AniFem Round-Up
Agency, consent, and queer monstrosity in This Monster Wants to Eat Me
The series’ nature as a piece of horror, coupled with the monsters and ambiguous intimacies at its core, set the stage for messy and emotional questions.
Magical Sisters LuluttoLilly — Episodes 1-3
It’s colorful, it’s sweet, and it wears its heart on its sleeve, combining a legacy of famous magical girl shows into a modern series that feels fresh enough.
Sailor Moon’s original North American release was shaped by broadcast standards, marketing logic, and a cultural framework that simply did not have room for everything the original series was doing.
Chatty AF 243: 2026 Spring Mid-Season Check-In
Dee, Caitlin, and Peter check in on the 2026 Spring season where they actually get to spend most of their time talking about Feminist Potential titles!
How often do you watch pre-1990s anime?
Whether that’s at home or on the big screen.
Beyond AniFem
Vampire Princess’ Last Stand (MediaOCD, Justin Sevakis)
An update on the still-forthcoming Blu-ray’s unexpected production issues.
Welp, we finished the disc, and sent the packaging off to Japan for it to get approved, which is a requirement when you work with anime professionally. We had some good back-and-forth initially, but ultimately we simply could not get this approval to the finish line. Due to the way the copyright system works over there, we hit a procedural log jam. We’ve made absolutely no progress in over a year.
We’ve done everything we could think of to rectify the situation, but unfortunately, this is not going to get fixed. Worse, we discovered that our contract for the show (which we inherited from the previous owners of AnimEigo), ran out much sooner than we expected: next year. That means that we’re basically out of time to do a proper release.
But we had this gorgeous HD remaster of a gorgeous show, just sitting there. The wall we hit with approvals would likely make it impossible for anyone to release it in the future. What a waste!
So we’re doing something ridiculous. We’re releasing this disc on our own site, without artwork or design to approve. Yes, it’s a completely blank cover.
Old-Fashioned Magic: A Brief History of Studio Pierrot’s Magical Girls (Anime News Network, Rebecca Silverman)
An overview of each show and their place in the genre’s history.
Almost all of Studio Pierrot’s magical girls fall under the “idol” heading. Bizarrely, Magical Idol Pastel Yumi is the only one who isn’t a performer despite having the word “idol” right in the title, but Mami, Emi, Lala, and sisters Lilly and Lulu all perform onstage. (Persia has moments, but it’s not the focus of her story.) But more than the simple classification, Studio Pierrot’s magical girls all share distinct similarities:
- They are all elementary school girls who have magic for a limited time. (Exception: Rui, who is in middle school.)
- They all transform into teenage versions of themselves. (Exception: Yumi, who can change clothes, but doesn’t age up.)
- Their parents are all working in a trade, often food-related. (Exception: Mai, whose family is stage magicians, and Miho, whose parents are a TV producer and a paleontologist.)
- They have a crush on an older boy and often become their own rivals for his affection.
Studio Pierrot is admirably devoted to these basics (although as you can see, they aren’t slavishly devoted), and that holds true up through 2026’s Magical Sisters, which feels very much like a throwback to the ’80s – in a good way, I promise! Arguably, many of these ideas were hammered out in Creamy Mami, who has, in many ways, usurped early magical girls as the grande dame of the genre.
Former Weekly Shonen Jump manga artist says editors insisted on erotic content as a precondition to publishing superhero series with a female protagonist (Automaton, Amber V)
The series began and ended in 2015.
Lady Justice is a comedic superhero manga featuring high school girl Kenzaki Ameri, who uses her super-human strength to fight criminals and gangsters under the hero name Iustitia. While Ameri is practically invincible, the clothes she wears are not, and a recurring topic in the story is the heroine’s embarrassment over her costume getting torn in battle and exposing her body, which makes it a pretty fanservice-heavy read.
Recently, an X user analyzing the series’ untimely cancellation commented, “I feel like the author approached this with nothing but a passionate desire to draw something erotic, only to be met with failure. Looking back on it now though, it was quite bold of them to try and compete with a superhero series in the heyday of My Hero Academia.”
The post gained enough traction to elicit a response from author Ken Ogino himself, and his side of the story came as a big surprise to manga fans. “I based this work around the concept of a Japanese-style American comic, and since I figured that Japanese-ness equals ‘moe,’ I decided to make the protagonist a female superhero,” he says. However, despite consciously aiming for moe, Ogino says his original idea was to depict a tough female superhero, with erotic fanservice only acting as an additional “spice.”
“However,” he goes on to explain, “the editorial department told me that if the protagonist was female, they wouldn’t publish the story unless the erotic content was the main focus, so I reluctantly went along with it. I’m feeling envious since Jump now lets its creators depict female protagonists even without erotic content.”
Muslim Burial in Japan: Government Surveys Cities as Tensions Rise (Unseen Japan, Kristina Rin Fujikake)
Burial is legal but currently difficult to access for many across Japan.
In Hiji Town, Oita Prefecture, a plan to build a cemetery for Muslim burials drew national attention – and not all of it positive. A local Islamic association had reached an agreement to acquire municipal land for the project, with support from nearby residents. The number of plots was capped, restrictions on who could be buried there were clearly defined, and environmental safeguards, including groundwater testing, were put in place.
Despite these measures, opposition grew. Some residents in neighboring areas raised concerns about possible contamination of local water sources. Others submitted complaints that included discriminatory language, prompting warnings from legal experts that parts of the backlash could constitute hate speech.
Similar patterns of misinformation and backlash have appeared in other contexts, including false claims targeting Muslim communities that have led to waves of complaints against local governments. Some rhetoric has extended beyond local concerns, with commentators suggesting that Muslim residents who require burial should return their deceased to their countries of origin. Critics say that overlooks the reality that many Muslims in Japan are long-term residents, and in some cases, citizens.
The issue quickly became political. In the town’s 2024 mayoral election, a candidate opposing the cemetery defeated the incumbent by a wide margin. Shortly after taking office, the new mayor reversed course and refused to proceed with the land sale, effectively halting the project.
ICYMI: Videos You Probably Missed – Cute Animal Boys, Ghost Hunting, and Band Drama (Blerdy Otome, Naja)
A video round-up featuring four different visual novel streams.
In case you’ve been living under a rock, I have a YouTube channel! I mostly upload playthroughs of games I’ve played on stream, with the occasional video review sprinkled in. This week I had four new uploads! So, let’s get to it, here are the videos you missed over on YouTube.
“Troubled Waters” by Ichiyo Higuchi (Asian Review of Books, Peter Gordon)
A collection of short stories from the influential writer.
Higuchi died young from tuberculosis, aged just 24, in 1894, leaving a mere 21 short stories as her total output of fiction, contributing no doubt to her relative lack of presence in the English-speaking world, while at the same time making her ubiquity in Japan all the more remarkable. Translator Bryan Karetnyk writes of her:
Ichiyo has gone down in history as Japan’s first woman writer to earn a living from her writing, and her legacy, which redefined Japanese literature for the modern age, lives on today. Her life and works are adapted for stage and screen, and her diaries have been serialized on radio.
In Troubled Water, Karetnyk unveils five of Higuchi’s short stories, not (except for one) quite for the first time in English, but quite likely the first time one would have noticed. The feeling is one of discovery of a writer one should have known but (probably) didn’t, like the first time reading Sándor Márai or Kurban Said.
You Don’t Own Me (Unwinnable, Sara Clemens)
Looking at Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within through the lens of AI.
At the time, The Spirits Within presented itself as a glimpse of cinema’s future – a world in which human performers might be entirely replaced by digital ones. Its ambition was both technical and conceptual, proposing with its lead that a convincingly rendered female character could transcend a single story and become a reusable star. That premise now reads like the precursor to a cultural shift. The film’s attempt to create a controllable, endlessly reproducible woman anticipates many of the ethical issues that define today’s digital media landscape, from AI-generated imagery to posthumous film performances. What once seemed like an innovative experiment now functions as a lens through which we can examine how technology continues to reshape and destabilize the relationship between bodies, identity, and control. Aki Ross is not just an example of cutting-edge animation. She is an early manifestation of a persistent cultural desire to divorce the female body from the woman herself, and to make that body infinitely manipulable.
Aki Ross was not only presented as the easily controlled version of a leading lady but marketed as a woman, full stop – appearing in Maxim magazine as one of the “Top 100 Hottest Women of 2001” – yet was given no autonomy and no interiority beyond what was scripted for her. This separation played right into longstanding feminist critiques of cinema, where women’s bodies are often treated as surfaces for projection rather than sites of lived experience. In Aki’s case, the separation was complete – the body remained while the subject disappeared.
Kadokawa to solicit voluntary retirement from employees aged 45 and over as it aims for “leaner” workforce (Automaton, Amber V)
Multiple companies have cut staff in recent years.
Japanese manga, anime and game publishing giant Kadokawa announced on May 14 that it would be launching a “special early retirement program” targeting an unspecified number of employees. The company will solicit voluntary resignations among employees aged 45 or older who have at least five years of service.
According to the announcement, this decision comes from the need to manage costs and “build a leaner and more efficient organizational structure” in the rapidly polarizing content industry. Kadokawa aims to restructure its workforce as it expands its operations across publishing, animation, live-action, video games and other fields.
The company will be accepting applications for early retirement from June 1 to June 26, with applicants expected to leave the company as of June 31, 2026 (note that all dates are marked as “tentative”). Kadokawa will offer employees who agree to retirement an additional severance package on top of standard severance pay, as well as optional re-employment support. These expenses will be recorded as an extraordinary loss in the company’s financial results for the current fiscal year.
Japanese broadcaster postpones documentary on “maid café for women with developmental disabilities” following allegations about poor working conditions (Automaton, Amber V)
The establishment denies the reports.
TV Asahi announced on May 21 that it will postpone the airing of a documentary dedicated to a Japanese maid cafe that employs women with developmental disabilities. The program was due to air on May 23, but has since been replaced, with no alternative airing date announced at the time of writing.
While TV Asahi did not provide a reason for the change of plans, this comes only a day after Tokyo Shimbun published a piece in which former staff of Star Blossom, a maid cafe for women with developmental disabilities and mental illnesses located in Osaka, blew the whistle on the establishment, alleging poor working conditions and below minimum wages.
According to the report, despite being signed as “paid volunteers” rather than workers, the women were required to work shifts (sometimes over 7 hours without breaks) and fulfill revenue quotas, which would normally constitute labor. They handled all tasks related to the cafe’s operations, from waiting on customers to preparing food, but allegedly only received renumeration of 800 yen per hour (the minimum wage in Japan is over 1,000 yen even in the lowest paying prefectures). Star Blossom is reportedly being investigated by the local Labor Standards Inspection Office based on these allegations.
Aftermath Bonus Blog: Workers At TheGamer Say Site’s New Pay-Per-Session Contract Is ‘Heartbreaking’ (Aftermath, Riley Macleod)
Workers foresee these changes causing dramatic drops in their income.
Valnet calls this new system “Pay Per Session,” or “PPS.” Saying it “rewards top-performing articles,” under the new structure, workers would receive between $3-$8 per 1000 sessions depending on their role in an article. An editor on a story would fall under the $3 rate; a “written article,” which workers who spoke to Aftermath explained means one that was edited, would receive $5 per 1000 sessions. “Self-published” articles would fall into the $8 category, which workers explained applies to when an article’s writer also handles tasks related to putting the article in the CMS. Workers say most articles TheGamer publishes would fall under this highest tier. In every case, Valnet wrote that this pay structure would be limited to “15 days per post publish.”
“The PPS model gives you more direct control over your earnings,” Valnet wrote, continuing that writers can “now earn up to $2,500 per article based on traffic performance.”
Not all workers at TheGamer have been offered these new terms, with workers telling Aftermath the offer has gone to some members of the site’s guides and news teams. One worker, whom Aftermath is granting anonymity out of concern for reprisal from Valnet, said they “don’t see any patterns here, really” regarding who the offer went to.
The Strange Dissonance of Rainbows After Storms (The Afictionado, Alex Henderson)
The series is a light comedy about two girls trying to hide their relationship.
I’m clearly not having the intended emotional reaction to these scenes. I don’t think Rainbows After Storms is doing anything wrong from a craft perspective, though; in fact I think it’s working just as intended. Rainbows After Storms is a shonen school rom-com, and when comparing it against some of its genre and demographic fellows, some things start to make more sense. It seems like the secret relationship fills the same function as, say, the fact that Komi can’t communicate in Komi Can’t Communicate, or that Shikimori’s not just a cutie in Shikimori’s Not Just a Cutie. These premises are built around a particular character trait and/or character dynamic, and the writers use this to establish a formula that sits at the heart of most of the jokes.
Rainbows After Storms fits into a similar formula, with a loose ongoing storyline largely built around a series of scenes that rely on and reiterate the premise—in this case, Nanoha and Chidori are dating but can’t tell anyone—and point things towards a punchline. There is some sense of continuity and progression, but largely the characters and relationships remain the same and the manga remains episodic. Combined with the repetition of the premise in those recurring text boxes, it really feels like you could pick this up and read a random chapter and have a chuckle with no further context needed. These are the genre conventions of slice-of-life comedy, and Rainbows After Storms fits them to a tee.
On one hand, I can’t be mad at this series for fitting into the expectations of its own genre and demographic. But you get a weird tonal dissonance from slotting a secret queer relationship, and two anxious queer teenagers, into this formula. The more grounded and poignant moments I highlighted above feel out-of-place and tonally different to the punchlines about Chidori and Nanoha blushing and fretting. The formulaic approach to the fear of being outed makes light of something that the reader has seen cause these characters a lot of heartache. Not to mention that coming out (or not!) is an immensely nuanced topic that, I’d argue, requires a delicate approach that the series just hasn’t given itself room for.
VIDEO: Interview with BL scholar Dr. Thomas Baudinette.
VIDEO: Massive backlash to a video….saying there should be more female protagonists.
VIDEO: Please Save My Earth manga restrospective podcast (part 1 of 2).
VIDEO: How Marriagetoxin Breaks the Shonen Harem Mold.
AniFem Community
Sorry about the inconsistent schedule, AniFam. Behind-the-scenes life has been pretty brutal for several members of staff — we apologize for the disruptions.
I always have *at least* one going while going through seasonal shows! Watching and enjoying the classics enriches my experiences watching things that are new. Knowing the roots of tropes, seeing how they are subverted, knowing when things get referenced? It makes watching that much more fun!
— LiteralGrill (@literalgrill.com) June 1, 2026 at 11:34 PM
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