"Men Aren't Better Than Women: Both Genders Are Inferior To Me" is a 1991 book by Dr. Ivo Robotnik (better known for other work). Though its primary purpose is clearly to stroke the author's own ego, it is generally regarded as a comprehensive, well-constructed, and accessible work of contemporary feminist theory, and is still commonly-cited to this day.
Most of the critical complaints have been about the tone; in a review from 2005, Professor Victoria of Spagonia University said, "The constant self-aggrandizement undercuts the idea that its subject ought to be taken seriously. Also, wasn't the 'feminist' line from the Sonic Heroes manual a mistranslation of 'womanizer'?"
In 2026, Dr. Robotnik released a new edition updated for the preceding 35 years of developments in feminism, with the subtitle changed from "Both Genders" to "All Genders."
I am so utterly fascinated by “Saki”, the 18-year-running mahjong manga in which you, the reader, become gradually, frog-boilingly aware (over the course of nearly two decades’ worth of mahjong tournaments) that none of these girls are wearing underwear and most of their boobs are slowly expanding.
I need you to understand that I have, like, an anthropological level fascination with this comic. From the perspective of someone who is also a comic artist and writer, two things delight me about it:
the fact that I understand completely how an artist gets from “the fans can have a little hint of skirted asscheek” to “the pussy is completely out on center page” over the course of 18 years; and
the way in which the pussy being out is treated by the characters and diegesis as being utterly unremarkable.
Okay. Point 1. The frog-boiling.
Let me put this in perspective for you. There was already a meme about how the characters in “Saki” don’t wear underwear when I was in middle school. I am thirty now. Okay? And it’s still going.
In the time since, this has stopped being a joke. It is now indisputable canon. This is not because anyone outright says it at any point. It’s because the underwear ran out of places to hide. I’m obsessed with this thought: somewhere in the over 20 volumes of “Saki”, there is a panel in which underwear was objectively deconfirmed. And it would be so hard to figure out where that panel actually is. Maybe the artist didn’t even realize it when she drew it! The frog? Boiling!!
And of course there is also the breast expansion. I don’t know how to put a spin on this. They are just expanding. Like, this happens a lot with artists: you define a character as being, in your mind, “the one with the big boobs”, and over the years you emphasize that trait further and further so that the signal doesn’t get lost in the noise. It’s just that normally—in like a wildly popular manga series about mahjong published by literally Square Enix, for example—normally there would be a point at which the boobs stopped getting bigger. Like, an editor would step in or something. Or you would get to the point where you cannot draw the character in the same panel as her mahjong tiles without her breasts spilling over the tiles, and you’d go, “Well, this is now untenable.”
That did not happen. There is no ceiling. The frog is soup.
Point 2. The complete and utter mundanity of all of this.
It’s like this, okay: there’s no shortage of trashy ecchi manga out there. There’s a million other comics doing wildly bawdier things with wildly more improbable bishoujos.
The vibe with “Saki” is different.
It’s hard to explain this, but it feels like the world of the comic is fundamentally uninterested in the fanservice happening on the page. I cannot describe it as “leering”, because I cannot conceive of a person in the story from whose point of view one would leer. I think the artist is probably into it—I can’t imagine anyone is making her do this—but “Saki” the comic has no opinion on the matter.
There are essentially no male characters in “Saki”. Like, there was one guy? Kind of? At the very beginning? But he is gone now. They put him back in the toybox. He does not exist. It appears to be some level of canonical that in the world of “Saki”, almost all humans are women. Those women are sometimes romantically into each other. According to comments the artist has made on Twitter (which I cannot source), they have lesbian baby technology, so it’s no problem. It’s so much not a problem that the story is about mahjong, instead of any of that.
So, like, the fiction here appears to be this: this is the, like, meta-narrative of the fanservice of “Saki”, right: it’s just normal that they don’t wear underwear and their boobs are arbitrarily big. It’s been normal. It was normal before the story of the manga began. It’s just how things are. Nobody bats an eye about it, and if they do, it’s in sort of a lesbian kind of way so like what’s the problem, we love lesbians here. This is literally normal for girls.
The fanservice simply diffuses into this all-encompassing aura of disembodied, ambient sluttiness. The framing of the panels demands you acknowledge it, and the story demands you already be over it, because it’s mahjong time now, and we’re playing mahjong.
Do you get??? why I’m so fascinated??? Are you not a little enraptured???
Anyway, I have no idea how to end this weird post. I guess the conclusion is that women stay winning????
I have so many questions... How does one SUSPECT a manga character isn't wearing underwear? Like, sure, boobs are front and center amd you can see them get bigger panel by panel but how does this work for panties? Are there just that many upskirt shots?
Also how do you keep a manga about Mahjong going for 18 years, what??
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Pictures from my lost roll of 35mm film shot at Acadia National Park last year, recently found and developed. All shot through my venerable Pentax K-1000 on Kodak Pro Image 100.
The above image is Bass Head lighthouse at sunset, with a lucky rainbow rising from the ocean, shot with a 24mm lens (set at f5.6 I think).
Sunrise from Ocean Trail near Sand Beach, through an A* 300/f4 lens, shot at f8 and f11 respectively
The cliffs beside my vantage point, nearly blocking the view to Sand Beach, partly lit by the just-risen sun. Shot with a 24mm lens.
I DSLR scanned all of these negatives myself, and inverted them in lightroom with the free Cinestill plugin.
sick, nauseous, retching at how corporate interests demand all technological advancement must come at the cost of choice and consent, must be forcefed to the uncooperative consumer. a digital menu would be useful? 'k great, they're FUCKING MANDATORY :D Wireless earbuds are an innovation, so we stole your fucking earphone jack. hard to find coins for the laundry machine? no problem, now you can pay with card, in fact you must pay with card, in fact you must DOWNLOAD AN APP TO WASH A LOAD ON MED-TEMP QUICK CYCLE. you want to park your car? you want to PARK your CAR you dumb CUCKFUCKLE? you weeping seeping pathetic pustulant bedsore of an open wound???
download our app! give us your data! give us control of your money, your time, your viewership, your exhaustion!!! give us your location, your viewing history, your marketable hopes and third-party-resellable dreams, we require access to your eyes your ears your motherfucking synapses, click here to accept OUR terms and OUR conditions!!!
to us you aren't a person per se, but you could aspire to someday be a profit
