Chatty AF 218: Post-Election Editor Discussion (WITH TRANSCRIPT)

TONY: Lynzee is wonderful.

CY: [crosstalk] Lynzee’s— Just shout-out to Lynzee.

TONY: [crosstalk] We love Lynzee. We love Lynzee in this— Shout-out to Lynzee. She’s wonderful.

CY: Shout-out to your new haircut today, Lynzee.

TONY: Oh, my gosh, I haven’t seen it yet! I need to look at it.

CY: It’s so good.

[Introductory musical theme]

TONY: Hi, everybody. Welcome to Chatty AF: The Anime Feminist Podcast. My name is Tony, and I’m a contributing editor here at Anime Feminist. And with me is Cy!

CY: Hi, everyone. It’s me, Cy. I am also a contributing editor here at Anime Feminist. And we have something very special for you today because, as you know—oh, well, I guess, as you’ll notice—there are two of us, a rarity.

TONY: Yes. Don’t worry, Vrai’s not dead. Nobody’s dead.

CY: [Laughs]

TONY: Everyone is very happy and alive. We’re recording a special podcast so that we can kind of address the results of the election and the rise of transphobia as a viable political strategy, which are very much intermingled; and then talk a little bit about our thoughts on the role of anime and Anime Feminist and the communities that surround Anime Feminist in hopefully offering some amount of solace or resistance to this moment of rising fascism.

So, yeah, we thought we’d start with talking a little bit about our values at Anime Feminist. Did you want to explain the first one that we put down here?

CY: Yeah, I absolutely do. So, one of, I would say, the— I mean, we have four core values, really, working at Anime Feminist. And one of the first ones is that we will not throw anybody away just because it’s politically expedient. Right? 

Like, we’re living in unprecedented times, and I will fully say, as a Black person, my body and the genetics that form me have been living in unprecedented times since 1619, when we got placed here as part of the literal landscape and chattel of America, right? 

And so, I think something that is important across the board at Anime Feminist is that, you know, we’re not just going to toss [people] away. Understanding comes when you invite people in. Now, obviously there’s a limit to, like, the throwaway. Like, if you’re obviously harassing somebody, you might be excused from the community. But just because there is convenience does not mean exclusion.

TONY: Yes, and this is really important, because I think that a lot of spaces right now are trying to claim that culture war issues or something like that are the reasons the Democrats lost and that, you know, if we just stopped worrying about the trans people so much then we could win elections and win back the working class. But the reality is, right, the vast majority of trans people are working class, right? And so, it’s a really silly and goofy kind of argument to me and is deeply unaligned with our political values. 

Like, I honestly was inspired partially to do this podcast by hearing ANN do a similar one talking about their understandings and beliefs around inclusion. And hearing that was really gratifying for me, and I think that hopefully we, as a larger community of people who love anime, people who are critics, people who are engaged with criticism, can all come together around this commitment to not throwing people away just because it’s politically expedient. 

And it seems very clear to me that we and Anime News Network are both really aligned in that respect. And I’m sure Anime Herald would say the same thing. I’ve not been looking as much at their messaging, but I’m sure they would too.

CY: Well, and how can you expect people to learn if you dismiss— Here’s the real: is that if you exist within American culture, there is a nonzero chance that you have had a prejudice or that you have held prejudice actively against a group. 

I will be candid that I grew up with a lot of anti-Asian bias. And just because I lived in Japan for four years does not— Y’all, that’s when I undid a lot of it. That’s when I was kind of forced to reckon with it. Why did I grow up with that bias? Because of cultural tensions placed between Black and Asian-American communities that were not necessarily grown in those communities but were put there politically. 

And so, you know, I totally agree with you, Tony. You gotta let people in to let them learn. And as a working-class website— Everyone at AniFem… let me tell y’all, we’re all working class.

[Chuckling]

TONY: We are not— We are not— And that’s another thing that’s really interesting about us and about, I would say, anime journalism in general, is that this is not some cabal of the liberal elite, coastal elites, who are all trying to ram social justice down your throat. No, all of us are directly affected by these issues. You know? We’re all just trying to pay our bills and make it out of American capitalism alive.

CY: Yeah, I guarantee that. I guarantee that Joey B is not sliding me a sweet check like “Thanks for your thoughts on Keijo, dude.” Like… [Chuckles] It’s just not happening! Yeah, we’re all directly affected. I wish Joe Biden would slide me a check for my thoughts on Keijo. I would be the cat in the cream right now.

TONY: [Chuckles] Imagine that. Just we gotta introduce an act for the next budget resolution, the Keijo Appreciation Act.

CY: Yeah. Absolutely.

TONY: And I’ll call my liberal elite friends, you know, that I have so many of here in New York City.

CY: Look, I’ll pay a wealth tax on that. [Chuckles]

TONY: [Chuckles] So, moving forward, moving on, I think that, also, it’s important to understand this moment as a moment in a much larger… I feel like we’ve probably covered the second one, which is that we will always stand with the most marginalized in society. Pretty much covered that. 

The third one is that we will understand this moment as one moment in a larger, slow apocalypse of endless… the unending American story of racism and ultimately, at a certain point, fascism. This is not an exceptional moment, and I think it’s very important to say that. If anything, the, at least, appearance of multiracial liberal democracy over the last 20 years—and when I say “appearance,” I mean “veneer”—is, in itself, the aberration. 

You know, America has, since its founding, as you were saying earlier, been invested in and producing the circumstances of oppression and violence across the world; whether it’s all of the imperial wars we’ve engaged in; whether it’s the continual status of neocolonialism and imperialism that we continue to profit from; whether it’s the experiences of all of the Black and trans and various other identity people in prisons. The presence of fascism in American society—and the ascendance of it—is not an exceptional moment.

CY: It’s horrifically mundane, what is happening. And I say that in the sense of, like, America has had a very… America almost fell to fascism, which is something really key to remember. It was really, really delectable. And it was only because… I’m not gonna say it’s only because it made us look good to not fall to fascism, but it was not politically advantageous. 

And now it is. For a lot of people, it’s very politically advantageous to hate. I struggle to understand why, in my heart. I cognitively do, and I would say a lot of people do, right? But this is a really horrifically mundane time, because there’s all these gory, cruel acts of violence happening, but people still are going to the grocery store. Like, I still have to pay rent. I went to the farmers’ market today and people are dying across the world. 

And that’s what the government wants, right? The government will always couch things in horrific mundanity because it kind of numbs you, and you have to not become numb. And I think that’s what we’re trying to do here.

TONY: Yeah, and it’s important— And that is the kind of paradoxical tension, right? It’s like, at once, this is nothing new, right? What’s happening in Gaza can be directly connected to political policies of, say, Henry Kissinger and the bombings of Cambodia and the destruction of whatever group is politically expedient to destroy to maintain American hegemony around the world. This is not a new thing. 

And just like that, though, we also have a legacy of resistance to that that we can draw upon. I mean, for me, I attend a Buddhist temple that was founded by Thích Nhất Hạnh, who was one of the key players in getting Martin Luther King to stand against the Vietnam War, right? We have a legacy of resistance that we can all draw upon. 

And sometimes that work is doing the political education that we do at Anime Feminist. That’s what I hope to do: that through writing what I write at Anime Feminist, I can help people to understand the circumstances in which we live. 

Yeah. Did you have anything more to say about that point, or should we move on to the last one?

CY: No, I mean, you wrapped it up! [Chuckles]

TONY: Thank you. The last thing I think we want to emphasize is that we really do want to offer a safe place to express and explore community, current communal issues, and to process this experience with y’all. That’s why we’re having this conversation on this podcast. 

So, Cy, did you want to talk a little bit about that?

CY: Yeah, so, I think pointing that out is really big because, you know, before the election, in the lead-up to the election, and right now, you—“you” as in the general you, you who are listening—are probably seeing a lot of messages of, like, “You need to lean on community.” But what does that mean if you haven’t established community? 

Like, I have experienced establishing community both as a Black person who grew up in a Black church, but also as someone who lived in Japan, a dynamically different, very communal country. And even then, I still had to learn. And so, you know, I have that experience, but it’s not enough to just say, “Learn how to establish community.” We have to teach, and we have to open up a space that is safe for people to learn and practice that because, speaking honestly, community is what is going to get us through these four years of fascism. 

And should that fascism extend—which, you know, I’m not a crystal ball, I am optimistic, and I believe in the power of community, but also, I do believe in realism—we have to be prepared, probably, for a war of attrition. We have to be prepared to help people understand humanity again. And part of that is that learning community. 

But what I hope we’re doing here at AniFem is allowing that space to practice that through the lens of feminism, through the lens of media that we all love, so that you can take that out of your walls, out of your door, into your community, into your workplace, to people that need it, so that that actual community-building can happen. Because it’s a skill. It’s not a reflex. 

You know, America has very skillfully and artist— you know, cruelly— I was going to say “artistically,” and I couldn’t pronounce it, y’all… but very cruelly has devised a society where, like, “Don’t know your neighbor; they could be dangerous. Don’t trust others; stand on your own two feet.” 

Well, you know, speaking as a disabled person, I don’t always have two feet to stand on. And speaking as a queer person, I want to trust my neighbors because I want to believe that they have my safety in mind. And just speaking as a person who lives in this country, I see so much power in the belief of trusting each other and being communal and opening our arms. 

Sure, people are gonna mess up. We are all human. You know, we’re all prone to mistakes. But I really live by a 95–5 principle, which is like 95% of us are just doing our best. We are out here in these streets, trying to coupon, trying to survive, trying to have a good laugh. And the 5% that aren’t are not evil by, like, predetermination; they’re doing evil because that is the way that they seek to navigate through life. 

And I’m not here to convince those 5 percent; I am here to help people in that gray area of the 95 that are doing good things but have erred and maybe have racism, maybe have these prejudices that, like, if I can invite them into a community safely… with that community’s permission, right? Because you gotta be mindful of that; you can’t just bring anyone in. But if I can change them through intent, that’s what I’m here for. 

Fuck Jeff Bezos. Fuck the Hot Cheeto bag in office. Fuck the man who likes to kiss couches! I’m not going to convince a cis white man in power. I mean, I’m just saying, when that couch stuff came out, that really did something to me.

TONY: [Laughs]

CY: But I’m not going to convince a white man in power. Right? If I could’ve, my people would’ve not been enslaved, if that was all it took. But who I can convince is [the] working class. Who I can convince is other people by offering them that safe space and saying, like, “Here’s what’s bothering me. I bet this is bothering you, too. Here’s what I’m afraid of. I bet you’re afraid of that, too.” Yeah. So that’s kind of what that’s coming from.

TONY: Absolutely. Amen to all that. I feel like you really summed it up well.

CY: Thank you.

TONY: So, I wanted to talk for a little bit about how we found Anime Feminist, because I think when we talk about how we found Anime Feminist, it could actually really give us an understanding of what Anime Feminist could mean as a community for us and what Anime Feminist can be, hopefully, and hopefully give us kind of an idea of what direction we want to take our community in. So, did you want to talk a little bit about how you found Anime Feminist?

CY: I would love to. So, I had known of Anime Feminist kind of during my time in Japan, because I want to say that the site launched the same year I moved to Japan. But I really didn’t come into contact directly until Chiaki reached out to me in May of 2020. 

This was during the pandemic, but also it was after we found out that the University of Tokyo had been changing the scores for cis women to gain admission to its… I believe, to its doctor… medical program, which is ironic because… it’s ironic because Unseen Japan broke today that they also are coding in the phrase “Tiananmen Square” so that Chinese applicants cannot apply from mainland China, which is just like…

TONY: Oh, my fucking God!

CY: Which is really xenophobic and fucked up! I’ll make sure that we put a link to that quick snippet in our show notes. But yeah, that’s really messed up. The University of Tokyo has this really grim history of who it chooses to be the elites. And so I had been asked to do a podcast about that.

TONY: [crosstalk] That is crazy.

CY: It’s wild. [Chuckles] It’s wild. I had been asked to do a podcast about it, though, and it ended up that by the time the podcast was gonna come out, it just wasn’t gonna be topical. It was gonna be, like, November of that year. And so, we did all that and Chiaki was like, “Hey! You want to try your hand at editing?” And I was like, “Me?” And so I came on—

TONY: Oh, so this was even before you were an editor at Seven Seas, right?

CY: Yes. Yeah, this was really my first dipping my toes into the editing pond. Yeah, this was like a year and a half before Seven Seas even headhunted me. Which I just want to say: they did headhunt me. They did source me out because they knew I was good.

TONY: Wow.

CY: Yeah. Yeah.

TONY: Whoa. Mm-hm!

CY: [Chuckles] And so—

TONY: We’re just gonna leave that there. We’re just gonna—

CY: We’re gonna leave that there. But yeah, and so, I started with reviews… I want to say my first anime review was the very shitty idol anime Lapis Re:LiGHTs. And, like, y’all know I love idols. [Chuckles]

TONY: Oh, we know. We been knew, yeah.

CY: [crosstalk] Lapis Re:LiGHTs is so bad! It’s so bad. It’s all fluff and nothing, and that’s why I love it.

TONY: But it has one of my favorite gems in the title, lapis. How can an anime that has the word “lapis” in the title be bad?

CY: I mean, because it’s catered towards cis men. [Chuckles] It’s so catered toward cis men!

TONY: [crosstalk] Oh, no. It’s got that Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha disease, yes.

CY: [crosstalk] It does. I think it has… they’re either sisters or cousins, but they’re like kissing cousins. Not in, like, the Sailor Moon way.

TONY: [Laughs]

CY: In the way that you’re like—

TONY: Not in a literally kissing way, though? Not in the Sailor Moon way?

CY: Yeah, in the way that you’re like, “911, I need to make a report.”

[Laughter]

CY: And so, you know, that’s how I started. That’s also how I got into podcasting. I had not really podcasted before that, but Anime Feminist really gave me this foundation to kind of explore my identity as a feminist and to… I’m also gonna say Anime Feminist gave me a really big platform to explore my gender, because I firmly believe, had I remained in Japan, I would be my birth name and a cis woman. And we all know that’s not the case. 

And so, yeah, that’s kinda how I found it, was, like, Chiaki, the catgirl of our heart, gave me a chance. How did you come to Anime Feminist? Because…

TONY: I feel like my route was very… a little bit different from yours, in that for me it actually was— So, I’ve always loved anime, right, ever since I was a kid. I grew up watching really trash shounen, you know. I loved my Bleach, my Naruto, my whatever. You know? Those are my two big ones, and then Zatch Bell, of course. I love the crying boys. Love crying fighting boys.

CY: Love Zatch Bell! [Chuckles]

TONY: Love my crying fighty boys. It’s like Fate/Zero but with, uh… a lot more crying. Anyways.

CY: [Laughs]

TONY: So, I spent a long time not really super into anime, and then I tried to get back into anime, and I just beat my head against the brick wall of, like, “Wow, the things that are popular in the United States are just not hitting it for me.” You know? 

Like, I tried these shounen. I tried all these shounen, and I was like, “Oh, I don’t like this! I can’t do this! It’s so battle-y and so focused on things that I don’t really care about!” I tried watching Demon Slayer, and I’m like, “Wow, I don’t like this. Ugh.” 

And so, I think I literally googled, like, “anime that a feminist would like.” And then boop, Anime Feminist! I’m like, “Oh, what? This exists?” And I think that I started looking at some of the recommendations on Anime Feminist, and I started watching Revolutionary Girl Utena, and I started reading Vrai’s episode write-ups for it, and I started reading Dee’s episode write-ups for Sailor Moon as I was watching those two shows. And I think Utena and Sailor Moon really shaped my identity as an anime lover.

And so, eventually, when I was in college, I went to grad school at NYU, and I was pretty intensely lonely in New York my first year, but I had a professor who encouraged me to try submitting a pitch to Anime Feminist for my own article. And I’m gonna get into what that pitch is later, when we’re talking a little bit about how anime helped us in times of political crisis. 

But writing for Anime— And I sent it into Anime Feminist, and the funny thing is that the pitch was basically the article itself. It was like, God, way too many words. I would never write that long of a pitch now. I pitched two articles. I pitched an article about Sarazanmai and I pitched an article about Madoka. And I got an email from Vrai. I was, like, shocked, and Vrai was like, “Oh, yeah, we like both of these. Let’s do the Sarazanmai one first.” 

And the process of writing that article… I would send emails back and forth with my bestie, you know, at the time, and she would talk to me on the phone for hours about the ideas in the article. And just the experience of writing that, the Sarazanmai essay, I think really shaped a lot of who I would become as a writer, just how I could use writing to explore aspects of masculinity in my identity, because that article is all about masculinity.

And eventually I started being a huge part of the Anime Feminist Discord, and I continued to pitch articles to Anime Feminist. And eventually, after I had had like four articles published or something or was on my fourth article, Vrai just reached out to me and was like, “Hey, so, would you like to be an editor?” Because… Yeah. 

And I was honestly kind of shocked and overjoyed and… Like, for me, the Anime Feminist community was a place where I could talk about my gender identity in a way that I could almost never in my daily life as a teacher or as a person in gay male spaces in New York City. As a person in gay male spaces in New York City, you can’t really talk about gender identity that deeply, because people just have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about, because, I don’t know, their brains are rotted with ketamine or something. (I’m joking.)

CY: [Laughs]

TONY: But there’s no sense of— And I say that with utmost love and… There’s no sense of space to explore those aspects of your identity. And Anime Feminist gave me a space where I could talk about like, yeah, sometimes I feel more like a girl, sometimes I want to dress in these ways; what would it feel like to go by a different way of spelling my name. 

And the Discord was always just like… I looked forward every single day to seeing what was in the Discord, what people were saying. It was like one of the first times I’d ever been in an online community that ever felt healthy.

CY: Yeah. Yeah. Because I don’t go on our Discord a lot, and it’s my goal in 2025 to be more active there, because I always see myself tagged and get a little shy, but yeah, I totally get that.

TONY: Yeah. So, for me, it honestly started mostly with the Anime Feminist Discord. And the funny thing is that I’ve become really close friends with so many people on that Discord who now are people who I fly across the country to visit, you know? People who are on the staff at Anime Feminist I fly across the country to visit. 

And Anime Feminist has allowed me to find my voice as a writer, as a nonbinary person, and honestly as somebody who thinks through political topics. I think that there has been no better place for me to actually— Like, Anime Feminist, I think, helped me to learn how to talk about politics in a way that was not steeped in the toxicity of Twitter discourse.

CY: Mm! Mm-hm. Wholeheartedly agree.

TONY: Like, one day last year, I just decided I was not going to be on Twitter anymore and I was just going to be on the Anime Feminist Discord, and that would be the only political social media that I’m on at all. And I’ve never looked back. [Chuckles]

CY: I think you are not only America’s bravest fighter in that but America’s smartest person to leave Twitter. I finally deleted the app off my phone. Ooh! The freedom.

TONY: Oh, my God. It is— Listen, I have it for one thing and one thing only, and I’m just gonna leave it up to people’s imagination. It is not something I go on for any meaningful conversation anymore.

Okay, yeah. So I wanted to talk a little bit about how anime has helped us in times of political crisis. Would you like to go first or should I go first?

CY: I want to know how it’s helped you, because I always forget that you wrote one of my favorite pieces of writing, and I really—

TONY: What?

CY: Yeah. Oh, dude, your Madoka piece? Ugh! That got me through something in 2020. [Chuckles] I’m just gonna say that got me through something. Mm! If y’all haven’t read some of Tony’s work, let me tell you. Mm!

TONY: Thank you, Cy. I really appreciate that. Yeah, I actually wanted to talk about that piece a little bit, because… So that piece is interesting, because I think it really marked a turning point for me as a writer. It was very much probably one of the most personal things I’ve ever written, and it is definitely the piece that got the attention of people in the anime criticism community and made people realize that I might have more in me than just one article. 

And I hope that it changed people’s perspective on Madoka Rebellion. I really hope that, because for me, the reason I wrote that piece… And this is important because I think this really ties into this question of how anime can help us in times of political crisis. When I wrote that article, I was experiencing the most profound political and personal crisis of my life. I had just moved to New York City. I was student teaching in New York City public schools, and I was just suffering so enormously. I was having migraines like seven out of seven days a week. [Chuckles]

CY: Oh, goodness.

TONY: And the pandemic was just starting. So, I was losing out on even that student teaching that I was getting.

CY: Oh, my God, you were in New York City at the beginning of the pandemic!

TONY: I sure was, yeah.

CY: Shit!

TONY: And it was this deep moment of political crisis for me, because I saw the kind of ways that fascism was operating almost as a machine in New York City’s public schools. For those of you who don’t know, New York City has the most segregated public schools in the entire country. That is statistically proven. Nikole Hannah-Jones has written extensively on this. You can look up her work on it. I maybe can put it in the show notes. 

And I was seeing just how much suffering was because of that, and I was struggling to figure out how to talk politically about my own suffering. Because I think in some leftist communities, suffering is viewed as almost this noble thing, right?

CY: Mm-hm. There’s definitely an air of martyrdom to some leftist identities that I find deeply concerning. Because who gets to be the martyrs? Like, who are we choosing to be the martyrs? The answer is: people of certain skin tones and identities.

TONY: And as people who, what Joy James would say, are within what’s called the “captive maternal”—and I’ve talked about this on many other podcasts, but people who are willing to stick their neck out for their communities to try to make change happen, but then their work to make change happen gets actually recuperated back into the system that was harming their communities, because as they do more work to make their communities safer, the state withdraws resources. Pretty much, however much we put in, the state withdraws. 

And so, I think I was trying to come to terms with that, the fact that the narratives that I was being told about the individual teacher who could transform a school community through sheer force of will or brilliance or charisma was just not true, and that they were a fantasy. 

And at the same time as this, there was a political catastrophe and the pandemic was happening. Everyone was isolated. And Trump was in office and just doing a shit job of it, and there was this huge amount of organized abandonment of just vast swaths of the American population, right?

And Madoka gave me a language to talk about this with, because I saw the original Madoka series and it was like I was seeing a mirror of the ways that I had been duped, right? I was seeing this mirror of all the ways that I had been recuperated back into the state’s violence, right, and being an agent of it.

And you can read the article if you want to see more, but it was because of the insights that I had in that article, right, and because of the willingness to confront that truth that I eventually was able to leave public school teaching and start working in an independent school, where I no longer feel like a martyr. 

And I know that I’m doing a different kind of work in that school, but I’ve been able to start to find some sort of collective liberation, right, in that space. I can feel the community forming around me and the students to try to lift up the most marginalized among them and also to help build their consciousness around the things that they might be deciding, as… I mean, the school I work in now, a lot of students are going to become part of the ruling class in America. So, the work that I do with those students could be really determinative of certain aspects of the country as a whole moving forward. These are students who will have enormous power and influence in American society, right? 

But for me, being able to confront the despair that I was feeling and have a language for it, anime gave me that language where I could find it nowhere else and gave me a space to experience the catharsis that I needed to make the choices that would be right for my life. And I’ll be talking about that a little bit later, when I’m talking about Vinland Saga.

But yeah, and I think this year in particular, as I experienced some of the worst politically motivated workplace discrimination I’ve ever experienced, right, and experienced some of the most vile and violent of hate speech, that is now being spewed by the president of the United States, right—or the future president—shows like Vinland Saga have given me the language with which to figure out how to have dignity and to let go of this martyr complex that I have, right, and to find a new way forward. 

I’ve talked for a long time. Cy, did you want to talk a bit?

CY: [crosstalk] I enjoyed it, though. Like, I always swear… I swear I could listen to you talk all day about just really introspective thoughts. But… you know, so, like, I would love to say that 2016 me, living in Japan, wearing skirts, was when I really woke up, but my experience in Japan was that I really didn’t watch a lot of anime. 

One: it’s really hard to stream. Like, you gotta go through some hoops if you want to VPN Crunchyroll. And let me tell you: 26 me trying to watch Yuri on Ice?

TONY: [crosstalk] That’s so ironic! You would think that in Japan, it would be easier to watch anime, right?

CY: You— Because I didn’t—

TONY: [Laughs]

CY: Okay, here, I’m gonna reveal something that I’ve never told anyone. So, Japanese government, if you’re listening, don’t. I never paid for NHK, baby. That man came to my door and he was like, “You need to,” and I was like, “I don’t know Japanese!” And he got very uncomfortable and he was like, “No Japanese?” And I was like, “No Japanese!”

TONY: “Nihongo o benkyou shinai!” [Laughs]

CY: And I made sure to say it in my first-week-of-learning-Japanese [accent] like how I used to speak, even though I was super fluent at that point. That man never came back, so I just never paid for cable! So I didn’t have access to anime because I was not gonna pay $30 a month for government cable.

TONY: [Continues cackling]

CY: [Chuckles] Look, all my grandma said I had to do was stay Black and die and occasionally pay taxes. I was not gonna pay for NHK.

TONY: Fuck you, NHK. [Chuckles]

CY: Like, for real! So I didn’t watch a lot of anime. I did watch Yuri on Ice. That’s the one big anime. I had a little shrine in my apartment, I was so in love with that anime.

But really, where things, I think, started to shift for me were in 2021. I’m gonna get vulnerable for a moment. I moved back August 11, 2020, to America. I flew into the Houston airport, and the first thing that my mother said to me was “I wish you hadn’t come home.” And that really set the tone of returning to America. 

Because here’s the thing: I was in Japan during the start of the pandemic, so the cultural schism that I had with, like… Look. Japan did have those shitty little masks they gave out. And I’m sure that somebody threw one on former Prime Minister Abe’s grave because those masks were bad. But there were stipends and there were things in place, and it felt like a country that actually cared about people not dying. 

And I come back to Texas, and we’re just herded into customs, nobody’s masked, you know, someone’s trying to shoot the coronavirus. And it’s just… it’s mayhem! And that was the first thing I was greeted by from a family member, from my mother. And so, I kind of get launched into this really deep depression. I had moved back partially for my mother, partially for a relationship at the time, and it ended up being really bad and abusive.

And I had watched anime. But, you know, your mind will do kind things like making you forget certain memories. And so, that time’s a blur, and where I really feel like I settled back into myself was spring 2021 with Super Cub. And I have written probably… I’ve written more pieces about Super Cub than I haven’t because it’s just been so evocative to me. And you can read my perspective piece of 2021, because I like to write an annual perspective piece.

TONY: You wrote for ANN about that, too, right? If I remember right?

CY: [crosstalk] Mm-hm. I did. I did. I wrote for ANN, because I covered it for ANN weekly. And then I wrote about it for AniFem. And the ANN, I just, like… I mean, I don’t hold back my feminism no matter what side I’m on, and I’m really grateful that Lynzee let me do that. But you know, and—

TONY: Lynzee is wonderful.

CY: [crosstalk] Lynzee’s— Just shout-out to Lynzee.

TONY: [crosstalk] We love Lynzee. We love Lynzee in this— Shout-out to Lynzee. She’s wonderful.

CY: Shout-out to your new haircut today, Lynzee.

TONY: Oh, my gosh, I haven’t seen it yet! I need to look at it.

CY: It’s so good. But you know—and I will say, also footnote: if you do look up my previous articles, you’re gonna see a different name. If you have been around in the AniFem community for a while, you’ll just know. That was back when I was a CIA agent. That’s “Cutie in”… I can’t think of a word for A. “Cutie in Access.” Yeah. You know, that’s back when I worked for the government. And now I have my legal name. And I don’t mind people knowing that. That is a part of my history. I had to have that name to get to the name I have now.

But yeah, you know, that and being able to write perspective pieces using anime… like, I think this year’s perspective piece is probably… it’s probably going to use MMO Junkie, because I watched that this year. I’m really excited about that. It’s great. It’s gonna be great! And, you know, being able to do that, though, through the lens of anime has really allowed me to open myself up to also kind of changing that martyr status. 

Because I… Here’s the thing. I think when you are Black… and I’m not saying this is an exclusive experience, but I do think when you are Black, and you are a darker-skinned Black person, and you are a darker-skinned Black person that has XX chromosomes presumably and you have secondary sex traits that indicate at some point you would’ve been checking “F” on a box, that you either get sexualized or you’re forcibly disappeared from society. I am on—

TONY: Oh, and let’s be clear: that happens to trans Black transfemmes too. Yes.

CY: [crosstalk] Yes, yes, yeah. Yeah. That is not exclusive to cis women. If a cis woman tells you that that is solely a cis woman experience, they are either holding a prejudice or sorely, sorely misinformed, because who gets it worse in Black societies? Black trans women. Absolutely. And it’s unwarranted.

TONY: But continue with what you were saying.

CY: Yeah. And so, you know, I have always been put in that mammy, disappeared category. I am the person that… especially when I was very prominently female-presenting, I was the person who people would come to for advice and people would depend on and call me strong and resilient and kind. But I was never classified as beautiful. I was never allowed to have sexual aspects because someone who is matronly can’t. 

And so, what Anime Feminist has done… Anime Feminist was a huge part of my transition. And anime was a huge part of my transition as well because I was like, “Oh, I don’t have to do this.” Like, I don’t have to do this. If I go by the Black saying of “All you have to do is stay Black and die—and sometimes pay taxes,” then within that is “I don’t have to go by the gender on my birth certificate. I don’t have to follow any of these social codes,” right? 

And so, it really allowed me to engage in that one-on-one conversation with myself and open up what my identity could be. Because I had that phase that I think sometimes you have when gender is a question mark where I was like, “Yeah, trans people are super dope! But I’m not trans. I just sometimes wish that I didn’t have secondary sex traits. But doesn’t everybody?” And it turns out, no, actually. No. [Chuckles] Yeah, not everybody does— [Chuckles]

TONY: [crosstalk] You know, that’s so funny, Cy, because I used to be totally in that phase. And I think part of the reason why I love Shuzo Oshimi’s work is that I very much relate to him in that I definitely thought for a bit I might be a trans girl. But then I… I don’t know, recently I’ve just been like, wait. I just want to get a really cute dress. I don’t need to get on HRT. I just need to find someone who can tailor me a really cute dress or a few really cute dresses.

CY: [crosstalk] Same! Same, because I—

TONY: And that is all that I could ever want.

CY: Yeah. And anime kinda took me through this phase of, like… [Chuckles] Y’all, for a long time, I was just like, “I’m a stud!” And my aesthetic as a stud… for sure, give me a cardigan, give me some pants. I love a ribbed—

TONY: Not a cardigan! I’m dead. [Laughs]

CY: Oh, I love— Well, because a stud gotta stay warm! [Chuckles]

TONY: [Laughs]

CY: But in the summer, I love some basketball shirts and one of those muscle tanks. Yes! And a cap? Oh, my God. But through that was, like, “I have to do HRT. I have to want to do T. I have to want a beard.” Y’all, I got a PCOS mustache. That’s good enough for me. [Chuckles] 

And I don’t have to have HRT to be who I am. I’m not seeking the approval of cis people. I am not seeking, really, the approval of anyone. What I need the approval of is my ability to go to bed and wake up and look at myself in the mirror. That’s really what I’m here for. And anime kinda gave that to me. 

Also, shout-out to cardigans. Y’all keeping studs warm.

TONY: [Chuckles] Yeah. And I think, as we’re talking about this, we can also acknowledge, right, that one of the most beautiful things about the Anime Feminist community, I think, is just how much of the community is people who are trans girls and trans guys or just trans, nonbinary, whatever marginalized gender you are a part of, right; and how that allows people to just talk about things like HRT, talk about top surgery, whatever kind of surgery you’re talking about like it’s no big deal because it’s such a common thing. And I think that there’s something about the kinds of spaces that we’ve cultivated that allows that. 

And something about just… I don’t know, a lot of, I think, trans people see themselves in anime, and it is an important step in transition to be able to see somebody and be like, “Hey! That’s kind of like me.” I mean, for me, my profile picture on Discord is like… um… God, I forget. What’s the auntie’s name in Skip and Loafer?

CY: Oh, it’s… um, is it…? Oh, I can’t remember! [Chuckles]

TONY: Nao-chan! Nao-chan, Nao-chan.

CY: Yes, yes! Yeah.

TONY: And when I see Nao-chan, I’m like, yeah, I relate to this character. But I don’t know, maybe I’m a little bit more masculine. But it’s interesting. But there’s room for all these different kinds of identity because you don’t have to represent all trans people as yourself in these communities.

CY: I think all of that feeds into the community. Right? And that feeds in especially right now. Like, we’re in crisis. You know, I would love to be smug and be like, “I knew it was going to be Donald Trump.” I didn’t! I really had a hope. I was like, “Kamala Harris and somebody’s 50-something-year-old dad, they’re gonna take the office! This man can’t handle anything hotter than pepper? Oh, we’re safe! We’re good!” 

You know, I really had a hope that this would be… You know, I mean, fascism is a machine that you always have to work against, because fascism is a very well-oiled machine. Part of the horror of racism is that racism is not illogical. It has a logic. Its logic is steeped in hate, and it can be very, very organized. It is a necessary part of crisis to make fun of racism, to punch up at the racist, to deconstruct that. But the thing also is it is an insidious, well-oiled machine. 

And I really thought… I’m not gonna say I was coconut pilled, but I was like, “Okay, maybe there’s a chance here. I mean, we know it’s not going to be Jill Stein. But when you Kamala—”

TONY: [crosstalk] Oh, my God!

CY: And it was really heart—

TONY: I— [Inhales deeply]

CY: [Chuckles] I feel like you’re gonna say something.

TONY: I think I was brat pilled, if anything. I was like, “Well, she got the Charli XCX vote. Nothing can stop her!”

CY: Right? Right? I really had a hope and—

TONY: Well, everyone here knows that I’m the biggest angel in the world.

CY: [Chuckles]

TONY: But I feel like this kind of brings us to the next one, which… I’m gonna combine these…

CY: Do it.

TONY: … parts because I think they make sense together. I think it’s important to ask ourselves: why do we create the communities that we create when there’s these times of crisis? And also, what is the relationship between anime fandom and organizing? 

Because I think… [Sighs] I’ve been really thinking a lot about what Yukimura-sensei said to me in our interview. Makoto Yukimura, of course, is the writer of Vinland Saga, and I’m gonna be talking a lot about Vinland Saga later. And towards the end of the interview, he said to me, “I was told 20 years ago by a mentor that we need to be thinking about war when we are at peace. We need to be preparing for and making sure we understand war when we are at peace.” Right?

CY: Damn. That’s deep.

TONY: And I think what I got from that is that— Yeah, I think it’s profound! What I got from that is that… Yeah, I mean, do you have a reaction to that that you want to share?

CY: I mean, that hit me kind of right in the sternum because it’s true. You know, just like we’re not always happy and sadness is not necessarily its opposition but just a part of that spectrum, the messy reality is that currently under capitalism, and especially under late-stage capitalism, there’s going to be a lot of fighting. There’s going to be a lot of war. 

And what that hit on mentally was, like, I’m a big believer in, like, you know, revolution is good, but there’s a lot of us that aren’t going to make it through it. There’s a lot of us on that foundational bottom that are not going to make it through it. We have lost people already because of the new presidency. 

But in that thinking ahead, yeah, in times of peace we have to be prepared for… how do we continue that peace? How do we work our way back to it? And that just hit me in the chest. Dang, I gotta read Vinland Saga. [Chuckles] I gotta read it.

TONY: It’s fantastic. It’s fantastic. Yeah, and I think about that a lot, like this idea of… I often… I’m not an accelerationist, and I find the accelerationists a little reprehensible. And something I think about a lot is, like, at least with certain sects of, say, tankies, they can at least point to something that actually exists and say they like it, and then I can say whether I like it or I don’t. 

But certain more utopian strands of left thought, I’m a little bit like, “Well, you’re asking me to agree or disagree with something that has never existed and we don’t see anywhere, so how am I supposed to take a position on this? Practically speaking, am I going to be able to get my medication when the revolution comes, or am I just going to die miserably, in an astonishing amount of pain and alone?”

But the reason that I brought up that quote was because, for me, the thing that I think about a lot is how, when we are surviving, can we plant the seeds for us to be able to thrive? And then how, when we’re thriving, can we plant the seeds that will get us through the times we have to survive, right? 

And I think that the anime fandom is a space where we can really start to think about how do we engage in those proactive measures. I think some of the things that I’ve seen that are really, really powerful in the anime community—and I’ve seen this just in Anime Feminist—has been the potential for mutual aid being a critical part of our communities. Right? Like… Yeah. 

Did you want to talk a little bit about mutual aid and that idea?

CY: Yeah. So, I mean, if you’re listening and you’ve seen the term “mutual aid” and you’re not sure, think of it as… You know how in video games there’s that one character that’s like, “Yo, if you can give me 100 gold, I can go back to the village”? 

Think of it as helping people like that. You’re giving mutually. You’re sharing the mutual collective wealth, whether that’s retweeting, sharing a link, making an Instagram reel. We saw a lot of this—and we still do—with authors and individuals calling for donations to families in Gaza who are trying to relocate. It’s just that sharing. It’s that communal sharing. 

And mutual aid nowadays, unfortunately, because of the systems of capitalism, is often money-based. And I say “unfortunately” because no one should have to beg for their humanity. Point blank. It does not matter—

TONY: Yeah. The GoFundMes are just offensive, frankly, for all the medical treatments that need GoFundMes. They should not exist.

CY: I say that as someone who’s had to do multiple GoFundMes. And let me say, behind the scenes, there’s an agony because there’s a expectation of publicly putting yourself out there and revealing what’s wrong and having to basically hope that people find you wanting enough to… And there’s shame on society, shame on the structures. 

But, you know, mutual aid can also be communal gardens. Mutual aid can be food banks. Mutual aid… It kind of extends into those networks of communities, right? And that can be… It’s mostly localized, I would say, but it also can go beyond state lines. And so, Anime Feminist has played a part in that, I would say, with our weekly link posts. We’ve certainly done stuff for Palestine. And I would even say our Patreon and Ko-fi are forms of mutual aid that help us keep going.

TONY: Yeah. And to be clear, mutual aid is not just when you give us money. It’s a structure of, like, how do we come together as a collective and, when we are in crisis, know that there will be people to catch us when we fall, and how do we create sustainable communities, right?

CY: Exactly.

TONY: Communities that are not fragile. I thought about this a lot in the context of Dean Spade’s work on mutual aid, which I just love—highly recommend Dean Spade’s book about mutual aid—where he talks about [how] the problem with so many activist spaces is that they actually end up draining people more than they actually provide meaningful material benefit. And so people end up burning out because these spaces often create this kind of toxic environment where, as you were saying, people get martyred rather than people actually feel supported and loved and like they’re working from their capacity. Right? And people are always working beyond their capacity in so many organizing spaces. 

And one of the things that I’ve seen in these kind of anime communities is that people are supporting each other as they are able. You know, whether it’s talking on the vent thread about something that they’re going through and getting solidarity and getting strategies and getting ideas, or whether it’s organizing meetups, you know, there’s many different ways that we as a community can come together and support each other through our shared love of anime.

And I think one of the most wonderful things for me has been that… As a person who’s often around cis gay men in New York City, I often find myself in this bubble of cis, gay, affluent men. I am not particularly affluent myself, but those are who I find myself surrounded by. And being with Anime Feminist allows me to really, really just have a grounding outside of that bubble. You know?

CY: I completely understand that.

TONY: Outside of that universe.

CY: Completely understand that, because I live in a very white part of Washington state, and so my real lived experience is I am surrounded by very, I think, well-intentioned white liberals. But when you exist in a city where you’re not even a full percent, there is a strange balance that happens, right, where you are the representation that you need, but you also need to find places where you can just be yourself. 

So, yeah, I completely get you on the affluent part and how AniFem has given that space. Because it’s also re-taught me, like, mutual aid isn’t just money, and I actually think that’s a really important thing, is that as we progress toward a future where money does not break us and money does not dominate our existence, understanding—

TONY: When we have an abundance, when we live in abundance, right?

CY: Right. Understanding that mutual aid in the now is bigger than money… Like, I’ma be real: sometimes money is what’s needed. My landlord don’t accept baked goods. Sometimes money is what is needed. 

But within our lifetime, when that shift happens and we have abundance and we have sharing and we have the communal gardens and we have food oasises everywhere and that’s just a way of life, understanding that mutual aid is sometimes in those interstitial moments of “How are you? Let me set up for an hour each week we talk. And let me set up for like two hours every week, a group of us gets together and we’re in community and we watch an anime.” Understanding that robustness of mutual aid is critical, especially right now.

TONY: Yeah, and I think one of the things that I’ve really valued most is the networks of community that are beyond state lines, right? Like, I can go pretty much anywhere in the country now… well, not anywhere, but many, many places in the country now and know that there are people there who I can hit up and be like, “Hey, let’s hang out,” because of Anime Feminist; because there’s so many people who I’ve met through Anime Feminist who I consider really close and dear friends; because we’ve been engaged in this kind of mutual aid and because we’ve been engaged in all of this conversation. 

And really, you know, I think about what bell hooks says, is that so much of our organizing has to be creating spaces where we can fall in love with each other. (Like, platonically is, I’m sure, what she meant.) But I think about that so much in the context of Anime Feminist, is that how much getting to do podcasts with y’all and getting to talk, laugh, and cry and talk about things that matter has given me a space to kind of fall in love with my friends all over again, right?

CY: Absolutely.

TONY: And it’s a beautiful thing. And I hope that, as we’re building these networks of community beyond state lines, that means that if shit goes down, people will have a place to go. Right?

CY: Right. Because I think that open-arms acceptance is… it’s going to be integral. We are not getting through whatever— It could be the most mundane, boring four years. God bless, I wish it would be. The reality is, is we have a fight ahead. But that acceptance and that—

TONY: It could be like in a year that half the country has banned HRT, you know? And we will need these networks of community beyond state lines.

CY: We do. And I will say for myself, my DMs are always open on Bluesky. And it was the same on Twitter. I routinely would just have people pop in and be like, “Hey. I heard you on a podcast one day say your DMs were open. Is that still true?” And yeah, because my service, the way I give mutual aid, because I… you know, reality is I’m a disabled person, and I’m a disabled person that doesn’t have a lot of money in the bank, but what I do have a lot, what I am rich in, is my ability to be kind. 

And you know, there’s going to be some hellish days where I’m going to wake up and not want to be kind, and I’m just going to have to look myself in the mirror and say, “You need to stick to that,” because it’s what people are going to need. And being kind does not mean laying down and being a doormat. You can be kind and use that kindness just as sharp as a blade.

TONY: And I think the thing is, right, to add on to that, the kind of love that martyrs you, that makes you… the kind of love that’s demanded of you is not love at all, right?

CY: Yeah.

TONY: When we talk about, like, the mammification of Black femmes and Black nonbinary people or Black… you know, you name it, right… that is not love at all. That is selflessness. And not in a holy sense, right?

CY: Yeah. It makes me think of—

TONY: The kind of love that we want to create is one that’s abundant, right, where one of the qualities of this love is its abundance—is its ability to be freely given. And I genuinely think that that’s something that we create, ideally, in these communities that we are creating around anime.

CY: I do, too, because I think the power of these communities is that… you know, love is a renewable resource. If there is magic in this world, if magic is said to exist, our ability to love people that we’ve never met, that we’ve only seen them type or we’ve only seen an icon that’s 100 pixels wide… our ability to love someone’s voice without a face to match it to, our ability to care, that is our magic. That is our superpower. That is our sustenance. 

And I mean, you know, you can’t only feed on magic—on love. You have to give that to yourself, to pour it out. But it is one of the most beautiful renewable resources that I have found here at Anime Feminist. Like, when people tell me that they care about my work, when people say that they care about me getting better, when Vrai very frequently tells me, “Stop taking on so much,” that is a love that I need because that’s a love that maybe I… well, I’m not even gonna say “maybe.” That’s a love I didn’t grow up with. 

And so I totally stand with you, and that power of transformation is something that I know for sure we’re doing here at Anime Feminist, and I hope people in our community see that as well.

TONY: Yeah, I hope so too. And so I wanted to move us on to the last piece, which is I wanted to leave the community with some kind of recommendations for books—or not even necessarily recommendations, but just personal anecdotes about certain books, anime, or other media that have kind of given us political and spiritual clarity in this moment. I think we should probably limit this to about maybe four minutes a person, so maybe share four things and each thing gets one minute, or at least that’s what I’m gonna do.

CY: I think that’s good because I can envision Vrai right now being like, “Why did they yap so long?” And it’s because Tony’s so much fun to talk to, Vrai!

TONY: Oh, thank you, Cy. This has been a delight.

CY: We didn’t mean to go long. Oops. [Chuckles]

TONY: Whoopsies. Too much fun.

So, I think I can get us started, because I’ve already mentioned Mutual Aid by Dean Spade, and I went into some of the basic ideas behind it. So, first of all, that. Highly recommend that. Very important text.

I think, for me, one of the key texts that has been important for me has been Vinland Saga. And the reason that that text has been so meaningful to me recently is I have been struggling enormously to think about the weight of violent oppression, right, and struggling to imagine any kind of future in which we’re able to resist the force of the American military and the American police state through armed means, right? It just seems insurmountable. I mean, Huey P. Newton described it, I believe, as revolutionary suicide. I need to read his text to be able to fully make sure I’m not just spewing nonsense. 

And I think that Vinland Saga was part of a constellation of works recently, along with Dead Dead Demon’s Dededede Destruction, and reading Thích Nhất Hạnh’s writings and studying his life, that have helped me think through “what does it mean to nonviolently resist state violence,” right? And what does it mean to dedicate your life to that kind of nonviolence and that practice? 

And I think that for me, simultaneously reading Vinland Saga, talking to Yukimura-sensei, and then seeing the roots of that anime’s political ideas in Thích Nhất Hạnh’s writing and antiwar Buddhism has been transformative. I feel like I’ve been able to let go of this part of myself that was so angry and so despairing. The part of myself that I was exploring in that Madoka piece is a part of myself that I’ve had to let go of. It was always going to be based upon this kind of savior mentality. And that’s what Madoka’s about: how you get duped into, right? 

Yeah, and so just like Thorfinn had to kind of let go of his revenge fantasy, I had to let go of my savior fantasy, right, and confront the actual inner child within me, which is very similar in many ways to the actual children that I work with, right? I work with children who live very similar lives to what I grew up with. And Vinland Saga has provided me a language with which to think about “how do I engage in that kind of nonviolent resistance.” Wow! 

Oop, bam, whoopsies, I talked for like three minutes about Vinland Saga. Better quickly talk about the other things.

So, Vinland Saga, definitely top of list. I also think that Doppelganger by Naomi Klein has been instrumental. It is prophetic. It is, I think, one of the most important texts for anybody to read to understand how we got where we are. The central thesis is about: how do people become radicalized to the right? And for that matter, how do people become radicalized for Zionism? And how is it that the same material conditions that lead people to become radicalized to the left also are what lead people oftentimes to become radicalized to the right? 

It’s a book that I think, in conversation with Vinland Saga, has deepened my empathy so much for all people on the planet. It’s a very kind and generous book. 

And the last thing I’m gonna mention is Wicked. I just…

CY: I was gonna say, are we talking movie or are we talking the original Broadway play?

TONY: No, the new movie, the new movie. The original show is bleh! But the new movie is amazing.

CY: Oh, Tony coming in with the hot takes! [Chuckles]

TONY: Oh, it’s just true! I mean, listen, that original book [sic]… mm-mm-mm, not good, but seeing Cynthia Erivo, she just… Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande really elevate that musical, and then casting Michelle Yeoh was genius, and I could get into it. 

But I think Wicked is just a really beautiful kind of depiction of fascism and the ways that liberal sentimentality can be co-opted into fascism that I just find incredibly powerful, because everyone knows that liberalism is all about doing terrible things and then feeling really bad about it.

Boo-hoo, I’m gonna cry now. You know. Whoopsie, I did an imperial war. Time to go cry, you know. Whoopsie, I drone-striked a wedding in Pakistan. Better go feel bad about it. You know? And I think that Wicked really captures that through the character of the Wizard. Yeah.

So, and lastly, of course, Oshimi. And you can read my Oshimi interview if you want to see how that has given me food for thought.

Cy, you want to leave us with some things that have helped you?

CY: I do, and for everyone’s sake, I’ma set a timer. [Chuckles] Okay, so, I read all of Claymore this year, the manga, and the way that it rewired my brain around the concept of how you can defeat evil with heart and when is the time to pick up the blade. Fantastic manga. 

It is all available, if you’re in territories that it services, through the Shonen Jump app. It’s all in there to read. You just have to have a… I think it’s $2.99 for the subscription, $2.99 USD. Highly recommend it. It is a fascinating look about, you know, when do you pick up the blade and when do you put it down.

I feel like I could say a lot about Revolutionary Girl Utena and how it’s kind of state-sanctioned violence by proxy of being a school which would receive state funding, but you can just go listen to those thoughts on our podcasts about it. [Chuckles]

In terms of non-Japanese media, I actually want to bring up two Korean works that I read that are absolutely my books of the year, and that is A Magical Girl Retires by Park Seolyeon. It is basically a book about a millennial who gets turned into a magical girl, and instead of having a Cardcaptor Sakura–esque staff or something cute, her wand is a credit card.

TONY: Oh, my God!

CY: [Chuckles] And it’s a really poignant look at what magical girls are having to face as their biggest fight. That’s right: it’s climate change! And it’s really, really good. Anton Hur does an excellent translation. It’s novella length, so you could gobble it up in a day. Like, if it’s Christmas, just get that and [if] you’re like, “Ooh, I want to get away from my family because I have sensory needs,” just get that and go in a corner and just read it. It’s a beautiful cover as well.

And also Snowglobe, which is by Soyoung Park. Snowglobe is the first book in a duology, and it came out this year. Gorgeous hardcover. And it asks the question, “What if we put a bunch of people in the one geothermically perfect environment, and the trade-off for them being able to live there was that they’re all actors on unscripted reality TV shows and they were recorded 24/7?” So, it is so— It’s Hunger Games meets The Truman Show. 

It’s so fucking good. It’s so fucking good. And there’s lots of twists and turns. And it’s really well translated. I will fully say I did not write down the translator’s name. I know it was a woman who translated it. And the second book is due next year, so you don’t have to wait a long time. 

And once again, it really challenged me because America is kind of the capital of a specific brand of reality TV, and it really brought to mind, like, what if that was how we had to survive? And for some people who have made it big on reality TV, that is how they survived. I think of Honey Boo Boo. For a long time— You know, people love to make fun of little fat children as if they’re the most hideous thing on Earth instead of… like, that’s a child and their body is not your question to ask. But she supported her whole family off of that. And it’s just a really fascinating look at that culture and what it would be like if your life was for consuming. 

So that’s my recommendations, and I’m coming in with 14 seconds left on my timer! Whoo!

TONY: [Chuckles] Alright, well, with that, I think we’ll just… I hope that this conversation has left you all with a lot of food for thought. I hope it’s left you emboldened with different ideas for how we can use the anime community to create some amount of social change. And is there any last things you wanted to say, Cy?

CY: Yeah, I mean, just, you know… In order to keep up the good fight, coming back to conversations like this is important, but also remember: you gotta take care of yourself. Feed yourself, nurture yourself, give yourself a moment. We’re all fighting the same fight, and we’re all going to cross the finish line the best way we can. We got this.

TONY: Yeah. We will get through this together, but only together. That’s the thing, right?

CY: [crosstalk] Yep. Only together.

TONY: And if we aren’t ready to hear people when they are having trouble and suffering and help support them when they are, we won’t all get through it together. So, we gotta be ready to talk about difficult things and to support people through difficult things, or else we might as well be burying our heads in the sand. And we gotta remember love is abundant even if money isn’t. So, there are always ways to support each other.

And with that, this has been Chatty AF: The Anime Feminist Podcast. If you like what you heard, please rate and review us. It really goes a long way to helping people to find our stuff. You can also subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/animefeminist. 

We are on Bluesky @animefeminist at bluesky.com. We are also on Tumblr @animefeminist. Or… I think it might be @anifemsite on Tumblr? I don’t remember. It’s something like that. 

With that, thank you for joining me, Cy. See y’all later.