I feel like it's a matter of time before I see "Yuri on Ice is the most feminist show ever"

[sqbr]

With arguments including:

• Made by a woman of colour (directed by a Japanese woman in Japan)
  
• Aimed at women, female gaze (don't get me started on 'the female gaze'. Just. Don't)
  
• Does not objectify women (because it's about men)
  
• Multiple well drawn female characters (who are secondary to the men)
  
• Canon amab genderqueer gay asexual protagonist in canon relationship with a man (is about two mildly gender non conforming guys being homoerotic-with-plausible-deniability)
  
• Ethnic diversity (a Thai character has had a few lines)
  
• Title is clearly a queer feminist deconstruction of male gazey yuri anime (title is very confusing if you are looking for actual yuri)
  

Which is to say: it's a lot of fun and less problematic/more progressive than most sports anime. I really like it! But it's still a mainstream anime about dudes.

I haven't actually seen any arguments along these lines for this show in particular but I was replying to a friend's post about the way people twist themselves in knots to argue that stories about dudes are THE MOST FEMINIST EVER and went "What would my example be? Well I just watched an episode of Yuri on Ice, and...oh God. I know exactly what someone out there is saying about this show".

Now later when I see such meta I can say "I KNEW IT" :)

Comments

[sqbr]

I wonder if it's a need to swing to 'ideological purity' and make sure the show is just 'so overwhelmingly amazing politically' that people can't crucify it into 'just outright terrible 100% trash' in a world of political binaries that are designed to Other people pretty aggressively?

That and it gives an excuse to decry the shows people don't like as trash by comparison :/

[hebethen]

Maybe it's because I was in Homestuck-land for a large part of my stay in Tumblr (2011 to 2013), but I sort of overhear from the sidelines mentions of this "100% perfect vs 100% terrible" thing and it just seems subtly off to me? I know there's always some fans who will interpret any criticism as "you said it was 100% terrible! hdu h8!", but it felt like the tenor back then, at least where I was reading, was more leaning toward Nothing Is Above Criticism, Deal With It. Can things have changed so quickly? Am I just experiencing ageing-induced subjective timeframe compression?

[sqbr]

Hmm. I feel like things have definitely gotten much worse since 2013, and Homestuck fandom was generally less prone to this sort of thing when I was hanging out there a lot (2010-2012ish, I think). But tends are always very unevenly distributed, all these attitudes have always existed to a greater or lesser extent in different parts of fandom.