No amount of blood splattering across the screen or sudden, emotional character deaths hit me quite as hard as the post-credits scene of the finale. It took just fifty seconds to make me squeal out loud and cement Akiba Maid War as one of the most impactful shows of 2022.
In a media landscape where there are seldom women who have a body type like mine, seeing two very different series, in terms of genre and presentation, showcase plus-sized sapphic women as people worthy of respect and desire, was so impactful for me.
After an initial viewing of Macross Frontier, most viewers would comment on a handful of topics. Not limited to, but including: the series’ back-to-basics approach reminiscent of the original 1982 Macross, its tendency to adhere a bit too closely to then-current trends, and unending talk of how awful Alto is. However, on a recent rewatch, a new thought clicked with me: what if Alto was fighting with some intense dysphoria?
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.
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.
Reading through Happy Sugar Life was a therapy I didn’t know I needed. With its wild-eyed, camera-spinning melodrama, it managed to capture so many unwanted feelings of anger, sorrow, desperation, resentment, anxiety, and at times, a truly aching nothingness. I joy-rode this tour-de-madness, but even I still spent a week afterward somewhere between “destabilized” and “no bath or shower will make me feel clean.”
I watched Pokemon: Diamond & Pearl during elementary and middle school, and Dawn became one of my all-time favorite characters. This might seem a little strange given that Dawn was a girl who loved pink and dresses, while I was a girl who rejected all things feminine, including my “girly” classmates. However, I realize now that I adored her so much because she challenged my conceptions of what femininity could be.
When I first watched Love, Chuunibyou and Other Delusions I had no idea what “chuunibyou” was, but the anime quickly made me think: I was definitely a chuunibyou as a kid! While not a form of mental divergence in and of itself, I contend that for neurodiverse kids, chuunibyou can be a coping mechanism.
I’ve been a fan of shoujo manga for 20 years, and for much of that, I’ve been fighting to get other manga readers to take it more seriously. I even started a podcast, Shojo & Tell, where I talk to other fans and industry professionals about it. Even so, the word “shoujo” for me evokes knee-jerk stereotypes and assumptions that I have to consciously fight against.
The Duke of Death and His Maid takes what could be a cheap device for titillation and, intentionally or not, transforms it into something far more emotionally powerful. When looking at the show as a story with metaphors about disability and navigating disability in that space, it becomes difficult to remove the fanservice without making the story weaker.
One of the most clever anime/manga series of the 2000s, Ouran High School Host Club is best known for the gently satirical way it engages with classic shoujo tropes, with its characters performing and overexaggerating certain traits for an audience of squealing female clients. It examines twin tropes through Hikaru and Kaoru, playing up certain stereotypes while dismantling others, and creates a more human portrayal of twin identity than most of the media it parodies.
I studied storefront displays too, the Aeropostale mannequin sporting the same dress as my lab partner. What did my peers see in these clothes that I couldn’t? I didn’t know, but I hated it: clothes, fashion, school, my classmates, all of it. I was better than the other girls. Fashion was shallow. I’d stick to tennis and The Prince of Tennis instead.
Toxic thinking? Absolutely. But in 2006 I didn’t know better.
Tsukushi faces more than just bullying from her peers and the controlling grasp of Domyouji. She also must carry the additional burden of financial instability and the pressure from her parents to marry a rich man in order to resolve their money problems. This situation forces her through the psychological process of parentification, molding her into a spirited and resolute character that I came to love.
Ruminations on everyone’s favorite motorbike anime, the pandemic, and my favorite topic: liminal spaces.
Many criticisms of moe characteristics stem from the idea that these girl characters are created to be appealing to male viewers, and therefore cannot be relatable to any real woman in the audience. However, so-called moe series have yielded several characters that are extremely relatable to the neurodiverse female experience.
Since his introduction, despite the fact that he’s a character quite hated by the audience, I’ve loved the Earl Alois Trancy as a multi-layered character that carries many intertwined themes around child abuse, queerness, genre influences and slut-shaming.
Of all the amazing things about the show, one of the most striking to me was the revolutionary way it portrayed the intersection of queer and Slavic identity.
You wouldn’t expect an otome game like Code:Realize to have themes that resonate so strongly with common queer experiences. In many ways, the game follows genre conventions, with a heterosexual romance story following a singular heroine and a cast of attractive men. Yet it spoke to me, an enby transgender man, by exploring themes of inner discovery, found family, and self-love.
It took years of consuming BL and Yuri to finally face my truth: that I am queer.
