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I’m currently not that motivated to read or watch the most popular or trending things. I’d rather indulge in short, tropey, audience catering works, unless I have solid recommendations. Maybe this will change soon because I want to know the popular things like everyone else lol.

Issues that concern me in anime and manga in general are how women are portrayed, from their characterization to the way they are designed— hell, I even take issue with school uniforms and how unfair they are.
All this has often been a subject of recurrent anguish, which might reflect in my reviews.

I like to read or watch anything with both important male and important female characters. That’s why I tend to avoid majority single sex media, unless it is Magical Girl because they’re cute.

I'm a huge fan of romance (yaoi/yuri/GL/BL, I'm not interested in). And I love seeing romantic relationships included and well-written in non-romance focused media. As such, I have my own standards for what a proper romance should look like. There should be...

-a level of physical attraction (such as increased heart rate with increased proximity),
-a bond beyond acquaintances
-jealousy when the love interest is with the opposite sex helps too but is not necessary
-other little things that I can’t think of right now

Otherwise, the feelings will be deemed platonic.

On that topic, I absolutely hate it when romantic relationships are depicted as the ultimate form of love, the most important relationship in one's life, and that you'll be lonely without one. That's why I love it when the story shows that there are people important to the couple besides each other (unless there are circumstances where this is not possible, as is often the case with yanderes and their backstories). But I do understand that in the romance genre, in order to make a romance interesting and memorable, the couple are often the most important people to each other and have a particularly unique, irreplaceable bond where they understand each other the most, which is fine, and also something I enjoy when executed correctly.

My favorite setting has got to be a historical setting that has a lot of influence from contemporary/“western” values, such as more positive views on women. Meaning, a setting that materially, is historically accurate, but in terms of select cultural and social beliefs, is not.
I don’t think your typical historical setting where “all women have to be submissive and pop out kids young” is a very useful read to me even if it is accurate, because what value is there in seeing that worldview pop up again? I say that because just the “small” misogynist ideas are never challenged. And contemporary settings are not my favorite because I am very environmentally conscious and too aware that the way we live our material lives, hell even our very social structures, are highly unsustainable. So certain tropes that are found in those stories remind me of those things.
That’s why the best setting is a mix of both— I’d like to live in a society like that, that’s got to be utopia. Lately though, I’ve been finding that setting more in VN’s.

I hate seeing depictions of children sexualized or seeing characters romantically or sexually attracted to them.
However, I do realize that this is a relative subject that I can’t set objective grounds on, but as for me, I will act on my own moral consciousness. For me, a “depiction of a child” is any character that registers as a child, which depends on the individual, so a character that I see as a child may not be so to you (though I will question if you really believe that if it’s a character that most people see as a child). I also follow “appearance over age” so yes I do not like 18+ year old lolishotas being sexualized, but I do not think being attracted to your average 16 year old character is wrong, nor do I think seeing them have romantic relationships with characters 5+ years older than them is wrong either.

I have a volatile relationship with the “it’s just fiction!” claim. On one hand, I do believe fiction affects reality to some degree, in the first place this is why I’m so concerned with misogyny and how women are depicted, so there’s no such thing as something just “being fiction and for pure enjoyment.” On the other hand, when it comes to subject matter, thisdoesn’t mean that every single thing that is wrong is real life is also wrong in fiction. For instance, back on the topic of age gap relationships with minor (non lolishota) characters. Why do we think this is wrong in the first place? Not because they’re literal children, they were never seen as such for millennia. It’s because that dynamic leads to a lot of abuse/only using the younger party for sex and dumping them for a newer model a few years later, both now and millennia ago. But in fiction, you don’t have to portray this dynamic, the readers can see both parties’ thoughts and be assured that they’re not going after each other for their age and/or status, you can actually see a chance of long lasting genuine love (which is even better in the non-misogynist ideal historical setting I described earlier where the older and younger characters are in the same life stage). That’s why this is one of the only places where the claim “it’s fiction!!!” applies.

Lately I’ve been realizing this, but I no longer want to read ongoing manga with no dedicated fanbase (JJK and AOT were great to follow on Reddit when they were releasing) which is a lot of the romance I’ve been encountering recently, it’s just tough to write reviews like that. Plus I forget everything.

How do I have time for all this?