Moving forward, my best-of animation series lists for 2024, libraries, archives, genealogy, climate change, LGBTQ+ people, and more
I thought I'd get this newsletter out this week, while covering the same topics I usually cover, as we head into a dark(er) period of U.S. history
Hello everyone. I had been meaning to get this newsletter out before January 20th, but with other volunteer commitments and busy-ness, I didn’t get to it until now. There are dark times ahead, for sure, with reports about efforts of the new administration to marginalize immigrants (including potential immigrants) even more with harsh and punitive laws like the Laken Riley Act which allows any immigrant to be arrested for a broad array of crimes, outward lies, pardoning a bunch of reactionaries and fascists (i.e. Jan. 6 rioters), a panoply of executive orders on various topics (including leaving the World Health Organization!), and favoring Hollywood (despite his tense relationship with the entertainment industry), along with ending the ability of federal workers to do their jobs remotely, stab into the heart of birthright citizenship, and end policies aimed at “promoting racial equity and protecting rights for LGBTQ+ people.”
The orange one is basically the U.S. equivalent of Scarlemagne, who dubs himself emperor of the non-human animals, over humans, in Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts (which I watched recently), with humans living underground and animals on the surface. Scarlemagne even holds his own coronation. Anyway, I’m still going forward with this newsletter. Since my last newsletter, I’ve published specifically about LGBTQ+ representation in animation in 2024, my top thirty anime for the year, and my top twenty Western animated series for 2024.
The latter two posts feature series with romance, friendship, togetherness, magic, androids, mystery, adventure, the supernatural, superheroes, and more. To be specific, these were series with characters using their magical powers to fight off monsters (or free animals from control by others), find their place in the world, travel the world looking for their friends, or wrestle with their feelings for another person, whether that person was male or female (depending on the series). Most aired on streaming services, but some are harder to find and can only be watched, reliably, on physical form (DVD or Blu-ray). Of the series I mentioned in both posts, only a handful are still airing. This includes those about: a young woman taken from a brothel who works as an apothecary and tries to uncover mysteries involving the royal court (The Apothecary Diaries), an artifact-stealing adventurer haunted by her past and is forced to face a man who wants to destroy the world (Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft), demons trying to create a hotel to rehab sinners and stop Heaven’s genocide (Hazbin Hotel), and a young woman trying to find her place in a new island world named the Ark where she has been reincarnated/transported (Ark: The Animated Series).
Moving from that, on my Pop Culture Library Review blog, I wrote about gamemakers, so-called librarians, and horror within Mr. Lemoncello’s library monstrosity, looking forward to this year, recently added titles; Mizore Yoroizuka, overdue books, and the school librarian’s ire; and the mysterious 1912 film entitled The Librarian and embedded librarian stereotypes within the series. On my Wading Through the Cultural Stacks blog, I wrote on topics such as: criminal chaotic archaeologists, morally bankrupt anti-heroes, and records destruction in Doctor Aphra (one of my favorite series); mysterious schematics, mainframes, and preventing worldwide destruction in What If…?, looking ahead for this year; a royal whistleblower’s archives “downgrade,” Maomao’s conjecture, and the power of records (about The Apothecary Diaries); holograms, manufactured stories, cults, and artifacts in two “Star Wars” series (Andor and The Acolyte), and pop culture depictions and archival realities.
With that, I’m moving onto the rest of my newsletter. Since December 15th, my colleagues at the National Security Archive wrote about an Israeli nuclear site, U.S.-Russia policy, dirty war in Mexico, release of project on CIA behavior control experiments and mind control, a declassified obituary for Jimmy Carter, and Carter’s legacy of dedicated diplomacy toward U.S. normalization with Cuba. There were further articles on LG quitting selling Blu-ray players (they can be found from third-party retailers) to customers, a review of the book entitled Archival Futures, making space for “neurodiverse perspectives in archives,” and cultivating sustainable next steps for archives.
Other than this, there were posts on:
legal report entitled "Climate Change and Historic Preservation"
resources on providing ethical and equitable access to restricted records
why oral histories matter
promoting archival work
securing the future of digital assets
collective archival debt
supporting cultural rights and indigenous sovereignty through archival repatriation
remote co-working as model for reparative description
assessing the digital curation lifecycle
links shared by Archivists Against (seemingly defunct) on various topics
Otherwise, there was the disturbing news that NARA was using A.I. to “develop an efficient, accurate and user-friendly archival query platform” rather than not using A.I., something which will continue under the new administration. On a more positive note, there were posts on placing organizational archives in repositories, offsite storage for organizational archives, and film fans who refuse to surrender to streaming (and want only to watch DVDs).
Apart from this, there were stories about book bans that succeeded, how most book bans target children’s literature featuring authors of color and diverse characters, librarians urgently organizing as they face cuts on the upcoming administration, and a review of how Orb: On the Movements of the Earth, a fictionalized account of the “controversy/censorship of heliocentrism in medieval Europe,” centers on not having knowledge and research freely available. The latter post further noted libraries in the manga Gokurakugai, anime series Read or Die (I wrote a review of it once), and stories of reading manga at the library. Beyond this were articles on favorite Reel Librarian posts of 2024, how the U.S. top spies “were academics and librarians,” digital audiobooks “lead[ing] growth in library circulation for the second year,” new restrictions on children’s access to “an Idaho Public Library System”, whether Chicago-area libraries gave in to 'heckler's veto', and efforts to ban books in Oregon libraries on the rise, with library patrons and supporters pushing back.
There were further posts about how error-riddled Indigenous language guides (created with A.I.) do real harm, ten library stories which shaped 2024, NYU students and professors cuffed after “blocking library during latest pro-Palestine protest,” judge ruling Arkansas law allowing criminal charges against librarians is unconstitutional, faculty perspectives on “serials access, sharing, and immediacy,” inclusive cataloging, and a library guide to navigate cryptocurrency.
This brings me to the subject of genealogy. There were posts on Elizabeth Packard’s legacy; slavery, freedom, and Puerto Rico; genetic study maps when and how Polynesians settled the Pacific islands, old Irish names and their aliases, and family stories coming down through genealogy, tracing lineage back centuries, and legal applications of the Spanish doctrine of blood purity.
There were further articles on blackness and the concept of origins in cultural perspective, a historian’s “odyssey in family research,” constructing masculinity through genetic legacies, genomic data and the “case for reparations in the Caribbean,” new roles for Africana studies, and formation of racial and ethical ancestries and identities, to name a few.
I am switching gears and moving to the subject of history. I recently read articles about how official acts of Richard Nixon against his enemies led to a bipartisan impeachment effort against him, how maps got toned, and Rhode Island soldiers of color at Red Bank, Monmouth, and Valley Forge during the Revolutionary War in the U.S. There were additional posts about the story of an interracial marriage which led to scandalous trial in the 1920s, the hidden history of Bermuda reshaping how we think about colonial America, and how French modernists from “Proust to Mallarmé were alarmed and inspired by the voracious dynamism of the newspaper world” as one article put it.
Additional topics were also covered, when it came to the story about the mutiny of 1783, top secret Japanese documents, the labor origins of whistleblowing, the forgotten crime of war itself, a brief history of the “isolationist” strawman, how The Great Gatsby changed New York City’s landscape, the “rotting” nature of the College Board itself, the woman (Sanora Babb) who “defined the Great Depression,” and how jazz got “caught between the cold war and the CIA.”
Before talking about other subjects, I’d like to talk about climate change and environmentalism. That begins with an interview with two writers on ecofiction in the "land of enchantment,” the spread of plastic nanoparticles, new executive orders by the orange one to use more fossil fuels and withdrawal from the Paris climate treaty (one NPR article I read said noted that actions reversed included climate change policy and plans to “declare a national energy emergency…[to] cut red tape and regulations for the energy industry, and a second one specific to Alaskan [oil] resources”), and citizens suing Exxon, Dow, and other companies over plastic recycling claims. Other articles, which are even more relevant now, focused on how community solar can liberate people from fossil fuels, climate change trial at the Hague, and the reality of climate apartheid.
There were further articles, of note, on how climate change is poised to push emperor penguins to the brink of extinction, Niger taking control of its uranium, a deranged pyroscape (i.e. more fires, especially across the U.S.), and the fact that Martin Luther King, Jr.’s fight for civil rights was also an environmental battle. There is also a fight by individual U.S. states for climate progress, regardless of the new administration, and Spain’s climate catastrophe.
I’m changing gears once more to talk about LGBTQ+ topics. Since my last newsletter, I came across articles about the decline of the use of the term “lesbian” and the complex reasons for its decline, societal implications of “consensual non-monogamy,” the new administration’s awful and dispicable war on trans people, and the tales of ace (asexual) and aro (aromantic) flags, but I was even more interested in Autostraddle’s list of the ten best queer animation moments of 2024. This began with mention of some series I only knew about barely (Solar Opposites), but also about queer themes in Hazbin Hotel, nonbinary Morph in X-Men ‘97, Nimona getting an Oscar nomination, Caitlyn and Vi having sex in the final season of Arcane, the Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur episode “The Gatekeeper” (about a trans character named Brooklyn) being leaked, the romance between Harley Quinn and Renee Montoya in Batman: The Caped Crusader, and the homoerotic (?) connections between Jayce and Viktor in Arcane. The post mentioned Memoir of a Snail and Bob’s Burgers too, but I only know about the latter, but not the former.
I enjoyed reading Frank Hecker’s publication entitled “Growth in the Number of Yuri Manga Titles over Time,” including the observation that more than 90% of yuri manga titles (in his data set, which began in 1990, gathered from Anime Planet’s tags) were published “after 2005, more than three-quarters after 2009, and more than half after 2016.” I was perturbed to learn that although the Disney higher-ups were happy with how The Acolyte performed in summer 2024, they claimed the series “cost structure” led to cancellation. This is BS because Andor cost a total $645 million and had LGBTQ characters, and it cost 0.6 million a minute as compared to The Acolyte which cost 0.7 million a minute. Furthermore, in terms of cost and cost per minute, The Force Awakens, The Rise of Skywalker, The Last Jedi, Solo, and Rogue One, were much more expensive . The same Forbes article cited above says “the more minutes of content Disney can offer, the more ads it can fit in and the more content there is to tempt subscribers. Andor isn't just a cost-effective way to do this with Star Wars, it's the cheapest way” which would also apply to The Acolyte because it is twice the average length of the latest five Star Wars films (140.2 minutes), coming in with a total of 309 minutes. There were further articles noting the original idea was to have three seasons of The Acolyte, and how the series cancellation is “symptomatic of larger issues within the [Star Wars] franchise.”
Other than the above animation PV, a promotion for a Thai comic entitled My Honey: She is the best!, which came out last year, it was great to see that Wicked is the highest-grossing live-action film with a LGBTQ+ lead: Cynthia Erivo (she’s Black and queer). Also, there’s an article noting that the path forward is for queer and trans people can rely on one another for a better future (which is vital with calls for banning rainbow flags), the release of a yuri music manga under a new title (Your Timbre Brings Me to My Senses More Than a Kiss Would), and the best GL light novels with official English translations.
When it comes to anime, there’s the sad news that several series left HIDIVE, the small anime-centered streaming service competing with Crunchyroll, and others like Disney+/Hulu, Prime Video, and Netflix. Specifically, Kubo Won’t Let Me Be Invisible, Giant Beasts of ARS, and Spy Classroom left the platform on January 15th, with Comic Book saying that the biggest of these three is Kubo Won’t Let Me Be Invisible, about “a romantic high school story that sees high schooler Junta progressively dared to do wilder things to gain attention thanks to Kubo’s influence.” Anime News Network had articles on:
the renaissance of shōjo anime recently
a review of the second season of Tonbo! by Erica Friedman (well-known for her reviews about series centering on female romance and friendship)
the debut of Mono, an anime by the creator of Laid-Back Camp (afro) centered around a girl who rides her motorcycle and “posts videos on motor blogs” after quitting her company job
the premiere of a two-part compilation film of Girls Band Cry premiering this year at some point
a review of the Cute Girls Doing Cute Things genre (examples it includes are Bocchi the Rock!, Stella Women's Academy, High School Division Class C3, Girls Und Panzer, Puella Magi Madoka Magica, School-Live!, and Train to the End of the World, some of which I’ve watched)
Let's Make a Mug Too compilation film premiering on March 22
approval of the second season of Ranma 1/2
launch off a manga by Squid Girl creator Masahiro Anbe about a demon policewoman (that’s literally the title, or Akuma de Fukei in Japanese) who “begins a battle of wits with her mean-faced coworker, Daichi Kuwahara, who endeavors to drive Eclair [the demon woman] back to the demon world”
The Solo Camping for Two manga, about two solo campers ending up camping together, getting an anime adaptation, reminding me a little of Laid-Back Camp, to give one example
Other sites noted the most controversial anime relationships, most controversial anime, the difference between a new isekai (Headhunted to Another World: From Salaryman to Big Four!) and previous ones, and the most anticipated anime of this year. In terms of the latter, the only ones I am watching are Zenshuu (about a Japanese animator who dies and finds herself in favorite film which she watched when growing up) and Honey Lemon Soda (about a quiet girl who falls for a yellow-haired boy who gives her the confidence boost she needs as students at school bully her). Others have not yet premiered, including Witch Hat Atelier, and Go For It, Nakamura!
While Japan News Today defined anime as Japan’s unique spin on animation, at its core, there were other posts about the growth of the anime industry, the addition of various Macross anime to Hulu on January 13th, a producer of Spy x Family saying that having long anime series is a challenge, Netflix making more money from anime “than Crunchyroll & Hulu combined,” according to a new report, and queering the narrative in Delicious in Dungeon.
It has been rough for animation. At the beginning of the year, Max, owned by the Warner Bros. Discovery mega-conglomerate, cruelly removed five animated series: Ed, Edd n’ Eddy, The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, Green Lantern: The Animated Series, The Looney Tunes Show, and Static Shock. If that isn’t enough, back in October of last year, big shows were removed without any announcement, including Ben 10, The Powerpuff Girls (2016 version), The Amazing World of Gumball, We Bare Bears, Steven Universe, Chowder, and Regular Show. This followed a Max content purge removing classic films in March 2024, and half of the classic Looney Tunes shorts some time before (in late December 2022). Then there was the cruel removal, in August 2022, of series like Elliott From Earth, Infinity Train, Mighty Magiswords, OK K.O.! – Let’s Be Heroes, Summer Camp Island, and Victor and Valentino, among others.
Max is not unique in this, as Paramount+ cruelly removed various Nickelodeon titles, like My Life As a Teenage Robot, Doug, and Wonder Pets, recently, following by a content purge back in June 2023, removing animated series like Star Trek: Prodigy. At the same time, there was news that Cartoon Network’s website now redirects to the website for Max, a sad day for fans of Cartoon Network, and cancellation of a stop-motion animated series by one creator of Beavis & Butt-Head (Mike Judge), after one season.
Other than articles about cancellations, there was reporting noting the reaction of Pixar employees to the removal of the transgender storyline from Win or Lose, the budget for Arcane season 3 (and possible spin-off shows), Pantheon now streaming on Netflix, and analysis of the final season of Star Trek: Lower Decks. Some noted the season’s self-parody, an interview with Mike McMahan, the expanded multiverse caused by the series finale, and another interview with Tawny Newsome who voices Beckett Mariner. The latter noted in part:
Star Trek: Lower Decks…[at its premiere] was seen as a somewhat radical experiment: It was the first animated “Trek” show since the 1970s. It was the first “Trek” comedy ever…Five seasons later, “Lower Decks” has more than proven itself as a worthy addition to the vast “Star Trek” galaxy, by marrying fast-paced satire with the creative freedom of animation to pay loving homage to every previous iteration of “Trek”…The series finale, titled “The New Next Generation,” takes that multiversal conceit and literally explodes it, with a massive fissure threatening to destroy the show’s main universe…[Newsome says:] I have so many deep, loving, platonic friendships — Jack Quaid included — that are just so important to me…Mike has stories upon stories in him for these characters. He could do 10 more seasons. He is not done.
This reminds me of when I wrote one of my first reviews ever of Star Trek: Lower Decks and I got some backlash, in part because I said that I did not see Mariner and Boimler as a couple. I ended up making some errors about the bisexuality of Mariner. The current version, states that “fan fictions shipping Mariner with Boimler, a ship dubbed ‘Marinler’ by fans which is popular on AO3 and Tumblr…Marinler fans see Mariner and Boimler as more than friends and buds. They see Mariner as Boimler as two people who are romantic toward each other. This perspective is completely understandable based on the interactions between Mariner and Boimler during the series, even if other fans, like me, interpret the interactions between Mariner and Boimler as being more platonic.” So, it is reassuring to that Newsome sees Mariner and Boimler as platonic friends and nothing more. I thought that was abundantly clear from the series and that they would have to go to an alternate universe to begin a romance. In a review of the show’s fourth season, I made the same point as in my earlier review: “I still see the interactions between Mariner and Boimler as platonic rather than romantic. I understand how people see them as the latter, shipping them as Marinler, but I see them as good friends, rather than good lovers.”
Other than the above, there were articles about Star Wars: Visions getting a third volume this year, a series which I gave a spotlight in my favorite animated series for 2024. There were other articles on the removal of Voltron: Legendary Defender from Netflix, the darkest episodes of Superman: The Animated Series, David Lynch seeking backers for an animated series (prior to his death), and the set-up for the third season of My Adventures with Superman (I think it is coming this year). There were further reports on Disney hiring the former head of Adult Swim, Suzanna Makkos, a Max series (Adventure Time: Distant Lands) no longer an exclusive on Max anymore, and a shift away from kids programming by Max.
I’m changing gears and will be discussing Gaza and Palestine. Arab Americans were wary of the orange one’s pro-Israel (i.e. Zionist) government picks prior to his election. More recently, a U.N. expert, Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories, called on all medical professionals to pursue the “severance of all ties with Israel as a concrete way to forcefully denounce Israel’s full destruction of the Palestinian healthcare system in Gaza, a critical tool of its ongoing genocide.” Pretty strong words there! Good for her. All the while, the U.S.-funded Famine Early Warning Systems Network withdrew a report, at the urging of then-U.S. ambassador to Israel (Jack Lew) and USAID, saying there was imminent famine in Gaza. Even more disturbing, Israel conducted airstrikes in Yemen and they struck only a few meters from where the World Health Organization's director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, and his staff, were, at the Sanaa International Airport. The Israeli military claimed they did not know he was there, but I doubt that claim. After all, prior to this attack, he publicly criticized the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip in December 2023, called the situation in Gaza hellish and called for a ceasefire in January of last year. He developed tinnitus from these explosions. Even after that, he continued to criticize Israel’s bombing campaign, saying:
…The level of destruction of health facilities in Gaza is something that we have never seen before. Out of 36 total hospitals that Gaza has, 20 are out of function already. The remaining 16 are partially functional. And when hospitals are destroyed like that, while the health needs of the population is increasing, because of trauma, injuries are on the increase, many people who could have been saved are dying because of lack of services. That's why we're asking Israel to protect health facilities…health facilities should be protected. And if you see not only health facilities, but the level of destruction in Gaza is really something that you cannot even describe in words. More than 45,000 people have been killed. More than 60% are women and children. This alone is enough to stop the war. I know war. I know war as a child. And that's why I hate war. The only thing I know related to war is death. Destruction. And then, of course, those who survive. Displacement. Deprivation. Hunger. That's what I know. Grief. Mothers crying. So, when we call for a ceasefire, we're saying, please look for the alternative, peace. It's in the best interest of Israel as well. I don't think war will be the solution. If we're going to have a win, it's finding a political solution that can transcend generations for generations to come. I can feel it.
Basically, the Israelis would love to off him if they had the chance. Apart from this, there were articles about Biden’s complicity in genocide (something we should remember), wondering whether genocide is the right word to use, asking when the U.N. General Assembly will suspend Israel, and stating that no state has an inherent right to exist, not even Israel, among many other articles.
With that, I move to another topic: Syria. The country’s new Islamist rulers have met with diplomats from Lebanon, Qatar, UAE, Jordan, and elsewhere, as they call for the U.S. to lift sanctions. With the incoming administration including Marco Rubio as Secretary of State, confirmed unanimously by the U.S. Senate, they may favor the new government, especially since he favored arming the claimed “rebels” in Syria previously and wanted U.S. troops to remain in Syria! The VP vetting dossier on him prepared by the orange menace’s campaign even said that he “generally supported military intervention in Syria.” It also noted he favored continued U.S. intervention in Iraq to counter claimed “Iranian domination.” The new Syrian government is acting like it is being conciliatory, even as they crack down on Kurdish forces (which will please the Turks to no end). Changes hint at a religious conservatism which will wash over the country. Fundamentalist fighters, i.e. reactionaries or terrorists, are flocking to the country (even joining the Syrian military), while they make a peace overture to Israel.
There’s reports that those which helped overthrow Bashar al-Assad, among other groups, are U.S.-trained, with the U.S. giving them “billions in weapons & support,” as they express their love for Israel. The latter has dramatically expanded the Golan Heights, which received U.S. support, despite the obvious illegal nature of this land grab. Israel should withdraw completely from all occupied Syrian territory, as is required under international law. The new Syrian government is getting more chummy with Western governments, Turkey, and others, as they want to carve Syria up into their own cantons, whether those controlled by Israel, Turkey, the Kurds (which have received some U.S. support), the U.S., and others. At the same time, the government plans to impose neoliberal economic policy, which will worsen lives of Syrian people. Perhaps Russia cannot sustain their “forever wars,” but neither can the Syrians sustain the country in this state, with the country at a delicate crossroads.
I’d like to talk briefly about the Panama Canal here. As you all probably know, the orange one wants to seize it, even though he can’t take it back on his own, which hearkens back to how Reagan used it to resonate with people while campaigning, but then dropped the issue once he got in office! The Panama Canal is not the property of China or the U.S., but is owned by the Panamanian people, period. This is part of the late Jimmy Carter’s legacy.
With that, I come to other topics which I couldn’t cover otherwise in this newsletter. This includes the worrying articles about…
key Democrats voting for a law which allows for mandatory detention of undocumented immigrants for very broad reasons (I mentioned this law at the beginning of my newsletter)
every social media / mass media platform “taken over by the right wing,” with the attendance of the CEOs of TikTok, Twitter, Meta (owns Facebook and Instagram), Amazon, Google, and Apple at the inauguration; this may be a bit of hyperbole by AOC, but having the CEOs kiss the ring of the orange one is certainly troubling, to say the least
Jared Kushner possibly profiting from “expanded Israeli settlements”
While Biden gave a pardon to those threatened by action from the orange one and pardoned Leonard Peltier, he did many other actions, like removing Cuba from the state sponsors of terrorism list, far too late, which was immediately reversed by the orange one. Why did he wait so long? That will remain a mystery. There was also reasoned criticism the Democrats, along with calls for solidarity, and describing the anti-China U.S. policy to come.
Others wrote about how capitalist housing markets make matters worse, said that Biden squandered many opportunities (and left a foreign policy with a path of destruction), the coming battle for Greenland, the need to defend immigrants from scapegoat politics, stated that Democrats brought about the orange one, argued that the Tik Tok ban is about “US tech hegemony, not national security or protecting Americans’ data” (undoubtedly true), examined the contradictions and issues inherent in the Congressional Black Caucus, noted the lonely strike of the Teamsters against Amazon this past Christmas, stated that Republican-run states see an “opportunity to push extreme policies” under the new president, and noted the worrying prospect of the Kessler Syndrome. The latter means that space debris will trap humans on Earth with no internet or astronaut missions.
In addition, there were posts about protection of anonymous speech, how the U.K.’s Online Safety Act is killing online communities, the information moving into the public domain this year, widespread distaste with democracy in Japan, what U.S. Latinos have to say about machismo, one in ten Americans rarely (or never) driving a car, and the lack of confidence Americans have in “cryptocurrency.” The below video is fun video from Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts, showing how characters, and people more broadly, can have fun, even in the face of adversity. It is something we should all remember to do despite everything that’s going on.
There’s also wonderful illustrations in The Nib about book banning, protecting trees, creative processing, and much more. Molly Ostertag, the prolific writer and cartoonist, continued her illustrations of the Sherlock Holmes story, by Arthur Conan Doyle, entitled “The Adventure of the Final Problem.” Here’s all the parts so far, almost exclusively using dialogue from the story, and she emphasizes the homoerotic elements, making story that much more interesting:
That’s all for this issue of the newsletter. Until next time!
- Burkely