AniFem Round-Up
Anime girl King Arthur and the history of genderbending in the Fate series
While occasionally thematically messy and narratively convoluted, Fate’s long history of genderbending is rooted in a genuine interest in exploring gender, identity, and personhood.
The Fragrant Flower Blooms with Dignity – Series Review
In case you missed it on Netflix, Fragrant Flower is a lovely rom-com from a female-led production team about two kids falling in love across very gendered class barriers.
Chatty AF 241: 2026 Winter Mid-Season Check-In
This season has an amazing spread of excellent shojo, josei, and romance anime!
Which neurodivergent anime or manga character most resonates with you?
In honor of Journal with Witch explicitly using the term.
Beyond AniFem
Plaintiff in Manga Creator Shōichi Yamamoto’s Sexual Abuse Case Releases Statement (Anime News Network, Anita Tai)
Yamamoto assaulted the plaintiff repeatedly while acting as her teacher.
In her statement, she wrote her intention was to prevent further victims from suffering the same kind of abuse under the hands of educational staff. She noted that during the initial settlement discussion, she requested that the publisher provide a transparent explanation for the break when Yamamoto’s manga series returned from hiatus. The publisher refused the condition, and the parties could not reach a settlement.
The victim stated she was unaware Yamamoto continued to work with the publisher under a different pen name. She also denied the headline Japanese weekly tabloid Shūkan Bunshun wrote for her interview claiming she “could never forgive Shogakukan.”
The statement noted that the publisher contacted her in private to apologize for the incident, and she reiterated her goal of exposing the truth of the situation. Shogakukan corroborated this story in a new statement on Monday and also expressed plans to establish a third-party committee to review the incident and recommend changes to prevent future cases.
The victim wished no further harm to Shogakukan, nor for further series to be removed from a platform as she is a fan of many of them. She concluded her statement calling on the public to refrain from escalating criticism of Shogakukan and Shūkan Bunshun.
The victim’s lawyer added that the victim is appealing the court’s initial ruling in the criminal conviction as it did not acknowledge the school’s wrongdoing in the case. There may also be further victims, according to the statement.
Crunchyroll Layoffs Update Confirms New Restructuring in 2026 (ScreenRant, J.R Waugh)
At a certain point, Sonyroll will have laid off everyone who cares about anime.
While broader reporting on the names and total number of employees affected has not yet surfaced, a source at Crunchyroll confirmed to Screen Rant that the company is undergoing restructuring across the HR, Product, and E-Commerce departments. Furthermore, while they did not provide specific numbers, they estimated that the departures were roughly 1/8 to 1/7 the size of Crunchyroll’s August 2025 layoffs.
In particular, the E-Commerce side affected by Crunchyroll’s restructuring involves shifting merchandise and e-commerce in the Crunchyroll store. The intent is to change the strategy for how merchandise is made available to collectors and fans, but there’s no confirmation yet on what that will look like.
Product and HR are similarly affected by this shift, although with fewer specifics on how. All three departments saw roles eliminated based on location, as Crunchyroll seeks to move roles internationally to address the company’s growth in Latin America, India, and other parts of Southeast Asia. From the scope of restructuring, this doesn’t quite reach “mass layoff” levels.
Rumiko Takahashi quietly withdraws all her works due to the Manga One issue…The contrast between her and George Morikawa, who was under fire (Rumic World, Harley Acres)
Translation of an article by the editorial department of BEST T!MES.
In a related post, Hikaru Yuzuki-shi, known for works such as My First Experience, wrote, “I have no way of knowing the internal information of other companies, and the facts are still unclear, so I can’t comment or make any statements. If I’m not careful, it could lead to chaos like in Kusatsu.” Morikawa-shi replied, “You’re right. Thank you.” [4] [5]
This exchange drew loud boos, with people saying, “There is no consideration for the victim,” and “Are you trying to say that the sexual assault is a false accusation?”
The “Kusatsu” that Yuzuki cited refers to the “Kusatsu Town False Accusation Incident” in which a woman who was then a Kusatsu town council member wrote a false statement in an e-book in November 2019, claiming that she had had a sexual relationship with the Kusatsu town mayor in the mayor’s office. The former town council member was found guilty of filing a false accusation. [6]
Although Yuzuki-shi sincerely apologized, saying, “It was wrong to use Kusatsu as an example,” Morikawa-shi added fuel to the fire by reacting angrily to the account that had given him advice, saying, “You’re the first person to tell me what I should do instead of just complaining. An apology, huh? Fine.”
Meanwhile, Rumiko Takahashi-shi, known for her masterpieces such as Urusei Yatsura and who has an exclusive contract with Shogakukan, has been praised for her quiet response. While she has not made any public announcement about the incident, she has withdrawn all of her works from Manga One. It appears she has not officially announced the withdrawal.
A Scandal in Yuri Publishing & Important Statement (Okazu)
A call to continue criticism of publications that continue to employ known sexual predators.
CW for CSA, Suicide, Online Harassment
It has come to my attention that a Yuri science fiction author in Japan has embroiled the Yuri community in a scandal. To begin with, I received an email today with an “investigative report” about an author going by the name of Namboku. The report stated that this author, though having a partner, allegedly deceived a fan in order to have an affair and, when she found out, threatened her. The fan has subsequently committed suicide and the author has been deleting posts on their socials. The Yuri community in Japan is outraged in part because of the lack of reaction by the author’s publishers. On X, people are speaking out plainly about this situation.
None of Namboku’s work is licensed in English, but that is not a good reason for us to ignore this.
In the week after the Manga One scandal at Shogakukan, (and the whole Epstein files cesspit on the political stage) fans are taking a stand against systems that protect predators.
Silent Hill was always feminist, Part 1: The cult, the witch, the burning girl (Mothership, Beatrix Kondo)
Part one of a four-part series on the original run of games.
The backlash from misogynists against Silent Hill f proves the game succeeded in its critique — so effectively that portions of its audience spent 25 years experiencing feminist horror without recognizing it as such. The moment the subtext became text, the denial began.
It’s worth unpacking who, exactly, is doing the complaining — because the backlash is not a monolith. The loudest voices seem to belong to people who have never played Silent Hill f, or any Silent Hill game at all; culture-war outrage rarely requires firsthand experience. Then there’s a smaller, more baffling contingent: players who claim to have loved the series for decades yet somehow absorbed none of what it was actually saying — the dread of patriarchal control, the horror of lost bodily autonomy, the psychological weight of women crushed by expectation, across game after game.
And finally, there is the largest group, and probably the one most likely to be reading this: genuine Silent Hill fans who understood the themes all along, because the series was never particularly subtle if you were paying attention. For this audience — and it is, by all evidence, the majority — Silent Hill f is, in every sense, a continuation of everything the franchise has always been. And it has always been in conversation with feminist ideas; it simply trusted its audience to meet it there. Most did. The ones who didn’t were always in the minority, and their shock at Silent Hill f says less about the game than about how successfully they tuned out everything that came before it.
This Week in Anime: Politics as Usual (Anime News Network, Lucas DeRuyter and Christopher Farris)
A discussion of series with overt political themes.
Chris: The audacity that Akiba Maid War frames itself in means it hits that much harder when the really salient social subjects make themselves apparent. The fact that the characters involved are a combination of organized crime/service industry makes the labor allegories that much more relevantly absurd. There’s also a whole bunch about the commodification of female labor in said industry and how it comes across in otaku culture. You see what we mean when we say it’s all political? Even the wackiest anime full of maid outfits and stylish ultraviolence can give itself to this kind of reading so long as the ideas are meaty enough.
Any amount of audacity still doesn’t preclude too relevant political themes. You mentioned Studio Trigger‘s BNA, which did that racial animal allegory thing way clunkier than BEASTARS or even friggin’ Zootopia. But Trigger’s works have always traded in pretty political points alongside all their artistic gusto. Kill la Kill is a multi-layered treatise on fascism that supposedly partially owes that to them noticing the word’s similarity to “fashion.” And then there’s Promare, which features…an ice-themed police force that rounds up an unfairly targeted minority group that’s being persecuted as a distraction from broader energy and environmental crises.
Trigger’s team allegedly claims there wasn’t any intended direct parallel to real-world events, but…come on. This came out in 2019. Y’all ain’t slick.
Lucas: Hey man, everything seems to be so fly-by-night at Trigger that I could totally believe that they stumbled into hyper relevant politics, but we both know that’s not how art works! While it might not have been specifically inspired by the growing anti-ICE sentiment in the US at the time, it’s at least clearly informed by rising global anti-immigration sentiments and the political tactic of scapegoating marginalized people.
I also never really understood why studios balk at owning up to their work being inspired by real-world events or politics, when the work in question is overtly political. They’re already feeding into the discourse and might as well own up to it!
Chris: Granted, it does make it stand out then that Sushio, who designs and animates for Trigger, seemingly fell for recent nationalist, anti-immigrant Japanese political positions. Dude, did you even watch the anime you worked on?
Songs for Lost Girls: Messy Teens and Emotional Stakes in BanG Dream! It’s MyGO!!!!! (The Afictionado, Alex Henderson)
How the series imbues its small stakes and mundanity with emotional heft.
Tomori, despite Anon’s initial efforts to be The Main Character, ends up as the leader of the group and is essentially the heart of the story. I’d say she’s less ‘messy’ than some of the other characters—she’s certainly less conniving than Soyo, and is less abrasive than Taki—but that doesn’t mean she’s written with less nuance. Tomori is instantly endearing, but not in a twee way; she’s also the source of a lot of the oddball, surprising humour in the early episodes, but not in a way where the show makes fun of her (though the wording is never used, many people have noted Tomori as a resonant and heartfelt depiction of an autistic character in anime). With Tomori, the efficiency of storytelling really shines: even when she doesn’t express emotion ‘conventionally’, her characterisation points the audience to an understanding of her emotional reality, and it brings the whole show together.
Episode 3 is entirely from her perspective (literally, that’s the camera angle!) and that short flashback wordlessly sets up the stakes of the story. Tomori was isolated, trying and often failing to relate to her peers, but Saki and the band gave her a safe outlet and a group of tight-knit friends sharing the intimacy of creative collaboration. CRYCHIC quickly becomes Tomori’s entire world… and so it feels like the end of the world when Saki suddenly breaks up the band. Bang, bang, in only twenty minutes montaging through this girl’s life, not only do you have the satisfying, grim catharsis of seeing the leadup to that dramatic opening scene, but you get, viscerally, why it made such an impact. You’re left sharing that feeling of devastation, especially as you come to understand why Tomori thinks the breakup was her fault (even if you also pick up on clues that suggest that’s not the case at all).
Getting CRYCHIC back together—or at least, working out why it split up and repairing the friendships between everyone—is the core conflict of the show. It doesn’t need to be anything ‘higher stakes’ than that, because the narrative so carefully draws you into the characters’ worldview that these relatively small and personal gripes feel enormous, just as they would if you were a young, awkward girl in Tomori’s position. Or an angry girl in Taki’s position, frustratedly grasping for some sense of control; or a lonely, overachieving girl in Anon’s position; or an anxious, eternally-masking ‘everything’s okay, let’s all be friends!’ girl in Soyo’s position… my gosh I could write another thousand words just about Soyo, but this is already getting long. Even certified Weird Girl Rana, the most undercooked (comparatively) member of the new band, gets enough backstory and characterisation for the audience to understand why she is the way she is and why playing music with these messy kids is so important to her.
VIDEO: Katy Igwe interviews her mother about her childhood and her relationship with Igwe’s Nigerian father.
VIDEO: How The Apothecary Diaries and Gachiakuta discuss sexual assault with care.
VIDEO: The exploration of idol fangirl communal politics in Tamon’s B-Side.
AniFem Community
There’s quite a few great characters these days that fall under “doing everything BUT using an official diagnosis.”
100% Tomoko Kuroki. I still think WataMote is the most realistic slice of life anime ever made. Every other anime takes great efforts to make their characters at least somewhat cool. WataMote is more…realistic.
— Beezy (@leningrad1941.bsky.social) March 10, 2026 at 8:05 AM
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Do I even have to say it
— ❄️Navi❄️ (@mystletainnnavi.bsky.social) March 10, 2026 at 8:43 AM
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