AniFem Round-Up
Discussing Pass the Monster Meat, Milady! across mediums with Chika Mizube and Kanna Nakamura
Caitlin talked with Mizube Chika, the artist of the manga version, and Nakamura Kanna, who plays Melphiera, about shoujo manga and creating adaptations.
Disney Twisted-Wonderland The Animation – Episodes 1-3
A gacha game adaptation that aims for the same gut appeal as Kingdom Hearts: what if old Disney stuff had more pretty boys in it?
What’s the oldest out-of-print title you own?
Always a good time to emphasize the importance of acrchival.
Beyond AniFem
How Dragon Ball Reruns in 90s Latin America Led To One of 2025’s Best Anime RPGs (Exalclaw, Wallace Truesdale)
Interview with Wander Star developer Paper Castle.
Exalclaw: Lastly, as you hinted at in our earlier email correspondence, it’s quite the time to be launching a game that you described, I’d say accurately, as gay Dragon Ball. As developers, how has it felt releasing games like this in a climate that has seen increased hostility to LGBTQ+ art and representation? And did you ever have concerns about this aspect of the game as the launch date approached?
Paper Castle: The LGBTQ+ aspects of the game came about very organically, and honestly we originally thought that it wouldn’t be that big of a deal because we have this sense that society is supposed to move forward, not backward. This might have been a little naive – we used to think that by the time Wander Stars came out, it wouldn’t be anything extraordinary to have a gay couple front and center, or that it wouldn’t be noteworthy to have trans and nonbinary characters in the cast. A lot of the queer representation in the game is actually inspired by the shows we grew up watching in the 90s. For a lot of kids like us, anime was actually our first encounter with anything LGBTQ+ related. For a lot of kids like us – growing up in conservative Latin America, going to catholic school, being raised for conformity – anime served as a window to another world where things could be different, where people could be genuine, and where everyone could love freely. We couldn’t have made Wander Stars without including this.
Things have changed a lot since we first came up with the idea for Wander Stars in 2019, and sadly not for the better. We prepared ourselves for the backlash, and there has been a bit of that here and there, but generally speaking we’ve been mostly spared. It seems that those who are against a more inclusive world are able to identify that this might not be for them. But we think it could be, if only we could get people to open their minds and hearts. This is why we think it’s more important than ever to share stories like Wander Stars. Stories about love, reconciliation, and working together with people who are different from you. Stories that say: don’t be afraid, you’re not alone. Stories like the ones we grew up with.
Japan deaf LGBT group hopes Deaflympics will boost minority awareness (The Mainichi)
The group is working on spreading information about LGBTQ-related signs.
People who are minorities within a minority, such as Yamamoto, can face double discrimination as they are often unrecognized by their respective communities, with many struggling to access information and feeling isolated.
Yamamoto said the center receives five to six inquiries per month from individuals ranging from teenagers to seniors. They cover a wide range of topics, including questions about gender confirmation surgery and name changes, as well as concerns about coming out.
To raise awareness of sign language expressions related to LGBT topics, such as “transgender” and “outing,” the center has published a support book that features sign language expressions and voices of sexual minorities with hearing impairment and is distributing it to schools for the deaf nationwide.
In the Deaflympics that started Nov. 15, a large number of deaf people have gathered in Tokyo to participate in the event, being held in Japan for the first time. A friend of Yamamoto’s, who is also a member of a sexual minority group, is a part of the U.S. delegation.
I Wanna Be Your Girl Manga Review (Spoiler‑Free) (Yatta-Tachi, AJ Mack)
Covers the first volume of the series.
The portrayal of the adults in their lives and their fellow classmates feel realistic and reassuring. However, there is a fair amount of misunderstanding and casual transphobia at the start as the class and the staff are introduced to Akira. Some of the behaviour from the teachers is well meaning but ignorant, to reluctantly accepting, to obviously only keeping their transphobic outbursts in check so as not to get reprimanded. There is one teacher who is unflinchingly behind them, with no prejudice or patronisation. Their maths teacher, Sasaki, treats them like any other students, which means telling them off when they mess up. It presents them as an antagonist at first, as the strict teacher nobody likes. However, it quickly becomes clear that this teacher is their strongest ally, with the best understanding of what Akira and Hime are going through.
As the story unfolds, the students become more accepting of Akira, and their misgendering goes from deliberate to accidental. Akira is able to be herself more, check out the clubs she wants to, not the ones she thinks she should, and makes friends. This shows both Akira’s bravery in not giving in to the pressure to conform to her assigned gender, but also the importance of the support of those around her (even if it’s well meaning but ignorant) and how the majority of people are good and decent. They just need a minute to adapt to new ideas.
Room for Improvement
My main complaint is that Akira is not given control of her narrative. Whilst it’s true that it does revolve around her, and there is no story without Akira, we don’t hear from her all that much. Whilst part of the narrative is about Hime learning not to make assumptions of Akira’s wants and needs, it would be good to be able to see things directly from Akira’s point of view. I’m hopeful that as the series goes on, we will get chapters from her particular point of view, but as stands, it’s disappointing to see Akira being used as a plot device rather than a human being.
Yasuomi Umetsu’s Virgin Punk: Clockwork Girl packs 35 minutes tight with exquisite, artisanal violence (The Gamesoft Robo Fun Club, David Cabrera)
In all likelihood we’ll never see any subsequent episodes following this pilot.
Despite its brevity, Clockwork Girl bursts with life; not just in its flashy action scenes or hyper-real digital effects (the water! My god!), but the kind of visual detail that tells a story by itself. The character designs (courtesy director Umetsu, of course) are loaded with these kinds of details: even if I hadn’t just described Mr. Elegance’s monstrous acts, you’d know he’s a weird asshole as soon as you saw that he’s got his dandy-man moustache tattooed over his lips. The world is built on visual details: the movie barely has the running time to explain it in words, and it doesn’t try.
That Mr. Elegance— a man whose goal in life is to collect, imprison, own and ogle cute girls while commanding them to do his bidding— is the most unflattering possible representative of the otaku culture should slap you repeatedly in the face during this movie. (Sure didn’t over on Letterboxd.) I’m fond of the scene where Ubu opens her new wardrobe and finds it’s been curated by Elegance with a selection of little-girl dresses, sailor uniforms and other perv-pleasers. She practically spits in disgust before leaving to find something in her own style; not one that Elegance or indeed the audience would want to dress her up in.
On the other end of the culture, I love that Ubu packs the “tools” of her trade in her prized rolling backpack; visit Ikebukuro or a Comiket and you’ll see that the roller is the standard equipment for nerdy girls all over Japan, just with doujinshi and costuming stuff rather than guns and a decapitation boomerang.
Afterglow Manga Review (Minor Spoilers) (Yatta-Tachi, Aki)
The manga is one volume and sexually explicit.
I followed the ChillChill BL Awards, and saw that Afterglow appeared on the list for the “Deep” category for being able to highlight the appeal of BL. The English edition of Afterglow meets that expectation. The creator was able to tell a cohesive story about adults meeting in a less than ideal situation, with lots of beautifully rendered uncensored sex, even if at some points, I couldn’t help but snort as Tenju spouted the most absurdly dramatic and sexy pickup lines at the blushing Higuchi
Afterglow is a case of the doctor getting a big dose of “magical healing cock,” but also getting his happy ending despite Tenju’s dangerous line of work. The art has little details that I keep flipping back to look at, and the artist is a master at showing off the character’s beautiful anatomy with great attention to detail.
Despite the heavy themes of trauma and working in careers that leave emotional scars outsiders cannot easily understand, the story is balanced in a way that you can’t help but laugh and cheer at Higuchi’s naïve blundering ways. We learn a lot about the backstories of both characters through the many instances of foreplay and pillow talk. You should definitely pick this up if you’re interested in beautifully rendered erotic art, gorgeous sound-effect lettering, and two very different characters getting to know each other better on and off any sort of vaguely horizontal surface.
Sexuality and Chobits (Tumblr, ohcorny)
Dissecting how the series does (and doesn’t) talk about sex.
what does that actually say about anything? what is it trying to say about sex? is it about the commodification of female bodies, how once they’re used up sexually they’re worthless? that if you can’t love somebody without fucking them, what good is your love? that love without sex is okay (but also a huge burden and sacrifice a man must accept for the sake of someone else’s happiness?)
what does it want to say! chobits is about sex, but it doesn’t want to commit to any specific message about sex.
and that’s just ONE issue i have with it. there are so many things chobits wants to be about but won’t say anything about. it wants to be about the persocoms replacing human connections, we constantly get told ‘gee people hang out with persocoms a lot’, chitose publishes a whole inexplicable book series about people preferring persocomes to humans. it’s to the degree that a prominent character’s husband gets So wrapped up in (presumably) fucking his android that he locks his actual wife out of the house, having just straight up forgotten she exists. we don’t have anything to say about it though. she falls in love with a new man. the people who hang out with their persocoms too much are all background characters in crowds. we never look at how the rise in persocoms has affected society as a whole.
4151+3√6, 84*4 (Bullet Points, Leanne Rahel)
Breaking out the academic texts to discuss Silent Hill f.
The significance of hermeneutics to Silent Hill may initially appear self-evident, in the sense that the conventional interactive progression found in the series at large does not require the setting up of a “(carnal) desire of mystery-solving” to justify their status as ‘games’ to its audience as a sound novel might. That desire is instead fulfilled by each progress-gating puzzle the player-interpreter solves. Who is left hungry when the ludic desire is fulfilled is instead the character-interpretant, for whom the narrative forms the site of desire+++. Silent Hill f’s Hinako Shimizu is one such character-interpretant who emerges as a translator, a Sontag-ian interpreter in its truest sense, in a particular sequence in the game. Stuck in Ebisugaoka Middle School, the transitory physical-psychological space where the spectre of socio-sexual difference first began haunting her, Hinako must solve (translate) “girl code” to gain access to the gender-segregated lockers. In the process, she unravels a narrative left behind by other students—a rare narrative beyond Hinako’s subjectivity in Silent Hill f, revealing the complex interactivities of gender in the world beyond her.
“Girl code” allows this locker puzzle to have a double-layer hermeneutic process and text-pleasure. The first order interpretation is already complete and closed by the time of Hinako’s arrival at the school, the translation and transmission of girl code between students. In this layer, if you read the order of the notes as presented in Hinako’s journal as a chronology, the boys appear to gain a hermeneutic education in girl code over time. Miki’s lover plainly rejects girl code as not worthwhile, ‘4151+3√6’ (‘AISITERU’) being simply a “crazy formula” to him. Satou, who gets called a ‘84*4’ (‘BAKA’) by a girl gets Yosida to teach him the cipher. And finally, Aoi observes and worries that Suga’s locker spells ‘505’ (‘SOS’) without any exterior stimulus from a girl like in the prior cases. The mediation of text-pleasure here is complex—the more the boys learn and use girl code the more it ceases being “girl code”, as it loses both its intention of adolescent jouissance and the girls’ ownership over the language.
VIDEO: How the “green yuri” uses color to shape its identity.
VIDEO: Recommendation of a shoujo by the Mechanical Marie mangaka.
SKEET: Graph of male vs female dialogue quantity across the Final Fantasy franchise.
The proportion of female to male dialogue in Final Fantasy. #advx25
— Rebecca McCarthy – Game Writer & Narrative Designer (@rebeccamwrites.bsky.social) November 22, 2025 at 10:58 AM
[image or embed]
AniFem Community
The photos are still our favorite part of questions like this.
Probably my Birdy the Mighty laser disks
— Celeste is Best (@celesteisbest.bsky.social) November 25, 2025 at 12:45 AM
1976 print of Moto Hagios "Alois". I'm too much a BB II fan and a Hagio fan to not hunt this down second hand.
— Jun (@jun-orphancross.bsky.social) November 25, 2025 at 7:38 PM
[image or embed]
Comments are open! Please read our comments policy before joining the conversation and contact us if you have any problems.