Monster Girls and the Fine Line Between Body Positivity and Objectification
Monstrous women serve as a reminder of the “other” in society, but good writing helps characters take pride in themselves.
Feature Category
Results-
-
“Queering” Heteronormativity: Biological essentialism in genderbending manga
The framework of “[cis character] must pretend to be [“opposite” gender] before restoring their [femininity or masculinity]” invites biological determinism by making the plot’s stakes dependent on the successful concealment of the main character’s “true” (here, meaning “assigned-at-birth”) gender. The idea of a “true” biological gender is itself a transphobic trope that does harm to the gender-nonconforming communities that genderbending manga purports to represent.
-
When Your “Best Girl” Is A Predator: Power dynamics and storytelling in Domestic Girlfriend
Domestic Girlfriend knows its central relationship between a high school student and his teacher is tragic, but completely misses the mark on why.
-
Women in the Kitchen: The unequal treatment of professional chefs in anime and beyond
Despite a broad range of titles, when looking at Japanese media about cooking at large, I’ve noticed a frustrating gender imbalance between stories about professional male and female chefs. Stories about male chefs (most often in shounen manga) tend to center around their skill and on their prowess in the kitchen; while the professional lives of female chefs are downplayed in favor of focusing on a romantic storyline.
-
No One is Born to Be a Slave: How The Twelve Kingdoms questions social systems
Fantasy is often described as escapism, but the genre has great potential to expose a reader to different perspectives on their own society while drawing them into an exciting new world. The Twelve Kingdoms novels by Fuyumi Ono truly show this. The world of the Twelve Kingdoms is a masterful example of a fully developed, politically complex, colorful and varied fantasy world.
-
Who is Allowed to Speak Their Pain? Demon Slayer, empathy, and Nezuko
Demon Slayer’s commitment to empathy thoroughly impressed me from the beginning of the series. However, Nezuko’s infantilization, objectification, and silencing throughout the season makes me worried the series may fall into the same traps as its shounen predecessors and contemporaries. Tanjiro and Nezuko share the same trauma, but only one is allowed to speak it.
-
My Roommate is a Cat Provides Comfort to the Socially Anxious
Throughout the series, My Roommate is a Cat depicts Subaru’s social anxiety and his efforts to manage it in a realistic manner. As he and his adopted cat Haru grow closer, he learns to cope and develop warm friendships.
-
What We Owe to Creators: Burnout in manga artists and how to prevent it
While manga artists have done a great service for international comics, we readers see an unsettling trend of writers and artists burning out.
-
The Demons Are in the Details: Disability representation in Dororo
Dororo is a complicated work to parse from a disability studies perspective. The story is set somewhere in the early- to mid-fifteenth century, was written by “godfather of manga” Osamu Tezuka in the 1960s, has been told in multiple mediums in the ensuing decades, and was recently adapted into an anime for the second time in 2019. These disparate time periods have created a jumble of disability representation that ranges between accurate, inaccurate, and downright confounding.
-
Virtually Feminist? The pros, cons, and possibilities of virtual idols
Much like the wider idol industry, when it comes to virtual idols, the picture is mixed.
-
Kase-san and Queer Thirst: Depicting sexuality in a “pure” yuri manga
“Purity” is most commonly used as a shorthand for chastity or sexlessness, and generally refers to stories that don’t engage with sex at all. Though Yamada’s sincerity and innocence is part of Kase-san‘s appeal, the way it engages with the girls’ sexuality is just as important. Sex does exist in Kase-san, and while the series focuses primarily on Kase and Yamada’s emotional relationship, it also explores their physical relationship and sexual attraction to each other from the very first chapter.
-
Nichijou and the Everyday Epics of High School Girls
Through its central cast of silly, snarky, kind, anxious, energetic high school girls, Nichijou not only showcases many common (and not-so-common) trials of adolescence, but also expands the narrow image of what it means to be a “normal” teen girl.
-
A Girl Worth Fighting For: Kingdom Hearts III and the mystery of the missing heroines
Kingdom Hearts’s cast and audience may have grown up, but its tired “boy saves girl” gender politics remain just as outdated as they were when the franchise first launched.
-
Subaru Sumeragi and the dark side of total empathy in Tokyo Babylon
The main driving theme of Tokyo Babylon is Subaru’s unlimited empathy for everyone, be it victims of supernatural occurrences, earthbound spirits, or simply an elderly man at the park. To Subaru, all deserve to be cared for, even at the cost of his own well-being.
-
Is Yuri Queer?
Inevitably, when I do any kind of public talk about Yuri or LGBTQ comics, someone will express dissatisfaction at mild school life romances or I’ll be asked for recommendations for manga about “real” lesbians. As we move through the 100th anniversary of the Yuri genre, it seems time to address this issue—not once and for all, as the genre is changing as rapidly as the languages that describe it, but for now.
-
Not “Just a Phase”: How Bloom Into You challenges common yuri tropes
Media presents a certain set of common tropes that informs much of our idea about love and what it “should” look like. Bloom Into You interrogates these tropes, making it a story that provides important queer representation in fiction while also talking about representation in fiction within the story itself.
-
The Beginner’s Guide to Yuri Manga
The last few years have seen a boom in the English-language yuri market, with more and more manga about queer romance between women making it to shelves. But with all these choices, where does a curious reader start?
-
When Creators Strive to Improve Female Representation: The case of Sword Art Online’s Kawahara Reki
Sword Art Online author Reki Kawahara has publicly stated he wants to improve the representation of female characters in the series… and this is something that’s already observable in his more recent novels. Let’s take a closer look at what Kawahara said and how the series has improved over time.
-
In Defense of Resasuke: Autism-coding and ableism in Aggretsuko
Aggretsuko’s seemingly simple yet charming premise got me on board when it first aired, but now I have mixed feelings about it. There is one problem with this otherwise awesome and progressive anime, and it has to do with the heavily autism-coded Resasuke.
-
Harmful Gimmick: The normalization of abuse in shoujo manga
I became interested in shoujo manga after reading Fruits Basket, and I have not stopped reading it since. The more shoujo I read, however, the more I’ve noticed a disturbing trend. While many manga I have read feature sweet, supportive romances, just as many normalize unhealthy, even abusive relationships and victim-blaming.
