AniFem Round-Up
Mental Health Crisis Resources and Advocacy Groups
In lieu of a Wednesday feature, we wanted to offer a post with resources for those looking for mental health/crisis help or for causes currently seeking donations.
Opening up the “Black Box Diaries” with Shiori Ito
Ito filed suit against a fellow journalist for sexual assault in 2017, sparking Japan’s own #MeToo movement. We spoke with Ito about her recent documentary, which covers her struggle with Japan’s legal system.
Chatty AF 217: 2024 Fall Mid-Season Check-In
We check in on the 2024 Fall season’s surprising number of magical girls, enjoyable het romances, and girls hitting the Sailor Moon pose!
What was your most cathartic anime-viewing experience?
It’s the kind of thing we could use right now.
Bonus Podcast (with Transcript): LOOK BACK, Grief, and Creating Art
The fantastic adaptation of Tatsuki Fujimoto’s LOOK BACK is on streaming, so we got together to talk about grief, burnout, and the mix of camaraderie and rivalry in friendship between artists.
Beyond AniFem
This Week in Videogame Blogging: November 10th (Critical Distance, Chris Lawrence)
Similar to our post this Wednesday, this is another list of organizations that could use support protecting vulnerable populaces.
Instead, we’ve decided to use our visibility and reach to promote a variety of organizations, support networks, advocacy groups, and relief funds dedicated providing material resources, legal counsel, essential serivces, representation, and other forms of support to vulnerable and marginalized communities and demographics both in the US and the Middle East. It is abundantly clear that governments and politicans in the US and elsewhere are broadly indifferent to the needs and dignity of these groups at best and actively hostile to their existence at worst.
We invite you to share this post widely and peruse these links and make your own informed choices about where best to make donations and lend support. Many of these links are flat-out copied from Kaile’s site No Escape/Fugue Plague and the rest were solicited from members of our Discord server. You are very welcome to join the server and share any other resources like this–we can always update this list and continue to link back to it in future issues.
How Witch Hat Atelier’s Manga Creator Made Magic for Everyone (Anime News Network, Jairus Taylor and Rebecca Silverman)
A panel summary and journalist Q&A with Shirahama.
The series runs in a seinen publication, but there are a lot of little features like learning how to design your own witch hat or games included in the volume releases and feel designed for younger readers. What made you want to include them, and did you envision children as part of your target audience for the story? Or was this sort of feature intended to encourage all readers, regardless of age or gender, to become involved in the story’s world? Does Witch Hat Atelier have an “intended audience” in your eyes?
SHIRAHAMA: So in Japan, manga is usually categorized by the target demographics of the magazines they run in. For example, shōnen is for the younger male audience, josei is for the mature female audience, and so forth, but seinen is kind of unique in a sense. It’s kind of like a mixed bag of topics. It doesn’t quite fit into a particular demographic, and it’s really just a matter of exploring the stories. So when I got a chance to write for a seinen magazine, I started thinking that this manga wasn’t just for a mature male audience, but for a wider audience as well.
In that sense, seinen manga is like a genre of all genres in Japan. As for my own manga, I do actually consider children around the same age as the characters the main target audience for the story, but I also like to make the story enjoyable for a broader audience.
Education is a big theme in the series, especially when it comes to allowing children the freedom to think and learn for themselves rather than blindly listening to adults. Why do you think that’s so important?
SHIRAHAMA: I think it’s really important for children or people of any age to think independently. When what’s considered common sense seems irrational, they should be able to question it themselves. So educating children to think on their own, and make decisions based on their own thinking, is really important. To encourage the readers to think in that way, I’ve included these kinds of themes in the story to encourage people in real life to apply them to their lives as well.
We see through characters like Tartah and Custas how society can often fail to accommodate people with disabilities. Was there anything that made you want to discuss that topic in your work?
SHIRAHAMA: This is also kind of a theme that’s throughout my series, as well. When there’s a problem, or a difficult situation emerges, there’s something you can always do with creativity. Although it’s true that the world has not been built to accommodate everybody just yet, everybody can come up with their own creative ways of filling in for those difficulties. And I hope that would become something that readers of the series would think about.
If I could use magic, I’d like to use those powers to help make the surroundings of someone who uses a wheelchair barrier-free. If they had to do something like pick up a book on the highest shelf, it would make it come down. Those are the kinds of ways that I would like to use my magic. If I could influence even one person to think in this way, maybe each of us could help accommodate everybody.
Can “I’m In Love With The Villainess” Win The Tokyo Anime Award Festival? (Okazu, Erica Friedman)
It’s a popularity vote and open to registration by email address. Bravern winning would also be good.
Stepping into this conversation, inori.-sensei just happened to mention that the Tokyo Anime Award Best 100 was open for voting. She gave step by step instructions to assist her overseas fans to vote if they wanted to. By November 3, Watashi no Oshi ha Akuyaku Reijou. (私の推しは悪役令嬢。) had made it into the top 20. It faced some serious competition, like Frieren (葬送のフリーレン) and Delicious in Dungeon (ダンジョン飯), but WataOshi passed both and is now sitting at a strong #2 position behind the amazingly popular #1, Brave Bang Bravern! (勇気爆発バーンブレイバーン) and in front of the Sanrio collaboration with boy band JO1, Jochum.
Can WataOshi push past Bravern to win the top position? It’s not likely given the highly sexualized nature of Bravern and the fact that it is a BL mecha series, so it has cross-genre appeal. As one of our esteemed Okazu Discord members, Rugose noted, “Bang Bravern has the gays and robotfuckers supporting it,” and I can’t disagree with that summation. That said, Watashi no Oshi ha Akuyaku Reijou has so far made a strong stand. Even a #2 finish might convince the powers that be to develop a second season. Like all popularity-driven “best” contests, this contest is absolutely vulnerable to ballot stuffing by using multiple emails. That said, it does indicate the passion of a fandom and WataOshi fans are keeping up the pressure.
Burned by mom, abused ‘young carer’ in Tokyo engages in support activities for similar youth (The Mainichi, Eri Misono)
The now-activist was both a caregiver for his mother and subjected to abuse by relatives during his upbringing.
On Nov. 1, when child abuse prevention month designated by the welfare ministry began, Naoto was participating in a street fundraising event held in front of JR Shinjuku Station. This is part of the activities of the “youth support fund,” which provides grants to organizations that support young people from socially disadvantaged backgrounds.
This street fundraiser was the first of its kind, and was the brainchild of Naoto. His desire was not only to collect donations, but also to let people know that there are many children who cannot rely on their parents and that there are adults who support these children.
He told the Mainichi Shimbun, “I want to create a society where people can reach out to anyone in need around them.”
Helping with support group activities
In fiscal 2022, child guidance centers nationwide received 214,843 consultations regarding child abuse. Meanwhile, there are approximately 42,000 children in social care and protection systems, of which about 23,000 live in children’s homes.
In April of this year, the revised Child Welfare Act came into effect, removing the age limit of 18 years old in principle (maximum 22 years old) for supporting the independence of young people growing up in children’s homes and other such facilities.
Dissatisfaction with Supreme Court justices suddenly surges (The Asahi Shimbun, Takashi Endo)
No justice has yet been removed as a result of the review system.
The four justices who received disapproval ratings over 10 percent were: Chief Justice Yukihiko Imasaki at 11.46 percent; Akira Ojima at 11 percent; Mitsuko Miyagawa at 10.52 percent; and Kimihiro Ishikane at 10.01 percent.
In national reviews, justices whose names are listed at the far right side of the ballot tend to receive more “X” marks. This time, Ojima’s name appeared in that position.
However, Imasaki surpassed Ojima in terms of disapproval, likely due to his involvement in several top court cases concerning the rights of sexual minorities.
In a 2023 lawsuit involving a transgender official at the economy ministry who lives as a woman, Imasaki, as presiding justice, ruled that restrictions on the official’s access to women’s restrooms were illegal.
In a 2024 case regarding compensation benefits for families of crime victims, he expressed opposition to including same-sex partners as eligible recipients.
The decisions in these lawsuits were hot topics on social media.
This was the first time in 15 years for a chief justice to be subject to a review.
VIDEO: Demo of 90s shoujo-inspired visual novel MY DEAR☆LOVE.
VIDEO: A process chat with one of the newly trained animators from the Animator Dormitory Project, as part of its ethical payment model.
VIDEO: Women, Oppression, and Hope in Taisho Japan: Exploring Utsuro Akuta’s VNs.
SKEET: FFXIV recently attempted to implement textured hair as an option in-game, though currently they were only able to execute a wavy option.
I’m going to write a message to the #ffxiv team on the forum to formally thank them. But I drew them a picture to remind them we are cheering then on and to not forget the people whom texture hair is important for. (Ps, used google for the Japanese text. God i hope its translated properly)
— Mon 🌻 (@madqueenmomo.bsky.social) November 11, 2024 at 4:00 PM
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POST: Survey for an undergraduate thesis titled “The Demand for ‘Girls’ Crush’ as Seen by Fans of Women Pop Idols: What Image of Women Do Women Desire?”
AniFem Community
It’s a good week to just…process.
as cliché as this answer may be, End of Evangelion. I remember finishing it, 16 years old and gender dysphoria having recently started ramping up, and staring out the window, seeing the brown sky slowly turning lighter, snow falling, and just zonking out on the couch with a stolen bottle of red wine
— Lettuce, Tchaikovskyite Woman (@latisserande.bsky.social) November 11, 2024 at 10:38 PM
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The final three episodes of Devilman Crybaby are simultaneously harrowing yet beautiful, dark yet hopeful, and is the rare piece of media to make me cry multiple times. Even if the world ends, connection is what makes life (and death) worth it. Grab that baton, and don't let go.
— Evan Bartholomew (@evanbartholomew.bsky.social) November 12, 2024 at 9:54 PM
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