Archive for the Classic Yuri Category


Yuri Manga: Moonlight Flowers

June 7th, 2006

Today’s review would never have happened without James Welker, who introduced me to this manga. He was surprised I didn’t know it – after I read it, so was I. How has this manga slipped under the radar of so many Yuri fans for so long? It deserves fame and recognition, at least. So thanks James, for turning me on to Moonlight Flowers, by Tsugumo Mutsumi.

So, let me just say that this is a *very* good Yuri manga. You should click the link above and buy it right away. Don’t wait.

The first half of the volume follows Sahoko, a bride-to-be as she meets Kaoru, a old high school friend. Kaoru has become a floral designer and she offers to design Sahoko’s wedding bouquet.

Sahoko spends more and more time with Kaoru, which starts Sahoko doubting her feelings for her fiancé. We learn that in high school, Kaoru and Sahoko starred in the school play – and Kaoru fell in love with Sahoko. But, when Kaoru kissed her, Sahoko ran away. Kaoru, after drinking too much, admits that she truly loved Sahoko – and because of her history of difficult family life and regret for driving Sahoko away, she is pretty much reconciled to living alone forever.

Sahoko marries (what a GREAT scene that was, honestly) and immediately regrets it. She hates sex with her husband – they trot out the “she was raped in college” complication, which was horribly overused in MIST magazine – and he almost immediately takes a lover. But Sahoko is spending more and more time with Kaoru until finally, one night after discovering her husband out with his lover, followed by a heinous confrontation, Kaoru and Sahoko become lovers.

Sahoko’s husband retaliates by telling her parents, but Sahoko has found strength in her new love and she tells them – and her husband – that she won’t be coming back. He tries to confine her in their apartment when she comes home to get her things, raping her to show her the error of her ways, but after she begs him for forgiveness and explains quite rationally that she will never be his wife again, ever, no matter what he does, he realizes that its a lost cause. Kaoru comes to save her and together they leave him behind.

What James liked best about this manga was that they do not go to America at this point, they stay in Japan and defy public opinion and pressure to make a life together. What I liked best was that Japanese style quotes 「」 are used in every single scene where quotes are warranted except when Kaoru is explaining how hard life is going to be. She says this isn’t California, and then she says in *Western* “” quotes that saying “I am a Lesbian” is a hard road.

The next story is a flashback to Kaoru’s youth, when she was in college and in denial. The adult Kaoru had confided to Sahoko that all the people she’d ever fallen for from childhood were women. But at this time in her life, she had yet to see that. (It’s easier than it sounds to not realize things like that. I only JUST realized I had a crush on my babysitter when I was ten. I mean, like, this week. ^_^;)

Kaoru arrives at a beach house with her boyfriend and another couple. The guy’s parents own the house, and he’s so excited to be there at the romantic seaside with the girl he desires. Only, Kaoru keeps putting him off and she really doesn’t know why. She finds the relationship between the parents disturbing – the wife seems pale and unsatisfied, while the husband treats her like furniture, or a maid. A friend of the wife’s, Kyouko, arrives and the uncle is glad to have his wife, Kayoko, out of his hair as he does his art.

That night, Kaoru goes outside for a midnight walk to settle her nerves when she comes across Aunt Kayoko on the beach, her face alight with anticipation and her arms open. Into those arms runs Kyouko and the two fall to the sand kissing. Kaoru is shocked to her core. This was an *amazingly* sexy and romantic scene – the winning scene of the book, IMHO.

Back in town, Kaoru breaks up with her boyfriend and sets out to find Kyouko, who turns out to be a successful businesswoman. Kaoru admits that she too loves women. Kyouko takes pity on her and invites her back home to talk. When Kaoru arrives at Kyouko’s apartment, she finds Aunt Kayoko there waiting to kiss Kyouko hello.

The boyfriend finds out about Kaoru, then vindictively learns about Kyouko and his mother. Enraged, he calls his father, who comes rushing into town threatening to kill Kyouko. As he attacks Kyouko with a knife, Kayoko steps in between them and takes the blow meant for her lover. Although the wound was not fatal, in the ambulance, Kayoko, who had a previously established weak heart, suffers heart failure and dies.

Years later Kaoru is looking at an art exhibit by the father and in front of a painting of Kayoko runs into her old boyfriend. Kaoru is a different person now – they are able to be civil, even friendly. Kaoru walks away thinking about her own love of her life, now lost, but never forgotten. (And, ultimately regained, but she doesn’t know that yet!)

The last story in the volume is a horror thing about a possessed woman I have never really read. ^_^

So the bad things are the outdated ideas about men and women: all men are evil, violent, possessive and rapists and are the natural enemies of lesbians. And all lesbians are stylish and successful. Hah. That’s all I’m gonna say to that.

Good things are everything else, really. The melodrama was very melodramatic, the romance very romantic, the sex reasonably sexy. Lots and lots of lily-filled backgrounds. Positively reeking of lilies, it was! The art is very classic, in everything from the character designs to the backgrounds. This is “Josei manga” at its most typical. But the art is very clean and doesn’t feel trite, even though it really is. And no school uniforms to be seen. Thank heavens.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Characters – 7
Story – 6
Yuri – 10
Service – 6 (a fair amount of rape here and there)

Overall – 8

Okay, it’s still a story about how a lesbian turns a “straight” woman, which is “meh”, but on the other hand, its a story about a successful businesswoman and so NOT about schoolgirls.

Oh, I forgot to mention – Sahoko is blonde and petite and Kaoru is tall and brunette. This looks so familiar somehow…. ^_^





Yuri Manga: YajiKita Gakuen Douchuuki, Volume 27

December 22nd, 2005

Some things can just never go on long enough. YajiKita Gakuen Douchuuki is one of them. If it never ends I’ll be a happy fangirl.

So let’s see, where did we leave off? Who can tell?!?

Seriously – let’s see, Yukiya has been rescued, and reunited with his retinue, and Sagiri is still in the middle of the woods whining…and trying to not be too obvious about his crush on Hardy (who pins him with his hawk-like gaze and asks him about it, making Sagiri go all goopy, which is even *worse* than him whiny), and the folks at the school go running around beating each other up and the tourists comb the caves looking for buried treasure, while Julian walks around mysteriously, and whatshisface, the one who idolizes Hardy and follows Ruriko around, eh – Tamahiko, that’s it – mostly follows Ruriko around.

There’s the usual insane fighting among the apparent 7 million occupants of and visitors to this school and mostly Junko (Yaji) and Reiko (Kita) spend the volume running around like lunatics, with the occasional face-slamming interlude for fun.

Reading this manga is a bit “sound and fury signifying nothing”, but I don’t care. It’s brain candy. :-)

Let’s move away from the plot for a second – especially as it is so insanely complex that I’m not always sure I can figure out what’s going on, much less explain it simply – and move onto the service, shall we? :-)

Ruriko has been trying to get Kita back into that tux for some oh 13 years now. And in Volume 27, she succeeds! For exactly 15 panels. LOL

Here’s Ruriko’s brilliant scheme this time: She notes that Kita is being shadowed (pun intended) by the school’s female ninja (kunoichi) club. Ruriko has the club president, an adorable little blonde, kidnapped. She tells Reiko that unless she gets back in that tux, bends her knee and swears fealty to Ruriko, dire and dreadful things will occur to doll-like Kaede. Kita, not wanting to see the girl hurt, dons the garb in question – which sends Kaede into fits of love, btw – and proceeds to bend that knee. But before she can swear to anything, chaos is unleashed. Kita-san rescues Kaede, and knocks Ruriko into unconsciousness, then they bail taking Ruriko with them. Which was a relief to Kaede, as Ruriko was about to make Kita swear she’d do anything Ruriko said to do. A somewhat disturbing thought, even to me. Ruriko’s a nutter.

Kita’s back in boring old school uniform before they even leave the house. It was brief, but DAMN that tux looked good.

Kaede’s mishap only serves to strengthen her interest in “Shinokita-sama”, and Ruriko is, of course, too stupid and rich to understand “no.” I’m not a fan of sociopaths in general, but this series is filled with nothing but – including our two leads – so I’m not going to get myself worked up over it.

This is a great shoujo manga series, but not something for the faint of heart. It’s just too long, too complex and has too many characters to be an easy read. Fifteen *lead* characters at casual count.

So is tux-wearing and ninja adoration all there is for poor Kita’s ongoing girl troubles? Not *quite.* On the last page we reintroduce an exceptionally bizarre character, Himegose – an impossibly rich Empress-wannabe with a obsession with…Yaji-san. Seriously. Himegose was all OVER Junko in the original series – wanted her as her girl toy. But her two little henchchicks had a raging crush on Kita. So with Himegose’s return we can expect massive Yuri sexual harrassment for both our lovely leading ladies.

Ratings:

Art – 6 A little weak, even for this series which is wildly inconsistent
Story – 7 But it takes some work on your part
Characters – 7 The good ones are great and the rest are legion
Yuri – 7 Sociopathic service, but harmless for a change
Loser FanGirl – 10 Pretty boys, gorgeous girls, squeal!

Love it or hate it, YajiKita Gakuen Douchuuki is a cultural treasure.





Hana no Asuka-gumi, Anime OVA

April 4th, 2005

How do you translate a 33-volume manga about girl gangs in Tokyo into a 48-minute OVA? Not that badly, actually. Hana no Asuka-gumi OVA is short, its silly, but it gets the point across in a way that quite true to the original.

Bad Points:

Right off the bat, the animation is *awful*. I mean, like, “what on earth is going on with her neck?” awful.

Good Points:

Everything else. Not only are we introduced to Asuka and her friends of the Omoteban; Hime, Miko, Mizu, et al.

But that’s not all – we meet Helolin, the local bully; The Kichuku Ladies, the local motorcycle gang and….

Hibari, leader of the Zenchuu Ura and her whipping girl Kazuga.

Along with about eight hundred other characters that are all lots of fun, but…I wonder if any of you watched this for the first time without assistance, would you be able to make heads or tails of the story? lol

The plot is simple – a girl is being bullied by Helolin and is saved by Asuka…only to find that her friends have abandoned her and are starting to bully her. She finds herself more and more involved with Asuka’s violent antics, ending up by joining Asuka as she confronts the Kichuku Ladies.

The moments of the OVA are classic – Asuka beats the crap out of the girl she’s saving; the Zenchuu Ura’s Punishment Group beats the crap out of the Omoteban; Asuka beats the crap out of Helolin’s group, and on and on and on… I love this series.

It’s a short OVA and feels like a bowl of mixed snacks – moments of interaction between Asuka and the zillion characters of the story, just enough to get the flavor of the thing.

If only the animation wasn’t so damn awful.

If you’re looking for a great but short retro moment, the Hana no Asuka-gumi OVA is perfect.

Ratings:
Art – 4
Character – 9
Story – 7
Yuri – 0

Overall – 7

Lots of nihilistic girl gang fun for the whole family.





YajiKita Gakuen Dochuuki Anime OVA Part 1 and 2

February 8th, 2005

The way I figure it is, if I can watch or read something ten years after I watched or read it the first time and it doesn’t make me squirm, it’s quality. Based on its renewed popularity, YajiKita Gakuen Douchuuki is quality.

Way back in 1989, and again in 1991, Akita Shoten video put out two one-episode OVAs of YajiKita, which featured the top voice actresses of the day as our intrepid pair. Sadly, I don’t think the casting was as great as they did, but, I can’t blame them for their choices.

The two episodes are unrelated, which gives one a good feel for how random the typical YajiKita arcs are. The two eps are filled with random ninjas, lots of fighting, mysterious beautiful women and other chestnuts of the genre. My personal favorite, Kotestsu the shadow, is *far* manlier than he is in manga form. Yukiya was perfect – he looked utterly girly, and made all his hench-gang blush with muted desire, but was actually quite the dashing boy with a male voice. This pleased me no end.

But what about Yaji and Kita, you ask? (You had better ask….)

Yajima Junko’s seiyuu, Yamamoto Yuriko (also the voice of Yuri-licicious Iczer-1,)is, in my completely personal opinion, a little too flightly and goofy. We do see a more serious side of Yaji, but because there’s so little time in the two stand-alone episodes, its not very developed.

Shinokita Reiko, played by Yamada Eiko (Anne in Anne of Green Gables and the righteous Midorikawa Ranko in Ace wo nerae!) is nearly perfect as Kita. The body language for Kita is pretty special too. Watching her stand and sit is like bird-watching – she’s got distinctive body language that communicates her emotions very effectively, and the animation really captures that.

But you guys don’t care about that. You only care about Yuri. I know you. So…is there Yuri?

Duh, this is Kita-san we’re talking about! Of *course* there is!

In the first episode, Yaji and Kita arrive at school and have just about enough time to be fed a pack of lies by the Principal and the Student Council President, when Reiko is served with papers. A love letter, that is. We get to smile at her usual reaction, because the only people watching this obscure video are clearly obsessive fans….

Now, this is pretty mild Yuri, I admit that.

What makes it a tad more amusing and a notch higher on the Yuri goggles scale is this:

The student who gives Kita the love letter is voiced by none other than that Yuri darling, Mitsuishi Kotono in what has *got* to be one of her earliest roles. (A quick survey of her resume on Anime News Network turns up nothing older, but that’s hardly definitive.)

It’s a small thing, but I love that the “6 Degrees of Yuri” hold true for no less than three of the voice actresses in this series – two of them the leads. ^_^

So, no hot steamy sex here, but for a quickie, this OVA neatly encapsulates the silliness of YajiKita perfectly.

And, sadly, no Kita in a tux either, but we do get her to see her casual boyish after-school look! ^_^

Ratings:

Overall – Nostalgia-gasm





Yuri: Manga: YajiKita Gakuen Dochuuki, Vol. 25

February 4th, 2005

It always gives me great pleasure to be able to discuss one of my favorite series, but in this case, not only does YajiKita Gakuen Douchuuki (YajiKita’s School Diary) have Yuri, this time its not just classic…it’s now.

I have reviewed this series before, once on January 13, 2004 and it even made my 2004 Top 10 of Yuri manga, and yet, hardly anyone knows about it, which is a crying shame, since it is truly a wonderful, wacky and Yuri-filled, girl-gang shoujo manga.

YajiKita originally went for 22 volumes, from 1984 to 1992. The plot was, basically, that two second-year high school students – blonde, cool Shinokita Reiko (Kita) and fiery tempered brunette Yajima Junko (Yaji) – move from school to school fighting corruption, Yakuza, bad gangs (as opposed to the good gangs which, yes, do exist in the story) and running into more ninjas and black-suited, sunglass-wearing men than you could ever have imagined.

Both Yaji and Kita have extraordinary hand-to-hand fighting skills, which they actually work on improving. Yaji’s family runs a dojo, so no surprise there, and Kita’s father is a police captain. They nominally work for the head of the eastern area gang association (Kantou Banchou Rengo no Souchou, for those of you who care) an exceptionally pretty rich boy named Yukiya, who looks like – but does not act or talk like – a girl. (One of the things you can absolutely guarantee in YajiKita is that the boys will often be as pretty as the girls.) Yuikya is served by an even prettier ninja boy named Kotetsu, who is always running around saving an even *prettier* ninja named Sagiri, whom I loathe. (Sagiri whines. Alot.)

In the beginning Yaji and Kita can’t stand each other, but after a dozen or so volumes that disappears. Sometime around the time Kita gets shot, Yaji realizes that she quite likes her partner…and Kita begins to act a little more possessive of Yaji, as well, often acting like her boyfriend. (Kita out of school uniform and without her glasses is seriously bishounen. People constantly think she’s a guy at first.)

There are about 877,636,345 other characters who linger in this series, so it would be hopeless to enumerate them all.

However, on to the Yuri. I’ve already pointed out in my earlier review that Kita is a girl magnet. Sometime towards the end of the original series, the mangaka threw caution to the wind and had Kita get a part-time job at a host bar. As “Rei” she danced with many a woman, and looked damn fine in a tux. Yaji even brought Misuzu, a girl that had honest-to-god fallen in love with Kita earlier in the series, just to watch her drool. Poor Misuzu was *dying* as “Rei” danced with the other women…and when one of them, a rich girl named Ruriko, goes so far as to *kiss* Kita, Misuzu is out of her seat and punching Ruriko faster than you can say “Hey! Get your hand off my Reiko!” :-)

Anyway, that was back in Volume 21 or so. About 12 years ago.

Last year YajiKita picked where they had left off 13 years before. With no interruption, no aging – no change at all, the next collected volume came out…as Vol. 23. In which not a single moment of time had passed. It was really charming and wacky. Not a single change had been made – unlike the New Hana no Asuka-gumi whioch had at least updated to include cell phones.

In Vol. 24, Ruriko, having had her desire for “Rei” thwarted for a decade and a half, (metaphorically speaking,) seemed even more determined to possess poor Kita. She concocted a variety of methods by which she tries to maneuver Kita out of her clothes and into a tux. Of course, I approve.

Which brings us to Vol. 25. Yaji and Kita are rushing around looking for a kidnapped (and escaped, yet still missing) Yukiya, and come across Ruriko and Tamehiko (another one of the many resurrected characters) at a pleasant little cottage in the country. Ruriko locks Kita in a room with her and slinks up to her “Rei” asking her to stay. Kita draws back and apologizes, telling Ruriko that she can’t work for her. At which Ruruiko is appalled. “Employee?” she keeps asking. “What are you saying? I want you to be my lover!”

I have to admit – I applaud Ruriko’s frankness.

Kita excuses herself…she’s not interested in women, at which Ruriko trots out the old chestnut that she doesn’t like girls either…she just likes “Rei.” Kita bails, but Ruriko is unfazed. I’m looking forward to the next plan she comes up with – all the others have been so wonderfully stupid. :-) And maybe we might just get Reiko back in that tuxedo!

In the meantime, however, Kita has been noticeably *there* every time Yaji faces unwanted attentions from men. Maybe Kita isn’t interested in women, but she might just be interested in Yaji. :-)

Okay, not. But I like thinking about it. ^_^

Anyway, despite the fact that you actually *do* have to read this series from the beginning to get what’s going on – Volume 25 offers yet *more* women who desire Kita-san, which keeps it in my top ten, even after 20 years.