Fumikoarmy

 Introduction: Or Why This Took So Damn Long About a year ago I was commissioned to write a report on the 2023 Ooku anime with insights coming from my new transgender status. Since this was a big deal, I considered writing such an important gender manifesto to be a crucial task, and spent a lot of time reading gender theory and living my trans life to try and put together a Grand Theory of Gender to analyze it with. At the same time however, I learned something about being trans. I think it was early on, reading the observations in the book Nevada by Imogen Binnie or maybe even Whipping Girl by Julia Serano. It is now widely known that the Matrix is intended as trans allegory. The first movie can be easily read through this lens, of discovering the true self you were denied all along and the feeling of coming into the power of being your true self. So you kind of get this inflated idea that you will be the Gender Messiah, where your insights from HRT will let you bridge the gap bet...

 I am alive.

 

 I've often wondered if straight cis men were real, and apparently I'm not alone in wondering this. No one would deny trans mens' experiences, and gay men certainly seems comfortable with themselves, but so many straight cis men seem obsessed with proving their masculinity to the point of desperation. All of them either being gay men or trans women in denial seems a tidy theory. Perhaps this is unreasonable, but if you look at the veritable cytokine storm of no homo that is Michael Bay's Armageddon you do have to wonder. I remember the film coming out in 1998 and ignoring it because of it looked awful and there was no escaping the sappy Aerosmith ballad that went along with it. I later read a description of the plot in Susan Napier's Anime book, where she contrasted it's conservative reinforcement and reassurance of the nuclear family triumphing with the "deassurance" of Akira, Ghost in the Shell, and Evangelion. However I was requested to watch it in ...

When becoming a new anime fan with Sailor Moon and The Adventures of Girl Genius Bulma Briefs (who tragically became overshadowed by her sidekick Goku) there were big anime people raved about. One was Evangelion. So I knew I needed to get around to it, and some video rental stores even carried it, so it would be easy to get. I misinterpreted Shinji as being a really butch girl, and ADV's always salacious box copy made it sound like the adventures of an alien slaying sci-fi girl team, like Sailor Moon with mechs. This would definitely be cool. I watched the first two episodes and was largely bored. Now I love the first two episodes now, I think they're the best crafted first episodes probably ever, but to 14 year old me they were boring. There was some cool imagery with the monster Angels but there were a lot of talking heads. And worse yet Shinji was a boy. I didn't hate it, Misato was cool, and in the days when only 30 anime were available at all, you sometimes watched mor...

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.