Chatty AF 212: 2024 Summer Mid-Season Check-In (WITH TRANSCRIPT)
Caitlin, Peter, and Vrai dive into a huge season of mess, some good (relatable trash girls! gender feels!) and some…less good.
Caitlin, Peter, and Vrai dive into a huge season of mess, some good (relatable trash girls! gender feels!) and some…less good.
Fordola and Yotsuyu’s treatment and ultimate fate in the story are starkly different, and in this way they clearly expose underlying gendered biases in how their writers think about Evil Women(TM) and who “deserves” redemption in narratives about trauma and war.
Declaring Show Time! as part of an entertainment criticism pantheon may overstate its importance in the anime sphere. However, this hentai uses its erotic elements to explore issues and humanize actresses in a way those other shows for general audiences cannot.
‘Tis the season of mess, whether from characters or writing.
Do YOU want to see hot anime men in nurturing roles? Does it sweeten the pot if I tell you they’re also wearing vaguely Victorian fantasy clothing? How about if it happened to name its antagonist after one of the notable despots of our time without much apparent self-awareness?
We speak with Aisya, who is a lolita, editor of magazine Lapin Labyrinthe and guitarist of Strawberry Quartz. Aisya is well recognized in online spaces for his commentary on lolita as a space for creativity and inclusion, as well as trying to create opportunities for lolitas from all backgrounds to participate in print media and photography.
Things are heating up, both narratively and literally, as Vrai, Cy, and Chiaki return to peak trauma with Part 4 of our Revolutionary Girl Utena retrospective!
Vibe with some great fantasy, check out some winning third seasons, and put your middle fingers up to the licensors who buried the season’s brightest new gem.
Among the changes that this remake made to its source material, the most personally striking was the radical difference in one character: Ryan Gray, a neurodivergent-coded antagonist originally presented as an unambiguous villain, but reinvented as a nuanced, sympathetic figure.
It’s a summer of love, ranging from sweet to very, very messy.
In the afterword of the first volume of Classmates, Nakamura Asumiko wrote of her first BL series, “I wanted to go with something cliche, almost hackneyed.” It’s true, Classmates does indulge many of the standards of the genre. Instead of using these cliches as shortcuts, however, Nakamura uses the reader’s familiarity to build a framework for a humanistic, multifaceted story about queer intimacy, connection, and joy.