AniFem Round-Up
Strength Unsaid: How Moribito’s main characters normalize gender equality
The roles and characterization of main characters Balsa, Tanda, and Prince Chagum make gender equality seem natural, and therefore powerful, even if their story takes place in a patriarchal system.
Chatty AF 239: Sanda Retrospective
Tony, Caitlin, and ANN’s Sylvia get together to talk about Paru Itagaki’s madcap dystopic LGBTQ romance battle shonen, featuring a sexy Santa Claus!
What should streaming sites be doing to improve their services?
Imagining, for the moment, that the major companies might pay attention.
Beyond AniFem
Emergency contraception now available over the counter (The Asahi Shimbun, Mirei Jinguji)
Prior to this, a prescription was required to purchase emergency birth control.
Anyone wishing to purchase the pill must visit a pharmacy or drugstore in person where a checklist will be used to confirm whether the buyer is the intended user and if the purchase is within 72 hours after intercourse.
A pharmacist will then provide an explanation about the medication before the purchase is completed.
After purchasing it, customers are not allowed to take the pill home; they must take it in front of the pharmacist. Following this, they are expected to confirm whether they are not pregnant by using a pregnancy test kit by themselves or visiting a medical institution about three weeks after use.
There are no age restrictions for purchase, and consent from a partner or guardian is not required. The pill works by delaying ovulation, and if taken within 72 hours after intercourse, it can reportedly prevent pregnancy with an 80 percent success rate.
Access to morning-after pills previously required first visiting a medical institution to obtain a doctor’s prescription.
Overseas, they can be purchased without a prescription in about 90 countries and regions, and there have been calls for making them available over the counter in Japan as well.
Sales are permitted only at pharmacies and drugstores that meet certain requirements, such as having pharmacists who have completed the necessary training on staff.
The health ministry’s website discloses a list of pharmacies and drugstores that are authorized to sell the product across 43 prefectures. As of Jan. 27, a total of 5,445 pharmacies and drugstores were on the list.
Crunchyroll Is Increasing Prices Right After Removing Its Free Streaming Plan (IGN, Blythe Dujardin)
Sony continues to tighten its stranglehold on the industry.
The changes generally increase every monthly subscription plan by $2, broken down as follows:
Fan Tier will increase from $7.99/month to $9.99/month.
Mega Fan Tier will increase from $11.99/month to $13.99/month.
Ultimate Fan Tier will increase from $15.99/month to $17.99/month.
This is Crunchyroll’s second price increase since merging with Funimation. The previous increase, which took effect in May 2024, had been the service’s first price hike in over five years. The new price hike notably follows Crunchyroll’s removal of its free streaming plan at the end of 2025.
The Anime AI Closed Captioning Situation Is Crazy (Aftermath, Isaiah Colbert)
This ramping up of service failures goes hand-in-hand with that price increase.
At worst, Crunchyroll’s subtitling creates the annoying scenario where you’re given two options: English and English CC. The first option translates Japanese text written within the show, where things like text messages, signage, and the like are translated in concert with dialogue—something that’s especially helpful for readers who are either curious or need to know all the fucking rules in Jujutsu Kaisen Culling Game Part 1.
The latter, in theory, provides viewers who are deaf or hard of hearing with captions that convey information about background noise and speaker changes within a show. But more often than not, Crunchyroll’s closed captioning, alongside its subtitling as of late, has become a far cry from what the company used to offer. This is a result of the popularity of anime rising exponentially. Crunchyroll as a company has an insatiable need to beef up the quantity of its shows in its streaming catalogue without giving a damn about the quality of its localizations. While Crunchyroll has claimed it doesn’t use AI for its subtitles or closed captions, the kinds of errors being made in these captions have made viewers suspicious. Especially, because, well, they have been caught red handed before.
Crunchyroll’s first AI incident saw users catch the German subtitles for the show Necronomico and the Cosmic Horror Show with the words ChatGPT explicitly written in its subtitling. Speaking with Aftermath, a spokesperson provided a statement saying the “AI-generated subtitles were employed by a third-party vendor, which is in violation of our agreement.” After that, the show’s German subtitles no longer include the ChatGPT prefix, according to Anime News Network. However, that hasn’t stopped the anime from having a bit of a tarnished reputation as the “AI” show online in the wake of its subtitling incident.
Gunpla is for the girls (Mothership, Nicole Carpenter)
The backbone of Gundam’s endurance is now, and has always been, women.
The success of the plastic models, called gunpla, helped sustain the franchise after the original show was canceled; since then, dozens of official TV shows, video games, and films have been created. At some point, likely early on, Gundam and gunpla became known as a boy’s thing — like video games, it was a hobby that wasn’t considered something girls were into. Women and girls had participated in the hobby since the beginning, and yet, for decades, that perception persisted. It continued as Gundam expanded into multiple universes and timelines, spanning shows, books, and video games; it continued when Mobile Suit Gundam Wing started airing on Toonami in 2000 — a move that’s considered Gundam’s big break in the United States.
Gunpla, like lots of other stay-at-home hobbies, saw an international boost during the COVID-19 pandemic’s lockdown restrictions. Not only were more people — including women — building models, but they were also livestreaming their processes and watching others do the same. That new group of enthusiasts continued to grow with the 2022 release of Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury, which included the main series’ first female, queer protagonist.
Orb: On the Movements of the Earth and its Parallels with Present-Day Censorship (Anime Herald, Kyli Rodriguez-Cayro)
The series is certainly relevant under the rise of fascism across the world.
As Rafal says, “inspiration is probably more important than lifespan.” The existence of the book title alone moves Albert Brudzewski – a Polish astronomer that famously taught Nicolaus Copernicus and the only real-life historical figure in the anime – to reignite the quest to prove heliocentrism in real-life Poland. The survival of just the title is not a symbol of hopelessness. On the contrary, the title is a symbol of perseverance in place of where hopelessness once existed.
Jolenta echoes Rafal’s sentiment when expressing that the meaning of birth and life is to “participate in the dull, endless path of crawling towards good.”
Despite ongoing arrests and threats of retribution, people globally are fighting back against authoritarianism. Protests against human rights violations have not slowed. Over the past year, Gen Z protesters from Nepal to New York flew the iconic Jolly Roger flag from One Piece as a symbol of resistance. Scientists have not stopped advocating for research-based healthcare even as they are ousted from their positions. Journalists are signing open letters addressing bias in Western media.
Sure, Orb is a warning against the dangers of authoritarianism. More importantly, the show represents the indelible curiosity that all people possess. It’s about the intrinsic need to understand. To know. To find meaning. To have autonomy.
VIDEO: Animatic for episode 2 of Pretty Pretty Please I Don’t Want to be a Magical Girl.
VIDEO: Rating magical girl media from 2025.
VIDEO: Making every outfit from Shugo Chara.
VIDEO: Introduction to the Year 24 Group.
SKEET: A short example of ongoing audio-visual issues with Crunchyroll’s platform.
Funimation devoured Crunchyroll and killed Right Stuf for this.
— Samantha Ferreira Is In Her Research Hole Until January (@sam-animeherald.bsky.social) February 2, 2026 at 9:03 AM
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AniFem Community
Even if the biggest monopoly-holders turn out to be a total lost cause, there’s no reason not to keep advocating for usability across services.
Bring back free Premium for public library anime clubs, Crunchyroll.
— M-x purple-panda-mode (@meimeimeixie.purplepanda.gay) February 2, 2026 at 10:41 PM
LET US TAKE SCREENSHOTS AGAIN. ANIME FANS THRIVE THROUGH EXPOSURE AND MEMES AND OUT OF CONTEXT SHOTS. remember Yuri on Ice with every episode that aired???
— Kittea (@kittea.bsky.social) February 2, 2026 at 10:50 PM
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Crunchyroll will never improve when their market position makes it unnecessary, but there's lots of ground to make up in navigation, subtitling onscreen text, actual CC instead of automated CC, rejecting AI sub tools, actually keeping complete series and old licenses, etc.
— Deep Sense of Creeping DreⱯd 2024 (@devedy.bsky.social) February 2, 2026 at 10:46 PM
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