February 2023 Patron Newsletter and Staff Recommendations

Winter is long, but it's got a few nice surprises up its sleeve!

We've got one exciting piece of news this month: longtime contributor Toni Sun Prickett has officially become part of the AniFem staff. Please give them a warm hello! We're so excited to welcome their thoughts and contributions. 

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February Recommendations

Is Love the Answer?

Format: Manga (one volume, complete)

Picked by: Dee (cosigned by Alex and Cy)

What’s it about? It seems like everyone in high school is obsessed with romance and sex—except Chika, who feels like an alien for not wanting the same relationships her peers want. When she gets to college, a chance meeting with a respected professor leads her down a research rabbit hole to the words "asexual" and "aromantic." As Chika learns about the queer spectrum and makes friends with people both allo and ace, she grapples with defining her identity, her relationships, and her place in the world.

Content warning: Depictions of sexual assault, queerphobia, and sexism (restrained); discussions of trauma, sex, and sexuality.

Why we like it: Is Love the Answer? is a thoughtful, sincere exploration of the many varieties of sexual and romantic attraction and how people don't always fit into neat, easily defined boxes. While it begins a bit "Queer Studies 101," it gradually builds into more complex ruminations on language, labels, and identity, as Chika and her peers struggle to understand themselves and find the words to explain that "self" to others. The manga features both gay and genderqueer characters, but it's primarily focused on the ace/aro spectrum, depicting a multitude of identities and experiences that overlap and diverge in unique ways, providing a variety of representation for an often-ignored portion of the queer community.

There's a lot of nuanced conversations happening in this one-shot, but it also never loses sight of its characters as human beings fumbling through young adulthood. They're not reduced to labels or flat representations of this or that sexuality or gender, but are messy people navigating a society that is casually hostile and dismissive to anyone who doesn't fit a specific type of cisheterosexual behavior. That focus on imperfect humanity helps their stories succeed emotionally as well as intellectually.

Is Love the Answer? is not always an easy read, as it does deal with restrained depictions of assault, trauma, and varying degrees of sexism, toxic masculinity, and queerphobia (both social and internalized). Even so, it ends on an emphatically hopeful note for both Chika and the queer community she's built around herself. This is a wholehearted recommendation for the entire AniFem community, but especially for fans of Our Dreams at Dusk.

Kyousougiga

Format: Anime

Picked by: Caitlin

What’s it about? The priest Myoue has a curious power: anything he draws comes to life. The people of Kyoto find his power off-putting, but he doesn’t mind too much, since he’s naturally inclined to solitude. But then, his drawing of a rabbit falls in love with him and, with her borrowing the body of a goddess, the two marry and create their own little family. When the townsfolk grow too suspicious, they escape into Myoue’s painting and create a new life for themselves in Looking Glass Kyoto. But life in a drawing doesn’t quite work in the same way as life on Earth, does it?

Content warnings: Death, destruction, grief, loss, parental abandonment

Why we like it: Kyousougiga is one of the more difficult anime I’ve seen and yes, that includes the collected works of Ikuhara Kunihiko. The entire series is awash with Shinto and Buddhist imagery and ideas, presented with director Matsumoto Rie’s frenetic, information-dense visual style. It’s one of those series where I’ve just accepted that I’m probably never going to have a deep understanding of its visual language and subtexts, but that’s fine because I understand enough to follow the plot (or at least, I did the second time around) and I’m having a great time anyway.

It helps that at the core of Kyousougiga is a rather straightforward story of family, loss, and grief that can be understood and appreciated without fighting to decode all the visual symbolism. It operates on fairy tale logic, where if something doesn’t quite seem to make sense, one can still intuitively find the meaning within its emotional context if they allow themself to simply experience it. And what an experience it is! The whole series sparkles with gorgeous imagery that speaks to the emotional state of the characters, all of whom are memorable and powerful within their roles in the story. Koto moves through it with all the grace of a jackhammer and the destructive force of her very literal hammer. Well, it’s literal, but also a metaphor, because that’s just how Kyousougiga rolls.