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EP. REVIEW: Tokyo Mew Mew New

The translator for this remake posted a neat Twitter thread on the topic last month. I've had no direct exposure whatsoever any version of TMM, but I found the "Mew Strawberry would 100% make more sense than Mew Ichigo, given the pattern, but it'd sound completely wrong to the entire fandom" point especially interesting.

Bu-Ling Huang

[lots of info re: localization of names]

Again, I'm fully aware of this. What I find interesting is that the tropes that we tend to brand as more "unwholesome" have largely fallen out of favor in non-manga/anime romance fiction, particularly in the west, with the notable exception of young adult literature. The book Dangerous Men, Adventurous Women edited by Jayne Ann Krentz has a few very interesting academic essays on the topic, as does Maya Rodale's Dangerous Books for Girls. I of course can't find them now, but the site Smart Bitches, Trashy Books has hosted several interesting essays about non-con fantasies in the past.

I agree but I do notice the same people screaming the world is doomed every heat wave. I agree overall temperatures are on the rise however heat waves do happen. Last year where I live we had a 3 week heat wave and hottest days being 115f. This year so far hottest day has been 81f and since summer started an average of 74f. So indeed climate change is a thing but a heat in the UK is what it is, unfortunate but possible. Lol

I'm not much of a YA lit fan so I don't know a lot about it, but a friend of mine has tried very hard to convert me a while ago, and one of the things I noticed about the books she made me read was that they were incredibly simplistic about these things, and very on the nose about "his is not right" "this is wrong" "this character did Bad Thing which means he's Bad and we should not empathize with him" etc. It was really perplexing to think "young adults" were reading what to me seemed to be on the level of children's books. Perhaps those books were more "young" adult than young "adult".

As for why the tropes have fallen out of favor, honestly I think it's another wave of repression, [...] I think this tendency just strengthens really unfortunate ideas about what "messages" are and how readers parse them, as well as authors endorsing what they write about and the baffling "good content is only created by good people" idea that keeps going around.

*a whole bunch of good stuff about the importance of empathy and how some people online shame others*

"Don't empathize," and its ilk are phrases I see more and more of and it fricking scares me. We should never be individually or categorically undermining the natural impulse to treat with other human beings as fellow humans, even if their behavior, ahem, "sucks." Maybe I'm just a bleeding heart who's never experienced true pain, or maybe it's because I've seen firsthand the kind of abuse that leads to "monsters" like that and feel guilty I couldn't do anything to stop it, but... that's enough oversharing on that topic for today.

My personal favorite is, "Well, if you want to see thaaat, there must be something wrooong with you." That epic one-two punch of gaslighting and kink-shaming. Often directed at persons I would guess are probably just kids themselves, who go on to internalize their own inherent wrongness and also learn the attitude that this is an okay way to treat others. Basically, I hate the internet.

Exactly. And also, empathy =/= sympathy. I keep seeing people equating the two and it's just mindboggling to me. Just because you understand where someone is coming from doesn't mean you have to suddenly be sympathetic towards them, or forgive them, or anything. However, understanding what makes someone tick is a great way to relate to them in ways that's beneficial to you (both of you, as the case may be), in many many ways.

Consuming fiction is, in a way, gaining some kind of a life experience, since it allows us to experience things, get to know people, etc. that we normally wouldn't, for a variety of reasons. It helps us put ourselves in the headspace of others, understand the complexities of the world and the many ways people see themselves in it, the many ways people think, relate to issues, etc. It makes people more open and sensitive, and I think that never hurts. So striving to sanitize it, or rejecting complexities for black-and-white simplicity simply out of not trusting readers to process it according to their own interpretations and processes, is something I find really sad.

didn't see the bell thing as so bad, I thought it was more "here's something to replace the choker you lost, P.S. if you're in danger I want to protect you."

I like that much better. I was very off-put by the fact that he framed it as "with this I'll always know where you are" and the whole belling-the-cat metaphor, which implies that he doesn't think she's capable. (I read too much folklore.)

I mean, in this very thread, someone said the non-con turned them off BL then said the backlash against similar/adjacent tropes in het romance is just people being sensitive.

As far as magical girl reboots go, I have to say from an animation, energy, and vibe level I feel like Tokyo Mew Mew New has more going for it than the first season of Sailor Moon Crystal.

if you want books that never stoop to kink-shaming or making people feel ashamed of who they are and what they like, go read some K. J. Charles. (Seriously. Her books are amazing.)

My only fear is the series length with hinder the development and spotlight we get with the girls. Even if it gets 2 cours that would be half the original series length. I do like more decompressed stories to see the girls interact and have adventures more than just rushing through the plot. A year-long run for a show like this is the sweet spot IMO, like what Precure gets.

This is a fairly short manga, though, so unless they just kind of do their own thing and add tons of anime original material, instead of adhering to the manga (which I assume the first anime did), the short length is probably justified.