AniFem Round-Up
Choosing to “Remain Strong” Against Female Criticism: The vindictive storytelling of Eiichiro Oda
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.
Has an anime ever helped you deal with grief?
Yeah, we’re still thinking about Journal with Witch.
Beyond AniFem
Localization Lore: Women’s History Month 2026 (Explorations in Translation, Elizabeth Bushouse)
Shouting out several women involved in early games localization.
Kaoru Moriyama was one of Square’s very first Japanese to English translators, before Ted Woolsey joined the company. She’s credited for the translation of Final Fantasy Legend II and III (and likely worked on the first one as well)2, Final Fantasy Adventure3, Final Fantasy IV4, and as a director on Secret of Mana. She also confirmed in an interview conducted by Chris Colette that she worked on an English translation of Final Fantasy II5, which was never officially released. In that interview, she recalled:
“Thinking back, it was a tough job translating at that time. We had so very limited memory capacity we could use for each game, and it was never really ‘translating’ but chopping up the information and cramming them back in. […] Usually, the ‘beautifully translated’ version of the text had six to eight times more letters than we can afford for screen text, so the toughest job was to chop them off and squeeze them back into the allocated area. Our boss [Hironobu Sakaguchi] had no understanding in putting in extra work for the English version at that time. Besides, we usually had too much text already in Japanese to fit in whatever the ROM size was.”
Chris Colette also spoke to her about some other unreleased Square games. As far as I can tell, these were the only English interviews she ever did. According to some tweets of hers that I uncovered, she was always an avid gamer: Romance of the Three Kingdoms II kindled her initial interest in games, and Final Fantasy II6 is what sparked her desire to work at Square.7 Her wish was granted in 1990, and she stayed with Square until 1994, working in their Japan offices.
In the Clear Moonlit Dusk – Episode 10 (Anime News Network, Caitlin Moore)
The series continues to struggle with its central theme.
Anyway. To me, these sound like perfectly normal topics for people of any gender to converse in, and yet the girls he talked to were disinterested. They were only interested in him because he was tall and hot. While there are certainly decent men who have lacked female friendships in adolescence – my husband is among them – there is a continuity between Ouji and Ichimura’s experiences that speak to a sense that Yoi is not like other girls. She is not shallow, and she likes things that boys like.
And yet, she does embody certain classical ideas about how girls should be. She is demure and shy, innocent to the idea that when Ouji asks her out, he has romantic designs for her. She’s dutiful to her family. She loves eating sweets, but she’s still slender. In the first episode we saw her assert herself against a would-be robber, but she is powerless to resist when Ichimura oversteps her boundaries. She’s never the pursuer, always the one being pursued, with no desires of her own other than the nebulous concept of being seen as a girl. Most appealing of all is her desire to be seen as feminine and be treated as a girl, rather than as an equal or a human.
These contradictions are nothing new to shoujo manga – scholars in both Japan and in the US have debated how it represents girlhood for decades, and the medium’s relationship to femininity has shifted and evolved over time as well. In the Clear Moonlit Dusk‘s contrasting of Yoi and the other girls who have pursued Ichimura and Ouji send a message that girls these days are shallow golddiggers. If any of the other female characters showed a degree of interiority, things would be different, but even Yoi’s friends only exist to gasp over how great it is that she’s acting girlier thanks to Ichimura’s attentions.
Supernatural Romance, Burn the Midnight Oil is Live on Kickstarter (Blerdy Otome, Naja)
We interviewed the development team during the release of their first game.
Solve crimes and steal hearts in the neo-noir supernatural romance visual novel, Burn the Midnight Oil. Indie studio, Foxglove Games, the team behind the rom-com Trouble Comes Twice has launched a Kickstarter campaign for, Burn the Midnight Oil alongside an early demo! The Kickstarter campaign is set to run until April 22, 2026 with a funding goal of $98,153 USD!
I Can’t Stop Thinking About Death Stranding 2 (Patreon, Ela Bambust)
A short meta about how the game defines the role of “woman.”
My argument is this:
Sam is a woman.
He was emasculated and found that he was happier as a mother.
Is this the intended reading? Probably the fuck not, but what’s the point of literary analysis if not to find within the text a version of the story you find as if not more compelling than the one the writers put there on purpose?
I posit that this, a reading of Death Stranding focused on womanhood and motherhood, is an avenue of thought that can not only lead to a greater appreciation of the series, but also to some really fun out of pocket conversations with your friends, and you should discuss it with them when it’s late and you’ve both had too much to drink so you can both go “WAIT ALL THE WOMEN IN DEATH STRANDING TWO HAVE TROUBLE DELIVERING CHILDREN UNTIL SAM GETS HIS DAUGHTER BACK DOES THAT MEAN–” and then feel really clever about it.
Anime creators received “0.0%” of Japanese government’s entertainment industry subsidies in 2024, official documents show (Automaton, Amber V)
Though more anime are being made than ever, creators see almost none of the profits.
According to MagMix, based on materials published by Japan’s Ministry of Economy Trade and Industry (METI) earlier this year, the domestic entertainment industry received 6.77 billion yen in subsidies (about $42.5 million USD) in 2024.
However, 54.9% of this total went towards the live-action industry, with only 12.6% and 10.7% being allocated to anime and games respectively, suggesting a significant bias. Not only that, but when looking at a breakdown within the anime industry, the subsidies primarily went towards promotion, localization and distribution, with actual creators receiving 0.0%. This means there was barely any government support trickling down directly to anime production staff. In the game industry, the percentage was somewhat higher at 1.4%.
On the flip side, METI does seem aware that this is an issue, and the ministry’s documents indicate that it’s considering introducing direct support for creators. However, as MagMix points out, there is concern about whether government officials have sufficient understanding of how the industry and its front lines work in the first place. With how difficult it can be to even make ends meet, many anime creators have little time and resources to dedicate to applying for grants, which means that large enterprises with higher administrative capabilities get favored in the system.
Xenophobia adds to ordeal of foreign residents seeking housing (The Asahi Shimbun, Takuya Asakura and Yoshichika Yamanaka)
Housing discrimination has risen with the increase in xenophobic political rhetoric.
“Housing discrimination against non-Japanese is an old problem, which, according to my impression, has worsened in recent years,” said Kim Kwang-min, a lecturer with Osaka Tokiwakai University, who is well-versed in human rights issues for foreign nationals in Japan.
Kim cited the increasing volume of news reports on problems related to foreign visitors, such as damage to private lodgings and overtourism. He also cited the tendency in political circles to mix up the issues of foreign visitors and foreign residents in Japan.
Kim said the anxiety of property owners is being fanned by these and other circumstances.
“Housing discrimination has to do with the right to live,” he said. “It causes great damage to those who receive a message saying: ‘Hey, you don’t belong here.’”
Kim continued: “The central and local governments should make it clear again, not the least from the viewpoint of sustained development of society, that denial of housing on grounds of nationality amounts to discrimination. “They should also rush to develop legislation toward multicultural coexistence, which will be the basis for stronger awareness-raising campaigns.”
Tokyo Court Denies Japanese Women’s Right to Sterilization Surgery (Unseen Japan, Jay Allen)
Over half of recently surveyed Japanese adults under 30 don’t want children.
The law is known as the Maternal Health Act (母体保護法; botai hogohō) and was originally part of Japan’s controversial (and since repealed) eugenics laws. When passed in 1948, it allowed abortion for some women under economic distress, while also mandating sterilization for people with mental disabilities. Legislators revised the law in 1951 and 1952 to provide easy access to contraception and general access to abortion services.
Japan repealed the worst parts of the Eugenics Law in 1996. At the same time, it revised the Maternal Health Act to prevent women from obtaining sterilization surgery at all unless their health was at risk or they had already borne multiple children. Even in those cases, married women required their husbands’ consent. (The same is true for abortion: the father of a child, if known, must consent to the procedure.)
The change in the law allowed those who had been forcibly sterilized to seek damages from the government. However, it also prevented all women in Japan from accessing sterilization procedures of their own volition.
VIDEO: Several Switch features are locked to docked mode.
VIDEO: Interview with cosplayer and author Kaho Shibuya.
POST: Fantagraphics will be reprinting Wandering Son.
We’re releasing a sensitive masterpiece from Japan’s most prominent creator of LGBTQ+ manga in a newly designed paperback edition: Wandering Son: Volumes One & Two by Shimura Takako is out 7/7! https://ow.ly/3OcR50YsFNe
— Fantagraphics (@fantagraphics.bsky.social) March 12, 2026 at 1:01 PM
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AniFem Community
We might be a little choked up, actually.
I watched the “With a Dog AND a Cat, Every Day is Fun” (yes that’s the full title lol) shorts shortly after our previous dog passed and this episode was cathartic (still is! I’m crying again)
— Ally ❄️🍵📚 (@sodapoplio.bsky.social) March 24, 2026 at 9:00 PM
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First Gravitation, then Given.
— Rompers, a humble potato (@rompers.bsky.social) March 24, 2026 at 6:57 AM
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