~Mass Effect Trash~

it straight up feels like you have to go full gen z and say "please for the love of christ show me some hags" when trying to get a recommendation on anime that has grown women in it, and that's frustrating in a way that the disingenuous posts circulating around never seem to address.

i don't want to call women hags, but unless i make the distinction that i want to see older, fatter women whose characterization includes their life experience, i ain't gonna get that from y'all. in the past two days i've seen numerous posts from other people hollering into the void about yuri with adult women in it, which can be a tad reductive, but is being disingenuously interpreted by morons as the seeker calling everyone who likes anime, pedophiles.

as we all know, that's only partially true, and if you're a pedophile reading this, kill yourself. for the rest of you, we're going to use picture examples to draw some lines in the sand and describe what does and doesn't matter to the "adult women"-seeking yuri enthusiast.

i'm gonna use picture examples, and condescend to the reader heavily as if speaking to a child, so that i can make myself perfectly fucking clear. just think of me as the Strong Bad of Women.

let's start with a character design i absolutely hate, and we'll work backwards toward the good stuff.

below is a model sheet for kikuri hiroi from bocchi. she's in her mid-twenties. she's built like a stack of plywood and has a head like a melon. these are both fine qualities for any human being to have. she is frequently depicted drinking beer:

if i'm the one asking for a recommendation from you however, understand that she ain't what i'm looking for. she isn't 1) an older woman, 2) a fatter woman, or 3) a character for whom the life experience she has is a serious factor in how she behaves.

she's a 90 pound alcoholic who looks like she just took her 8th grade yearbook photos, and people look like that sometimes. but now you can start to understand the distinction- i know you're showing me an adult woman, but now we both understand that I asked for a recommendation of something with older, fatter, experienced women in it, and you showed me a character who brings to mind none of that.

so let's try and find something, anything, any oasis in this fucking desert, together. take my hand. 🤝

this is milly and meryl, from trigun. milly, the giant, is the younger of the two at 19 or 21 (there's a timeskip), and meryl, the second proud owner of some broad-ass shoulders and size 13 shoes in the image, is the same age as kikuri up above.

neither of these women is what i'd call older or fatter. we eat table scraps in this search, though, and someone in my position, seeking body diversity, is going to be thrilled to see women who are square, who have bad posture, and I think these two actually do deliver on being characters whose behavior is informed by life experience, considering they live in, y'know, Planet Texas and everything is trying to kill them, not to be too reductive. their lives are challenging enough that you get excited for them to cut loose and have fun, instead of just... I dunno, watching them be cute? That's a broader genre criticism of anime that seems to just want to show you Pictures of Women In Sequence, but when I'm asking for recommendations of this type, it's as a lifetime watcher of shows that aim to tell stories.

I feel like Hank Hill at the trial proving he didn't rent Cuffs and Collars, but I also feel like this is the most effective way to get my point across.

dead center here is Pine-Pine from Space Dandy. she appears in one episode of the oversexed stylistic romp that is Space Dandy, and she's the absolute finest woman ever committed to animation in the entire run of the show.

she's older. she's fatter. she has ABSOLUTELY NO STORY. now you begin to see how the three circles of the venn diagram of the seeker's heart never find that blessed triple overlap.

this is Fujiko Mine from anime and manga classic dating back to 1967, Lupin III. she's older! she's got a wealth of incredible life experiences! all of her body fat is stowed safely away in the tits and ass, which is great if that's what you're looking for, but she's from 1967, when those were legally the only areas at which a woman was allowed to carry her fat.

it's been 59 fucking years, we can do better now than anime's own Jessica Rabbit. she is bad as fuck though and i love her- but she's not what we're looking for. again. it's a triple venn. we only got two. she simply is not fatter. you can hold that bitch like a cup.

and none of this manages to address the fact that, in the shit-ass posts circulating around this website, the other seekers are looking for yuri. which adds a fourth circle to the venn diagram, making the overlap an even bigger pain in the fucking ass, and it's one i'm not even gonna try for myself. i'm already walking uphill both ways to make this point to you.

here's a couple of dwarves from dungeon meshi. we all know ryoko kui is simply moving different when it comes to body diversity, but even here, let's talk:

it's just the dwarves that are built like this.

falin has broad shoulders and wears a pillowcase to work. she's not that heavy. fanart has done an awesome job at fattening her up, but i'm not watching fanart on my fucking television, am I?

the primary lesbian romance is between a college grad who hates to eat and a woman who isn't there until the end, it's all one-sided yearning until it isn't. i'm happy they love each other, but them loving each other isn't the story we're presented with, and we shouldn't pretend it is.

for once, we can freely tick the box on life experience. the dwarves at least are older and act like it, and in dungeon meshi, everyone's striving, growing, eating bullshit they found on the ground, and learning.

are you starting to see how close we can get, to what the seeker is asking for, and still never get there?

here's a fucking shotgun blast of older women with diverse body types, all from the same studio- are you gonna look me in the eye and tell me that studio ghibli is the only studio qualified to make women like this?

and even then, none of them are darker than an afternoon tan, but that's an entirely separate discussion worthy of drawing up entirely different examples and making entirely different comparisons.

frankly, i'm as white as elmer's glue and would rather an expert with her own life experience have that discussion with you, while I focus on what I'm good at, which is being an old, fat dyke.

to the point of this post, however, they're older! they're fatter! they have life experiences!

and not a single one is fucking one of the other ones! so you still can't pitch anyone depicted here as a suitable recommendation for someone seeking yuri with older, fatter, experienced women.

finally, it goes without saying that i don't want you recommending me shit about anyone in school. not unless it's fucking grad school. you show me a fat bitch who loves women, has stress lines on her forehead, and is working on her doctorate, and i'll kiss you on the fucking mouth. but nobody's showing me that, and if it's out there, the crowd looking for it hasn't found it yet.

now, i know we're in a literacy crisis right now, but if you read the whole post, congratulations. that was a lot of reading! go get yourself a go-gurt out of the freezer and watch a few hours of Keijo! or something to treat yourself. i know that was hard. i'm proud of you. i'm even prouder of you if you read the whole post and didn't come away from it so scandalized that you have to mischaracterize me as humanity's greatest monster because I don't like your favorite cartoon.

i'll leave you with one more picture. it's kaede from inuyasha. she doesn't fuck women that we know of, but if she did, we'd be living in that chrome future from the meme.