I'm late to talking about Watanare.

Full name There's no freaking way I'll be your Lover! Unless...

This was somewhat hyped in 2025, but that it was going for an actual Poly resolution was not something I recalled coming up. As much as I am a long time Yuri fan I have spent the last few years feeling less obligated to watch every Yuri, especially when so many are still not even being Dubbed. 

I have talked on this blog before about by enthusiasm for Polly Anime of all forms but also wanting them to come in more forms then just some variation of one guy and multiple girls. Even the excellent Dusk Beyond the End of The World as much as it wants it's world building to be about more then that the main trio we're following is still one guy and two girls. 

So a Yuri Anime with a true Threesome resolution is something I wish I'd heard about sooner. 

This is still only the start.  I want more Yuri Polycules but I also want Yaoi Threesomes and Polyandry and a Polycule form of Anime's common 3 girls and 2 boys School Club dynamic. And also some with Non Binary characters. 

I would like to see an Anime adaptation of the Light Novel/Manga Kono△Love Comedy wa Shiawase ni Naru Gimu ga Aru by Chihiro Haruna, it is a 1 guy and 2 girls Threesome in the end but the girls are explicitly unambiguously also in love with each other (there is some slander going around right now that this is a Homophobic story turning the girls' straight, that is not what happens).  It is a good story, you can argue the Threesome nature of the resolution felt abrupt, but I think it worked. 

Getting back to Watanare. Besides having this satisfying ending it's also a good build up, lots of Comedy and Drama and all the characters are fun. Where the Anime currently ends it's just a Threesome but it seems like it could expand to a full 5 person Polycule. 

So this is now tied with In Another World With My Smartphone for being the best Poly Anime. 

Twist Pilots are my least favorite Anime Pilots

I’m referring to cases where the first episode of an Anime ends on a twist revealing even the genre of the show wasn’t exactly what it was precented as for most of the pilot.

They are often pretty entertaining the first time you watch them, but when I rewatch a show I find myself wanting to just skip it and start the show with the first episode that actually represents what the show is. 

The more I like the rest of the show the more the fact that they start with these kinds of pilots annoys me. Because in an online culture obsessed with treating not spoiling something as a moral value, these become shows you are supposed to recommend to people without even accurately telling them what genre they are getting into. 

School-Live! is the ultimate example of this, its mere inclusion in my posts recommending Horror Anime to watch during Halloween month is technically a spoiler, but it shouldn’t be.

The impact of watching the School-Live! Pilot blind without knowing you are actually watching a Zombie Apocalypse show works only if you like both Cute Girls Doing Cute Things and Zombie Apocalypses as genres (which I do), someone who only likes the former will be upset you got them into that show only to take it away, and someone who only likes the latter will be annoyed they had to sit through a Moe show for 20 minutes.

Maybe some will argue it's good to filter out the Slice of Life haters in the pilot because it is still structurally largely a CGDCT show even after the Zombie shoe drops. But as someone who is an enjoyer of vanilla Cute Girls Doing Cute Things shows I think it’s perfectly valid that some people can enjoy those antics with a Genre element mixed in but not on their own, I have no desire to Gate Keep the joy of School-Live! from people who can’t also enjoy Lucky Star and K-On. 

A more recent show where this applies is Quality Assurance in Another World. I haven't rewatched this one yet at the time I’ve started writing this but I’ve been planning to, and I keep wondering whether or not I should just skip the pilot and start with episode 2.

In both cases there is an artistic/narrative reason for starting the show this way beyond just shock value,  that it’s important to sell a certain character’s perspective. But that really doesn't take away its lack of rewatchability. A single 20 minute episode of Anime doesn't have a lot of time to do anything that truly feels interesting to rewatch knowing the twist. The twists in Anime that have a good set up and pay off are the ones that span multiple episodes.

I said the more I like the rest of the show overall the more I dislike it starting this way, so let’s look at a reverse example.

Talentless Nana’s twist pilot works pretty well. But my excitement for the show early on did not maintain itself. 

This was hyped by some of its fans early on as being an example of “Death Note but better” because Death Note has a certain type of hater, people who want an Anime with its basic appeal but where the female cast is treated better. I’m no Death Note fanatic, I’ve never called it one of my personal favorites and I too prefer Anime that are more feminine at their core. But in the case of Talentless Nana watching it while comparing it to Death Note does not do it any favors. 

Some people complain about Misa in Death Note being a Chaos Factor that made Light’s defeat unfair.  But she does not show up as early as people are making it sound when they say that.  Light had already made the key mistakes that made his downfall inevitable, L was already treating Light as effectively his only suspect. A Chaos factor is kind of what the show needed at that point to keep it from getting boring. Seriously everyone who says they wish Misa wasn’t in the show, what do you think it could have actually done without her?  

Talentless Nana actually does what people falsely accuse Death Note of in this regard. It introduces way too many not remotely foreseeable factors way too early. I think the show would have been better if it took two cours to cover what it wound up covering in only 1.  {And I’m saying that as someone constantly annoyed at how often people online are saying that about every single cour show lately.) Or even just did a few more simpler scenarios before starting all the mini arcs. 

The Executioner and Her Way of Life is a debatable show to include here because the equivalent twist happens more like half way through the Pilot. I feel like this show I might have convinced myself I liked more than I really did originally out of some obligation to it being a Yuri. But the truth is I kind of want more Yuri Isekai that are the same as regular Het Isekai in how the Romance is integrated instead of always having some other quasi subversive element to it. 

The Best Year in the History of Anime?

This is a follow up to a post I made at the start of 2026 where I made the case for 2006 being the best year of Anime History while doing my usual, “look back on Anime that turn 20 this year” thing I started doing in 2024.

The thing about years in Japan however is that in every way but nominally Japanese society really functions as if years begin with Spring and end with Winter, the first month being April and the last being March. 

So the thought entered my mind that maybe an even better year could be created by swapping out Winter 2026 for Winter 2027? 

It so happens that would correspond to exactly the year that Nana was airing.  So we could call it the Year of Nana, or Nana Year or Year Nana. 

I already said in that first post that the Spring season is where the argument for 2006 really kicked off. Some of what was airing in Winter 2006 were multiple cour shows still airing in Spring. 

So the full shows we lose from dropping Winter 2006 are mainly Kashimashi Girl Meets Girl and Neirma Kaidun Brothers. Both shows I like a lot but wouldn't call either the best of its genre, Kashimashi is closer to being an essential viewing of its genre(s) but is also arguably surpassed by later 2006 shows. 

On the subject of Detective Conan we do lose what I consider perhaps the single best episode of that show in 425. But the trade off is getting Shadow of The Black Organization and The Unsmashable Snowman. We also switch out the 6th OVA for the 7th, they are all about equal in quality. 

What we gain by adding Winter 2007 includes Shattered Angels which I consider a very underrated Jem, Hidamari Sketch which is a show I haven’t seen yet but know is considered important to the Slice of Life/CGDCT genre, and Venus Versus Virus which I haven't finished and haven’t seen what I did see for awhile.  Plus the start of Yes! PreCure 5, a show that proved important to setting the tone for Pretty Cure going forward. 

Looking more at stuff I haven't seen there is a Shuffle sequel called Shuffle Memories I didn’t know about till recently. And the start of that Les Miserables Anime.  

And then there’s Loving Angel Angelique which I should look into as an early Otome Game Anime, and it was a sequel whose first part aired in Summer 2006 so is a show I should have known about back when making the first 2006 Anime post, it looks like it was the first TV Anime based on an Otome Game adding more to the argument for this being a particularly important year for VN Anime.

And for Shounen fans the start of Naruto Shippoden (it occurs to me that means the closing arc of the original Naruto Anime must have also aired during this year). I’m afraid I can’t bring myself to care about standard Battle Shonen enough to find out what was going on in the other two of the “big three”.  Maybe someone else trying to follow up my thesis could do that. 

The other major Four Cour show connected to 2006 was Blood+, it changes from three fourths airing during the year in question to just the second half, but that’s still enough to matter. 

And we also gain the second cours of a lot of Fall 2006 shows like Kanon and Le Chevalier D’Eon. There must have been some delays in the original broadcast of Code Geass because I expected it to end in late March but it was actually in late April, same with Death Note, I expected episode 26 to air in the first week of April at the latest but it didn’t.  Still for both those shows adding Winter 2007 adds a lot of why they are considered great. Same with early Pokémon Diamond and Pearl, episode 25 aired in Japan on March 29th

In the OVA department Winter 2007 had the Burst Angel OVA and the first episode of Murder Princess. And some Maria-Sama OVAs.

Something I should have mentioned in the original 2006 post is Summer Days from June.  It’s not on the Anime Database websites due to how it’s released being a Visual Novel but like School Days the prior year it was Animated, seemingly even more so. I, like many Americans, have only been able to play the censored version of its later remake titled Shiny Days, but it seems a lot of what I like was already there in the original, but there is a lot of Shiny Days content that wasn't there originally (not just the Inori routes).  It’s the Anime where my favorite Anime character gets to be the lead, so it’s important to me. 

The annual Lupin III TV Special during this year was Seven Days Rhapsody in September.  But I haven’t seen it or most 00s Lupin specials since they aren’t among those Dubbed, so I can’t say if it was even above average for the time. 

I considered looking at what source materials for future Anime came during this year, but there wasn't much.  2004 might be the better year for that, containing a number of source materials for what got animated during this year as well as some that came even later.  But I didn’t think to look into that back in 2024.

Four of what I’m currently listing as my top 23 Anime on Anilist are from this year, no other single year is that overrepresented. Those are three shows I consider the best of their genre, Nana, Kanon and Higurashi, and one that in the past I’d labeled my second favorite of all time, Code Geass.  Add to that the importance shows like Haruhi, Death Note and Gintama have, and a few other best or most important of their genre candidates like Strawberry Panic, and the case for this being the best year is pretty easy to make.  [Update: Black Lagoon is another pretty popular Anime from Fall 2006 I forgot to mention before.]

Talking about all the hidden gems adds some nice flavor to the argument but every year has those so they aren’t the crux of it. 

Of the 2006 shows I consider the best of their genre, Kanon is probably the most controversial. Yes they’re all gonna be disputed by someone, Strawberry Panic is hated by people with very different priorities for what they want in a Yuri Anime (some of them might like Simoun the best) and Higurhshi is hated by VN purists who don’t like it being classified as Horror in the first place and others who think no Anime has ever been good at Horror. But with Kanon it tends to be nearly universally viewed as surpassed by its own spiritual successor Clannad and Clannad After Story. 

I do love Clannad and place it just below Kanon.  Some of why I prefer Kanon is more my personal tastes then anything remotely objective, but I also think getting the entire story in one single Anime instead of across two counts for something. Clannad fans I’m sure at least respect the fact that Kanon made Clannad possible both as a VN and an Anime. And with Kanon it has been argued the KyoAni Anime is an improvement over the source material while Clannad is still viewed as falling short of the VN. Since as an Anime specifically is the point of comparison here, I think you can even argue Knaon is better animated with a better art style. 

Haruhi, Death Note and Code Geass are important to Anime culture as a whole in ways that transcend whether or not they are the best of their "genre" or not. Haruhi created her genre, making her important regardless of if you think something like Bunny Girl Senpai has surpassed her. Code Geass and Death Note can’t be considered the best of any Genre simply because they aren’t pure manifestations of any Genre you could slap onto them since they are Genre Mixes ultimately, they are compared to each other more often then they are the rest of their genres. If any Anime is as important to the 00s as Eva was to the 90s it’s one of these three.  Clearandsweet has a video on how Haruhi is singularly important to redefining what most modern Anime looks like.

Gyaru are not Normies

[Update August 8th 2025: I really regret much of this post, the title and thus the main point is still correct, more so even, but there is a lot I clearly didn't get about Gyaru culture and it's history, and still don't.]

I see people like Anime Vlogger OtakuSpirit in his Alya speaking Russian videos make the mistake of calling a Gyaru character a Normie a lot so I felt like talking about it.

American watchers of Anime confuse Gyaru for Normies sometimes because what Gyaru are doing is influenced by what is or at least once was Mainstream Normie White Girl culture in the United States.  But in Japan that’s not normal, they are a subculture under constant pressure from mainstream Japanese culture to conform just like typical Otaku and Fujoshi.

Sometimes I think viewers fail to notice a character being a Gyaru when they are the main character, like in Citrus.  In what got animated the term is never actually used, at least not that I can recall, so it’s easy for someone not fully paying attention to think Yuzu is Blond for the same reason Sailor Moon is.  Citrus also catches a lot of western viewers off guard because Anime usually doesn’t fully acknowledge how strict the Japanese Public School system actually is, Yuzu getting crap from the authorities for not looking like everyone else actually makes the show more realistic than most Anime, but some casual critics of the show don’t want to think about that so pretend it’s just being cartoonishly dystopic.  Yuzu being a Gyaru is what makes her a rebel against Normie society.

I could also mention the studio Nur Hentai called Soshite Watashi wa Sensei ni…  The main character has recently become a Gyaru but her “best friend” and Teacher don’t like that so they are trying to make her stop being a Gyaru by…. Raping her repeatedly.... because Hentai logic.  4 episodes in and they haven’t succeeded yet, but Nur/PoRo isn’t known for having happy endings. 

So as I alluded to before Gyaru fashion is in part inspired by parts of American culture, so you could say they are a specific type of Ameriboo, that they are Otaku of sorts but instead of Anime it’s based on movies and shows like Clueless and Mean Girls and Gossip Girl and Pretty Little Liars.  PLL is still my favorite American TV show in spite of my issues with the last 3 seasons, so seeing an Anime where a character is explicitly a PLL fan would really make me Geek out, someone please make it happen. 

And all that is why Otaku Media depicting Gyaru do often express solidarity with them.  We saw this in the brief Gyaru appearance in the Nokotan Anime last year.  I’m currently watching the Dub for Loner Life In Another World as it comes out on HIDIVE, it’s depiction of its Gyaru clique seemed unflattering at first but they quickly seem to be getting better.

A good number of Hentai Doujins are about a male Otaku and a Gyaru having sex.  And yeah you could dismiss that as a pretty typical and generic self serving fantasy, but those Doujins are among the most Wholesome.  If you want Doujins where Girls can be consensually and enthusiastically sexually active without at all being shamed for it, your best bet are Gyaru Doujins. 

Update June 3rd 2025: I'm starting to think I maybe should have watched Super Gals before trying to write a thesis statement about the role of Gyaru in Anime.

It vindicates the main thesis of this post, they are a subculture outside the mainstream as much as Otaku are. 

My speculation about what kinds of American Media they are into possibly still holds up, but a lot of that Vibe could simply come from how the Dub chose to translate things. 

The main thing is the Tanned Gyaru are very rare in Anime from the last Decade, but they have a notable presence here.  And I'm still unsure whether or not they are a distinct thing from the Gongoro Girls. The Trio of Tanned Gyaru in Super Gals remind me of the similar trio in Durarara!!.  Super Gals came first, it's Anime ended two years before the first Durarara!! LN came out.

I'm told the female lead in Dandadan is also a Gyaru of sorts, but I wasn't able to get into that show.

Characters I interpret as Ace

This is not a complete list of every character in works I’m into that can be interpreted as Asexual and/or Aromantic.  They are characters I have a particular interest in interpreting this way, and largely came to this interpretation on my own before seeing any evidence that anyone else had also interpreted them as Ace.

I’m not Ace myself and so none of this is driven by a desire to see myself in these characters and in fact some of what I say may unwittingly reflect my own lack of understanding of Aceness.

Being Ace is a nuanced identity, besides the Sexual/Romantic distinction many make, there are some who wind up in sexual or romantic relationships in spite of identifying as Ace.  So some of these may be characters who the Canon gives a partner eventually but that doesn't invalidate my reading.  Some may even be characters who I myself also Ship with another character, but Shipping to me is not inherently Sexual or even always Romantic, it’s ultimately about liking the chemistry between two characters and wanting to see more of them together.

So I’m not even going to clarify whether I think a given character is Asexual or Aromantic or both as I’m not even sure I understand the line between them.

Cassandra Cain/Batgirl:  Since Batman is my oldest Fandom I figured I should start with the Bat Family member on that list. My direct experience with this character is limited, mostly Comics after she was no longer Mute but before Infinite Crisis, and even within that time frame is by no means complete.  But she does show a lack of interest in Romance.  

She is the main reason for one of my above clarifications since I’m also a StephCass shipper, but how I view Steph’s orientation isn't solely defined by this Ship either.

Terra Branford: A good deal of her early game dialogue is about being unaffected by the flirting of the charming male character and feelings like she lacks something because of it.  She’s from Final Fantasy VI originally released in the US on the SNES as Final Fantasy III.

Paul of Tarsus: Is not a Fictional Character but I wanted to cover him here anyway. Much of my efforts to debunk Puritan and Ascetic readings of the New Testament involves stressing how in 1 Corinthians 7 Paul expresses hesitance to even talk on this subject and clearly says he’s NOT speaking with the Apostolic Authority he is on other issues. The fact is he clearly has a lack of ability to even relate to the desires that most people have.

Rei Hino/Sailor Mars in the Manga/Crystal:  Rei in the Manga canon is quite adamant about her lack of interest in men.  And as someone more sympathetic to the Manga fans complaints about the 90s Anime then most it still bugs me when they default to framing how Rei was changed as Straight Washing a Lesbian.   Rei’s wording it as not interested in “Men” does not mean she is interested in women, we live in a Heteronormative society where often the default way to express a lack of interest in Romance is to say you're uninterested in the other Sex. 

Anri Sonohara: There is a lot made in Durarara!! about her inability to Love in a traditionally romantic sense.  Made all the more awkward by her being bonded with a sentient magical Yandere Katana.

Akito Yamada: It’s particularly awkward when you are coming to an Ace reading of a Romantic Lead in a Romantic Anime, and one example of that happening to me is with the title character of My Love Story with Yamada-Kun at Lv999.  This character very heavily comes off as Asexual and the knowledge that the genre setup sees that as an issue he needs to overcome is frustrating.  

Yuu Koito: Bloom Into You is one of the most beloved Yuri Anime of the last decade, yet the Asexual vibes of its protagonist are just as thick.  Yuu isn’t the only possible Ace character in this show however. Seji Maki is definitely Ace, and there is the scene where he distinguishes his lack of interest in Romance from Yuu’s, but I don’t really think that means only one of them can qualify as Ace.

Ai Amatsu: Injuu Seisen is a Hentai series, so this might be the most baffling of all, how can I argue a Hentai character is Asexual?  Well the story involves evil Lust Demons as you might expect, and Ai seems almost completely immune to their lust inducing powers.  Now you might think that’s simply because of her own super power as one of the Twin Heroines of this series.  But her sister Mai who has the same magical gifts is absolutely NOT so immune, she is very very horny actually.

Septimal Anniversaries of Summer 2017 Anime

 First an update, what I’ve seen of Winter 2017 has recently increased. This June I watched all of Nanoha ViVid and Vivid Strike including its OVA specials from January-March of 2017.

The Summer of 2017 is definitely a big part of my early Anime fandom development.

In Another World With My Smartphone season 1 remains a personal favorite show of mine.

https://mithrandirolorin.blogspot.com/2024/05/isekai-smartphone-is-still-best-polly.html

Fate/Apocrypha has similarly refused to leave my mind.  Astolfo is that show's biggest contribution to Pop Culture, but it seems in time other characters have started getting the appreciation they deserve as well.

Classroom of The Elite is a show I still enjoy even though I’m not gonna be a huge evangelist for it.  Its 2nd and 3rd seasons did not disappoint.

Princess Principal is another show that has held up on rewatch quite nicely, Yuki Kagiura music plus how it reminds me of my Paul Feval/Shadowmen interests adds to it’s personal appeal to me.

Can’t forget the second half of Re:Creators, it too should have been an instant classic.  It’s unfortunately no longer on Amazon PrimeVideo, there is now no way to legally watch it in English.

Vatican Miracle Examiner is a show I haven't finished but I still highly recommend it based on its opening 4 episode arc alone, it’s a great B Movie Horror premise.  Fortunately it’s still on Amazon Prime Video.

New Game!! is a show I’m disappointed hasn’t stayed in the Anime public consciousness more, its hype at the time felt like it was shaping up to be the leading Cute Girls Doing Cute Things as Adults show.

Gamers! Is the TV Anime from this season I took an interest in most recently.  It’s like a Gender Flipped version of Jane Austen’s Emma for Gamers and Otaku.

Netsuzou TRap is a show I was too hard on when it first aired.  I finally just watched it in June and it’s great.

Hina Logic: From Luck & Logic is a cute fun little kinda Yuri Magical Girl show that's been unfortunately forgotten.

Kakeguri season 1 I enjoyed but still haven’t seen season 2 of. 

Symphogear AXZ is obviously great if you saw the prior seasons.

Action Heroine Cheer Fruits I’ve still only seen one episode of so don’t feel like commenting on too much.

I’ve seen 5 movies from this season but none are entirely stand alone.  

Pokémon I Choose You I wound up deciding is pretty fun in its early parts but gets more mixed over time.  

No Game No Life Zero is neat.

Fate/kaleid liner Prisma☆Illya Movie: Sekka no Chikai aka Vow in The Snow is fantastic.

I also in June finally rewatched the Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha Reflection and Detonation movies, they hold up pretty well.

The last of the Washio Sumi movies was of course good.

Yuri needs both its Wholesome and Trashy varieties

Citrus is probably my personal favorite Anime of 2018.  

Citrus of course held an awkward place in the ecosystem of 2010s Yuri, being contentious already even when it was just a Manga and as soon as the Anime dropped it was quickly the target of certain Yuri critics as the poster child of the kind of problematic “Trashy” Yuri they want to see less of, with only Netsuzou TRap being even more hated.

I was a Citrus Stan who refused to watch Bloom Into You at the end of the year out of spite for how these people propped it up in contrast to Citrus.  Now here we are 6 years later and neither show has a second season to continue its story.  We both lost and in consequence got a few years of not much proper Yuri at all.  Now I’ve finally seen Bloom and it’s great, it was dumb of me to call it boring simply off the second hand vibes I got.  Also the Dub has Luci Christian.

Anthony Gramuglia released a video at the start of this June called We Need “BAD” LGBTQIA Representation.  And similar videos with similar sentiments have popped up before like one called something like “Good representation is boring representation”.  And I feel like someone saying this specifically in the context of Anime is overdue.

I don’t exactly agree with all the sentiments expressed in his video, I like my Edgy Trash to still also have some Heart hence my Elfen Lied is Wholesome Actually blogpost.  And comparing it to his older Anime Fanservice video I imagine he’d criticize Citrus for not going far enough.  I have long noticed a certain Semi-Puritanism in Anime discourse where some people feel like an Anime should only be Sexual at all if it crosses some line that makes you question how it was able to air on Television.  Never considering that for some people the exact level of eroticism shows like this have is exactly what we crave and is not a mere compromise.

Parallel to that is the complaint I know some will make of “why are they only Step Sisters, why not just go all the way if you want to appeal to incest feithsists”.  Step Siblings is a specific Fantasy on it’s own and not a mere Incest compromise.  It’s the fantasy of getting to live with someone about your age of whatever Gender you’re attracted to without the issue of having known them since you both were in Diapers.

So Citrus isn’t the Trashiest, and neither is Netsuzou TRap.  Not too long ago I would have suggested nothing could possibly surpass Prisma Illya.  But then this year we got Gushing Over Magical Girls.  If that isn’t “all the way” enough for you then nothing but literal Hentai is.

Of course there are also the Classic Trashy Yuri to consider, from Strawberry Panic to Kuttsukiboshi.  There’s also Candy Boy which is a trashy premise on paper but utterly Wholesome in execution.

I’m starting to think 2023 might have ushered in a new peak era for Yuri.  The last year and a half has provided a lot to satisfy those who want Yuri that is as Unproblematic as possible.  But I gotta admit I kinda miss a lot of the madness only a Crazy 2000s Yuri like Kashimashi Girl Meets Girl could provide.

Anime Terms need to be defined based on Vibes rather than Technicalities

For most Anime terms the idea is to explain the appeal of a certain genre or trope or character archetype.  That way of defining something can be more subjective so I will agree the line is not always easy to spot.  But it will steer us wrong far less often than a strictly technical definition.

More often than not the technical definitions I'm referring to wind up being more broad rather than more strict, but there are notable exceptions to that.

Yuri is the one where I have the least problem with the more broad technical definition.  Using the word casually for all wlw content in Anime/Manga/LNs/VNs and Bishoujo Games is something I do myself and it’s become far too pervasive for anyone to stop it even if they wanted to. That said, few would deny there are certain Vibes associated with the term that make a more specific explanation necessary.

Erica Friednam also uses the word of all wlw content in Anime but also has a more specific definition she likes to use being “Lesbian content without Lesbian identity”.  My problem with that definition is the kind of judgmental vibe it has in the context of how she often talks about what characters she does and doesn’t consider a “Real Lesbian”.  It feels intentionally or not related to concepts like Political Lesbianism and other relics of Second Wave Feminism. 

Yuri Scholars like Erica Freidman will also talk about the concept in Japanese Culture of Class S, the notion that adolescent girls are expected to have quasi romantic friendships that they will grow out of when they become adults.  

My contention is that Yuri as a Genre essentially is the Class S set up, a given work may play it completely straight, it may explicitly reject the notion that they will grow out of it, or it may refuse to address that final question, either way the initial Class S set up is the core of what Yuri is.

And because parallel ideas to Class S did exist in Western Society in the past, I consider it appropriate to let our use of Yuri language drift into how we talk about Western Media only where a Class S parallel is arguably present.  So for example many of those old Lesbian Pulp Fiction novels of the 50s and 60s can fit in with the Yuri genre, as can Nancy Garden novels like Annie On My Mind and Good Moon Rising, as well as Emily Fields’s complicated love life on Pretty Little Liars.  However, using it to describe Harley/Ivy feels wrong.

However the concept of calling Lesbians "The Lily Tribe" goes back to the 70s in the Barazoku magazine.

Bifauxnen is a term that can easily at face value seem like just an Anime word for Butch, but I feel it’s definitely more specific than that.  Butch can refer to women who have no aesthetic femininity at all, Bifauxnen definitely does not.  When you look at some of the standard Archetypal Bifauxnen from Haruka Tennoh/Sailor Uranus to Amane in Strawberry Panic to most recently Manaria Sousse from I’m In Love With The Villainess it’s clear that the concept is in fact a particular blend of Masculine and Feminine, (I’d love to see a Bifauxnen character who was Assigned Male At Birth but I’m not holding my breath for it).  They are Masculine in a Princely or Knightly way but not in a muscular hairy barbarian warrior way.

The Fire Witch in the Boogiepop LNs is described as Bifauxnen but in adaptations I feel only the 2000 Live Action Movie where she’s played by Maya Kurosu succeeds in conveying that, however I may just have an irrational bias against seeing it in any long haired character design.  Similarly in the recent Willow TV Series Kit Tanthalos played by Ruby Cruz proves a Western Character can qualify, it really pisses me off that Disney buried that show.  

Returning to 2D characters Cure Sword/Spade in Doki Doki PreCure/Glitter Force is a good example, one of my favorite Yuri Doujins involved her and the Blue called Jealous Jealousy 238622. So short hair tends to help but it’s not all there is to it, Ami Mizuno for example has short hair but doesn’t at all come off as androgynous because of it.

The Yandere is where my takes on things may start getting controversial.  

First is that you will sometimes see a Male character described as a Yandere and this to me misses the point.  A Male being obsessive and overprotective and controlling and unwilling to take no for an answer is unfortunately in real life far from uncommon, it’s a real concern Girls and Women have to worry about every time one even looks at them.  The Yandere is supposed to be Absurd, it’s supposed to be the unlikely Absurdity of a Girl taking on those conventionally Masculine characteristics but still being Hyper Feminine in every other way.  Treating it like a Gender Neutral term that just happens to be associated with Cute Anime Girls because that’s all Otaku care about ignores the deeper commentary at the heart of it all.  At best a Femboy/Otokonoko could be a Yandere but in that situation I’d immediately be afraid of the potentially Transphobic implications.

A second tendency I’ve noticed among Yandere that is not in the textbook definition is that they tend to be pretty conservative sexually, almost like that’s another comedic duality, being so nonchalant about killing but then incredibly Chaste.  It’s not just because they like to call the girls they see as a romantic threat to them Sluts, lots of female characters might do that in the heat of the moment regardless of their actual feelings on sex.  It’s that they’ll hold the object of their affection captive for days or weeks and never try anything, and they’ll get all shy about their Bra coming off in the Pool like any other Anime Girl.  Kotonoha in School Days is willing to have Sex with Makoto but only once she feels that’s her only option.

The big possible exceptions to that are people who are controversial to classify as a Yandere for more reasons than just this.  Sekai in School Days I refuse to classify as a Yandere first and foremost because in the original version of the VN she only gets homicidal under very specific circumstances that include her being pregnant and feeling abandoned and she only kills Makoto not the other woman. Sonozaki in Higurashi arguably predates the formation of the Yandere and her mental breakdown happens when she thinks Satoshi is long dead, and it also wouldn't have happened without the *Spoiler*.

The closest thing to a Western Analogue for the Yandere are the Female Stalker characters you see in a lot of Lifetime Movies.  However they are the opposite on the conservative sexuality point, they are usually a Femme Fatale at the same time.  Because their target audience are traditional stay at home housewives who regardless of how they vote can be assumed to be at least a little socially conservative, so they are made to appeal to the anxieties such women have about the kinds of Girls they fear might steal their Sons or Husbands from them.  

The Anime Yandere is designed to appeal to Otaku who have a complicated relationship with Japan’s Purity Culture.

Netorare is a term that has multiple disputable aspects to how to define it.  But to start with the problem with simply treating it as an Anime synonym for Cuckolding is that Cuckolding in western live action Porn is almost exclusively a subgenre of Femdom, they involve women who never intended to be faithful.  And that even extends into more G rated allusions to the Feitsh like the Kesha song Bad Girl's Lament.

In an NTR Hentai or Doujin, even in the rare cases where it is even remotely reasonable to argue the girl consented, it still wasn’t premeditated on her part, she was Seduced or Tricked or Manipulated.  Hentai that rather does the above will get mistakenly tagged as NTR but they clearly have a different vibe.

There are other mistakes in how English Language websites apply the Tag.  If the Protagonist is the one taking someone else’s Girl or Boyfriend that’s Netori which some sites fail to recognize as a separate thing. And if the Girl is technically cheating but her husband or boyfriend isn’t a character in the story then he doesn’t actually matter.

However Netorare is a broad term in that it’s about the Emotional Feeling it creates and has nothing to do with there being a formal relationship, it can be about the protagonist’s Crush they never confessed to, or a close relative.  The VN You and Me and Her literally uses the word in reference to the prospect of your love interest dating someone else and not you.  However the way Wseterners currently used "Cucked" is also the same in that case.

Another psychological factor in what makes NTR distinct is how it often is essentially eroticizing the feeling of failing to protect your girlfriend.  And this is why Reverse NTR is a thing but attempts to gender flip Normie Cuckoling fail.  In Nomrie Cuckold porn it's just about the Cuck's failure to please his girlfriend while the notion that a male could ever be difficult to please is pretty hard for most people to buy.  The Boyfriend as an innocent who needs to protected is also a bit of a subversion of gender norms, but not completely incomprehensible.

Last but not least is in fact the term Anime itself.  

The common assertion that in Japan that word is used of all Animation is in fact an oversimplification of its complex history, Cynic Clinic and STEVEM and Carbioo-kun have done videos on that nuance.  It begins with how Osamu Tezuka himself in one conversation at least distinguished Anime from Animation.  In that context however it treats as innate to the definition certain tendencies of TV Anime that some Western Anime fans see as a Bug rather than a Feature, and excluding Ghibli from qualifying as Anime is something few would be happy with.  So that isn’t a debate I want to settle here.

But I do want to express that if Country of Origin is going to be treated as an important part of it we classify something as Anime or not, it’s kind of Racist to count Chinese and Korean Cartoons but not sufficiently Anime Inspired Western Cartoons.  It is an inherently White perspective of the world that assumes other East Asian countries are probably more similar to Japan than anyone else.  Japan lived in massive isolation from even the rest of East Asia for Centuries until contact with the West broke it.  Modern Japan is heavily Westernized and the origins of its approach to Animation are a part of that with some being influenced by Disney but Tezuka more by the Fleischers. So China and Korea and everyone else in the Far East’s Animation industries may be very adjacent to all of that in their origin stories, but they are still not the same thing.

And if you think they count because of how clearly Anime Inspired they are, then so does a lot of American Cartoons that don't have MAL pages.

Retro Rewatching of 2004 Anime

My stated intention to devote a lot of 2023 to helping start the Nostalgia Boom early 2000s Anime was not as successful as I’d have liked it to be.  But some fruit was borne.

One thing I noticed is a lot of what I devoted time to wound up being specifically from 2004, shows that will be having their 20th Anniversary this year.

2004 was an important year for the Magical Girl Genre with the original Futari wa Pretty Cure, much of PGSM airing that year, and the first season of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha.  But also Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch and its sequel Pure which I still have On Hold even though I think about it a lot.  Tweeny Witches is another obscure show from 2004 I may return to.

Madlax is an enjoyable Hot Mess of a show that I like to consider a good example of the kind of Anime you can only find in the 2000s, along with Burst Angel which was a fun Anime NeoWestern.

Monster also started in 2004. I still haven’t finished that one but what I’ve seen I agree is good television.  And it’s not an Otaku show at all, Normies can get into it.

Most controversially of course was my passionate defense of Elfen Lied.

My preferring the original Fullmetal Alchemist to Brotherhood is also moderately controversial.

Specifically the Winter of 2004 had another show I still haven’t finished called Gilgamesh, that show has a lot going for its premise but its vibes don’t gel with me as much as I want them to.

From late in the year Mai Hime and To Heart Remember My Memories are two other shows I have On Hold I’ve been meaning to return to.  While Gankutsou and School Rumble are two more Classics of 2000s Anime.

I also enjoyed Rozen Maiden and Howl’s Moving Castle.  But we don’t talk about Kanazuki no Miko.

On the subject of Detective Conan aka Case Closed the first episode of 2004 was 345 the climax of the Vermouth Arc, and the very next episode opens with some aftermath to all that, but then it's two years before the main storyline picks up again.  In Spring was 356 the Kaito Kid episode of the year and the same month also had the 8th Movie Magician of The Silver Sky which I still rank among the best.  Episodes 371-372 I’ve noted as being one of the Columbo Style cases which I always have a fondness for.  Then 2004 ended with 383 a two hour special Heiji episode about Baseball that I wound up enjoying.  I still haven’t seen most 2004 episodes so I’m sure there are other Gems.

On the subject of Pokémon, some of the Pokémon Chronicles Episodes aired this year in Japan, while the main series was still in the Advanced generation.  And the movie for this year was Destiny Deoxys which I rank up in the upper tier generally preferring the Odd Number movies during the early Gens.

So I want to devote some time this year to revisiting some of the above and maybe watching more, but I won't be limiting myself to 2004.  Some 2002 and 2003 or even earlier stuff will be having the 20th anniversary of their English Localizations this year, but it’s not always easy to find out exactly when such localizations were made.

Septimal Anniversaries of 2017 Anime (Winter Focus)

I'm pretty sure I've still seen more Anime from 2017 then any other single year.  It was in late 2016 I started following Seasonal Anime.  So even 2017 shows I actually didn't watch till last year I still usually did in part because of the impact 2017 left on my memory.

The various Anime of 2017 will be having their Seventh Anniversaries this year which makes this a good time to revisit stuff from that year.  Both what objectively stood the test of time and what seemingly only I still think about.

You don't need at least a full Decade to start becoming Nostalgic for something, I started feeling oddly Nostalgic for 2017 during 2020.  And in 2022 we started getting unexpected sequels to seemingly forgotten 2017 shows suggesting it wasn't just me.

The first time I devoted a post on this blog to talking about how I'd seen so much of 2017 was in 2019 where I talked about ranking Anime from that year with presumably less of a recency bias then the usually trend of talking the immediate prior year.  In hindsight that year still had a bit of a recency bias at least in my mind.  Now we are truly in a time when 2017 can be considered too old to be current but not old enough to be Retro.

But I've also realized I don't like ranking things, most things I like I like about the same and/or for different reasons which makes me not like comparing them.  I'm also way to easy to please for my assessment on whether something is worth watching or not to be considered all that credible to anyone who even slightly agrees with the sentiment that most seasonal Anime is forgettable mediocrity at best.  There is rarely anything I Completed I will not consider wroth recommending in some way, or even much of anything I dropped I can't see redeeming qualities in.

So instead I want to comment on shows from 2017 I watched with more of a focus on what kind of appeal they have so readers can try to guess if it'd appeal to them or not.

I'm also torn between trying to cover all of 2017 in this post or just focusing on the Winter Season and saving the rest for future posts.  I decided to compromise, the last section of this post will try to cover everything from Winter 2017 I've seen, but first I'll comment on a couple from later seasons at the top of my mind right now, with the option to revisit them in a post more properly about their season later.

Unless said otherwise everything should be on Crunchyroll (except the movie they're rarely streaming anywhere).  Also there is probably an English Dub unless I say there isn't or it's a PreCure.

First of all the last post I made in 2023 included a comment on the second season of In Another World With My Smartphone, which I found mildly disappointing for perhaps unfair reasons, but I still stand by season 1 as a perfectly fun show that doesn't deserve how often it gets dismissed as the posterchild for generic disposable Isekai.  If you're one of those people who've become more tolerant of Isekai over the last few years rather then less you should maybe give it a second chance.  Land of Leadale had the same director so if you enjoyed it you'll probably have some fun with Smartphone.  If in general you like more Slice of Life Isekai that are not even pretending to be about some Epic adventure then Smartphone might be for you.  And it was the first Isekai to openly take a Poly resolution to it's Harem long before even that became a trend.

Re:Creators has been on my mind a lot since I finally watched it.  It's most remembered among followers of AniTube for Mother's Basement declaring it an "Instant Classic", and I now agree that it should have been.  I blame the fact that it was behind Amazon's double Pay Wall at the time and also how it still doesn't have a Dub, the later is the reason I didn't watch it till last year.  I've already talked about it on this Blog in the context of Kuudere being Stoics and Auteur Theory, and I added it to one older post where it's be a spoiler for me even say it was relevant to that.  If you are at all into Meta Anime, Anime about Anime, it's one of the best of the last Decade.  If you are a fan of the Magical Girl Genre is has a character who should definitely check out.  I as a DC Nerd also compare it to Crisis on Infinite Earths in a few ways.  It's still only legally on Amazon PrimeVideo but fortunately now it's included in the standard subscription, same one that gives you free shipping and a bunch of other shows.

Classroom of The Elite is perhaps worth commenting on now since it's season 3 is airing this season, I mentioned that show already in my first post of 2024.  I plan on waiting to Binge season 3 till all of it is Dubbed and may rewatch seasons 1 and 2 right before then.   If you like shows that more revolve around characters trying to outsmart each other then action it's a decent entry in that genre, I think it holds up better then say Talentless Nana.

And now to breaking down the Winter of 2017.

There is one carry over from Fall 2016, Trickster, which I Dropped after 16 episodes, so I saw at least some from 2017, but yeah the middle of the show bugged me.  But I clearly enjoyed something if I got that far.  It's a Detective Show with some ambiguous Yaoi and at least one supernatural element.

Akiba's Trip is one of the shows I didn't watch till last year, and shockingly I don't think I even recall hearing about it at the time.  It was perhaps the last time doing an Anime about being set in Akiba could work, in some ways it feels like a product of an older era.  It should NOT be considered a Vampire show though a couple weird details of the Pilot might trick some into thinking it is.  It's a fun show I think anyone who self identifies as an Otaku should watch.

Masamune-Kun's Revenge is a show I'd watched some of at the time but didn't finish till years later and still haven't watched it's recent second season.  It's a RomCom who's MAL plot description is pretty accurate.  It sticks in my memory mainly because a few scenes setting up the Female Lead in the Pilot I find actually quite Sexy in a way this genre of Anime rarely is, however if you too start to like her because of your Femdom Fetish you will be disappointed by the rest of it.

The Saga of Tanya The Evil gets grouped in with Isekai on a technicality but it's vibes and appeal are very different.  If you are into Fantasy or Sci-Fi with a WWI inspired setting you should check it out.  The main protagonist is someone a Leftist should not ideologically agree with but is fun to watch anyway.

Fuuka is definitely an underrated hidden gem of this season.  It's a good Romance Anime about characters starting a Band.  The issue is the first 2 and a half episodes contain some Fanservice the likes of which the rest of the show will not have, I ask people interested in the premise to trust me on this, most of the show will not be like that.

Little Witch Academia is one of the two 10/10s in the Winter season.  It's Harry Potter but good actually, but in truth more comparable to some of the Magic School stories that predate Harry Potter being an All Girls School.  I also recommend it to people who like My Little Pony Friendship is Magic or TumblrCore Western Animation.  I do kinda recommend seeing the OVAs first even though they are a different continuity.  This one is a Netflix Exclusive.

Gabriel Dropout doesn't have an English Dub but that's fine, it's the kind of show that is easier for me to watch Subbed then something like Re;Creators so I watched it pretty close to when it aired.  It is a comedic Slice of Life show that produced a lot of funny Memes at the time.

ACCA: 13 Territory Inspection Dept. is a show a lot of people found boring at the time but I enjoyed it.  It's a show about Bureaucracy but has some interesting world building and politics.  However it will never be an action show.

ChaoS;Child is the other 10/10, it's a SciADV show that does get Dark but is also worth it.  Now on CR the first episode will look like it's hour long because they crammed into the same video file Episode 0 which is really a recap of ChaoslHEad, I've always skipped that part on the rewatch.  I've talked about Chaos; shows on this Blog before.

Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid was a very funny well animated Yuri show that doesn't need me to explain it's appeal.  I wasn't able to enjoy season 2 but season 1 regardless is still a classic.

Scum's Wish is a fun sexy show about people being emotionally messy, not unlike why I like Rumbling Hearts.  This one is on HIDIVE.

Monster Girl Quest doesn't have a Dub and isn't on CR since it's a Hentai, a rare Femdom Hentai which I recommend even though I found the ending disappointing.  It's not the only Hentai I've seen from the Winter of 2017 but the others aren't worth mentioning.

I've seen only a few episodes of KiraKira PreCure (I only list one on MAL since I add only what I've seen consecutively from the beginning there), it's one of the PreCures I struggle to get into even though I do like it's HaruMi inspired couple.  I did also see the Dream Stars movie but don't remember much about it besides Red Haired Haruka flirting with some Go Princess background characters.  The series is on CR now but the movies aren't.  Also not on CR is Mahoutsukai Precure which ended during this season and which I did see more of, it's gimmick was kind of Precure Harry Potter.

Speaking of movies, I enjoyed SAO Ordinal Scale but wouldn't recommend it to anyone not already into SAO as a series. Lupin III Geomon Ishikawas' Blood Spray is a very cool movie just like the other films in the Koike Trilogy. 

And the Washio Sumi movies are probably the better way to watch the Washio Sumi story of the Yuki Yuna Is A Hero franchise, but they aren't Dubbed.

Napping Princess is a very good stand alone movie I watched Dubbed on Tubi.TV but it's not there anymore, it isn't on any Streaming App now but can be digitally purchased on PrimeVideo, VUDU or Apple.  I'm not sure how to describe this kind of Anime film, if you enjoyed The Girl Who Lept Through Time or the last three Makoto Shinkai films you should probably check it out.

Update January 6th: Since I first wrote this I just watched Tales of Zestiria The X the second season or cour of which aired in Winter 2017, though the last episode was in late April for some reason.  It's a pretty good show, Fantasy and not even quasi Isekai, some may complain about how it uses CGI but it's nothing compared Luminaria or Chainsawman.  My favorite character is Princess Alisha who's one of those Anime Princesses that is basically Padme Amidala but better.

Looking back on 2023

For starters it’s my second year as a Detective Conan aka Case Closed fan, the only Movie I hadn’t already seen by the end of 2022 was the one that wasn’t out yet, which this year I as expected had to wait till November to see.  I enjoyed movie 26 but it might be the hardest movie to recommend to franchise newcomers. This year was also big for Conan fans in getting 50 new Dubbed episodes on Tubi, and the Dub for movie 24 The Scarlet Bullet was finally released seemingly just before Christmas for Digital Purchase on Amazon PrimeVideo.  And on the main show some long awaited developments in the main storyline.

For Pretty Cure, Soaring Sky I do think is probably the best show we’ve gotten since Hugtto but I wasn’t able to finish it for reasons that have nothing to do with its quality.

The Pokémon Franchise gave us both Paldean Wings and Path to The Peak which were each very good.

Lupin III vs Cat’s Eye was decent, and this year also had some movies I still haven’t been able to see yet, like the Sailor Moon Cosmos movies and the second SAO Progressive movie.

And outside the realm of Anime was the Willow series which I mostly enjoyed but Disney decided to bury. And from Star Wars I enjoyed both Mandalorian season 3 and Ahsoka.

But let’s look at regular Seasonal Anime now.

Winter had 9 shows I watched to Completion, not all as they were airing, plus two that finished then from prior seasons.  Two of the sequels were In/Spectre which is still pretty cool and Vinland Saga which was also good.  

Tomo-Chan is a Girl was a fun RomCom, I’m not as into the main premise as I think a lot of other people will be but I enjoyed it’s Kuudere character. I already made a post about her as a great new addition to the Kuudere Canon.  

Buddy Daddies is a show in an unfortunate situation because I suspect it will ultimately be mostly forgotten in Spy x Family’s shadow even though I think it was a more overall satisfying show.

The Magical Revolution of the Reincarnated Princess and the Genius Young Lady kicked off this being perhaps the best year for Yuri since 2018.  It was a great show, very funny but also genuinely emotional.  And it ended in such a way where there is room for a season 2 but it won’t feel unfinished without one.

Onimai was awesome.

Uncle from Another World, Ningen, Fruit of Evolution season 2, and Rougo were all fun Isekai.  

I’ll share my thoughts on both seasons of Eminence in Shadow up front here, it’s good but I’m not gonna be as inclined to list it as a favorite as some other people are.

The Super Mario Bros movie and Across The Spider Verse were both great western Animated films.

Spring dropped an instant classic with Heavenly Delusion which I do hope gets a season 2. 

Honestly there are a lot of shows this year I haven't finished or watched yet but which I still might.  Like Tsundere Villainess, and the second season of Tonikawa and Bofuri.

My Love Story with Yamada-Kun at lv999 was a very good RomCom Anime.  Dead Mount Deathplay was a fun new Reverse Isekai Premise.  Season 2 of The Witch From Mercury was also great but not something I have particular thoughts on.

My thoughts on Psycho-Pass Movie Providence I already tacked on to the end of my Dystopian Sci-FI post from earlier this year.

Yuri Is My Job was very fun as well, it kind of felt like a true throwback Yuri in the best way possible.

Mahou Shoujo Magical Destroyers is one of those shows that had a strong start but I don’t really like where it ended.

The main show I have complex thoughts on for the spring season is In Another World With my Smartphone season 2.  As someone who’s been season 1’s most vocal online evangelist since it aired back in 2017 I don’t like reporting that I felt disappointed by season 2, but I kind of do.  Part of it is how the Dub had to replace some cast members, but in a way that tried to keep people from noticing which only made those performances sound more forced.  It’s the kind of failed recasting I do not blame on the actors.  However I don’t think that’s the only reason I think this period in the story in the original LNs was perhaps a low point.  Also the confirmation that Leen is going to become one of the nine wives I don’t like.  I like Leen but as a mischievous perverted little gremlin side character, I don't think her as a main Waifu will work.

For another digression outside of Anime I watched The Flash and I did like it, but I don’t feel like going out on a limb for it.  My view that the accusations against Ezra Miller are pure Transphobia hasn’t changed.

The Summer season was pretty fun too.

Zom100 technically isn’t a show I completed but that’s because it’s one indefinite hiatus, it’s a fun show with blatant Marxist Subtext which I highly recommend.

Am I Actually The Strongest? Was another fun Isekai.

Liar Liar feels like a distinctly more light hearted take on the Battle Royal inspired genre, it's a Death Game set up but without the Death, which it turns out appeals to me perfectly.

Rent-a-Girlfriend season 3 was great, the more frustrating aspects of the series were toned down this season to focus on our main characters actually achieving a goal and dealing with some real emotions.  I never agreed with the hate on the first two seasons but for season 3 anyone claiming they watched it and that it’s no better is simply lying.

Jobless Reincarnation season 2a was also good, don’t listen to the haters.

Fate/Strange Fake Whispers of Dawn was a neat little special and I will definitely watch the full show when it airs.

For more non Anime digressions season 2 of Apple’s Foundation series was great, it massively improved on what I already enjoyed about season 1.  Now you have to accept that it's not Isaac Asimov’s vision at all, but once you accept it as its own thing it’s a perfectly enjoyable and interesting Sci-Fi show, perhaps the best the west has had since Caprica.

Dungeons & Dragons honor Among Thieves was also a more enjoyable movie then I expected, it’s the closest any Western Fantasy show can come to the appeal of an Isekai or rather “I can’t believe it’s not Isekai'' style Anime since it has that living in a Game world Vibe.  But without the distinctly Otaku Elements has an even broader appeal.

Venture Brothers Radiant is The Blood of The Baboon’s Heart is a pretty satisfying movie, if it indeed is the send off for that franchise it’ll have been a fitting one.

The Fall season I’m most hesitant to even cover here since it isn’t over yet.  

I did watch two Netflix Anime in October, Good Night World and Pluto which were both awesome, and then November had a neat Slime Reincarnation ONA.  Besides that there’s only 4 shows I’ve watched to completion, one I already covered up above.  There are a number of shows I put On Hold that I feel there’s a strong chance I will return to like Frieren.

I’m In Love With The Villainess was fantastic, another required viewing for Yuri fans.

Tearmoon Empire was also cute and fun.

16bit Sensation Another Layer was a great show with Deep Cuts for someone like me who's spent the last two years researching the history of Visual Novels and Dating Sims and related game genres.

For one last non Anime addition I saw  Rebel Moon Part 1 but I’ve decided to stick to Mastadon for expressing my thoughts on it.

I suppose Suzume can count since it’s not originally from 2023 but the Dub I watched probably is, it was good.  I could also add Kaguya-Sama: Love Is War - The Kiss That Never Ends, which was very good.

If I included everything I watched for the first time in 2023 but which is actually older this post would be twice as long.  A lot of them were via browning Tubi.TV.  Some of them I’ve already discussed in various Blog Posts.

If anything new is added before midnight on Christmas Eve I’ll add an Update.  In the meantime Happy New Years.

Update December 28th: Well I just finished BOFURI season 2, which also happens to be my 900th completed Anime.

The 2000s were Anime's most Revolutionary Decade

I don't think Anime has changed more in any single decade then it did in the 2000s.

At the start it looks a lot like the late 90s and by the end it looks almost like what 2010s Anime has been.  That's normal of course.  My point lies more in how radically different the 90s are from the 2010s.  In a lot of ways the early 90s only looks a couple upgrades different from the late 70s.  However comparing what was airing in December of 1999 to January of 2010, it can be hard to believe that took only 1 decade.  

The 2010s meanwhile as much as I've loved the Volume of Anime they've given me (about half of everything I've watched), do feel like they've mostly been defined by a handful of trends.

The 2000s were the most experimental decade, a decade where seeds planted in the 90s were nurtured and cultivated to eventually fully blossom into what we see now.

How did the Magical Girl genre go from Sailor Moon and Card Captor Sakura to Madoka Magica and Yuki Yuna?  Well stuff like Magical Girl Lyricla Nanoha fills in the gaps.  But in the world of Magical Girl shows that stayed strictly kids' shows, the first 6 years of Pretty Cure laid the foundations of everything that franchise has been doing since.

When it comes to the really out there trippy stuff, yeah everything in the 2000s may be standing on the shoulders of Eva, Utena and Lain, but that just helps them reach greater heights.

Is Mecha dead?  That's a question that's been haunting Anime discourse for awhile now, and I'm not interested in answering what most people mean by that question.  What I miss about the late 90s and 2000s was how Mecha just sorta popped up in shows that weren't mainly Mecha shows.  Like oh you're gonna do Futuristic Space Opera Anime Count of Monte-Cristo, of course the duel is gonna be with giant robots instead of swords or guns.  And even among stuff that Mecha could be considered the main genre classification, today they are usually one of three things, trying to be Eva, trying to be Gundam, or very rarely trying to be Mazinger Z.  It's only in the 2000s that we had a lot of Mecha shows that don't easily fit into any of those.

The nature of these transitions were complicated.  Partly in how often Anime is behind it's source material.  A lot of the trends that have defined mid to late 2010s Anime were already flourishing in these more niche mediums in the late 90s and early 2000s.  Remember when the Sword Art Online Anime debuted it's source material's original publication was already a full decade old, older then some well known franchises that got animated a lot sooner.

Light Novels have existed and been an occasional source material for Anime longer then Visual Novels have.  But in the 90s and very early 2000s the kinds of stories an Anime fan would associate with the term "Light Novel" were completely different.

You could conceivably take any year from the 2000s and argue it to be a key transitional year.  But for the rest of this post I shall focus on arguing for 2006, simply because some shows from that year have been on my mind.

Prior to 2006 no Visual Novels got any 2 cour Anime adaptations, AniDB may list some but I'm pretty sure those are based on games that don't properly count as VNs under the strictest definition.  But in 1 year 2006 saw the debuts of three 2 cour Visual Novel Anime, Higurashi, Fate/Stay Night and KyoAni's Kanon.  Two were instant hits that were in some way followed up immediately.  The one that didn't quite take off as immediately eventually dwarfed the rest to become one of the most all consuming brands in all of Anime.

And in the world of Anime adapted from Light Novels, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya single handedly changed everything.  Though The Familiar of Zero also got it's Anime that year.

In addition to shows that were seemingly giving birth to the 2010s in that year, there were also shows that were in some ways send offs to trends of prior eras.  Nerima Daikun Brothers isn't technically the last Nabeshin Anime, but I feel it was mostly the last gasp of the style of Anime comedy popularized by Excel Saga.  Meanwhile Strawberry Panic felt like the Magnum Opus of everything the Yuri Genre had been for the prior half century.

And Pokémon quite literally transitioned from Advance Generation to Diamond and Pearl.  At the same time it's English localizers made some production transitions.

There was also plenty of stuff that feels just as related to what came before as to what came since, but still while being innovative.  Code Geass, Death Note, La Chevlair D'Eon, Kashimashi: Girl Meets Girl.  And then there was a show that wound up making a good case study in Anime obscurity.

Update: On my Twitter thread promoting this post I wound up talking about an interesting 2007 show.

https://twitter.com/KuudereKun888/status/1459123983417229338

2004-2005 was a transitional phase for the Magical Girl Genre.

The end of Ojamajo Doremi closed one chapter in Toei Animation’s role in the genre’s history.

Meanwhile with Sailor Moon, the ending of the Live Action series PGSM as well as the original run of Sera Myu musicals and the discontinuing of the Pioneer/Cloverway localizations marked the end of official Sailor Moon material anyone is currently nostalgic for.  In a decade people will be nostalgic for Crystal and the Viz Dub and the new musicals but for now classic Sailor Moon ends in 2005.

Meanwhile the first two seasons of both Futari Wa Pretty Cure and Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha mark the beginning of what the Magical Girl genre has been ever since, for both Shoujo and Seinen respectively.  The OG PreCures interestingly got their blonde adopted daughter before Nanoha and Fate did.

Pretty Cure literally took over Doremi’s timeslot.  Here is a Twitter Thread I made inquiring about Anime Time Slots.
https://twitter.com/KuudereKun888/status/1137272052031938565

And these two years also had their own little isolated projects not particularly connected to what came before or after, like Uta Kata and Tweeny Witches.

This wouldn’t be the last time there would be a game changer year in the genre’s history.  I already talked about 2011 which included some of its Magical Girl relevance.  But also the end of that year and going into 2012 was the 20th Anniversary of Sailor Moon which sparked the Sailor Moon revival we’re still experiencing.

But these two years were more revolutionary over all with Nanoha clearly being an influence on both Madoka and plenty of the alleged Madoka imitators.  Both Madoka and Day Break Illusion shared some key creative staff with Nanoha.

And this was an important time period elsewhere as well, Pokemon was changing via the Advance Generation and Bee Train was changing via Madlax.  In Hollywood the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy was ending and The Chronicles of Narnia and the Nolan Batman saga were beginning.  Meanwhile DC Comics was building toward Infinite Crisis and Marvel towards Civil War.  In WWE the Ruthless Aggression era was starting.  And the currently last great Vampire craze was sparked by the publications of Twilight and the books True Blood was based on.

For now this will probably be my last post looking at specific time periods or seasons of Anime's past.  But I may return to the idea later with less specific focus on the Magical Girl Genre.  For the rest of June I have other Magical Girl topics I want to cover.

The Night is Darkest just before the Daybreak

In The Dark Knight (and one of it's trailers) Harvey Dent says "The Night is Darkest just before the Dawn".  This is apparently an expression that already existed though in this Millennial Bat-Nerd's mind it will always feel like a reference to that film.  It's an expression I've used when explaining why I enjoy so much fiction that can get pretty dark and bleak even though I'm ultimately an optimist who prefers happy hopeful endings.  Including in a blog post that I flat out named that in the latter part of 2016.

It happens to fit my theology, since I believe the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, The Sun(Shamash/Helios) of Righteousness of Malachi 4:2, happened at Sunrise on the day of the week we happen to have named after the Sun. And in light of some of my recent rethinking of the Biblical Calendar possibly also the Sunrise of the morning after the Spring Equinox, when the days start being longer then the nights.  Luke 1:78-79 uses Sunrise terminology in Zacharias' Prophecy.

And that of course includes my controversial defense of the Darker takes on the Magical Girl Warrior sub-genre of Manga/Anime (where I often see the main protagonists as Christ-like).  Which is why I was positively giddy to see the line used in the Canadian Dub of the last episode of the first season Futari Wa Pretty Cure.  And today I'm intrigued to find a pretty good Dark Magical Girl show that is seemingly referencing this idea in it's title.

Genei wo Kakeru Taiyou is the name of a 13 episode Summer 2013 Anime who's official English Title on Crunchyroll and VRV is Day Break Illusion, but MyAnimeList lists the alternative English title "The Sun Penetrates the Illusions".  Google Translate actually favors the official title, however much you think it's trustworthy.  It's apparently also known in some language(s) under the title Il Sole penetra le illusioni.

Digibro once on a chart implied this was THE darkest Magical Girl show, but that was made before stuff like Raising Project, Site and the possibly upcoming Apocalypse were a thing.

Taiyou is a Japanese word for the Sun, it's not the only one, but from what I've read is the one that would be used when referring to the Sunrise or Sunset.  In addition to being in the title of this show it's also the family name of the main protagonist.  Her given name is Akari which is a word for Light, making her full name "Sun Light", The Fourth Gospel talked a lot about The Light.

This show actually works better as a darker take on the usual Magical Girl formula then either Madoka or Yuki Yuna in that it partly follows the victim of the week format.  It shows how terrifying the idea of a demonic force turning a normal person into a horrible monster over some small emotional insecurity would be.  However it explores that darkness while remaining firmly optimistic thanks to it's protagonist.  And it subverted my expectations in ways that actually worked, unlike a certain 2017 film.

On a broader nerdy note, I found myself comparing the Leguzario who run Sefiro Fiore to The Watcher's Council from Buffy.

Peter Hiett once said to watch all the Harry Potter movies looking for Jesus.  This show can also qualify as a Magic School Anime, and I already justified how the MC's name fits.

I notice how Seria Hoshikawa is kind of like the Older Brother in the Parable of the Prodigal Son. Luna Tsukuyomi's name fits with how most commentators seem to think the Moon is Rachel in Genesis 37 and Revelation 12, making Seria Leah.  But I've argued the Moon represents Leah in those passages which makes this not fit as well.  The text of Genesis gives us no indication Leah was ever jealous of Rachel, it was Rachel who was jealous and I see that as typologically relevant to Romans 9-11.

At any rate it's a good show and I'm annoyed Aniplex hasn't made a Dub for it yet.

Galaxy Fraulein Yuna is a Hidden Gem

The thing about being someone who didn't get fully into Anime till 2014-2016 is that learning the history of this art-form and the community of people who are fans of it in the West is a difficult and murky journey.

I spent a long time assuming that the only stuff that got legally localized before 2000 were Saturday morning kids shows, the occasional big movie like Akira, GitS and Ghibli films, and then stuff like Eva, Utena and Lain at the very end of the 90s.  And the occasional anomaly like Robotech which I first heard of via SFDebris.

It was mainly discovering Bennett The Sage and his Anime Abandon series on YouTube that made me realize how many OVAs, lesser known movies and even some TV Anime did get properly Dubbed onto VHS and then early DVDs in the 90s and even 80s.  Lots of what he's covered is stuff I'd likely never watch myself but that I can certainly enjoy watching him mock.  But there is other stuff where I can from watching him humorously crap on them tell that I'd probably unironically enjoy it.

One realization that slowly dawned on me as I watched more and more of those was how many trends I thought of as inherently post 2000 Anime trends did have their roots already planted in the 20th Century, they just usually weren't in TV Anime.  What I'm referring to is "Moe" related tropes.  I've discovered that it might just be possible to label Project A-Ko the first true Otaku Anime.  Then came Tenchi Muyo as the proto-type of the Harem genre, and plenty of other interesting forgotten gems.

The one that is most fascinating to me at the moment is Galaxy Fraulein Yuna.  This franchise was originally a series of Video Games, but it had two OVA serieses, a 2 episode one and a 3 episode one, totaling 5 episodes.

It's like a Magical Girl show and a Mecha show at the same time, which gives it unique similarities to Nanoha and Symphogear.  I'm also comparing it to Prisma Illya manly because the Dub has the same lead Voice Actress.  Further backing up the Nanoha connection is that Shinbo directed the second OVA series.

It's aesthetics do feel 90s, yet it's so ahead of it's time for something I know was made in the 90s.

I can't speak to how things may be different in the games, but these OVAs are possibly the first Magical Girl Warrior Anime without a Het Male love interest thrown in.  There is a character who kind of plays the Tuxedo Mask role, but that character is a woman.

Yuna is also explicitly gay, she's a pretty kinky Lesbian in fact.  It's played as a joke largely which can be problematic.  But this isn't a side character who's there just to be that joke, this is the main Hero of this Universe, she has those Magical Girl protagonist qualities I love about Usagi Tsukino and Nanoha and right on down through the PreCures and good post Madoka stuff, making Superman look look like a cynical nihilist in comparison.  And she's made unambiguously gay in a way modern Anime hesitates to even with the joke characters.

I watched the first two episode OVA awhile ago, but put off Galaxy Fraulein Yuna Returns because I knew it was gonna go down a somewhat darker path.  But now that I've seen it, they are worth it, the emotions hit quite well.

They aren't a hidden masterpiece.  But they are a fascinating overlooked relic of Anime's past.  And I recommend them to anyone who likes Nanoha or Symphogear or Madoka or Yuki Yuna Is A Hero.

#MahouShouJune & #PrideMonth week 4 was a very #Yuri week.

I also watched the recently released Asagao to Kase-San OVA.

It’s a well animated and well directed Anime, and well acted as far as I can judge Japanese voice acting.  But…..

As a massive Yuri enthusiast I hate being the one debbie downer on this OVA, but it’s really not to my taste.  A lot of people are saying it’s so preferable to Citrus cause it doesn’t have so much DRAAAAMAAAA!!!!!  But the thing is, it is still a Melodrama, it is still a conflict driven narrative.  And so if we’re gonna have Melodrama I’d prefer they just go all out with it.

I do want more fiction that isn’t conflict driven narratives.  And what I want from that for Yuri is just Lucky Star or K-On or Yuru Yuri but with everyone unambiguously openly gay, all the plausible deniability thrown out. 

I get that Kase-San is trying to capture a more realistic relationship awkwardness and tension, and if that’s what you need from a Yuri Romance then this might be for you.  But I don’t want that kind of realism from Anime.  This OVA was okay but I couldn’t watch a 12 or 24 episode series with this general tone.

Hugtto! PreCure episode 20 was definitely worth it’s build up. I’ve also done a lot of other Pretty Cure viewing which I’ve posted on elsewhere.

Katana Maidens episode 20 was interesting.  I’m starting to think there is supposed to be some kind of Id, Ego, Superego correlation to the three Princesses.

Episode 8 of Steins;Gate 0 was quite good.

Symphogear season 1 was very good.

And I finally got around to Sasami-San@Ganbaranai which was a very interesting show.

For Shin Sekai Yori however I could not even finish the first episode.

I started Symphogear G which is pretty good so far.

And I finished Magical Girl Site.  It did have a happy ending (but with sequel hooks) so my final opinion on it for now is that it’s a good show.

#MahouShouJune & #PrideMonth week 3: Currently airing shows plus a lot of Pretty Cure.

Hugtto!PreCure episode 19 was surprisingly relevant for Pride Month, I liked it.  I also notice how it looks like PreCure has been influenced by the recent trend in Western Superhero tv shows and movies to pretty much just have all the supporting cast be in on it.

Katana Maidens episode 19 was pretty interesting as well.

Legend of The Galactic Heroes episode 8 does provide us with some Yaoi.  Literally, there is no heterosexual explanation for him playing with his hair like that at the end.  That said I’m also not opposed to a threesome including the Blonde’s sister.  In case you can’t tell, I’ll probably never memorize these characters names.

Steins;Gate 0 episode 7 put some more focus on Ruka.  Some might not get my repeated references to Steins;Gate’s handling of Ruka’s gender identity being a confusing problem.  Their being groped for comedic effect from time to time is just a surface level aspect of it. 

The issue is the original show went down the route of suggesting Ruka’s preferred gender identity was Female, but then implies they just felt that way because of their attraction to Okabe.  The sentiment that Gender doesn’t ultimately matter I can support, the issue is how dismissive that can seem of Trans Women.  I guess I would like to ultimately think of Ruka as Non-Binary or something like that, which is why I’ve been using they/them.

I’ve been revisiting some Pretty Cure pilots with the help of Rabbit.  This franchise was super Gay from day one. 

And I’ve now seen Subbed the first episodes of every season but the only two that continue a prior continuity.  None of them are bad, but I seem to be the only person who finds Heartcatch the least compelling.

I also watched some more of the movies.  I have now seen the first 5 Allstar movies, the first Yes 5 movie, and the Suite movie.  The movies are all pretty fun.

And then I finished Glitter Force Doki Doki.  It reminded me of a lot of similar themes from The Last Jedi, Batman V Superman and The Dark Knight “there’s not gonna be any fireworks”.  And while the part of me sympathetic to the critics of those films kind of wants to go “look how this show for little girls handled them better”, I ultimately view it as a vindication.  Clearly those things aren’t so inherently dark and nihilistic as Snyder haters think, it’s just harder for some people to see the hopeful optimism in them if it doesn’t have the color pallet of a cartoon.

And I also feel like saying that the Yuri ultimately is not very subtle.  What really grabbed me was how it kind of even addresses the “girls do it to practice and then grow out of it” when Regina says things like “I was a kid then” but ultimately the love between does prevail.

Magical Girl Site episode 11 was pretty intense.  My final verdict on this show utterly depends on how it ends.

Next I’ll probably finish the first Glitter Force, then focus on either Symphogear or the Canadian Dub of the original Pretty Cure for awhile.

#MahouShouJune & #PrideMonth week 2

Following up where I left off last week.  I enjoyed Mikagura School Suite which I watched Dubbed, I recommend it.  Sasami-San doesn’t have a Dub so that may take me more time.

Hugtto PreCure episode 18 was great, a lot of fun.  This Lulu Arc has been quite the ride.

Katana Maidens episode 18 was also pretty darn good.  I hope this show can live up to the hype I’ve been trying to give it.

I decided to watch the rest of the Project A-Ko franchise.  As much as I was annoyed by the attempts to straighten the girls out starting with the third movie, they remained entertaining.  But only the first movie is a masterpiece.

I was trying to be optimistic about Steins;Gate 0’s handling of Ruka.  But here they are getting molested by curious scientists for comic relief again in episode 6.

Legend of The Galactic Heroes episode 7 was pretty good.  It may be the least relevant of shows I’m following during Pride Month.  It has some Yaoi potential, but it’s not guaranteed to show up every week.

Magical Girl Site episode 10 was a pretty decent bridge between the preceding episodes and the closing ones.

#MahouShouJune & #PrideMonth week 1

I started writing this one while MyAnimeList was down to help me keep track of what I’ve watched.

Legend of The Galactic Heroes Episode 6 introduced us to a female soldier finally. It's based on books from the 80s, so I guess I just have to forgive the fact that the show acts a little like the very idea is still surprising.

Steins;Gate 0 episode 5 has definitely sped up it’s plot.

Magical Girl Site episode 9 was pretty darn good, it earned its first major death, and Kiyo-Chan has proven to be a very good character, I just hope she continues to be treated this well.

Episode 6 of Food/Stay Night dropped and it was pretty good.  We got to see Fujinii as a little Oneechan.

Upon the Pride Month recommendation of a Twitter acquaintance I have put Mikagura School Suite and Sasami-San on the agenda.

Next week I wanna get into the pattern of posting these on Friday or Saturday, so that's why this post doesn't have any comment on PreCure or Katana Maidens.

My Feminist defense of "Cute Girls doing Cute Things" and Yuri Anime

 First I'm going to talk just about "Cute Girls doing Cute Things" for awhile.  Then talk about Yuri at the end.

I'm not really an expert on the genre, there are a number of important shows I have seen little or none of yet, Aria, Azumanga Dioh, Manibi Straight, Hidemari Sketch, Nichijo and Is The Order a Rabbit.  And the shows Digibro talked about in his How to Distinguish between Cute Girl Shows video.  All shows I intend to get to eventually.  Well Aria seems comparatively boring so maybe not that one.

This genre of Anime is in a similar place to Twilight in that I can't sympathize with the Feminist criticism as much as I maybe should, since I know the hatedom is truly driven by Misogyny and Homophobia, yet because Sexists always try to deny they're Sexists, they then use the Feminist criticisms as a shield.  The difference being I don't particularly like Twilight myself so have no personal investment in pointing this out for that one.

Before most Western Feminists even heard the term "Moeblob".  The outrage against these shows started among 80s/90s Nerds who missed the days when Anime (or at least the Anime that got localized in America) was dominated by hyper masculine shows, from Giant Robots to Shounon fighting shows.  Who are deeply offended by the very idea of men enjoying girly shows, even if they are ones technically marketed to men rather then women.  Who see it as an example of how modern society is trying to emasculate them in their paranoid minds. 

Before I became a full Otaku, most of the girly shows I liked were shows that were made for women at least partly, and are shows I still like to varying degrees.  From Buffy, to One Tree Hill, to The Vampire Diaries to Pretty Little Liars.  Before those I even recall being into Party of Five and Xena.  And of course one of my earliest exposures to Anime was Sailor Moon.  I've also genuinely enjoyed a number of Lifetime movies.  And all of this was stuff I got crap for on IMDB if it came up on a board where most of the visitors were typical male nerds.

And my favorite characters have always been female characters no matter how male oriented a show or movie is.  And not just because I found them attractive.  Even though I'm Cisgender, I have a tendency to relate and identify with female characters far more often then male ones in the fiction I enjoy.

And so Padme is my favorite Star Wars character, Stephanie Brown and Cassandra Cain are my favorite Batman characters, Donna Troy and Raven are my favorite non Batman DC characters.  My favorite Narnia character was Susan.  Even when I read Children of Hurin I liked Niniel the best.  With Pokemon it was weird at first that I didn't like Misty much, but then I got Lisa in the 3rd Movie, Domino in Mewtwo Returns, and in time May and Dawn, and Leaf in the games (I also like the Lass trainers).

I want to write a show that would be essentially the Western Live Action counterpart to Lucky Star.  And the thing is I wanted to write that before I knew Lucky Star existed.  Back around 2010-11, I started working in my head on a show that ostensibly had a Sci-Fi/Fantasy premise, but most of the scenes I cared about were just my characters, which were mostly teenage girls, talking with each other about random and often nerdy stuff.  So when in mid 2016 I discovered Lucky Star, and discovered there was an audience for doing that without the Genre pretense, I felt really liberated.

Digibro likes to compare the appeal of shows like Lucky Star to the appeal of Let's Plays, or at least Let's Plays with more then one person involved.  And indeed the above show I planned even included a few scenes of them talking while the others were watching one play a Video Game, even though I hadn't really heard of Let's Plays yet.

The first show I watched that could be considered a Cute Girls doing Cute Things show, isn't one strictly since it did have one prominent male character love interest, that was Engaged to the Unintended.  Later in early 2016 I watched Yuru Yuri, that show really helped me through some stuff.  Then later in the Summer of that year when I watched for the first time Lucky Star, I knew this was a genre I wanted more of.  Lucky Star remains the best in this genre to me.

Next in line was K-On, it is also really great but a bit too plot/story driven for my tastes.   The thing about K-On is it's only in the west Feminists (or anyone) complains about it, in Japan in-spite of being ostensibly marketed more to men, it was written and directed by Women and has a strong female fan-base.

These shows generally do not have what I complained about in my Anime Fanservice post.  Occasionally one will have a little early on while hooking viewers and then completely drop it.

I'm not the only male who's enjoyment of this genre overlaps with an ability to enjoy Girly Shows actually made for Girls.  I don't think it's a coincidence that the biggest advocate of K-On on YouTube was also once the original Brony, or at least the leading one on YouTube.  A number of Digibro's videos about K-On and Lucky Star are in my Kyoto Animation playlist.

Digibro made a chart called A Guide to "Cute Girls doing Cute Things".  And then a YouTube video explaining it.  A lot of the sub-genres in that chart fail to carry over all of the original appeal, in fact some unfortunately do become Fan Service heavy.  The first three categories are really the purest examples of the Genre.  Digibro also did a Podcast on his history with the Genre.

Some of you might be annoyed how often I'm mentioning Digibro.  Well in a lot of ways he's smarter at explaining things then I am.  Yet still I think there is a slight difference between what I look for in the genre and what he does, so I do need to say more then just "Watch Digibro's videos".

The reason I have come lately to mostly like these shows more then actual Shoujo Anime, is that unfortunately Shoujo Anime continues to be made under an assumption that a Het Romance is necessary for girls to care about it.  I have recently come to find most Het romantic fiction boring, and believe it or not so do a lot of women.

What I'm getting at is, these shows appeal to men who in some ways don't fit society's normal standard of masculinity.  So while these shows may still have problems, and some of the men they appeal to may still be sexist in some ways.  I think it helps far more then hurts that we have these shows.

I mentioned in a comments section once how these shows all pass the Bechdel test rather easily.  And then got responses that I was somehow missing the point of the Bechdel test.  I'm well aware that what the Bechdel test points out is only a symptom not the problem.  The way to pass that test without actually treating the real problem would be a story with like 30 characters but only two are female, and there is no reason to expect or be interested in those two characters talking to each other besides being the only representatives their Gender has, yet they are given a single scene together and it feels forced.  I don't know if such a hypothetical scenario has happened yet, but it's something I suspect will inevitably happen.

Shows that pass the Bechdel test not because of a single scene but because the show is entirely about women who's lives don't revolve round men, are worth celebrating even if they have other problematic issues.  So that we have an entire genre doing that on a regular basis, in-spite of being technically marketed to men, getting almost no credit for it from Western Feminists bugs me.

There is no point in individually criticizing a movie that isn't an ensemble and has a single male lead for not passing the Bechdel test.  The problem is films fitting that description have for decades been most of what Hollywood cares about producing.  Yet TheMarySue felt the need to do a whole article on Spiderman Homecoming not passing the Bechdel test, I still haven't seen that movie, there may be valid reasons to criticize it, but there is no reason to go in hoping it'll pass the Bechdel test.

In the past I've gotten criticized for expressing the above with the statement, "just cause a film has a male lead doesn't mean it can't pass the Bechdel test".   Yes it's hypothetically possible, but there is no good reason to expect it.  And as someone who wants more female lead films, I don't want them to have scenes where the male supporting characters get together to have a conversion that has nothing to do with the lead character I'm watching the movie for.  Still at the same time I enjoy many scenes that others criticize for being useless to the main plot, but those are usually scenes with female characters.  So I may not be the one criticizing a male lead movie for passing the Bechdel Test when it had no obvious reason to, but the criticism would certainly exist.

I think the existence of films with Female Leads that still fail to pass it are far more worth criticizing.  Like The Force Awakens and Rogue One, and I currently suspect The Last Jedi will continue this with Rey spending at least half the film on an island with Luke.  The Wonder Woman film passes it only because of the scenes on Themiscyra, but at least it has a good reason to have Diana mostly interacting with men for the rest of the film.  The new Star Wars films are giving their female leads mostly male support because they seem to think that's just natural.

In Anime this issue rarely happens, when Anime gives us a Superheroine, it also give her a lot of female support.  And if it's related to the Cute Girls doing Cute Things genre, it may well have no male characters at all.

I'm well aware that this genre is kind of driven by a non-sexual objectification, sometimes treating Cute Girls like Cute Animals.  And that is the main Feminist criticism I sympathize with.  But that's relatively harmless compared to most ways a show can be sexist.

The assumption that most of these characters are simply one dimensional doesn't hold up, at least not for the shows well known enough that they're the ones articles criticizing this genre default to singling out.  LadyGeekGirl has an article specifically singling out K-On as being a "Moeblob" show with no character depth, even though K-On has so much character development that they seem unrecognizable watching the pilot and finale back to back.  The development is just done subtly, rather then topping off every episode with a "what did we learn today" speech.  Fortunately AnimeFeminist has a good article praising K-On.

Yuri is ultimately a separate Genre though with overlapping appeal.  And all Slice of Life Cute Girls shows have Yuri shipping in their fandoms.  Main reason I want to separate it from everything I said above is that Yuri shows are more likely to include Fan Service.  But I'm not making a separate post because the Toxic Masculinity issue is relevant to what I have to say on both.

A warning before reading on, I will talk about some sexual content below.

Lots has been written online about why Yaoi and Slash Fiction would appeal to women besides the most superficial carnal appeal.  Lots of different appeals get discussed.  But with men the default is to just assume they only care about watching Girl on Girl sex, and most Western Lesbian Porn indeed only cares about appealing that carnal desire.

Digibro again has a Podcast on his personal history with the genre.  But later I'll get to the more insightful thing he said somewhere else.

A lot of the criticism of Yuri is the Purity fixation.  And I agree that that is a problem, but for not exactly the same reason.  If your going off only the most mainstream Yuri Anime, it's easy to think the Purity fixation is why actual Sex rarely happens.  However there are Yuri Doujins (the target audience writing what they want to see) like A Pure Heart (A Nao x Reika from Smile Pretty Cure Doujin) that are about rejecting the idea that Sex takes away Purity, that Doujin was deeply moving to me personally.

Now you can say the reason that happens in the Yuri Genre is because of the whole problematic "Lesbian Sex isn't real Sex because there is no Penetration" idea.  However the reason Lesbain sex has been thought of that way, is intimately related to how society often thinks of Male sexuality as inherently violent.  Digibro said in the PCP podcast on Porn that he used to be inherently turned off by Penises in porn because he thought of them as inherently violent, but that changed once he actually had sex for the first time.  When he said that I felt relieved, since I now knew it wasn't just me.

Just look at how many slang terms for sex, that were originally specifically about intercourse, are also inherently violent terms, Screw, Nail, Bang, the F word, ect.  Toxic Masculinity encourages men to be proud of that association, but for me it's inherently uncomfortable, and it seems like the only Erotica that's at least sometimes free of any violent subtext is Femslash Fan Fiction and Yuri.  And when violence does enter Lesbian Erotica it's always because of the need to have one of the women "play the man".

And this also reminds me of why I really feel that Revolutionary Girl Utena is one of the best nuanced works of Feminist fiction.  What a lot of people miss looking at it on the surface level is that it criticizes it's own Protagonist when her Princely ideal leads her to Toxic Masculine behavior.  Sadly this is also the main area where the movie sort of falters.

I shouldn't need to remove my own gender from the scenario for Sex to be non violent.  But the Patriarchy doesn't make it easy.  Interestingly, the one piece of Het Erotica I'm aware of that doesn't have this issue is The Song of Songs that is Solomon's.

So yes, these two genres aren't perfect, and I'd like to see them improved.  But "Cute Girls doing Cute Things" being rejected out of hand by many Feminists annoys me.