Archive for the Artists Category


I Married My Female Friend, Volume 1

December 26th, 2023

A woman with long, dark hair in a green dress and a woman with collar-length light hair wearing pink overalls and a beige shirt, share the handles of a plastic bag as they walk and talk.Kurumi and Ruriko are friends. They have decided to be married even though neither of them feel romantically inclined toward one another. They come up with rules to follow to preserve their relationship and immediately those rules feel strained in I Married My Female Friend, Volume 1.

“Or so they think…” weighs heavily in every scene in which they monologue about their feelings of friendship for one another. Kurumi is a free spirit, but on a solo trip she keeps thinking about Ruriko. Ruriko is glad to let her wife roam, but her mind is always on what would make her happy.

They negotiate boundaries. When Kurumi messes up the garbage Ruriko redistributes the labor more sensibly. When Ruriko doesn’t tell Kurumi about how sick she is feeling, until she has to be rushed to the hospital, they find themselves discussing what will make “them” work. For that…and for the moment, Kurumi comes running into the hospital asking to see her wife, left me feeling happy, with a coda of “been there.” Very happy, because it’s still new and exciting to see women identifying themselves as wives, and I don’t see it becoming less wonderful as time goes on.

The one thing that feels different from Usui-sensei’s other “couple figures it out” series, Doughnuts Under A Crescent Moon, is that from the beginning, there’s a very distinct sense that, while Ruriko says she’s only gto feelings of friendship for Kurumi and Kurumi does not seem to have any romantic feelings for Ruriko, there’s an overwhelming sense that that is where we’re heading.

I have been thinking a lot about platonic intimacy between women…and I have always been an advocate for a legal partnership that is not meant as an indication of a romantic pairing. Why shouldn’t friends just be able to designate one another as “family?” Of course, with same-sex marriage in some countries, we’re a little closer to that, but I cannot designate my dear friends who are married to each other, as members of my family, in case of emergency or need. That has never made sense to me. Why shouldn’t people who live together and share household requirements just be able to be seen as a “family” legally? This first volume skirts this issue, as Kurumi and Ruriko balance what their friendship means to them and what their marriage means. 

This series is less of a personal journey into sexuality and identity than Doughnuts, but is, perhaps, more of a journey into social identity. It’s also quite goofy at times, which is fun.

The folks at Seven Seas brought us a wonderfully clean adaptation, with retouched sound effects (yay! whoo! It looks great! Thank you Aly Villanueva and Seven Seas for allowing Aly to do that.) Avery Hurtley’s translation does a great job of giving Kurumi and Ruriko their own voices. I care deeply about that kind of thing, especially for a manga in which these two voices are most of what carries the story. The cover, which is a straight-up gloss looks great, thanks cover designer M.A. Lewife.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 8
Characters – 8
Service – 0
Yuri – 6

Overall – 8, with loads of potential

This is not the deepest book about queer identity (the issue of same-sex marriage is handwaved away as “it’s legal now”) we’ve seen in 2023, but it doesn’t need to be. Sometimes, all we need is a gag about a roaside radish.

Thanks very much to Seven Seas for the review copy…I had bought myself the print volume first, but I appreciate the thought!





Watashi no Oshi ha Akuyaku Reijou. (- 私の推しは悪役令嬢。) レイジョアハンズ!!～Raise Y/Our Hands!!/O.C.～Optimum Combination～

December 24th, 2023

A woman with brown hair pulled into a short ponytail in a white and blue tuxedo, dips a woman with golden curls, in an orange evening dress, as they dance at a formal dance.While in Japan, I had a very short list of things that I wanted to pick up. Usually I come with a long list, but this time, I had already decided that I wouldn’t be buying much media, only things I didn’t know – and goods. Media is the easiest thing to get shipped. That said, there was one manga series I was looking for, that sadly I did not find and one CD, which I did!

Watashi no Oshi ha Akuyaku Reijou.  私の推しは悪役令嬢。) レイジョアハンズ!!～Raise Y/Our Hands!!/O.C.～Optimum Combination～ is the CD of the opening and closing themes of the I’m in Love With The Villainess anime. It was apparent to me from the credits that some interesting manipulation of the lyrics was going on, so I really wanted the whole CD to get the lyrics.

Well…I’m blown away. Absolutely gobsmacked at the effort put in by everyone involved. From the awesome cover image, you know you’re not getting something generic. I’m not saying I’m burned by the G-Witch drama or anything, because that was merely annoying and somewhat silly, but it still feels real and important to have something like this image being a genuine reflection of the contents of the music.

The music is suitably sticky and I will now sing the choruses to Raise Y/Our Hands!!  and O.C. ~ Optimum Combination~ over and over for the next week undoubtedly. But as I sat with the lyrics and listened to the music, I was quite overcome with the sense that the writers really understood the story. I wondered if inori.-sensei had been the writer, but to my surprise lyric, composition and arrangement were credited to TECHNOBOYS PULCRAFT GREEN-FUND. I’m going to give those guys serious praise for the music, but even more for the lyrics.

Most of the OP/ED CDs I bought back in the day had 4 tracks. One each of the OP/ED sung and one each of a karaoke track. This CD has five tracks. The OP, of course and 4 different iterations of the end theme, as we saw on the anime. Both Rae and Claire have their own individual tracks. But as the text bubbles of the ED animation make clear, this is meant to be a dialogue. The first track is O.C. ~ Optimum Combination~ -Side by Side- which remixes Rae and Claire’s verses to respond to one another. The final track O.C. ~ Optimum Combination~ -Side by Side-/reverse (which surely has to be the most punctuation ever used in a title) which remixes the verses *again* for another take on that conversation.

The more I listened to these…the more I liked them.

Serizawa Yuu acquits herself very well, while singing in Rae’s silly voice, with occasional flashes of her real voice, but Nanami Karen is the star here, bringing a lot of varying emotion into very quickly sung lyrics.

So for a series that put lesbians in the top ten rankings for weeks, is still out there giving us a ton of queer rep (I just finished Volume 2 of the audiobook yesterday), even the animation opening and closing themes are worth your time and money!

Ratings:

Music – 9
Lyrics – 10
Art – 10

Overall  – 10





Watashi no Oshi ha Akuyaku Reijou. Volume 7 ( 私の推しは悪役令嬢。)

December 21st, 2023

A nun with silver hair and red eyes stands in the center of the cover, flanked by Rae and Claire. Lilies bloom and ice shards fly around her.In Watashi no Oshi ha Akuyaku Reijou., Volume 7 ( 私の推しは悪役令嬢。) a new characters is introduced that will (arguably, has) changed the course of the narrative. Cardinal Lily Lilium, daughter of Prime Minister Sala Lilium enters the story proper and chaos ensues.

Claire has been brought face to face with the plight of poverty and Rae has incited her to learn more and find solutions to the issue of poverty in Bauer. At Prince Yu’s suggestion, Claire and Rae head to the Spiritual Church, a Catholic-ish organization that runs the hospitals and orphanages, feeds the poor, and tends to the spiritual needs of the populace.

Right away, Lily is a strange character. Stuttering and shy, she blurts out rude comments from time to time. Her own nuns do not respect her and although she seems sincere, there’s something off about her.  She takes a liking to Rae, when Rae defends homosexuality and becomes a cast regular almost immediately. Claire and Lily push Rae into a story about her first love, from her previous life. This segment is both frustrating and poignant as a character who we later learn was struggling take their misery out on other people. I cannot accept that, even if we are told that everyone made up later. 

Then Lily drives us full-tilt into the next arc which will refer back to Rae’s story…

…but first! A game of dodgeball.

As one does.

This becomes a bridge to the next major arc, which will again, throw things into chaos. In a huge way. In fact, as I look over my reviews for the novels, “chaos” seems to be the defining characteristic. Reading reviews of the anime, again chaos seems to be the main takeaway, as most of the things seeded by the time the anime ends, won’t become apparent until a second anime season. In the meantime, we have the manga with Aonoshimo’s amazing drawings to fill in those gaps.

I’ve said it before but, really, the manga in many ways improves upon the Light Novels, as Aonoshimo’s art is so very good and doesn’t have the LN habit of being mere portraiture. And the anime, while being absolutely excellent in terms of characterization, did have pretty basic animation. For folks looking for a satisfying visual version of this story, the manga is highly recommended. Volume 5 is out now, in English, which takes you to the same point the anime ended.

Ironically, I was listening to Volume 2 of the Audiobook this week and ended up on the same exact place that Volume 7 ends. So now I’m primed to move forward into the last major arc before the chaos becomes a revolution.

Ratings:

Art – 9
Story – 8, although I find Rae’s backstory tough going
Characters  – 8 Lily is not my favorite character, but she is crucial from here on
Service – Not much, maybe a panel here or there
Yuri – 8
LGBTQ+ – 9

Overall – 9

I had purchased this volume at Kinokuniya here in the US, but it came with no extras, so while in Tokyo, I bought a second copy to get the extra “Claire in Wonderland” comic from Gamers. It’s a cute little “weird dream” comic that includes series characters dressing up as western and eastern iconic fictitious characters exactly as one might expect. Very cute!





The Two of Them Are Pretty Much Like This, Volume 4 Guest Review by Patricia Baxter

December 13th, 2023
Two women lean on a fence, looking at each other, entwining fingers. One woman has medium-length brown hair, wearing a red blouse and cargo khaki capris. The other has long blonde hair pulled into a severe ponytail, wearing a lavender long shirt and a white skirt.My name is Patricia Baxter (she/her). I am a bisexual autistic writer who has previously written articles concerning how media represents different marginalized communities. You can find more of my work through my personal website “Autistic Observations”.
 
The fourth, and final, volume of The Two of Them Are Pretty Much Like This is, in a word, delightful.  Not that this manga series hasn’t been an absolute delight for me to read these past two years, because it has been, but this volume in particular emphasizes just how special the series was to read.  In essence, this series’ greatest success is the same reason why I also love She Loves to Cook, and She Loves to Eat and If We Leave on the Dot so much; they are manga series centred on the lives of sapphic women who are living happily and without shame for who they are, who they love, and what they do with their lives.  It sounds like a simple thing to take joy from, but in a media landscape so entrenched in heteronormativity it is still challenging to find narratives that even cover a fraction of what members of the LGBTQ+ community experience, or wish to experience, for themselves.  Therefore, instances where we can read a series where the characters who, even if they are not exactly like you, foster a sense of familiarity and empathy to you, are all the more special.
 

Ellie and “Wanko” continue to be a delight to read, as their day-to-day routines and shenanigans do not fail to amuse and warm the heart and they feel like actual people who exist in our reality.  The emphasis on the couple moving forward to the next stage of their relationship, discussing their future in terms of marriage and their respective career paths, adds a new layer to their established dynamics.  This may sound mundane on paper, but it’s enriching for those of us who need to see these ordinary life events occur to imagine our futures for ourselves.There is one element of the book that, while overall handled very well, deserves some criticism.  This volume introduces a new character to the series, a high school student named Kita, who is revealed to be a transfeminine youth.*  They initially assumed that Ellie was a trans woman, and asked her for advice on how to become a woman.  While Ellie cannot be the guide Kita needs to traverse through a gender transition, she is still more than willing to lend an ear and offer positive reinforcement to think about their future.  The main sticking point in this volume is the pronouns used to address Kita are exclusively masculine ones, which is a choice I felt frustrated by.  I’m uncertain if this is meant to reflect how they were addressed in the original Japanese edition, or if it was an intentional request by Takashi Ikeda for the English translation, but having a transgender character only addressed by the pronouns associated with the gender they’ve been assigned with at birth is something many people will find discomforting, as it did for me.  This slight hiccup is unfortunate, as this volume has several instances of queer positivity, but overall I am happy for Kita’s inclusion in the narrative and that their story was treated with empathy and kindness by the author.

In the end, the final volume of The Two of Them Are Pretty Much Like This emphasized just how much I love these characters and taking the time to experience their lives.  I didn’t want the book to end, but I am glad that we were able to catch a glimpse of these characters’ journeys for a little while.

* I chose to use they/them pronouns for Kita in my review because Kita is a transfeminine character, and it is important to address the possibility that they may be non-binary as they are still considering their gender identity for themselves

Art: 8
Story: 9
Characters: 10
Service: 2 (some nudity, references to Ellie and Wanko still having very enthusiastic sex together, but nothing egregious)
Yuri: 10
LGBTQ+: YMMV, 5 – 7 depending on how you view Kita’s treatment in the book
Overall: 9.5





The Two Of Them Are Pretty Much Like This, Volume 3

November 27th, 2023

Two woman in bikinis frolic down a beach happily together.To paraphrase myself from my review of this volume in Japanese, “One of the defining characteristics of an adult life is facing setbacks. You can work really hard, gambare with all you have and still not achieve the goal. Sometimes it’s hard and sometimes it’s just life. In The Two Of Them Are Pretty Much Like This, Volume 3, its both.”

“Wanko” is giving it her all, doing audition after audition. The one job she had gotten is canceled for reasons that are beyond her control. (And which resonate kind of hard this season, after the recent scandals of a major production group in Japan.) She’s working that treadmill hard, but she’s not getting anywhere.

Ellie is struggling with a wholly different problem. She’s been given an opportunity. One of the best in the business is mentoring her, with a tough love attitude and hard, cold facts. Now that she has an opening, she’s not at all confident that she’ll be able to move forward. 

Wanko really wants to be a full partner in their lives together, so despite her loss of her job, she contributes to the month’s rent. Ellie would be happy to let Wanko keep it, but she’s 100% supportive of her partner’s choice. Again, as I said, in my review of the JP edition, ” get yourself someone who looks at you the way Sakuma looks at Wako.”  Ikeda-sensei’s art is great in this volume, with expressions and body language really dragging you in to the emotional backdrop of every scene. But – and I will say this every time – his art hits new levels when he just does a panel of Ellie. He loves drawing her and it shows.

Solid work by the team at Seven Seas. Anh Kiet Ngo had a few challenging passages here and came through with a solid translation. (I was thinking about this just a moment ago, when I made an excruciating pun to my wife that was both in-joke and tortured English and I had a thought about how impossible that is to translate. This series is full of that kind of thing. Rina Mappa’s lettering is solid, but she is not given time to retouch which would have looked better. Give letterers time and money to retouch!

Overall a funny, poignant volume of this lovable series.

Ratings:

Art – 9
Characters – 9
Story – 8
Service – 5 Light nudity
Lesbian – 10

For a slightly goofy, slightly realistic story of two women (and their colleagues and friends) adulting together and being in love, this is a quietly outstanding story.  I hope you’ll pick it up and give it a read.