The Gateway to Anime podcast was kind enough to invite me for a chat about all things queer anime, plus the ins and outs of working with AniFem and writing about anime from an intersectional perspective! Watch (or listen, on a podcast app of your choice) along for some recommendations!
Podcast | LGBTQIA+ Anime – Revolutionary Girl Utena, Yuri on Ice & more – Featuring Alex from Anime Feminist
Filed under Fun with Isms
Anime Feminist Recommendations of Winter 2024
We had a warm winter of romance—whether it involved middle school students, office workers, or giant robots. Click through to read about our staff picks!
Filed under Alex Watches
First Impressions | THE NEW GATE
(The above is a relatively quick shot from the intro, but I just had to include it as the header. Why the hell is he sword so big. That cannot be practical)
What’s it about? One day, the MMORPG The New Gate became deadly, preventing its players from logging out and killing them in real life if their avatar died in the game. The curse was only lifted when a player named Shin defeated the final boss. But instead of being logged out and sent home, Shin finds himself portalled to somewhere unexpected—the world of The New Gate some 500 years in the future.
I love a series that presents an interesting premise and then does absolutely nothing with it, don’t you? Despite its twist on the “trapped in a game” formula and intriguing (if… confusing) set-up, THE NEW GATE seems pretty content to waltz through familiar plot beats, character types, and misogynistic disappointments that we’ve seen played out before.
Filed under Alex Watches
First Impressions | Yatagarasu: The Raven Does Not Choose Its Master
What’s it about? The kingdom of Yamauchi was founded by a Golden Raven, who remained on the mountain serving the gods while the lands below were granted to his four children. Tradition states that each of the four houses must send a daughter as a marriage candidate for the crown prince—the symbolic Golden Raven—when he seeks a bride. Lady Asebi, the second daughter of the struggling Eastern House, is sent to the marriage rite in her sister’s place at the last minute, and quickly finds herself in the midst of court intrigue and bubbling political turmoil.
Yatagarasu seems intent on setting up a sweeping epic, a historical fantasy couched in political drama stuffed full with a succession crisis, bubbling tensions between multiple factions, deep magical lore, and a big cast of characters. In a genre that’s often (not always, but often) associated with male nobles strategizing over wine and warmongering, it’s interesting that that this first episode is mostly anchored in the perspective of a female character and concerned with the bridal tradition.
Filed under Alex Watches
First Impressions | Salad Bowl of Eccentrics
What’s it about? Sosuke is a private detective struggling to make ends meet, but his life changes when a runaway princess from another world falls out of the sky and takes an interest in his line of work.
The first thing I can say about Salad Bowl of Eccentrics is that it’s very silly—and I don’t think the creators of the show would disagree with me on this. This reverse isekai (a rare example!) is so far lighthearted and light on logic. If this premiere wasn’t so sodden with fanservice I’d be inclined to call this charming and be intrigued for more, but as it is I’m left a little wary and weary.
Filed under Alex Watches, Uncategorized
First Impressions | An Archdemon’s Dilemma: How to Love Your Elf Bride
What’s it about? Zagan is a powerful sorcerer who’s good with magic and bad with people, and considers relationships more trouble than they’re worth. That is, until he sees the beautiful elf Nephelia being auctioned off as a slave and falls in love at first sight. In a rush of affection, he buys her for a fortune. But what’s he supposed to do know that she belongs to him?
Whether they’re embarking on melancholy quests, navigating the perils of dungeon cuisine, or playing video games, it’s safe to say that elves are in in anime at the moment. As this Elf Era continues into Spring 2024, we now get to add a… er, rom-com about slavery to the mix.
Filed under Alex Watches
First Impressions | Spice and Wolf: Merchant Meets the Wise Wolf
What’s it about? Legends tell of the harvest god Holo, a fickle and fierce wolf who runs through the wheat fields and guarantees a bountiful crop if the local humans please her. However, as agricultural techniques improve and the Church becomes more prominent, Holo and the traditions around her have been demoted to peasant folklore and pagan superstition. Traveling merchant Kraft Lawrence isn’t sure what he believes… until he finds the wolf goddess herself asleep in the back of his cart.
I have a fondness in my heart for Spice and Wolf; I remember enjoying the original 2008 anime back in the day, despite the intricacies of medieval fantasy economics going over my teenaged head. My household even has copies of the original Yen Press light novels with the alternate covers that made them look “less anime” and more like other English-language fantasy novels being published at the time. How the industry has changed since the early 2010s! But that’s a tangent for another day. As Spice and Wolf: MERCHANT MEETS THE WISE WOLF seems to be a newbie-friendly reboot of the series, I’ve avoided revisiting the original, and am approaching the 2024 tale with fresh eyes. So, what’s it like?
Filed under Alex Watches
Mucking Around in Boats: March ’24 Roundup
March marches on, through many musings on fantasy novels both on land and on sea!
On the blog
Faeries and Footnotes: The Nerdy Fun of Scholarly Worldbuilding – adventures with Jonathan Strange and Emily Wilde, and why I like fantasy that takes an academic approach to its worldbuilding.
Voyage of the Damned: A Magical, Marine Murder Mystery – twelve noble heirs to a fantasy empire get stuck in a locked-ship murder mystery in maybe my favourite book of 2024 so far.
Other people’s cool stuff
A brief overview of the importance of cover design for signalling genre, audience, and general vibe, and how the question of “should we judge a book by its cover?” is a very present one, especially in the online market.
Theatre documentarian Brendan Henderson (no relation) gives a rundown of my current favourite disasterpiece, the Glasgow “Willy’s Chocolate Experience”.
Just in time for the anime adaptation, come with me and (re)watch Colleen’s great analysis and recommendation of A Condition Called Love.
Love Him to Heal Him: Heterosexual Wish-fulfilment in Mars and I Sold My Life for 10,000 Yen Per Year – the fantasy of “nice girl fixes sad boy” is everywhere, but as Elif explores it has very different applications depending on whether the target audience is being asked to identify with the nice girl or the sad boy.
The Failure of “America’s Greatest Otaku” – technically from last month, but please double back and enjoy this tale of hubris in the wild days of the early US anime industry.
Writing Fat Characters – a blog from Frances White about the very book I just reviewed, and her decisions to give this magical mystery a plus-sized hero.
My Fave is Problematic: I’m in Love with the Villainess! – in a tragedy of adaptation, this anime covers the novels’ early stumbles and finishes before it gets to the truly inclusive, subversive parts of its queer story.
For the song on repeat this month, I’m going a little bit vintage:
And that’s all for the moment! I’ll be back again soon with some anime premiere reviews. As always, take care of yourselves out there, and thanks for taking the time to read.
Filed under Monthly Roundups
Voyage of the Damned: A Magical, Marine Murder Mystery
Book blurbs—those little paragraphs of praise from other authors and industry reviewers that you see dotting the covers of novels, telling you how the text inside is a triumph or breathtaking—can be hit or miss. Sometimes they say a lot of buzzwords that actually give you no impression of the book at all. Sometimes the endorsement becomes frustrating because you don’t respect the opinion of the famous author giving out praise (e.g., T.J. Klune’s name cluttering up the covers of queer spec-fic that’s much more nuanced and inclusive than his own work). Sometimes, most frustratingly, they replace the synopsis on the back of the book. Alright, so it’s devastatingly beautiful, that’s good to know, but what’s it’s actually about? Do I gotta Google this in the middle of the bookshop?
Sometimes, though, they very much serve their industry purpose and catch a reader’s attention with such a specific and potent recommendation that they can’t help but dive in. And in this case, by “readers” I mean me. When I was scooting around the Instagram account of debut fantasy author Frances White, wondering if I’d be interested in her upcoming book, I saw a nice little graphic highlighting a review quote from Freya Marske, author of The Last Binding trilogy (which I finished earlier this year and very much enjoyed). Marske said this of White’s novel, Voyage of the Damned: “This book reads like Agatha Christie took Gideon the Ninth out for a boat party and got it delirious on champagne and fairy floss”.
Now that, my dear Watson, was compelling as hell*. And having now read Voyage of the Damned, I can also say it’s beautifully accurate.
Continue readingFiled under Alex Reads
Faeries and Footnotes: The Nerdy Fun of Scholarly Worldbuilding
I have an affection for stories that take a scholarly, dare I say nerdy, approach to their fantasy elements. I’ve recently devoured both books in Heather Fawcett’s Emily Wilde series, which follows a prickly academic on a field trip into Faerie, filling her journal with footnotes and references to in-universe research on magic along the way. My favourite character in Freya Marske’s The Last Binding trilogy is Edwin Courcey, who helps deliver much of the setting’s lore and magic system via his ceaseless curiosity and very academic and technical approach to how magic works. The scholarly book-within-a-book about portal worlds in The Ten Thousand Doors of January made me whoop for joy.
I can probably trace this back to reading Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell at a formative stage of my undergrad studies, at which point I reckon it did something to my brain chemistry. But what, exactly, is the appeal of a series that looks at its magic through the lens of research, and with all the scientific technicalities and academic in-fighting that come with that? It does something unique and very fun to the way these fictional worlds are built, and I want to play with that here.
Continue readingFiled under And I Think That's Neat, Archetypes and Genre
The Afictionado 