Individual posts about series and topics that caught my interest. Organized by medium, then series title.

Anime

• Akiba’s Trip: Speak, Fan, and Enter! Heroes & Gatekeepers in Akiba’s Trip
  A refreshingly optimistic and welcoming look at nerd culture nestled inside a fanservice show.
• Baccano!: Light Novel vs. Anime: Baccano! and the Art of Adaptation
  How the anime differs from the source material—and why that’s a good thing.
• ClassicaLoid:
  • Gals of All Stripes: ClassicaLoid & the Girls’ Day Out
    An exuberant exploration and celebration of what it means to be a girl.
  • Love in the Time of ClassicaLoid
    This wacky rom-com episode comes with a happily inclusive twist.
• Cute High Earth Defense Club LOVE!: How Cute High Earth Defense Club LOVE‘s 2nd Season Struck Comedy Gold
  This goofball series perfectly captures what it’s like to be in high school.
• Dance with Devils: Capriccio of Fantasy & Power: The Silly Brilliance of Dance with Devils
  This campy musical cleverly indulges in the “bad boy” romantic fantasy without ever losing sight of the important line between escapism and reality.
• The Eccentric Family: Failed Tanuki and Half-Baked Tengu: Identity & Community in The Eccentric Family – Part 1 | Part 2
  Through its colorful world and unique individuals, The Eccentric Family asks us what makes us who we say we are—and wonders how we’d find that answer in the first place.
• Fushigi Yugi: My Fave is Problematic: Fushigi Yugi
  Untangling fifteen years’ worth of feelings about the messy, emotional, flawed, sincere shoujo fantasy that’s been a part of my life since middle school.
• Haikyu!!: The Nail That Sticks Up: Haikyu!! and the Power of Weirdos
  With its cast of unconventional players working towards a common goal, Haikyu finds a smart balance between encouraging individualism and fostering teamwork.
• Magic-Kyun Renaissance: Magic-Kyun Renaissance and the Spark(le) of Creativity
  In addition to being a pleasantly silly otome adaptation, Magic-kyun also uses its world of “magical arts” to deftly address the struggles of young artists.
• Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun: Heroine Boys and Princely Girls: How Nozaki-kun is Challenging Gender Roles in Fiction
  Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun deftly flips the expectations of its characters and audience to challenge our understanding of traditional gender roles both in fiction and out of it.
• MY love STORY!!: My Love(ish) Story: Anime, Aces, and Suna-min Rolls
  A personal essay about asexual representation in anime and the importance of Sunakawa Makoto in My Love Story.
• Nichijou: Nichijou and the Everyday Epics of High School Girls
  Through its absurd comedy, Nichijou not only showcases many common (and not-so-common) trials and triumphs of modern female adolescence and friendship, but also expands the narrow idea of what it means to be a “normal” teen girl in fiction.
• Ping-Pong: The Hero Appears! Ping-Pong and the Asobi Spirit
  Ping-Pong grapples with the moment in adolescence where hobbies become careers and “fun” becomes “work,” and challenges society’s focus on winning in favor of embracing play.
• Pokemon:
  • Lady Leads & Sidekick Lads: Flipping the script in Team Rocket’s “Training Daze”
    Team Rocket’s special backstory episode defies as many conventions as they do, taking the classic team origin story and turning familiar gendered archetypes cleverly on their heads.
  • Nonconforming in the ’90s: How Pokemon‘s gender variance caught the hearts of a generation
    When the Pokemon anime arrived in the U.S. twenty years ago, it filled the space between “boy stuff” and “girl stuff,” treated both as having value, and—through its world, characters, and story—challenged why there was a division in the first place. I fell in love with it in 1999, and now in 2019, I can finally explain why.
• Princess Nine: A Swing and a Miss: The mixed-up feminism of Princess Nine
  Despite a keen understanding of the sexism girls and women face when trying to enter traditionally masculine fields, Princess Nine falls into its own sexist assumptions in its last act, undercutting its progressive messaging in the process.
• Princess Principal: Know When to Fold ‘Em: “Loudly Laundry” and the feel-good feminism of Princess Principal
  A deep-dive into the upbeat and inspiring seventh episode of Princess Principal, which offers perhaps the show’s most nuanced depiction of inequality to date, asking our central cast to acknowledge their own privilege—and encouraging them to find a better way forward.
• The Royal Tutor: Like Its Pint-Sized Protagonist, The Royal Tutor is More Than Meets the Eye
  Never judge a book by its cover or an anime by its quantity of chibis.
• Sailor Moon Crystal: Moon Crisis Make-Up! How Chiaki Kon Saved Sailor Moon Crystal
  A little love goes a long way in Sailor Moon Crystal‘s third season.
• Saiyuki: An Introduction to the Saiyuki Anime (…As told by a fan who read the manga almost a decade ago)
  A loving and extremely not-serious overview of an old favorite, written in honor of the Summer 2017 Saiyuki Reload Blast anime.
• Sakura Quest: Life After Failure in Sakura Quest
  This low-key inspiring series picks up where most high school anime leave off, exploring what happens after you don’t achieve your childhood “dream” and showing how people can still find happiness and fulfillment on the other side of professional failure.
• She and Her Cat: She and Her Cat and Her Story
  Adulthood, family, and the purrpose-driven life.
• Tanaka-kun is Always Listless:
  
  • Tanaka-kun is Always Listlessly In The Moment; Or, Zen and the Art of Laziness
  • Tanaka-kun is Always Listlessly Growing Up; Or, Taking the Staircase Elevator to Adulthood
  • Tanaka-kun is Always Listlessly Defying Appearances; Or, Delinquency is Only Skin Deep
• Tokyo Ghoul: A Tokyo Ghoul Retrospective; Or, “Waiter, There’s a Tragedy in my Horror Anime!”
  Tokyo Ghoul follows the beats of a traditional Hamlet-style tragedy… but is that the story it truly wants to be?
• Multiple series:
  • So That I Could Be Myself: Gender Performance in Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju and Yuri on Ice
    How two very different male protagonists use their art forms as an outlet to express their femininity.
  • You Don’t Have to Kick Ass to Be Kickass: Shoujo fantasy and the value of the noncombatant hero
    What shoujo fantasies can teach us about writing protagonists who don’t adhere to traditional masculine ideals of strength.
  • After the Rain, Ristorante Paradiso, and the delicate art of the age-gap romance
    Power, perspective, and how little decisions can create major differences.
  • WorldEnd vs Hajime no Ippo: When bad frames happen to good people
    A look at how framing can turn an innocuous scene into predatory one.

Manga

• Chihayafuru: A Dream of One’s Own: Finding a home outside femininity in Chihayafuru
  Sometimes wrenching but ultimately inspiring, Chihayafuru’s first volume quietly challenges traditional gender norms and offers the hope of a supportive community to anyone who’s ever felt like they didn’t quite fit society’s gendered expectations of who they’re “supposed” to be.
• Goodbye, My Rose Garden: Daring to Speak its Name: Goodbye, My Rose Garden and the queer historical romance
  With its window to the past and its door the future, Goodbye, My Rose Garden is a masterclass in writing queer historical romance.
• Heaven’s Design Team: All Folks Bright and Beautiful: The casual gender diversity of Heaven’s Design Team
  Come for the neat animal facts, stay for the charming cast breezily ignoring gender norms.
• Princess Jellyfish: No Geek Girls Need Apply: Bias & Blind Spots in Princess Jellyfish Vol. 1
  Princess Jellyfish‘s early chapters often depict the prejudices people face because they don’t fit societal norms—and isn’t afraid to show how those prejudices can be held by anyone, even those who face prejudice themselves.
• The Promised Neverland: Emma’s Choice: The gender-norm nightmare at the heart of The Promised Neverland
  What begins as a sharply crafted horror story soon reveals itself to be a sophisticated critique on restrictive social practices, including the hellishly limited roles expected of girls.
• Witch Hat Atelier: Thinking Outside the Circle: Accessibility and education in Witch Hat Atelier
  Using its “magical school” premise, Witch Hat Atelier explores diversity among students and argues for the importance of accessibility throughout society, especially in education.

Miscellany

• Media analysis: Watch Me If You Can: Context & Nuance in Imperfect Fiction
  A sprawling essay outlining my thoughts on engaging with our favorite stories (and one another).
• Anime Supremacy: Review: Anime Supremacy! is the SHIROBAKO sequel you’ve been waiting for
  A review of Mizuki Tsujimura’s novel Anime Supremacy!, a trio of interconnected stories about three women working in the anime industry.
• Kingdom Hearts: A Girl Worth Fighting For: Kingdom Hearts III and the mystery of the missing heroines
  Kingdom Hearts’s cast and audience may have grown up, but its tired “boy saves girl” gender politics remain just as outdated as they were when the franchise first launched.
• The Legend of Korra: The Korra Retrospective
  A Legend of Korra series “review” that swiftly spiraled into an essay about power, privilege, and Korra’s journey towards empathy.

Roundtables

• For the Love of Trash Characters
  The team talks “trash characters,” those flawed darlings we relate to more than we’d like to admit.
• Age-gap relationships in fiction
  Caitlin, Vrai, and I discussed the line between reality and fantasy and how both creators and consumers can responsibility engage with age-gap romances in media.