2023 Winter Premiere Digest
Things have cooled off from Fall, but there are still some excellent girls to root for this season.
Things have cooled off from Fall, but there are still some excellent girls to root for this season.
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!
Thoughts on name changes, transition, and how Shirono Honami’s I Want To Be a Wall is a reminder that we can shape our own barriers and boundaries.
Between my feelings about the ending of the third game, the drama surrounding its production, and the series’ long-standing controversies, I just felt drained as I watched Bayonetta 3’s credits roll. Which sucks, because the previous two games left me feeling nothing but energized and wanting to be a bolder, braver version of myself.
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.
For better or for worse, there’s nothing quite like Vampire Knight out there. Revisiting the series today—about 15 years after its release—reveals not only a lot of its shortcomings, but a lot about the cultural context in which it was released.
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.
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.
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.
Stop!! Hibari-kun treads plenty of expected ground when it comes to teenage romantic comedy because, at its core, the narrative is cut from the same striped cloth as Urusei Yatsura. However, Hibari isn’t an alien in a bikini or a widowed landlady—she’s a trans teenager.
Although Kintaro’s respect for women toes (and occasionally crosses) the line into objectification and some of them get more respectful treatment than others, the series overall gives these female characters more agency and regard than other anime of the same genre.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Bleach means quite a lot to me. It’s the foundation for so much of my work as an artist and writer that breaking it down into its smaller parts would be very difficult. Reading it carried me through high school as a deeply insecure, deeply in-the-closet teenager, and even through early college when the series ended in 2015.
In retrospect, I recognize those first fanfics as something that let me safely imagine myself as a boy in a relationship with another boy. That desire to find media that would let me project myself into the positions of these male characters was what led me to discover BL.
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.
Vrai sat down with Camacho at Otakon 2022 to ask her about her influences, her dream role, and the expectation put on marginalized public figures to act as educators.
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.