Archive for 2011


Yuri Manga: Sasamekikoto, Volume 8 (ささめきこと)

March 11th, 2011

Here we are at Volume 8 of Sasamekikoto (ささめきこと). And we are just about as far from where we started as we can be. Instead of layering Yuri tropes and riffing on fan expectations, Volume 8 is a straightforward look at what happens when two people decide to be more honest with their feelings, with the strong subtext of “taking responsibility.”

We left Sumi on the cusp of running for Student Council President and facing a smear campaign about her sexuality. To counter this, she is set up on a date with Akemiya-kun as a beard, but when he shows up as Akemi-chan, the more important message becomes one of personal responsibility for one’s choices. This is brought front and center when Mayu punches out a classmate for her unkind words and Sumi, as Karate team captain has to bear the responsibility. Ultimately, to save the Karate team from being disbanded, Sumi pulls herself from the election…only to have Ushio step in to replace her. Ushio, determined to be as responsible a member of the Student Body as Sumi is, wins. The Karate team remains intact, and Ushio does not back down from her own new responsibilities.

Throughout this volume, Ushio’s brother is being pressured by their grandmother to take responsibility for his own future and for Ushio. After she falls and is injured, he bites the bullet and confronts Kinuta-san about his responsibility to his grandmother and Ushio. The scene where he asks Kinuta to marry him was, IMHO, one of the funniest, most realistic scenes we’ve had in the series (and the reactions of the people around them remind me strongly of a night in a restaurant in England during which everyone in the room was visibly listening in on a breakup at a table in the center of the room.)

And then there’s Sumika. Sumi has been under a tremendous amount of stress recently. She’s pulled herself from the election, but had attention focused on her personal life in a rather unnerving way. Then she had to deal with Mayu’s situation. But what pushes her to the point of breaking is Ushio saying that she’s leaving to go take care of her grandmother. Smear her, blame her, make her the brunt of what you will…the one thing Sumika cannot tolerate is the loss of Ushio.

And that brings us to the end of a very excellent volume of a manga that is not what we could have expected, but has become everything it could be.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Characters – 9
Story – 9
Yuri – 7
Service – 1

Overall – 9

Where will Volume 9 lead us? I don’t know, but I can’t wait to find out!





Digimon Tamers Anime (English)

March 8th, 2011

As I noted a few weeks ago, the anime Digimon Tamers is now available on Hulu.com. This has provided me a chance to revisit one of the most remarkable Saturday-morning cartoons I’ve ever watched.

Digimon follows the same formula that made Pokemon a hit – young people “collect” creatures, and participate in fights so the creatures can “evolve” to higher power levels. In Digimon Tamers, which was the third anime series of the franchise, there is a card/computer game version of “Digimon,” which is played by all of our principle characters. As a result of several plot complications, actual Digimon are transported from the “Digital World” to our world. The plot follows these Digimon and their human counterparts, their “Tamers.”

The Tamers are Takato, the Digimon anime franchise equivalent of a energetic young tenor in opera. Distinguished by his goggles, every-so-slight cluelessness and energy, he is the de facto leader of the group. Jian (called Henry in the English dub) is a Chinese-Japanese, whose father was part of the team that originally created the Digimon. The third member of the group is Ruki (called Rika in the dub,) known as the Digimon Queen for her card gaming skills.

Takato appears to have created his own Digimon by force of will and, like his Tamer, Guilmon is guileless, cheerful and energetic. Jian appears to have had his Digimon, Terriermon, for some time and they already have a history and some traumatic experiences behind them when the anime starts.

Ruki is typical of many girls in gaming – she works twice as hard as the boys, ekes out a little respect and about the same level of derision, and is, at 10 years old, already quite jaded and cynical. At first glance, there’s no way not to peg Ruki as a babydyke, from the leg holster and the broken-heart t-shirt she habitually wears, to her passive-aggressive relationship with her Digimon, Renamon.

Renamon is eight kinds of awesome as a fighter, she’s smart and, compared with the other Digimon, she’s mature. (To be fair, Terriermon is more mature than Guilomon, partially because of Jian and partially because he is older and more experienced than Guilomon.)  Ruki and Renamon’s relationship is as full of denial, recrimination, poor communication and tenderness as any real-life relationship. It’s almost embarrassingly realistic.

I first watched this series as it played out on American TV, during a Saturday morning cartoon block. Now, watching the original anime in Japanese with subtitles, I’m amazed how *little* was changed for the dub. I’m amazed – and impressed. Scenes, tone, dialogue are all exactly as I remember it.

I am not impressed by the subtitling on Hulu, however. It has exactly the same lack of quality control that plagues Crunchyroll’s subtitling. It really would be worth hiring an editor, purveyors of streaming subtitled anime. Instead of seamless translation, there’s typos, grammatical and syntactical errors, and an overall sense of middle-schoolers or non-native English-speakers having been put in charge of the project.

Nonetheless, I’m thrilled to be able to watch Digimon Tamers again, and watch Ruki slowly, reluctantly, come to realize what Renamon really means to her. If you missed it the first time around on TV, I hope you’ll give it a try this time. It’s a surprisingly excellent franchise cartoon.

Ratings:

Art – 7, with flashes of 9 and moments of 5, when the budget runs low
Story – 9
Characters – 9
Yuri – really depends on how you interpret Ruki and Renamon’s relationship. Let’s call it a 5
Service – 1

Overall – 9

It’s not a “Yuri anime” but is an excellent anime, with Yuri potential if you want to go there. If not, it’s a great cartoon.





Dare Ni Mo Ienai Manga

March 7th, 2011

Dare ni mo Ienai (誰にも言えない) is a manga that follows the lives and love affairs of three women.

Midori had a traumatic experience when she was young and has not been able to move past it. It does not appear to be an actual trauma per se, but more a situation in which she found herself with a man she could not have – and no other man has really stacked up since. Midori doesn’t make it all that easy, to be honest. She’s a recluse, not outgoing, or friendly…and she doesn’t get along all that well with her sister, Minae.

Minae is, if anything, even *more* tactiturn and ill-tempered than Midori. She’s seeing this total goofball of a guy and is completely in denial about her feelings for him. It’s not until he falls from the 19th story of a building (down to the 18th story) that she realizes that she’d really miss the big lug if he were gone.

The final story follows two women, Meh-chan and Tsugumi, who live together, are lovers, but somehow don’t seem to be doing a good job of communicating. The fact that they work together actually makes it harder, rather than easier, for them to communicate properly. When Meh-chan falls apart at the idea of losing Tsugumi, for one brief moment, their hearts are in synch. But that turns out to be only a brief moment, as Tsugumi does leave to marry a man as her parents want. Meh-chan is able to find a generous thought for her ex, as she gazes on the “Just Married” announcement she’s received.

Shigizawa Kaya’s art was, at first, a little hard for me to parse. Midori and Minae are not twins, but looked so much like one another it took me a moment to realize that they were not the same person, as I had assumed at first glance. Tsugumi was also the same type. The three also shared the same expressions of dissatisfaction and grumpiness which contributed to the problem.

The final story “Ending” – which is the Yuri story – is that old-school, “I love you, but we can’t be together,” story, which really isn’t wearing all that well. To my eyes, at this point, there’s just something pathetic about someone who can walk away from a viable, passionate relationship for some kind of abstract duty. Yes, I know it still happens, but it makes me sad that we’re still stuck in this same space. 20 years from now, I really don’t want to be reading this same story anymore. Right now, I can’t stop myself from thinking that Meh-chan is better off without Tsugumi.

The stories in this collection are not awful, but given the unlikability of the main characters, it was hard to really get involved in them. The best of the three was Minae’s story, and the only character I could really sympathize with was her boyfriend, who seemed like a genuinely fun guy. That’s kind of deathly for a book about three women.

Ratings:

Art – 6
Story – 6
Characters – 5
Yuri – 9 in “Ending”
Service – 4

Overall – 6





Yuri Network News – March 5, 2011

March 5th, 2011

Yuri Anime

Welcome to the “some series never die” edition of the YNN report! Top news this week is German licensing company m4e has re-licensed the Sailor Moon anime for the German market. It’s not that US companies don’t want to license Sailor Moon, we know that. Remember when Funimation looked into it? And I know two others that have, as well. And…it’s not happenin’ right now. I don’t know why it’s not. but I’m going to close my eyes and pray for a moment that we do get a re-release sometime soon. I really want a DVD set of the third season with sound that doesn’t suck. I like to crank it when the Outer Senshi transform. (I’m sitting here watching Sailor Moon S as a I type and *man* does it have lousy art! But I don’t care, I love it anyway and want to see it re-released.)

Also in keeping with our theme this week, Funimation has announced that the release date for the Noir Complete Collection has been pushed back to July.

Back in the 2010’s, Ain’t It Cool Anime News mentioned that a K-ON! movie has been announced with a release at the end of 2011.

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Yuri Events – Yuri Artists

If you’re in or near Kyoto, Japan on the 21st of the month, you might want to arrange your day so you can participate in the 5th Girls Love Fes, Yuri doujinshi market, being held from 11:30-4:30 at Plaza  Pio.

For those of you in or near New York on the 20th of the month, consider arranging your day to make a trip to the Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance (BAAD) where Rica Takashima (Rica ‘tte Kanji!?) will be joining Jennifer Camper (Juicy Mother), Diane DiMassa (Hothead Paisan) and Joah Hilty (Bitter Girl) for a slide show and discussion panel called “Dykes Draw the Line.” The tickets are free, but you must reserve in advance.

If you were on Twitter last night, around 11PM EST, you were able to catch Fujieda Miyabi-sensei drawing live on Ustream. It was fun and rather relaxing, to watch him create something before our eyes (and hear him sing along to his background music.) Those of us watching it decided that we desperately wanted to live in a world where he designed all the clothing. ^_^ (He’s on his stream still, as I type this morning, so quick go over and say hi!)

Nakamura Ching-sensei has been working like a madwoman and picking up a number of very interesting gigs, along with her work on GUNJO and Girl’s Jump. One of her recent jobs was to pen a Yuri story for a fashion magazine, commons & sense, issue 140. This appears to be a real fashion mag, full of stuff I find laughably poser-y, but people who read this kind of thing probably take quite seriously. Check out the gallery and decide for yourself. I’ve ordered the magazine and I’ll let you know how it is.

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That’s a wrap for this week.

Become a Yuri Network Correspondent by sending me any Yuri-related news you find. Emails go to anilesbocon01 at hotmail dot com. Not to the comments here, please, or they might be forgotten or missed. There’s a reason for this madness. This way I know you are a real human, not Anonymous (which I do not encourage – stand by your words with your name!) and I can send you a YNN correspondent’s badge.

Thanks to all of you – you make this a great Yuri Network!





Yuri Manga: Strawberry Panic Omnibus (English)

March 3rd, 2011

91Bt+QH8+zL It’s been practically an eon since I first encountered Strawberry Panic! in the pages of Dengeki G’s magazine as stand-alone scenarios of Yuri couples. Since then, both I and the series itself have changed a few times. The series underwent an adaptation to manga, in which the initial pairs were expanded to an entire cast, and adapted into an anime, which reached deep into Yuri memes and roots and pulled out a love story with a satisfactory ending. The Light Novels, with their melodramatic stylings, served to complete the unfinished manga in an over-the-top way.

For my part, I began with pretty much nothing but loathing for the series which wallowed and pandered in a way that completely turned me off. There was nothing in the original stories that was created with me in mind and the manga was decidedly shaped for the lowest common denominator. As the anime shifted from “stolen meme of the week, which we present with a straight face and no real desire to tell a story” to “stolen meme of the week, which we present with a wink and a nod and –  we can’t help ourselves –  a bit of character development and plot, too” my opinion began to change. (I consider this a positive quality in myself, even if fans have a somewhat difficult time accepting that. I still get angry letters about reviews I wrote 7 years ago.)  And then I read the novels.

I have to say, very frankly, anyone who cannot “hear” the overt campiness of the novels, the hyper-melodramatic tone in which they were written, is really, honestly missing the point. In my review of the first LN in English, I tried to illustrate this with a few of the quoted passages. My comments were not me being snarky, but me commenting on the snark embedded within the lines of the novel. Of these, this passage really stood out as a tell:

Of course, most of the young ladies used their judgment when they heard those legends. But there were some who really believed them. …And yet those same young ladies grew into fine women.

Really read that, please, and note the subtext which (for those of you who cannot see the flashing lights,) says, “DO NOT TAKE THIS STORY SERIOUSLY.”

At the moment I read that line in the Japanese edition of the Light Novel, I ceased to take any of Strawberry Panic seriously and was, at last, able to find affection for it in my heart.

This week I found myself re-reading the manga as the Strawberry Panic Omnibus, put out recently by Seven Seas (who are now more active on Twitter. Go say hello.). My primary emotion upon completing it was that I was a little sad that it ended so soon. There were so many good bits yet to come and at least one helicopter would surely have been included! But no, this story was terminated at the equivalent of the end of the first novel.

Technically, the omnibus looks good. The translation is as it was; the translation notes are short, but enough. I like the size of the book, which is A5 – this gives it the feel of a typical seinen manga. It feels good in my hand and isn’t going to break a foot if I drop it, as Cardcaptor Sakura might. The one thing I will continue to say about Seven Seas is that they really do a great job of giving us, the readers, an authentic manga reading experience.

The story is very Yuri. There is nothing else to be said about that – there are multiple pairings in this manga but, of them, there are two entirely romantic romances (which almost no fans cared about, instead focusing on the hopeless losers in the rivalries…which has got to be some kind of commentary on something, don’t you think?)

This we can say about Strawberry Panic in all its iterations: Shizuma is queen-like, a veritable goddess on earth who is inexplicably (even to herself) attracted to a humble, down-to-earth energetic, cheerful girl, Nagisa. And Amane is a Prince-like being who is inexplicably (especially to herself) attracted to humble, angelic, cry-baby Hikari. And those two romances fill the pages of this collection with melodrama, tears and kisses.

Love it or hate it, Strawberry Panic was a gateway Yuri series for a generation of fans last decade. If you have not already picked up a copy of this omnibus, please do. And get an extra for your library, to spread the love of Yuri love to the next generation.

Ratings:

Art – 6
Story – 7
Characters – 8
Yuri – 9
Service – 10

Overall – 8

Foreshadowing: I have had the opportunity to see the Strawberry Panic Light Novel Omnibus and it is also quite good. More than it being good, though, you need to read it to get the end of the story! If you liked/loved/tolerated the manga and 1) want to know what happened or 2) really, really want to read about the helicopters, get it! I have to say, I laughed through the novels all over again as I read them. The language is breathtakingly campy in places.

Postscript: Today we have the genuine pleasure of thanking our own candidate for Etoile, Okazu Superhero Eric P., for his sponsorship of today’s review! As always, Eric, thank you kindly for your generosity. If you’d like to become an Okazu Hero, just click on the Yuri Wish List links on Amazon and Amazon JP on the right-hand sidebar and purchase something for review and you’ll be a Hero to Okazu readers world-wide!