AniFem Round-Up
Coming of age as a queer teen in Okazaki Kyoko’s River’s Edge
Okazaki’s 90s manga is a portrait of queer youth during both the “gay boom” and Japan’s economic crisis, where the most open these kids could be was when meeting up to look at a corpse.
Talk to Me: The stories you run into during an interview
Veteran reporter Chiaki shares the lessons she’s learned interviewing people over the years, and the behind-the-scenes considerations you don’t always see in a published interview.
Would you ever get an anime or manga-based tattoo?
And do you have cool photos to show off.
Beyond AniFem
A Prominent Accessibility Advocate Worked With Studios and Inspired Change. But She Never Actually Existed. (IGN, Grant Stoner)
Susan Banks, the deceased founder of accessibility gaming site Can I Play That?,and several other disability advocates were revealed to have been false identities constructed by Coty Craven.
Reporting on these allegations is no small task, especially when this story highlights multiple prominent advocates within the accessibility and disabled community. For months, myself, IGN editors, Kate Sánchez, and Matt Donahue cross-referenced multiple conversations between ourselves and Craven, conducted extensive interviews with multiple sources, and spent dozens of hours analyzing social media profiles, as well as Discord messages. To even posit the notion that three advocates are allegedly fake is admittedly hard to believe.
And speaking as a disabled individual, writing a story like this is no easy feat. The disabled community is incredibly close. We defend each other’s work, and especially our existence within the greater gaming industry. To bring forth a story like this required immense dedication, determination, and an understanding that the accessibility and disabled community will ultimately need to heal from such a piece. However, after countless hours and weeks, we truly believe this is a story worth reporting, not only to highlight the unique nature of this case, but also to allow the varying impacted communities time to process and rebuild.
Each of Craven’s partners embedded themselves into varying marginalized communities, with each allegedly being Deaf, a person of color, queer, and having some form of major health episodes like cancer. And through Craven’s varying social media accounts and presence in the industry, he was able to ensure each partner remained visible. Their work, whether written or through social media advocacy, reached thousands. From AAA studios to different community spaces, Banks, Hamid, and Vaughan entrenched themselves into the gaming industry.
〈少女漫画誌〉部数減少の原因は？ 漫画編集者に聞く、雑誌離れだけではない問題点 (Real Sound)
Discusses declining sales figures for girls’ manga magazines.
数ある少女漫画雑誌のなかでも、「りぼん」「なかよし」「ちゃお」は“３大少女漫画雑誌”と言われている。しかし、現在「なかよし」は約2万8667部まで減少。『美少女戦士セーラームーン』の連載時には約200万部を発行していたことを考えると、約71分の1まで部数が減少してしまったことがわかる。
他の少女漫画雑誌の部数を見てみると、「花とゆめ」4万2500部、「別冊マーガレット」3万7333部、「Sho-Comi」が1万2400部、「マーガレット」1万1800部である。実売部数はもっと少ないはずで、書店でも少女漫画雑誌のコーナーは縮小されつつある。以前はコンビニにも配本が行われていたが、雑誌によってはゼロか、あっても１～２部というケースが増えているという。
■少女漫画はメディアミックスが難しい？
かつては女の子が必ず通る道といわれた少女漫画だが、娯楽の多様化に伴い、新規の読者獲得に苦戦している。その最大の要因は、少女漫画のメディアミックスがうまく行われていないためだと、現役の漫画雑誌の編集者はこう語る。
「1990年代まで、ゴールデンタイムには少女漫画原作のアニメが必ずと言っていいほど放送されていましたが、現在は見る影もない状態。アニメのプロデューサーも少女漫画をそもそも読んでいないので、存在すら知らないことが多く、アニメ化の俎上にすら上がらないんです。編集部もメディアミックスを進めるべく、原作を積極に売り込んでいかないと、読者離れがますます進むのではないでしょうか」
Women’s wages 70-80% of men’s in Japan as gender gap remains (The Mainichi)
The July survey collected information from 11,300 people.
While the gap has been narrowing, Japan lags behind some European nations like Sweden, which has achieved over 90 percent parity. The figure reflects that the number of female workers in managerial posts in Japan is still low, while the average length of employment is shorter for women than men, the government said.
Japan’s average wage level for women was 74.8 against 100 for men in the 2023 survey. Kochi Prefecture saw the narrowest gender gap in wages with 80.4, while the gap was the widest in Tochigi Prefecture at 71.0.
It is the first time the government has released the gender wage gap index since making it mandatory for companies with 301 workers or more in 2022 to report such data, aiming to encourage more women to join the workforce at a time when Japan’s rapidly aging population is expected to further worsen the shortage of labor.
Regional differences in wage levels for men and women are seen as one reason why more and more female workers prefer to move to urban areas like Tokyo, where more jobs are available and wages are higher than in rural Japan.
You Should Show Grave of the Fireflies to Your Kids(The GrillOut, Borealis Capps)
Why the harrowing war tragedy is a potentially useful teaching tool.
We should realize what a blessing having the privilege to witness these horrors animated on a screen from the safety of our home is while others have experienced them abroad and are still experiencing them abroad. While we live on lands stolen from people our ancestors committed horrifying atrocities against who still suffer today from those actions.
To not show this movie to children models the behavior that we should refuse to acknowledge cruel acts happening in our world so long as it preserves our personal comfort to those kids. If we show kids movies like Grave of the Fireflies in a safe environment where they can process it, they can grow up into the kind of people who understand the horrors of war and will do all they can to prevent it. They can understand as adults that by starting new wars they will irreversibly scar an entire generation of people who come after them.
Secondary trauma can also be extremely serious and if parents don’t want to safely expose children to these serious topics, they may find just how terrifying it is when online posts on platforms like Telegram, Instagram, and other places on the internet do so for them. The world has been with images and videos of the horrors happening in Gaza from reporters and those living through these events.
We should not have to live with a future where we may see an animated film about the crimes against humanity committed in Gaza, Myanmar, the Congo, or anywhere else ever again. We can raise children who understand this truth and live their lives in service of it. We can raise children with the tools to keep themselves emotionally safe while tackling the difficulties they face in the future. In doing so, we can create a future that is better for everyone who lives in it.
Use parental discretion as necessary, but if you can, show Grave of the Fireflies to your kids, possibly followed up by My Neighbor Totoro just as it was shown in Japanese theaters years ago to ease the blow. If approached with love and care, it is not a decision you will regret.
Koreans massacred after 1923 quake remembered at ceremony in Tokyo’s Sumida Ward (The Mainichi, Yoshiya Goto)
The article also includes video footage from the event.
The event was sponsored by “100.nyeon,” a group of young Japanese and Korean people, and turnout was over 600. They vowed to remember the massacre and ensure such an incident would never be repeated.
At the ceremony, 100.nyeon members read out the testimonies of Cho In-sung and Sin Chang-bom, who witnessed the massacre by vigilante group members on the banks of the Arakawa River up close.
Based on a feeling of common ground between the massacre of Koreans 101 years ago and the situation in the Palestinian territories currently occupied by Israel, the poem “If I must die” by Refaat Alareer, who was killed in an Israeli air strike in December last year, was read out at the ceremony.
Sin Min-ja, 74, a Korean resident of Japan serving as a director of Hosenka, a general incorporated association that cosponsored the ceremony, expressed the significance of the event, saying, “I feel hope in that we are able to share (memories of the massacre) with Japanese people as human beings, beyond ethnic differences.”
Former lawmaker of Japan’s Nippon Ishin party arrested for alleged sexual assault of minor (The Mainichi, Shotaro Kinoshita)
The accused ran in 2012 and served two terms in the House of Representatives.
Tamotsu Shiiki, a 58-year-old former House of Representatives member with Nippon Ishin (the Japan Innovation Party), has been arrested for allegedly sexually assaulting a junior high school girl in a karaoke bar in the capital’s Kabukicho nightlife district, Shinjuku Police Station announced on Sept. 9.
The suspect, from the city of Urayasu, Chiba Prefecture, reportedly denied the allegations and told investigators, “We entered the karaoke box together, but did not have sexual intercourse.” According to the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD), Shiiki is believed to have approached the first-year junior high school student on a street in Kabukicho on Aug. 20, the day the alleged assault occurred. The manager of the karaoke bar called the 110 emergency number, and the MPD investigated.
Agency still not providing full explanation to sex abuse victims (The Asahi Shimbun, Amane Shimazaki)
Rumors that Kitagawa sexually abused boys in his agency were published as far back as the 1990s, but were only acknowledged by the agency last year.
Johnny’s, which had long denied any abuse by Kitagawa, acknowledged the allegations on Sept. 7 last year.
According to Smile-Up, 996 individuals had filed compensation claims as of Aug. 30, and 497 of them have reached agreements with the agency.
But 203 of the claimants have not received compensation because either their registrations with the agency could not be confirmed or they could not provide proof they were molested.
Lawyers of Smile-Up’s compensation committee have heard the accounts of the victims. But the lawyers have not disclosed when Kitagawa started the abuse, how he committed the crimes, and why the agency did not report the abuse.
Two other former staff members of the agency were also found to have engaged in sexual abuse, but Smile-Up has not provided a detailed explanation on their actions.
It only said the two staff members have already left the agency, and that it took disciplinary action against one of them in accordance with relevant laws and the company’s internal rules.
Shattered Souls ~ Dark Fantasy Isekai Otome/Visual Novel ~ (Kickstarter)
Fundraiser for an otome visual novel with 16 different endings, plus the possibility of DLC.
Celeste finds herself fighting for her life after enduring a betrayal that no one should experience.
As she nears her final breath, she is whisked away to a different world: Remoire.
Things are not as they seem, though. She’s not a mortal. Her past is as vast as the ocean. Her soul is fractured and barely holding together from the traumas she’s faced and forgotten. She must heal herself or even the tiniest tragedy could shatter her. But she’s not the only one who is broken.
Join Celeste as she fights not only to save her own life, but to change the lives of those around her.
Will you traverse worlds, realms, and even time itself? Will you test your fate? Will you try again?
VIDEO: BL manga recommendations.
VIDEO: The new Zelda game and Nintendo’s past comments about playable heroines.
AniFem Community
We believe in you, AniFam. Get those designs of your dreams.
Absolutely, If I ever have the money, I want Marco’s Savoia S.21 from Porco Rosso and Harlock’s flag.
[image or embed]— Wlsonx1999 (@wilsonx1999.bsky.social) September 10, 2024 at 8:42 PM
I want the words “without live it cannot be seen” from umineko no naku koro ni
[image or embed]— Lettuce Ophelia Violet Electra (@latisserande.bsky.social) September 10, 2024 at 3:49 PM
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