With the globalization of anime opening from a trickle in the 1970s to a virtual torrent at present, Japanese cute visual cultures have spread worldwide. Under this umbrella is the genre of magical girl, which tells sentimental and powerful stories of young hyperfeminine heroines who, through love, friendship and superpowers, solve global-scale problems. We interview Colin Armistead, a filmmaker located in California in the United States, and voice actress Phoebe Chan, who together tap into this genre as part of their queer short-film project, Angelic Kitty Miracle-chan . Central for our interviewees is moe , which today in global circulation means cute or anime cute, but in Japan refers to an affective response to any character. We discuss concepts of hyperfemininity in anime, its excess and boundless potential and what this can mean for those negotiating trans-feminine identities.
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Galbraith et al. (2024) studied this question.
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