Yuri Manga: Simoun, Megami magazine version

February 5th, 2007

I must have been prophetic last week. I said, “no more reviews for a while,” went home and promptly became incredibly ill. I did make it to Jennifer’s great lecture, and I’ll talk about the book sometime in the future, but basically, I’ve been in bed since Saturday afternoon.

I’m doing a review today so you don’t all forget me, but because I’m exhausted, it’s going to be quick. So. I thought I’d review a manga that is *so* thin that I ought to be able to review it in a single sentence:

“What if the characters from Simoun were in a world that looked and functioned suspiciously like Garderobe from Mai Otome?”

And that’s the entire “story.” It’s much more like a parody doujinshi than any kind of “real” version of Simoun.

The Simoun Sybillae are in training at Arcus Prima Academy, in bouts that look suspiciously like those held at Garderobe Academy for potential Otome. They win fame, fortune, money and status, meow, meow, in these battles.

As you can see in the cover picture from chapter 2, the kisses remain, and so do the remersions, although these become attacks used in the 2-on-2 hand-to-hand battles. And Amuria is not dead, she’s just punch-drunk on remersions.

The big on-going gag (and I use that term liberally) is Aeru’s negative reaction to the whole “kissing another girl” thing, as you can see in the above picture. She is so put off by the kiss, that she kisses one of Lodreamon’s ugly dolls instead. The resulting remersion surprises the heck out of the rest of the Sybillae.

I find that I don’t have the first chapter of the five that comprised this story…I’m not sure I care.  ^_^

This is a goofy, service-laden, Lowest Common Denominator parody of Simoun. Like the Drama CD (review of which is forthcoming) if you actually *liked* the depth of the anime, you should ignore this version of the manga with all your might and stick to the Yuri Hime edition of the Simoun manga.

Ratings:

Art – 5
Story – 2
Characters – 5 (What’s left when you take deep characters and render them into their one or two most superficial traits?)
Yuri – 5
Service – 7

Overall – 5.

It’s crap. But it still made me laugh once or twice. If it had been a doujinshi, instead of an official story, I wouldn’t have had a problem with it. As it is, it reads like a ritual diminutizing of the Simoun Sybillae. “Well, we can’t have you gals thinking you’re all that. So, some mostly naked posters and a crappy story’ll put you in yer place. Ay-yup.”

4 Responses

  1. neo_hrtgdv says:

    *how* can there be other official Manga? isn’t the original from Yuri Hime? I’m confused at this “version” thing oO’

    It does however look well drawn, and probably a way to see and eh.. “learn ” more of the universe of Simoun.

  2. It’s not that confusing. Simoun is a property created by Ichijinsha and sold wherever they can make money with it.

    They did an anime, a manga in Yuri Hime, a manga in Megami, a PS2 game and a Drama CD. If they can make more money they’ll make more things.

    The Megami Simoun has nothing at all to do with the world in the anime or the Yuri Hime manga. It’s a completely different world.

  3. nae says:

    Aw, rest well and leave the reviews for later? Megami’s Simoun isn’t really worth the time. I’m hoping I can come back to it in maybe a year’s time and find it funny. As parody, it could have gone further, been crazier, and as a story… what story? I know of some who prefer this version to the serious one, though.

Leave a Reply