No Rest for the Wicked: Criminality and justice in Psycho-Pass
Psycho-Pass’ villains are heinous in their own right, but they exist to also criticize the larger failure of a deeply flawed justice system.
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Discordant Tones: Oversimplifying Music as Resistance in Carole & Tuesday
Carole and Tuesday are just two girls dreaming of becoming musicians. While the series initially follows the girls’ rise to stardom, the focuses shifts to examine how music can fight back against oppression, but leads to a simple and unsatisfying ending.
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Your Lie in April: An Oedipus Complex and a Manic Pixie Dream Girl have a meetcute
Your Lie in April has high ratings on almost all of the major anime databases. Unfortunately, I, the Feminist Killjoy, am here to say that Arima has an Oedipus complex and Kaori is a Manic Pixie Dream Girl.
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“What If Our Greatest Pain Speaks to Us?” Using the supernatural to explore mental health in Bunny Girl Senpai
If I feel invisible, then I turn invisible. If I feel conflicted about myself, I split into two people. If I suffer from verbal bullying, then I wake up with cuts and scrapes all over my body. This is Adolescence Syndrome, the key concept behind Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai, which the series uses to explore various social anxieties and mental health issues that can affect young people but which often go unnoticed.
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Tower of God’s Rachel Problem: Fandom, female antagonists, and the risks of overly vague writing
While Rachel did do many things wrong, and this is definitely not a defense of that (especially as she is coded as a blonde white woman in the art), her character’s depiction can open a larger discussion about portrayals of female antagonists, and patterns of online fandom misogyny.
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Thinking Outside the Circle: Accessibility and education in Witch Hat Atelier
Using its “magical school” premise, Witch Hat Atelier explores diversity among students and argues for the importance of accessibility throughout society, but especially in education. With supportive mentors and a focus on individual accommodation, anyone really can wield their own kind of magic.
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“Who the Hell Do You Think We Are?” Gurren Lagann’s blunted message of liberation
A distinct antiauthoritarian spirit runs through Imaishi’s works. Yet nowhere is the director’s call for collective action more realized, but most glaringly compromised, than in the show that made him a household name: Gurren Lagann.
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World-Building a Queer Paradise in My Next Life as a Villainess
So, is the world of Villainess a queer utopia uniquely laid out so that Catarina’s love(s) can bloom? Or is the question of world- and story-building a little more complicated?
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The Post-Apocalypse Which Enforces Gender Roles: Code Vein
The game’s cast is gender balanced, with a roughly equal number of male and female characters, and the female ones play an important role in driving the story. While that sounds great on paper, the problem lies in the gender-essentialist ways that “importance” works out.
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Bend the Rules, but Never Break Them: Individual growth and systemic oppression in Yu-Gi-Oh!
While the series wants to tell a story about individuals overcoming their trauma and inner darkness, its strength at depicting individual growth often conflicts with the conservative social systems it ultimately upholds.
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How Can I Connect to You? Breaking out of toxic masculinity and capitalist ideologies in SARAZANMAI
Both Kazuki and Toi emerge from similar circumstances of capitalism, oppression, and the hypermasculine coping mechanisms they’ve been given to deal with the pain of that oppression. It is only through learning to care for one another—and learning that they can care for one another—that they can both be free.
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The Worker’s Nekopara: A call to arms against nekonomic exploitation
Yes, even the horny catgirl anime can be a lesson in real-world inequality.
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The intersection of queer and Deaf identity in I Hear the Sunspot
As a long-time reader of manga, I always found the medium to be a means of escape to fantastical worlds. Yet, there remained a disconnect between me and the stories I was reading. Discovering I Hear the Sunspot filled that absence with its portrayal of the specific reality of being both gay and Deaf.
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Pride, Policing, and the Conservative Politics of My Hero Academia
My Hero Academia, in its proud declarations of right and wrong, good and evil, heroism and villainy, argues how the world should be. Understanding how My Hero Academia works means understanding what this prescription is, and who gets labeled the villains.
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Beauty and Beast: The messy, complex women of Helter Skelter and Pink
Constantly, in pop culture, we see women being used as an accessory, a love interest, a mother, but in Okazaki’s world, women take the main stage and prove that a female-led manga can be just as impactful as stories focused around men. These two stories explore both the “beauty” and the “beast” contained within their heroines.
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Allegory, Allegorier, Allegoriest: Visual storytelling and empathy in Revolutionary Girl Utena
Revolutionary Girl Utena has a well-deserved reputation for being difficult to parse. Dense with metaphor, thinly-veiled critique of old shoujo tropes, and allusions to obscure literature, Utena’s style of storytelling relies heavily on its own visual language.
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Skip Beat!’s Harmful Healing: Forgiving abuse at the cost of self-worth
As Kyoko struggles to recover from abuse and trauma, she is encouraged to forgive everyone around her, put her own happiness last, and believe that love cures all. Skip Beat’s prioritization of these ideals over actual healing processes perpetuates unhealthy, even dangerous ideas about recovery.
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Beyond UNIQLO: Tips for supporting Japan’s indie fashion designers
How can Western fans of Japanese alt-fashion help keep Harajuku brands alive? Although it is at odds with the current opinion that buying second hand is far better than buying clothes new, we must keep buying clothing directly from these independent brands in order to keep their doors open.
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Perfect World, Disability Narratives, and Writing Outside Your Experience
Mainstream media tends to over-dramatize or romanticise disability to make the intended able-bodied audience feel pity or inspiration. While I can’t say Perfect World completely escapes these tropes, Aruga still strives to make a narrative that incorporates experiences from the disabled community.
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“A Man Who Can Experience His Feelings”: Fruits Basket, toxic masculinity, and mental health
Fruits Basket is a radical work regarding its treatment of mental health because it actively works to destigmatize mental illness, critiquing and dismantling ideas about toxic masculinity through its portrayal of mental health.
