Comment Meta

[amaresu]

Femslash Mini Meta fest was an utter fail this year. And I'm still not in a place where I could do it, so I purpose Comment Meta. And let's have it cover all things female and fannish. However you define those.

How it works

1. Post a meta topic in a top level comment. Use the subject line for the meta subject and expand as you want in the body of the comment. Or don't.

2. Repeat Step 1 for as many meta ideas as you have.

3. Comment on other meta topics.


It's kinda like a kink meme, only with meta. Feel free to browse the mini meta tag for ideas.

This is meant to be about as low pressure as it comes. Feel free to write on your own journal/Tumblr/blog and link back here. Respond with as little or as much as you want. This post will remain open indefinitely, so please track it if that makes things easier for you.

Comments

F/F in anime/manga

[veleda_k]

I'm so out of date with anime and manga releases that it's not funny, but I thought I'd start up a thread for us anime fans. Feel free to recommend anime/manga with f/f content/subtext. Here's a tiny list to get us started.

Anime/manga with canon f/f pairings:

Sailor Moon. Haruka and Michiru are up there with Xena and Gabrielle in terms of classic f/f pairings.

Loveless. Yamato and Kouya only appear in one volume of the manga/a few episodes of the series, but they are so awesome.

Revolutionary Girl Utena. Juri/Shiori is quite canon, though tragic. The main pairing in fandom is Anthy/Utena, which has heavy subtext, even if it never quite croesses the lines into canon.

Tetragrammaton Labyrinth. Not a manga for everyone. For one thing, while Angela is Really 700 Years Old, she looks twelve, and the mangaka has an unnerving habit of drawing her naked. This could definitely be a squicky one for some. I enjoy it despite the icky bits. I may just be desperate.

Voiceless. Sweet little story. Unfortunately, there's only 1 volume available in English, and it appears that it will remain that way. I haven't checked for fan translations.

First Love Sisters. Another sweet story. Despite the name, there is no incest. Rather, both sisters are going through first love. Another one that seems doomed to never see a full English language release.

Strawberry Panic. Girls love in a super fancy boarding school. The manga is partially available in English. I'm not sure if the light novels have been completely released or not.

In case you're seeing a pattern here, Seven Seas bought up a lot of f/f titles which then fell through. I don't know whether they couldn't get licensing for future volumes, or if sales were low, or what.



Others to consider:

Puella Magi Madoka Magica. Some pretty intense subtext between Homura and Madoka, and Sayaka and Kyoko.

Venus Versus Virus. I haven't kept up with this one, but there was definitely subtext between Sumire and Lucia. However, when I dropped off Sumire was getting something of romance arc with a boy, but I don't know what happened with that.

Maria-sama Ga Miteru (Maria Watches Over Us). I'm not clear on whether this series has canon f/f of just a lot of subtext, but it's one off the classics. (That I, uh, have yet to watch.)

Noir. Lots of subtext between Mireille and Kiriki. Any who denies the canon status of (one-sided) Chloe/Kirika is fooling themselves, in my not so humble opinion. (Chloe kisses Kirika. What more do you need?)


So, feel free recommend others, or discuss the ones I've listed here.

Re: F/F in anime/manga

[salinea]

Maria-sama does have a bit of canon f/f, though it's limited to a flashback episode, mostly, the rest of it being the heavy subtext.

There are some excellent yuri shows which as far as I know don't have much in term of fandom, such as Aoi Hana and Sasameki Koto. There's Simoun, with elements of genderfuckery. And Kannazuki no Miko which I do not like at all, but some people do. Nanoha is on the same line of borderline canon as Madoka, I think.

Re: F/F in anime/manga

[veleda_k]

I have heard such mixed things about Kannazuki no Miko. I keep thinking it's something I'll watch eventually. I'll have to keep Aoi Hana and Sasameki Koto in mind.

Re: F/F in anime/manga

[tamsin]

Sailor Moon ♥ I adored the series as a kid and watched it obsessively. I've been meaning to do a re-watch soonish.

Do you have any recs to share?

Re: F/F in anime/manga

[rubylily]

I'll add some more titles (and unless otherwise noted, they're all completely available in English):

Bodacious Space Pirates has a canon lesbian couple with Jenny and Lynn, and the leads Marika and Chiaki have lots of subtext between them.

Lagrange: The Flower of Rin-ne (Rinne no Lagrange) is from the same director as Bodacious Space Pirates, and it's real easy to read subtext between the three main heroines (they're certainly my OT3).

Blue Drop is a tragic romance, and the anime is loads better than the manga.

Girl Friends by Morinaga Milk is a popular high school story, and her other work Kisses, Sighs, and Cherry Blossom also just came out in English.

Horizon in the Middle of Nowhere has a canon lesbian couple and El Cazador de la Bruja apparently has plenty of subtext between the heroines, but I haven't seen either series yet.

Voiceful unfortunately is only one volume, but I still enjoyed it a lot.

For Strawberry Panic, the novels have been entirely released in English as one giant omnibus, but personally I enjoyed the anime more.

Venus Versus Virus never goes beyond subtext for f/f, but the straight romance is pretty much unresolved by the end as well, and it's one of my favorite series, so I still recommend it.

Attack on Titan and Dangan Ronpa (a visual novel, but the anime is starting soon) look to have solid femslash fandoms, but I'm not familiar with those canons.

Re: F/F in anime/manga

[ember_keelty]

Pretty Cure! I've watched Fresh, Smile, and what's aired so far of Dokidoki. Fresh is by far my favorite. The writing is just really, really excellent and at times surprisingly smart for a children's show, and the dynamic between Love and Setsuna is wonderfully touching and very, very subtext-y. Smile had a lot less subtext, but there were still a few notably shippy moments, like Miyuki and Reika playing Cinderella and her Prince and clearly finding it genuinely romantic. Dokidoki is really, REALLY gay. It's basically a g-rated harem anime in that most of the girls in the group are clearly crushing on Mana, plus Cure Sword pretty obviously had a crush on her queen.

Unlike a lot of the other titles mentioned in this thread, Pretty Cure's target audience is young girls. It's less male-gazey than even Sailor Moon or Madoka, and way, way, way better than Nanoha or VividRed. So if that's something that's turned anyone off of magical girl shows in the past, I would highly recommend it.

Re: F/F in anime/manga

[erinptah]

If anybody's avoided watching Sailor Moon for being "too male-gazey", I'm judging them. Just sayin'.

Some more magical girl recs: Tokyo Mew Mew (where they protect the Earth from aliens with Science!) has a canon (if one-sided) lesbian thing going on within the team. Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne (where she exorcises demons on behalf of God, although [spoiler]) has a cute and heart-tugging dynamic with the heroine and her angelic sidekick, plus the super-tropey, subtext-heavy "obsessed detective who will catch our hero-thief at all costs!" dynamic.

And for people looking for something shorter, less filler-y, and maybe with some psychological drama, I can't rec Black Rock Shooter enough. It's kind of like if Utena had the school parts and the magical-dueling parts happening in parallel universes, plus the fight-scene choreography and visual surrealism of Madoka, and beautiful animation in general -- and all of it fueled by grade-A lesbian angst.

Re: F/F in anime/manga

[ember_keelty]

"If anybody's avoided watching Sailor Moon for being "too male-gazey", I'm judging them. Just sayin'."

I, uh, didn't mean that. I was more referring to the other tier mentioned (Nanoha, VividRed). Sorry for the lack of clarity. I've known people who watched Sailor Moon and then couldn't get into anything else.

ETA: Also hi I love your fic. /o\

Re: F/F in anime/manga

[erinptah]

Ah! That makes more sense then. Carry on.

And thank you =D

Re: F/F in anime/manga

[amethyst_hunter]

Get Backers: My all-time favorite series ever; while I'm not usually into f/f pairings, I do rather like the Himiko/Clayman one (although I see Himiko as more het than femslash, but hey - it's all good and I'm open). They're two women who don't get enough fanlove (particularly in the former's case; fans seem to either love or hate her, and sadly, the majority tend to fall into the hate camp), which puzzles me as I think they're both strong and amazing women who can more than hold their own with the guys.

Re: F/F in anime/manga

[havocthecat]

I would love to get my hands on Strawberry Panic. Do you happen to know where I might find it? I'm a huge St. Trinian's fan, and the f/f being more up front would be even better.

Re: F/F in anime/manga

[ember_keelty]

You mean physically get your hands on it? I was able to buy it off Amazon. I would recommend streaming an episode or two off the internet (which, for any moderately popular anime just Google the name of the series and "watch online" or something similar) before deciding to whether to shell money for it, because I quickly regretted that decision, personally.

Re: F/F in anime/manga

[havocthecat]

Yes, by 'get my hands on it' I meant 'test it out via (legal, hopefully) streaming first and then see if I want to buy it.' I remember back in the day when the only anime you could find was bootlegs or imports, both of which cost $40 to $60 per VHS tape (yes, VHS) at the local nerd store, and there was no way to preview it first. I lost a couple hundred to comic stores to 'try out' anime that turned out to be hideously male gazey - because I had no idea what a harem story was.

In other words, I'm still really bitter that Oh My Goddess! turned out to be about something other than Belldandy, the actual goddess whom the story was named after. Plus some story about mermaids, but I can't for the life of me remember the title, I was that disappointed. I think that my frustration with that (and several other purchases) made me abandon anime for a number of years.

On the plus side, my local nerd shop did have the Vampire Princess Miyu OVA, which I now recognize was pretty amazing, and Devil Hunter Yohko, which I enjoyed a lot even though it was a bit male gaze-y. (Not that I knew what the male gaze was at the time. I had no name for it; I just knew I didn't like it.) Both of which Amazon tells me are on DVD for half or less than half of what I paid for a single VHS tape. (Which I still have, and one solitary, lonely VCR to watch them with. But not for long now!)

Re: F/F in anime/manga

[cantarina]

It baffles my brain that the Gravitation fandom turned me into such a stan for the women characters but that I never shipped any of them together. Mika/Noriko? YES PLEASE

I could absolutely stand to see some Yue/Miaka Fushigi Yuugi f/f too. I also looked up a whole whack of Blue-from-Wolf's-Rain related f/f when I finished that series.

Princess Tutu's Rue/Ahiru seems to be a reasonably popular thing?

Re: F/F in anime/manga

[hebethen]

NO. NO, IT ISN'T.

/kneels, weeps, etc.

It's fairly well-regarded -- as in, most fellow fans that I've personally interacted with have expressed positive opinions about it and acknowledge that they had chemistry and a good relationship -- but there's not much fannish activity surrounding it, compared to Ahiru's canonical romance.

If we're talking Princess Tutu, though, it doesn't stop at Ahirue -- there was that shy artist girl who was obsessed with Rue, right?

Re: F/F in anime/manga

[aiffe]

omg Fushigi Yuugi and Wolf's Rain nostalgia!

I remember being really really into Miaka/Yui, especially since Yuu Watase said that Yui is a lesbian and was in love with Miaka, and only redirected these forbidden feelings into trying to steal Tamahome--out of jealousy for him being close to Miaka in the way she wanted to be. So there's very, very good grounds for that.

Other FY femslash ships--Yui/Soi, I mean it was pretty explicit that the Seven Stars have pretty much no choice to be in love with their priestess, and word-of-god lesbian priestess Yui has one female priestess, who also happens to have the only power of buff magic which conveniently requires sex to apply. I mean YES PLEASE.

And on the other side, I've realized what I didn't quite get on first viewing--that Nuriko was absolutely a trans woman, and the whole "I tried to live my dead sister's life for her" was a pretty bullshit excuse. Like, lots of people grieve siblings without thinking, "A chance to take on the gender identity I always wanted!" (I know taking on a dead person's identity as a way to honor them is a more popular Japanese media trope, but still.) Nuriko wasn't faking being in love with Hotohori either (I know gay != trans, but not completely sure Yuu Watase knows this), and used female first-person pronouns (atashi) for herself. She seemed pretty exclusively interested in men, and it was only the "seven stars MUST love their priestess" thing that made her fall in love with Miaka, and since Miaka was (ostensibly) straight, that threw her whole gender identity into doubt and I think really messed with her head. Plus there was honestly something quite transphobic about the way she recanted her misguided trans ways and promptly died. And then her crush married a cis girl who LOOKED EXACTLY LIKE HER. Add to that that Yui also had a team of six boys and a girl--so did Miaka, her girl was just trans. So I really came to ship Miaka/Nuriko but where Miaka is the one to maybe explore her heteroflexibility/bisexuality instead of forcing Nuriko to alter her gender identity to be with her.

Also BLUE I adore Blue. I think my only ship for her was with Cheza since there weren't a lot of female characters in the series...though with Cher could be interesting too? But I love Cheza/wolves in general, though I could see how some people would be squicked by the potential power imbalance. (The same is kind of true for Yui/Soi and Miaka/Nuriko.)