AniFem Round-Up
From the Verdigris House to the Rear Palace: Sex workers’ perspective on The Apothecary Diaries
Kyli Rodriguez-Cayro speaks with other sex workers about the series’ depiction of the profession, and how it subverts many common harmful tropes.
Queer Self-Acceptance in Guilty Gear Strive
Testament, Bridget, and Venom’s character developments over the course of the franchise mirrors the broader evolution of LGBTQ+ in games.
What anime-related topic could you give a convention panel about?
Whether you’ve done it or it’s still in your imagination for now.
Beyond AniFem
Sony’s Crunchyroll Makes Layoffs as It Restructures to Lean Into International Growth Markets (Variety, Todd Spangler)
Because in the world of corporate America, line must always go up.
“As we look toward the next three to five years, we believe the right path forward is a new organizational model that supports regionally-empowered teams to lean into anime fandom even further,” Purini wrote in the memo. As such, “some of our colleagues will be departing the company, some will be expanding their scope, and some will be assigned new roles.” He said the layoffs are “not a cost-cutting measure or driven by financial performance.”
Job cuts are occurring across Crunchyroll’s 13 offices in nine countries in North America, Europe and Asia. L.A.-based Crunchyroll currently has more than 100 open job positions worldwide and expects to add even more roles over the next several months.
As part of the reorg, Crunchyroll is building engineering hubs in the U.S., Mexico and India, according to Purini. In addition, Crunchyroll will invest in growth opportunities beyond its core anime biz, such as in collectibles, other merchandise and manga.
Dear manga publishers, we don’t want your AI translations (Comics Beat, Matias De La Piedra)
Viz quietly licensed an AI translation for one of the series they run on their site and obscured this fact.
Generative AI is everywhere. Everyone wants to be the cool kid, forcing it into every corner of their business to seem innovative. Manga publishers are no exception to this FOMO and are investing big bucks into AI translation. Manga tech startup Orange Inc. (not to be confused with the animation studio Orange) raised ¥2.92 billion (~$19.5 million) in 2024 to enable a capacity for Japanese-to-English “localization” of up to 500 manga volumes per month via its app emaqi. Among its investors? Shogakukan, publisher of the manga magazine Shonen Sunday, which recently launched NOVELOUS, a light novel reader app powered by AI translations. Shogakukan is also a co-owner of VIZ Media, which has recently come under fire.
These companies preach their “love for manga,” and yet they fund AI-powered translations under the guise of increasing manga availability and fighting piracy. But that’s bullshit. This is a cost-cutting strategy designed to phase out human translators. At this point, they would automate a handshake if it saved them a dollar.
So, why raise the alarm now? One word: Transparency.
As reported by MangaAlerts on X (formerly Twitter), VIZ Media quietly used the very same AI translation from emaqi for Dealing with Mikadono Sisters Is a Breeze on its VIZ Manga app. That alone is no good, but here’s the curveball. VIZ Media credited the AI-assisted translation and lettering as “provided by Shogakukan.” For shame, VIZ Media. For shame!
‘Queer feminist cafe’ creates hub for conversation, community, cake (The Asahi Shimbun, Momoe Harano)
The cafe is located in Osaka but draws patrons from across Japan.
It occurred to Kukita that food could provide a way for her to interact with people with more diverse values.
She began working at a restaurant in Osaka Prefecture in 2018.
The experience opened her eyes to the charms of the industry, which gave her opportunities to chat with customers and listen to their conversations.
About two years into working there, she married her husband, who also works in the restaurant industry. They had a daughter during the novel coronavirus pandemic.
After giving birth, Kukita suffered from postpartum depression for about three years.
Kukita’s husband opened a restaurant in his home city of Kawanishi around that time. As she watched him work up close, she felt a growing desire to open a restaurant herself.
Kukita landed on the concept of a “queer feminist cafe” right away.
At her university, Kukita began to identify her gender as nonbinary, (meaning that she doesn’t fit into the male-female dichotomy) and identify her sexual orientation as pansexual (meaning that she can feel love and attraction to people regardless of their genders).
Kukita also became interested in feminism after the birth of her daughter. Becoming a parent forced Kukita to reflect on how being a “girl” had dictated how she dressed and behaved her entire life.
ATTENTION ANIME CLUBS: How to Legally Show Anime post-Crunchyroll (Reddit)
An overview of available services for libraries after Crunchyroll revoked their streaming permissions.
To summarize:
Sentai Filmworks: Official discs only, no movies without a LICENSE AGREEMENT FOR THEATRICAL EXHIBITION (whatever that is), first four episodes of any show. No streaming
Viz: Can show the entire series, must request three months ago. Not sure on streaming (I forgot to ask; I will next time)
Discotek: As long as they license it, just let them know dates & episodes and you’re good. Streaming seems to be okay from officially licensed places; need to verify this is for ANY sites, not just YouTube’s TMS page
AnimEigo: Haven’t contacted yet, but run by the people handling Discotek requests. Feel like you have a good shot they will help.
Media Blasters: Just let them know days, times, episodes, etc. Make it clear to the club that Media Blasters is presenting it / giving permission. Legal streaming is okay. Careful viewing the site at work, they do sell hentai under another label.
Aniplex of America: Send them an e-mail, they will send you a form. Physical releases are insanely expensive and may be a roadblock to access material, so look for used copies, older releases, borrow them from people, or look for older, more affordable releases from FUNimation’s days.
A Celebration of 25 Years: An Interview with Manga Creators PEACH-PIT (Anime News Network, Kalai Chik)
The mangaka team recently spoke at this year’s Anime Expo.
PEACH-PIT is also hosting a 25th Anniversary Special Exhibition in Tokyo from July 18 to August 14, 2025. Lucky Anime Expo attendees were given a special pre-event preview with a select number of manga panel reproductions. However, there will be more available at the exhibit, including a first-ever peek behind the curtain at PEACH-PIT’s creative process, which includes their drafts, storyboards, and finalized art.
In your career, which spans over two-and-a-half decades, you have drawn manga for different genres like shōnen (Zombie Loan/DearS), shōjo (Shugo Chara!), and seinen (Rozen Maiden). Which genre was the hardest to write for?
PEACH-PIT: There wasn’t a genre that was particularly difficult or easy. If we were to discuss what was challenging to approach, since Shugo Chara! is intended for children to read, it was challenging to ensure that we didn’t convey anything incorrectly. We were careful not to mix what is considered ethical with what is considered wrong.
As a quick follow-up, Rozen Maiden deals with a hikikomori character. Was that difficult to write about?
PEACH-PIT: We thought it was just a character trait. Hikikomori wasn’t widely recognized as a major social issue at the time, and it didn’t really come up in our discussions with the editor as something to consider or discuss.
Tokyo’s Lost Showa-Era Nightlife Club Scene (Tokyo Weekender, Wakaba Oto)
Short, but well worth clicking through for the photos from the era.
Beneath Toa Kaikan’s booming floors, another form of theatrical nightlife emerged: host clubs. These were male equivalents to hostess bars — young men in sharp suits, rhinestones and stage names who sold conversation, attention and illusion to women in Kabukicho.
Host clubs trace back to the late 1960s. By the 80s, the number of these clubs had increased significantly, with roughly 50 establishments in Shinjuku alone. The format soon became highly competitive as hosts earned commissions on drink sales and attempted to climb up the rankings.
A few blocks from Kabukicho’s neon dazzle lay another revolution — Shinjuku Ni‑chome, Tokyo’s queer quarter since the late 1940s. After the 1956 passage of the Prostitution Prevention Law, as red-light districts were restructured, a different kind of nightlife began to flourish.
By the 80s, Ni‑chome hosted hundreds of intimate bars catering to gay men, lesbians and trans patrons. Spaces were coded — specialized for butches, femmes, bears, drag — accessible by referral and loyalty. This nightlife was defiant and political. It was as much survival as it was spectacle.
LGBTQ+ Organizations, Spaces Cut Ties with Voice Actor Kiba Walker Due to Sexual Allegations (Anime News Network, Rafael Antonio Pineda)
Walker has been prominent in the English dubbing scene for the past several years.
Voice actor Korey Solomon posted allegations against voice actor Kiba Walker (also known as “Salem Moon” in drag and LGBTQ+ circles) on July 30, saying that Walker messaged Solomon with sexually suggestive messages when Solomon was only 15 years old, with Walker being 22 years old at the time. Solomon, known professionally as Blade or BladeWillBe, accused Walker of grooming him since 2017. Solomon added that he had cut off all contact with Walker in 2023.
The following day, voice actor James Molloy also posted similar allegations against Walker, saying that Walker began grooming him and sending sexually suggestive messages when Molloy was 17 years old in April 2017.
Both Solomon and Molloy’s allegations are supported by screenshots of the messages with timestamps.
LGBTQ+ organization Pride in Dallas issued a statement on August 1 that it has ended its relationship with an “individual” after allegations against one of its local community performers. Walker is based in Dallas, Texas. The LGBTQ+ bar 1851 Club in Arlington, Texas also issued a statement that it has “parted ways” with a performer. Walker, under his “Salem Moon” drag name, has performed at the bar before. Game developer BLits Games also issued a statement saying that it has “cut all professional ties” with Walker, including recasting the role of the character Yoshino (which Walker voiced) in its Scoutmaster Season game.
“The Dilemmas of Working Women” by Fumio Yamamoto (Asian Review of Books, Alison Fincher)
The short story collection was initially published in 2000.
Japan and its writers have been coping with the reality of economic decline—and the end of its position as “Number One”—for decades. It’s part of what makes some of the fiction translated into English during the recent Japanese literature boom seem so of-the-moment, even fiction written in the 90s and 00s. The translation of Yamamoto’s short story collection comes 25 years after its original publication, but the English-language translation is startlingly relevant.
The Dilemmas of Working Women is also about the post-World-War-II undertow of gendered expectations that pull at the lives of Japanese people. One successful woman switches from full- to part-time work after her children are born as a matter of course. Another considers accepting a marriage proposal from her problematic boyfriend; at least it will get her out of the house of her controlling and physically abusive father. A third has to go back to work, but finds herself carrying the workload of a full-time, stay-at-home housewife nevertheless. Several women struggle with bosses who anticipate their resignations the moment they marry or coworkers who think married career women are “unpleasant”. Like tales of post-bubble economic woes, these stories of sexism in 1990s Japan also resonate in the English-speaking world in 2025.
Men’s attraction to and fear of strong women is a pervasive motif in the collection, too. For example, Izumi has a brief relationship with an unimpressive, younger former co-worker. A self-described “loser, a whipped dog with his tail between his legs”, he once had a crush on Izumi because she was “a winner”, unlike him. But as someone who was both “a winner” and female, she also, in his words, spoke in a “nasty and abrasive” way. Her marriage, too, had been doomed by her professional drive. According to Izumi, it “all came down to [her] insistence on dominating every little thing having to do with the business” she and her husband ran together. Nevermind that the shared business was significantly more successful with Izumi on board.
Announcement: Anime Herald Magazine’s Final Article List, And A Slight Delay (Anime Herald, Samantha Ferreira)
The physical magazine is currently available for pre-order.
Unfortunately, I must announce that we will delay the issue by a couple of weeks. Due to a few family and personal emergencies that occurred in June and July, I was unable to maintain our current schedule. As such, it was decided that it would be most prudent to delay the launch date to November, so we can deliver a book that we can be proud to release, and that you will be excited to own.
I’d like to note that this not a decision that was made lightly. Due to the previously-mentioned emergencies, maintaining our existing release window would have both forced unfair deadlines on everyone from our editorial team to our designers, while compromising the overall quality of the issue that you will receive.
We understand that you are putting a lot of faith in us to deliver something you would be proud to keep, and we want to make sure that we live up to that expectation. As such, the delay was the most reasonable option. I would like to apologize for this as the editor-in-chief, and take full responsibility.
You Can’t Live All On Your Own! Volume 1 Manga Review (Spoiler‑Free) (Yatta-Tachi, Alex Henderson)
The new series is available through Tokyopop.
You Can’t Live All On Your Own! engages with some prescient contemporary issues through the lens of slice-of-life comedy. Despite the presence of some deeply annoying male characters (Misaki’s “boyfriend”? Throw him away, as far as I’m concerned!), there’s no obvious villain among the cast. No, it’s the social factors of sexism and ageism that really loom large as the antagonist of the series.
Each character is haunted by double standards: for Misaki, it’s that men can rely on a woman’s care and affection while not offering any commitment in return. For Eika, it’s that men can fumble their way to success while women have to prove themselves exceptional. And for Shuko, it’s that women aren’t complete until they’re married—and they had better get married before the age of 30, at which point they transform into a decrepit hag that no one would ever want, I guess!
AniFem Community
We’d watch the hell out of these.
“METROPOLIS, mechanical turks and men in suits: the aesthetic origins and philosophical roots of japanese robot fiction.”
i promise you, i can fill a one- to two-hour panel on this topic with practiced ease.
— st ajora says trans rights (@ae2501maeth.bsky.social) August 12, 2025 at 11:39 PM
I’ve been meaning to do a ‘history of Xbox in Japan’ panel for ages. I guess that’s technically not anime, but stuff like Steins;Gate and iDOLM@STER starting as Xbox exclusives is like…anime adjacent, at least? 😅
— janejana 🩷💜💙 (@janejana.bsky.social) August 12, 2025 at 1:24 AM
Source link
cats] , , #Weekly #RoundUp #August #Crunchyroll #Layoffs #Library #Streaming #Options #Osakas #Queer #Feminist #Cafe, #Weekly #RoundUp #August #Crunchyroll #Layoffs #Library #Streaming #Options #Osakas #Queer #Feminist #Cafe, 1755383455, weekly-round-up-6-12-august-2025-crunchyroll-layoffs-library-streaming-options-and-osakas-queer-feminist-cafe