AniFem Round-Up
You’ll go supernova for this absolutely excellent premiere about meeting your imperfect idol; it’s sure to start 2026 off on a high note.
Jack of All Trades, Party of None – Episode 1
t’s not great, but it manages not to have the sexist subtext that’s common to this kind of “kicked out of the party” story.
Sentenced to be a Hero – Episode 1
This is a pleasant surprise as “falsely accused” fantasy stories go, setting up a solid mystery across its double-length premiere.
This is the baseline we should expect from adaptations of classics–a lovingly done project that isn’t afraid to edit the material where it’s aged.
The Daily Life of a Part-time Torturer – Episode 1
It’s too self-serious to work as a dark comedy and too shallow with its commentary to respect as a serious narrative.
Kunon the Sorcerer Can See – Episodes 1-2
A fantasy story about a blind protagonist working to make the world more accessible with magic is cool, but it completely falls flat in execution.
Journal with Witch – Episode 1
It’s exquisitely boarded, perfectly edited, and speaks profoundly to the human condition, intimacy, and ambiguities of grief.
All the winter premiere reviews in one easy-to-find place.
Chatty AF 238: 2025 Fall Wrap-Up
Dee, Caitlin, and Peter wrap-up the year 2025 with a recap of the 2025 Fall Season’s solid line-up!
Beyond AniFem
How Fukuoka Women’s University is preparing to accept transgender students (The Mainichi, Shizuka Takebayashi)
Current discussions are centered on the dorms, and whether giving trans students single rooms by default might lead to them being excluded or harassed.
Students showed signs of change after the lecture. A first-year student who said that news about LGBTQ and other sexual minorities had always felt like “someone else’s issue” reflected, “The more I meet people who are involved, the more I feel that the biased views I see on social media and elsewhere just aren’t true.”
Looking to the experience of other universities that adopted similar policies earlier, Fukuoka Women’s University established a review committee in fiscal 2023-2024 to consider accepting transgender women. A major obstacle was that all first-year students are required to live in the dormitory. Four students share a four-bedroom unit, and they share a kitchen, bath and toilet. The changing area and each personal room can be locked.
According to international law professor Tomoko Fukamachi, who chaired the committee, surveys and dialogue sessions with students revealed concerns — just as the committee had expected — such as, “Will it be OK to have someone who is physically male living in shared dorms?”
Reflecting on the students’ reaction, Fukamachi stated, “Influential figures like U.S. President Donald Trump make definitive statements such as ‘There are only two genders: male and female.” There’s all sorts of information available, and people have very different ideas of what a transgender woman is, and we could see that some anxieties were based on misunderstandings.”
In the end, the university shifted toward acceptance, encouraged by broader social changes such as the growing number of municipalities adopting partnership declaration systems that officially recognize relationships between couples of sexual minorities — a sign, university president Tsuyoshi Mukai noted, that “the diversity of sexuality is gradually being accepted by society.”
Tubi Adds Sugar Sugar Rune Anime (Anime News Network, Alex Matteo)
Unfortunately, users have reported that the subtitles are of dubious quality.
Yusuke Matsui (CG animator and CG animation director for Evangelion: 3.0+1.0: Thrice Upon A Time) and Studio Khara producer Kohei Fujiwara revealed a 20th anniversary “Sugar Sugar Rune Les deux sorcières” anime short at the Japan Expo event in July 2025. Matsui announced that production on a separate, full-fledged anime project using similar CG animation has also been green-lit. “Sugar Sugar Rune Les deux sorcières” serves as a prologue to the original manga.
The same Japan Expo event revealed that the original Sugar Sugar Rune manga will go back on sale in the United States, Italy, and Taiwan this year. According to the panel, Udon Entertainment will offer the manga in the United States.
Udon Entertainment had announced its license for the manga in 2015. The company describes the story: In the Magical World, the future queen is chosen by selecting two young witches and sending them to the Human World, where they’ll compete to capture the hearts of boys. Whoever has collected the most by the end of the competition is crowned queen. This generation’s Queen Candidates are best friends and polar opposites Vanilla Mieux and Chocolat Meilleure, the daughters of the current queen and her former competitor (respectively). They’re aided by their assigned mentor and guardian, pop idol witch Rockin’ Robin, and their two animal familiars, Blanca the mouse and Duke the frog. But the girls have more to deal with than just competing for hearts at school. There’s something weird about the cool, mysterious middle school boy Pierre, who resembles the evil king Glace—and he seems to be after Chocolat. Now, both trapped within their own new goals, the two witches must fight their way and retain a friendship which no magic can defeat.
Adult Analysis Anthology Issue 4 Submissions Now Open! (BP Games, Bigg)
Submissions will be open until January 18th.
Guidance On Pitches:
First off, I recommend at least skimming the contents of the first, second, and third issues to make sure your idea isn’t too similar to something that’s already been covered. You can also read all previous essays in full on the BP Games official blog. Pitches that are informed by and/or in direct conversation with previous essays ARE welcome!
For this issue, pitches related to porn game censorship – whether that’s something about work of yours being directly affected, some kind of historical parallel to our present moment, a bird’s-eye-view summary of various censorship efforts as they pertain to porn games, or something else altogether – would feel particularly timely!
Similarly timely would be commentary or analysis focused on generative AI usage in porn games!
Publisher Crossed Hearts Announces Glam Beat! Girls Love Imprint (Updated) (Anime News Network, Joanna Cayanan)
The company launched in 2025 and plans to release over 30 print titles in 2026.
Update: Crossed Hearts also stated in a press release about the new imprint: Yuri, also known as girls’ love (GL), encompasses stories that explore emotional, romantic, and intimate relationships between women. Over time, the genre has expanded far beyond its early roots, now spanning coming-of-age narratives, adult and mature relationships, fantasy and historical settings, psychological drama, lighthearted romance, and emotionally complex storytelling. GLAM BEAT! exists to bring this full spectrum to English readers in a thoughtful and consistent manner. Rather than limiting the genre to a single tone or trend, the imprint is being developed as a growing catalogue that reflects yuri’s diversity across themes, moods, and storytelling styles.
The publisher assured fans that the new imprint “is not a limited initiative or short-term experiment,” adding, “It represents Crossed Hearts’ long-term commitment to girls’ love as a genre with lasting cultural impact and global relevance.”
Man arrested over stabbing of Fukuoka idol group worker also accused of attacking woman (The Mainichi; Takeshi Kawabata, Jangrae Kim and Yuki Kurisu)
The man’s stated intention was to kill multiple members of the idol group.
A 30-year-old man who has been arrested for allegedly knifing a male staff member of the Fukuoka-based idol group HKT48 was served a fresh arrest warrant on Jan. 5 on suspicion of stabbing a woman at a nearby commercial facility which houses a theater for the group.
Fukuoka Prefectural Police served a new arrest warrant to Naoya Yamaguchi, an unemployed resident of the prefectural city of Itoshima, on suspicion of attempting to murder a 27-year-old part-time worker. Yamaguchi was first arrested over the attempted murder of the staff member, 44, and the detention deadline was on Jan. 5.
The incident occurred at around 5 p.m. on Dec. 14. The male staff member was stabbed in the chest with a knife in the elevator hall of a staff-only parking lot on the first floor of Mizuho PayPay Dome Fukuoka in the city of Fukuoka’s Chuo Ward, sustaining serious injuries. About a minute later, a woman from Kurashiki, Okayama Prefecture, was attacked at the commercial facility Boss E.Zo Fukuoka, which houses HKT48’s dedicated theater and is adjacent to the dome.
Foreign groups fear spread of misinformation during disasters (The Asahi Shimbun; compiled from reports by Akari Sugiyama, Shiori Tabuchi and Shoko Rikimaru)
Similar racist disinformation led to widespread violence against Korean residents following the Great Kanto Earthquake and against Chinese residents following the Great East Japan Earthquake.
Taro Tamura, representative of the Institute for Human Diversity Japan who also serves as an adviser to the government’s Reconstruction Agency, recommends using disaster mitigation drills and town meetings as opportunities for communication among local residents regardless of nationality.
“Many foreigners are not just recipients of support, but they are among those providing it,” Tamura said. “It is important to share and resolve each other’s concerns in normal times.”
Kensuke Kajiwara, associate professor at Kyushu University who has expertise in the Constitution, said Japan faces an uphill battle in preventing the spread of misinformation about foreign residents.
“In consideration of freedom of speech, it may be difficult to require the deletion of such posts solely because they are false and stem from hatred,” he said.
Although he said posts that lead to violence or slander against foreigners can be punished under existing laws, he added, “It takes time, and the speed of information spreading on social media is overwhelming.”
Kajiwara said it would be effective for central and local governments to quickly point out that such posts on social media are false.
VIDEO: Pilot episode for magical girl roller derby series Wheels & Roses.
VIDEO: Doing redesigns for One Piece’s female characters.
VIDEO: Review of otome game Olympia Soiree Catharsis.
VIDEO: Retrospective on failed Tokyopop original manga Princess Ai.
AniFem Community
Starting this year, we’ll be changing our site style guide to comply with requests from publishing companies and current industry standards: this includes rendering character names in Western style (given name followed by surname), and utilizing “shonen” and “shojo” rather than “shounen” and “shoujo.” We also intended to make it an explicitly stated part of our submission guidelines that use of GenAI is prohibited. Happy 2026, AniFam!
Comments are open! Please read our comments policy before joining the conversation and contact us if you have any problems.