AniFem Round-Up
Complicated Age: Passion, hobbies, and aging through the lens of Complex Age
Our relationships to our hobbies change with age–but that doesn’t mean you get too old for the things you love.
The Fragrant Flower Blooms With Dignity – Episodes 1-2
A latecomer of the season, but it’s building a solid basis for its cross-class romance.
What’s your definition of “filler”?
The word’s arguably wandered pretty far from its initial conception.
Beyond AniFem
『ぼざろ』『虎に翼』の脚本家 吉田恵里香が語る、アニメと表現の“加害性” (Kai-You, Ogamiya)
Writer Yoshida Erika discusses her process, including trimming fan service elements while adapting Bocchi the Rock and making Maebashi Witches her own.
「現実ではそんな会話しない」と強く否定した“女の子たちが互いの胸の大きさについて言及し合う描写”なども含め、そういうシーンはアニメにおいては何気ないよくあるものと考えてしまっていたが、吉田恵里香さんは「それを売りにしている作品でない場合においてはノイズ」と言い切る。
「原作がまず素晴らしく、原作サイドもとても協力的で、監督含めスタッフも音楽チームも本気で動いてるし、けろりらさん（※キャラクターデザイン／総作画監督）もすごく良い絵を描いてくれている。制作の段階からこれなら覇権が取れるって思える作品なのに、そうしたノイズがあると多くの人に見てもらえなくなってしまいます」
アニメには長年の歴史から生まれた多くのテンプレート的な表現がある。それ自体の是非はともかく、作品や時代に合わせて適切か否かを模索する思考は、今後より重要になりそうだ。
「現実的に考えても、ギターを弾きながら胸が不自然に揺れ続けるみたいなことはないわけですし、そういう描写があったら私は幼い息子にその作品を見せるのを躊躇する。自分の子どもに見せられるかどうか、というのは大事にしている基準です」
Fall in love with Shojo (Humble Bundle)
The charity benefited provides emergency financial support for bookstore employees.
Fill up on shojo manga this fall as Kodansha and Humble team-up to offer fans digital volumes of dramatic, heartwarming, and surprising sagas during the Fall In Love With Shojo Bundle! Just $30 gets you more than 80 digital volumes and over $900 worth of manga. This includes all volumes of modern classics like the love story steeped in trauma and healing, MARS, the magical girl adventure Shugo Chara!, the frenemies and lovers high school rom-com, Peach Girl, and more. Not only that but fans can catch up on nearly all volumes of the ongoing tender and wholesome school days romance, A Condition Called Love. It’s a perfect bundle for anyone who loves shojo or is curious to try some of Kodansha’s best. Explore amazing shojo manga from Kodansha and help support The BINC Foundation with your purchase!
2025 Yuri Game Festival (Steam)
A collection of yuri games running until the September 20th.
To better meet players’ preferences, we’ve pre-screened the games for their yuri content level—but we still encourage everyone to pick your favorites based on personal taste!
Additionally, since visual novels dominate this festival, we’ve grouped games with notable non-VN gameplay under the category “Gameplay-focused games” instead of splitting them further. Thanks for your understanding!
Additionally, please note that most of the games featured in this festival are from Chinese-speaking regions. So we recommend checking whether the games support your preferred language!
Happy gaming! Hope you find something you enjoy~
When’s The Best Time To Scream In Public? Catching Up With Ladybeard At Otakon 2025 (Anime Herald, Lauren Orsini)
The group had both a concert and workshop at this year’s Otakon.
Lauren Orsini: What is the specific image you’re trying to create?
Ladybeard: The whole mission of the group was firstly to “happy everybody up.” On top of that, we’re trying to get Japanese pop culture to the world, because it’s so hard to access it if you can’t speak or read Japanese. And even if you can, sometimes it’s hard because it’s very gatekeeper-y. The culture of Japan is so specific. And the style of communication: both with the language and just with the way people communicate. That transcends to music as well. When you try to do that—when you try to get all this Japanese pop culture stuff outside Japan—you start to learn why it is the way it is. Once you strip away this cultural level, and you’re trying to communicate in the same way, there’s still a gap that needs to be bridged.
Is this making sense? It’s hard to explain to people if they’re not in Japan. Because once you’re in Japan, especially as a foreigner, you learn very quickly that you don’t know what’s going on. You know that you don’t know.
Lauren Orsini: Tell me an example of a time, as a foreigner, you did not know what was going on.
Ladybeard: Like in my early pro-wrestling shows. You’d turn up in the locker room and everybody would be sitting on one side. So you sit in the empty space, and get told you need to with everybody else. You’re all cramped in together, and you realize later that’s the space for the VIPs—that’s how the hierarchy system works. But you don’t necessarily know why it happens like that. You just know that you don’t know.
Scarlet Anime Film Review (Anime News Network, Reuben Baron)
The loose take on Hamlet might be Hosoda’s weakest to-date.
Our first sign of trouble arrives with the introduction of the deuteragonist, Hijiri. Hijiri’s pacifism makes a natural source of conflict with Scarlet’s revenge-seeking. The issue is that this conflict is poorly developed with ham-fisted, repetitive conversations about war and peace. Do-gooder characters don’t have to be boring — the new Superman proved kindness is punk rock! — but Hijiri himself is just completely flat. His personal story arc of gradually coming to accept his own death doesn’t add much interest and feels largely extraneous.
Scarlet and Hijiri’s journey through the Otherworld has some striking vistas and a few well-choreographed fights, but it is lacking as anime quests go. In lieu of any distinctive supporting characters, they mostly interact with nondescript crowds. The crowd scenes only contribute to the increasing inconsistency of the animation quality. Sometimes we’re looking at awkward blends of 2D and 3D characters. Other times, Hosoda fills the screen with so many background figures it’s hard to tell what we’re looking at.
The worst moments animation-wise are the two dance sequences. A hula dance with two characters doing the same movements looks like a low-framerate Fortnite animation. Then there’s the most audacious sequence that should make the movie, but instead breaks it: a La La Land-inspired fantasy sequence sparked by Scarlet hearing Hijiri sing a modern pop song. The song itself is nothing special — underwhelming, especially compared to the BELLE soundtrack—but what really ruins the moment are the hundreds of badly animated extras overwhelming every shot, turning the already busy 3D camerawork into a headache. Let it be said that Panty and Stocking did anime La La Land way better than Hosoda.
My frustration with Scarlet reached a peak with the film’s ending. Understand, I have a high tolerance for well-meaning, idealistic liberal cheese. I still love Hamilton! The ending of Carole & Tuesday makes me cry even though I know it’s naive! So it means something when the ending of Scarlet just had me thinking, “Oh, COME ON!” I doubt Hosoda actually has the conviction that an extremely basic Hamlet deconstruction equals a solution to the problem of ALL WAR IN THE FUTURE. This stupid ending might have at least been more entertaining if he believed it.
Woman contests Japan hospital’s triple-rate charge for Chinese mother (The Mainichi)
The hospital has declined to comment.
Foreign nationals without health insurance in Japan are treated as private patients, with hospitals setting fees at their discretion. After the woman’s mother was discharged, the hospital billed her around 6.75 million yen, triple the rate charged to uninsured Japanese patients.
When her family requested a reduction, the hospital declined, stating that foreign patients without insurance are uniformly billed at 300 percent. The woman later died in 2023 after returning to China.
By May of this year, her daughter had paid around 2.25 million yen — equivalent to what a private Japanese patient would have been billed.
She argues that the hospital’s practice constitutes unreasonable discrimination based on nationality, in violation of the U.N. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and Japan’s Civil Code provisions on public order and morality.
“I hope for a society where people can receive medical care equally, without fear of discrimination,” the woman’s daughter said at a press conference in Osaka after filing the suit.
Mitsui offers scholarships to give Brazilians more job options (The Asahi Shimbun, Ayami Ko)
Recipients receive roughly a million yen per year, which they aren’t required to repay.
According to the Immigration Services Agency, around 3.77 million foreign residents were living in Japan at the end of 2024, including about 210,000 Brazilians, making up the sixth-largest group.
Kumiko Sakamoto, president of Aidensha, a Mie Prefecture-based nonprofit organization that helps foreign residents, said many children of Japanese-Brazilians grew up without receiving enough education.
However, the number of those receiving higher education has increased.
After graduating from high school, many of them choose similar jobs performed by their parents and other community members, including factory work and nonregular employment.
But the Mitsui scholarship system opens more opportunities by helping them move to higher education.
“There had been no scholarship funding foreigners of Japanese descent living in Japan, but it’s so moving to see the new system introduced, and I’m happy,” Sakamoto said.
In addition, a growing number of foreign workers have decided to live in Japan.
VIDEO: Sexual Politics- What Gets to be BL with Dr. Khursten Santos
VIDEO: Short about Lavi’s (Magia Record) character design incorporating Indigenous American elements.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/k0QyPP8H7IU
SKEET: One Peace Books (I Hear the Sunspot) is changing distributors but also taking license suggestions.
One Peace Books announced they're switching to Independent Publishers Group to distribute their books starting in 2026 • They confirmed some listings may be taken down, but will shortly come back • They also announced they're taking license suggestions via the link below buff.ly/mHPcOw2
— MangaAlerts (@mangaalerts.com) September 11, 2025 at 7:02 PM
[image or embed]
AniFem Community
Evolution of colloquial terms, eh?
“Filler” is the stuff that was made for logistical reasons: original material added to pad out an episode or season to a standard length or to buy time for more of the source material to be produced, and clip-show recap episodes buying time for a production that’s fallen behind schedule.
— Luke Beeman (@lukebee.bsky.social) September 15, 2025 at 8:40 PM
Anime specific, and if someone around me refers to an episode of a non-anime as a "filler" I will fucking smack them Also means nothing in the context of anime after dipshits founds out they can just call anything they personally disliked "filler", so.
— Red The Vampire (@redvampire.itch.io) September 16, 2025 at 1:31 PM
[image or embed]
genuinely; any definition that isn't "episodes or segments of a tv anime adapted from a manga that is *not* in the manga" is just actually incorrect and a fundamental misunderstanding of storytelling.
— socostx @ san japan recovery ward (@socostx.bsky.social) September 16, 2025 at 1:04 PM
[image or embed]
Comments are open! Please read our comments policy before joining the conversation and contact us if you have any problems.