Archive for the Kuzushiro Category


Yuri Manga: Inugami-san to Nekoyama-san, Volume 3 (犬神さんと猫山さん)

December 19th, 2014

istns3Here we are at Volume 3 of Inugami-san to Nekoyama-san (犬神さんと猫山さん) and…I’m not tired of it yet. Why? I don’t know, but I’m not! There’s something about Kuzushiro’s characters that make them completely not-boring to me. I don’t think I’ve enjoyed a gag comic this much since…well, ever really.

So here we are and Nekoyama is fully invested in being too interested in Inugami, with no real way to express herself, while Inugami wears her heart on her sleeve.  We follow Aki for a good portion of the book and get a new seasonal addition with her Kendo sempai Touko (whose name is written with the character for “winter.”) Most of the other animals take a back seat to  to Ryuuzaki and Torao. And we see that indeed, they are the couple they appear to be. In addition to Otome and Mari, we get to see Nekoyama’s older sister, Tamaki with her girlfriend. So the Yuri level is significantly higher than previous volumes.

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For the rest, it’s basically a balanced mix of genuine emotion and excruciating jokes that I nonetheless laugh out loud at.

What is it about this comic that I like so much? It’s taken me a while to nail it down, but I think I’ve figured it out. Kuzushiro-sensei likes these character and as a result, so do I. ^_^  Despite the animal puns, there’s a sense of depth to all the characters (except Torikai). While we’re mostly seeing the silly side, every once in a while we see that depth – just a glimpse – and it convinces us that time spent in this boisterous crowd is time well spent.

Ratings:

Art – 7
Story – 7
Character – 7
FanService – 6
Yuri – 8

Overall – 7

Apparently the key to a good gag comic is not one loud joke-cracking annoying character, but about half a dozen of them all at once. ^_^

This volume is also available on Kindle for folks with Japanese IP addresses.

 





Yuri Manga: Kimi no Tame Nara Shineru, Volume 4 (姫のためなら死ねる)

August 19th, 2014

You know those moments when someone mentions a series that you no longer follow, for whatever reason, and you think, “Is that still running?”

I’m pretty sure you all think that when I mention this series, because JManga is ancient history now and no matter how amazing a job Erin S. did on the translation, you probably forgot all about it, and ran right back to scans, or forgot the series existed at all. ^_^; Well, it still exists and it’s still a bizarre mashup of high culture and low. If you’re new, here’s my reviews of  Volume 1 and  Volume 3.  Volume 2 was never reviewed because it went straight to translation at the time.

Volume 4 of Kimi no Tame Nara Shineru, (姫のためなら死ねる) introduces us to two new characters. One, Sei Shonagon’s brother, is rather more a distressing than a positive influence in her life and I was glad when he sort of slid back out of the narrative once more.

The second is a new court lady, Sugawara no Takaesu no Musume, whs is a straight-up otaku obsessive about Murasaki Shikibu’s writing. This leads to a startling confession by Murasaki that she has never known the kind of passionate love she writes about, it’s all…duh…fantasy. (Which means if Sei Shonagon is a blogger and tweeter in our vernacular, Murasaki is a doujinshi writer.)

There’s a bizarre little interlude when Kuzushiro-sensei flails for plot ideas Murasaki and Shonagon switch bodies, which leads to many, many breast jokes. (Murasaki’s are large. Hahahahah.) And we are then introduced to a third new character and we can see that Kuzushiro-sensei has just about given up on historicity with her. The new character is the Onmyouji, Abe no…wait for it…Hito (Which would roughly translate as “that Abe person”), whose face is always obscured by material, which reflects ASCII art of her emotions.

Were my expression at her appearance to be rendered into text it would read “…”. And so it is with the rest of the cast, who kind of wonder why she’s there, too.

This volume was a bit more otaku humor, a bit less Yuri. We do get a bit of lovely Takako-sama (Teishi’s mother) and Benkan service, which I quite enjoyed.

I hope that Volume 5 (yes the series is still ongoing, remember?)  returns to the formula of Shonagon being besotted over Teishi.

Ratings:

Art – 6
Story – 7
Characters – 8
Yuri – 3
Service – 5

Abe no Hito? Really?





Yuri Anime: Inugami-san to Nekoyama-san End Of Season (English)

July 1st, 2014

InutoNekoThe Inugami-san to Nekoyama-san anime has come to an end, which brings this season’s Yuri anime to a close. I gave this series a first look at the beginning of the month, and I find that there are few things left I want to say about it.

First, the quality of the animation dropped off pretty sharply toward the end, but the style really never looked anything like the manga art. I expect Kuzushiro-sensei’s scratchy, loose style would actually be too difficult to animate as is.

The Yuri is actually upped a notch for the anime, in that what gets stretched out over 3+ volumes of manga is condensed for the anime. So we’re getting selected moments where Nejoyama-san is forced to recognize her actual feelings, and she and Inugami-san argue about how much they love each other.

The very last episode hints at the later plot complication of Ushiwaka’s continued attempts at seducing Inugami – something that’s easy to overlook, since Ushiwaka is presented at first as a bit of a doofus, but as the story goes on, it is becoming increasingly obvious that she’s not at all unaware of her looks or how she uses them. As the anime ends, I’m finding myself wanting to revisit the manga and watch more closely Ushiwaka and Nezu’s relationship. It initially appeared that Nezu was the more worldly of the two, but I’m rethinking that now. ^_^ In fact, they may well be the best couple in the series.

My last thought was that I actually really liked the hyper-peppy, goofy, catchy little end theme.

Ratings:

Art – 6
Story – 6
Character – 8
FanService – 6
Yuri – 8 I’m going to call this an 8, despite there being so little overt love-love, for the two implied couples made more obvious.

Overall – 8

I genuinely found the Inugami-san to Nekoyama-san anime to be non-taxing and quite entertaining, with more Yuri, both actual and service, than Riddle Story of a Devil. And, after the trials I went through dealing with Funimation’s maze, Crunchyroll has become a veritable haven for just clicking and being able to watch anime. Thumbs up, Crunchyroll.





Yuri Anime: Inugami-san to Nekoyama-san (English)

June 3rd, 2014

InutoNekoInugami-san to Nekoyama-san by Kuzushiro-sensei is an entertaining, not very emotionally taxing manga series that runs in Comic Yuri Hime. I’ve reviewed the first two volumes of the manga here on Okazu: Volume 1 | Volume 2.

When the anime for Inugami-san to Nekoyama-san was announced, I had no compelling drive to run to see it, but since it is streaming on Crunchyroll (regional restrictions may apply), I had a chance to check it out while I was on the road this weekend – and I was pleasantly surprised. ^_^

The story,  such as it is, is the non-adventures of girls at a school who have animal names, and appear to have the temperamental characteristics of the animals they are named for. The leads are Inugami Yachiyo (a name which is mostly likely a pun on the famous faithful dog statue at Shibuya, Hachiko. 八千代 – Yachiyo ハチ公- Hachiko) and Nekoyama Suzu (whose given name implies to the small bells on a cat’s collar.) True to their names Inugami-san is dog-like, while Nekoyama-san is cat-like. Ushiwaka, (cow) Nezu, (mouse) Sarutobi (monkey) and Torikai (bird) have all joined the cast in the episodes so far.

The voice cast gives the characters a cuteness that I was not reading into their voices in the manga, a quality that lightens the mood and makes the anime more enjoyable than it might be. The gags in this series are low –  sexual innuendo, bad puns, and snort-ful cheap laughs, so I’m perfectly happy to have the tone lightened throughout. The one thing that really stands out in the first half of anime episodes is that Inugami-san and Nekoyama-san actually have an interest in one another. There’s a cheap laugh bit at the end of the 6th episode in which they find themselves clearly talking about themselves as a couple.

Episodes are 3 minutes long, and focus on some of the most suggestive scenes in the manga and you know, I’m not really going to bitch about that. ^_^ It’s being sold as “Yuri”, and the anime audience in Japan is a subtle as a brick to the forehead, so whatever works. As I said in the Kill La Kill ANNcast, it’s easier for me to deal with grossly overplayed service than coy pretend-innocent BS, of the kind one finds in Sakura Trick.

Ratings:

Art – 8 More consistent than the manga, sorry Kuzushiro-sensei
Story – 6 There isn’t one, but that’s okay
Character – 7 Whittled down to ther essence as they are here, I find I quite like them.
FanService – 6 Mostly lustful fantasies
Yuri – 7 Still mostly lustful fantasies, with the addition of the Inu/Neko and Ushi/Nezumi couples

Overall – 8

More entertaining than I expected and kind of cute in places; the anime captures Kuzushiro-sensei’s narrative style well.





Yuri Manga: Inugami-san to Nekoyama-san Volume 2 (犬神さんと猫山さん)

May 8th, 2014

Volume 1 of Inugami-san to Nekoyama-san, (犬神さんと猫山さん) introduced us to the animal-themed cast of a “typical” Japanese high school. Inugami Hachiyo who likes cats and Nekoyama-san and Nekoyama Suzu, who likes dogs, but maybe not Inugami-san, their classmates Ushiwaka (“ushi” means cow, so she is big-breasted, har har), teeny little Nezu Mikine (“nezumi” means mouse) and their zookeeper, Inugami’s friend Aki (whose name means “autumn” and is wholly unrelated to animals.)

In Volume 2, we add a monkey and a bird to the menagerie. The bird is sickly, ghostly, flightly Torikai Hibari, the monkey is class rep Sarutobi Sora. It is with perpetually irritable Sarutobi (who does not get along with Inugami-san, despite her most puppy-like attempts at friendship) that we encounter the one genuinely laugh-out-loud gag of the book.

Sarutobi really cannot stand when people ascribe the characteristics of her animal name to herself. So she says, quite seriously to our resident mouse (who is, apparently, the most worldly of the bunch and the most likely to use sex appeal to get her way.) Quite seriously, Sarutobi explains that their names are just their names and really, people should stop saying she’s like a monkey, she insists as she picks up her schoolbag and pulls out a banana. I laughed as Nezu-san calmly pointed out that that would have been a lot more more convincing without the banana.

I’m struck again at how bananas are intrinsically the funniest of fruits.

Anyway, we do get a shocking amount of Yuri in between the excruciating gags and Kuzushiro’s typical fake-y Yuri. Nekoyama hallucinates (she thinks, she hopes) that Inugami-san kisses her while feverish and we’re told that Nezu and Ushiwaka are an item. And, as unsubtle as Inugami-san is, she’s going to have to be less subtle than this to get her actual interest across.

Ratings:

Art – 7
Story – 6 Slice of life
Character – 6
FanService – 6
Yuri – 7 Slightly more  in the real world-ish

Overall – 7

The Sarutobi gag all by itself notched this up a point.

Tl;dr: