frog

I have brief but vivid memories of playing this at a friend’s house in my younger days, so I thought I’d revisit it after playing Tangled, by the same devs.

People like this are why the kill la kill fandom is made a mockery of. They can't handle serious topics like sexual abuse without making humor out of it and treating satsuki like she's lucky for being in that situation even though she obviously didn't want it.

I do too. But it lives its whole life. So you have to take it seriously eventually, right? And be respectful and shit.

Summary of what I’m about to write: I’ve researched the work of Takashi Murakami & Kaikai Kiki, along with the concept of “Superflat”, for years. This has basically driven me insane, so I’d like to hear some second opinions on my findings and the conclusions (or lack thereof) that I’ve come to. With that out of the way… this concerns something I’ve had an OCD-like obsession for YEARS now, so I’m gonna try to turn a long story into something as compact as possible:

What I’ve initially read that Takashi Murakami & Kaikai Kiki are all about: They are the creators of “the Superflat movement”, a postmodern art movement intended to criticize and denounce things like otaku culture, moe and lolicon. An article by Michael Darling, who curated a 2001 Superflat exhibition, posited that the exhibition and its works “may have” a negative/critical stance on things like lolicon.

The conclusion I came to after doing my own research after suspecting that this reading is bullshit: “Superflat” is not considered by Murakami or any of his cronies to be an “art movement”. It was a word coined by Murakami to describe the “flattened” nature of Japanese art along with the idea of “flattening” the distinction between high and low art. The man’s stance on post-war “kawaii culture” is not a moral one, but a deeply conflicted one; he goes back and forth between talking about it as a good and bad thing and he views it from varying perspectives. And above all else, purported “Superflat movement” (which is not actually a movement) is not against moe, lolicon or any of those things. I personally contacted the aforementioned curator to ask him if his opinion has changed over the years; I basically jumped through hoops to find his contact info, and I had to exchange emails with his secretary first, but eventually I got to talk to him. His answer to my question of “do you think Murakami & co intended to take a stance against lolicon/moe/otaku culture” was “in retrospect, not at all”; he agreed with my personal reading of what it all meant. One of the Kaikai Kiki artists, who goes by the nickname “Mr.”, is a self-described “lolicon”. Direct quote: “I’m releasing my fantasy world through my work, instead of acting it out in real life.”

…SO, that’s where it should all end, right? It was just a misinterpretation that sparked a bunch of rumors; there’s nothing else to talk about. Well, there is ONE thing.

The self-described “lolicon” Mr. directed a film based on his lolicon drawings, called “Nobody Dies”.

A live action film.

Featuring real underage girls.

I looked up a bunch of info on the film to see how bad the whole is and eventually I found the trailer on Youtube. I was wondering if having this in my browser history could get me in trouble, but then I realized: this is “art-house cinema”. It was shown in American art galleries and watched by rich aristocrats, pondering its deep meanings while adjusting their monocles. The film contains some obviously-sexual shots of an actress who was 16-17 at the time of filming, along with a scene of another actress eating a phallic ice cream. The aforementioned actress, if my research was correct, was 13 years old at the age of filming.

And it turns out, she was not the only one.

The full film is not available anywhere online, but there are plenty of reviews that hint at its content. Some of them do call it intentionally-disturbing social commentary:

“Throughout the film, the camera lingers suggestively on the girls, like the eyes of a shut-in comic geek, making for an altogether uncomfortable viewing. Which is likely the point.”

Others just call it otaku bullshit:

“ More than a half hour long, the tedious narrative weaves together silly flashbacks with a plethora of crotch shots. The accompanying photos depict the girls in front of various locales in elaborate costumes—from gingham uniform skirts to fashionista camo—designed by Mr. and Kaikai Kiki. What the viewer is supposed to get out of “Nobody Dies” is anybody’s guess, but if Mr. hopes to entice more than just otaku geeks, he’d better start giving a clue, or his own career may expire.“

This guy sounds like he’s typing out the review with one hand while desperately trying to convince himself that he isn’t, and that the cum stains on his monitor are an illusion:

“Take the fanservice shots of the girls’ butts, boobs, and other sensitive camera angles out, and it’s no different in theme or content from any cute, playful, bubblegum film designed to thrill tween girls.

While there are a number of these shots in the film, quite blatantly aimed directly at the girls’ chests, between their legs, or at their bottoms, the viewer hardly sees anything they would not see in everyday normal life. There is one scene in which the camera follows directly behind one of the girls in the pool, and we watch as her legs open and close, kicking her swimming stroke. When she comes up for air, we see her head and face, and then her chest emerging out of the water.. and then the camera takes us from the floor, up her long, thin, unblemished legs as she showers after getting out of the pool, her bathing suit still providing excellent coverage and concealment.

These shots make me smile; I won’t lie. I enjoy them, but not in a sexual way. And I don’t think that Mr., or his intended audience, would be sexually excited by this. There is something beautiful and peaceful and pleasant about the clean lines, clear skin, and youthful features of the young female form, and about the bright & colorful palette seen in the film, along with the innocent and playful context. Critics confuse aesthetic pleasure for sexual pleasure, the innocent, cute, beauty of a young girl for something intended by artist/filmmaker as a sexual object.”

So basically… yeah. World-famous art collective Kaikai Kiki released a film, produced by Takashi Murakami and directed by a self-described lolicon, containing “fanservice” shots of a bunch of living, breathing girls aged 13-17.

My first thought upon seeing this, likely as a result of my utter self-hating lack of confidence in what I consider “common sense” was “Wait, what if I was wrong? No way would the art world embrace such a thing unless it is explicitly presented as satire. Clearly “Mr.” is a character and the whole thing IS in fact intended to satirize lolicon”.

But… no, that can’t be right. Takashi Murakami openly protested against the whole lolicon censorship thing from 2011 while teaming up with Seiji Matsuyama, the guy who made motherfucking EIKEN. He basically tricked Britney Spears into dressing up as a character from a loli manga by Matsuyama, then later revealed his actual intentions while going on a rant about artistic censorship. There was no public statement I could find even vaguely hinting that “Mr.” is a character; in fact, I found articles dating back to the 90s, from before the word “Superflat” even existed, where Murakami talks about him as “his otaku friend” who goes to conventions and collects doujinshi. Mr. has an entire gallery of lolicon and shotacon porn drawings which were shown at multiple exhibitions, and yes, that includes the US. The only “excuse” I could see them try to pull would be that the film is “self aware” and is intended to “explore” otaku-ism and fetishism in post-war Japan, but that doesn’t change the fact that they let a 39 year old self-described “lolicon” man direct a film that sexualizes teenage girls.

And even if they DID come out and say “no, it was an epic ruse all along xD”… WHO THE FUCK WOULD BUY THAT? I’m not insane for thinking that such an explanation would be an ass-pull, bullshit excuse, right?

I mean, as you all know I’m the type of person to defend such things as long as they are drawings, but doing it to LIVING underage girls as a 39 year old otaku film director is completely fucking different and you won’t see me morally justify that. And yet, this seems to be… a thing in Japan. Looking up the kind of teenage sexualization present in Japan will not yield pretty results. Girls that start off as “junior idols” will become accepted in mainstream TV, including anime and tokusatsu. The Japanese version of Playboy features AKB48 members, some of which are no older than 13. This entire thing seems to be an untouchable aspect of Japanese culture that people are afraid to tackle and criticize.

But yet… this was not merely shown in Japan, but also at the AMERICAN Kaikai Kiki exhibitions. This movie is a thing that was approved of by the US “fine art” world. And the only thing I can ask is… HOW THE FUCK DOES THIS HAPPEN.

(”no means no” and an untitled painting by yoshitomo nara, contemporary superflat artist; oil on canvas etc etc)

or aya takano (happens to be one of the many women influenced by the movement by the way), who criticizes lolicon by instead painting young cartoonish/anime female figures in van gogh-esque artistic nudes:

(”edible plant garment guardian deities” by aya takano; also, another gorgeous painting by her in a similar vein, “across two hundred years we send our blessings”; linking it cause this post is getting long)

or kensuke sugimoto, who criticizes the otaku idolization of so-perfect-it’s-impossible-in-real-life 2d female characters (the title of one of his exhibits translates roughly in english “real love is nowhere near here”) by doing crazy shit like this:

third example in no way implies “drawing loli art is wrong”, critiquing hyper-idealism is a very common thing 

It is truly difficult to cut ties with someone who is considered a staple part of the community you take part in. Many people would rather feign courtesy and acceptance than admit to harboring discomfort with individuals who interact often with their immediate friends. Behavior you deem as problematic seems to go unnoticed by the other members of your community, leading you to wonder if they’re really as bad as you make them out to be. You may fear social and mental repercussions by severing contact with such a person. Sometimes, it’s just easier to ignore your feelings of unease and keep the status quo. As a result, toxic individuals will continue to thrive in your community and continue spreading their influence, with few or no consequences.

Such is the case with Twitter and Tumblr user @andrearitsu. With almost 3k followers on Twitter alone, she is an insidiously popular person in the online yuri community. This post is written with the intention of showcasing the honestly troubling and downright dangerous behavior she exhibits and to explain why she is, simply put, not a good person and unfit to be a part of the fandom.

As a longstanding member of the yuri community, I know for a fact that I am not the only person who feels this way. Plenty of people, both people I know personally and from hearsay, have expressed real discomfort with Andrea. For a variety of reasons (which I will touch on later), however, they’re afraid to speak out. In fact, I personally don’t want any possible retribution inflicted on me, either, which is why I’m choosing to do this anonymously. I wouldn’t be doing this at all if I didn’t earnestly think that she has become an unmanageable problem within the fandom. I believe that the yuri community has really suffered with her inclusion; this post is not made with the purpose of inflicting harm towards her, but to warn people of the harm she presents, wittingly or unwittingly, to them.

Guilt-Tripping and Manipulation

The reason why Andrea has been able to go on for so long mostly unchecked, and the primary issue with her, is quite frankly her ability to manipulate the goodwill and intentions of other people. It is very difficult to raise a word against her because she seems like such a sympathetic person on paper. As a transwoman facing many prejudices and hardships, and as a purportedly staunch advocator of LGBTQIA and women’s rights, she definitely resembles a person worth admiring and supporting. The moment you’re deceived by this impression, however, is the moment where you cease to be able to speak out against her.

Andrea uses her mental illness and her status as a trans lesbian as an impregnable defense for everything she does. If you disagree with her, she accuses you of doing so because of her identity; if you attempt to speak out against her, she loudly and repeatedly livetweets the negative impact you’re having on her health. Furthermore, even if you do attempt to argue rationally with her, she’ll just spout an endless stream of arguments modeled on pseudo-intellectual Tumblr ideologies until you stop responding in frustration. This makes it impossible to ever have a dissenting opinion without severe (and often annoying or even distressing) consequences. There are plenty of instances on her public account where this happens, and I’m sure many people reading this have experienced some form of this when attempting to have a conversation with her. The example I’ve chosen to highlight is a fairly recent one from October 2015, in which one of her apparently close friends finally has enough of her and cuts off all ties.

https://archive.is/Y5TNS & https://archive.is/kyAas

As you can see here, Andrea seems to have been rebuffed (perhaps multiple times) by a friend who became increasingly uncomfortable with her until she snaps and publicly calls her out, begging her to leave her alone. This is the culmination of several days of Andrea tweeting things similar to the post she made, in which she constantly talks about being suicidal over the actions of her former friend. At this point, Andrea takes advantage of her own, rather large following to ask “advice” on a very public forum, where her friend can definitely see. This is problematic for several reasons: it paints the other party as a terrible person, it makes her look sympathetic and wronged, and it is a truly passive-aggressive way of getting her friend to feel bad.

The response that her friend finally gives is nothing short of revealing; they describe an individual who is toxic, clingy, and dramatic, with behavior that closely resembles stalker tendencies. She also summarizes the exact reason why Andrea is so difficult to pin down and confront:

“It doesn’t matter what reason I give because you will still make yourself to be the victim. You’re egoistical and manipulative but hide behind a facade of self-loathing and being a sweetheart.”

Andrea, of course, immediately acts in line with this statement in a string of melodramatic tweets.

https://archive.is/YJQHT                       

Again, you see the attempts to guilt-trip, garner sympathy, and cause a scene. She does this to an audience of nearly 3,000, instead of using something like a private account to air her grievances. Almost certainly, some of the people reading it are probably friends with the person she is speaking so negatively about. At the same time, she is very careful to pull back any sign of bitterness and insist that she still only wants the other party to be happy. By doing this, she maintains her façade of being a goodhearted, rightfully hurt, sympathetic individual. All at the expense of the person she originally had problems with.

As I’ve said before, this is recurring behavior. Earlier the same month, Andrea got into a fight with a friend for an unknown reason. The result is this tweet thread:

https://archive.is/n4r2T

There are several things to notice here. Andrea is the one who initiated cutting contact this time, which she dismisses quickly as “I softblocked you for 1 min,” making it seem less impactful as it actually is. She then immediately sets about trying to paint herself as the victim again: “Sorry I’m such a nuisance.” This self-deprecating language is a well-laid trap; if the other party agrees then they become the villain, but they can’t deny it either because that would amount to forgiving Andrea. The only choice they have is to not defend themselves. Andrea goes on to cement her position as the wronged party by alluding to her suicidal tendencies and mental issues, just like she did in my first example. Clearly, her ex-friend gives up soon after, but Andrea makes a point of tweeting several more times after the other person has stopped responding to her. She also says spitefully, “And maybe realize you’re not as great at arguments and debate as you think you are and you are pushing others away.” Which is ironic, considering the next example I’m about to present.

https://archive.is/PopAh

In a nutshell, Andrea posted a picture of Nozomi from Love Live! with giga-boobs, to which one of her followers posted a light-hearted (although there’s definitely a hint of discomfort in her tone) reply. This devolves into a 30+ reply thread that culminates in Andrea dismissing the other person from her friend circle. The entire thing is a bit of a trainwreck, but there are a few standout tweets. Andrea continually uses pseudo-social justice reasoning to justify what is essentially just a kink she has, defending it and claiming that it isn’t problematic. She goes from claiming giga-boobs aren’t that unrealistic to accusing the other person of objectifying women. Honestly, she does a lot in this thread, and I could make a whole post about this one thread alone but I’ll leave it up to you, the reader, to go through the whole thing if you have time. What’s important is that she presents her arguments as advocating women’s rights and sexual freedom, while in reality she’s supporting an objectifying fetish that’s literally about enhancing boobs, the most sexualized part of a woman’s body. Ultimately, she concludes the conversation by telling the other person she got triggered by their comments, that they were attacking her over and over, and that she didn’t want to talk to them anymore. Again, these are all comments designed to pull sympathy, guilt-trip the other person, and give her the upper hand by ending the conversation. One of her last tweets reads:

“I thought you were a friend. But I guess I was wrong, you’re just another person who tosses me away.”

It gets worse. Later on, she releases an entire stream of tweets about this person, unfairly skewing the story in her favor and unabashedly name-dropping the other party. 

https://archive.is/KZSni

This is the same behavior that she exhibits in the previous two examples. The list honestly goes on and on, but from these three instances, you can see that Andrea makes a habit of manipulation and framing herself as a victim. These were all pulled unedited from her public account, and have been presented in their full context. These are all things that commonly happen to people who try to seriously disagree with her in any way, making it nigh impossible for others to communicate her. You’re stuck with either ignoring her comments (which she’ll take as agreement), or arguing with her and being subjected to multiple tweets that may or may not be relevant or logical, before you inevitably give up the conversation or are blocked.

Undermining the Yuri Community

Andrea’s interpersonal relations are worrisome enough, but her misuse of her large following and the way she asserts her opinions as fact are harmful to the yuri fandom. The most insidious thing about her is that she truly seems like she’s talking sense, but in reality, she’s actually defending a lot of things that are, if not downright problematic, then at least worthy of criticism and close analysis. There are a lot of ways she does this (for example, the self-righteous assertion that giga-boobs are totally problem-free as mentioned above), but I’ve chosen to point out two other points directly relevant to the yuri fandom.

Valkyrie Drive: Mermaid, which came out Fall 2015, is fairly notorious for being a softcore lesbian hentai show. You can read about it in the MyAnimeList article if you somehow missed it, so I won’t go into details here. Andrea is a self-admitted fan of this show, evidence below:

https://archive.is/2zEFm, https://archive.is/dKcID

In the first link, she celebrates the existence of Valkyrie Drive after watching the first episode and eagerly paints it as a revolutionary show promoting feminist ideas of sexual liberation.

Just for reference, this is one of the official PVs for the show.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5aOq5sPg_Q

Even just by looking at the PV, it’s almost irrefutably obvious that the show was made with men in mind. Andrea doesn’t seem to acknowledge this at all, taking the complete opposite route and actually claiming that it benefits women.

Now, my issue with this is not the fact that she likes it. Plenty of women-loving-women enjoy this show, even while admitting it is problematic. My issue is that she doesn’t do that. Instead, she enjoys it uncritically, and when she finds out that a lot of people don’t like it for very good reasons, she paints herself as a victim once again. The second link I provided contains tweets after the infamous scene in episode 4 of the anime, where a girl is (very explicitly) sexually assaulted by faceless men. Instead of acknowledging people’s (rightful) discomfort with the show, she instead expresses her own discomfort about not being able to like a show for fear of being judged by other people.

“Similarily, I’ve wanted to catch up on Valkyrie Drive -Mermaid- in the last three weeks but due to the awful scene in the episode before -that one it’s beecome a case of me being worried about enjoying the rest of it at the risk of people looking down at me.”

Again, Andrea is careful to present herself as a conscientious person in this thread. She calls the scene “awful,” as if acknowledging people’s outrage with it. She also later says that the only person she blames for her “being worried about enjoying the rest of it” is herself. However, the language she uses clearly is tended to make her look sympathetic. She calls out to others who may feel the same way, says some self-deprecating things to garner sympathy, and preemptively guilts those who would judge her for enjoying the show. She never explicitly admits that Valkyrie Drive is pure fan service appealing to the male gaze, and never directly calls the show’s integrity into question. Her worry is simply that she won’t be able to enjoy her super problematic show without other people hating her for it.

Andrea takes a similar route in her handling of Sakura Trick, which aired in Winter 2014. Adapted from a yuri 4-koma, this show is definitely a lot less explicitly problematic than Valkyrie Drive, but a lot of lesbian/bi/pan women took issue with it as well, and it was a fairly hot-button topic in the yuri community when it was first released. She wrote a long post on her blog addressing, combating, and ultimately dismissing the concerns of the community.

https://archive.is/orsyY

For the sake of time (this post has dragged on long enough as it is), I’m not going to bother responding and refuting every single point she tries to make in her article; I’m just going to showcase a few, more problematic ones that she bases her argument on.

First off, she discounts the experiences of other queer women watching the show who dislike it:

“I’ve been told by multiple people now that the problem comes down to Sakura Trick reinforcing the tasteless idea that lesbian couples are just something hot for boys to look at…. Now, honestly, that’s something I found quite offensive. I know countless of men who don’t get into fan-service, and I know plenty of girls that don’t.”

Instead of digging deeper into why a (very large!) number of people really did not enjoy this show, she simply tells them, “Based on my anecdotal experience, there’s nothing wrong with the fan service and you shouldn’t dislike it.”

She then goes on to say that an example of media objectifying lesbians is the common trope of men “turning” lesbians straight. While this is true, she harps on and on about this already-obvious point for several paragraphs, as if it is the only instance of media objectifying lesbians that exists. Clearly, that’s not the case; Valkyrie Drive doesn’t have any lesbians turning straight, but that doesn’t stop it from objectifying relationships between women. She contrasts Sakura Trick with this type of media for so long to confuse the reader and throw them off track; in reality, these two types of fan service are incomparable beyond superficial elements.

Finally, and most troublingly, she addresses the issue of Sakura Trick having a large male fanbase:

“If a straight man find Sakura Trick incredibly sexy because it has lesbians in it, there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s personal sexual taste that we can not control. Your fantasies and enjoyment are always yours and should never be in control of someone else.”

This is literally the same mindset that self-admitted pedophiles have. Andrea acts as if the things you are attracted to exist in a vacuum. She excuses men who seek out Sakura Trick and other media with lesbians on the basis that as long as those men don’t act upon it, then they’re totally allowed to have lesbian fetishes. The comparison to pedophiles may seem like an extreme one, but the connection is there; Andrea goes out of her way to excuse people who have sexual fantasies about specific demographics that would most certainly not consent to those sexual fantasies if they knew about them.

There are tons of other arguments I could make about how problematic this article is, but ultimately, my point is that Andrea exhibits harmful mindsets as fact and defends them. My issue isn’t that she likes Sakura Trick, it’s that she’s willing to defend it even when receiving a lot of feedback about how people view it as objectification for legitimate reasons. She would rather excuse it and all its faults (and remember, no media exists without faults) than acknowledge that some people might take issue with something she doesn’t like - to the point where she would write a very long post arguing with them.

And, of course, she also manages to slip in some classic guilt-tripping and manipulation at the end of her article:

“And yes, I realize some of you will toss out every single word I wrote here simply because I’m transgender, and you know what? If you’re going to be that simple minded, I don’t want you reading my things anyway.”

As I’ve mentioned repeatedly, Andrea has no qualms about using her identity as a defense for any of her actions. Here, she basically implies that anyone who disagrees with her is only doing so because they are transphobic (instead of, you know, having reasonable disagreements with her statements). This is a huge discredit to the rest of the trans community and the struggles they face.

Conclusion

I’d like to close off this post with one last piece of evidence: a sex rp thread on Andrea’s public twitter account. As a warning, I want to mention that it is extremely graphic and triggering.

https://archive.is/de82B

The above is a link to a thread written in August 2015, between Andrea and a Vocaloid nsfw-rp twitter. Honestly, I think it really speaks for itself, and furthermore, it definitely explains why Andrea would be so insistent on the idea that fetishes exist in a vacuum. This post has gone on for long enough, and I’m not going to bother dissecting just how problematic it is; I can barely stand reading it without feeling severely discomforted. Again, this took place on her public account, which is followed by many, many minors.

Thank you for taking the time to read through this post, if you’ve made it this far. I really hope I’ve managed to convince at least a few people of the harmful nature of Andrea’s presence within the yuri community. At the very least, I hope that this lends some skepticism to the morality of her character. Again, my intention for this post was not to attack Andrea, but to make the yuri community a safer place by revealing already-public information about a potentially dangerous individual. I’ll be happy to answer any questions within reason and clarify my statements in DMs on twitter (@andrearitsucallout), but will not be responding to any direct replies in tweets or asks on Tumblr.

Links

“If a straight man finds [softcore anime porn] incredibly sexy because it has lesbians in it, there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s personal sexual taste that we can not control. Your fantasies and enjoyment are always yours and should never be in control of someone else.”

Last chance to own a piece created by Suehiro Maruo.

For more information:

[email protected]

12 Days of Aniblogging, Day 5

Writing about Heaven Will Be Mine is so so hard because any level of engagement with this game reduces me to warm melty sludge, so I’m going to keep this one short.

Mecha animes always get so close to having something interesting to say, but they can never quite get it out smoothly. Macross has something to say about how human society will always try to make art and love even in the most dire of wars, but the balance of war to art never sits right. Macross 7 has something to say about how the power of diverse new music can force you to reconsider your identity and perspectives, but this gets muddled after 49 episodes of alien hijinks. Macross Frontier… okay maybe Macross is my only strong frame of reference for the genre, so I’ll eschew the specific examples. What I’m trying to say is that mecha anime really does have a Wow Cool Robot problem.

This meme places the blame squarely on the fans for failing to notice the actual message the show is blasting outwards, too distracted by the medium of cool robots. But I think that’s a little disingenuous. Fans suck, but also most of these shows are padded to hell and do a pretty murky job of actually shooting out that “war is bad” missile. Subtlety is nice and all, but in a world where a lot of war media is literally military-funded psuedopropaganda, if you’re sincere about being anti-war, it means a lot to really make that clear.

Heaven Will Be Mine is kinda rooted in Cold War politics, but that’s not the focus. Its actual meaning and value is rather nested and personal. Don’t get me wrong, this is not a subtle game! It’s blunt and direct and horny in only the way a bunch of gay girls writing about gay girls mech fighting could be. But the problem’s not finding the messages, it’s decoding them. This is a game that’s running on dozens of layers at once. It’s hard to keep track of everything, and I think that’s the point. There’s the ambitions of the factions in the past and present, the ever increasing archive of memos and emails, the chatlogs, the current political situation, the history of each girl, who’s fucked who and when, what the future could hold, the power levels of each Ship-Self, what was going on behind the scenes of the space program, what each girl wants personally compared to their faction, the effects of Gravity, the effects of Culture.

But when all else fails, you’ve always got one layer you can return to: the spectacular trio of characters fighting and loving each other in their Cool Robots. And sometimes, that’s all you need.

It is truly difficult to cut ties with someone who is considered a staple part of the community you take part in. Many people would rather feign courtesy and acceptance than admit to harboring discomfort with individuals who interact often with their immediate friends. Behavior you deem as problematic seems to go unnoticed by the other members of your community, leading you to wonder if they’re really as bad as you make them out to be. You may fear social and mental repercussions by severing contact with such a person. Sometimes, it’s just easier to ignore your feelings of unease and keep the status quo. As a result, toxic individuals will continue to thrive in your community and continue spreading their influence, with few or no consequences.

Such is the case with Twitter and Tumblr user @andrearitsu. With almost 3k followers on Twitter alone, she is an insidiously popular person in the online yuri community. This post is written with the intention of showcasing the honestly troubling and downright dangerous behavior she exhibits and to explain why she is, simply put, not a good person and unfit to be a part of the fandom.

As a longstanding member of the yuri community, I know for a fact that I am not the only person who feels this way. Plenty of people, both people I know personally and from hearsay, have expressed real discomfort with Andrea. For a variety of reasons (which I will touch on later), however, they’re afraid to speak out. In fact, I personally don’t want any possible retribution inflicted on me, either, which is why I’m choosing to do this anonymously. I wouldn’t be doing this at all if I didn’t earnestly think that she has become an unmanageable problem within the fandom. I believe that the yuri community has really suffered with her inclusion; this post is not made with the purpose of inflicting harm towards her, but to warn people of the harm she presents, wittingly or unwittingly, to them.

Guilt-Tripping and Manipulation

The reason why Andrea has been able to go on for so long mostly unchecked, and the primary issue with her, is quite frankly her ability to manipulate the goodwill and intentions of other people. It is very difficult to raise a word against her because she seems like such a sympathetic person on paper. As a transwoman facing many prejudices and hardships, and as a purportedly staunch advocator of LGBTQIA and women’s rights, she definitely resembles a person worth admiring and supporting. The moment you’re deceived by this impression, however, is the moment where you cease to be able to speak out against her.

Andrea uses her mental illness and her status as a trans lesbian as an impregnable defense for everything she does. If you disagree with her, she accuses you of doing so because of her identity; if you attempt to speak out against her, she loudly and repeatedly livetweets the negative impact you’re having on her health. Furthermore, even if you do attempt to argue rationally with her, she’ll just spout an endless stream of arguments modeled on pseudo-intellectual Tumblr ideologies until you stop responding in frustration. This makes it impossible to ever have a dissenting opinion without severe (and often annoying or even distressing) consequences. There are plenty of instances on her public account where this happens, and I’m sure many people reading this have experienced some form of this when attempting to have a conversation with her. The example I’ve chosen to highlight is a fairly recent one from October 2015, in which one of her apparently close friends finally has enough of her and cuts off all ties.

https://archive.is/Y5TNS & https://archive.is/kyAas

As you can see here, Andrea seems to have been rebuffed (perhaps multiple times) by a friend who became increasingly uncomfortable with her until she snaps and publicly calls her out, begging her to leave her alone. This is the culmination of several days of Andrea tweeting things similar to the post she made, in which she constantly talks about being suicidal over the actions of her former friend. At this point, Andrea takes advantage of her own, rather large following to ask “advice” on a very public forum, where her friend can definitely see. This is problematic for several reasons: it paints the other party as a terrible person, it makes her look sympathetic and wronged, and it is a truly passive-aggressive way of getting her friend to feel bad.

The response that her friend finally gives is nothing short of revealing; they describe an individual who is toxic, clingy, and dramatic, with behavior that closely resembles stalker tendencies. She also summarizes the exact reason why Andrea is so difficult to pin down and confront:

“It doesn’t matter what reason I give because you will still make yourself to be the victim. You’re egoistical and manipulative but hide behind a facade of self-loathing and being a sweetheart.”

Andrea, of course, immediately acts in line with this statement in a string of melodramatic tweets.

https://archive.is/YJQHT                       

Again, you see the attempts to guilt-trip, garner sympathy, and cause a scene. She does this to an audience of nearly 3,000, instead of using something like a private account to air her grievances. Almost certainly, some of the people reading it are probably friends with the person she is speaking so negatively about. At the same time, she is very careful to pull back any sign of bitterness and insist that she still only wants the other party to be happy. By doing this, she maintains her façade of being a goodhearted, rightfully hurt, sympathetic individual. All at the expense of the person she originally had problems with.

As I’ve said before, this is recurring behavior. Earlier the same month, Andrea got into a fight with a friend for an unknown reason. The result is this tweet thread:

https://archive.is/n4r2T

There are several things to notice here. Andrea is the one who initiated cutting contact this time, which she dismisses quickly as “I softblocked you for 1 min,” making it seem less impactful as it actually is. She then immediately sets about trying to paint herself as the victim again: “Sorry I’m such a nuisance.” This self-deprecating language is a well-laid trap; if the other party agrees then they become the villain, but they can’t deny it either because that would amount to forgiving Andrea. The only choice they have is to not defend themselves. Andrea goes on to cement her position as the wronged party by alluding to her suicidal tendencies and mental issues, just like she did in my first example. Clearly, her ex-friend gives up soon after, but Andrea makes a point of tweeting several more times after the other person has stopped responding to her. She also says spitefully, “And maybe realize you’re not as great at arguments and debate as you think you are and you are pushing others away.” Which is ironic, considering the next example I’m about to present.

https://archive.is/PopAh

In a nutshell, Andrea posted a picture of Nozomi from Love Live! with giga-boobs, to which one of her followers posted a light-hearted (although there’s definitely a hint of discomfort in her tone) reply. This devolves into a 30+ reply thread that culminates in Andrea dismissing the other person from her friend circle. The entire thing is a bit of a trainwreck, but there are a few standout tweets. Andrea continually uses pseudo-social justice reasoning to justify what is essentially just a kink she has, defending it and claiming that it isn’t problematic. She goes from claiming giga-boobs aren’t that unrealistic to accusing the other person of objectifying women. Honestly, she does a lot in this thread, and I could make a whole post about this one thread alone but I’ll leave it up to you, the reader, to go through the whole thing if you have time. What’s important is that she presents her arguments as advocating women’s rights and sexual freedom, while in reality she’s supporting an objectifying fetish that’s literally about enhancing boobs, the most sexualized part of a woman’s body. Ultimately, she concludes the conversation by telling the other person she got triggered by their comments, that they were attacking her over and over, and that she didn’t want to talk to them anymore. Again, these are all comments designed to pull sympathy, guilt-trip the other person, and give her the upper hand by ending the conversation. One of her last tweets reads:

“I thought you were a friend. But I guess I was wrong, you’re just another person who tosses me away.”

It gets worse. Later on, she releases an entire stream of tweets about this person, unfairly skewing the story in her favor and unabashedly name-dropping the other party. 

https://archive.is/KZSni

This is the same behavior that she exhibits in the previous two examples. The list honestly goes on and on, but from these three instances, you can see that Andrea makes a habit of manipulation and framing herself as a victim. These were all pulled unedited from her public account, and have been presented in their full context. These are all things that commonly happen to people who try to seriously disagree with her in any way, making it nigh impossible for others to communicate her. You’re stuck with either ignoring her comments (which she’ll take as agreement), or arguing with her and being subjected to multiple tweets that may or may not be relevant or logical, before you inevitably give up the conversation or are blocked.

Undermining the Yuri Community

Andrea’s interpersonal relations are worrisome enough, but her misuse of her large following and the way she asserts her opinions as fact are harmful to the yuri fandom. The most insidious thing about her is that she truly seems like she’s talking sense, but in reality, she’s actually defending a lot of things that are, if not downright problematic, then at least worthy of criticism and close analysis. There are a lot of ways she does this (for example, the self-righteous assertion that giga-boobs are totally problem-free as mentioned above), but I’ve chosen to point out two other points directly relevant to the yuri fandom.

Valkyrie Drive: Mermaid, which came out Fall 2015, is fairly notorious for being a softcore lesbian hentai show. You can read about it in the MyAnimeList article if you somehow missed it, so I won’t go into details here. Andrea is a self-admitted fan of this show, evidence below:

https://archive.is/2zEFm, https://archive.is/dKcID

In the first link, she celebrates the existence of Valkyrie Drive after watching the first episode and eagerly paints it as a revolutionary show promoting feminist ideas of sexual liberation.

Just for reference, this is one of the official PVs for the show.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5aOq5sPg_Q

Even just by looking at the PV, it’s almost irrefutably obvious that the show was made with men in mind. Andrea doesn’t seem to acknowledge this at all, taking the complete opposite route and actually claiming that it benefits women.

Now, my issue with this is not the fact that she likes it. Plenty of women-loving-women enjoy this show, even while admitting it is problematic. My issue is that she doesn’t do that. Instead, she enjoys it uncritically, and when she finds out that a lot of people don’t like it for very good reasons, she paints herself as a victim once again. The second link I provided contains tweets after the infamous scene in episode 4 of the anime, where a girl is (very explicitly) sexually assaulted by faceless men. Instead of acknowledging people’s (rightful) discomfort with the show, she instead expresses her own discomfort about not being able to like a show for fear of being judged by other people.

“Similarily, I’ve wanted to catch up on Valkyrie Drive -Mermaid- in the last three weeks but due to the awful scene in the episode before -that one it’s beecome a case of me being worried about enjoying the rest of it at the risk of people looking down at me.”

Again, Andrea is careful to present herself as a conscientious person in this thread. She calls the scene “awful,” as if acknowledging people’s outrage with it. She also later says that the only person she blames for her “being worried about enjoying the rest of it” is herself. However, the language she uses clearly is tended to make her look sympathetic. She calls out to others who may feel the same way, says some self-deprecating things to garner sympathy, and preemptively guilts those who would judge her for enjoying the show. She never explicitly admits that Valkyrie Drive is pure fan service appealing to the male gaze, and never directly calls the show’s integrity into question. Her worry is simply that she won’t be able to enjoy her super problematic show without other people hating her for it.

Andrea takes a similar route in her handling of Sakura Trick, which aired in Winter 2014. Adapted from a yuri 4-koma, this show is definitely a lot less explicitly problematic than Valkyrie Drive, but a lot of lesbian/bi/pan women took issue with it as well, and it was a fairly hot-button topic in the yuri community when it was first released. She wrote a long post on her blog addressing, combating, and ultimately dismissing the concerns of the community.

https://archive.is/orsyY

For the sake of time (this post has dragged on long enough as it is), I’m not going to bother responding and refuting every single point she tries to make in her article; I’m just going to showcase a few, more problematic ones that she bases her argument on.

First off, she discounts the experiences of other queer women watching the show who dislike it:

“I’ve been told by multiple people now that the problem comes down to Sakura Trick reinforcing the tasteless idea that lesbian couples are just something hot for boys to look at…. Now, honestly, that’s something I found quite offensive. I know countless of men who don’t get into fan-service, and I know plenty of girls that don’t.”

Instead of digging deeper into why a (very large!) number of people really did not enjoy this show, she simply tells them, “Based on my anecdotal experience, there’s nothing wrong with the fan service and you shouldn’t dislike it.”

She then goes on to say that an example of media objectifying lesbians is the common trope of men “turning” lesbians straight. While this is true, she harps on and on about this already-obvious point for several paragraphs, as if it is the only instance of media objectifying lesbians that exists. Clearly, that’s not the case; Valkyrie Drive doesn’t have any lesbians turning straight, but that doesn’t stop it from objectifying relationships between women. She contrasts Sakura Trick with this type of media for so long to confuse the reader and throw them off track; in reality, these two types of fan service are incomparable beyond superficial elements.

Finally, and most troublingly, she addresses the issue of Sakura Trick having a large male fanbase:

“If a straight man find Sakura Trick incredibly sexy because it has lesbians in it, there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s personal sexual taste that we can not control. Your fantasies and enjoyment are always yours and should never be in control of someone else.”

This is literally the same mindset that self-admitted pedophiles have. Andrea acts as if the things you are attracted to exist in a vacuum. She excuses men who seek out Sakura Trick and other media with lesbians on the basis that as long as those men don’t act upon it, then they’re totally allowed to have lesbian fetishes. The comparison to pedophiles may seem like an extreme one, but the connection is there; Andrea goes out of her way to excuse people who have sexual fantasies about specific demographics that would most certainly not consent to those sexual fantasies if they knew about them.

There are tons of other arguments I could make about how problematic this article is, but ultimately, my point is that Andrea exhibits harmful mindsets as fact and defends them. My issue isn’t that she likes Sakura Trick, it’s that she’s willing to defend it even when receiving a lot of feedback about how people view it as objectification for legitimate reasons. She would rather excuse it and all its faults (and remember, no media exists without faults) than acknowledge that some people might take issue with something she doesn’t like - to the point where she would write a very long post arguing with them.

And, of course, she also manages to slip in some classic guilt-tripping and manipulation at the end of her article:

“And yes, I realize some of you will toss out every single word I wrote here simply because I’m transgender, and you know what? If you’re going to be that simple minded, I don’t want you reading my things anyway.”

As I’ve mentioned repeatedly, Andrea has no qualms about using her identity as a defense for any of her actions. Here, she basically implies that anyone who disagrees with her is only doing so because they are transphobic (instead of, you know, having reasonable disagreements with her statements). This is a huge discredit to the rest of the trans community and the struggles they face.

Conclusion

I’d like to close off this post with one last piece of evidence: a sex rp thread on Andrea’s public twitter account. As a warning, I want to mention that it is extremely graphic and triggering.

https://archive.is/de82B

The above is a link to a thread written in August 2015, between Andrea and a Vocaloid nsfw-rp twitter. Honestly, I think it really speaks for itself, and furthermore, it definitely explains why Andrea would be so insistent on the idea that fetishes exist in a vacuum. This post has gone on for long enough, and I’m not going to bother dissecting just how problematic it is; I can barely stand reading it without feeling severely discomforted. Again, this took place on her public account, which is followed by many, many minors.

Thank you for taking the time to read through this post, if you’ve made it this far. I really hope I’ve managed to convince at least a few people of the harmful nature of Andrea’s presence within the yuri community. At the very least, I hope that this lends some skepticism to the morality of her character. Again, my intention for this post was not to attack Andrea, but to make the yuri community a safer place by revealing already-public information about a potentially dangerous individual. I’ll be happy to answer any questions within reason and clarify my statements in DMs on twitter (@andrearitsucallout), but will not be responding to any direct replies in tweets or asks on Tumblr.

Links

if a guy jacks off to anime lesbians he’s raping every real living lesbian I guess

Note the Shingo drawing is exactly the same as this colored anime pic:  

The art book this pic is from is credited to author ‘Rumiko Takahashi’ but it’s very obvious that the anime production stuff is not all done by her; it has frames from the show, background art, etc. to think Rumiko, who drew endless fanservice of her characters, wrote that note, is like Naruto fans thinking Kishimoto animates the entire anime. it’s obviously an attempt to make the franchise more family-friendly, as the manga (before the anime started airing) had TONS of nudity and fanservice.

Rumiko drew NOTHING like that around the time when that picture was drawn. How could a fan make this mistake? 

It’s so easy for a manga artist who’s already famous to tell a bunch of small, up-and-coming young artists to “stop complaining” about a massive corporation censoring adult art on a platform that countless creators use to independently make a profit.

I know it was likely hard for Maruo to get his art noticed back in the day, but “this guy had to suffer to find success in his youth, so youngsters these days should endure hardships too!” would not be a very good argument.

It’s so easy for a manga artist who’s already famous to tell a bunch of small, up-and-coming young artists to “stop complaining” about a massive corporation censoring adult art on a platform that countless creators use to independently make a profit.

I know it was likely hard for Maruo to get his art noticed back in the day, but “this guy had to suffer to find success in his youth, so youngsters these days should endure hardships too!” would not be a very good argument.