Archive for the Artists Category


Lesbian Novel: Himeyuri-tachi no Houkago

April 20th, 2007

This is me reading Himeyuri-tachi no Houkago:

^_^

o_o

o_O

O_O

I had absolutely no expectations of this book when I got it. Never read a single review, never even read the description. I bought it entirely based on the fact that Mori Natsuko is a famous lesbian author and I liked the title. ^_^ I was totally, completely unprepared for the kind of stories the book contains. It turned out to be a collection of “erotic fiction.” In other words, Himeyuri-tachi no Houkago was unremittingly filthy. It was also brilliant. This is *exactly* the kind of thing that makes spending all those hours learning to read Japanese worthwhile. ^_^

All the stories are short tales of emotional S&M and light B&D sometimes in a school setting, other times not. The way each story is constructed lets the reader know that the author is completely aware of how silly each premise is (and they get REALLY silly at times) and that she just doesn’t care, thanks. This is the kind of cheesy titillation that Strawberry Panic attempted, but came nowhere near the level of intelligence and artistry (and wtf-ness) that Mori-sensei attains here.

The first story was mostly a tale of emotional sadism in high school, but that was followed quickly by revenge against a school counselor who calls two girls’ relationship a “pseudo” love. Extra kudos to the protagonist, Miu, who pegs the teacher’s comment as a beard for her own gay leanings.

There’s the story that takes place in the future, when masturbation is an Olympic sport (I’m laughing as I type that, because the story is just…indescribably funny) and the hysterical story about the day when the aliens show up and demand to see a lesbian threesome in order to save the world. ^_^

My favorite story was the penultimate one in which an old-school sukeban gang girl type shows up at a rich girl’s school to challenge “the chief” – only to be tied up and tamed by the Student Council. Oh my god…so brilliant. I read this traveling home on the train – I hope my fellow passengers weren’t too freaked out by my fits of shrieking laughter. The last story is an homage to Mori’s horror roots, with a creepy sisters-by-marriage story with an unpleasantly ambiguous end.

And despite the absurd premises, this book was pretty hot. So bonus points for Mori, because that takes actual skill.

Ratings:

Story – 8 on average, with moments of 12
Characters – 8 on average
Yuri – 127
Service – 10

This book was so “stimulating” that I’ve already come up with two stories in homage to the sheer evil genius here. ^_^ I *must* read more by her…





Yuri Anime: Noir, Volume 5

April 17th, 2007

Wow, there’s nothing like taking a step back a few years to really appreciate both what went before and what we have now. I recently sat and rewatched the volume with the most awesome episodes of Sailor Moon (106-109, in case you care) and on the train on the way to a professional conference, I rewatched Noir Volume 5 for the first time in many moons.

Volume 5 of Noir is not high art. It makes the art of Madlax look stunning by comparison, but story-wise, it’s pretty much the lynchpin moment, the moment at which the entire story alters.

It begins with one more foray into Mirielle’s past where she learns the horrible truth about herself – that she is a child of the organization who now hunts her. Turning away from her own past, she now decides to focus on Kirika’s. Kirika, in the meantime, when faced with a choice of knowledge about herself, Noir and Soldats, or saving Mirielle’s life doesn’t hesitate to chose her friend over herself. I say “friend” here, because it seems that that alone is enough of a revelation for both of them, that they might, perhaps, be becoming friends.

When Mirielle reminds Kirika of the promise that they made – that when they both understand who Kirika is and what, exactly Soldats wants, she will kill the younger woman, there is a edginess to it – we can see that that promise is now a lie, even if they can not.

Just as they start to deal with this change in their relationship, it all comes to a crashing halt. Chloe, who has been stalking Kirika from the beginning, shows Mirielle, in an impressive and incontrovertible display of skill, that she and Kirika are the True Noir. Her explanation of what Noir is, and why Noir is, only serves to highlight the gulf between Mirielle and her partner. When Kirika begins to respond to words that Chloe utters, it becomes obvious that Mirielle has lost the battle, if not the war.

This is a very “having loved and lost” kind of volume. We watch Mirielle gain knowledge of her past, but lose some of her understanding of what her childhood meant to her. She gains Kirika as a friend, but loses her as a partner. And she gains understanding of Soldats and Noir, but loses herself in the process.

I found the Noir/Soldats manuscript lines just as silly this time as the last, but somehow – and really, I don’t know how – it all sort of seemed to make perfect sense. Above all, the sense of loss that Mirielle was experiencing at the very end was very poignant and very powerful. And because El Cazador de la Bruja has already begun, I found myself hoping that I care half this much about Nadie and Ellis by the end, as I do about Kirika and Mirielle.

What makes the story here so interesting, is watching Chloe take everything that Mirielle has fought so hard to gain. What makes the rest of the series so interesting is watching Mirielle fight even harder to get it back.

Ratings:

Art – 4
Story – 7
Characters – 8
Yuri – 4
Service – 2

Overall – 7

I still think Chloe’s character design looks weird and out of place, but I guess that kind of works…





Spring 2007 Anime Season: El Cazador

April 11th, 2007

It’s going to be very anime-heavy in the upcoming days, as the new 2007 Spring season has begun, and there are several series worthy of attention from the Yuri fan. And, thanks to the continued generosity of my readers, I have an even larger pile of anime to watch now. There’s also a greatly belated end-of-season review I really must do sometime soon. So, manga, live-action and Drama CD fans, I’ll try to get at least one thing in a week for you. But anime is where we’re at for the foreseeable future.

So, here we are just barely into the spring anime season. Which of the several series of interest do we with start with? Well, as the large bulk of attention is being paid to Nanoha StrikerS, let’s buck the trend and start with El Cazador instead.

El Cazador is the third of the “chicks with guns” trilogy by Machimo Koichi and Bee Train – the trilogy that began with Noir and continued with Madlax. (And, I’m of the belief that the latter will be hard to beat, given Bee Train’s preference for ambiguously yuri relationships.)

This series has all the “6 degrees of yuri” signposts: the aforementioned director and production company, Fiction Junction Yuuka and savage genius for EP and OP artists, Ai Shimizu (Mikoto in Mai HiMe/Otome, Hatsumi and Fuji-hime in Yamibou among others) and Itou Shizuka (Rei in Maria-sama ga Miteru, among others) voicing the lead roles. Also joining the cast are Hisakawa Aya (who was Chloe in Noir and Rimelda in Madlax making this a hat trick for her) and Toyoguchi Megumi (Sei in Maria-sama ga Miteru). So, cast, crew and music all scream “Yuri.” The big question now has to be – what about the plot?

We don’t yet know, of course. ^_^ Bee Train stories usually take a good 8 episodes to get going. I’m always willing to give any series about that to gain, keep or lose my attention. And we’re only two episodes in at this point. But I expect it to be in the same realm of ambiguously Yuri relationships as the first two entries in the trilogy – that is to say, I’ll bet there’ll be enough Yuri somewhere in here to make us happy. (I sincerely hope we don’t revert to the Avenger model, which was not at *all* the kind of thing I’m looking for.

Let me be lazy for a second and abstract some of my initial response to El Cazador from the Yuricon Mailing List :

El Cazador has so many of the elements we have come to expect from Bee Train that it almost seems a parody of itself. ^_^ The credits have all the same elements as the Noir and Madlax sequences did. It felt a bit like watching a James Bond flick when Cubby Broccoli was doing all the opening sequences. There was a…uniformity…even though they are all different. Same here.

The setting is different from both Madlax and Noir – this time the American southwest or perhaps a Mexico-ish place. The characters look different but again, they are similar – tough, competent, but slightly flaky gunwoman; cute, flaky younger woman with no memory of the past. Repeated murder in the past footage (without plinky musical theme, though…). Weird object with no meaning as of yet, and grand conspiracy in the background. This time, instead of Soldats or Enfant, we have Project Leviathan.

Last, but hardly least, the end credits give us annoying guy in a mask. Oh, and NOW we know where Friday Monday’s little brother got to. He’s the bad guy in this one. ^_^

I was a tad disappointed by the animation for the first episode. The people all look thin and featureless. But it does set off the highly detailed backgrounds of sand and office doors nicely…

Ratings:

Art – 5
Story – I’m deferring this until the story gets going
Characters – 7 (By episode two I kind of like both Nadi and Ellis…)
Yuri – 0 as of yet, unless you count the fact that Hisakawa Aya’s character is clearly an Evil Psychotic Librarian type.
Service – 3 (Crotch shots, maid costumes, I’m sure there’ll be bathing scenes.)

Overall – 7

Nadi’s the goofy, tough gal with a heart of gold type, Ellis is flaky with a distinctly sexual thing going on with her mysterious power. So, there is definite potential and a good track record backing it up. But only time will tell whether Bee Train comes through for us on El Cazador, or not.





Twinkle Saber Nova Manga, Volume 1

March 13th, 2007

I picked up Twinkle Saber Nova while I was in Tokyo, for two reasons.

1) I am a huge Fujieda Miyabi fangirl

and

2) I am a shameless otaku for Drama CDs.

Volume two of this series came with a Drama CD, and along with it being a Fujieda Miyabi story and all, there was no way I was going to be able to pass it up.

The story of Twinkle Saber Nova takes place in the future at a school where our heroine Hayana seems to spend a large proportion of her day eating. Her best friend Aoi and she make the rounds of the many restaurants in their school, which is located in Tokyo Bay.

One day, while in one of Hayana’s favorite lunch places the owner, Yuzuru, is attacked by the “World School Uniform Club”. Hayana and Aoi are approached by crazy Fujishiro-sensei (female) who offers Hayana an “Active Dress” armor uniform thing which she names “Twinkle Saber”. There and then, Hayana starts the “Ally of Justice Club” and continues to battle for her right to eat lunch peacefully, against the “World School Uniform Club” whose aims remain obscure to me, for several reasons. ^_^

As the new school superheroine, Hayana develops a fan club. One of the members, Satsuki, brings Hayana a really big lunch, thus guaranteeing Hayana’s eternal devotion. Satsuki expresses some interest in being a “Ally of Justice Club” member, and is quickly outfitted with her own active dress, which she names Arc Saber.

They battle against the weirdness of the Sekai Seifukubu, and at the end of the volume are joined temporarily by one of Fujishiro-sensei’s old classmates, who has an active dress of her own – in fact, the prototype active dress – and goes by the name, Crymson.

They fight against other characters that look an awful lot like those from other recognizable Fujieda series. And, in the end, they defeat the World School Uniform Club yet again. Lunch is safe for another day. More happy fighting and fashionable armor to come in Volume 2!

Let me comment on the fashionable armor, for a second. Fujieda does *really* nice armor/uniform design. Nothing obscene, in fact, where most shounen armor/uniforms for females tend to highlight secondary sexual characteristics in ways that are entirely service-y, Fujieda’s outfits are really quite stylish and lack pointless service. Thumbs up from me, particularly for Crymson’s design, which is adult, simple and cool. Also Arc Saber, which ups Satsuki’s cool factor several notches.

Yuri in this series is light. In fact, I remember reading (and no, I don’t know where and there’s no way I’m tracking this down, so you’re out of luck) a post on a Japanese BBS by Fujieda-sensei, commenting that this series has *implied* Yuri, but nothing overt.

It is fairly obvious that Satsuki has an akogare crush on Hayana and Fujishiro-sensei pings my gaydar…and twice as much when Crymson arrives on the scene. In my head they were obviously (may still be?) a couple, but yes, I *am* reading into it. A lot. ^_^

Ratings:

Art – Fujieda Miyabi.
Story – mmm, ramen
Characters – cute!
Yuri – squint and look at it from a bent angle
Service – Yes.

Overall – 7

This isn’t a Yuri manga, but it is a cute chicks in armor with weapons manga, so if the one doesn’t work for you, the other might. ;-)





Live Action: Love My Life

January 24th, 2007

While I was in Tokyo, I had the chance to see the movie based on the terrific, Yuri manga by Yamaji Ebine, Love My Life. I won’t be going over the characters or plot of the story in detail, because if you haven’t read the manga, there’s just about no way you’d see the movie, so if you’re unfamiliar with this manga, please take a second to read my original review of LML. (For folks coming to this blog from Afterellen.com, most of the next paragraph is relevant to earlier posts about my trip to the world’s largest comic market, Comiket. If you want to know the story of the manga – and movie – read the link above.)

Looking at it now, I realize that we were *incredibly* lucky, because the theater we saw it at, N Theater Shibuya was a very few blocks from Bruce’s hotel. I only today learned that it played at like *two* theaters. What were the chances that one would be in walking distance from where Bruce was staying? Oh, and btw, it was immediately above the Shibuya Animate, which meant that the next day, we knew where we were going for that, too. Did I mention “lucky?”

The movie version of Love My Life was very sweet. There were some number of changes from the manga, which I’ll detail below, but in general, it was a really cute movie with an undoubtedly happy end where the girl got the girl. Totally worth having seen for that alone. I sincerely hope that there’s a US release.

The biggest weakness of the movie was something I have encountered over and over and over in Japanese live-action films: the pacing. This movie was almost 90 minutes long and when I saw the running time,I was skeptical as to how they’d stretch the story…especially as the first few chapters of the manga/movie zip by in rapid succession. So it starts off light and fast and happy, and then, suddenly, stops dead. At just about the time any American movie would start wrapping up, Japanese movies insert 20-30 minutes of absolutely nothing. It kills the energy, sucks the life out of the movie and makes my wife get fidgety. ^_^

In this case, after having established how sad Ichiko is, we are treated to 20 more minutes of her being sad. Sad, sad, sad. She’s so sad. And when the end comes, there’s another pacing issue, but if I complain about that I’m just being a hard ass.

Well, I’m a hard ass. Here goes. Eri has called Ichiko after their long separation and instead of calling back, Ichiko starts running. And running. And running. Eri, waits and waits and waits, while Ichiko appears to run across the freakin’ country. *Just* as Eri begins to turn away unhappily, Ichiko comes running up. Uh…wouldn’t a phone call back saying “I’m coming!” have been a good idea right then?

The actress who plays Ichiko is…well…okay. Where the Ichiko of the manga is pleasant, hard working, smart and cute, this Ichiko is dreamy and over-smiley happy. She plays the role like a baby seal you’re waiting to watch be clubbed.

On the completely other hand, Eri is played perfectly. It’s immediately apparent that she, while not being a gabber, has a deep and rich inner dialogue – and you want to be part of it. I think that she was just about perfect.

And the rest of the cast is pretty great, too. The actor who played Ichiko’s father hit the nail right on the crumpet with his portrayal – and Ichiko’s gay friend Take was immediately likeable and real.

There were a few things changed for the movie. For one thing – the hair. In the manga, Ichiko, and later, her mother’s former lover, have dyke-y short hair. In the movie, both have shortish normal cuts. And the bald skinhead girl who piques Ichiko’s fancy is turned into a mohawk-wearing punk. No clue why.

Another thing that was changed, which I thought really odd, was the soundtrack. The manga has a distinctly classic jazz background. You can’t miss it, as jazz music and musicians are mentioned nearly every chapter. The movie was given a peppy, pop music soundtrack by noodles, that was, nonetheless, exceptionally appealing. The opening theme, particularly, was darn cute.

The final thing that I could not help but notice was that Take merely announced that he had nabbed himself a boyfriend. In the manga we meet Joe, an African-American student. I was sort of sad to see that they didn’t show Joe. I was wondering how they were going to handle that – the fact that that they didn’t bother bugged me a tad.

The story is reasonably close to the manga, until the extra inserted bit at the end, as Ichiko kills her Eri-less time by trying to become a translator like Papa. The beginning, particularly, is very, very good. Their relationship is sweet (I know that I wasn’t the only one in the theater holding my girl’s hand during a few of the lovey-dovier scenes) and quite realistic.

Ratings:

Cinematography – A little precious, 6
Story – 8
Characters – 8
Yuri – 10
Service – 3

If only someone would edit that slow bit, the whole movie would be a real keeper. ^_^