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  • Parade Parade and the Phallic Woman Fantasy

    Parade Parade is part of a long tradition of media, especially pornographic media, that fetishizes trans and intersex women as victims and perpetrators of rape. It is also somewhat unusual in its focus on lesbian and long-term relationships.

    Because we marginalized women are considered too unsanitary for the societies we live in, we are forced to look to the margins of media for representation, even if it also dehumanizes us. The narrative violence of the film, to those of us who relate to Kaori’s position, is not at all unlike how the world outside of Parade Parade treats us trans and/or intersex women.

    Featureby Sarah Guinevere Smit August 30, 20240 Comments

  • The Infantilization and Sexualization of Inoue Orihime in Bleach

    Even as someone who loved the show in the past, I’ve found myself becoming more of an onlooker these days. I suppose it’s because I can no longer keep from opening Pandora’s box and exploring the problematic traits of Inoue Orihime, a character whose screen time grows in line with the misogyny of her portrayal.

    Featureby Contributor March 22, 20230 Comments

  • Subverting masculine expectations and complicating the male gaze in My Dress-Up Darling

    While still tangled in fan service and horny comedy, My Dress-Up Darling’s depictions of masculinity and the sexualization of its female characters are typically leaps and bounds above many of its genre counterparts.

    Featureby Archie Fenn March 10, 20230 Comments

  • My Fave is Problematic: Golden Boy

    Although Kintaro’s respect for women toes (and occasionally crosses) the line into objectification and some of them get more respectful treatment than others, the series overall gives these female characters more agency and regard than other anime of the same genre. 

    My Fave is Problematicby Izzi Geckle November 25, 20220 Comments

  • Digging Under the “Strong Female Character” Surface: The exploitation of women in Claymore

    Going into it hoping to experience an underappreciated classic, I was met with a series that routinely undervalues the very women that define its main appeal, to the point of ritualistically torturing them on-page and treating what makes up their person as disposable.

    Featureby Psyche Kale November 18, 20220 Comments

  • My Fave is Problematic: Bleach

    Bleach means quite a lot to me. It’s the foundation for so much of my work as an artist and writer that breaking it down into its smaller parts would be very difficult. Reading it carried me through high school as a deeply insecure, deeply in-the-closet teenager, and even through early college when the series ended in 2015.

    My Fave is Problematicby E.B. Hutchins November 9, 20220 Comments

  • The possession and performance of relationship in Spice and Wolf

    Holo and Lawrence’s relationship is initially held back by the circumstances upon which they first meet, rendering Holo as an owned object rather than an equal companion and stifling both leads’ feelings behind layers of performative inauthenticity. Part of the appeal of Spice and Wolf is watching these two characters overcome the gendered norms of their medieval setting, as well as their own personal flaws, to achieve an emotional reciprocity that is narratively satisfying.

    Featureby Dya June 17, 20220 Comments

  • Reading The Duke of Death and His Maid as disability allegory

    The Duke of Death and His Maid takes what could be a cheap device for titillation and, intentionally or not, transforms it into something far more emotionally powerful. When looking at the show as a story with metaphors about disability and navigating disability in that space, it becomes difficult to remove the fanservice without making the story weaker.

    Perspectivesby Borealis Capps May 11, 20220 Comments

  • Love, Agency, and Androids: A Chobits Retrospective

    Chobits uses its post-humanist storytelling to ask questions about the highly personal relationships that humans can develop with something that looks human or shares human qualities, but can never exactly be human. Because the persocoms are almost all built to look like young women, it also creates a space to ask questions about gender roles in relationships and how those perceived as female can be literally objectified. At times, Chobits presents a very compelling and empowering narrative around love, personal choice, and sacrifice. Yet, simultaneously, Chobits fails to reckon with the very questions it raises.

    Historyby Alexis Harper March 11, 20220 Comments

  • Choosing to “Remain Strong” Against Female Criticism: The vindictive storytelling of Oda Eiichiro

    While One Piece looms large in the present and past, conversations about how Oda treats women have often taken place on a surface level. Oda started his career by including women in prominent and active roles in his stories. But as time went on, he began responding to criticism by taking it out on his female characters and fans alike, undoing the good work he had done in the series’ early days.

    Featureby Lillian King February 16, 20220 Comments

  • Gearing Up or Dressing Up? On female fighter equipment

    When it comes to a particular category of battle-related gripes, I think I’m less the annoyingly fastidious critic nobody wants to watch a show with, and am actually harping about something genuinely important: female fighter equipment, which too often sacrifices realism and practicality in favor of sex appeal. In anime, this issue manifests in three major forms: “boob armor,” high heels, and “chainmail bikinis,” all which hurt the dignity of not only the characters who must wear them but also the female viewers who must endure the real-world effects of such normalized sexualization of womens’ bodies.

    Featureby Raven Wu September 10, 20210 Comments

  • My Fave is Problematic: Yu Yu Hakusho

    The lovable characters have kept me hooked on Yu Yu Hakusho for the past 18 years, in addition to the “fight your enemies head on and defeat them through raw power and sheer force of will” storyline that will always be a guilty pleasure of mine. Although these elements make it worth the rewatch even now, my love for this anime hasn’t completely blinded me to its flaws. Yu Yu Hakusho, unfortunately, overtly and subtly fails its female characters time and again.

    My Fave is Problematicby Jessica Justice May 7, 20210 Comments

  • Dressed to Kill la Kill: The overlooked power of fashion’s rebellious history

    While Kill la Kill was all about clothes and the way commodification objectifies bodies, it missed the opportunity to talk about the rich history of rebellion using fashion. And moreover, it failed to interrogate the real villains running the show.

    Historyby Vrai Kaiser March 5, 20210 Comments

  • My Fave is Problematic: Kakegurui

    It soon becomes clear that within Hyakkaou Academy, it’s the women who get shit done. That was where I found what had first caught my interest in the first place: the women of Kakegurui.

    My Fave is Problematicby Jordan Mulder February 5, 20210 Comments

  • My Fave is Problematic: Free!

    One of the biggest gripes I have now with Free! is the amount of fanservice the show throws at you. While the perfectly sculpted muscles of the main male cast is what led to the show’s boom in popularity, it has also caused harm for the show.
    Despite its flaws, Free! remains close to my heart as a show full of relatable and raw emotions. There’s been times where I’ve shed tears along with the characters on screen, and also deeply sympathized with their hardships.

    My Fave is Problematicby Tanushri Shah December 11, 20200 Comments

  • The Post-Apocalypse Which Enforces Gender Roles: Code Vein

    The game’s cast is gender balanced, with a roughly equal number of male and female characters, and the female ones play an important role in driving the story. While that sounds great on paper, the problem lies in the gender-essentialist ways that “importance” works out.

    Featureby Tessie Alina Corwin August 5, 20200 Comments

  • Monster Girls and the Fine Line Between Body Positivity and Objectification

    Monstrous women serve as a reminder of the “other” in society, but good writing helps characters take pride in themselves.

    Featureby Jordan Mulder December 20, 20190 Comments

  • Decade Apart, Miles Ahead: Lady action heroes in Bubblegum Crisis and Tokyo 2040

    Bubblegum Crisis: Tokyo 2040 aired from 1999-2000, and I have recently discovered that I love it as much today as when I was a preteen girl with a deep hunger for ladies kicking ass.

    Versusby Aysha U. Farah August 9, 20190 Comments

  • From Princes to Pigeons: A Beginner’s Guide to Otome Games

    In the world of video games, anything is possible. You can be a cavegirl dating pigeons in a post-apocalyptic romantic dramedy, or someone helping humanized swords fight against historical revisionism, or you could even be a gender-nonconforming barista at a cat cafe. In other words, you could be playing an otome game.

    Historyby Katie Randazzo March 20, 20190 Comments

  • Dissonant at its Soul: Sexual objectification in Soul Eater

    The Soul Eater prologue chapters lean heavily into the ecchi tradition, sexually objectifying the female protagonists both in dialogue and visual representation. One of the notable differences between the manga and anime adaptation is the reduction of sexualized framing, allowing viewers to consider the necessity of “fanservice” in the first place.

    Versusby L.M. Brents November 14, 20180 Comments