Anime + Manga Titles

The Josei’s Top 10 Anime of 2018: Part 1 (Honorable Mentions & #6-10)

Bringing a little color to the end of the year.

A group of teens in school uniforms standing under an abstract rainbow with a golden fish flying across it.

Is it just me, or was 2018 kind of a down year for anime? Maybe I’ve just been spoiled by the avalanche of quality we’ve gotten over the past 2-3 years, but while I’m usually agonizing over what I’ll have to drop from a list, this year I was agonizing over what I was going to put on it at all. I’d worry that my sense of whimsy was fading, but I’ve spent literal months rolling around in the Twitch Pokemon marathon, so that can’t be it…

Whatever the case, the weird year resulted in me having two Top 10 lists with relatively little overlap: one was of shows that I knew in my head were good but had left me cold, and one of shows that I knew weren’t as technically sharp but I sure did care about them.  I wrote up the first list… and then threw it in a fire and published the second one instead. So, please enjoy the Top 10 Shows That Made Your Stressed-Out Blogger Feel Things.

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All Folks Bright and Beautiful: The casual gender diversity of Heaven’s Design Team

How to succeed at inclusivity without really trying.

A group of people sitting around a meeting room table. A man and woman face each other in the foreground.

The Heaven’s Design Team manga follows God’s R&D Department as they take requests from on high (literally) to populate the earth with new animals. Similar to Cells at Work!, it’s an edutainment series that balances comical interactions between coworkers with mini-lessons about some of the world’s most unique, clever, or just plain terrifying critters.

As the kid who devoured Zoobooks and the adult who’d rather visit a new city’s aquarium than its art museum, the series sounded like my jam, but it wasn’t exactly waving its arms and shouting “I’ll make great AniFem content!” either. Which was part of what made it such a pleasant surprise. I may have come for the neat animal facts, but I stayed for the charming cast breezily ignoring gender norms.

Click here for the full article on Anime Feminist!

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Podcast: The Vision of Escaflowne Rewatchalong – Episodes 7-13

Your one-stop shop for good girls and disaster boys!

Merle waggles her hands at Hitomi and looks disgusted. Hitomi flushes and looks annoyed. Van stands between them, head tilted, puzzled.

The rewatchalong continues!  Join us for a lively discussion on whether Allen is a trashbag (spoiler: he is), how the show depicts romance and female friendship, and the Power of Positive Thinking.

Click here to view the show notes and download the SoundCloud file, or find it on iTunes and Stitcher by searching for “Chatty AF.”

If you like the dishes AniFem is serving up, please consider becoming a patron for as little as $1 a month!

Podcast: The Vision of Escaflowne Rewatchalong – Episodes 1-6

Combining our powers to summon ’90s isekai to the Chatty AF airwaves.

Hitomi, Allen, and Merle join hands over Hitomi's pendant, all three looking serious

After almost a full year, Caitlin, Vrai, and I have teamed up for another (re)watchalong, this time shifting our focus from mysterious plays to mystic moons.

To kick things off, we talk production history, why Hitomi is great, and why the shounen manga version is super not. Oh, and no need for newcomers to worry about spoilers—none of us can remember a damn thing about the plot, either.

Click here to view the show notes and download the SoundCloud file, or find it on iTunes and Stitcher by searching for “Chatty AF.”

If you like the dishes AniFem is serving up, please consider becoming a patron for as little as $1 a month!

Emma’s Choice: The gender-norm nightmare at the heart of The Promised Neverland

Some monsters aren’t just under our beds.

A sketch of two girls, Emma and Isabella. Emma is crouched and facing the left, looking determined. Isabella is standing and facing the right, looking sorrowful.

Since it began serialization in Viz’s Shonen JUMP, The Promised Neverland has garnered well-deserved praise for its twisting narrative, tense story beats, and compelling characters. But this series is more than a page-turning thriller. 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.

CONTENT WARNING: Discussions of sexism and violence against children; disturbing imagery. SPOILERS for The Promised Neverland, Volumes 1-5 (Chapters 1-38).

Click here for the full article on Anime Feminist!

Want to see more articles like this one? Please consider becoming an AniFem patron for as little as $1 a month and supporting both me and my fellow writers!

Podcast: Ouran High School Host Club Watchalong – Episodes 21-26 (Final)

One last visit to Music Room 3.

A group shot of the cast of Ouran High with rose petals blowing past them

The grand finale of our 4-part watchalong of Ouran High School Host Club with Amelia, Alexis,  Isaac, and your humble blogger! As the series gallops to a thrilling anime-original conclusion, can stunning flashbacks and emotional climaxes overcome a few cringe-worthy moments? (Spoiler alert: Yes.)

Like with the Fushigi Yugi podcast, I had an absolute blast with this one and am so happy folks took this little stroll down memory lane with me. I hope you enjoyed it, too! (Also, since this is my last opportunity to say it: let the record show that, even several years later, Haruhi is Best Protagonist and Kyoya is Best Boy.  Look, that’s just science folks, I don’t make the rules.)

Click here to view the show notes and download the SoundCloud file, or find it on iTunes and Stitcher by searching for “Chatty AF.”

If you like the dishes AniFem is serving up, please consider becoming a patron for as little as $1 a month!

Podcast: Ouran High School Host Club Watchalong – Episodes 14-20

Refreshing Points for everyone! (Except you, Lobelia Episode. You go sit in the corner.)

An Ouran high School Host Club screenshot. Haruhi, Tamaki, and Honey look shocked while Mori and Kyoya stand slightly behind them, expressionless.

Part 3 of the 4-part watchalong of Ouran High School Host Club with Amelia, Alexis, Isaac, and me!

The show is all over the map in this stretch, both in terms of locale and quality, as we travel through cute B&Bs, surprise department stores, touching flashbacks, and…siiiiigh. Lobelia Academy again. But hey, at least I got to spend some time gushing about the good good relationship developing between Haruhi and Kyoya!

Click here to view the show notes and download the SoundCloud file, or find it on iTunes and Stitcher by searching for “Chatty AF.”

If you like the dishes AniFem is serving up, please consider becoming a patron for as little as $1 a month!

Podcast: Ouran High School Host Club Watchalong – Episodes 7-13

When Ouran is good, it is very, very good. But when it is bad…Ranka hugs Haruhi gleefully with hearts popping out around them. Haruhi looks annoyed.

Part 2 of the Ouran watchalong with my lovely colleagues Amelia, Alexis, and Isaac! Join us for some the show’s highest peaks and and most of its lowest valleys as we journey through bad beaches, literal feminazis, an A-Plus Dad, painful subs, charming sibs, and…Wonderland? Yeah, you might wanna buckle in for this roller coaster.

Content Warning: The Ouran High anime English translation uses transphobic slurs in both the sub and the dub.

Click here to view the show notes and download the SoundCloud file, or find it on iTunes and Stitcher by searching for “Chatty AF.”

If you like the dishes AniFem is serving up, please consider becoming a patron for as little as $1 a month!

Podcast: Ouran High School Host Club Watchalong – Episodes 1-6

Time to KISS KISS FALL IN LOVE all over again!

A teen boy dips a teen girl while girls around her squee, hearts popping around their heads. Behind them, an androgynous figure in glasses is unphased. They are all wearing school uniforms.

I found three whole people over the age of 25 who hadn’t seen Ouran, and they were kind enough to sit down with me and chat about it! Like Fushigi Yugi, this is an imperfect but treasured series very near and dear to my heart, so please enjoy the gushing and critiquing in (hopefully) equal measures.

For this first episode, the team discusses their history with the series, chats about the highs and lows of the Host Club’s parody playground, and lavishes lotsa love on First-Class Protagonist Haruhi.

Click here to view the show notes and download the SoundCloud file, or find it on iTunes and Stitcher by searching for “Chatty AF.”

If you like the dishes AniFem is serving up, please consider becoming a patron for as little as $1 a month!

After the Rain, Ristorante Paradiso, and the delicate art of the age-gap romance

Power, perspective, and how little decisions can make a big difference.Two side-by-side shots of a young woman with short hair (Nicoletta) and a teen girl with long dark hair (Akira). Reflected in both of their eyes is a different middle-aged man.

At first glance, Ristorante Paradiso and After the Rain bear remarkable similarities. Both are anime adaptations of manga series written by women that center around a May-September romance. Both star a young woman and a middle-aged divorcee. Both even feature characters who work at a restaurant together! So why does Ristorante Paradiso leave me with the warm fuzzies, while After the Rain just leaves me feeling vaguely skeevy?

Click here for the full post on Anime Feminist!