AniFem Round-Up
Dweebs, Dorks, and Dictators: El-Hazard’s prescient political commentary
This isekai OVA might have been made in 1995, but the story of a power-hungry loser burning society to the ground for the sake of his own ego feels awfully relevant now.
Throw the Man Away With Me: Rejecting heteronormativity in Run Away With Me, Girl
While it says a lot about how forced heteronormativity cruelly forces queer people to diminish who they are, the story also envisions so much more for its heroines.
Takopi’s Original Sin – Episode 1
So far thoughtfully addresses its heavy themes with gorgeous style, but its graphic imagery make it not a show to be watched lightly.
Private Tutor to the Duke’s Daughter – Episode 1
Sleepwalks its way through the most rote tropes of the fantasy and harem genres.
All of the season’s premieres in one place.
Who’s your favorite LGBTQ+ protagonist?
From BL, yuri, or beyond!
Beyond AniFem
Yuri Manga Romance to Read This Pride Month (and All Year!) (Yatta-Tachi, Alex Henderson)
Manga recs of titles that are currently both translated and licensed.
One such development is the rise of genre yuri. If you’re looking for horror yuri, you might have a good, spooky time with Otherside Picnic or This Monster Wants to Eat Me. If you want to scratch your fantasy itch, you have The Magical Revolution of the Reincarnated Princess and the Genius Young Lady or The Executioner’s Way of Life at your fingertips. And if you’re in the mood for something more straightforwardly lovey-dovey, the contemporary romance remains a staple. In fact, there’s a variety of series even within that specific subgenre.
It’s those contemporary romances that I’m going to focus on in these recommendations. I’ll specifically be showcasing my favorite series with adult protagonists, taking us outside the walled gardens of Class S to the world of queer adulthood. Some are slice-of-life comedies, others are much more dramatic. Each is a queer story in its own way, though they all handle their themes differently. From nightclubs to home kitchens, come on a tour of contemporary adult romance yuri with me and celebrate what the space has to offer right now.
LGBT partnership system now available to 90% of Japan’s population (The Mainichi)
The system does not have all the benefits of legal marriage, and activists continue to push for full marriage equality.
As of May 31, 530 local governments have implemented the system and 9,836 couples have registered, according to the collaborative study by Shibuya Ward and Nijiiro Diversity, a nonprofit organization supporting the rights of LGBT people.
Japan is the only Group of Seven country that has not legalized same-sex marriage. While the current partnership certification system gives LGBT couples access to a limited number of public services, such certificates are not legally valid.
This means that LGBT couples are not granted the same benefits enjoyed by married heterosexual couples such as medical visitation rights and the ability to make medical decisions for their partners, co-parenting rights and spousal income tax deductions.
In the first survey conducted in June 2017, only six local governments had implemented the system and there were just 96 registered partnerships. The survey will conclude this year now that the system has been widely adopted, according to the authors of the study.
Playing With Myself: Asexuality At Play In Course Of Temptation (Adult Analysis Anthology 3, MorganH)
Exploring both interfacing with erotica as an ace player and ace representation in adult games.
It would be a great exaggeration to say that playing adult games were in any way causal to my identification as ace, but they did force a certain amount of introspection. I had to somehow reconcile my new understanding of myself as asexual with my authentic interest in pornography. In particular, the fictional contexts for the vast majority of adult games feature the player character as the incarnated avatar for the player themself, the vehicle through which the game’s sexual encounters are translate corporeally onto the player’s own body. While this is not a novel complication for the ace community in general, it was new to me. My resolution came in the form of comparison to the other games I was playing, the non-erotic games that otherwise filled my time.
Nearly every videogame entices the player into desiring the completion of goals that they would otherwise not want for themselves — I enjoy Hitman even though I have very little wish to be a murderer (though sometimes I do fantasize about placing the banana peel that would cause some technocratic billionaire to slip and fall facedown into a puddle and drown). Porn games eroticize the existing motivational systems that predicate all player behavior. Ultimately, there was no contradiction: I can enjoy the erotic interactions within the game without desiring them for myself, just as I desire many aspects of action games without desiring the experience of violence.
Once the tension resolved between my enjoyment of sex in games and my lacking desire of it for myself, I started to think about porn games not as merely audio-visual representations of sexuality, but as ludic simulations of it. And the more comfortable I became with my asexuality, the more I was interested in exploring it through the art I consumed — which is challenging, in that ace representation is truly sparse, and ace characters in adult games are, not unsurprisingly, practically absent. There are a few games that I am aware of that have erotic content with an asexual perspective: All In by Storysinger Presents is one, a short visual novel that explores asexuality and kink. But in general, this combination is underdeveloped.
Girls Band Cry Real Band TOGENASHI TOGEARI’s Big Break (Anime News Network, Ken Iikura-Gross)
Interview with the voice actors and actual musicians of Girls Band Cry.
What are your favorite songs? Which ones do you like to perform the most?
RINA: “Emptiness and Catharsis.” It’s a song I love listening to and performing live, partly because Nina wrote the lyrics in the anime, but also because the sound is so cool and the fans get so excited when the song starts at a concert. My favorite lyrics are the first part of the song, [translation] “No matter how much I get/I can’t catch up with you.” It is a perfect beginning to this song about the emptiness of not being able to catch up with one’s aspirations and ideals, and it really leaves a thorn in my heart.
YURI: My favorite song is “Lonely fate to be destined.” I’ve loved the lyrics of this song ever since I first heard it, and I’ve talked about it with other outlets, but it’s been my favorite since I first looked at it. Lately, my favorite song to play and perform is “melt into the dark.” It has a very fast BPM, but it’s also very refreshing and fast-paced, and it feels great to play live. It’s my favorite song right now.
SHURI: My favorite song is “Voiceless Fish,” but it’s pretty negative. There are a lot of negative TOGENASHI TOGEARI songs, but I think this is probably the most negative.
YURI: It’s like, [translation] “Shut up!” or [translation] “Get out of my way!”
SHURI: It’s a very dark song with lyrics like [translation] “Someone please tell me quickly what the reason is to live” and [translation] “In the end, I really wanted to be happy like someone else.” But in the anime, everyone plays and performs this song with big smiles on their faces, so I really like that gap. I also really love lyrics that are so pessimistic, so I end up listening to this song a lot in my private time.
For performing “Answer to Extreme.” We haven’t performed much at live shows recently, but the bass in this song really comes to the forefront, so it feels like my chance to show off, which gets me pumped and makes it a lot of fun to play. It’s fun to be able to step forward, as both myself and Rupa and perform with such passion.
You win, Rent-A-Girlfriend. I Give Up (Aftermath, Isaiah Colbert)
It is still, somehow, still going. Article includes discussion of heavy misogynistic backlash.
Kazuya and Chizuru both know they have feelings for each other. Everyone knows. And yet, instead of resolution, the story stalls—like a cat toying with its food, savoring the indecision. Chizuru has had the ball in her court for what feels like geological time, and the series seems intent on suspending the inevitable “let’s date” or “let’s just be friends” moment for maximum agony. Along the way, every romcom cliche and emotionally manipulative contrivance has been hurled at them to stretch the string taut: cohabitation shenanigans, Kazuya becoming her acting manager, a chorus of women (all but his ex) lining up to cheer him on like a dating sim with no bad route story branch.
But then something happened. Around chapter 380, the pair is finally on their first real date. Let that sink in. In the time this saga has burned through endless trial runs of their date like it was an episode of The Rehearsal, entire romcoms—Komi Can’t Communicate, My Dress-Up Darling, Don’t Bully Me Nagatoro, and Uzaki-chan Wants to Hang Out—have wrapped up their burgeoning love stories with them getting together and ending the series. Rent-A-Girlfriend, meanwhile, is shaping up to be the One Piece of emotionally constipated romcoms.
What’s especially wild, and why I lead with the manga suddenly being critical in the manga reading community, is that the series is at a strange narrative crossroads: it could deliver a long-overdue moral reckoning about transactional intimacy and the entitlement that festers around men regarding women…or it could go full tilt into rewarding Kakuya, breathlessly validating the worst kinds of reader fantasies. And the manga community is embroiled in a civil war over either outcome as the series progresses toward its conclusion.
Repeated abuse suspected at facility for people with disabilities in north Japan city (The Mainichi, Shintaro Matsumoto)
The article includes video footage from the facility.
The abusive behavior at the facility Eikouen in Goshogawara, Aomori Prefecture, is suspected to have occurred on a regular basis, and the city is currently working to confirm the details.
According to sources close to the matter, in mid-April, a female employee instructed a subordinate female care worker to prevent a female resident from standing up and moving around. The resident apparently had an intellectual disability that made it difficult to communicate. Staffers placed her in the dining hall in a wheelchair, and surrounded her using long table and chairs, effectively restraining her.
In another incident in August 2024, a male resident repeatedly knocked on the door of a room where several residents were gathered. A male staffer who was monitoring responded by punching the man in the face. In October 2024, a different worker was seen slapping the cheek of a male resident who shouted loudly while lying in bed. These incidents were confirmed by the Mainichi through photographs and videos.
The Goshogawara Municipal Government has already started conducting inquiries regarding the abuse allegations. The city’s welfare policy division commented, “We are continuing to confirm the facts. If the actions are deemed malicious, the prefecture will issue administrative guidance or other penalties based on the Act on the Prevention of Abuse of Persons with Disabilities and Support for Caregivers.”
Support for Transgender Rights Slips Hard in Japan, Says New Worldwide Survey (Unseen Japan, Jay Allen)
There is still, however, fairly broad support for marriage equality in the survey.
The report from French marketing firm Ipsos looked at the state of LGBTQ rights worldwide. It surveyed 19,028 people in 26 countries between the ages of 16 and 74, depending on the country.
In general, the report found support for LGBTQ rights dropping worldwide. Support for equal rights for LGBTQ people hit 49% in Ipsos’ 2021 survey. This year, that’s dropped all the way down to 41%.
Japan followed that same trend. In 2021, support for LGBTQ rights and protections stood at 52%. This year, it fell to 37% – a 15-point drop.
Transgender people are suffering the most. Awareness of discrimination towards transgender people is lowest in Japan among the 26 countries surveyed. Only 39% of people believe transgender people are discriminated against, while 33% say transgender people here suffer no discrimination.
In reality, transgender people face an uphill battle in Japan. Japanese law requires sex change surgery before they can legally change genders. This often leaves transgender people and parents in legal limbo.
For the past couple of years, transgender people in Japan have also been the target of a campaign to drive them from using public restrooms that align with their gender identity. Only 31% of survey respondents said transgender people should be allowed to use public toilets aligned with their gender; 44% oppose it. That’s a massive 21-point dip in approval from 2023. Globally, such policies are supported 47% versus 37%.
Younger Japanese drawn to anti-immigrant populist Sanseito party (The Mainichi, Takara Sato)
Includes several interviews with Sanseito supporters and discussion of xenophobia.
Amid growing discontent with economic malaise and record-breaking numbers of inbound tourists, Sanseito supporters complain that foreigners receive better treatment than Japanese and the country’s culture is changing rapidly.
A movement with roots in social media, supporters blend nationalism with a sense of crisis and frustration over their daily lives.
At a party gathering in Hashimoto, Wakayama Prefecture in February, about 25 attendees split into groups to discuss rewriting the 1947 Constitution. One group suggested a new supreme law should state that “Japan belongs to the Japanese people, and foreign ownership of Japanese land is not permitted.”
“First, (foreigners) have to fulfill their obligations as human beings and then we can teach them their rights,” said one woman.
“That’s right. Japan’s a paradise for foreigners,” chimed in another.
Others said everyone living in Japan should follow its traditional culture and customs. One proposal called for a return to the spirit of “Hakko Ichiu” as a national ideal. The Japanese Empire’s wartime slogan means “unify the eight corners of the world” and it was used to justify its domination of Asia.
‘Awakened conservatives’ in Japan targeting foreigners (The Mainichi, Takara Sato)
As in the United States and other countries, immigrants provide a ready-made target for scapegoating.
Some observers suggest emerging right-wing populist parties have achieved a breakthrough in national politics. But Masaki Hata, an associate professor of political psychology at Osaka University of Economics, is uncomfortable with that term.
“Sanseito has not improved its voter share since the 2022 upper house election,” Hata said. “When people say ‘breakthrough,’ I would like to say, ‘let’s look at the structure of the elections more closely.'”
Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications data show Sanseito garnered 3.33 percent of the votes in the proportional representation constituency in the 2022 upper house election. It netted 3.43 percent in the national proportional vote in last year’s lower house election, according to preliminary results.
Hata dismisses support for the CPJ as mainly backing for Takashi Kawamura, one of the party’s leaders and former Nagoya mayor, but admits the LDP slush fund scandal helped Sanseito and the CPJ gain clout. According to exit polls by Kyodo News, about 2 percent of LDP supporters flowed to each of the two parties.
While these new right-wing parties share anti-foreigner messaging with counterparts in Europe, especially France’s National Rally led by Marine Le Pen, Hata believes their growth will be limited in Japan, which has a single-seat constituency system in which one candidate is elected from each electoral district.
He emphasized, however, that not only Sanseito and the CPJ but conservative parties such as the Democratic Party for the People and the Japan Innovation Party have portrayed foreigners as enemies to gain support.
“This is not something that is readily reported in the media. We have to sound the alarm on this,” he said.
Japan residents with foreign roots raise voices over racial profiling (The Straits Times)
Naturalization is increasingly difficult to achieve in Japan, which also does not have birthright citizenship.
The survey, released in February, found that over 71 per cent of foreign nationals in Japan had been questioned by police on the streets in the past five years, a rate around 5.6 times higher than for Japanese.
This is despite the crime rate between Japanese and foreigners being roughly the same, the lawyers said, citing an analysis using official government data.
According to Justice Ministry statistics, out of 182,582 people in Japan investigated by the police in 2020 for suspected Penal Code offences, 9,529 were foreigners.
With the total population in the country, including foreigners, in that year standing at 123.35 million and non-Japanese at 6.34 million, the ratio of people subjected to criminal probes was 0.15 per cent for both Japanese and foreigners in Japan, the analysis showed.
The questionnaire, the first of its kind comparing police questioning of foreign nationals and Japanese, drew answers from 521 Japanese and 422 foreigners who have lived in Japan for five years or more, excluding those from the north-east Asian region apparently because they look similar to Japanese people.
In January 2021, advocacy group Japan for Black Lives posted on social media a video which showed a police officer saying “in our experience many people with dreadlocks carry drugs” when questioning a mixed-race man at a station in Tokyo. The post went viral.
AniFem Community
Let’s wrap up Pride with some icons.
Cocona from Flip Flappers! I love her journey from insecurity toward self-actualization.
— Stephen (@stephen28.bsky.social) July 1, 2025 at 2:37 PM
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There are so many to pick from but Richard
— jenni ✨ (@lamarqiaa.bsky.social) July 1, 2025 at 10:29 PM
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Going to go for a deep cut with Saki from Shinsekai Yori. Still think about her and her bonds and relationships throughout the series to this day.
— Rand (@celestialrand.bsky.social) June 30, 2025 at 11:32 PM
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Lots of runners-up, but sorry, the number one is still Kino
— S.E. Robertson / C.A. Moss (@feelingsandmagic.bsky.social) July 2, 2025 at 7:06 AM
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