While the series wants to tell a story about individuals overcoming their trauma and inner darkness, its strength at depicting individual growth often conflicts with the conservative social systems it ultimately upholds.
Both Kazuki and Toi emerge from similar circumstances of capitalism, oppression, and the hypermasculine coping mechanisms they’ve been given to deal with the pain of that oppression. It is only through learning to care for one another—and learning that they can care for one another—that they can both be free.
If all representation is good representation, then Gankutsuou’s two LGBTQ characters should win out against Dumas’ one. But if we are to examine representation with a more critical eye, it is difficult to conclude that the later reimagining of the story does any more for queer people than does the story as first told some hundred and sixty years before.
Constantly, in pop culture, we see women being used as an accessory, a love interest, a mother, but in Okazaki’s world, women take the main stage and prove that a female-led manga can be just as impactful as stories focused around men. These two stories explore both the “beauty” and the “beast” contained within their heroines.
Revolutionary Girl Utena has a well-deserved reputation for being difficult to parse. Dense with metaphor, thinly-veiled critique of old shoujo tropes, and allusions to obscure literature, Utena’s style of storytelling relies heavily on its own visual language.
As Kyoko struggles to recover from abuse and trauma, she is encouraged to forgive everyone around her, put her own happiness last, and believe that love cures all. Skip Beat’s prioritization of these ideals over actual healing processes perpetuates unhealthy, even dangerous ideas about recovery.
You never know when a series you watch on a whim will turn out to be one of your favorites. That’s how I discovered Nobunagun: I just plopped it onto my Crunchyroll queue after seeing my favorite voice actress, Asakawa Yuu, tweeting about it.
Fruits Basket is a radical work regarding its treatment of mental health because it actively works to destigmatize mental illness, critiquing and dismantling ideas about toxic masculinity through its portrayal of mental health.
It’s easy to think the best solution to any harmful trope is to avoid it altogether and, to an extent, in the short term, this is true. In the long term, however, avoiding a trope entirely can be counterproductive, creating a new harmful trope on the other side of that same coin.
While old-school sukeban (“boss girls”) anime/manga characters come across as irrational in their anger and resentment toward society (until the very end of their respective series, at least), newer sukeban characters often are more level-headed, using their rebellious spirit to improve their circumstances.
Juggling respect and likability is a tightrope many women are forced to walk. This intricate dance of cultivating social and professional balance is what first drew me to Maid-sama!.
Where Aggretsuko season one mostly dealt with how Retsuko handles her emotions, season two instead explores the different ways in which men and women are allowed to express their anger in society, exposing a double-standard within the show itself.
Through both the character design and characterization of its three protagonists, Eizouken challenges a lot of the tropes that often loom over portrayals of nerdy, passionate teenage girls… and, if we’re being honest, teenage girls in general.
Throughout its 100-year history, yuri has uniquely evolved in and moved about multiple markets, often existing in many simultaneously. It is by and for a variety of people: men, women, heterosexuals, queer people, everyone!
There comes a time in every girl’s life where she’s obsessed with one thing: the occult.
Minutes before a high-stakes karuta match, Inokuma first must calm somebody who doesn’t respond to reason and certainly doesn’t know how to be patient for his meal. It’s a moment every new parent will experience at least once—when your own wants and needs butt heads with your obligations to your kid.
Despite a broad range of titles, when looking at Japanese media about cooking at large, I’ve noticed a frustrating gender imbalance between stories about professional male and female chefs. Stories about male chefs (most often in shounen manga) tend to center around their skill and on their prowess in the kitchen; while the professional lives of female chefs are downplayed in favor of focusing on a romantic storyline.
Fantasy is often described as escapism, but the genre has great potential to expose a reader to different perspectives on their own society while drawing them into an exciting new world. The Twelve Kingdoms novels by Fuyumi Ono truly show this. The world of the Twelve Kingdoms is a masterful example of a fully developed, politically complex, colorful and varied fantasy world.
Demon Slayer’s commitment to empathy thoroughly impressed me from the beginning of the series. However, Nezuko’s infantilization, objectification, and silencing throughout the season makes me worried the series may fall into the same traps as its shounen predecessors and contemporaries. Tanjiro and Nezuko share the same trauma, but only one is allowed to speak it.
Twenty years ago, I fell in love with the Pokemon anime. Now, I think I can finally tell you why: why this strange, silly, sincere show mattered. How it filled the space between “boy stuff” and “girl stuff,” treated both as having value, and challenged why there was a division in the first place.
