What the heck are you doing, Erica? I can hear you scream. You have a house full of BRAND-NEW interesting Yuri from Japan, and yet, here you are, reviewing some ancient, hoary old series, which has been available for *ever.*

Well…yes, you are correct. Because I felt like it. ^_^ Let me point you to my review for Volume 3, from back in June. I refer you to that post because, for the most part, if you replace the word “Ichino” with “Kris”, this would basically be the same *exact* review. Which says a lot general crappiness of the writing for this series. Only every third volume is worth watching, but hot DAMN! its worth watching!

So, in Volume 4 and 5 Akari arrives at the Satellite and finds that she is, once again completely, utterly outclassed. And this time the opposition really thinks she’s a bug. On the positive side, she has met her roommates: Anna, whose story is genuinely tedious, but only half of the unpleasant backstory Anna has in the manga, and; Kris. Yay! Kris Kristopher is really the best thing about this series. Voiced by a woman who would one day shake the Yuri world as Tenjou Utena, Kris is hot in every direction, The cow she brings is an unwelcome “funny” addition to the anime, (as is the candy bar-obsessed “Mister Miracle”, Kris’ coach) but really, in every other way, any moment Kris is on the screen is a good moment.

So, we reach Volume 6, and Kris has become as important to Akari as Ichino was (and, I think, more so.) By the time we’ve reached this volume of the anime, Akari is finally in her “striving to succeed mode”, but she can’t quite get it together, because she’s freakin’ obsessing about Kris all the time. And of course, Kris is mooning about, doing the same.

While Kris and Akari dance around each other, we get to see another Yuri obsession in full bloom – the magnificent Mylandah and her object of desire, Lahrri. Mylandah never even *looks* at her opponents, she’s so intent on Lahrri. We’re not supposed to know that this is a love affair gone bad, yet, so I’ll move on. Suffice to say that Mylandah is delightfully violent and psychotic (and we all know how I feel about that…!) while Lahrri is so focused that she can’t see the forest for the trees. They will develop into the only interesting thing about the final arc of the anime, but at the moment, its all just unresolved tension, that hasn’t yet been revealed as sexual. ^_^

Back on the field, Kris breaks her coach’s rule and approaches Akari, kissing her in front of the entire world. It is a very nice kiss, but still pales in comparison to the manga kiss, if only because in the manga both Akari and Kris throw themselves into it. This kiss is just as public, but it is one-sided and they had to go ruin it with a stupid justification. But there ya go. They kiss.

Oh, and Akari gets better and wins. Bleah.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 6
Characters – everyone other than Akari and “Mr. Miracle” – 8. Akari – 5, Mr. Miracle – 2
Yuri – 8

Overall – 7

So, wait, let me summarize all this: It’s really, really gay. Just go watch it already.