Archive for the Kannazuki no Miko Category


Yuri Anime: Shattered Angels, Volume 1 (English)

July 23rd, 2008

Shattered Angels (originally known as Kyoshiro to Towa no Sora) is a story that takes place in the land of Academia – a small country with an abundance of schools, and therefore students (but no teachers, I can’t help but notice.)

In this world there is a girl, Kuu, whose name means “empty” and indeed, she appears to lack mostly everything except incredulity and a childhood dream of a Prince. When Ayanokoji Kyoshiro arrives at the school, dressed in the school uniform of the one school that has been destroyed completely Kuu, like everyone else, is wowed by his princely-ness. So when he grabs her shirt and rips it open, she’s pretty aghast. Of course this being a Kaishaku story, she forgets to stay upset – and all the other girls in the school likewise have no frontal lobes – so when Kyoshiro asks Kuu to come with him, she does.

Immediately she finds herself the center of a battle for…herself. Why, Kuu has no idea and no one really tells her, but that’s not really important because of every character in this series, Kuu is the least interesting. lol And the only characters we want to see are Kaon and Himiko.

So in episode two, Kuu is kidnapped by Kaon, who turns out to be an Absolute Angel, like Tarlotte, the cat girl who was after Kuu, and Setsuna who fights for Kyoshiro. The meeting with Kaon and Himiko is mostly so we can witness them kissing, and they can deny that they are in love, and Kuu can, in her own brainless way, tell us that they are lying and even she knows it.

Then we meet Mika, the evil ojou-sama who “owns” Kaon and Himiko and watch her torture them both a bit in an ill-conceived plan of domination.

Episode three was hysterical, as nearly every character spends time in either bath or shower – even the boys. If the idea of anime beef- and/or cheesecake appeals, this episode is great. For me, it was plain hysterical – especially watching Soujiro, Kyoshiro and Mika in a split frame showing them all in showers as they provide exposition about the end of the world and their Absolute Angels. Episode three also includes many gratuitous random kiss scenes.

The final episode provides us with insight into Kyoshiro’s obsession about his older brother Kazuya, and a lot of crazy talk.

Video extras include the first and second DVD specials. The first shows us just how much of a raw deal Setsuna has signed up for. (Is there anyone watching this who does not feel bad for Setsuna? I know I do. She’s loads better than Kuu.) And the second is a romantic vignette called “Lovers Reunion” that shows us, in no uncertain terms, what Kaon and Himiko feel for one another. No subtext here at all. It’s a sweet and touching extra. Their interactions with each other will continue to be tender and touching through the series, whatever amount of service is layered over them. And I still prefer them to Chikane and Himeko, regardless of the fact that they are not the main couple.

Ratings:

Art – 7
Story – 7
Characters – 7, except for Mika, Kaon and Himiko, who are all 8
Yuri – 7
Service – 7

Overall – 7

I know I’m in a minority when I say this but, I still think that Shattered Angels is a better Yuri story than Kannazuki, primarily because the Yuri relationship does not have violence or insanity built into it. This time the crazy and abusive is confined to the Ayanokojis, so Himiko and Kaon are left alone to have a deep, mostly functional love.





Yuri Manga: Kannazuki no Miko, Volume 1 (English)

June 25th, 2008

Just for fun, you might want to compare my review of the Japanese edition of Kannazuki no Miko from three years ago to this one. I bet at least some things have changed.

Today’s review is brought to you by Ted the Awesome and the word amai. :-)

Amai is an interesting word. It means “sweet” and is used, as one would expect, about pastries and other sweet things. In the same way that we describe someone as “sweet,” in Japanese a “sweet girl” will be amai just like a pastry might be. But amai has other meanings in Japanese as well. Where we would say “you’re too soft on her” or “you spoil him,” the word amai might be used. And there’s amai as in “naive,” which you find used in fight scenes in which the hero is confident about his/her giant robot piloting skills and the bad guy screams “Amai!” as they launch an underhanded, treacherous attack which inevitably fails to win.

So amai is more than just “sweet” as we understand it in English. It implies a kind of naivete which, in a mild case is simply indulging (another person) too much, and in its extremity is a sort of dangerous cluelessness.

This is all to preface this next sentence: In the first volume of Kannazuki no Miko, Himeko is amai.

She is sweet in the conventional sense, and kind and good – but she’s also dangerously naive and dotes on the people around her, giving into their whims without question, to the detriment of their well-being – and her own. As a result, she is forced into the role of victim by both the people she trusts.

Why, one has to ask, if both Souma and Chikane love Himeko so much, do they allow her to be bullied, outcast and victimized instead of stepping up and claiming their friendship publicly? Setting aside for the moment the fact that Kaishaku’s writing skills are total ass, lol, let’s look at this objectively.

If either Chikane or Souma *had* stepped forward and said – get your hands off her, she’s my important friend, okay, maybe the talking behind her back and bullying might not have disappeared, it would have at least been notched down. If BOTH of them had said “Get your hands off my Betty!” the rest of the school would have backed off, and watched the drama play out with immense satisfaction and titillation. But neither does. Although both Souma and Chikane profess to love Himeko, they let her dangle, unprotected, on the edge of a precipice every day – only showing their “true” emotions when they are alone with her.

It seems particularly nasty behavior in the light of their professed desire to “protect” Himeko…when they are the reason she needs protecting in the first place, right?

Basically, both Souma and Chikane are fail. ^_^;

Souma’s fail is slightly more forgivable, because he’s the basic stuttering non-verbal manga boy. Chikane’s fail is quite literally epic, because she *knows* the whole story and isn’t giving Himeko a single piece of information. Ultimately she brutalizes her physically and emotionally, because in her warped view, it’s to “protect” Himeko from knowledge of the situation.

Himeko’s fail is that she is completely, totally amai. She allows the whims of others to take control of her life, she indulges them by not having an opinion of her own, she naively forgives even the basest behavior, and she never once takes an interest in the truth of what is going on. Not really.

The truth is that the the myth cycle the Orochi and the Priestesses are playing out, is quite thin. The story, really, revolves around the love triangle and Himeko’s victimization by herself and the people who profess to love her.

Tokyopop’s team did as good a job with the material as they could. It’s not a good story, nor is it well-drawn, but they made it make as much sense as possible. I applaud them for that. It’s not as easy as they made it look. The original was actually quite nonsensical. ^_^

Whether you like Kannazuki no Miko will depend on a lot of factors, but if you are the kind of person who goes by the equation zOMG Yuri!=Good!, you’ll probably like it lots.  ^_^

Ratings:

Art – 6
Story – 6
Characters – 6
Yuri – 8
Service – 8

Overall – 7

Of course, we’re all interested in finding out the fate of the second volume, which is slated for release in about a week or so. I expect that as it’s one of the licensed titles, it’ll see the light of day eventually, if not actually next week. Sadly, some members of the team who made soup out of this stone are no longer with the company, which is a genuine loss.





Kyoshiro to Towa no Sora Manga, Volume 3

April 9th, 2008

Short review today because 1) I’m sick (again!) and 2) there’s basically not much to say about Kyoshiro to Towa no Sora, Volume 3.

Kyoushiro’s big brother Kazuya has shown up and, surprise!, he’s as crazy as everyone kept saying he was. He admits to wanting to destroy the world and Kyoushiro in particular…and really, who can blame him? Kazuya beating the daylights out of Kyou is *still* my favorite part of the series. I could read/watch Kyou having his brother complex and spine shattered at the same time, a million times without it getting tired in the least. :-)

But of course, love and stuff win the day. There’s lots of exposition about the various Tenshi’s dreams and hopes, most of which is kind of abstract, and people pop in and out of existence in a way that really doesn’t make a whole lot of sense (as the wife would say, “Just go with it.”) Kuu and Kyou get to be reunited, only to be be torn apart as Kuu dissolves into pieces, which is followed by Kyou heading out on a quest to find Kuu again because, for some reason, even after she dissolved into a million shards, he think she still exists somewhere. Setsuna gets sympathy sex, until, miraculously, they find Kuu, who is even “emptier” than before.

Mika-sensei dies wondering why Himiko got the girl when she was so awesome, but Himiko does, in fact, get Kaon. They have a nice, non-servicey scene, so we can see them safely in each other’s arms happily ever after.

And Tarlotte and Soujiro return to doing whatever it was they did.

Poor Waltesia is left with a broken Kazuya.

The End.

I still maintain that it wasn’t bad. It isn’t anything as bad as Eikyuu Alice and in many ways I liked it better than Kannazuki. No, it is not *about* the lesbian couple, but the ending for Kaon and Himiko beats both anime and manga endings for Chikane and Himeko.

Ratings:

Art – 7
Story – 6
Characters – 7
Yuri – 6
Service – 7

Overall – 7

“Snuggling in a boat on the lake as a couple” trumps “probable repeat of horrible fate” or “being reborn as sisters” in this reviewer’s eyes.





Yuri Manga: Kyoshiro to Towa no Sora, Volume 2

February 20th, 2008

Let’s play a game, shall we? I’m going to review Volume 2 of Kyoshiro to Towa no Sora as if Kaon and Himeko were the protagonists. Pretend you don’t know they are not. Read it all the way through and then *honestly* commment about the series. Because my guess is, all you Kannazuki no Miko fans would LOVE Kyoshiro, if Kaon and Himiko were the leads, regardless of how junky it is. (Of course it’s junky. Kaishaku writes junk. It’s all they have ever written.) The bottom line is that you loved KnM for the Yuri kisses, not for the story, despite how awesome you say you thought the story was because the story made little sense and rape really isn’t romantic no matter how you’ve chosen to fill in Chikane’s motivation in your head. Since the Yuri in Kyoshiro is secondary, you all *suddenly* noticed that Kaishaku suck. ^_^

Here we go.

Once upon a time, there was a girl named Himiko. She was very gentle and kind, and a very talented artist. Because she was so talented, she was recruited to attend an exclusive school run by the charming, but overbearing Ayanokouji Mika. Mika-sensei ran the school like a harem, taking various students, including Himiko, as lovers. But her true interest lay with a girl named Kaon. Kaon was tall and beautiful and powerful – because she was not human. In reality, she was the human form of a powerful weapon, an Absolute Angel. Himiko and Kaon fell in love, but they could not be together, since Kaon was Mika’s possession. They stole moments together and kisses here and there, but all the time they knew that Mika owned them both.

One day Mika commanded Kaon to kidnap a girl, which she did. But she was weakened in the attempt. The girl was immediately claimed by Mika as her own, and given to Himiko to take care of. But when the girl’s previous owner sent his weapon to take the girl back, Kaon was too weak to fight. Himiko kissed Kaon to giver her “mana,” the energy she needed to fight. But it was too late. The other weapon, named Setsuna, and her owner, Kyoshirou, took the girl away. Kaon was punished by Mika for failing, and she and Himiko were once again kept apart.

The next chapters follow the girl’s adventures as she is returned to Kyoshiro, but not left at peace. She learns that she too is an Absolute Angel, something that she simply can’t handle, having thought she was human all along.

And then, Mika and Kyoshirou’s crazy older brother shows up. Everything is about to change.

Ratings:

Art – 7 Orders better than usual. I wonder what happened.
Story – 7
Characters – 7
Yuri – 7 Don’t forget that Mika is an EPL, too
Service – 7

Overall – 7

Admit it. If Kaon and Himiko were the protagonists, you’d love this story and wouldn’t be able to sit still waiting for Volume 3. Yuri fandom is willing, able and wanting to watch absolute crap (cognitive dissonance will assure us that it is good, as long as we liked it, anyway) as long as the lead characters are a Yuri couple.  ^_^

Kannazuki no Miko isn’t as good, and Kyoshiro isn’t as bad as you think you think. ^_^





Kyoshiro to Towa no Sora Manga, Volume 1 (Japanese)

October 3rd, 2007

Kyoshiro to Towa no Sora is Kaishaku’s version of CLAMP’s Tsubasa Chronicles. In this story, many popular elements from past Kaishaku stories are gathered togther under the umbrella of a new alternate universe plotline, so we can enjoy them all over again for the first time. (That Kaishaku and CLAMP are in no way similar is a given – they just happened to use a similar story construction technique.)

I’m not an expert on Kaishaku continuity but, as I see it, this story is most likely a continuation of the Koutetsu Tenshi Kurumi (aka Steel Angel Kurumi) story, in which the “Angel” technology that was awakened in the Meiji period has been refined over time into the “Zettai Tenshi” or “Absolute Angels” of some possible, post-apocalyptic future.

In KtTnS, we are first introduced to Shiratori Kuu, an insipid blonde with a dream of a Prince who saves her from the obscurity she so richly deserves. When mysterious, princely, Ayanokouji Kyoushirou approaches her, it’s like a dream come true. Or a nightmare, as Kyou immediate rips her shirt to (assumably) look for some kind of mark. But since he doesn’t explain himself, it’s just plain old tedious sexual molestation. And, when Kyou reaches out a hand to take Kuu with him, it makes perfect sense that she’d go because his being cool and princely makes up for his being a molester. (This is meant to be read as irony. It annoys and bothers me quite a bit that the standard male fantasy in Japan is non-consensual. I worry that the women haven’t killed all the men, too. But then, the marriage and child-bearing rate is dropping at an alarming pace, so maybe they are. But I digress)

As in the anime, Kuu is immediately thrust into a world of service and violence, as the poor, insipid girl is kidnapped and rescued repeatedly for reasons that no one quite explains – although they obviously all know what’s going on. You’d think that Kyou could take five minutes and give it a shot. But, no. It’s more important to see Kuu bathe.

Volume 1 of the manga is a little light on the Yuri. We do get a short hiatus with EPL Ayanokouji Mika, who does loves her some girl toys. And we get the briefest glimpse at Kaon and Himiko, this story’s reincarnation of Chikane and Himeko from Kannazuki no Miko. But the Yuri is painted with a light brush, because there’s a bunch of fetishes they have to cram into this series and Yuri’s just one on the list.

I quite liked the Kyoshiro to Towa no Sora anime. It made some sense, Kyoushirou’s brother was so far over the top that he came back around the bottom again, Kaon and Himiko were an obvious couple and had a nice ending to their story. I expect the manga will turn out to be much of a muchness. It’s not like I have high expectations for this, or anything. ^_^

If you like Kaishaku enough to enjoy the recycling of characters, then you should get your 600 yen’s worth. If you’re an OCD Yuri fan, you might want to wait ’til Volume 2, which ought to have more Kaon and Himiko.

Ratings:

Art – 7
Story – 3
Characters – 5
Yuri – 2
Service – 8

Overall – 6

ADV has licensed the anime for this series, so you’ll get to see the Kaon and Himiko-themed specials on the DVDs. Honestly, I think they managed more Yuri in the anime than in the manga, where Kuu’s roommate also managed to be tainted with the same brush as Mika, her love slaves, Kaon and Himiko. But we’ll see if the manga can achieve parity.