Chatty AF 229: 2025 Spring Mid-Season Check-In (WITH TRANSCRIPT)

VRAI: We get a lot more depth on his character and what he’s going through as an adoptee, in his relationship with Gwen, and the fact that he is constantly self-sabotaging for the sake of revenge when he has this potential happy relationship right here that clearly he relies on so much. He’s like the most sad little meow-meow.

TONY: [Laughs]

[Introductory musical theme]

VRAI: Hello and welcome to Chatty AF: The Anime Feminist Podcast. My name is Vrai. I’m the daily operations manager here at AniFem. You can find me being professionally sad about vampires on Bluesky @writervrai. And with me today, I have Peter and Tony.

PETER: Hi, I’m Peter. I’m an editor at Anime Feminist, and I am @peterfobian on Bluesky.

TONY: Hi, I’m Tony. I’m a contributing editor at Anime Feminist. You can find me at kuu (that’s K-U-U) dash hime [@kuu-hime] on Bluesky.

VRAI: And welcome to our seasonal podcast. We are checking in at the midway point for the spring 2025 season. If you’re just joining us for the first time, then what we do is we take our premiere digest and we work from the bottom up. It’s just the easiest way for people to keep track of where shows are and to sort of make a sensible order. So, even if shows kind of move in what they’re doing, they improve or they get additional content warnings and go downhill, we keep to that initial order we gave them, just for simplicity’s sake. 

There will be some spoilers here. And if you are looking for sequels or continuations, you’ll want to check back in on our end-of-season podcast, which is where we do sort of a roundup on second seasons and shows that are carrying over from winter. And one last thing: if you find yourself listening or reading and saying, “Dang, you didn’t talk about the show that I wanted,” our patrons vote every season on what shows they’re most interested in making sure we cover within the limited time we have, so you can head over there every season and help us decide what to talk about.

Alright. [Claps hands] Speaking of, our first show for the day is A Ninja and an Assassin Under One Roof, which, Peter and Tony, you are both watching and I’m gonna get to eventually. How are the Shaft lesbians?

TONY: This episode was definitely Shaft lesbians. I’m not gonna lie: I really love the Shaft lesbians. I think I’m liking the show more and more as it goes on, as it becomes clear whatever fanservice it has is more in the service of just a dumb joke rather than actually titillating at all. Case in point, this episode, which was the boob nonsense episode, very self-consciously, in that it asked the question “What would it be like to actually have giant anime bazongas?” Right? What would that actually be like for a girl?

VRAI: That is pretty funny.

TONY: It honestly might be my favorite episode of the series so far. I can’t count the number of times that I’ve watched when Satoko walks through the door for the first time with her gigantic breasts that have been augmented and she’s showing them off and they’re just bouncing around like big water balloons in a way that could never, ever, ever possibly be titillating. It’s just too ridiculous.

PETER: They’re like defamiliarized boobs, yeah.

TONY: Pretty much, yeah. And then the show kind of goes through, like, how is she going to do dishes when they are in the way? How is she going to chop vegetables, right? And just various different situations that would be hard if your breasts looked like the ridiculous sorts of things that, I don’t know, the writer of Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid creates. You know?

PETER: I thought it was very funny. And yeah, yeah, the way they portrayed the boobs was not even… Like, if you get titillated by that, you should go to a doctor, I think.

TONY: My roommate walked in on that scene and said, “Boob inflation anime? Boob inflation kink?” But continue.

PETER: Yeah, I mean, the whole premise of that, too, was just because she wanted to have hammerspace so bad and saw somebody do an Utena sword pull. So, even her motivation kind of makes sense in context. But yeah, I think the show largely is very great. I… For a while— I’ve had a couple concerns as things went on, but that kind of turned out to be unfounded. I really— Yuri and Kuro are just like a textual basically married lesbian couple. I was worried for a while that Kuro might die, especially because Konoha really seems to want to kill her, but it seems like she is safe and Yuri is also safe.

I was also a little worried I might fall off since the relationship between Konoha and Satoko was kind of very… Konoha is not a nice person. [Chuckles]

TONY: No, she’s horrible.

PETER: And you start feeling really, really bad for Satoko after a while. But I think the ridiculous robot episode where Konoha falls in love with the robot for some reason did something really crazy, as the robot… even though it’s destroyed, it turned out it was just sort of a surrogate that allowed Konoha to actually maybe recognize her feelings for Satoko that she was denying earlier. So now it appears that there is a central lesbian romance as well, which is the most insane thing I think I’ve ever watched in my entire life.

TONY: It’s really growing, I think, in its poignance because I think that the Robo-toko episode… First of all, that one, I think, was either storyboarded or directed by the director of the newest Monogatari series, and it really shows in just how emotionally resonant it is and how beautiful the direction is.

PETER: And the Shaft nonsense, like when she kills the ninja and it just swaps to some real-life cabbage getting shredded.

TONY: Very Shaft nonsense, but I love it so much.

PETER: I loved that so much, yeah.

TONY: And honestly, I think one of the central questions in this series is what do you do when— I think Konoha might perceive herself as being at a different level of maturity than Satoko, right, like perceive Satoko as being just immature, and I think to an extent she is, but then Konoha has her own immaturity that she’s gotta work through if they’re gonna have a real romance. But I do think it’s interesting to have a show that’s about, like, what does it mean to try to be patient with the people who you love’s things that they need to work on. [Chuckles]

PETER: Definite IQ-versus-EQ kind of thing, right?

TONY: Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is the… I guess Konoha is the IQ, Satoko is the EQ? [Chuckles]

PETER: Yes.

TONY: And I’m glad to see larger story arcs starting to happen with it and for it to kind of escape the sense of victimization that I felt that was starting to happen to Satoko.

VRAI: Alright. Well, I gotta move us on. We’ve got— Let’s see. We have some notes for the next couple of shows from other members on the team, which I am always grateful for. So, next on our list is Mono, and now we go to Alex, our slice-of-life and hobby anime reporter: “Mono is largely still staying the course and hasn’t evolved beyond what it set up in the premiere. Show hasn’t really touched on the very clear sapphic overtones that helped kick off the plot. There hasn’t really been much emphasis on the characters’ relationships at all, even as the photography gals make a new friend and combine the defunct photo club with the defunct cinema club. They’re all just sort of hanging out, drifting from one pretty location to another, helping the manga artist with her research, and reacting to stuff they see, which is fine for a chill-out show, but I can’t help but hunger for a bit more depth and a bit more active passion. We’ve barely even had any fun facts about videography, which is not super relevant to intersectional feminist analysis of the series, but it is disappointing, given that geeking out about a niche hobby is often the key draw of shows like this, and it’s not really got the juice. I’d be interested to know if other people feel the same way or if I just have unfavorably high standards based on how much I love the genre and the creator’s previous project. And I can’t help but think of Laid-Back Camp because characters from that series keep popping up in the background.”

But, on the other hand, they also left us some notes for Food for the Soul, which is the other kind of cozy hobby show this season. To quote: “This one’s largely just capital-C Cute and capital-F Fine and is rolling along doing its slice-of-life thing. One thing I’d like to flag is that now we’ve met all the characters from the promo material, including the club’s newest member, Nana, who is extroverted and bubbly around her friends but literally cannot talk to strangers without being gripped by fear. It means she looks mean and unapproachable or hides and runs away from conversations with new people, and this is played up for both comedy and a little bit of conflict. Her intro episode features some very awkward sequences with protagonist Mako before they get past that wall of anxiety, which mostly happens because Mako meets Nana where she is and respects her boundaries, even if she’s a bit put off at first. It’s sweet, but I wonder how this might resonate very differently to viewers. To some, she might seem like a relatable representation of anxiety dialed up for comedy, and to others, she might seem like an over-the-top stereotype that’s more cutesy than realistic. I don’t have a concrete answer either way, but it did make me think of an article we published a few years ago called ‘Reconsidering Moe Through a Neurodiverse Lens’ that unpacks this kind of tension.” That’s interesting, that— Like, if you have a series by the Laid-Back Camp creator and one that’s not, I wouldn’t expect that the one that’s not would be the one that’s coming out ahead.

PETER: Interesting. I would say that, between the two, I enjoy Mono more. In fact, I think I might like Mono more than Laid-Back Camp itself. But…

VRAI: Huh!

PETER: I think it’s just a personal preference thing.

TONY: Say more about that. I want to know why.

VRAI: You work in video. Is it, like, hitting better?

PETER: No, not at all. In fact, I know two people who are photography enthusiasts, who I was like, “Oh, this anime is supposed to be all about photography,” and they watched it and all of us kind of… [Chuckles] They don’t do anything with it after that, but all three of us are still enjoying it. So, I think it’s kind of like the same thing as Laid-Back Camp but maybe executed with more experience on the part of the author so that, I guess, the chill vibes and adventure and stuff are more fun. Also, you get the occasional easter egg from Laid-Back Camp, which are very indulgent but also fun.

VRAI: Okay, but Laid-Back Camp does have a lot of fun facts, many fun facts, about camping.

PETER: True, yeah, I guess if you’re an enthusiast about camping, you get all the… you know, they pull out the tools and the cooking techniques and stuff. I think this is just kind of stripped of the product placement–slash-instructionals on how to camp and it’s just kind of wacky behavior. Also, it’s got better animation.

VRAI: I will not use the phrase Cute Girls Do Cute Things. I will not use the phrase Cute Girls Do Cute Things. That’s not a real genre anymore! Uh, so, it’s a hang sesh.

PETER: Yeah. It’s just goofy stuff. But I do agree that the beginning of Mono is very strange, since it— One girl literally imagines herself growing old with the other girl in the club and drinking tea on their porch, and then that does not come up again. Very confusing, but it’s still a fun show.

VRAI: Rock on. Is there anything worth saying about The Beginning After the End? Because I keep getting news items about how people are mad that the animation isn’t very good, and I’m just like, “You are weak and would never survive the shoujo winter.” Anything as a show?

PETER: I will say that it did say slavery is bad.

VRAI: Hey! So, you know what—

PETER: [crosstalk] So, it’s got that going for it.

TONY: The bar is in hell.

VRAI: Alright, the bar is in hell but it met it. Let’s talk about a show that’s much better, which is a Cygames show, and that’s Apocalypse Hotel.

PETER: God, do I have really anything to say about this show? I think it’s really fun. The episode where they’re hunting the worm from Dune might be my favorite episode of anime this year so far. I think it really does well balancing this sense of existential dread upon this kind of goofy comedy. The characters are pretty great. Yeah, but I don’t know if I have a lot to dig into besides me just really enjoying it, the aesthetic and the comedy and the characters.

TONY: It’s definitely a show, a very good one. Definitely a very good show.

PETER: True.

TONY: A lot of the themes that I was kind of pointing out in the first episode that were kind of more existential have fallen a little bit by the wayside, because, you know, she now has guests, right, and they occasionally have aliens come to the hotel. And there is this kind of question of living in denial, and to what extent can you continue to live in denial. As far as we can tell, the humans are not coming back.

PETER: So you’re saying it’s kind of like a Don Quixote–type situation with the manager of the hotel?

TONY: A little bit, yeah. Or, like, almost… I would almost say Sisyphus, which is what I put in my premiere review, right? Like…

PETER: Oh, shit. Okay.

TONY: You have to imagine Sisyphus happy, right? [Chuckles] Even as he rolls the boulder up the hill every single day and it rolls right back down again. There’s a little bit less of that sense now, but there is this question of… it’s been replaced more by this question of: are they just going to kinda live in denial about the situation? And what’s gonna happen when the tanuki family… I can’t imagine they’re gonna live there forever.

PETER: Well, they had to convert their spaceship into a house, so I don’t know if they can leave. And also, apparently, they were staying at the hotel for like 50 years, so I have no idea how long they live.

TONY: That’s true, they were. And as far as we can tell, 50 years it’s like two years our time in terms of their lifespan. So, yeah, it’s a good show. Definitely another banger by the writer of Zombie Land Saga. It’s good.

PETER: Rather than thoughtfulness, I guess it just kinda turned into, like, Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou–esque vibes. They also had a really great joke where the guy who was going to come to destroy human civilization shows up and he’s too late so he just hangs out for a bit [Chuckles], has to leave. But yeah, it doesn’t seem like there’s too much to dig into, at least for me, past just enjoyment after the first episode or two.

TONY: It’s not like it’s trying to radically critique customer service.

[Chuckling]

VRAI: It’s just a nice show that’s good, and that’s okay.

PETER: Yeah. I recommend it.

TONY: Highly recommend it, yeah.

VRAI: Nice. Yeah, that’s another one that’s on my to-watch once I can catch up on things.

On the subject of notes from the team, we are now moving up into our top two categories, and the first one is To Be Hero X, which Cy was kind enough to check back in on even though they were kind of unimpressed by it three episodes in. I don’t think that’s improved. So, to quote: “My biggest gripe is the absolute lack of any resolution regarding Moon being actually murdered nor Nice’s life after that. Does he change? Does he recognize her lack of autonomy? No. Instead, the show is now focused on a new hero named E-Soul. And while I’m sure his path will cross with Nice’s, like… who the fuck is this college student? Yeah, we see the character E-Soul at the end of Episode 4, and it’s obvious this isn’t the same guy, but who the fuck is this college student? I want some level of resolution for Moon! Justice for my girl! Very ‘He doesn’t even go here’ vibes. 

“And, like, once again, the women in this series just feel so one-note and lackluster. They could all be replaced with lamps, and there really wouldn’t be much missing outside of romantic motivation for the male leads, which really serves to highlight the fact that Moon’s ability was to teleport herself to Nice, including the new version of him that succeeds the one who died by suicide. And I hate it, because the show actually has potential. But I’m just constantly grinding my teeth because it’s a real boys’ club here outside of tragic women or girls who are motivating them as their sole purpose for existence. The women are never the hero, once the villain, once the companion, and finally a lost Lenore. Where is their place in this world of heroes? Clearly, best served with a smile on demand and little else, given the show’s current direction. And yes, I know that might be plot, but does plot have to be laid on a foundation of tragic women? I don’t think so and I’m not sure that in 2025 it’s ever going to feel compelling, even though I’m still sticking with the show.”

TONY: I love scathing Cy. I just have to put that out there.

VRAI: I feel like something that comes up in the Discord fairly often is that, “Damn, if Cy doesn’t have anything nice to say about a show, it’s really bad!”

PETER: I think that the show—

VRAI: Go on, please.

PETER: —was… It is doing a lot of interesting stuff with the— Because the hero’s power essentially comes from people’s belief in that hero. It’s called, like, their Trust score or something like that. And they’ve kinda, especially in the first arc with Nice, covered how the conception… It’s kinda like idol culture, where the perception of your fans and your fans’ idealistic view of you is ultimately a constraint that you can’t break out of. Like, the character Nice, he’s supposed to be so perfect that he ends up developing, like, obsessive-compulsive disorder around keeping things immaculate. 

And since the fans had a perception like he said, “Oh, Moon and Nice would make a great couple,” and everybody shipped them together, after that, Moon lost her ability to teleport wherever she wanted and could only teleport to Nice after that, and they were trapped in that relationship essentially. And she was not into Nice at all, especially so after, essentially, her power was turned into something that was sublimated to him, right? And then, of course, there’s a thing about… I think he was called Mr. Firm, who… he was able to— It just came with this concept of him as a hero who’s always standing in the way of danger, and after that, he couldn’t sit down or lie down for something like half a decade, until finally this one person’s scheme results in the guy losing enough Trust that he stopped being a superhero and lost his superpowers, but after that, he was able to sit down again and was very happy to no longer be a celebrity, I guess. So, there’s obviously a lot of stuff going on there that I think is really interesting. But yeah, the fact that they fridged Moon twice and actually had the same thing happen in the E-Soul story arc is really concerning when it comes to, like, the writing quality side.

VRAI: Yeah, and that sounds like it echoes what Lizzie talked about when they reviewed the premiere, too: like, yeah, there’s totally some interesting, meaty stuff going on here about celebrity culture, just at the expense of the female characters.

PETER: Yes.

VRAI: But you were saying.

PETER: I do expect that this “swap to E-Soul” thing is gonna happen about eight more times, since it seems to be a series that’s supposed to be about the top ten heroes. And I’m assuming everyone’s gonna get a four-episode thing, so we’re probably looking at 40 episodes of… That seems to be the pattern that’s revealed itself. But some of the heroes are women. At least three of them are women. So, maybe when they are the focus of the writing they’ll be treated better? I can say the other fridged character was also a guy and not a woman. I, too, would like things to get back to whatever the hell is going on with Nice and Moon, but maybe that’ll be a lead-in for the main story. Definitely a weak area of the story so far.

TONY: I am fascinated by the fact that this is a Chinese-Japanese co-production.

VRAI: Mm-hm. Well, this is the— My understanding is that the source material is the same creator as To Be Hero X, which… wildly popular donghua. And from my understanding, folks who are big fans of that have reported kind of similar issues, is that it’s really great and compelling; not so great with female characters.

PETER: Mm-hm. I think Cyan might be the next focus character, given that E-Soul keeps talking about being a fan of her music, so she’s, like, literally, the idol superhero, so I think she’ll be maybe the next focus character. There’s obviously a larger plan here, and I’m curious where they’re planning to get to all this. Also, in addition to being Chinese-Japanese, I think it’s like a multi-studio production on the Chinese side. They have a trailer where they specifically say it’s like different animation studios. I don’t know if they’re taking turns for each story arc, which could result in some wildly different levels of production and/or story. But yeah, yeah, the production is definitely very interesting, as well.

VRAI: Yeah, it’s visually very, very striking.

Let’s move up to something that’s less mixed, and, um… You know what, Tony? Tony, you suffered. You suffered. You go ahead. You deserve this.

TONY: Lazarus?

VRAI: [crosstalk] We are talking about Lazarus.

TONY: Okay, are you fully caught up on Lazarus, Peter?

PETER: I think Episode 7 just came out, right? I’ve watched six episodes.

TONY: Really? Oh, my God. It just keeps happening! It keeps happening! Okay, so, my issue with Lazarus is, like, nothing frickin’ matters. Nothing they do ever matters. None of the little hijinks that they get into matter. Like, a typical Lazarus episode, we start in the planning room, in their home base, and the hacker girl is kind of explaining to them something she discovered, and everyone is sitting there bored, and they are the audience surrogate because we are bored while she’s narrating to us all these things about people we don’t know and plans that we do not care about. Axel says something corny. The rest of the crew groans. We groan, too, because he’s corny! They go to this disclosed third location. And sometimes it’s an interesting location, right? Like, in the rave episode, I quite liked that episode! It also happens to be the only episode actually written by Dai Sato. And then one of them… somehow, through some bullshit reason, some fight chase sequence is instigated. It’s always stupid! It’s never a good reason!

PETER: It doesn’t even seem like there’s any development on the metaplot level besides the fact that they’re running out of time, right?

TONY: No, there’s none! It’s just like, every single time it’s a shaggy-dog story. And I can’t stand it anymore! Honestly, I dropped it because I was just like, “Fuck this shit!” And… I don’t like it! And it’s getting to the point where the John Wick choreographed fight scenes are starting to feel really tonally dissonant, because, say, Axel will purposefully provoke the guards in an elevator into attacking him, and then he’ll fucking destroy their asses, like choking them half to death. Like, what is happening? If you’re gonna have John Wick fight choreography, then you have to have a reason for that level of intense… like, intensity. Otherwise, it just feels like “I guess this guy’s just an asshole?”

PETER: Yeah. They’re looking for excuses to have fight scenes rather than giving good reasons for him to fight people.

TONY: He just comes across as a dick.

VRAI: [crosstalk] So, Akudama Drive this is not?

TONY: No, this is not Akudama Drive!

PETER: Yeah, and I read in an interview where Watanabe was asking people not to compare this to Bebop, but it seems like such a discount Bebop. I feel like it’s supposed to have the same dynamic between the characters, although I feel like after one episode with any of the characters from Bebop, you really got a good sense of what their character was like. And I still don’t really feel like I know anybody in this series, except maybe the hacker girl, a bit more. But honestly, there’s not too much there.

TONY: I kinda liked Chris in the episode where, you know… Well, if you haven’t read our three-ep check, essentially a guy tries to date-rape her and a whole room of girls, and then she can’t be date-raped because she does too much drugs already.

PETER: Yeah. [Chuckles] That was a crazy excuse, yes.

TONY: I kinda liked that episode.

PETER: I feel like during that episode, though, she was supposed to be like the femme fatale, and the series seemed to go out of its way to say, like, “Oh, yeah, she wasn’t able to get an invite to the VIP area. Meanwhile, the boy who we force-femmed on our squad was invited up,” as kind of like… to kind of take her down a peg or something. Which, I didn’t like that dynamic, yeah.

TONY: Well, I guess the DJ is just a chaser, you know, is the implication.

PETER: Have you watched Episode 6, with the cult?

TONY: No, I haven’t.

PETER: Okay, I feel like there’s like a border between doing homage to Midsommar and just plagiarizing it. And I feel like it went into the area of plagiarism. James Beckett—

VRAI: Now, now, I also heard people call it discount Wicker Man, which, I mean… that might be redundant.

PETER: Oh, yeah. Because he was trying to burn him to death, yeah. James Beckett kinda described a lot of the plot holes in that, like the timing just doesn’t make sense and the cult doesn’t make sense, and the creative impetus behind the AI thing they have at the cult all doesn’t make sense. It’s just like, yeah, “Where’s all this writing coming from and where’s it going?” is kind of a continuous mood in this series.

TONY: Well, sometimes it just feels like there’s this deep incuriosity about the world that they’re in, right? Like, I mean, think about, say, the Pakistani hacker girl, right? She could have been a really fun character. But instead, all they do is give her lines like “Hardcore!” Like, the number of times that she said that in that episode, and every single time I wanted to die. I was like, “Y’all… She has such a great character design. Nobody can fault the show’s character designs. Can you give her a personality to match that character?”

VRAI: You’re giving me so many flashbacks to Great Pretender, by the way.

TONY: Oh, it’s very Great Pretender vibe. It’s very Great Pretender vibe. Yeah.

PETER: Yeah, I was gonna bring that up when you mentioned heists, just like… But they weren’t actually heists at the end of the day, so… Yeah, I mean, I think Watanabe has a reputation for having good representation in his stories, and there was a positive representation of a trans character as well. So, I think you can give it that. But yeah, I think ultimately those characters seem more interesting than the people we’re following… is the problem!

VRAI: One thing that folks were asking about and, Tony, you talked about in your check, was the kind of potential antisemitic dog whistles. Is that still going in the background? Has it gotten worse? Is it… [mutters indistinctly]?

TONY: I mean, as long as it has that opening animation that begins and ends with a dreidel being spun and is always about this medical conspiracy, it’s gonna continue to have that problem. And that happens literally every single episode; they recycle the animation.

VRAI: Hoo.

TONY: So, it’s basically a second opening for the series.

VRAI: Yeah, let’s move on to a show that’s very good, actually, Kowloon Generic Romance, which is good! And I haven’t— As we’re recording today, Episode 7 just dropped. I haven’t watched that one yet, but I’m otherwise current. Tony, did you want a chance to geek out about this one first?

TONY: Sure. I mean, first of all, Gwen hot.

VRAI: [crosstalk] You don’t have to if you want a break from your despair.

TONY: No, it is a break from my despair because I’m very happy with it. I mean, first of all, Gwen hot. Gwen is very hot. Very happy to have hot gay male representation who are also, like… sane.

VRAI: I was about to say, yeah, you so often bemoan the fact that there aren’t a lot of canonically queer ripped dudes in anime.

TONY: Well, there’s… not only that, but canonically queer dudes at all who are in animes that are not explicitly BL, right? Whereas with yuri, I feel like there’s a lot of canonically lesbian characters in non-yuri shows. They’re often kind of a type where they’re the pining best friend who’s very sweet and would never actually, you know, cause problems. But, you know, they’re there, and it’s nice that they’re there. Whereas with gay men, there’s just almost… there’s nothing. They have to be cordoned off in their own little BL universe where no homophobia exists. So, it’s really nice to see a show that seems actually interested in people who canonically identify as gay. You know? Gwen says explicitly at one point, like, “Yeah, if you were presenting as a girl,” to Miyuki, who’s intersex, “I would probably not have picked you up in a bar,” right? He’s out. He’s open. And he’s openly gay in conversations with his close friend Kudo, right? And they talk about his relationships. And Miyuki and Gwen are also a really interesting relationship because it kind of serves a similar function, I think, to the romances in Sailor Moon, where it’s like you have this queer-coded villain who’s like, ooh, menacing, ooh, scary, but then shows his tenderness and his psychological complexity through his relationship with this other man. If that makes sense?

VRAI: No, totally. And I gotta say, since we flagged it in the digest and since it didn’t really come up in the check, because Chiaki was talking more about the historical context of the show—which is really fascinating, and if you haven’t read it, you should read what she wrote—I do want to shout out how pleasantly surprised I am by Miyuki because, yeah, the first episode he’s in he’s just kind of the queer stereotype, where he’s doing the voice (you all know the voice) and his first move is to sort of sexually harass Reiko to get a rise out of Kudo. And then after that first appearance, it basically drops. Like, the voice performance itself becomes a lot more naturalistic, we get a lot more depth on his character and what he’s going through as an adoptee, in his relationship with Gwen, and the fact that he is constantly self-sabotaging for the sake of revenge when he has this potential happy relationship right here that clearly he relies on so much. He’s like the most sad little meow-meow.

TONY: [Laughs]

VRAI: And as you pointed out, he’s intersex, and that’s just introduced in a conversation with his doctor, because he wants to know if… He’s sterile, right? And I think that clearly was something he’s considering as part of his revenge on his adoptive father. But that’s how it comes up. We don’t have to have a scene where he gets stripped naked and people are shocked by his genitals. Hooray!

TONY: [crosstalk] Absolutely not. If anything, there’s a scene in the most recent episode, where Gwen has sex with him for the first time, and Gwen’s just like, “Oh! Okay. Chill.” And we don’t actually see the sex, but it’s like they’re kind of sitting in bed together, and never does the camera linger on anything that would make Miyuki look gross or grotesque. If anything, it lingers on his sexy, chiseled masculine features. Which, thank you, show. I love that.

[Chuckling]

TONY: So it really is an interesting representation of queerness. I think that overall the show is wrapping that up really nicely into this larger question of identity and how do we rely on nostalgia and on models outside of ourselves, et cetera, to figure out our identities. And I really appreciate that the show is kind of using that as another way to explore that idea, rather than making it its own gross kind of “shocking twist! Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” It’s very matter of fact.

VRAI: But I do also— Like, it’s a romance show. It’s not horny fanservicey in the way that first episode is anymore. It basically kind of drops that off in a very “We wanted to hook in viewers the first episode, and now we’re going to do what we’re actually doing.” Chiaki’s actually been reading the manga, which is coming out in English. She’s been getting the Japanese ePub editions, and it seems like they’re really booking through the story, and not in a way that’s… It’s been working for me as an anime-only viewer, but it is interesting to hear from her that we’re losing a lot of moments of getting to hang out with the characters more, basically, such that this might be going for a complete adaptation of 12 volumes in 12 episodes, which is interesting. You know?

PETER: Yeah, it definitely doesn’t feel like it’s going on that kind of clip. But also, based on the first episode, I could definitely see just a lot of the story being like just a lot of vibes, “I want to draw characters chilling in Kowloon” type stuff, that’s probably getting clipped. You know?

VRAI: I know you said that [Episode] 6 felt a little bit rushed for you, Tony, because it was going through… That’s the big lore dump episode, right?

TONY: Yeah, it was a bit confusing to me. And also, characters were introduced, and, you know, they didn’t really do much other than kind of serve as the lore-dumper of the episode. And that was a little bit like, okay, this is a little bit clumsier storytelling than we’ve had so far. But I feel like that was saved by Episode 7, which was so character focused and so laser focused on the relationship between Gwen and Miyuki, in a way I found incredibly satisfying and a very nice course-correct. It seems like this show is trying to focus on the things that matter at the end of the day, and I can’t fault it for that.

VRAI: Definitely with Yaomay’s episode, which I really liked a lot. I think the show is good at character portraits. But with her, that was the episode where I felt a little bit like, “You’ve made this functional, but I want some more time to sit with her and what she’s gone through,” because that episode isn’t… That episode isn’t lore heavy in the same way 6 is, which shockingly worked a little bit better for me, I don’t know, maybe because it’s so invested in terms… I don’t… whereas 5 is more about vibes and emotions. But yeah, I found myself seeing like, gosh, I want a little bit more time to just sit with her during conversation and how she’s feeling about these things and seeing her mom from this revival film festival, when she thought she’d gotten away, and the fact that Kowloon apparently works on Howl’s Moving Castle logic.

PETER: Yeah, that definitely felt like more American cartoon–type storytelling, where they have to move things back into the status quo by the end of the episode. So, they kinda— I really liked her subplot, but yeah, it felt like they’re like, “Okay, we gotta wrap this up real fast,” and you didn’t, yeah, as you said, Vrai, get to sit with the character and kind of feel out the kind of tumultuous emotional state she was in after being reminded of her past life.

VRAI: Which, when that storyline’s taking up an entire volume to itself, probably works a lot better to come back to that reaffirmation place.

PETER: Mm-hm, for sure.

VRAI: But no, yeah, this is a really good show for all the reasons that you enumerated, and I hope people check it out? Yeah.

PETER: Same.

VRAI: Any last thoughts on your part, Tony?

TONY: Yeah, I mean, it’s also interesting to me, I think, as somebody who is myself Chinese from that region of China—I mean, from Guangdong, which is very near Hong Kong, right—just how this idea of nostalgia gets interwoven with this very particular location that has this history with Japanese colonization and imperialism. And I find it fascinating to think about whether the show is kind of conscious of the power dynamic that’s going on there, right? I’m not sure it quite is, if I’m being really honest here, but that doesn’t necessarily leave me in a place where I dislike the show. It just means I’ve got to turn elsewhere for that kind of critique of imperialism, if that makes sense.

VRAI: Yeah, totally. Like, the show understands Kowloon as a source of toxic nostalgia and the fact that that is maybe sort of incidentally tied to what it represented for maybe the author’s generation of Japanese people, but she’s not connected on a systemic level, right? So… Is maybe what you’re… Yeah.

TONY: Yeah, no, no, that’s exactly it. Especially thinking about just the character of Reiko and the fact that she’s renting units, I don’t know, a property manager, essentially. You know? It’s like, okay… And she’s Japanese and she works for a Japanese firm. There’s more going on there than the show seems to be aware of, speaking as somebody who, myself, lives in New York and thinks very often about the dynamics between renters and owners and within a racial context. Again, this is just not a show that I’m going to be able to look to for that, you know, and I can’t say this is a show failing at what it’s trying to do, because it was never trying to do that.

VRAI: Right. I totally get you. I got shows like that myself. But it’s also worth talking about. And honestly, if folks want to talk about that in relation to this show or other shows dealing with that sort of interplay between Japan and Chinese aesthetic, Chinese history, we would love your pitches. But, for the sake of time—honestly, we could do a whole podcast on this show, if that’s what folks want—let’s move on.

The Gorilla God’s Go-To Girl, Cy and Alex, I believe, are both watching, but it’s one that made it as sort of staying the course on our check-in and it seems to still pretty much be in that place. It’s like a nice fantasy reverse harem show that’s kinda got some gender, the gender stuff that Alex pointed out in the premiere, but mainly it’s kind of interested in being cute and tropey. And if that is your thing, it seems like it’s a nice time. But neither of them had too much to comment on about it otherwise.

Alright, moving up to our last category, the Feminist Potential, Cy did have notes about The Too-Perfect Saint: Tossed Aside by My Fiancé and Sold to Another Kingdom, so I will quote from them: “Part of what’s fascinating is watching one sister finally be accepted for herself while the other actively prays for the downfall of her royal spouse. It’s genuinely heartwarming seeing Philia exist as herself but a steadily more happy version. She’s changing, not by force, but because she’s finally in a safe environment where she’s appreciated for the fact that not only does she have natural talent but incredibly impressive skills. She’s so much more than just a Saint; she’s a girl with feelings, and that’s getting the dedicated episode focus it deserves. 

“As a counter, we have her sister Mia, who so genuinely cares about her sister’s life abroad in another kingdom, she’s completely unaware that Philia is actually thriving and learning how to exist outside of her title and skills, which leads her to start down this fascinating path to revenge. Mia does eventually learn that Philia is safe, but she also really realizes how much her parents are meddling. I think both girls do, really, and it just kind of serves to show how cruel parents can be when they have a favorite just because of something as surface level as pleasantries. In any other anime, there’s the potential that this plot, which has definitely been done before on some level, would be kinda humdrum, but here it’s compelling because it’s driven by Mia’s deep love for her sister alongside an equally deep hate for the nation that abandoned one of their strongest Saints just because she expresses emotion differently, largely due to public and private trauma. It’s neat seeing her develop into a cunning and quite blunt, at times, young woman who is using the power imbued in her by being the next monarch, alongside her rotten prince of a fiancé, to do the right thing. In many ways, this series reminds me of My Happy Marriage, and honestly, it works for similar reasons. I love an underdog story and, better, deeply enjoy stories where young women are able to heal from their trauma by being embraced by an entire community. While not groundbreaking by any means, Perfect Saint has quietly become one of my favorite shows this season because of how well it executes on fantasy intrigue while also being incredibly kind to Philia.”

I think that’s nice. And like they say, this is the kind of show that’s maybe not shattering any grounds, but it’s doing a really good job of a thing in an existing subgenre, where, you know, normally… There are plenty of works of this sort, where a heroine is done wrong by and gets put in a better place and is much happier, that I have read, that end up demonizing or discounting other members of the female cast. And it sounds like this one is really dedicated to doing the opposite of that, and I think that’s lovely. So, you know, if it’s a subgenre that you have maybe been curious about, this seems like a good one to check out.

Alright, moving on up to Rock Is a Lady’s Modesty, which I hate that I’m behind on, but thankfully, Tony, you are up to date.

TONY: Sure am.

VRAI: How’s it going?

TONY: It’s good. I mean… This is definitely a show that I think, similar to what you were just describing, is very dedicated to not doing anybody in its female cast dirty. There was kind of set up this potential villainhood of the protagonist’s sister, and I really love how that sister’s own internalized crap around femininity and feminine expectations is also explored, and she gets very much humanized and not treated as just a crazy villain. If anything, it seems like the mother is going to be explored as more of a villainous character because she is the one who has put all this pressure on Lilisa to behave herself, essentially, and save her marriage, which is just so wrong to place upon a teenage girl, that expectation that you are going to single-handedly make me accepted by this incredibly classist and sexist community by being the perfect girl and disown everything that you care about and everything that actually matters to you, including your relationship with your father, your love of music… As somebody who plays the saxophone myself, I find it interesting how the show is also exploring kind of how instruments are gendered and how certain forms of music are very gendered, in the way that rock music and music generally can be a way for women to express anger in a way that is largely societally acceptable, if, you know, obviously not according to this ridiculous class system.

VRAI: I do kind of hope that the show ends up going a little bit more into the mom and why she’s so driven on this front, because it would be super easy to just condemn her as, you know, gold-digging and exacting, but there’s probably more nuance going on there. And it seems like as absurd as this show is, that’s something it could dig into if it took the time, you know?

TONY: I think the show is very intentional about that sort of thing. It often will set somebody up in one way and then show that they’re actually something else. I mean, that’s kind of what happened with Tina, who’s another character who’s introduced as this kind of princely character. Think Lady Oscar, think Utena, or… isn’t there one in Dear Brother, too?

VRAI: Yeah, Rei.

TONY: Yeah, just like, I think, Rei. And then it’s revealed that they are not that, inside, and they are actually deeply insecure and literally talk to a imaginary-friend stuffed animal any time that they’re anxious, just outside of camera view. As somebody who’s myself an instrumentalist and a musician, I would not really have the patience that Lilisa has with Rei—[Corrects self] not Rei—with Tina to teach them how to play their instrument. I think I would probably be more along the lines of how Tamaki feels, where she just is like, “Get this mediocre instrumentalist out of here, because we need people who are on our level.” But I also think that the show is interested in women’s solidarity with each other in terms of, like, Lilisa sees that this is an opportunity that Tina has now to develop some self-confidence and develop a backbone and to have the escape that she so clearly needs and that Lilisa so clearly has been wanting for years. And so, Lilisa really identifies with Tina in that way and refuses to deny her the opportunity that she herself had wanted for so many years—that Lilisa herself wanted, I mean. So, yeah, I think it’s… It’s a good show. And the music remains pretty good, though sometimes I wish it would just show them performing a little bit more.

VRAI: Mm, right.

TONY: And, yeah, it’s a good show. I like it. I wouldn’t say it’s my favorite of the season, but it’s enjoyable.

VRAI: It is very interesting to me… So, they just dropped a trailer for Young Ladies Don’t Play Fighting Games, which has been in development forever, and the manga of it actually technically predates Rock Lady. I didn’t mention this in the premiere review, but someone pointed out in the comments (and they’re right to do so) the first episode of Rock Is a Lady’s Modesty kind of steals the opening setup between the leads from Fighting Games, basically beat for beat!

TONY: Oh, dear.

VRAI: Which is not to say that— I don’t bring [that] out to say that “And therefore this show is shit.” I just think it’s interesting because it’s pretty blatant, but also, as they develop, it seems like Rock Lady is a little bit more actively interested in the class elements of its premise, whereas Young Ladies Don’t Play Fighting Games is fantastic and I love it and I’m so hyped for the anime, but it’s a little bit more focused on being a hobby game and, as the mangaka described it, she wanted to create a space that was like the gaming parlor she loved and imagine a space for that where girls could just enjoy themselves and feel really at home in this hobby. And I love that about the series, but it’s interesting to me the different way these two developed.

TONY: If you’re going to explore class, are we going to eternally be in this kind of upper-class environment, or are they going to have actual confrontations with people who do not have upper-class sensibilities? Because I think the show is interested in rock as this kind of language of the working class to say “Screw you” to society, right? But will the show… And this might, again, be another thing where this is not what the show is interested in and I just kind of have to accept that, right? Similar to Kowloon, right? Is the only kind of strictures of society that rock is against now going to be the constraints placed on upper-class women, right? Or is it going to explore other ways that rock can be a fuck-you to The Man or whatever you know? Again, if it really wants to go hard on the class elements, it would be very interesting to see if they encounter, say, a rival band that has a very different set of messages, right, and a very different set of circumstances. But again—

VRAI: I mean, it’s an ongoing manga, so who knows?

TONY: Who knows?

VRAI: I mean, obviously the one-season yuri curse will fall upon it but… You know, we’re getting the manga in English, so…

TONY: It is nice that this show is so well animated, though, because so often I think shows that are about subjects— So often yuri shows are so poorly animated and so poorly produced, and this one is artistically just firing on all cylinders at all times.

VRAI: Whisper Me a Love Song did its best, and it was very charming and, oh, it was struggling at the end.

TONY: Yeah, I’m definitely much more compelled by this than I was by Whisper Me a Love Song, I’m not gonna lie.

VRAI: Alright, moving on up, just to carry us through, two shows that I believe I am currently the only one watching. First of all, we have Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX, which, by reader demand, I still— My point remains sort of the same as it was at the check-in, which is this is a good show that I only understand about 40% of. I will say that the new characters have done some interesting stuff. You know, Episode 4 had the hot mom that everybody is drawing fan art of, with the actual purpose of that episode being about how revenge destroyed you, very Gundam. I feel a little bad that my predominant thought right now is “Man, I hope they fridge Shuji,” which sounds mean. He’s a really nice character. I don’t dislike him as a character, but he’s so clearly the writers consciously doing “Let’s do a guy version of the Newtype Waif (TM).” Thanks to regular contributor Megan for coining that term. And that is a character who is not infrequently killed off for man pain. And I would like to see it, just because… well, partly because let’s see your commitment to the bit and how the audience reacts, and (B) because while he’s there, it’s kind of fomenting a love triangle subplot between Machu and Nyaan in the background, and I don’t care for that at all. It’s just the most boring way to write conflict between female characters, and I think this show is smarter than that, so I kind of hope it moves away from that element quickly.

TONY: And it’s not a love triangle where they’re both into Machu.

VRAI: No, I know, which is some BS. It is shocking that the show has— Speaking of shows where I can’t be mad at it for not doing a thing it’s clearly not setting itself up to do, [Sighs] it doesn’t seem interested in having these two kiss at all! Very sad, very sad.

TONY: I mean, in the first— This is— You know, sometimes I kinda roll my eyes at accusations of queerbaiting in certain circumstances, but this does feel a little bit like “Y’all have them have ‘Sukira-kira’ in the first episode when they touch. Like, come on. Come on! What are you doing?”

VRAI: I mean, look, I’m just saying if they kill Shuji off for sadness points, that’s at least so many options for them to grow closer through this bonding experience. So sorry, Shuji. You are a plot device to me.

TONY: Trauma bonding is the best way. Yeah, no, I also dropped it because— I mean, you didn’t drop it yet. I dropped it because at a certain point I was just like, I just cannot be bothered to feel like I am, as you put it in your three-ep check, being told, “Leave the room until you’ve come back and watched 100 episodes of…” And at this point, it’s beyond even watching the first season of Mobile Suit Gundam, like the very first series. It’s watching that and the stuff about Newtypes and the stuff about all these other things, right? Like, you have to be deep in the lore of Gundam to actually get this shit. And I’m just like, “Come on, y’all, at least confine it to the first—”

VRAI: Newtypes are a pretty established franchise thing. That bit I do get, and I think it is somewhat part of the 0079 series. But yeah, it’s also something that has a ballooning amount of lore in other shows.

PETER: I thought— Amuro was a Newtype, wasn’t he?

VRAI: Yeah, I think so. Gundam fans, tell me when I’m wrong, because I’m sure I will be frequently, because, again, I am not suitably prepared for this show; I am simply trying my best for all of you.

TONY: Yeah, I’m just going off what people have said in the Discord about, you know, that it is requiring you to know lore from things that are not even just in the first series but in other things.

PETER: Well, if people feel really strongly about us doing a solo cast, we could bring out an expert and we could get an educator.

VRAI: [crosstalk] I mean, Megan came on for when we did G-Witch, and I’m sure that I could find some Gundam experts. You know, Lauren runs Gunpla 101. She’s busy being a parent mostly, but maybe we could get her out of retirement to talk about the Gundams. But yeah, if folks want us to do a fully dedicated episode, we are happy to see if we can find a way to make that work. For now, yeah, that’s kind of the best assessment I can give, just as somebody with a fairly casual, extremely non-UC knowledge of the franchise and what I’m getting from the new cast members. I like that it has continued to give… Like, my grumblings about the love triangle stuff aside, it has worked pretty hard, this show, to give women things to do in a lot of different facets, and I really appreciate that. And I just wish I knew who any of these people were that they’re talking about in the scenes that aren’t about our teenage leads.

So, from a show that everybody is already watching and they don’t need me to tell them about to a show that I think only I am watching and that everybody should check out, which is my Maebashi Witches. I sort of covered this a lot, in a fair amount of depth, in the check-in, but to sort of give an update, yeah, the show’s really still swinging big and, I think, largely succeeding as my favorite kind of magical girl show, which is kind of a sweet lowkey social issues series.

The next two-part episode after I picked up was maybe a little bit less successful than the one about fatphobia because it’s about… Yeah, the second two-parter that we get is about Mai, who’s the gamer girl, and it’s a little weird compared to Azu’s two-parter, which is pretty straightforwardly about that, you know, she’s fat, she struggles with bullying and the trauma from that, and she wants to become a witch because she can use magic to make herself thin, whereas Mai’s episode is…

One thing I really like about this show is that it’s doing a very interesting job of trying to balance our character of the week, who can kind of offer a very bite-sized, neatly-wrapped-up-with-a-bow version of the story, and then however the member of the main cast resonates with it kind of gets left a little bit more unresolved. And I think that works.

I’m holding judgment on how that goes with Mai, because her thing is that she is just clearly in love with this girl who was like her only friend and is like two years older, and then when she went into high school and Mai was still in middle school, she basically stopped talking to her to try and become an influencer and a model and a pageant contestant. But Mai is still like her number-one superfan. It ultimately resolves itself by undoing the events of the episode and sort of leaving her in the place of, like, “You are clearly in love with this girl,” but the character hasn’t realized that, and so the terms of the script are just leaving it as “Oh, you really want to be her number one person, like the most important person to her.” And I’m like, “You’re gonna get there, kid!” And because the show has had a good track record up to now, I don’t mind leaving it at that, especially because I think they’re gonna come back around to all these unresolved threads in the back half of the show, sort of like how Fairy Ranmaru did, where it kind of introduced each of the main cast with an issue they’re struggling with, then we come through and we do a second run, and we sort of tie up their character arcs. 

But it is weird comparatively, just because its solution to it is the girl of the week that she has a crush on basically asks to steal her more popular social media account, screws it up, and then decides to try to piggyback on it for followers for herself, and ultimately her wish is to make it so that this never happened and she’s trying to make her way sincerely without buying the followers, and maybe she really does still care about Mai but it’s ambiguous? It’s not as strongly written as the first two-parter, but I don’t think it’s bad.

And we’re still, at time of recording, halfway through the next two-parter, which is about Choco, who’s our extremely bubbly girl, who clearly has a rough time going on at home but we haven’t really delved into that. There’s also a little bit with Kyoka, who’s the sort of princely character, comes from a rich family, and is clearly going through some gender stuff. I don’t know where that’ll end up, but again, I trust how this show’s been written so far. Also, she looks a lot like Momoka [sic] from Wonder Egg Priority, so seeing her written much better is kind of a little bit lowkey healing for me.

PETER: Finally justice.

VRAI: Right? Yeah, it’s a really good little series, and I think people are maybe skipping over it for the fact that the magical girl outfits and the rigs are a little bit generic looking. Like, they’re fine, and the visuals on the dance sequences themselves are really beautiful and creative. But I think if you just look at it, like a screenshot of it, you’re like, “Oh, this must be another multimedia project with a gacha tie-in and I’m gonna sail on by.” But no, it’s really good and thoughtful, and I hope more people give it a look.

PETER: Hm. Yeah, the aesthetics in the trailer were pretty great, so…

VRAI: Yeah! It’s… I don’t know, it’s sweet. It’s really sweet. Also, people should watch Fairy Ranmaru. Nobody watched that one either, and it was really good.

TONY: I watched it. I like it.

VRAI: Yeah, you did! It’s you and me! [Chuckles]

TONY: Yep. You and me, pal.

VRAI: Yay. Alright, our last show for the day is Anne Shirley, which I think I am also— Oh, Peter, you’re watching this one, too. I want to hear how you’re doing.

PETER: Hm, do I have much to say about it? I will say, looking at it, I was thinking to myself, before it was released, “God, what an act to follow,” because, you know…

TONY: [Chuckles] Isao Takahata, yeah.

VRAI: ‘Cuz Takahata?

PETER: Yeah, like, how are they gonna make a production that’s gonna measure up to the original? That said, I have not watched the original, so I really can’t say if it’s measured up or not, but I am really, really, really enjoying myself. I think it’s a lot of fun. Obviously, they have some constraints on production, but I think they’re doing a pretty good job with what they’ve got. Anne is a wonderful, funny character. And I don’t know if I’ve really got any analysis here. I just think it’s a really fun, charming show.

VRAI: I mean, I’m a casual here. I’m piggybacking somewhat off my… Like, I’ve seen two other adaptations of this, the ‘79 series that was directed by Isao Takahata and Anne with an E, which is the Canadian Netflix co-production. And so, this is the third version of I’ve seen, but I haven’t read the books myself. But my partner is a huge fan of this, of Anne, just as a book, she’s seen most of the adaptations… So, definitely anything I’m saying that’s smart, I probably at least partly stole from them. But yeah, so, it’s so interesting for me to hear both from you and Alex that you’re really having a good time with this because I think that’s wonderful and I feel like I also have to say that I think this is a really sweet, fun show that people should watch and that it’s very charming and bite sized, because I’m about to nitpick it, so I really have to foreground that I do think it’s good and that people should watch it.

I will say that of the three adaptations I’ve watched, this one’s maybe the one I’m least into, just because… Well, it’s flying through the material and, to be fair, the ‘79 show is, like, excessively slow. I really enjoy it as a chill-out. I think it probably hit really well for kids in the ‘70s, when it’s 50 episodes so you’re like, “Every week I’m gonna hang out with my friend Anne, and we’re just gonna go through her day.” And it does really well to sit with the characters and their emotions and the living-in feeling of this place. I think you could make a good argument for it as a very early… one of the earliest iyashikei animes. But it is also, like… It takes 18 episodes for it to cover the material that Anne Shirley does in 5, through the croup incident, so it is not in a hurry. And, you know, Chiaki said that she never watched it as a kid because she found it kind of boring, and I think that’s fair and that there’s nothing wrong with wanting something that’s a little snappier in pacing.

I think Anne with an E is a good, interesting middle ground between those because it’s sort of a gestalt adaptation that’s incorporating stuff from Anne but also stuff from Montgomery’s other books, The Storyteller Girl [sic], and also kind of looking at stuff that was latent in the original text but maybe not discussed because of, you know, authorial oversights that you wouldn’t consider at the time, like the fact that this girl has PTSD and also we’re going to talk about Canadian residential schools a little bit and how those were terrible. [Whispers] It’s really good!

[Resumes normal tone] But Anne Shirley is, I think, really fun, but just because I’m looking at it comparatively, I end up thinking that it doesn’t have time for itself to sit in some of the moments that I really like about the other versions, so its ultimate priority is to be sort of a soothing greatest hits. And I think the example that I would most prominently draw is the really early episode where Marilla’s brooch goes missing and she insists that Anne must have taken it and lost it and that she’s lying about it. And so, she tells her she can’t go to this picnic that she’d been so dearly looking forward to, which causes Anne to make up a story, admitting to doing something she didn’t do. And then, as it turns out, Marilla had actually misplaced the brooch and it was in the laundry. And Anne Shirley sort of plays this as kind of whimsical? Like, it’s a misunderstanding and Marilla admits that she’s wrong and Anne gets to go to the picnic, so it’s fine. 

But it’s very— But that’s the thing, is as Anne Shirley does it, it’s like, “Oh, this was fine. What a silly misunderstanding. How like Anne that she would make up this story in this very over-the-top way,” whereas I think that both other versions kind of let this be a little bit more of a serious character moment where Anne has just come from this place where she was considered really disposable, and now this place that’s supposed to be this home—where they said they’d keep her but that’s still, you know, on ice—is calling her a liar, and now she’s at this crossroads between “I’m a very honest person, but also my new caretaker isn’t gonna relent unless I admit to doing this thing I didn’t do. And maybe that’s just the pill that kids have to swallow because adults are always right. And, you know, that’s just the breaks,” and the ultimate lesson of it being that, like, no, if you want your kids to be honest, you have to listen to them when they tell you the truth, which, you know, when the novel was written, is an even bigger thing to claim and assert. And, I don’t know, just letting the despair of that be serious is something I really value about that bit of the story, even though it’s small. And I think that that sort of sanding off of some of the quieter edges in favor of it being really, really fun is maybe something I miss a little, even if I don’t think it’s like a disastrous decision.

You know, same deal with the fact that… We don’t have time to go into seriously how much this school teacher sucks and how much that goes on to affect Anne as an adult when she ultimately becomes a teacher. Actually, Rebecca Silverman has been doing the weekly write-ups of this show for ANN, and she’s a fan of the book, and her write-ups have been just dynamite if you’re looking for discussion of it as an adaptation. It’s really, really good.

PETER: Yeah, I definitely got that sense of what you were talking about, because I think in the second-to-last episode that aired, she breaks her leg falling off of a roof, or breaks her ankle, and I think it said she needs five weeks to heal, and I think literally two minutes later it’s like, “Okay, well, that was five weeks.” And I got the impression that there might have been more to that in the book or perhaps in another series.

VRAI: There are rumors—I don’t think it’s substantiated anywhere yet, but given the pace it’s going along, I suspect, is probably true—that part of the goal of this is to get through the original book a little bit more quickly, because the ‘79 series only covers Anne of Green Gables, and there’s other series about her as an adult and ultimately leading up into stuff with her daughter, even, I think. And I think the thing about this show is probably that it’s trying to get to that, and that’s why it’s kind of booking its way through. I wouldn’t be surprised if it gets to the big event from the end of the original ‘79 series by like Episode 12 at the rate that it’s going. And, I don’t know, I’m interested in that because—like I said, I know some adaptations; I don’t know the source material well—my understanding is that even fans of the books maybe don’t love all of the sequels. So that’ll be interesting.

PETER: Wait, so you’re telling me she doesn’t marry Diana?

VRAI: [Sighs] No. Look, I—

PETER: That’s shocking.

VRAI: The Class S of it all is so… [Blows a kiss] And like, look, that book… Anne of Green Gables is not consciously gay. Like, it’s not coded-lesbian fiction in the same way that, like, Hana monogatari was written by a lesbian author, and that shit is coded lesbianism, and that’s the mother of Class S and yuri, and everyone salute her. But, my God, it’s still really gay. And I love to point out how gay it is and how Anne is a bisexual icon at every opportunity because of this thing in American academia called the Bosom Friends Affair, where one time an academic in 2000 wrote an article saying, “Hey, Anne of Green Gables is kinda gay, isn’t it?” and it was such a kerfuffle that there is a Wikipedia entry about this backlash!

PETER: I gotta go check that out. Yeah, yeah, the way she dotes on Diana, it’s like some insane shit [Chuckles], like some “Romeo quoting stuff up to Juliet in the moonlight” type language she’s using for Diana.

VRAI: [crosstalk] And she is, like, a hyper-dramatic kid—

PETER: Yeah, yeah, she is.

VRAI: —who’s… But… [Whispers] it’s also very gay. [Resumes normal tone] Like, she’s, at one point, sitting outside crying about how one day Diana is going to get married and a man is going to take her away from her.

PETER: Yeah, and how much she hates Diana’s theoretical future husband. [Laughs]

VRAI: Anne is right up there with Usagi in terms of bisexual icons! Yeah, I think where I land on this is it’s good to check out as an intro, to get people hooked on the material. It’s a really fun, up-to-date… It looks shiny. Naoko Yamada did the boards for the opening, and it’s super cool. So, I think it’s a really good intro that maybe, I hope, introduces people to some other versions. And that’s where I’m at with that. It’s very historically important and also just good.

Are there any last thoughts that we didn’t cover today that either of you wanted to shout out?

TONY: I’m good.

PETER: [crosstalk] Nope.

VRAI: Alright. If you have any thoughts out there in reader land or listener land, please do drop them in the comments. We truly love to hear back from y’all. Thanks for joining us, AniFam, if you liked what you heard here, you can find more from the team by going to animefeminist.com, both written and podcast content.

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PETER: Hell yeah.

TONY: Hell yeah.