However, I entered Capstone with a very different idea: I originally set out to make history, another longtime passion, more accessible through art and reenactment. While I enjoyed looking at pretty historical fashion, I found a lot of the research to be a bit of a slog. After reading Stanford professor Richard Thompson Ford’s book Dress Codes about power dynamics in fashion, I began thinking about how the principles Thompson Ford discussed applied in the exaggerated world of character design. Hence, my project was born. 

I began by scripting several videos about topics ranging from the depiction of female scientists to a comparison of the relatively feminist Ghibli films of the 80’s to the severe sexism of modern anime.  The format of video essays can encompass a broad variety of styles: some, such as Philosophy Tube, use highly produced costumes and record their actual face, while others, such as OverlySarcasticProductions, use animation and images/clips from movies. I chose to keep my face and my channel separate, and created a stylized avatar to narrate my videos. I recorded the audio, found images, edited the footage, and more all on my own. Teaching myself Adobe Premiere Pro was certainly difficult, and there were some tears involved at points, but I came out of it confident in the software and my ability to edit video at a professional level.

My breakthrough came when I recorded a video about the anime My Hero Academia or MHA. MHA is one of the most popular anime and manga of the past decade, but its female representation has deep issues: many of the fifteen year old female students wear skimpy, tight fitting hero costumes while their male counterparts get full-coverage outfits and cool tech. Furthermore, throughout the series the author chooses to abandon female characters’ development in favor of a man’s cool moment. Despite these issues, it was one of my favorite shows as a young teen; this cognitive dissonance inspired me to write a 25-minute long video critiquing how the series handled its female characters. 

However, not everyone reacted positively to my critiques: under the My Hero Academia video, there were people not only criticizing my ideas, but me as a person. While there were many people who offered nuanced critiques or built off my ideas, there were people who called me hysterical, stupid, or…other things that don’t belong on a school website. Here was the same sexism that inspired my project, being levied against me when I tried to critique it! 

Writing this at the end of my project, my channel, Lunailva, has almost 300 subscribers. My most viewed video has over 17,000 views, and all my videos together have over 21,000 views. This experience not only taught me when to engage with good faith criticism vs when to ignore bad faith criticism, but has lit a fire under me to keep producing these videos. Even though my time in Capstone has concluded, I hope to continue making videos and growing my channel.