This Week's Round-Up: Women in Localization, Wandering Son Reprint, and Switch 2 Features
The 0.0% subsidy figure quantifies a structural gap between production growth and creator support in anime, while the Wandering Son reprint signals continued mainstream interest in LGBTQ+ manga.
Reporting from 1 sources: Anime Feminist.
Anime Feminist's weekly round-up for March 18-24, 2026, covers a range of topics including a feature on women in early game localization, a reprint announcement for Shimura Takako's manga Wandering Son, and a report on Japanese government subsidies for entertainment. The localization piece highlights Kaoru Moriyama, one of Square's first Japanese-to-English translators, who worked on Final Fantasy Legend II and III, Final Fantasy Adventure, Final Fantasy IV, and Secret of Mana, and confirmed an unreleased English translation of Final Fantasy II. Fantagraphics announced a newly designed paperback edition of Wandering Son: Volumes One & Two, releasing July 7, 2026. The round-up also includes a report from Automaton noting that anime creators received 0.0% of Japan's entertainment industry subsidies in 2024, with most funds going to promotion and distribution. Other items cover housing discrimination against foreign residents in Japan and a Tokyo court decision denying women's right to sterilization surgery.
The round-up opens with a deep dive into Kaoru Moriyama's career, drawing from an interview where she described the challenge of translating games with severe memory constraints. She recalled that her boss Hironobu Sakaguchi had little understanding of the extra work needed for English versions. Moriyama worked at Square from 1990 to 1994, and her interest in games was sparked by Romance of the Three Kingdoms II and Final Fantasy II.
Fantagraphics' reprint of Wandering Son collects the first two volumes in a new paperback edition, set for July 7, 2026. The series is by Shimura Takako, a prominent creator of LGBTQ+ manga.
The subsidy report, based on METI documents, shows that of 6.77 billion yen allocated to entertainment in 2024, 54.9% went to live-action, 12.6% to anime, and 10.7% to games. Within anime, funds went to promotion, localization, and distribution, with nothing directly to production staff. METI documents indicate consideration of direct support, but concerns remain about officials' understanding of industry realities.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.