Anime:

• DandaDan:

Here’s the thing about problematic media- when you swing for the fences, sometimes you miss, but you can’t hit a home run if you don’t try. Ep 1’s definitely a strike and problematic as fuck, but the rest of the show has been batting consecutive home runs (so far). It definitely has Things to Say about gender that are worth saying, and while I do think that screwball coming-of-age romance/sex comedy might not have been the best medium to tackle heavy topics like SA, I’d rather a piece of media take risks and be challenging while trying to say something important rather than play it safe and fail to say anything at all.

(Although, that said, screwball coming-of-age romance/sex comedy is already a genre with a whole lot of problematic baggage and I completely understand anyone being turned off by that. But the larger point is that we have to differentiate between problematic media intentionally reproducing harm vs unintentionally reproducing harm, because the latter can still have value.)

Like, for example: the Boss Alien using an extremely phallic… appendage to pump the Gig-Worker alien full of (what I can only assume are) brainworms that makes them start singing a jingle that’s an ad for an energy drink as a mid-episode power-up to help them better, er, steal Banana organs from teenagers, the punchline for which is JAPANESE BUSINESSMAAAAAAAAN!!!; if that isn’t the most metaphor for how capitalism reproduces patriarchy idk what is.

Context for that take, btw. And stuff like that is what makes Dandadan so good- there is a larger dialogue about feminism as the main narrative and thematic focus (the entire Acrobat Silky arc is such a beautiful encapsulation of how patriarchy encourages women to hurt other women, even if unintentionally; and that the only way to a kinder, more fortunate world is through empathy- Sakugablog has a wonderful blow-by-blow production notes article breaking down the AcroSilky episodes both industry-wise and storytelling-wise for those interested) but even the small throwaway double Ultraman/Regain reference joke has gender-related social commentary baked in.

• Ranma 1/2 (2024)

This show aged a heck of a lot better that Urusei Yatsura, that’s for sure. Ranma overcoming his misogyny by applying the insights he gains from his experience as the other gender is even more relevant now than it was in the 80’s, but the show hewing closer to the manga and giving a lot more interiority to the characters really helps a lot; I honestly don’t remember the original being written or paced as well as this. It also helps that Ranma and Akane are largely more sympathetic characters than Ataru and Lum are. The retro-modern aesthetic and the animation quality overall is fantastic (especially the whacky fight scenes, MAPPA’s animators did a really good job; I really do hope they aren’t getting overworked)

Not much to say here, it’s just a really solid show.

Manga:

• Chainsaw Man

Chainsaw Man is crazy good this week. <— The last half-a-year, basically. Mid-point of part 2 was a bit slow but we had to let my boy cook cos it was worth it.

Where we’re at in CSM btw, without context:

• Centauria

Hey, y’know how we keep joking about a John Brown Isekai? This is the closest thing we’re going to get to that. Imagine Berserk, but the main character is an escaped slave who was granted power by an eldritch sea demon when a bunch of slaver’s decide to “liquidate the cargo” for insurance money and inadvertently draw the demon’s attention.

Spoiler for Chapter 1

The climax of the first chapter is a ship full of slaver’s getting satisfyingly gorily murdered by the hero, who is empowered by the souls of 100 dead slaves crying out for justice.

Is it nonsensically edgy? Yeah, kinda, but it’s also the single most based thing I’ve read/watched all year. Granted, I’m only 4 chapters in but I like what I see so far.

FUN FACT: The authors of Chainsaw Man, DandaDan, SpyxFamily and Centauria have all worked together at one point or another, and they all share an editor (Shihei Lin, who is interestingly freelance atm, even if all these manga are getting published on Shonen Jump’s online platform where he worked formerly).

Given that 3/4 of these have been unfathomably based and absolute bangers (sorry SpyxFamily I’m docking points for not accurately portraying fictional East Berlin as the communist utopia it was historically) I am forming the Shihei Lin Defense Force: I will personally field any questions in defense of the creative decisions these authors have taken, and will counter any and all accusations that the above authors/works are exceedingly/inherently problematic by incoherently screaming into the Void before skulking into a dark corner, curling into a ball and rocking back and forth while repeatedly muttering “media literacy” under my breath.

(The exception, of course, being SpyxFamily).

(I thank God every day I never made a Twitter account.)

BECAUSE TALKING ABOUT SOME ACTUALLY PROBLEMATIC SHIT

• Drama Queen

Oh fuck me I had high hopes that Jump would keep up the progressive streak, but I guess it was only a matter of time. The is going off big time here.

The premise is that aliens have come to earth, taken all the good jobs and gentrified the place. The two MC’s, who are racist against aliens, decide that murdering and eating the aliens is the way to go towards alleviating their economic precarity.

1. Yeah if you squint hard enough it could be anti-colonial instead of anti-immigrant, given the Japanese context, but there are too many right-wing dog whistles in the work (they took our jerbs, the focus on miscegenation in like the first 4 pages, the vaguely antisemitic suggestion that there’s a conspiracy) plus it completely fails to make any of the structural critiques of racism necessary for an anti-colonial narrative (think Code Geass and how Elevens form an oppressed underclass)

2. Yeah maybe they’re villain protagonists like in Death Note or Breaking Bad… except those stories made it EXCEEDINGLY clear that their villain protagonists were in the wrong from the get-go: there’s no such indication here

Reading this is like reading a cracked-mirror version of Chainsaw Man: it’s clearly using the same visual language and themes (the protagonists “very relatable” struggle with poverty, for one) but instead of getting its reader’s to more deeply interrogate their relationship with capitalism through the challenging allegory of an abusive relationship, it just blames everything on immigrants and gleefully embraces misanthropic nihilism. Whooooo cannibalism let’s goooooo!

Seeing something reactionary hijack something progressive to its own ends isn’t surprising, but it makes me irrationally angry. Fuck this.