AniFem Round-Up
Hagio Moto’s Marginal and BL manga as feminist fabulation
1985’s Marginal examines gendered oppression by examining a one-gender world where patriarchal violence has simply rebuilt itself along different lines.
A World That Can’t See You: Otherness and disability in Tsukihime
Nasu’s pre-Fate visual novel, finally available in English, poignantly captures a story of rebuilding community after your body has betrayed you.
What pre-2000 manga still needs an anime?
There’s definitely a sizable list.
A heads up on recent technical behind-the-scenes snafus.
Beyond AniFem
A Mahou Shoujo Mid-Twenties Crisis: New Takes on “Magical Girls for Adults” (The Afictionado, Alex Henderson)
An analysis of genre shifts via two recent examples of the “working magical girl.”
Interesting, too, is that neither of them force magical girl-ing to be a secret identity for these young adults—instead, being a magical girl is their job. It might sound like a terribly boring approach, but hey, think about it: when you’re little, the idea of discovering you have a secret magical destiny is a power fantasy. When you’re older, the offer of job security (and a job you enjoy and find fulfilling!) is something like a dream. Kana finding a rewarding career after her fruitless, emotionless job search is something like magic. Likewise, the concept that the unnamed heroine has a destiny is bizarre and enthralling to her when her life has felt so directionless and hopeless for the past few years. Maybe the gig is dangerous (though in different ways—Magilumiere deals with formidable yet cartoony monsters, Park Seolyeon’s magical girls are called away to do counter-terrorism) but there’s also a sense of cathartic security. Plus, well, this is a magical girl story, so the day will get saved without anyone getting too badly hurt, right?
Well, mostly. Though they’ve got a big dose of whimsy, it’s not all sparkles and moonbeams in these stories, and the themes they address and the stakes that come up reflect their grown-up characters and target audience to embody a sense of… let’s say millennial ennui, especially in the case of A Magical Girl Retires, where, among other discussions of domestic violence, income inequality, and sexism, Park Seolyeon’s magical girls are grappling with the fact that their greatest foe is not a villain nor a monster but the inevitable destruction of climate change. While much more lighthearted, Magilumiere is not immune to stakes that reflect real-world worries for real-world working adults, as Kana realises that her small start-up is abnormal in the industry and even magical guardians in pretty costumes aren’t free from the horrors of capitalism nor immune to workplace injuries. Still, even when these stories infuse dark and grimy realism with their fantasy, it feels wrong to sticker them with the “dark magical girl” label that was oh-so-common, once upon a time.
LeSean Thomas Schools New York on ‘Consumer’ Fans and Uplifting Animators (Anime News Network, Reuben Baron)
Thomas gave a series of talks in collaboration with a film series showing by The Japan Society of New York.
Thomas does not speak Japanese, so he used an interpreter throughout the production. He made friends with the animators, which meant going out for drinks with them regularly; “I’m not a drinker,” he says, “but they don’t smoke weed in Japan.” One big cultural difference he noted is that “there aren’t a lot of ‘cowboys’ in Japanese productions compared to the United States, where you can have an intern trying to rewrite the script.” Japanese animators are more likely to say, “Tell me what you need”—by which they mean, “Tell me how to do it right.”
With Cannon Busters, Thomas wanted to “play around” with the many different ways Black characters (or more precisely, Black-coded characters, since no one in the show is from Earth) can look in anime. S.A.M. is pure moé style, while Philly the Kid looks like he could have stepped out of Cowboy Bebop. Thomas sometimes had to teach the Japanese animators how to draw Black people; when one design for the second episode came back with “sausage lips,” he sent an email explaining the history of minstrel imagery and why it could be offensive to international audiences.
Another challenge came about when it was time to dub Cannon Busters in English. The producers had only budgeted for a non-union dub, not considering that most of the best Black voice actors are union and that non-union dubs tend to be overwhelming white. A whitewashed Cannon Busters cast would be unacceptable, so they ended up spending an additional $8,000 per episode on a union dub from NYAV Post (Thomas’ preferred dubbing studio, which is “excellent” at finding diverse voice talent).
Pokémon Go Data ‘Adding Amplitude to War Is Obviously an Issue,’ Niantic Exec Says (404 Media, Mika Baumeister)
The comment came from Niantic’s Senior Vice President of Engineering.
“The LGM is an early stage project and is months or even years away from any kind of product,” a Niantic spokesperson said when asked whether Niantic would consider selling its LGM or related data to governments and militaries. “Just like any kind of AI, there will be important questions that arise and we’ll tackle those responsibly and thoughtfully.”
As I wrote last week, Niantic named LGM as a direct reference to Large Language Models (LLMs) Like OpenAI’s GPT, which are trained on vast quantities of text scraped from the internet in order to process and produce natural language. Niantic’s LGM aims to do the same for the physical world, a technology it says “will enable computers not only to perceive and understand physical spaces, but also to interact with them in new ways, forming a critical component of AR glasses and fields beyond, including robotics, content creation and autonomous systems. As we move from phones to wearable technology linked to the real world, spatial intelligence will become the world’s future operating system.”
The data to train the LGM comes from Niantic’s games, including Pokémon Go. For example, Niantic recently introduced an experimental feature in Pokémon Go called Pokémon Playgrounds, where the user can place Pokémon at a specific location that will remain there for others to see and interact with. This feature, Niantic explains, is powered by massive amounts of data, and is unique because it is taken from a pedestrian perspective from locations inaccessible to cars.
November Roundtable: Revolution (Sidequest, Melissa Brinks)
Discussion of the handling of revolutionary themes in games.
Cress: Maybe not the best example, but for me it’s Persona 5. Atlus takes great pains to show that so-called criminals are often labeled as such as a convenience to people in power. Persona 5‘s protagonist was trying to stop a man from assaulting a woman and was quickly labeled a delinquent and carted off by the police. The whole party has one example or another of being pushed around by authority. So, as the Phantom Thieves, they set out to steal the hearts of the cruel and change their ways.
Sounds really cool right? Unfortunately, Persona 5 stops short of critiquing the ways those people came to power in the first place. For example, the teacher abusing students was only caught and fired because we made him confess. But the game acts as though his power existed in a vacuum. Other staff don’t get called in for questioning, there isn’t an overhaul of how kids can reach out to someone—no anonymous tip line, no anything. Staff aren’t given any instruction on spotting signs of abuse or how to help. I do know that in Royal, Atlus added a therapist character because there was harsh feedback on how they originally handled an incredibly sensitive topic.
Sure, Persona 5 pays lip service to how things improve. But in each arc it feels like the game is saying there are just bad actors in an otherwise functional system. Makoto, one of your party members, offhandedly asks why she should worry herself ragged studying if she’s just going to be thrown into the lion’s den, fighting others for top jobs. Her sister admonishes her for being childish and reminds her how hard it is to be a working woman in a man’s world, but she did it and so Makoto should too. I can’t stop thinking about this scene. It kind of encapsulates all my problems with Persona 5. There’s a momentary suggestion that there might be a different way to live… which is dropped completely because, oh my god, college is important, you need to get a job! Anyway, Makoto becomes a cop. Great…
The ANN Aftershow: A Letter from the Executive Editor (Anime News Network, Lynzee Loveridge)
A shorter podcast episode talking about current events, and hope.
Resources: InclusiveTherapists.com/crisis
-Call Blackline 800-604-5841 (Centers BIPOC, LGBTQ, Black Femme Lens)
-Trans Lifeline 877-565-8860 (US), 887-330-6366 (Canada)
-Wildflower Alliance Peer Support line: 888-407-4515
-StrongHearts Native Helpline: 844-762-8483
-Thrive Lifeline: 313-662-8209
-LGBT National Help Center: 888-843-4564
-Fund abortion travel: www.brigidalliance.org/donate
Homeless people evicted from encampment at Osaka ‘symbol’ (The Asahi Shimbun)
“More than 500” government employees and riot police showed up to evict a group of unhoused individuals who had been living at a center closed in 2019; their belongings were collected during eviction.
Between 1961 and 2008, 24 riots occurred in the Kamagasaki district, resulting in many injuries and arrests.
The causes of the clashes varied. Some homeless people were upset at being out of work and took out their frustrations against the government and police, whom they distrusted.
In other cases, the day laborers railed against poor working conditions or the perceived arrogance of the work arrangers.
The Airin general center was jointly built in 1970 by the central government, the Osaka prefectural and city governments, among others.
The purpose of the center was to supervise the open labor market and recruit workers on the streets in response to the “first Nishinari riots” in 1961.
The center had a space called “yoseba,” where day laborers gathered for work assignments, and a hospital facility that provided free and low-cost medical care.
The center has been called a symbol of Kamagasaki in part because it was a place where day laborers interacted with each other.
The same US Copyright Office decision that struck down a major game preservation effort also quietly reversed a historic DMCA win for accessibility advocates (Games Radar, Dustin Bailey)
The ruling allowed players to break copyright in order to mod games for accessibility purposes.
“Given the constraints of the rulemaking process,” the Copyright Office wrote in its ruling, “because the Office did not receive a petition to renew the current exemption, the Register is not able to recommend its renewal. The Office continues to support enactment of a permanent exemption.” Yes, you’re reading that right – the government wants to make this accessibility exemption permanent. The rules just mean it can’t do so without an external advocate.
The accessibility exemption allows – or rather, allowed – people to bypass copyright protection in order to add features like alternate controller support for PC games in order to help people with disabilities play them. As Game File reports, this was part of a much larger effort from accessibility advocates to be allowed to bypass copyright protection across all kinds of media, hacking in features like audio description for digital movies or more accessible fonts for ebooks. Almost all of the proposed exemptions were struck down – except, specifically, the one for PC games.
“When the narrow exemption came up for renewal in the 2024 cycle, with the available resources we weren’t able to locate anyone who could say that they used the exemption and that they were likely to need it in the future,” Jonathan Band, one of the folks who argued for the broader exemptions in the first place, tells Game File. “This is not to say that it wasn’t used. There just was no efficient way for us to find anyone who had. So, we did not seek renewal. Of course, if anyone does come forward, hopefully it won’t be too hard to convince the Librarian to grant a new exemption.”
VIDEO: Spotlight on Collette Decides to Die.
VIDEO: The lasting resonance of Revolutionary Girl Utena, particularly Anthy.
VIDEO: Why vague photosensitivity warnings don’t help.
AniFem Community
They just announced a Hana-Kimi anime, so….you never know?
From Far Away for sure. I read that manga a while back and was utterly charmed by its gentle handling of its characters and romance. It deserves to be known as a classic early isekai.
— Starry Magi (@starrylitme.bsky.social) December 3, 2024 at 6:38 AM
My first thought was Alice 19th, but that's actually early 2000s. So my second choice is Red River. It would fit right in with all the isekai anime that are so popular right now!
— Pearl (@elysiondream.bsky.social) December 3, 2024 at 12:56 AM
I’d love to see more classic shojo manga getting anime adaptations. It genuinely surprises me that there is only one anime based on Moto Hagio’s manga, the “They Were 11!” film, when I can totally see “The Poe Clan” getting a series due to its popularity and impact. Ditto for Hideko Mizuno’s “Fire!”
— Patricia Baxter (@swirly313.bsky.social) December 3, 2024 at 3:17 PM
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