Death Notes on Camp: Repurposing a classic
New layers and new ways to appreciate the series emerge when it’s considered as a campy melodrama rather than the brooding thriller that writer Ohba Tsugumi intended it to be.
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Moriarty the Patriot’s class war is far from history in the UK
In the anime, Moriarty’s seamless assimilation into British high society makes an inadvertent mockery of the idea that you can simply be born “better” than others. The reality is anyone could get into Moriarty’s position with the right opportunities, but not everyone would choose to share the resources they gained to support those they left behind. It’s no exaggeration to say that to many, classism still feels so deeply ingrained in the UK it seems like the country would collapse without it.
This begs the question: how effective is Moriarty’s plan to burn everything to the ground, and what does the UK (both in fiction and reality) need to do in order to destroy class inequality for good? -
Unsung Heroes: The women of The Heike Story
The creators of The Heike Story go a step further beyond tribute with the character of Biwa: by presenting her as the epic’s original author-performer, the anime adaptation places the theme of female agency front and center in what is otherwise a male-centric work.
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In the Name of Art: Academic burnout in Blue Period
The detrimental effect of academic burnout can be easy to overlook. While the media has had a hand in normalizing these behaviors, stories are starting to crop up that examine the issue critically. Blue Period is an excellent study in the behavior that leads to burnout and the consequences that follow.
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All My Darling Daughters and the need for working women’s success and failure stories
Just as inspirational stories of women who achieve their goals are necessary, stories of those who are forced to relinquish them are equally important. Success stories are empowering, but in a vacuum they may unintentionally insinuate that failure also rests entirely on effort, laying the blame on women themselves rather than the disadvantages they face as a result of gender inequality.
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The Orbital Children’s Rejection of Ecofascist Ideas
The Orbital Children rejects the ecofascist idea that humans need to be controlled and culled in the name of someone’s idea of “humanity” and demands we imagine a better future that everyone gets to be a part of.
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Choosing to “Remain Strong” Against Female Criticism: The vindictive storytelling of Oda Eiichiro
While One Piece looms large in the present and past, conversations about how Oda treats women have often taken place on a surface level. Oda started his career by including women in prominent and active roles in his stories. But as time went on, he began responding to criticism by taking it out on his female characters and fans alike, undoing the good work he had done in the series’ early days.
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Re:Zero’s critique of Nice Guy Subaru and supposedly selfless love
Though often shown empathizing with and caring for Emilia, Subaru is also manipulative and controlling towards her. Re:Zero highlights these contradictions to create a portrayal of what is often the actual problem with Nice Guys: the assumption of commodifying good behavior for the return of love or sex, and the sense of entitlement or control over the person they like that often stems from it.
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Wolf Queens and Girl Heroes: How Lonely Castle in the Mirror plays with gendered fairytale tropes
Tsujimura Mizuki’s best-selling novel Lonely Castle in the Mirror twists and plays with familiar fairytale tropes to empower its young female characters.
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Love Hina and the Normalization of Male Abuse
The abuse women can inflict on their partners is a topic taken seriously by intersectional feminist discourse, but often dismissed and even normalized in mainstream media. In anime, this was especially prominent in the world of harem anime. The wildly popular 2000s series Love Hina is a useful emblem of this, as it showcases normalized abuse directed by women toward its male protagonist.
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The Importance of Centering Black Fans When Discussing Yasuke
With positive reviews and high ratings, Yasuke is a critical success. However, I found Yasuke lacking and wanted some perspectives on this story that was supposed to center a Black lead from people other than the mostly white critics who were praising it. Thankfully, I found several overlooked Black reviewers highlighting how the show falls short of the source material’s potential.
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#AnitwtKKK: When Trolling is Just White Supremacy in Disguise
Racebending, or drawing characters as races other than what they were intended as, is not new to fandom; however, this particular iteration was to counter the fact that the person took it upon themself to aggressively white out the existence of canonically Black and brown characters in anime.
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Portrayals of Black Masculinity in Carole & Tuesday
Despite its social justice-minded storytelling, Carole & Tuesday can be a frustrating watch as it swings back and forth between exploring these characters as nuanced individuals and perpetuating harmful stereotypes of Black masculinity.
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Gearing Up or Dressing Up? On female fighter equipment
When it comes to a particular category of battle-related gripes, I think I’m less the annoyingly fastidious critic nobody wants to watch a show with, and am actually harping about something genuinely important: female fighter equipment, which too often sacrifices realism and practicality in favor of sex appeal. In anime, this issue manifests in three major forms: “boob armor,” high heels, and “chainmail bikinis,” all which hurt the dignity of not only the characters who must wear them but also the female viewers who must endure the real-world effects of such normalized sexualization of womens’ bodies.
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Pregnancy as the pinnacle of womanhood in TSF porn
Though inherently absurd once verbalized, “Abenime” are stories that speak to a nation’s plight. They are designed to manufacture consent by defining baby making as the norm. Women can make babies; ipso facto, their role in saving Japanese society lies in buffering the ever-shrinking population with young, healthy babies who will carry on the nation in the future.
And while this attitude reaches public discourse by way of popular entertainment, it also likewise prevails within narratives not often discussed out in the open. -
The Dead Mothers of Shounen
To be a mother in a shounen series, especially of a male protagonist, is often a guaranteed death sentence. It also means a lack of characterization outside of her role as a caretaker. Even otherwise highly acclaimed series are guilty of these tropes, and I can’t help but wonder why they continue to persist.
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Queer Subtext and Representation in Kamen Rider
Much of the franchise’s homoeroticism is a result of the franchise’s severe gender disparity, which it has only recently taken steps to address; the series took 31 years to get its first female Kamen Rider. There have also been canonically gay, transgender and nonbinary characters, but the quality of representation is questionable. Regardless, many LGBTQ+ viewers have seen their own experiences reflected in the many characters of Kamen Rider, whether implicitly or explicitly.
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Is it Hot in Here? Consent, communication, and boundaries in Sweat and Soap
Even with a hefty dose of olfactophilia, Sweat and Soap is as heart-warming and nourishing as it gets. In a genre rife with toxic relationships and uncomfortable relationship dynamics, Sweat and Soap takes what seems like a fetishistic premise and turns it into a story about the growth of a healthy relationship. Throughout the story, we see Natori and Asako set boundaries, communicate clearly, and, most of all, grow as individual people.
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The Always Smiling Girl: How Tohru critiques toxic positivity
The narrative takes care to demonstrate that Tohru has her own issues, and highlights that her relentlessly positive attitude and her devotion to putting others before herself is not healthy. Ultimately, Fruits Basket explores and unpacks the harmful side of her relentless positivity as one of many healing stories across the series.
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Cannon Busters: Black representation beyond social issue dramas
Anime with multiple Black leads, though not unheard of, were rare. I had to know if this was a fluke, or an elaborate marketing ploy to bait viewers like me, who eagerly soaked up every ounce of non-stereotyped diversity they could get their hands on. What I discovered was so much more than that. The fun of Cannon Busters isn’t just its inclusiveness, but in the way it doesn’t take itself too seriously.
