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Not Just Roses and Sparkles: Unpacking assumptions about shoujo through Hagio Moto's work

Content warning: mentions of sexual assault and childhood sexual assault in the material of some comics discussed

Minor spoilers for The Poe Clan, Marginal, A Cruel God Reigns, and The Heart of Thomas

Like a lot of people, before I ever read a shoujo manga, I used to think of shoujo as “romance comics.” For me, the word would evoke a mental image of an unserious, weepy soap opera about girls with curly hair and very shiny eyes, with a lot of sparkles and stylized roses around the panel borders. In other words, not for me—a butch, working through a lot of internalized misogyny about not liking “fluffy romance stories for girls.” I assumed that all shoujo manga was melodramatic and over the top, and that I, a “serious comics reader,” wouldn’t enjoy it very much. 

Several years ago, though, I stumbled into reading some of the work of the Year 24 group—a group of female artists who were incredibly influential on the evolution of shoujo manga in the 1970s—and fell in love, not just with their series but with shoujo manga itself. I discovered that shoujo was so much more than I had first assumed: not a genre, but a demographic category (manga aimed primarily at a young, female audience) and a style—and a set of tools and conventions for telling stories. Shoujo manga is all about focusing on melodramatic emotion, and using expressionistic linework to depict a character’s internal emotions as images on the page, and what I thought of as just that “sparkles and roses” style was used even from the demographic’s earliest days to tell stories to all kinds of emotional effects. Manga artist Hagio Moto’s work in particular opened my eyes to how versatile the iconic shoujo style can be as a storytelling tool—not just for romance, but for horror, mystery, and mind-expanding science fiction. Her classic work is emblematic of the exciting range of stories under the shoujo umbrella, and how the visual and narrative hallmarks of shoujo itself can be applied to great effect in many different genres. And if you’re like me, and think you won’t like shoujo manga because you’re not a “romance person,” I think checking out her work might be worth a try.

Read it at Anime Feminist!

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A Family, and A Balanced Diet

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Boys Run the Riot, Visual Kei, and Gender Euphoria Through Fashion

Content Warning: Discussion of transphobia, dysphoria

Identity exists in a large, tangled mess of intersections that culminates into lived experience. Gender identity, self expression, and ethnicity are so intertwined that it would be hard to discuss one without discussing the others. As a Japanese trans man, all of these things have come into play in relation to my self-expression and identity. One of the things I found solace and euphoria in, as a teenager, was clothing. Clothing allowed me to express and present my identity as I knew myself, and was an early gateway to outer expression as a trans man.

Self-expression through clothing has always been a part of the LGBTQ+ community. The first image that may come to mind is the drag scene in particular, where Drag Queens and Drag Kings come together to express themselves in ways that are otherwise non-conforming to society’s standards. “Drag” or, specifically, crossdressing has existed in Japan since the 1800’s, with kabuki theater being a prominent example. In the 20th century the Takarazuka Revue was formed, which was an all-female theater group created in opposition to kabuki theater.

Read it at Anime Feminist!

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Nagata Kabi and the Mundane Pain of Sickness; or, That Time My Body Broke and I Had To Figure Out How to Keep Going

Content Warnings: Discussion of disordered eating and trauma

For many queer, marginalized manga readers, the name Nagata Kabi rings an immediate bell. Whether it’s her first title, My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness, her Solo Exchange Diary duology, her musings on alcoholism and marriage in separate, consecutive entries, or most recently, My Pancreas Broke, but My Life Got Better, Nagata’s autobiographical works capture contemporary life with an unflinching honesty that has resonated across her audience. This is certainly true for myself and that last title. 

My Pancreas Broke, but My Life Got Better is a bit of a time capsule, capturing how it felt to be sick in Japan’s emergent COVID-19 pandemic. It’s a pandemic that I had a unique perspective of as I was living in Fukushima when, in March 2020, the country shut down. I would go on to live within that pandemic until I immigrated back to the United States on August 11, 2020, where I would be faced with the jarring dissonance between Japan’s health care system and America’s tendency towards capitalistic cruelty.

While a distinctly different view on the pandemic, Nagata Kabi’s sixth autobiographical entry resonates with my own story as it captures the confusion and mundane chaos of suddenly living in a society that seems to be falling apart at the seams. Simultaneously, it details what happens when your body breaks while the world is just… kind of falling apart. It’s a story—a true narrative—about what happens when your life falls apart and you can no longer escape 

That last bit is what this article is about: falling apart.

Read it at Anime Feminist!

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I'm very tired of this "queer college students should stop supporting Palestine, they'd kill you there!" I watched a hijabi ask a trans man, "but what name do you want to go by?" A butch giving a woman their hoodie so that she could keep her hair covered after the cops took her scarf. Muslim girls making sure the lesbian couple got through the system together. Religious men making sure green haired protestors got out safe. A Palestinian girl with an ex-southern baptist fiance, who definitely isn't a practicing Muslim, whose parents were raising hell for her. I don't want to hear it. Solidarity forever, free Palestine.

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Male tits and girl dicks are NORMAL they are 100% normal to me and not just in a sex way but also like, if you are ftm and wanna chill with your boobs out no bra/binder or are mtf and wanna chill in boxers or underwear with a bulge why the hell not? It’s just body parts ya know.

Why does it have to be inherently sexualized by people? If you DO find it sexy that’s ok but I’m referring to transphobes who treat trans peoples bodies as some kind of… “scary”thing

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the QUEEN

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The situation of the Congo Genocide is complicated because we are all implicated in it. We can’t ascribe it to a foreign policy state interest as we can regarding Palestine. It is something we, as consumers, all have a hand in and given the ubiquity of the resources involved, a lot of us are caught off of guard by this premonition of the type of wars to come. This is that nasty intersection of neo-colonialism and hyper capitalism that pits the Global South against the Global North. It’s a war of sustaining a way of life means imposing slavery and genocide on others. This is an instance of global capitalism and hyper consumption as a lifestyle and convenience is being pitted against the humanity of those we deem expendable.

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swans

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mereoleona from black clover

Feral and hot, that's how we like em on this blog

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im noticing that for a lot of americans “free palestine” has been an ideological motto and symbol rather than them actually believing in their heart that freedom is attainable and necessary

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Ged, a wizard of Earthsea.

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i know my ass is up too late because i’m losing my fucking mind over accidentally typing george of the gungle

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He stick he leggy out real far

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🖤💗

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"Isami...I love you!"

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ANYWAY childhood trauma is so fucking crazy wdym i have to learn to love myself the way my friends love me wdym my parents treated me unfairly and taught me awful untrue things wdym im a person worthy of the same grace and patience as any other person what is HAPPENING over here