drawing deltarune every day until chapter 3&4 drop ✨(day 121)
something's different.
Whenever people talk about Denji from Chainsaw Man being a "perverted anime character" I feel like we read completely different manga. Denji doesn't try to trick girls into stripping for him, he doesn't grope people without their consent, he's not looking up girls' skirts or doing any of the other horrible pervert shit that Master Roshi or that awful rat baby from the superhero anime did. He just bluntly states that one of the things he wants out of life is to touch boobs and kiss girls. That's not being a pervert, that's just being a teenage boy who likes girls.
In fact Denji suffers sexual assault and harassment more than anyone else in the manga, so it really feels gross to lump him in with that archetype if you think about it for more than two seconds.
I've always found it fascinating that Denji's first overtly sexual interaction with another person is transactional, focused on explicit consent, and viewed as meaningless because there was a lack of emotional connection between him and the other person. It really seems like he wasn't even actually expecting Power to follow through until she does and was totally fine with it, and his emotional struggle afterwards is so poignant and sad, especially when Makima immediately uses this emotional difficulty to twist him around her finger further.
Its even more wild to see all this get distilled into nothing but 'wow what a pervert', especially when its so early on and so connected to Denji losing Pochita and how he wants emotional closeness but can't express that.
Still fucks me up when he says 'They won't even let me dream' about the mob and that's basically the emotional throughline of the entirety of part 1.
There's also something to be said about how Denji's situation is, like, an exaggeration of growing up AMAB. Denji is a young man and he's expected to be Masculine, and that means he's gotta be stoic and tough and get girls. So when he wants to express needs that aren't masculine - like his desperate need for a genuine emotional connection with people - he expresses it the way he's allowed to: as sexual desire. Denji doesn't really just want to touch boobs, he wants to love and be loved in turn, but he doesn't think he'll ever be allowed to have that or even want it, so instead it all comes out as a more acceptably masculine desire for sex.
He's an incredibly vulnerable and timid character when you get past the crude bluster in how he talks, and that crudeness is so easily explained by his upbringing. The idea that he's "just a pervert" is such an insulting read, he's way more complicated and tender-hearted than that implies.
Watched the first episode of Journal With Witch - a perfectly solid start to a show. I find myself intrigued by the direction of the character designs - namely why these two women are so non-femme?
The older aunt Makio's hard chin and eyes and tall prescence are obvious, and even the younger Asa has this bulky frame to her and a level of height that is not typical for the genre. I don't think there is an intent to degenderize them or anything, at least not strongly - the author of the manga (which has similar designs, this isn't an anime-only thing) discusses it being a "story about the bonds between women" and such. But it does combine these characters with a more overall cold & reserved design philosophy:
Both characters wear a lot of browns and greys, with monochrome designs and minimal flourish. This is a story about grief/depression, so it matches that tone, that is the first level reading for sure. On top of that I feel like in anime more explicit "feminine" traits have a more inherently romantic/intimate strength to them than in real life, something the show does not want these characters to have; their journey is going to be very internal where those connotations don't have much of a place.
But if you told me the author was deliberately trying to queer the fujoshi/yuri binary, I wouldn't be like shocked or anything.
Anyway, this episode did a good job setting up the inherent dynamic - frazzled social misfit artist-type aunt and responsible-but-reserved lost soul niece - and the themes of their mutual loneliness. What it will live or die on to me is how much it understands the need for the emotional journey of Asa in particular to travel outside of this core dynamic. If every episode is "I struggle with loneliness...but now I have my found family", it will get both repetitive fast and be unrealistic to how long a valuable bond takes to form - but this kind of "rushing it" circularity is common in this genre of anime from my experience.
It definitely has potential, so we will see if it can avoid the pitfalls!