Romance in Anime

Last year, the internet introduced me to White Day. What we do for Valentine’s Day in the US is split into two holidays in Japan; whereas Valentine’s Day is the day where women express affection for men in the form of chocolate, White Day (celebrated March 14th ) is the day where the men reciprocate, also in the form of chocolate, but the white variety, hence the holiday’s name.

So in celebration of White Day, I have compiled a list of anime moments where ladies get their candy. So to speak.

In the interest of balance, my co-conspirator Steven Hubbard, who wrote the Valentine’s counterpart to this article, has a contribution to this discussion, so he’ll weigh in at the tail end of this.

I Love You Warts and All—Durarara

Shinra_and_celty

One of Durarara’s strengths is its incredible dialogue. All of the characters are downright philosophers, with unique and carefully thought out ways of seeing the world. When a Durarara character busts out with a monologue, you know it’s going to shake your shit, and Shinra’s bizarrely beautiful love confession to Celty is no exception. Celty is a Dullahan, a type of fairy whose head is not attached to its body. Rather the Dullahans carry their heads and ride through the night on black steeds (think the Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow). Celty is immortal, but lost her head long ago, a fact that gives her great anxiety. She discovers that Shinra, a human doctor and her best friend of many years, has hidden information from her that may have helped her find her head, and she is furious. Shinra explains, then, that he does not want her to find her head. He says that he is in love with her, and

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A Sweet Maid is Sweeter with a Deadly Weapon

In the last year, I’ve seen three new anime that have gotten me all lit up, and one of those is Re:Zero. It got plenty of other people lit up too, and I’ve seen about a million cosplays of Rem, the character lauded as the show’s “best girl.” BUT what I have not seen a lot of is Rem with her flail. Because a sweet maid is sweeter with a deadly weapon, I thought I’d post a tutorial for Rem’s flail. It’s my first tutorial so bear with me.

You’ll need:

  • a styrofoam ball and five styrofoam cones from the craft store
  • a piece of plastic chain (the length is up to you–I got mine off Amazon. Pictures below!)
  • a 3/4 in dowel
  • black and rose gold acrylic paint
  • black spray paint
  • a screw eye
  • a drill (though you could probably fight through using a hammer and nail instead)
  • a handsaw
  • hot glue and glue gun
  • mod podge and (if you want) clear plasti-dip

STEP 1: So you have your styrofoam ball right? Mark it so that on one side you have a spot for the chain to attach, and directly on the other side mark the “top” spike. Or be like me and just make a bunch of random ass circles without planning at all.

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Owari, Yuri, and The Making of History: Shonen’s Emerging Gay Canon

As much as I love anime, especially shonen, there are things about it that eat at me sometimes, and one of those things is the way that it depicts gay men. I’m neither an expert nor a critic, but rather a devout (read, “obsessed”) fan who finds herself really annoyed by this aspect of the thing I love. Annoyed enough to write.

freed-and-laxus
Poor Freed.

So usually, homosexual men and homosexual acts in shonen are jokes, e.g., Naruto and Sasuke’s unintentional kiss in Naruto, Freed’s unrequited crush on Laxus in Fairy Tail, etc. (By the way, I’m focusing on the guys here, by the way, because while there’s plenty to discuss regarding lesbian and queer relationships in anime, I need the space of a whole ‘nother essay if I’m going to pop those topics open). Anime is bawdy in general, so it’s not like heterosexual sex isn’t also a subject to ridicule, but those jokes are balanced out by straight couples whose romance is meant to be taken seriously. In the cases where they aren’t meant to be laughed at, gay relationships come off as sort of empty and lascivious, as pandering to female fans. In these scenarios, the characters aren’t necessarily homosexual, either, but rather they happen to be hanging out in these ambiguously homoerotic situations (Free! and Haikyu are the most cited example of this, though I’ve seen instances of this in many other shows). And that’s cool. I’m comfortable with ambiguity. But after a while, I start to think, are there any male shonen characters that are just into characters of the same sex? And could they be more than comic relief?

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Eight Storytelling Maneuvers that Make Naruto Amazing

I have a thing with Naruto. Perhaps you’ve noticed, considering I’m always writing about it, or talking about it, or cosplaying its characters, or rolling around in piles of its fanart. I started watching the show when my son was ten months old, and so part of my love of Naruto probably stems from the fact that I watched it at this tender point in my life, when I was very tired, and very lonely, and raising a baby. I can get into all that later, but the other reason for my thing with Naruto is that I’m completely preoccupied with the art of storytelling, and Naruto is a GREAT fucking story. It’s a GREAT fucking story, and that’s not an accident…it’s the fruit of Masashi Kishimoto’s life’s labor, his incredible imagination, his understanding of his craft as well as his understanding of human nature. Whenever I read an interview with the guy, he seems to mostly giggle and act overwhelmed by the response to his creation—I mean, who wouldn’t be overwhelmed in the face of that kind of worshipful, massive, international audience? But trust me, Kishimoto, giggly or not, overwhelmed or not, is a storytelling genius. So without further ado, here are eight of Kishimoto’s wise moves as a storyteller.

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Dear Scientists: Have you even watched Full Metal Alchemist?

…bioethicists and other scientists have expressed their concern that creating interspecies embryos could blur the ethical line between what is human and what is not…

I don’t really have a particular stance on this issue, and I certainly don’t want to make it seem as though real-world biochemistry and evil cartoon alchemy were the same thing, but whenever I hear the word “chimera,” this is the image that jumps readily to mind, and boy, is it ever unsettling.

chimera

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But seriously, Kushina is a bad bitch

I cosplayed Kushina Uzumaki (Naruto’s mother) this past weekend. I don’t get a lot of character recognition when I do this cosplay, because I’m not wearing the clothes that Kushina is depicted in for most of the show, a white blouse and a green jumper. But that’s okay. Because I need to play this mama like the badass that she is—and if that’s expressed in terms of clothing, then you gotta lose the jumper.

I wear Kushina in the clothing she wears as jounin, a member of the Leaf Village ninja ranks. That is, I wear her dressed as a soldier, which is what she was before she got pregnant. We all know that when it comes to feminism, Naruto is not especially progressive, and is sometimes downright infuriating. The cool thing about cosplay, and about fan art in general, is that we can sort of re-frame these female characters and cast light on their more powerful, independent aspects. And if we’re talking about power, Kushina has A LOT of it. Unlike Naruto, Kushina is able to

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Black Butler Makes You Complicit in Some Really Messed Up Shit

[A little note here: at the time I wrote this blog, I’d only watched the first season of Black Butler. I’ve since seen all the rest of the existing anime and read quite a bit of the manga. So yes, I know the end here is not the end-end, but I think the point still holds]

I did not expect to like Black Butler. I figured it would be weird and lascivious and funny (it was), but I didn’t expect it to be moving or witty—and it was both those things. In spite of the absurd, dark humor, Black Butler can actually get quiet, and it leaves a lot unsaid. In those quiet spaces, I found myself feeling…disturbed. And, the biggest surprise of all, I was still wondering what made it so disturbing weeks after I watched it.

I’m starting to figure it out, though. I’ve been thinking especially about that last episode of the first season (I’ve only watched the first and second season, by the way, so it might take a turn that screws up my analysis here. If so—meh!). In this scene, Ciel has accomplished his revenge, and Sebastian is rowing him across a river to the place where Sebastian plans to eat Ciel’s soul. The physical and the spiritual are all muddled here—the river could be a real  or it could be symbolic…and it’s hard to  wrap your around what eating a soul looks like. We get the feeling that it’s not going to be like rainbows flying into Sebastian’s mouth, but neither is the soul some corporeal thing that can be wedged between a couple buns.  At any rate, the journey toward this soul-eating moment which will break the partnership between Ciel and Sebastian is a damn quiet one. As they row, little lights like fireflies pass them, and Ciel asks what they are. Sebastian explains, without sentiment, that they are the manifestation of his encounters with other souls—the people who have passed through his life. Ciel admits that he finds them “pretty,” which is

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