Archive for the Artists Category


Yuri Is My Job!, Volume 13

May 14th, 2025

A blonde girl wearing glasses in a dark-green dirndl-style uniform is surrounded and embraced by flowering branches. She grips the tie at her collar as if to protect herself.

by Eleanor Walker, Staff Writer

After the shocking events of volume 12 and the Okazu Staff’s first ever group review, Yuri Is My Job! is back with volume 13 and the aftermath of those events. Content warning for discussion of sexual assault.

As I hoped, this volume focuses on Kanoko and her past and, to a lesser extent, future. We learn, via a conversation between Sumika and Kanoko, how Kanoko became friends with Hime, and how her feelings developed. The best way I can describe this is that it all feels very realistically teenagerish. The not wanting your only friend to start going out with someone because then you’ll be all alone is certainly something I remember experiencing, although my best friend wasn’t the popular girl, unlike Hime.

Frustratingly though, Kanoko doesn’t seem to have moved on or learnt anything from the whole ordeal. She’s still obsessively infatuated with Hime and a complete doormat to everyone else, and although she says in the last chapter she wants to face her head on, to me the only way she can do this is confess to her, which she steadfastly refuses to do. I just want to shake her and tell her you cannot put aside your own feelings to make others happy, it will all end in tears like it just did with Sumika!! Her fear of romance taking her friend away is beyond healthy at this point, and she really needs help. Whether she will get it remains to be seen.

One thing I did appreciate is this page though, where Mai, in a rare moment of actually acting like a manager, says to Kanoko that even though nothing physical happened, she was still threatened and hurt. It’s nice to see the story acknowledge that (sexual) violence doesn’t always have to simply be a physical act but also a mental one. I’m still in two minds as to whether it was even necessary to begin with, but I am glad the author is taking it seriously in the aftermath.

5 panels of Yuri is My Jon, Volume 13 in which Mai explains to Kanako that even though she was not hurt physically, she was traumatized. "Someone *hurt* you, Kanako-chan, I'd say that's violence."

I can’t honestly say I’m enjoying the series at the moment, but I am interested to see how we move on from this arc. In the afterword of the volume the author says this arc should conclude in the next volume, but unfortunately, the series has been on hiatus in Japan for about a year now due to the author’s health, and at the time of writing, there is no indication of when it may return. There are 3 chapters which have been released in the magazine which have not yet been published in graphic novel form.

Whilst nowhere near as viscerally intense as the previous volume, to finish I am going to quote Erica from our volume 12 review:

“The question I am left with is…is this what we needed or wanted from Yuri Is My Job!?” and after this volume I’m inclined to think not. I can’t work out what the end goal is or where the story is going to go from here and I can’t help but feel the author may have written themselves into a corner they can’t get out of.

To be continued.

Ratings:

Story: 5
Art: 7
Characters: 5
Yuri: 6
Service: 2. Thankfully nothing nearly as egregious as the colour spread in the previous volume. One brief scene of Sumika getting changed but no details visible.

Overall: 5





The Rose of Versailles movie, streaming on Netflix

May 12th, 2025

In the animated halls of Versailles, gleaming in the sunlight, Marie Antoinette in a pink and white dress is accompanied by a tall blonde wearing a red Royal Guard uniform,. One the left a noble man in a blue coat looks over his should her at Antoinette, who looks at him. In the shadows on the right a servant in a green suit of clothes looks at them.The Rose of Versailles movie, streaming on Netflix, is an ambitious, entertaining and colorful condensation of Riyoko Ikeda’s masterwork manga series set in the days leading up to the French Revolution. 

I was honored to be the editor for the English-language edition of The Rose of Versailles manga, published by Udon Entertainment. As a result, I am among a select few who can claim to have spent many intimate hours with the text of this magnum opus. I am no more intimate with the Dezaki anime than most other fans, having seen it two or three times (more on that later.) But the manga? I know that very well. ^_^

After opening credits that flash gilded splendor and brightly colored character designs in a dizzying display, we are flying above the carriage of Marie Antoinette as she, the new Dauphine, rides into Paris to the great acclaim of the French people. We are presented with a song of hope, that hunger and strife will be things of the past, now that their beautiful and beloved Antoinette arrives.

When then meet Oscar François de Jarjayes, the young scion of the noble de Jarjayes family. Born a girl, Oscar has been raised as a boy since her birth. She has been assigned the rank of Captain of the Queen’s Guard and is, likewise, acclaimed as beautiful and talented. 

What follows is a tightly wound story, focusing on a mere four characters from this grand historical epic: Oscar, Marie Antoinette, Oscar’s servant Andre Grandier, and Hans Axel von Fersen, an envoy from Sweden. To quote from the very first panels of the manga itself, “1755… In this year, three individuals who would eventually have a fateful encounter at Versailles, France were born in three different European countries.”

The manga is a massive 1300+ page epic, spanning the years before and after the French Revolution, looking at this tumultuous time from the perspectives of noble and commoner alike, centering the experience of one person, Oscar, who moved between the classes through circumstance and choice and whose decisions come to rest on the side of the people. 

The anime is a brilliant look at court life and the circumstances that turned the people against the Royal family.

This movie is about those three people mentioned in the first panels of the manga and the fourth, a loyal and loving servant carried in Oscar’s wake. To tell this more personal tale, much of the historical context is removed and some of the personal context is re-imagined as musical numbers. I really enjoyed these, noting that, of all four, only Oscar is ever seen “singing” any portion of the song. Animation during those musical numbers was grand in the way that Versailles is grand – over-produced and hard to watch, too much to take in. It was perfect.

While we’re on the topic of Versailles, this anime does the same thing the original anime does – it simplifies the visuals of Versailles. We see that it look fancy, but that is not how it looks at all. Versailles is entirely covered inside with marbles and porphyries and paintings so that there is nowhere for one’s eyes to rest. Every inch of floor and wall and ceiling is illustrated and gilded. This is important to understand, because as we see a young, presumably naive Marie Antoinette being besotted by clothes and watches and jewelry (and, in reality gambling), we must understand that Versailles is beyond normal people’s reckoning of how money is meant to spent. This is literally the kind of opulence the current US President aspires to, but as he is a short-fingered vulgarian, his vision is limited with no artistic aesthetic value, so his towers are classlessly gilded and tawdry. But I digress. My point is, that in the manga, we are meant to be exasperated with Marie Antoinette from the beginning, losing faith in her along with the French people and losing hope when when her own mother writes her to stop, already and remember her responsibility as well as her privilege. We are given leave to sympathize with her again at the very end of her life, as a mother who cares deeply for her children but, although she retains her dignity to the end, she also retains her unchanged belief in royalty’s claim of power granted by God, which makes her a hard person to like.

What this movie does well is frequently pay homage to both the manga from which it sprang and the original television anime series, directed by Dezaki Osamu, which led to his later masterwork direction on Dear Brother. We are frequently given moments from the anime, reimagined, and we once again meet old friends, who get a line or two: Rosalie, Bernard, Alain, Girodelle. Girodelle had 6 lines. I counted. I love Girodelle, in part for the fact that translation of his name is a key element in the presentations I was doing about translation and editing some years ago. Of the principle characters in the first half of the story, Girodelle is one of the few nobles who has no basis in history. So is ジェローデル Girodel or Girodelle? He only has one purple suit and I know how his story ends, which was a whole homage of it’s own. I won’t spoil the fun, though, in hopes that one day we finally do get the Rose of Versailles Episodes volume 1.

Homage to the manga comes in still screen shots (something Dezaki favors in his anime) that are rendered to look more like the manga, especially classic “shock eyes.” I know I mentioned this before, but while editing RoV, I collected a lovely assortment of  Osca’rs expressions and eyes. So much of the story is told through the way she changes, from her youthful determination

to the moment she chooses her fate – her look of grief and despair cloaked in her desire to not waste her death.

Many of these looks are captured by this movie, something I really appreciated. The scene where Andre and Oscar spend the night together is also very reminiscent of the manga, to great effect.

Every time I watch this series to review it, it is so politically relevant I feel a bit nauseous. My first encounter with it was when Bush “nice-guyed” us into wars we did not belong in, and the second time, I finished the final disk just as police shot Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mississippi and again at the protests of that death, and this time I watched the movie as a petty and gobsmackingly incompetent man is funded by another petty and delusional man in order to destroy our Commons, so they can scrape more money out of our economy for their clothes, jewelry and gambling and the Mar-a-Petite Trianon. As prices rise and shelves start looking empty, I have to expect that we will be seeing scenes similar to those in this movie.

The voice acting was top-notch throughout, but I feel the need to praise Sawashiro Miyuki’s Oscar for a powerful performance throughout. She was outstanding in every scene, but the night before the storming of the Bastille, as she querulously ask if Andre would sleep with her, with a catch in her voice of fear and hope…breathtaking.

A number of people I respect felt that this movie was a superficial treatment of the story, I politely disagree. It chose a new path through this story, focusing not on events, or politics, or economics, but on the lives of four people who live through this history-changing event. And as that, I found it a fresh and approachable take on one of the greatest historical manga of all time.

Ratings:

Animation – 9 CGI was a little intrusive in some places, but the more over-the-top, the better it worked.
Characters – 9 We still get a sense of them
Story – 9 Of all the revolutions, the French Revolution never ceases to be relevant

Overall – 9

I understand why, when I stood on the spot formerly occupied by the Bastille, that there is no trace of the building. I wonder what our next revolution will pull down.

In happier thoughts, I am reminded of the time we visited the Margaret magazine 40th anniversary exhibition and were able to pose with Oscar and Andre, but the moment that really blew my head off, was coming around the corner to find myself facing the portrait of Oscar as Mars that, in the OG anime, she commissioned. There it was, lifesize in oils, and for a moment, reality bent and it was all real. ^_^

 





Oshi ga Budokan Ittekuretara Shinu, Volume 10, (推しが武道館いってくれたら死ぬ)

May 8th, 2025

A girl with long reddish hair in two ponytails, wearing a a pink dirndl-style dress with petticoats and long black boots. She runs away from us, but looks back over her shoulder at us, sadly.Volume 9 left me weak with relief as Eripyo and Maina actually had a conversation. But as we look at the cover of Oshi ga Budokan Ittekuretara Shinu, Volume 10, (推しが武道館いってくれたら死ぬ), we can see that this volume will be different. All previous volumes portrayed Cham Jam or another idol group. This volume only has Reo. And we know why… Reo is retiring.

This whole volume focuses on the ripples in the water when the well-liked and talented lead of a small-time idol group retires. Reo is not the only one whose life will change. Of course the entire group now will be different with only 6 members – they no longer have a center position! Every member of Cham Jam has to reconcile their personal and professional feelings about Reo and decide if the group is strong enough to continue.

And then there are the fans. Kumasa has been very vocal about how his fandom for Reo changed his life for the better. If she retires, what will he have to look forward to? The volume gets very deep into this because for all three of our resident fans, the group is secondary to the passion they have for their favorite, specifically.

And then…Reo retires. I was kind of surprised, honestly. Right up to the very end, I was just sure something would bring her back. Once again, good opportunities were missed by the management company. Who better to add to the management team than the former lead? But, no. And then they miss the opportunity of centering Maki and Sorane as a lead *pair.* Gosh this management team is a bunch of dipshits. It would have enraged Aya for lulz, as an added benefit. But no one asks me. ^_^; When the management announces who will join the front row all hell breaks loose, not. It’s an insane choice for the business, but it’s brilliant for the story.

I just picked up Volume 11 (spoilers on the cover!) in Japanese and kinda want to see what’s going to happen and also want to bash something heavy into my head because reading this manga is my equivalent of a hair shirt. ^_^;

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 9
Character – 9, except Motoi who is still awful. Thank heavens for his sister Rena, who, even in abstensia, is twice the man he is.
Service – 0
Yuri – Idol/fan lives are complicated.

Overall – 9

If My Favorite Pop Idol Made It to the Budokan, I Would Die, Volumes 1-10 are available in English now from Tokyopop and Volume 11 is on the way this month, if you too want to marvel at the ineptitude of Cham Jam’s management in this dark comedy about provincial idols groups.





Homunculus Tears: Alchemy For the Brokenhearted

May 4th, 2025

Stories from the perspective of “other” are not uncommon – and especially so in the context of queer literature. Indeed, much of what we have read from inori.-sensei is from the perspective of “other.” In I’m In Love With The Villainess, Rae Taylor, isekaied into her favorite otome game, was not only not of that world, and a gay woman in love with an apparently straight woman, and a 21st century mind in a feudal society, as the story played out, we learned how she was in fact even more “other” than that. The sequel series and inori.-sense’s subsequent novel, The Girl Who Wants to Be a Hero and the Girl Who Ought to Be a Hero (EN release in June, reviewed here on Okazu in JP,) include the ultimate in-world “other,” introduced to us in the form of young women who are, in whole or part, demon.

In Homunculus Tears: Alchemy For the Brokenhearted, we are asked to contemplate the idea – what if there is only “other?”

In our world, including among the readership of Okazu and folks that hang out with me on a regular basis, I count few, if any, people whose lives are unconditionally privileged. I am happily surrounded by creative folks, queer folks, and women of many classes other than elite. We are all – inexplicably, as we are the majority – considered “other” in a society in which the presumed standard is, weirdly, a small minority. In Homunculus Tears, inori.-sensei presents us a world in which any possible not “other” person is invisible, some unseen (possibly non-existent) elite. Instead, we follow people whose lives are treated as “other” to the extent that an entire military exists for the purpose of being eventually eliminated.

We meet Maha, a woman brought into the world to fight, to die, by a soldier mother who values her who only for that fighting skill. The same mother creates another young woman, an alchelmical homunculus, Ruri, to be an even better fighter. They are trained by yet another outcast, a woman who can read minds, which allows her to, yet again, be a strong fighter. None of these people belong in the context of the society in which they live. The members of the society we do see are the poor, the orphans – the outcasts of a society at war. At no point in the story are we privy to the existence of anyone who is not “other.”

The story makes a point of this, too, so it’s not that we are to infer any of this. Maha is not alone as she ponders why she exists at all, why she was given life and why she continues to struggle. Ruri likewise, when faced with the voices of the “other” around her, struggles with the value of life. Why was I brought into this world? Why do I continue to live? are questions that many of us ask during the hardest times.

The answer here is that we are loved, even if it’s not what or how or by whom we expect. A community might be part of a world at war, but it is community, nonetheless. Throughout Homuncuus Tears, we are told this over and over. And may I remind you that, although the not-othered insist “other” is a problem, they are the weird minority, not you, not us. As “other” as we feel sometimes, we are the majority. If we can band together, the demons don’t stand a chance.

The use of the word “anti-natalism” in the author’s note has been commented on in discussions of this book online. Use of “-ism” usually indicates a belief system. In the context of anti-natalism, it would be a belief that procreation itself is unjustifiable. In this specific scenario, it is not a group or society, community or sect with this belief, not a generalized belief system that procreation is bad, but two individuals who question why they, personally, were brought into the world. However – and this is actually quite relevant to our world right now – the only children we meet in this story are war orphans. The question of “why would anyone want children, or desire them to live in our current society” is valid one. It is a valid one in 2025 on the planet earth, as well. Perhaps more people ought to ask that “why.”

The illustrations by Aonoshimo-sensei miss the chance to illustrate any of the excellent battle scenes, favoring pin-up poses and service. I am always disappointed when, rather than seeing Ney and Maha going head to head in a complicated battle of will and magic, I get to enjoy underwear. Again. This is light-novel tropiness that I would not mind losing. I did not feel that either a bath or beach scene added anything of value. I am ambivalent about the Yuri, as well. Both Maha and Ruri are brought into the world by the same woman, and Yuricest is never appealing to me. The loli jokes fall flat for me as well. Maha and Ruri as a couple is simply unconvincing.

What definitely did work for me was the alchemy. I’m fond of magical systems that are consistent within themselves. This alchemy and it’s trappings of tomes, vials, and attacks worked incredibly well. To that point, the character of Metako, (‘meta’-ko, which works really well across three languages) was the most interesting character to me. Her story, the way she worked and her functional relationship with Maha, were high points of the narrative. How Maha uses alchemy is presented as a kind of standard behavior, but in reality it was very cleverly handled throughout. Also solid is Kevin Ishizaka’s translation, which keeps the narrative running smoothly and provides excellent alchemical magic attacks.

Overall, this was a fast-paced light novel that delved into some tough questions about existence, but missed a few opportunities to be great.

Ratings:

Art – The art is excellent, it’s just of the wrong things
Story – 7
Characters – 8
Service – 4 It will never add anything to a story for me
Yuri –  As above, so below.

Overall – 7.5

As a self-published light novel, this book was poised for success. I hope this allows inori.-sensei some room to work her own way. And I look forward to her next original work.





If My Favorite Pop Idol Made It to the Budokan, I Would Die, Volume 5

April 10th, 2025

7 young women dressed in cute clothes with purple skirts, different blouses and accessories pose on the cover, looking at us, as if doing a photo op.In If My Favorite Pop Idol Made It to the Budokan, I Would Die, Volume 5, the members of Cham Jam make it to Tokyo. And, while they do not get to perform at the Budokan…or even the other, smaller, Budokan…they are filled with a renewed sense of purpose and gain some new fans.

Eripyo is glad the group has new fans, she is no longer Maina’s only fan…but that puts her in awkward place. Yay, Maina is more popular!, but Eri’s not her one and only any more. Of course, yes, she is and Maina has eyes for no one else. Even though they manage to have an almost normal conversation over a handshake, neither Maina nor Eripyo manage to sake anything of importance, leaving everything they want to say hanging. As always.

It has been six years, *six* years, since I read this book in Japanese. And yet, the sense of desperation and obsession clings to me, still. So when I picked up this volume, I sat down to it much as one does to a meal of leftovers that were just alright the first time and won’t be better now. ^_^; Of course, I know what we’re in for and want to warn you that the next few volumes are just going to double, triple and quadruple down on Eripyo and Maina just not being able to communicate and Volume 7 is, enraging, because it is *almost an excellent volume.* And then, once out of the well*, the story starts to get better somehow.

But as I read this volume, my words from 6 years ago come back to haunt me. “The more I read this story, the more I desperately hope it’s meant to be a cutting commentary on the utterly brutal idol industry, and the equally brutal hobby of being an idol group otaku. Otherwise, it fills me with despair. (Yeah, I know, I know, I keep bringing it on myself.) The idea that this manga is getting an anime is already annoying, but it will probably be meant to be a comedy and I will just want the world to burn.” As we know, to make it a comedy, the anime removed much of the worst parts of the manga to leave us feeling as it was actually a comedy. So if you watched the anime and came to manga from that…the next few volumes are gonna be rough, I’m sorry.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – There is one, yes
Character – 8
Service – 1
Yuri – 3 I was convince when I read this the first time that there was another couple among the members of Cham Jam, I know now that, yes, there is.

Overall – 7

I’ll end with another quote from that review 6 years ago, ““Their eyes meet, they have a conversation, no plants fall and Eri doesn’t end up injured. They are practically married.”

*Many ages ago my father told me of a story in which a person was stuck in a well, with no way to get out, at which point the next chapter began, “Once out of the well…”. This parable reminds us that there is lazy writing and there is lazy writing.