It’s freaky anime gremlin girl summer

polygon.com:

BetweenDelicious in Dungeon’s feral cat girl Izutsumi andThe Apothecary Diaries’ weirdo poison taster Mao Mao, I’m absolutely thriving with current-wave chaotic little anime gremlin girls.

It’s very common for shonen anime to feature heavily sexualized female characters. Yes, there are exceptions, but it’s such a regular occurrence that boob close-ups and panty shots almost become background noise. So, seeing characters who could otherwise fit in those tropes do a total 180 to be completely nonsexual — and, in fact, repulsive — is so damn satisfying.

Izutsumi and Mao Mao aren’t the only characters to ever fit this bill, but watching the two shows in succession really scratched a good itch for me, kicking off the summer anime season with a growl. They join the canon of freaky gremlin gals with Skip and Loafer’s Mitsumi, an ambitious but totally awkward and kinda cringe high school student; the trio of budding animators at the center of Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!; and Ouran High School Host Club’s Haruhi, the tired scholarship student who puts up with all the host club’s extravagant bullshit.

None of these characters are designed in a traditionally “sexy” way; in fact, they’re aggressively unsexy. They get to be little weirdos, delighting in their interests and ambitions, without thinking about being appealing or pandering to their crushes (and in the case of Mitsumi and Haruhi, that’s exactly what gets their love interests’ attention!). It’s vindication for weird girls everywhere!

Izutsumi and Mao Mao take the trope from the slice-of-life genre to fantasy and historical settings, where female characters typically suffer from hypersexualization.

In the fantasy world of Delicious in Dungeon, none of the female characters are really sexualized at all. But Izutsumi stands out — because in any other show, she would be turned into a sexpot. Izutsumi is a cat girl, but not in the traditional sexy feline person way. She’s not purring up against other characters or