AniFem Round-Up
Aiba Kyoko at Otakon 2024: Reverse Villainess Isekai, Social Issues, and the Manga-Making Process
Manga artist Aiba Kyoko spoke with us about upending the villainess and isekai formulas, women’s issues, and what constructing a typical chapter looks like.
Parade Parade and the Phallic Woman Fantasy
The film’s narrative of fetishization and abuse is a violent one; it is also one that, sadly, trans and/or intersex women might find familiar.
Chatty AF 213: Revolutionary Girl Utena Watchalong – Episodes 35-39
Our newbies have reached the end of the series. Revelations are had. Tears are possibly shed. How does it hold up?
What’s your “get to know me” anime?
Lots of ways you can answer this one.
Beyond AniFem
This Week in Anime: Banned Together (Anime News Network, Steve Jones and Nicholas Dupree)
Sasaki and Miyano is now a banned book in Florida thanks to a single parental complaint.
Steve: So this is a pretty new story, but if you’ve been anywhere on the anime internet recently, you’ve probably already seen people talking about it. A school board in Brevard County, Florida just voted to ban, among other things, the first volume of Sasaki and Miyano. If you’re unfamiliar with the manga, you can read Rebecca’s review here to inure yourself to its salaciousness.
Nick: As somebody who reviewed the anime, there is genuinely nothing funnier than seeing the feigned pearl-clutching over this series of all the potential BL titles they could have picked. I like SasaMiya a lot but there are episodes of Teletubbies that have more sexually explicit sequences than that first volume.
Steve: This issue isn’t just about manga. Another news story dropped this week about major publishers banding together to sue the state of Florida over its recent ban-happy tendencies. And of course, book banning has become one of many lightning rods for conservative punditry, with Ron DeSantis happily waging that culture war during his failed presidential bid. But the Sasaki and Miyano inclusion helps highlight how dumb, polarized, and removed from reality things have gotten.
Nick: It’s one of those examples that is so obvious in its capriciousness that all the usual excuses stop applying. This is a slow-burn friends-to-boyfriends romance that takes an entire season of television for the leads to kiss, let alone do anything even approaching sexually explicit. The only reason to target it specifically is homophobia, as even the official complaint from the school board members admits.
Steve: It’s bigotry, plain and simple. And if you need any more proof that this particular complaint (shared on Twitter by Jennifer Jenkins) was not lodged in good faith, look at their suggestions for the alternative manga, which includes the family-friendly antics of Chainsaw Man and the notoriously heterosexual cast of Sailor Moon.
Interview with Hajime Kasai (Indie Tsushin, Renkon)
Interview with the developer of indie game YOUNG TEAM SOUNDS.
YOUNG TEAM SOUNDS is an adventure game about the dark side of music creation. The main character, a physically disabled young man, spends his days trapped with his distressing thoughts within the confines of his home.
The player’s main experience is discovering their own music by sorting through the protagonist’s various emotions. The protagonist’s personality and music will change depending on which emotions are selected, as will his reaction to the events of the story. As the player progresses through the story and reaches its conclusion, the music they have completed based on the emotions they’ve chosen throughout the story will play during the ending.
In the background of the story, a crime known as the Endo Incident in which an idol group and their entire audience were murdered during a live concert in the Kansai region, and is dominating the news in Japan. As the protagonist learns more about the statements and background of the perpetrator, he is damaged mentally and emotionally. Eventually, that damage leads to obsessions that spawn eerie hallucinations that only the protagonist can see.
That’s Why I Pushed Her: Dakara Watashi wa Oshimashita (Aniwire, Adam Wescott)
Looking back at a 2019 live-action drama.
It’s no surprise that Ai sees herself in Hana Kurimoto. Hana may have a long way to go to become a great singer and dancer. But she’s still young, and is working hard to improve. Ai moves heaven and earth to ensure Hana’s success. When she discovers that another fan is abusing the system to keep Hana to himself, Ai finds a legal loophole to keep her safe. When Sunny Side Up makes its first live appearance in a trendy shopping center, Ai breaks away from her friends to support Hana. Then when Sunny Side Up joins a competition to prove their worth among the idols of Tokyo, Ai secretly works nights as a camgirl to supplement Hana’s low income.
It’s tempting to read Dakara Watashi wa Oshimashita as a parable about the dangers of idol fan culture. The cinematography of the series itself leans into the surreality of all-consuming obsession. Match cuts between past and future violate continuity. Fan dinners are shot via up-close GoPro footage. The camera spins and spins around simple conversations just to add visual interest. Not to mention the show’s frame narrative: the police are interrogating Ai to determine whether or not she killed somebody as a result of her hobby. But who, and why?
All that said, I don’t think Dakara Watashi wa Oshimashita is a series about why idol fan culture is bad, per se. Just look at Sunny Side Up’s other fans, who Ai befriends over the course of the show. They aren’t the stereotypical maladjusted otaku you find in media for normies. One is a social scientist in college. Another is an older lawyer whose fandom has made him an expert in contract law and the entertainment industry. They are even able to grasp the idol industry’s institutional unfairness, although they refuse to let it poison their love for Sunny Side Up. These folks aren’t so unlike fans I’ve met in real life.
Ai’s friends outside of idoldom spend their time together flexing their accomplishments. We never see them talk to Ai about their dreams or other interests. While they’re better at reading the room than Ai’s otaku friends, the otaku are seemingly more at peace with themselves and each other. It’s different for Ai, though. When she becomes a camgirl to fund Hana’s rise, it’s marked as something outside the norm of otakudom: a sacrificial act of self-injury she cannot take back.
Disability, Queer Identity, and Caressing Bear Nipples (Yatta-Tachi, LiteralGrill)
Bear erotica and relearning one’s relationship with their body.
I hadn’t seen another piece of media presented for mass consumption that showed a masculine character with breasts presented as an object of desire to an audience before. Yes, I said breasts, not pectorals — the title focuses on nipples for a reason, after all. Nowa’s breasts are often shown in scintillating shots as soft and round, much like my own, and not just as solid muscle. They even grow a bit bigger and rounder as the story goes on, mirroring some of the changes I had seen in my own body post amputation.
This was groundbreaking for me, someone who couldn’t even fathom being desired sexually after being socially and romantically ostracized. This was my first glimpse of someone who had features like I did being so desired that an entire series about them could become popular enough to receive an official English dub.
The series had more lessons to teach, as well. Is the pseudo-incestual relationship with a severe gap in age and life experience between its two main characters extremely problematic? Absolutely. Still, Nowa and Airi navigating the issues this presented contained valuable lessons in being able to love and accept yourself for the things you want and desire, even if they are imperfect and messy at times.
Bluntly, this also showed me how I might focus on my own pleasure again, as well. I was recovering from a botched bottom surgery where the genitals most people would focus on hurt too much and caused far too much dysphoria to be enjoyable. All of this talk and show of caressing bear nipples gave me ideas to fantasize about again and literally illustrated tutorials on ways I might pleasure myself that I had struggled to find elsewhere.
Japan plans cash incentive for women to marry and leave Tokyo (The Asahi Shimbun, Sawa Okabayashi and Shino Matsuyama)
The plan has faced criticism online for focusing its moving incentives for women exclusively around marriage.
Under a program to revitalize regional economies, the government plans to offer up to 600,000 yen ($4,100) to newlywed women who move from Tokyo’s 23 wards to rural areas.
The new system, part of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s “Vision for a Digital Garden City Nation,” would expand the existing “relocation support fund,” which has been in place since fiscal 2019.
The fund currently provides up to 600,000 yen through local governments to single people, regardless of gender, who move to rural areas to work or start a business after living in or commuting to Tokyo’s 23 wards.
The new system would limit eligibility to women and remove the work or business requirement in rural areas.
It would first cover transportation costs for women attending matchmaking events in rural areas.
Additional funds would be provided if they actually relocate from Tokyo.
30% of Japan Gen Z men think equality measures have ‘gone too far’: poll (The Mainichi, Tomofumi Inagaki)
The survey included 983 people, split roughly evenly between men and women.
In different countries, regarding measures to promote equality among people from all groups, respondents were asked to choose between six answers: “gone much too far,” “gone a little too far,” “about right,” “needs to go a little further,” “need to go much further” and “not sure.”
In Japan, 30% of men in Generation Z, those born between 1996 to 2012, said measures have gone too far. This was nearly 10 percentage points higher than the 20% of women of the same generation as well as just over 20% of men of the millennial generation, or those born between 1980 and 1995, Generation X’ers born between 1966 and 1979, and baby boomers born between 1945 and 1965.
Most notable were Gen Z Japanese people’s responses regarding which groups face the most discrimination. While both men and women selected those with physical disabilities (which for women, were in a tie with transgender and nonbinary people) as a leading choice, Gen Z women were roughly twice as likely to cite groups such as sexual minorities and those who are neurodivergent, such as those with ADHD or autism, than men of the same generation.
Following those with physical disabilities, many Gen Z men chose people with mental health conditions, women, and men themselves as the groups facing discrimination. Men were three times more likely than women to see men as a group facing discrimination, showing that in the current state of affairs, men of this generation feel some form of disadvantage from efforts to promote equality.
Smartphones, sensors aid foreign staff at nursing home (The Asahi Shimbun, Tetsuo Teranishi)
The care home uses a speech-to-text program to help international workers, as it’s not uncommon for N2-certified speakers to struggle with writing in Japanese.
The screen acts as a quick visual overview and swiftly alerts caregivers of any sudden changes in movement. This allows them to make fewer check-in rounds, according to nursing home officials.
Jikeikai, the medical corporation that runs Sawayaka Nursing Villa complex, began hiring overseas talent and incorporating more technology into a variety of tasks three years ago.
Today, around 5 percent of its workforce is from overseas. Its 34 international caregivers are from countries that include Myanmar, the Philippines and Sri Lanka.
Foreign staff seeking to improve their language skills or gain a new job license can also receive official corporate support.
Jikeiki partially covers expenses for Japanese language courses and offers training to prepare workers planning to take the certified care worker exam. These efforts are designed to help retain them.
Moreover, Japanese and international staff share the same working conditions, something that is not always the case at many facilities in the industry.
VIDEO: Shojosei manga suggestions for fans of popular shonen/seinen titles.
VIDEO: A localization wishlist of otome games.
VIDEO: Hands-on demo with the Byowave Proteus Accessibility Controller.
AniFem Community
This one was a curveball, so good job with the answers AniFam.
I guess Wandering Son because thats literally the series which obliterated my eggshell because my backstory was so remarkably similar to Nitorin’s
[image or embed]— Read Psychadelta 2000! (@cosmotropic.bsky.social) Sep 3, 2024 at 10:10 PM
That’s a thinker. Bodacious Space Pirates is what I’d tentative go with. Fairly wholesome adventures with a mainly female cast and split into arcs that are representative of a genre of sci-fi (hard sci-fi, Star Trek-y sci-fi, etc). It’s got a lot of my jams in there. Or Bubblegum Crisis 2040.
[image or embed]— Reaf (@reaf.bsky.social) Sep 3, 2024 at 7:06 PM
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