2023 Winter Premiere Reviews
All the winter premiere reviews in one easy-to-find place. We’ll update the chart as more series become available, so be sure to check back in the coming days for more!
Feature Category
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The Beautiful Masculinity of Mob Psycho 100
At its very core, MP100 is a show that despises violence as the main means of resolving interpersonal issues, and instead invites its audience to understand each other. In fact, it rejects the mere idea that being more powerful than your enemy is a net positive, or that having special powers makes anyone better altogether. Violence, the series posits, should only be used as a last resort.
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The Day I Became a God and the mistreatment of disabled people
The Day I Became a God, while not featuring representation of a specific, real-world disability, features a lot of insidious ableism in its last few episodes. This final arc of the show perpetuates a lot of harmful ideas around how those who are disabled should be treated, and the agency that they often do not have, serving as a painfully apt example of the clichés and stereotypes narratives about disability often fall into.
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Making Up and Making Waves: How Tropical-Rouge! PreCure rewrote narratives of femininity and fairy tales
Tropical-Rouge balances historical attitudes with refreshing, contemporary ideas that grant its young female characters agency and thus delivers a great message to its target audience.
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Girls Doing Stuff: Agency and motivation in girls’ hobby shows
By their very nature, these series’ protagonists are driven and motivated young women—motivated by something other than romance and men—who experience visible development across the narrative. As a bonus, the relaxed vibe and personal stakes of this genre means that realistic dangers are removed and these characters are left in idyllic spaces where they have autonomy over their time and their surroundings.
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The World is Our Egg: Understanding Adultification through Anthy Himemiya
Adultification not only works against Black and Brown women and AFAB folks in our society today but also contextualizes aspects of Anthy’s story more clearly.
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Digging Under the “Strong Female Character” Surface: The exploitation of women in Claymore
Going into it hoping to experience an underappreciated classic, I was met with a series that routinely undervalues the very women that define its main appeal, to the point of ritualistically torturing them on-page and treating what makes up their person as disposable.
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The trans resonance of Haibane Renmei
The series’ use of transformation and body horror resonate with the physical experiences of dysphoria and transitioning; its depictions of mental health struggles, particularly self-harm and suicide, may find special meaning with trans audiences; it thematically explores names as potential sources of both trauma and self-actualization; and the characters of Haibane Renmei strive to build a safe community that promotes healing and growth. Yet I have never seen this two-decade-old series discussed through a trans lens, despite the wealth of potential it has to offer. That ends today.
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Work Sucks, I Know: The Marxist horror of Aggretsuko
Aggretsuko isn’t just about the pitfalls that come with growing up and accepting responsibility. It’s about the pitfalls that come within the exploitative system of capitalism.
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Good Soil Makes a Good Crop: The Story of Saiunkoku and the myth of meritocracy
Despite its fantastical shoujo setting, The Story of Saiunkoku is no traditional fairy tale, and the sexist hurdles Shurei faces to achieve her dream of becoming a civil servant are much closer to unjust reality than escapist fiction. This allows the series to explore systemic oppression, workplace harassment, and the importance of structural support, especially in systems that claim to be merit-based.
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“I am a shadow… The true self…”: Identity and social norms in Persona 4 Golden
Ultimately, the game universe makes clear that “facing yourself” is more concerned about fitting into society than personal growth. And though individual characters may seem to subvert normative expectations of gender and sexuality, the game ultimately reifies those roles, forcing all characters into societal norms that stand contrary to the glimpses of their more rebellious authentic selves.
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How My Brain is Different allows the neurodivergent to tell their own stories
When manga author Monzusu realized how poorly the general population understood neurodivergence, she sought out the stories of ordinary people with experiences similar to her own, eventually turning some of them into a memoir manga. In doing so, she offered neurodivergent people like her a rare chance to tell their own stories in their own words.
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Overcoming Barriers: Mobility limitation; “inspirational” disability; and Josee, the Tiger, and the Fish
Josee, the Tiger, and the Fish, a 2020 adaptation of a 1987 story of the same name, is certainly an uplifting and inspirational film, but its treatment of its central character usurps this concept. Instead of being saintly, Josee is a rounded character who works to achieve her dream of living as an artist.
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Being a Better Man: The healthy masculinity of MY love STORY!!
Through its characters and their relationships, MY love STORY!! supports a vision of masculinity where boys and men can be openly emotional and not be shamed for it.
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“Differences Die At The Door”: A post-mortem of Netflix’s Cowboy Bebop
Few adaptations miss the point of their source material as brazenly as Christopher Yost’s series. There are many avenues to critique it from, ranging from casting decisions to direction to the script itself, and much ink has already been spilled on all of these. But it’s prudent to get even more granular. If we trace each individual influence behind both Bebops, the fundamental failings of the Netflix show become even more apparent.
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What Role Are You Playing? Communication, queerness, and neurodivergence in Yuri is My Job!
Miscommunication as narrative conflict is often linked with contrivance and bad writing—and no genre faces this criticism more than romance. That’s what makes Yuri is My Job! so refreshing. In the process of building a will-they-won’t-they story, it explores the gendered, neurotypical, and heteronormative expectations that are built into social interaction.
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The possession and performance of relationship in Spice and Wolf
Holo and Lawrence’s relationship is initially held back by the circumstances upon which they first meet, rendering Holo as an owned object rather than an equal companion and stifling both leads’ feelings behind layers of performative inauthenticity. Part of the appeal of Spice and Wolf is watching these two characters overcome the gendered norms of their medieval setting, as well as their own personal flaws, to achieve an emotional reciprocity that is narratively satisfying.
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Queer resonance and critiquing heteronormativity in SPY x FAMILY
Spy x Family is a great example of how a story might have queer resonances and queer themes even if it cannot be classed as queer fiction.
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Comedic Highs and Objectified Lows: The girls of The Disastrous Life of Saiki K
The Disastrous Life of Saiki K is a hilarious supernatural comedy in which a cast of teenagers tries to live ordinary lives amidst extraordinary shenanigans. The female characters are three-dimensional and compellingly written, often just as expressive, funny and absurd as the boys. Although this potential is often well-utilized, narratives on the show that involve male attraction often sacrifice the depth of the girls, for the sake of sexualized scenes and lazy punchlines.
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Strength Unsaid: How Moribito’s main characters normalize gender equality
The roles and characterization of main characters Balsa, Tanda, and Prince Chagum make gender equality seem natural, and therefore powerful, even if their story takes place in a patriarchal system.
