When I hear that a series has Yuri or Yuri subtext, I’ll usually give it a chance, even if it’s not my particular thing. Just in case it is worth it, or might be of interest to Yuri fandom in general. Well, this past week I wasted a cumulative total of 46 minutes that I can never get back, watching two not very compellingl new anime series. Consider yourself warned.
This is a one-shot OVA for what must be a much longer, if not more complex, story. Rabbie is an “Angel,” or attemtping to be one, to be just like her cool, competent Mother. “Angels” are a combo of magical girl, hardsuit-wearing fighter chick and space police. In other words, they are a mixture of nearly every trite cliche’ possible.
The improbably named heroine, Lasty Farson, has all the typical qualities of a mediocre shoujo heroine; she’s clumsy and constantly late, has inexplicably good fighting skills and a best friend who passionately loves and desires her.
There’s a mysterious “bad” girl, a renegade Angel who, in the manga, probably also desires Lasty, but in this shortened OVA, only says one line, smiles enigmatically and moves her cape around a bit.
Perhaps the Yuri fanservice (and I can tell you know with complete assurance that that’s all it would be) is greater in the manga, but there’s so little even of that in this OVA that it’s not worth saying its there.
The characters are very moe, so they look years younger than they are, but have fully developed chests – ac onvention which repulses me – and the transformations Lasty goes through are unnecessary and ridiculous. The plot, if you can call it that, is superficial in the extreme. I probably wouldn’t even push any of the characters out of the way of an oncoming train.
This series is a big zero – give it a miss if you value your sanity.
Futari ha PreCure (Pretty Cure )
This is a generic magical girl anime.
Two girls, butchy and athletic Nagisa, and smart, feminine Honoka, somehow manage to be drawn together to form the magical team of Cure White and Cure Black, who fight for…shall we *all* say it…”Love and Justice.” Their costumes aren’t even good, just sort of stupid. Of course, the butchy girl is REALLLY straight,and we have that beaten into our head a thousand times as she moons over some faceless boy.
The art is wholly uninteresting, the story predictable and tiresome, the Monster of the Week was *dire*, but thrn this is targeted to children and they are probably not as cynical as I am.
But the worst, the absolute worst, thing about it was the ubiquitous cute, fluffy creatures. These were so horrible that I grit my teeth simply thinking about them. Each girl has been given what can only be called an anthromorphized cell phone which is really a cute, fluffy creature. These two creatures appear to be in love with each other. Mippiru and Meppuru add the syllables of their names to every sentence, which was enough to make me scream at the screen after five minutes of “Mippu, mippuuuu!”. I found it difficult to tolerate.
It’s very obvious that the entire point of this series is simply to sell stuff – in the first episode we get no less than 6 objet de plastic they will eventually try to sell.
Any Yuri is strictly fandom-based. These two characters have to hold hands to attack, but there’s no anything between them. Unless Honoka develops a raging crush on Nagisa, I’d recommend treating PreCure like the commercial franchise it is.
