“I have two posts about Eizouken coming up, on two different sites!” I said to myself earlier this month. “Wouldn’t it be funny if they came out back to back?”
Lo and behold…
On the blog:
Keep Your Hands off Eizouken: A Passion Project about Passion Projects – in which I get a bit sappy about the love with which this anime-about-anime celebrates creativity and collaboration.
Queer YA Mini-Reviews: Soccer, Steampunk, and Survival Horror – in which the mini-reviews kick off for 2020, with Highway Bodies, Running with Lions, and Tarnished Are the Stars.
On Anime Feminist
The Gloriously Goofy, Geeky Girls of Keep Your Hands Off Eizkouken! – “this show is good – feminist analysis edition”. In which I dig into exactly what’s so delightful (and a bit subversive) about the antics and aesthetics of the main characters, and how they’re allowed to be cartoony, zany, and passionate.
Enter the Web Zone
Drew Gooden (yeah, the guy of “road work ahead? Uh, I sure hope it does!” fame – he’s been pretty consistently funny since then, too!) talks the benefits of letting a beloved show end, rather than stretching it out until it’s no longer recognisable as the show you thought you wanted to watch forever.
The story of Jo March and her sisters is one of many classics that we keep returning to, and this video looks at the major film adaptations to see what new spins we’ve put on the narrative in each era.
Reclaiming the Witch Through Magical Girls– the cute witch is almost a ubiquitous character/trope/aesthetic, but this wasn’t always the case, and its resurgence and reframing across media history is something to talk about.
Season of the Witch: The Rise of Queer Magic in YA SFF – continuing with our (unexpected, but I’ll roll with it) theme of modern witchy media, this piece looks at the recurring theme of magical queer characters in YA… and how exciting it is that there’s now so much queer YA that we can identify trends within it!
The New Wave of Fantasy: How Millennial Authors are Changing the Genre – interviews with four young fantasy authors (Tori Adeyemi, Ryan La Sala, Adalyn Grace, and Hafsah Faizal) currently making a splash by bringing their own diverse spin to it.
Yuri is For Everyone: An Analysis of Yuri Demographics and Readership – yuri is just made by straight dudes for straight dudes, right? Not right! The Holy Mother of Yuri herself goes through the history of the genre and its authors and publication spaces, mapping its development and proving that yuri really is for everyone.
Tea Leaves and Dog Ears’ A Discovery of Witches recaps – the blogger who so entertained me with their “I read this goofy shit so you don’t have to” recaps and reviews of the Grey novels has returned with some witchy, vampire-y fiction, and I’m looking forward to following along.
Be Gay Do Crimes: The Mystery Story Model of Implicit Queer Storytelling – AniGay returns to dig into the history and process of “hunting for clues”, Poirot style, as a means of finding queer stories where they might not be overtly visible.
How Stars Align Offers a Fresh Narrative Model for LGBTQ+ Characters – an analysis of Yuu’s arc and how it covers their identity with nuance, and moves beyond the traditional focus on bullying, homophibia, and struggle, in favour of a queer narrative that’s allowed to simply exist nested in a greater story.
As a bonus: I’ve recently discovered the soundtrack to SIX, a pop musical about the wives of Henry VIII, and I can’t stop listening to it. Maybe it’s not the most in-depth or accurate thing ever, but goddamn does it have some bops in it (and some great puns – I can’t decide on my favourite, but “live in consort” and “ladies, let’s get in reformation” are solid contenders):
And that’s all for now – take care everyone!
The Afictionado 
There are some really good articles I need to read on here! I watched the Little Women video after watching the film and I liked it!
That article on yuri was very interesting. Thank you for sharing. 🙂
Also I will now subscribe for those Discovery of Witches posts because that sounds delightful!
Thanks for reading as always! 😀
I found the Little Women vid super interesting because I’m really only familiar with the most recent movie (which I loved) so it was cool to see how the story has evolved with each new retelling to get to that point.
The Discovery of Witches recaps are giving me the giggles… glad I can bring someone else in on them!
I have NEVER heard of Six but holy hot damn, after listening to it… This is going to be my jam for the entirety of this month of March. Just “Ex-Wives” by itself has me clamoring for the entire musical. Like, I need this in my life.
Ex-Wives is SUCH a banger of an opening act, I love it. You can listen to the whole soundtrack here, plus it’s on Spotify etc… which means I can play it in my car, and pull into work singing along to ‘Don’t Lose Your Head’ like an idiot 😀 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCOOUY9uAnn82EnBxCXpN6uF9pYVTvBqQ
My entire night last night was drinks and drunken singing to a musical I only just found on repeat. XD It was fantastic.