Curses and True Forms: Reading Fruits Basket as a lesbian
As a lesbian, Fruits Basket was not written for me. Even so, the romance between Kyo and Tohru resonates deeply with my experience of queerness.
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The Consequence of No Consequences: Mushoku Tensei and excusing sexual violence
Any story that wants to explore this darker side of humanity must be willing to explore how doing horrible things affects the world and people around you, or it risks trivializing the true horrors of the darkness it depicts.
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My Fave is Problematic: I’m in Love with the Villainess
I’m in Love with the Villainess starts out as a silly isekai romance but grows into a story that earnestly advocates for queer people, taking on complex subjects like homophobia, transphobia, and classism. However, the story’s reliance on messy tropes can sometimes muddle its messages.
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Chatty AF 202: Revolutionary Girl Utena Watchalong – Episodes 13-20 (WITH TRANSCRIPT)
Cy, and Chiaki, and Vrai return and dive into the Black Rose Saga, the importance of the secondary cast, and Anthy’s deepening characterization.
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Love Him to Heal Him: Heterosexual wish-fulfillment in Mars and I Sold My Life For 10,000 Yen Per Year
Looking at these series side by side, we can see the same archetype and corresponding fantasy of the scarred, strong yet secretly sad man being nursed emotionally by a female love interest play out in different hues for their specific target audiences, in all its glories and pitfalls.
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Immaturity and Impunity: Performative Masculinity in Baki the Grappler
Despite its enthusiastic embrace of playful exaggeration and dramatic pageantry, Baki the Grappler shouldn’t be written off as mind-numbing entertainment for the masses. A critical analysis of Baki as contemporary anime, and a part of pop culture more broadly speaking, can help us all better understand how performative masculinity functions—and why it is so potentially dangerous.
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Roland Kelts on Blade Runner: Black Lotus, the influence of shoujo, and 18 years of Japanamerica
Writer Roland Kelts opened up about his early childhood relationship with anime and manga, the status that Japanamerica holds today, cross cultural influence in media, female characters in manga and anime, and his work on The Art of Blade Runner: Black Lotus.
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Unlovely Complex: Social Justice, Misogyny, and the Lovely Complex Dub
The way this writer, a member of the dubbing team, talked about the show and his inability or refusal to unpack even its most basic themes spoke to the sort of misogyny that pervades critical analysis, in which female characters and creators don’t get even the slightest grace for being messy, imperfect beings.
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Chatty AF 201: 2024 Winter Mid-Season Check-In (WITH TRANSCRIPT)
Vrai, Alex, and Peter check-in on the 2024 Winter season, where quite a few titles with a lot of potential have a lot riding on their second halves!
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Cyborgs and Identity in Cyberpunk, from Ghost in the Shell to Cyberpunk Edgerunners
Identity is a complicated subject; the ways we can reflect, parse, and better try to know ourselves are nearly infinite, while the ways we can convey that to others effectively are not. Usually, we are limited in how we present by the economic and social pressures of our society. The cyborg challenges its fans to ask themselves: if what makes us people isn’t as concrete as flesh and blood, then what other unshakable, unchangeable truths about ourselves have we been wrong about?
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Rainbows and Rollerblades: The queer evolution of the Scott Pilgrim series
This series has always been queer, it’s just been handled in different ways, with earnest character writing that nonetheless reflected the stereotypes and assumptions of the early 2000s, before unfolding into a more careful, nuanced narrative of sexual fluidity and love in the 2020s.
