In an exclusive interview with Anime Feminist, Sedgwick and Kutsuwada spoke about the process to create this project, how they approached diversity considering gender and racial themes, the sensibility of portraying real life trauma, and how their work has been a healing experience to both and readers alike.
Adultification not only works against Black and Brown women and AFAB folks in our society today but also contextualizes aspects of Anthy’s story more clearly.
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.
Vrai sat down with Camacho at Otakon 2022 to ask her about her influences, her dream role, and the expectation put on marginalized public figures to act as educators.
The series saw praise for its well-characterized Black heroine, optimistic outlook and its swing-for-the-fences tale of pushing back against injustice (including a spot in our 2019 recs list). At the same time, it’s received its share of criticism for the way that core optimism lends itself toward over-simplification of fraught issues, as well as its stumbles in portraying Black masculinity and queer and trans characters.
Discussion about wages and working conditions have exploded to the surface of the anime industry over the past few years. Anime Feminist had a chance to talk with Zeno Robinson, acclaimed actor and vocal supporter of the unionization movement, at Otakon 2022.
Hi, it’s me, Chiaki, once again thinking too hard about cats in media. Today I’m here to tell you that Aoka’s Neo Cat conveys how being celebrated doesn’t necessarily exempt you from racism.
In the anime, Moriarty’s seamless assimilation into British high society makes an inadvertent mockery of the idea that you can simply be born “better” than others. The reality is anyone could get into Moriarty’s position with the right opportunities, but not everyone would choose to share the resources they gained to support those they left behind. It’s no exaggeration to say that to many, classism still feels so deeply ingrained in the UK it seems like the country would collapse without it.
This begs the question: how effective is Moriarty’s plan to burn everything to the ground, and what does the UK (both in fiction and reality) need to do in order to destroy class inequality for good?
Nascimento studied the work of one of Japan’s famous feminist scholars, Kishida Toshiko (1864 – 1901), and her place of study is especially meaningful given that Tohoku University was the first university to accept women as students back in the early 1900’s. Nascimento is also known as Mmyoi and is the creator of The Bride of the Fox.
With positive reviews and high ratings, Yasuke is a critical success. However, I found Yasuke lacking and wanted some perspectives on this story that was supposed to center a Black lead from people other than the mostly white critics who were praising it. Thankfully, I found several overlooked Black reviewers highlighting how the show falls short of the source material’s potential.
Michele Kirichanskaya recently had the chance to interview Budjette Tan about working as the writer of Trese and the series’ recent anime adaption on Netflix
Racebending, or drawing characters as races other than what they were intended as, is not new to fandom; however, this particular iteration was to counter the fact that the person took it upon themself to aggressively white out the existence of canonically Black and brown characters in anime.
Media from all over the globe contains an abundance of pro-law enforcement storylines and themes. Anime and manga are not exempt from this, with some of the most successful franchises in both mediums espousing dangerous, pro-cop social politics. That’s why this piece aims to introduce new and old anime fans to the concept of copaganda, highlight some of the most popular ways the practice appears so that it can be regularly identified, and offer some direction on how fans can still enjoy the mediums in spite of these prevalent themes.
Despite its social justice-minded storytelling, Carole & Tuesday can be a frustrating watch as it swings back and forth between exploring these characters as nuanced individuals and perpetuating harmful stereotypes of Black masculinity.
Anne Yatco is a longtime actor with a varied and fascinating career. She entered the world of acting after spending four years as a full-time forensic scientist, worked with the all-WOC sketch group BAE*GENCY, and co-starred on the Grey’s Anatomy spinoff Station 19. She’s recently pivoted primarily to working in voiceover, where she’s best known for playing Nobara in the English Jujutsu Kaisen dub.
Anime with multiple Black leads, though not unheard of, were rare. I had to know if this was a fluke, or an elaborate marketing ploy to bait viewers like me, who eagerly soaked up every ounce of non-stereotyped diversity they could get their hands on. What I discovered was so much more than that. The fun of Cannon Busters isn’t just its inclusiveness, but in the way it doesn’t take itself too seriously.
With a cast mostly of “dangerous criminals” identified by the crimes they’ve committed instead of their names, I assumed Akudama Drive’s dystopian setting would act as little more than set dressing in a story that ultimately reinforces, rather than challenges, the stigmatization of criminalized people. I have rarely been happier to be proven wrong. Echoing the calls of the prison abolition movement, Akudama Drive delivers a powerful and subversive statement against the criminal legal system, one that goes beyond slogans like All Cops Are Bastards and questions the basis of our conception of justice.
The initial premise promised colorful heists alongside an interesting story, but it ultimately failed its characters of color.
While it may appear on the surface to be an overtly feminine, traditional fashion, Lolita’s history and present iteration are rooted in rejection of the male gaze and societal expectations for women, as well as the building of women-centric community spaces. Of course, these things don’t make it feminist outright, but the result is a subculture well-positioned for the potential to embrace feminist ideals of choice, self-empowerment, and autonomy.
When your cries are constantly dismissed under thinly veiled apologies, it can be hard to feel seen or heard, but that is exactly what happened when I stumbled upon From the New World, the anime adaptation of Kishi Yusuke’s novel by the same name. I ventured into the series expecting a casual sci-fi horror but was instead met with a much deeper allegory for discrimination that paralleled my feelings of being a minority in America.
