Today’s review is dedicated, once again, to 828-san.
Back in November 2007, I reviewed the Cream Lemon: Escalation light novel. It was pretty good, for what it was. The language was flowery and the overall emotion behind the BDSM was really very sweet.
In stark contrast, Escalation: Die Liebe (エスカレーションディ・リーベ) was written by a man (how can you tell, Erica? you ask. I answer – it’s seriously obvious,) with limited sexual imagination. Also, for whatever reason, it is not a “Light Novel,” it is full paperback novel size, but still has illustrations. They are still quite laughable, as they were in the original.
The plot (tell me when you stop laughing and I’ll continue) of Die Liebe starts with Naomi-sempai abusing Rie a bit as a good-bye present and leaving her to pick up the pieces at school. Arisa, the student Rie chose as her pet at the end of Escalation is disappeared and instead we get a stoolie called Yukari and the target of her affection, a whiny, soppy kid named Tomoe.
Rie and Midori see Tomoe crying against a tree on the first day of the term and Rie decides that that girl will be her new pet. Only, uncharacteristically, she seduces Tomoe’s roommate Yukari first in order to something something…because it makes no sense at *all* that she needs more than a “You – Me – Now,” gesture at Tomoe and be able to have her. And, um, btw, the girl you seduced, Yukari? She is your pet. In case you didn’t notice. Midori is also written completely out of character. Suddenly popular, she is head of the tennis team, and really nice. Um…okay. Whatever floats your boat.
The entire novel follows Rie’s pointlessly complex plot to get Tomoe. There’s a lot of nothing that goes on and remarkably little sex. …And the author has a spanking fetish.
I believe that Die Liebe is the novelization for a game of the same name. I can only say that if it follows this novel, it’s probably *dire*. ^_^
What this novel did make me long for was to see Naomi come back bringing Arisa with her, and for me write a 5-girl pileup fanfic using the same girly, flowery language used in the original novel. ^_^ (How convenient, I have time now to work on it!)
Ratings:
Art – 4
Story – 4
Characters – 5
Yuri – 10
Service – 10
Overall – 5
Unlike the original, this wasn’t pretty good, not even – not especially – for porn.
As a conversation piece – this book is total win, however. ^_^
I’d recommend adding a Paypal Donate button (aka “Tip Jar”). Works quite well with all the webcomics I read every morning (“Feed the starving artist”), and I’ve donated a few bucks now and again because it’s quick and easy.
Because of the nature of Okazu and Yuricon and because of the innate homophobia of Paypal, I can’t add a “donate” button. I did that once and almost ended up in a lawsuit with them.
Should people want to support Okazu, Yuricon and/or ALC, they will have to contact me directly to arrange it.
I’d recommend adding a Paypal Donate button (aka “Tip Jar”). Works quite well with all the webcomics I read every morning (“Feed the starving artist”), and I’ve donated a few bucks now and again because it’s quick and easy.
Right. Except that Paypal will not allow that because of the “adult” nature of my business. So, as I said, it can’t happen. I’ve already tried that once and it got very ugly.
wow, sorry to read about the job, erica. i hope that a gig will come along soon – i’ll be thinking good thoughts for manga/anime work for you!
i had NO idea of PayPal’s regulations – that sucks considering it would be a good money maker for them in the long run. i suppose there isn’t a PayPal competitor/alternative out there, eh?
Not any good ones, grace. The last alternative that didn’t have a anti-adult, homophobic structure took the money and ran. I lost $300 that way, but there were many other companies that lost much more.
Just for historical record (hello, everyone in futureland! This “internet” fad still going, huh?), I did not purposefully post twice, requiring two seperate replies to identical worded comments. That was Firefox being funky. Dur.
Hello, Die Liebe does suck, but the book is written by 真行寺たつや, who independently did the story, scripts and character designs for the first two installments of the Anime Escalation series, the story, the original artwork, and the artwork direction. Unfortunately, he’s not in the same shape as he used to be after the events of “表面張力”