Archive for the Dear Brother Category


Dear Brother Anime (English)

October 22nd, 2012

It was 2004. Fansubs were already phasing out of the elegantly clunky VHS tape-exchanges by snail mail and were shifting towards the passionless and infinitely faster transmission of IP people had no right to share by digital means.

Oniisama E was already a relic of a former age even then. Fansubbed by a bastion of Victorian worldviews, each volume of the anime came with notes on culture, references and a full set of what we ought to be feeling and understanding. It wasn’t enough for us to know that the rain, the wind, the trains and the flocks of birds were symbolic, we were to be told exactly how to interpret them. ^_^ As the end of this series heralded the end of anime fandom as I had entered it, I finally wrote a review, if only to say goodbye to it.

Now we have a chance that I could never ever have expected – a free, legal, multi-language option for people to watch this oh-so-shoujo series, streaming on Viki.com. I hope every single one of you who loves Maria-sama ga Miteru will watch Oniisama E/Dear Brother based on the manga by Riyoko Ikeda.

This is a series fraught with fraughtness. In the poisonous hothouse of an elite girls’ school, a nice girl named Nanako will encounter insanity, obsession, emotional manipulation, friendship and love.

Kaoru-no-Kimi, the athletic masculine type, Miya-sama without whom we would never have had Juri in Utena and the beautifully tragic Sainte-Juste, who makes homicidal depression and drug use look…sexy. You cannot tell me that kids books today are too dark. ^_^

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 9
Character 9
Yuri – More than you expect (and more than Technogirls would admit)
Service – 4 for girls in suits, but nothing more salacious than that

Overall – 9

This stuff is made of awesome. Give me until Episode 7, and if you hate it, you can stop. But then, we can never be friends. ^_^





Oniisama E…Licensed.

March 20th, 2012

I cannot believe I am about to type this.

This is not rumor and I have done some due diligence, and this appears to be actually legit: Oniisama E, (Dear Brother) Ryoko Ikeda’s classic high school drama…has been licensed by streaming site ViKi. You can find it here: http://www.viki.com/channels/5849-dear-brother The license is global except Italy and Japan. Rose of Versailles has not been licensed by ViKi and they were told it is not available.

I will say four words about this: Sainte Juste. At last.

The ViKi CEO has added a few words about their licenses to their blog. If you, like me, had some questions, check it out.
 





Yuri Anime: Oniisama E / Brother, Dear Brother

February 3rd, 2004

Things I’m Not Going To Write About
Part 6

Oniisama E (Brother, Dear Brother) –

Steadily holding the #3 poster child position for Yuri for many years, was this timeless classic anime and manga created by Ikeda Riyoko. So much of what we consider to *be* Yuri had early roots with Ikeda, so it’s only fair that she be on any Yuri-related list as often as possible.

Most people know the anime version of this series as fansubbed by the passionate, if heavy-handed, Technogirls. Despite the subbers’ belief that there was *no* Yuri in this series at all, no one who has ever seen Rei (Sainte-Juste) as she dressed in her nice white suit, fixed her tie, and bought flowers for Nanako, can really doubt that what she was doing was getting ready for a date.

There is a great deal of akogare in this series, and very little outright Yuri, but I’m going to have to weigh in on the yes, Yuri camp. What Rei had with Miya-sama and, later, with Nanako, was something as close to love as makes no nevermind. And that’s not even counting Mariko’s crush on Kaoru-no-kimi and Nanako’s crush on Sainte-Juste.

The manga is surprisingly short and painfully hip – Sainte-Juste has scary bell-bottom pants and mod vests. It’s kind of hard to remember she’s so cool when the clothes are so distracting. :-) Both manga and anime have a happy ending, but of a strictly hetero sort.

Oniisama E is soapy and angsty and really, really shoujo. If you’re a guy, or a chick who likes action, you probably won’t enjoy this, but I’ll go to the grave saying this – no one makes doing drugs, smoking, going mad and dying tragically look as sexy as Sainte-Juste does. Yeah.

Ratings: Yuri – 8, Art – 6, Story – 7, Music – 4, Characters – 8, Overall – 8