Archive for the Gunjo Category


Ride or Die on Netflix

April 16th, 2021

Ride or Die on NetflixIf you are a regular reader here at Okazu, you know that I have loved the darkly violent Yuri manga GUNJO from the day I received a message about it on Japanese social platform Mixi, back in 2008ish. I’ve written reviews of various chapters I read in Morning Two magazine and all three of the volumes in Japanese in my GUNJO category here on Okazu.  In 2018, I was able to meet with Nakamura-sensei (over what was possibly one of the hilariously worst lunches I can remember. This was supposed to be a BLT. It was inedible.) At the time, we worked out how we might do a translation for GUNJO into English. And she mentioned that she was in talks about a live-action adaptation.

Translator Erin Subramanian and I have completed the translation for Volume 1 of GUNJO, into English, which is purchasable by the chapter on Nakamura-sensei’s website. We’re hoping to see a collected Volume 1 on ebook sellers near you one day soon. As we completed Volume 1, the pandemic hit and the project was paused. Today’s review was, in large part, why it paused. Last night Netflix released Ride or Die, the live-action movie based on the manga by Nakamura Ching.  Ride or Die, directed by Hiroki Ryuuichi, is not GUNJO. It is, however, within spitting distance of it.

Like GUNJO, (I ended up using this spelling when Morning Two magazine chose it over Gunjō, so forgive me) Ride or Die contains graphic violence and marital abuse. Unlike the manga, the movie also contains several explicit sex scenes, both straight and lesbian. If any of this makes you feel uncomfortable, you may well want to give this movie a pass. Interestingly, for the lesbian sex scene at the end of the movie, the staff brought in an “intimacy coordinator,” which Max Gao writes about in his article on NBC, Stars of Netflix’s lesbian thriller ‘Ride or Die’ on their on- and off-screen connection. This intimacy does change the end of the story considerably, but whether you think it works better or worse will be an entirely personal decision. In my opinion the end of the manga is very hard to beat for perfection. ^_^

Another change from the manga is that the characters – who remained nameless and were referred to as “Megane-san” and “Lesbian-san” by Japanese fandom – here are named. They get to share moments of genuine joy in this movie, which was probably the most disconcerting change for me. I don’t think it was a bad change, it merely signaled that we would not get that manga ending. Overall, I think both Sato Honami as the abused Nanae and Mizuhara Kiko as Rei, the woman who loves her enough to kill for her, did an excellent job. There were moments when Sato looked so like Megane-san that it was quite extraordinary and I found myself commenting on it every time.

As you may remember in my other movie reviews, I dislike the slowdown of pacing that seems to be to be a common occurrence in Japanese live-action manga adaptations. In the case of Ride or Die, it was the sex scenes that I felt went on too long, and the movie would have benefited from them being cut slightly. But this was pretty much my only complaint. This, I think, came from the choice of director whose career began in pink films and whose body of work tends to favor graphic sex and violence. 

Some of you may wonder about the title, Ride or Die, which I’m sure many of us see as an already tired trope. Nakamura-sensei mentioned that the title change was something she approved of and I’m inclined to agree. It allows us to view the movie as something separate from the manga…but also to see this is a subversion of the trope itself. This is not a “ride or die” scenario in the most typical sense. The characters are, yes, being followed by the police, but not hot on their heels. There’s just no urgency as they wander randomly through their lives together until they and we have all the pieces.

Ratings:

Cinematography – 9
Story – 9
Characters – Portrayed beautifully, so 9 but they are sometimes deeply unlikable
Service – 10
Lesbian – 10

Overall – 9

I’ll watch it again, for sure. If you get a chance to watch it, let us know what you think in the comments!





Yuri Manga: GUNJO, Volume 3 (羣青下)

June 20th, 2012

The third and final volume of GUNJO (羣青 下) is no easier to read than the previous two volumes. In fact, there are several moments that still manage to shock and appall, even with all we’ve been through.

“What would you kill for?” The brunette, Megane-san, asks the blonde’s, Sensei’s, sister-in-law, and she in turn asks her husband. It is a question that is buried deep in the heart of this volume.

Things we thought we knew, turn out to be not true, and the depth of the despair of Megane-san’s life only becomes truly apparent when she’s all but shed her last layer of emotional armor. Still, it is in moments where kindness manages to be felt for a mere moment, that brutality is the most harsh, and in the middle of the most intense violence when gentleness can be felt most clearly.

One of the questions asked back when I reviewed the first or second volume was – how much time has passed? I can answer that now – it’s been about a week, going on two.

As I read this story, probably about halfway through what would become the second volume, I conceived a wish – a hope. It was an insane hope, because there was nothing at all in the story that lead me to think it could ever come true. I desired, most of all, to see the two characters – the beaten, abused, unloved woman, and the woman who killed for her – smile. It was a ridiculous wish that could never happen.

The final half of this final book is the literary equivalent of lancing an infected wound to get the infection out. There’s really no other way to describe it. Page after page of confession, admission, digression, discussion finally brings the two characters through the last of their despair to the inevitable end of their story.

GUNJO is over and I have nothing left to say about it. It’s been wonderful, it’s been painful, it’s been sublime.

In the end, there’s only one question left for you to ask – Did they ever smile? You’ll have to read it and find out.

Ratings:

Overall – 10

Once again, I want to thank Nakamura Ching-sensei for creating this extraordinary story. 

Without question, GUNJO is the best manga I have ever read, and it encroaches deeply on the “best book I have ever read” list.





The End of GUNJO (羣青)

March 4th, 2012

I finally had a chance to read the final chapter of GUNJO, in the March issue of IKKI magazine.

I do not know what to say about it, really. It left me quite literally gasping for air. I sat there and panted for about two minutes, as I stared at the last page.

The ending was not what I feared it might be, it was not what I hoped it might be. It was infinitely better than I imagined, both happier and sadder that I expected. It contained something I wished desperately for and never truly believed could happen.

If you too have read it, please feel free to tell me your impressions in the comments. No spoilers, please. I do not wish to ruin anyone’s experience of the ending.

The third and final volume of Gunjo will be slightly delayed. According to her Twitter feed, Nakamura-sensei entered the hospital recently and, while she is back home recovering, her work will be slowed or suspended for some time until she is feeling better. I know I am not alone in wishing her a speedy recovery.

「羣青」ありがとうございます。Thank you, Sensei, for GUNJO.

It’s been a hell of a ride.





Yuri Manga: GUNJO (羣青), continued

October 24th, 2011

It’s been a while since I talked about GUNJO (羣青), hasn’t it? The first volume was brutal and awful and wonderful and the second volume was, as I keep saying, like eating the most delicious razor blades ever.

And now, as the story approaches an end, I want to talk about it once more. Now, while it’s still in that Schroedinger’s Cat phase of not being over, but already ended. (It has to be ended, or nearly so, just because of the publishing schedule of magazines.)

As I read each new chapter, I find myself scanning the faces of the woman who was abused and despised by everyone ever who was supposed to have loved and cared for her and the only person who ever actually did,  wondering how this series could end without them both dead, wondering if they will ever be free, wondering if they will ever smile again, wondering if I’m as or more pathetic than they to even think that they might.

Look at the scan above. (I left in all the ghost images from the pages in front and behind this tableau, because this is what the pages look like when I read the chapters in the magazine.)

“Hey!” says the brunette, who Japanese fans call Megane-san because she wore glasses.

“…Mm?” says the blonde, called “Sensei” by Japanese fans because she was a vet, before she became a criminal.

There they are, facing each other down, having survived so much together and yet not together at all. The brunette gets angriest when the blonde shows her any kindness, the blonde gets angriest when the brunette becomes self-deprecating. Neither can let each other go….neither wants to be left alone….neither wants to be with the other. They are suspended in a relationship so intimate that they loathe each other for it, but when they think about it a little, they don’t dislike each other at all.

Where can this series go? I have absolutely no idea. I sit around sometimes and try to predict the end. Will Megane-san give herself up, and let Sensei return to what’s left of her life? Or maybe they will die in a freak accident, solving the entire problem? Or maybe they will be free, after all, the police haven’t caught up to them yet….maybe they can escape…and then I slap myself for being a fool.

You don’t know what the brunette says next. I don’t know what will happen next. Like every chapter of GUNJO, this one keeps us suspended on a knife bridge, spikes on one side, swords on the other. This moment is not a breath of fresh air – it’s the moment before the breath is punched out of us.

GUNJO has been the hardest thing I have ever read in my life. I love it to the point of incoherence.  It’s long moved past being about a lesbian, and I don’t even know what it’s about anymore…other than life and death.

However it ends, no matter how much it hurts (and it will, of that I have no doubt,) I’ll still consider this one of the greatest stories I have ever read in any language. Thank you Nakamura-sensei. Thank you for GUNJO.

要約:これまで読んできたあらゆる言語の作品の中で、最も優れた物語のひとつ (要約/翻訳 |小松さん)





Yuri Manga: GUNJO, Volume 2

April 11th, 2011

There will be massive spoilers in this review. I cannot discuss how powerful the story is or the reactions I had without them. If you object, skip to the ratings.

Today, we speak of desperation.

In my interview with Nakamura-sensei, she called GUNJO (羣青 ) a story about the “profound loneliness of a lonely person.”

In Volume 1 (上), we learned why the brunette would be driven to desperate acts, as a way to escape a life of despair and pain. She had nothing to lose. And we can understand that, we can forgive that. Abused women fighting back makes sense to us.

In Volume 2 (中), we are forced to deal with the other half of that act…executed by a woman who had everything to lose.

The beginning of Volume 2 starts with the chapter that made it impossible for me to continue to write chapter-by-chapter reviews of this story. This is when I began thinking of reading GUNJO in terms of “eating the most delicious razor blades you’ve ever had.” Each chapter hurts so magnificently, it has become my equivalent of cutting. I read a chapter to see how low into despair I can sink, how intensely I can feel their loneliness, how miserable they can make me feel. I read this every month to see if I can still summon hope.

In Volume 2, we do the most absolutely emotionally draining thing possible, we stop watching the main couple, with their dysfunctional relationship and dangerous dynamic, and take a step aside to really understand everything the blonde has thrown away. I don’t believe I’ve ever shed so many tears over a book as I did in these chapters. Watching the blonde’s ex re-create her life, find out how close they were to making it permanent (or, as permanent as possible for two gay women in Japan in the present), watching as the loss of her lover forces the ex to come out to her parents, and express how she *would* have spent the rest of her life with that woman. And then, when it all seems like she’s put it behind her and is ready to move on, we watch her give up completely…and kill herself. The blonde, who has everything to lose, has lost everything.

Then, when we think that we can put that behind us and we can move on, the ring her lover had bought her….the ring with which she was intending to propose…is given to the blonde, along with the story of her lover’s death. Now she has to deal with new loss on top of old.

But the book doesn’t end there. Profound loneliness has no cure. It wants no cure. The brunette, a woman who has run until she has been cornered by life, has new ammunition to make the one person who cares about her hurt. So she does. She batters the blonde with emotional torment until the blonde throws away the very last relics she has of her former life, 550 yen….and the wedding ring.

Ratings:

Art – 10
Story – 10
Characters – 10
Lesbian – 10
Sevice – 1

Overall – 10

There is no respite here. There is no moment when we can breathe a sigh of relief.

All we can do is feel the desperation and the loneliness of despair. And wait. For Volume 3.