Five Years On; Anime Feminist Vs Japanese Pop Culture

Well, as you can see, not a great deal of writing is getting done for this blog. To be honest, I have put the blog on hold for a while for various reasons. I still want to complete my series on Japanese cinema from 1989 and my long-planned series on the anime films of Japanese cult Kofuku-no-Kagaku (Happy Science), plus a number of other articles I have done initial research and planning on. Instead, here is an article I wrote on and off for a couple of years, then abandoned. When Anime Feminist had its fifth anniversary in late 2021, I decided to rewrite it. This mostly took place from December. I wrote about half of it, then abandon it again, only to recommence and abandon it, on and off until I finally finished it in April, when I sat on it and initially decided not to publish it. After a lot of thought, I have decided to put it up on my blog. I know it’s rather long, but it sort of turned out that way as I complied my issues with the website.

To explain, I originally wrote a piece criticising the website Anime Feminist (Anifem) and its creator Amelia Cook back in 2016 some months after it launched. My main issue with the writing and the website itself was that it failed to understand Japanese pop culture as a whole and bizarrely viewed it through a weird myopic western feminist lens. I felt it was a really bad approach and applying western feminist dogma was very unhelpful in understanding something which had its own unique evolution, visual grammar, stylistic devices and even genres. Even worse was the deliberate misinterpretation of the material and to a large degree demonisation of specific sub-fandoms. I was also extremely cynical of Cook’s motivations for creating the website. I suspected that she saw Anita Sarkeesian’s Feminist Frequency website and wanted to make something similar in order to beef up her resume or to gain a higher profile.

Apparent Anifem critic as perceived by the site's staff

I doubted her sincerity of being an anime and manga fan and felt that the thing she proclaimed to love was just going to be collateral damage in order to reach whatever goal she was aiming for. But at the same time, I also felt that the vast majority of the criticism levelled at Anifem was poorly articulated and of very little value. Most of it was extremely anti-feminist, felt quite misogynistic and used the language of the far right, despite the protests of those who used such language, who mocked others when this was pointed out to them.

A lot of water has passed under the bridge since the website was launched. The site’s creator, Amelia Cook, deregistered the site as a business in the UK sometime in 2018 and left the website in 2019 after experiencing burnout. Just over a year ago, both her twitter accounts went silent. Caitlin Moore, Dee and Vrai Kaiser became the website’s managing editors in 2019. Another thing I’ve noticed was the initial support in the first two years of the website’s inception, mostly from many well-known people in the anime community, bafflingly seemed to practically evaporate soon after. Regardless of how well written or thought provoking an article might be, very little of the material published seems to make it out beyond their small core of supporters.

Anifem's dog whistling paying dividends 

And because of that, I have one question I am grappling with in writing this article; is there any point in criticising their work? Well, considering that some core staff on the site have branched out to writing for more mainstream websites such as Anime News Network and have hauled their ideological baggage with them, I would say yes. Because there has been a lack of decent criticism written about the website, I would say yes. Because criticising and judging pop culture based on an ideology, and limiting your own entertainment choices to those that only fit your own impossible to achieve personal values is quite unhealthy, I would say yes, there is a point in criticising their work.

To begin with, I have to admit there has been some excellent articles published since I last wrote about the site, notably to do with anime and manga for women in general, as well as genres within those two types of media that women would enjoy (with most of these written by outside contributors). However, much of the material published is mostly in the form of negative criticism of Japanese pop culture. And while that I agree that Japanese pop culture should not be free of scrutiny and criticism, when the vast majority of material published is negative or at least contains some negative elements within it, I sort of find myself questioning if the core staff of Anifem actually enjoy anime or other Japanese pop culture at all.

Winning hearts and minds yet again

Part of this constant negativity seems to centre on a focus on a small number of franchises and one genre; shonen manga, specifically those which appear in Shonen Jump. For example, Anifem commissioned at least six “Kill la Kill” full length articles, with search results yielding over 30 pages of results for the series. For a show that possibly sits within the seinen demographic and had finished broadcasting two years before Anifem's site went live, that’s a lot of mentions. Anifem’s bête noire, “Darling in the Franxx”, has seven full length articles and over 30 mentions on the website. This is despite writers like Caitlin Moore claiming they don’t think about or want to write about shows they despise. Clearly that’s untrue on both counts. And it’s the same story for other articles exploring issues tied to racism, sexism and other topics; they barely stray outside the realm of a few titles, again mostly those published in Shonen Jump, with “My Hero Academia” appearing quite frequently, shoehorned in as an example, regardless of the topic at hand.

I recall one reader complaining about the number of articles dedicated to “Darling in the Franxx” versus material their readers would actually like. Vrai Kaiser responded by saying they didn’t set out to do that and it was untrue. But the reader fired back by noting there were more search hits for “Darling in the Franxx” than there were for Yaoi. And this is a more than a fair argument. You have to question why so little time and energy is dedicated to exposing their readers to material they may like. Apart from one single article on shoujo manga from the 1970’s and a couple of articles on Yuri and Yaoi, few classics of the genre, mangaka or female anime directors are rarely mentioned, let alone given full length articles.

Murasaki Yamada

For example, inputting Riyoko Ikeda into the site’s search bar literally brings up ten hits. One of the most popular shoujo mangaka ever, ten mentions in total. Let that sink in. Other female mangaka, even popular ones like Rumiko Takahashi, feature less prominently at times. The same goes for female anime directors and other creators. While Sayo Yamamoto was interviewed and a couple of her titles given feature articles, few other directors or creative staff are even mentioned on the site, let alone given feature articles. For example, Naoko Yamada is really only mentioned once in a full-length article in the last five years. In fact, there are far more links to outside articles than there are ones written for Anifem. Even worse, instead of celebrating and highlighting the new wave of highly regarded and influential female directors and talent over the last decade and a half in the anime industry, they decided to dwell on the negative with an article entitled “Anime’s Glass Ceiling: what keeps women out of the director’s chair?”.

Even when the material they are critiquing offers up excellent avenues to explore the talented women in the industry and the history of women in fandom, they seem to be either totally ignorant of it or deliberately avoiding highlighting them. For example, a podcast episode of theirs explores the movie “Miss Hokusai (Sarusuberi)”, but bafflingly only mentions the author of the original manga, female mangaka Hinako Sugiura, in passing. They either seem ignorant or utterly uninterested in Sugiura’s history, including the fact she was initially an assistant to prominent feminist mangaka Murasaki Yamada. Considering that the website is called “Anime Feminist”, I found this omission rather curious. Reviews of currently airing anime include most shows streaming on Crunchyroll and other streaming services, including shows their readers would clearly not be interested in. Meanwhile shows which did not fit their myopic review criteria, like “Little Witch Academia”, were ignored because Netflix wasn’t streaming it weekly like most simulcasts. This is despite the fact it clearly was in line with what their viewers enjoyed. “Little Witch Academia” was eventually the subject of their podcast, but that is literally the only time the series has been mentioned.

Kyoto Animation main studio

It’s the same with events in the media. When the Kyoto Animation arson attack occurred three years ago, there was a massive outpouring of sadness and empathy from anime fandom. However, none of the key staff tweeted or even retweeted anything at all about the incident for days afterward. Instead, all we got was a quickly written post three days later which was titled “What does KyoAni mean to you?”, which literally comprised of one sentence about the incident, and posed questions to the readers like what their favourite anime from the studio was. No feature articles about the studio were forthcoming. This was quite odd as Kyoto Animation is extremely female positive in its employment practices such as hiring more women than most studios, promoting them to higher roles such as director, have far better working conditions than the industry standard such as salaried roles, restrictions on overtime and a generous maternity leave policy.

I also question their comprehension of complex issues and wonder if they only understand them beyond having a superficial knowledge of them. For example, when they decided not to review “The Rising of the Shield Hero” as they felt the show had themes of rape and slavery apologism, they instead they posted a list of Non-Government Organisations (NGOs) that dealt with stamping out modern-day slavery and gave assistance to survivors of rape and abuse. That’s all fine and dandy, but they managed to fuck it up big time by initially including the Polaris Project, an anti-sex worker, religious right NGO that most certainly highly inflates their statistics in terms of human trafficking. Readers were rightly outraged by this, and although Anifem apologised and took down the link to the NGO, they still kept the link to the National Human Trafficking Hotline, which is run entirely by the Polaris Project. How they didn’t know that is beyond my comprehension. Polaris’ logo is displayed prominently at the bottom of the website.

After the Rain

But one of the major issues I have with the website is that many articles blatantly ignore large sections of storylines, plots or characters in order for the author to force fit a narrative, their own biases or ideology. For instance, an article comparing the age gap romances in “Ristorante Paradiso” and “After the Rain” is utterly dishonest about the latter’s content. The show is essentially a very bittersweet tale of two people regaining their dreams and purpose back. More importantly the romance is very one sided; the middle-aged male restaurant manager, Kondo, from the get go rejects Akira’s (the highschooler who works as waitstaff) advances and does not pursue a relationship with her at all. However, you would not assume that from the article. It blatantly misrepresents both lead characters feelings, their work relationship and doesn't seem to understand how an employee would greet their boss in a Japanese setting.

Now I'm all for discourse on titles which may have the potential to be controversial, like “After the Rain”. But the article takes key scenes out of context and deliberately misrepresented what happens. A laundry list of scenes the author had issue with, which includes links to screenshots, are far, far tamer or totally mismatched to their rather salacious descriptions. Many were taken completely out of context. It is quite apparent that the show is heavily influenced by shoujo manga, even though the original work was published in a seinen magazine. Aping this style doesn't necessarily set out to sexualise Akira, but this is all the author sees; a woman in a seinen manga is only there for sexual gratification of the male audience. The author can't empathise with the audience or see them as anything but predators or potential sexual abusers. It's quite odd but also rather telling.

Bubblegum Crisis

Other articles are even more blatant in their exclusion of plot lines to force fit the narrative the author is trying to push. A piece on the differences between the original OVA and the latter TV series of “Bubblegum Crisis” has a narrative being pushed that the older OVA series presented the main cast as sexual objects and not as fleshed out characters. The only evidence presented for this is two quick cuts of animation in the opening sequence where Priss is changing into her stage outfit in the first OVA episode. For anyone who has seen the original OVA series, it’s quite a curious claim to make. It’s as if the author has conveniently forgotten what Priss does in the rest of the episode. The author also makes the absurd claim that she does not understand what the Knight Sabers’ motivations were in the OVA series and stunningly suggests that maybe they were only interested in money. To anyone who has actually watched the OVA series and has a modicum of comprehension skills, this is a bizarre takeaway. So, in the world of “Bubblegum Crisis”, the evil multinational corporation Genom and their Boomers weren't much of an issue then?

Some articles have premises so absurd you’d think they were satire. Take for example “Love & Lies: Case Closed and the normalization of gaslighting in fiction”, in which the author, with a straight face, suggests that “Detective Conan’s” titular character, Conan Edogawa, is gaslighting Ran Mori because he has to keep tricking her into thinking her boyfriend, Shinichi Kudo, is still away overseas when in fact Conan is Kudo and has been shrunk to the size of a small boy by an experimental drug. See, I told you the premise of the article was absurd. Now it’s hard not to admit some of the writing and situations in “Detective Conan” are silly beyond belief, but one can only assume the author is completely unfamiliar with how fiction is constructed and presented to an audience, especially in long running franchises like this one where the “reset button” technique is used at the end of each episode in order maintain the status quo of the setting and characters.

Detective Conan

The claim of gaslighting implies that Shinichi Kudo/Conan Edogawa is an abuser in his relationship with Ran Mori, which is absurd. It’s patently obvious that is not what Shinichi/Conan is trying to do. To seriously try to link the concept of gaslighting to a franchise running for over a quarter of century about a teenager stuck in the body of child who solves crime while riding a turbo powered skateboard just boggles the mind. Will there be another article written about the series concerning Conan’s highly dangerous practice of continually knocking Detective Kogoro Mori unconscious and impersonating his voice to announce he has solved a case? Surely this would cause Kogoro long term cognitive issues? But seriously, an absurd article like this really trivialises serious issues in regards to domestic abuse, like gaslighting and other forms of abuse in relationships.

Another issue I have with the writing is constant outdated stereotypes, myths and straight up othering of sub-fandoms. In the past Cook and the website have not been not been too complementary to fandoms centring around moe and idol fans and have suggested that sexist media creates “harassers”, which has no scientific basis in reality. In a response to what can only be described as an actual harasser on twitter, Anifem’s account stated “We never made any statements about the people watching the show. The stories someone enjoys are not indicative of their personal moral character and we've never stated otherwise. We analyze and critique fiction, not the fans of that fiction”. This statement is patently and demonstrably false.

Why was this particular screenshot of a Momoiro Clover Z
concert used to illustrate the idol culture article I wonder?

For example, hilariously in Vrai Kaiser’s debut episode review of “AMAIM Warrior at the Borderline”, she states “My goal is absolutely not to tell anyone not to watch AMAIM, or that they’re a bad person if they like the well-executed cool robot fights”, immediately after describing fans who liked “Darling in the Franxx” as “chuds” (“Franxx” truly is their bête noire, isn’t it?). Another earlier piece on idol fandom, “A Wedding Gown for “Their” Idol: Love Live, male audiences, and idol culture” trots out the usual clichés about idol fandom and men, dredging up the same couple of negative scandals the usual crowd bring up when criticising the industry. With a predictably you could set your watch by, the story of former AKB48 member Minami Minegishi shaving head bald for forgiveness after the public found out she had a boyfriend, was wheeled out yet again for the umpteenth time.

Reading the article, you get the impression that women do not exist in idol fandom, that the insanely popular boy bands on Johnny & Associates’ roster don’t exist, acts like Ladybeard, anti-idol groups BiS/BiSH apparently don’t exist, and the explosion of alternative idols in the last decade apparently was a figment of people’s imaginations. You would also believe that female “Love Live!” fans were non-existent too. Yet again, we see the exclusion of inconvenient truths and realities in order to force fit the narrative the author is trying to push. Even if they don’t explicitly criticise fans of certain anime or genres, they do enough dog whistling to appeal to the prejudices of their readers. And the dogs bark back. Sure, a second excellent, far more balanced article on female participation idol fandom was published several months down the track, however it was too little, too late in my opinion.

Otaku no Video

I really don't see how articles like this are helpful to fandom at all. Why stick up a strawman to bash away at? Why continue to perpetuate easily disprovable stereotypes and myths about certain fandoms and sub-fandoms? Why ignore how fandom actually interacts with the material they consume? Why claim on numerous occasions that any depictions of military action in anime are propaganda, not the fact that otaku just love military hardware? Of course, the “why” is to perpetuate an “us and them” mentality. Their thinking can be summed up as; those who watch and read material we deem repugnant (and have a very limited knowledge or understanding of) are “the enemy” and therefore we prejudge them as not sharing our beliefs or values (without having real evidence of course). Imagine having such a blinkered, Manichean view of the world and “othering” fandoms in this way.

I could go on and on, bringing up dozens more examples where you could only conclude authors deliberately misinterpreted storylines to fit narratives they were trying to push, ignored positive elements in manga and anime to dwell in mindless negativity, and perpetuating false and negative stereotypes of fandoms they took issue with. Instead, I want to bring up the elephant in the room; where does the website and the main staff sit in terms of their feminism? I think a lot of their views do sit comfortably in a moderate, mainstream type of feminism. However, it’s patiently clear that when dealing with themes of expressions of sexuality, it is really hard not to label a lot of the published views as sex-negative with some views heading into radical feminist territory.

In a winter 2018 summary of anime series for that season, Vrai Kaiser bizarrely described the pinkish knees on the female characters in “Citrus” as “blowjob knees”. In another recent seasonal review, Vrai again implied another set of female characters which also had the same feature and again that apparently meant they were also fellatio aficionados. I’m really not sure if Vrai has some issue with fellatio, but I do find it rather telling that she will on occasion bring this up in relation to female characters. Recently a reader rightly criticised Vrai’s specific, odd, prejudicial language in terms of female anime characters that have pinkish knees. With this complaint being from one of the “core demographic” and therefore they could not dismiss it as an “attack” as they normally do, they apologised, removed the offending language from the review and said it was a joke. It was patiently obvious it was not.

Anifem’s moralism around sexual expression and fantasy does not stop with female characters. It applies to fandom and more broadly, women. Caitlin Moore’s article on the manga “Horimiya”, BDSM and potential abuse in relationships starts out with her berating her own mother for defending “50 Shades of Grey”. Moore then trots out the old, thoroughly debunked Media Effects model, by suggesting that young people develop their ideas about relationships from fictional media, not from their close family and the communities they live in (yes, even in ones where sex education is non-existent). Putting that aside, it does feel odd to dump sex and relationship education on to fiction and criticise it for doing “a bad job” of it, when in reality the issue is clearly poor and/or inadequate or even non-existent sex education polices of governments and schools.

At any rate, it all reeks of a Mary Whitehouse mindset where fiction must change or fit their narrow, myopic morals and ethics in order to pass muster in their eyes. And it does feel similar to the techniques and language Christian fundamentalists like Whitehouse used (and continue to use), especially when shonen manga and anime titles are being criticised. Wrapping it up in progressive language does not make it less authoritarian than when Whitehouse or her contemporaries did it.

When I was involved in campaigns to stop the Australian internet being filtered more than 15 years ago, I would often come across far right Christian groups masquerading as feminist groups. One of their side issues was that of female pop singers sexualising themselves. These groups would often complain about the overt sexuality of Lady Gaga, Rihanna et al. The main argument was that the complainers could not find any female singer who wasn't “sexualised”. But then I would counter with a list of female singers who weren't; Polly Harvey, Florence Welch, Missy Higgins, Sarah Blasko, Kim Deal etc. And then they'd go silent. As you can see, the issue wasn’t that they wanted artists who weren’t “sexualised”, they wanted Lady Gaga and Rihanna not to be sexual. And there was their agenda laid bare; they did not really care about finding media or singers that were to their liking. They wanted to change stuff they didn't like. And I highly suspect this is mindset of Anifem as well.

Naoko Yamada

One of the issues with Anifem constantly highlighting negative aspects of Japanese pop culture, without reasonably highlighting the positive aspects of it, is they give the impression to those unfamiliar with it that as whole it is hostile to women and has little to offer them. This is of course untrue. I have already highlighted the fact that instead of writing an article on the amount of fantastic female directors making waves in the industry in the last decade or so, they went the negative route with an article about what keeps them out of directing positions. I’m not denying that the industry isn’t sexist or discriminatory (it most certainly is), but it’s unfair to ignore female talent in the industry and only tell one side of the story, especially when your website is about women and anime.

And if they are interested in women and anime as they claim, why are there no articles on women in fandom? Why is there nothing about the large female fandoms for franchises such as the original “Gundam” TV series and “Saint Seiya” for example? Why is there nothing about how female artists totally dominate Comic Market (Comiket) every year and have done so since its inception in 1975? Of course, anytime anyone asks any of the key staff why there isn't any articles like these, the answer is always the same; send in a pitch. Meaning, we the readers have to do the work for them. Seeing as they are always crying a poor mouth and asking for donations to fund their website and writers, why can’t they instead put some of that money towards searching out and commissioning people to do research and write articles about women and anime?

Large group of female fans trading badges in the
rain at Naka-Ikebukuro Park, photographed by myself,
circa Autumn 2013

For example; why not fund articles for subjects like trailblazing female mangaka and their titles? Or the history of early female centric fandoms in Japan? What about crushing stereotypes about doujinshi and talk about how women dominate that industry, especially when it comes to Comiket? How about an article on Otome Road, the female centric anime shopping district in Ikebukuro? Or perhaps, shock horror, anime and manga titles that their audience have never heard of before and might actually like? Who cares if this stuff isn’t commercially available in English? People are not going to know about it if someone doesn’t highlight it.

But of course, they aren’t doing any of this stuff. In fact, no one really is, and it can be extremely difficult to find articles or information about any of these things, especially in English. But that’s my point; why on earth would you create a website dedicated to women and anime (even if it has an ideological bent) and not really explore the topic? How is reviewing seasonal anime like the latest titty-filled fanservice show that your readers would not watch in a million years helpful to anyone at all? Unless your point is to feel morally superior because you’re so sophisticated that’d you’d never watch that “trash”? They also seem to have the condescending attitude that anime fans are uncritical of what they watch and consume. If don't agree that whatever this new season's “controversial” show is awful (usually some trashy exploitation or genre anime), then you're the problem, not them.

Top notch writing

And that’s the attitude that comes across. It's all very much "this is my experience, my unwavering, set-in stone philosophy on this subject, therefore every woman feels this way", which is utter bullshit. Oh, but don’t you dare criticise them. They really don't take any criticism well, regardless of how mild it is. All valid criticism is ignored, dismissed and placed the same pile as the right wing, anti-feminist abusive stuff. That is unless you fit certain criteria (I’ll leave you to guess what that is). Then they are suddenly very empathetic to your complaints.

I honestly could not imagine viewing all the media you consumed through the myopic lens of a rigid ideology. Imagine how tiring and tedious that would be. You can enjoy "problematic" material and still be a well-rounded, socially progressive person. It's not that hard. Humans are more than their personal beliefs, ethics and morals, and to a large degree people’s media choices do not have to comply 100% to their own personal beliefs, ethics and morals. For example, someone may enjoy the crime thrillers of Quentin Tarantino does not mean they subscribe to the ideals of his film’s protagonists. It would utterly absurd to suggest that fans of the TV show “Dexter” would empathise with and support serial killers. However, this is thought process seems to permeate through many of their articles and reviews throughout the website.

Just adding to the ridiculous existing moral panic about
anime and manga...

This is what drives me so batty about them. You have to ask why this sort of stuff is helpful to fandom as whole. Why review stuff that your core audience would just refuse to watch? Why even apply an ideology to any kind of entertainment in the first place? They and their supporters/readers also have no idea how fandom (especially Japanese fandom) interacts with media or why fandom even watch certain types of shows in the first place. Having suffered through various moral panics centred around music, horror films, pornography et al in the 1980’s and 1990’s, I thought we were long past this, but no. This lot pile on their blinkered, westernised interpretations on very Japanese pop culture. Mischaracterising this stuff isn’t useful in understanding it nor helpful to anyone trying to navigate the world of Japanese pop culture.

Five years of Anifem has brought us very little valid criticism. Mostly it's been a lot of hand wringing, tut-tutting, bolting on tired ideologies to the usual franchises where there are none, wretched, outdated views of what male fandom supposedly is and lots of gnashing of teeth. I really don’t understand the purpose of the site at times or understand why or how the writers became fans of anime and other Japanese pop culture. If you have so many issues with it and can’t reconcile your own personal ideology with it, why on earth are you a fan?