredibly bad decisions, and desperately wants to be taken seriously. She also has a cocktail of family trauma that is elaborated upon beautifully near the end of the series and then comes back in the film End Of Evangelion. As someone whose mental health problems are rooted in the way my family treated me, she became an endearing character for myself. I plastered a huge poster of her above my bed when I was 15, and in hindsight I felt like my choice of decoration had little to do with me wanting to be her. Rather, I felt like her already.
Fighting Futility with Bloodborne (Sidequest, Cress)
Playing a game about plague to cope with real-world disease.
How wonderful it would be to think this was all a bad dream. Imagining that is a salve on the eve of bad news. We’ll wake up and things are peaceful; the sun is turning granite into gold, illuminating a beautiful city where I’m free of responsibility and pain. Either way, the dream must end, and so instead, I end on becoming something new. Will my memories of humanity help or hurt the people of Yharnam? When we’re free of looming sickness, will we move into a new beginning? I don’t want to return to “normal”; I want something better. Both for Yharnam and our dear Earth. I want this to be a lesson for governing structures in our fragility and resilience. The terror of death was not abated by steel-crushing bone, but by the hands of healers and the working class who needed to survive. So as much as I crave the sunrise, I know that’s a selfish wish. I can’t forget; none of us should.
After some regicide and plundering one more treasure in the dungeons, my journey ended. The Platinum trophy of a hunter blinked on screen. I did it, I Platinumed my first game, and it was Bloodborne.
Having trauma doesn’t mean you can only consume mild, boneless art. (Welcome to Hell Zone)
Musings on the limitations of exhaustive trigger warnings.
And, when there is a content warning for something obvious like depiction of rape, it only half helps me. Okay, so it has a rape scene. Is it violent? Is it ridiculous enough that I won’t be phased by it? Or is it treated respectfully, in a way that’ll hit close to home but won’t deeply hurt me? Or is it treated respectfully on-screen at the time, but the writing shames the victim later on in the running time, causing me to contemplate my entire life and cry? Just saying there’s a rape scene can make me brace myself, but it doesn’t ACTUALLY tell me whether or not it’ll cause me strong emotional distress.
I need specificity. Specificity that a stranger putting together a content warning list will never be able to provide. At some point, I just have to accept that I cannot be protected, and move on with my life. It’s not a stranger’s job to protect me, anyways.
…Besides, if I don’t freak out over a movie, I’ll have a panic attack at the store because I hear a song that played at a party I was groped at or something. There’s not really much saving me there!
Child abuse cases pass 200,000 in Japan for 1st time in FY 2020 (The Asahi Shimbun, Ryuichi Hisanaga)
This data refers exclusively to reported cases.
Of the 205,029 consultations, 50.5 percent were brought in by police and others.
In many cases, police officers who responded to an emergency call reported to a child consultation center that domestic violence between a husband and wife had occurred in front of a child.
In 13.5 percent of the cases, a neighbor or an acquaintance contacted a child consultation center. In 8.2 percent of the cases, a family member or a relative made a consultation.
Psychological abuse was reported in 121,325 cases, or 59.2 percent, while cases of physical abuse accounted for 50,033 reports, or 24.4 percent.
Child neglect was reported in 31,420 cases, or 15.3 percent.
Tokyo Paralympics repeatedly hit with ‘unexpected’ bus accidents, heatstroke cases (The Mainichi, Yuta Kobayashi and Takuya Nagamune)
Several athletes were injured to the point of being unable to compete.
Since winning the bid to host the Games, Japan’s lack of experience in operating international parasports events has been an issue. About 4,400 athletes are participating in the Tokyo Paralympics, and compared to the Olympics, more detailed support depending on certain disabilities is essential. However, a large-scale mock tournament inviting foreign athletes was never held after the Games were postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic.
An executive of the organizing committee said, “In consideration of athletes with visual impairments and other disabilities, we should have stopped the self-driving buses at the athletes’ village. Our prediction was too optimistic.”
The organizing committee also announced on Aug. 30 that a total of 25 athletes and those involved in the Paralympic Games have suffered from heatstroke in its first five days. One athlete was taken to a clinic in the athletes’ village while the remaining 24 suffered minor symptoms.
VIDEO: Takedown of gatekeeping in cosplay.
VIDEO: Summary of the recent explosion in hate-raiding against marginalized streamers.
THREAD: On the continuing rollout issues with the vaccine in Japan.
THREAD: Info on the database site Black Anime Podcasts.
TWEET: Open-access thesis of a sociological study of kawaii fashion.
AniFem Community
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