Anime

Yu-Gi-Oh! is a long-running franchise encompassing anime, manga, video games, and trading card games. Between 2000 and 2019, six Yu-Gi-Oh! anime series were produced by Studio Gallop, each focusing on a different cast of characters, setting, and even genre. Although each Yu-Gi-Oh! series offers a distinct story, all six of these anime have received criticism from both fans and critics for their portrayals of female characters. All six Yu-Gi-Oh! anime are centred primarily on male characters, and the few girls and women that appear in the stories are commonly sidelined if not cast into harmful gender stereotypes. From my research, most analyses of gender representation in Yu-Gi-Oh! discuss these problems, but I think there is also scope to analyse how Yu-Gi-Oh!’s problematic depictions of female characters contrasts with its representation of male characters. Despite its marginalisation of female characters, Yu-Gi-Oh! presents a surprisingly non-toxic portrayal of masculinity, in which male characters are allowed to talk about their feelings, show friendly affection for one another, and resolve conflicts without resorting to violence. The proposed article would unpack how Yu-Gi-Oh! offers both reductive and progressive representations of gender and how these representations create contradictory messages for the audience.

Money in Naruto comes in the form of ‘Ryo’. However, it isn’t ever explicitly mentioned how money is received or created. For example, Kakashi Hatake. Previously, he was part of the ANBU Black Ops, then soon became a jonin-level, academy teacher. What kind of income did he get while he was working as an ANBU? If any? Compare him to a chunin, academy teacher like Iruka Umino. What kind of income did he get? If you compare them together, would that mean Kakashi is significantly wealthier than Iruka?

With so many different anime and manga available in the world, there are bound to be many that grow in popularity much more than others. For instance, series like Demon Slayer/Kimetsu no Yaiba absolutely blew up in popularity in late 2019. Other series like One Piece and Naruto have stayed relevant ever since they began in the late 1990s, and it seems just about everyone knows what Attack on Titan is even if they never watched/read anime/manga. But what is it that makes these series so popular? The characters, themes, accessibility, plot, or something else completely?

Jigoku Shojo or Hell Girl is an anime that deeply explores anecdotes of people holding grudges against each other and sending the perpetrator to hell for multiple reasons, sometimes even for what seems like trivial reasons. For instance, a school girl chooses to send her bullies to hell thanks to the website from which Hell Girl appears and invites her to pull the string off a Voodoo doll. Hell Girl gives all her clients the free will to decide whether to pull that string or not, i.e. the choice to send them to hell or not. As such, this is a depiction of how humans carry emotions like hate and resentment within their heart when they go through some kind of unfairness. The show does not only include victims choosing to send their enemies to hell though. It also involves characters misunderstanding situations and misjudging someone as causing some sort of disturbance and they send them to hell while they are innocent. This entails how humans’ sense of justice can be distorted due to many factors. This anime is thought-provoking in that occultic elements and events can be analyzed to investigate how they work towards the representation of human unforgiving tendencies against the ones who they feel have wronged them. An interpretation can also be made to invoke spiritual beliefs on the theme of forgiveness as in how not forgiving someone eventually leads the victim to hell as well. From this, a discussion can be developed about the meaning of real forgiveness beyond the anime.

Analyse the role fillers play in anime to protect long running anime series from running out of source material. Fillers in anime are used to prolong a certain stage of the anime without affecting character relationships or the main plot line. Typically, they are used when an anime series catches up to the manga it is based on, and seeks to give the manga time to "catch up". For example, Naruto Shippuden is a popular anime series that ran from 2007 to 2016. In that time 500 episodes were aired with 205 or 41% of them being considered filler. There are many examples of this (One Piece, Bleach, etc), which have led viewers skipping fillers in their pursuit of the rich storylines these series have to offer. Whether or not a viewer likes or dislikes filler episodes, skips or pushes through them, they are clearly a significant flaw in the process of anime series adapted from manga. Perhaps, it is better now? Or perhaps it is the same? What alternatives are there for writers when the adaptive material overtakes the original? Since in essence it is an adaptation, should it expand on its own? Or should producers of these large anime series go on hiatus to allow the manga to catch up?

This topic involves an examination of the animated opening/ending credits sequences that bookend most popular modern anime. In anime, an opening credits sequence often highlights main characters, hints at plot arcs, and features the names of studio staff, all while synchronized to music. Analyze how an opening may influence the "tone" of a show, and how that may correlate to sub-genre. What does a "good" opening sequence do for an anime? What does it do or provide for audiences? Perhaps look into the history of opening/ending credits sequences in anime to compare how fans view & share these openings today online. (I had some trouble coming up with a catchy title, so any and all suggestions are welcome!)

"The Duel" is the first episode of Disney ‘s new of Star Wars-anime series. In this short 15-minute story, most of the world (including the village, characters, most objects) are animated in black and white. Lightsabers, blaster shots, and a few other "light" technologies are the only pops of color on the screen. This aesthetic decision is worth further analysis. An article could dig into this use of color more deeply by considering "The Duel" within the history of black-and-white Samurai movies and/or discussing how this episode’s use of color supports or challenges color-coding in previous Star Wars stories. For example, red lightsabers have always represented the Sith and the dark side, while blue and green usually indicate the presence of a Jedi. Thus, colors play a role in telling the audience who is "good" or "bad," and it could be argued that this reinforces a moral binary. How does "The Duel" challenge, complicate, or draw attention to this binary through its use of color?

Many movies under Studio Ghibli have been lauded for their strong, complex female protagonists. Chihiro from Spirited Away, San from Princess Mononoke, and several others come to mind immediately. Hayao Miyazaki writes “brave, self-sufficient girls that don’t think twice about fighting for what they believe with all their heart. They’ll need a friend, or a supporter, but never a savior. Any woman is just as capable of being a hero as any man”.

However progressive Studio Ghibli may seem, the representation is nowhere near perfect. Ghibli producer Yoshiaki Nishimura has gone on record to say that women are too realistic to direct these fantasy films, and “men on the other hand tend to be more idealistic—and fantasy films need that idealistic approach. I don’t think it’s a coincidence men are picked”. But many Studio Ghibli films are movie adaptations of stories originally written by women. Diana Wynne Jones wrote the original novel “Howl’s Moving Castle”, Ursula K. Le Guin was the original novelist of the “Tales from Earthsea” books, and Eiko Kadono wrote not just “Kiki’s Delivery Service”, but also five sequels to it.

It might also be worth looking at some character portrayals from a folkloric perspective. It is certainly true that many young female protagonists are brave, independent, and heroic. But many Studio Ghibli villains such as Yubaba and Suleiman are magical women and fall into the “old hag” archetype of Western folklore, which Miyazaki has taken inspiration from countless times. These women are characteristically old and thus “ugly”, or not conventionally attractive, and they serve as antagonists to more conventionally attractive, younger women. Meanwhile, magical men such as Haku and Howl are often portrayed as heroic and noble—not without their own character flaws, of course, but there is still a distinct contrast. As progressive as Miyazaki is with his portrayal of women, he still relies on archetypes such as these, whether intentionally or not.

This topic is open to any discussion regarding portrayals of gender in any Studio Ghibli film, whether positive or negative.