2019 dawned with me being the proud subscriber to more streaming services than I could imagine. Or need. Or want, really. As media goes, visual media is my least favorite, as it takes more time and concentration than I care to give to staring at a screen. Which is why I end up watching movies on airplanes, where I’m a captive audience. ^_^

Because I’m paying these services for access to anime, among other things, I thought I’d better, y’know, use them to watch stuff I didn’t want to buy. I’m all for buying the 20th anniversary Blu-Ray box set of Revolutionary Girl Utena – and watching it again. ^_^ Crunchyroll has been a staple for me for years, Hidive has been pretty good in providing access to Sentai Filmworks‘ titles, which I tend to enjoy watching once, but don’t really want to own (although there have been exceptions,) with Netflix coming in a distant third in anime for me, but it turns out to have Master of the 36th Chamber of Shaolin, so I forgive it all its failings.  Amazon Prime has been sort of interesting too, although I keep it around more for the free shipping than the anime. Nonetheless there are titles I’ve watched on that service. And of course, I’m trying to stay current on Yuri and Yuri-friendly series like Bloom Into You– but sometimes you gotta watch something new!

In an attempt to watch something out of the usual for me and something new, I turned to Boogiepop and Others, streaming on Crunchyroll.  This series looks at the light novels that precede the Boogiepop Phantom (this link goes to the Nozomi Entertainment Official Youtube channel dub) light novel.

Boogiepop and Others is not a Yuri series. Just to be very clear. There are, however, elements that may appeal to Okazu readers.

The opening credits include a same-sex kiss between the main character and herself, but I am not convinced that that has relevance to the story. The fact that it exists at all is merely indicative of the kind of Yuri one gets in this series.

The story centers on a supernatural being, a Shinagami known as Boogiepop who appears periodically to combat evil. Boogiepop, who refers to itself as “he/him,” manifests in the body of a high school girl, Miyashita Touka, who has no idea that she even becomes Boogiepop, although in a later arc, her mother does recognize that Touka is being possessed by a “strange man.”

In the first arc, there have been disappearances and murders, someone is killing high school girls (a repeated theme within the story.) Again there is some same-sex kissing. These kisses lack affection and are more a means of transmission of a compulsion than anything else.

Most interesting to me is the character of Kirima Nagi, whose backstory takes up the the bulk of the “Boogiepop at Dawn” anime arc (and, presumably, the light novel it is based upon.) When we first encounter her in the “Boogiepop and Others” arc, she has exceptional skills and fights Manticore, just as Boogiepop does…but they are not on the same side. They will encounter each other over and over throughout the series.

Miyashita, Kirima, and a third girl, Suema Kazuko, who has a strong interest in criminal psychology, form a triumvirate of main characters, around which the plots swirl. With the addition of a criminal organization, supernatural and alien influence, there’s always a lot going on in any given arc.

The animation is both good and not moe, with a number of adult characters. It’s been, frankly, a pleasure to watch, even with all the deaths.

I quite like that the series is always low-key horror even when what’s going on is actual horror. ^_^ Gruesome murders are presented with layers of narrative and artistic rendering to give us the thrill without too much of the grotesque. There’s a lot of pretension to psychological horror, but just as the tension rises, the arc comes to an end. This makes most of the arcs seem rushed, but if we spent any more time in the arc, the endings  – which mostly consist of Boogiepop talking the bad guy to death, then killing them – would be even less impressive than they are.

Ratings:

Art – 9
Characters – 8
Story – 8 Every arc is a lot of story crammed into a little space
Service – Yeah, there is some egregious undressing and the Yuri is clearly meant as service
Yuri – 2? It’s nothing more than window dressing and not why you should watch this series
Overall- 8

As I said, this is not a Yuri series, Yuri is merely a feature of some of the story arcs and is presented as a throwaway fetish. If you’re looking for well-developed Yuri relationships, this is not a place to look. However, if you are interested in a horror series with intriguing characters, decent people and terrible people, both male and female, adult and teens, strong female leads and a teeny dash of gender switching, this might appeal to you.

I haven’t seen so much symbolic bird flight since Oniisama E. ^_^

Liz and the Blue Bird is a complicated and fascinating look at the habit of loneliness, obsession, affection and human relationships. If you were paying attention last summer to Japanese theatrical releases for animation, along with Asagao to Kase-san, you’d have come across Rizu to Aoi Tori (リズと青い鳥 ), which often shared a theater with Kase-san. Liz and the Blue Bird is the official release of this movie from Eleven Arts.

The movie follows two young women who play woodwind in their concert band as the band competition nears. Nozomi is popular, easy-going and wears her position as sempai to the flute section comfortably. On oboe, Mizore is a loner who avoids any connection with the other double-reed players, leaving the undergrads wondering what they are doing wrong. They are doing nothing wrong, Mizore simply has no room in her existence for anyone but Nozomi. As pressure is put upon them to play the key movement in a competition piece called “Liz and the Blue Bird,” based on a children’s book of the same name, Nozomi’s and Mizore’s relationship starts to buckle.

The movie’s structure is complex, with two stories-within-a-story, three separate animation styles and acting parts for the voice actors, the foley and the music.

I said in yesterday’s news report that you could, if you were so inclined, see Mizore’s relationship with Nozomi as Yuri. In fact, its hard not to, as Mizore declares that Nozomi is everything to her. That said, this is not a romance and this obsession Mizore has with Nozomi is not the end goal, but an obstacle that must be set aside for them both to thrive. To do so, Mizore is required to break out of the habit of loneliness that she has developed for herself as an identity.

The characters outside Nozomi and Mizore are excellent. We don’t spend much time with them, but we get to know a fair number in that short time. I liked them all, from Yuuko, the band leader and Natsuki, another third year, to the first-years, especially Kenzaki Ririka, the only other oboe in the band, and the amusingly bad-tempered library club member.

Nothing in this movie is simplistic. The children’s story of “Liz and the Blue Bird”, it’s relationship to Mizore and Nozomi, their relationship to one another and to the people around them are all fully developed and realistically complex. In fact, after watching this movie through once, I went back and watched it again to pay attention to details I knew I had missed the first time, especially in the animation and soundtrack.

I had gone into this movie cold, with absolutely no knowledge that it was part of the Sound! Euphonium franchise. Once I did, my sole complaint about the movie was instantly given context. So many people I know and trust have told me I would enjoy Sound! Euphonium, but I was unable to get through the first episode, as we spent almost the entire time watching the girls’ legs. In Liz and the Blue Bird, the one thing I found distracting and, ultimately exhausting, was the way the camera dissected the characters, separating out body parts endlessly, so we watched legs, then arms, then an eyeball so close we could see the curve of it, then feet, a lap, rinse, repeat almost as a non-stop compulsion, which if we weren’t also moving back and forth through the fairy tale would have been as intolerable as I found the Sound! Euphonium anime. It was so much of a problem that the few times the “camera” backed up in order to show us a whole person, it was a physical relief. This is not an animation style I enjoy and I will be very glad when it falls out of favor.

The three animation styles are, as I mentioned, wholly unique. The main story is the kind of thing Kyoto Animation is best known for, with higher production values than a TV series, and faces and bodies that are mostly similar, with realistic backgrounds (although thankfully not hyper-realistic which would be out of sync with the character designs.) “Liz and the Blue Bird” is told in an animation style that is strongly reflective of a children’s picture book come to life. Any frame of that animation could have been used as is in a picture book. It was very fitting to the tale and fun to watch. The third animation style comes in later in the narrative and is abstract, colorful and modern, and wholly suited to the scenes in which it is used.

The soundtrack was my favorite part of the movie. As a former woodwind, it’s nice to hear them get some love in the music. ^_^ But more importantly, the climax of the movie is not only centered around the music , it is a moment in which this viewer suddenly realized that the best acting of the movie had come from the musicians playing the piece, as they had throughout the movie played it wrong every time. Not, badly, not broken, they’d hit all the notes…it was just wrong. It was a masterful performance and one that I hope you will appreciate when you watch it.

Ratings:

Art – 9
Story – 10
Characters – 9
Yuri – 3
Service – 6 That whole bodypart-staring is a form of service which I do not care for. It feels dehumanizing to me.

Overall – 9

In the end, I think the thing that best captures my feelings about this movie is that it was worth watching a second time and that second time made me appreciate it more.

From the moment it began, Revue Starlight (which is streaming on HIDIVE) reminded me of something.

Centered on a group of young women at a Takarazuka-like performing arts school, in which they vie to be cast in one of three successive performances of a muscial called “Starlight,” they find themselves called upon to literally fight for the Top Star position in battles set in the surreal landscapes of their own desires and fears.

And wow, did it remind me of something.

Duels, surreal landscapes, hrm. Uniforms created by impossible machinery…

Now what did that remind me of…?

Oh, yes, I got it! It reminded me, almost immediately, of…Melody of Oblivion. 

Yes, of course, it also reminded me of Revolutionary Girl Utena, but there was something specific about the tone that pinged Melody of Oblivion in my head in a very immediate way, which shared some staff and a lot of theatrical elements with Utena. As it turns out, Revue Starlight shares some staff with Melody, so I’m probably not that far off.

In any case, there was a similar sense of grimness that pervaded the plot of Revue Starlight so, despite the apparent desire to excel, the play the young women are working on is depressing as fuck. We watch them shine, in order to star in a play in which they must fail. And yet, despite that, Revue Starlight was a pretty good anime with a lot of emotion and a soupçon of WTF, in between shiny fight scenes and earworm music, capped off by utterly likable characters.

Yuri here lies primarily in intensely emotional relationships between various pairs of the girls. Futaba and her charge, imperious Kauruko, Mahiru’s overt crush on Karen, the late breaking, but immensely satisfying relationship between Nana and Junna and the even more satisfying rivalry of Maya and Claudine. If the story had been about Maya and Claudine, I would have loved it even more. Maya gets very close to making the series about them a few times and even goes so far as to refer to her rival as “my Claudine.” ^_^ 

By now, if you’ve seen this anime, you’re wondering if I’m going to mention the giraffe in the room. If the role had been an adult man, everything he said would be bizarre and creepy. So it’s a giraffe instead, and comes off as inexplicable and surreal instead of a creeptastic old dude in a series about young women in a school that has no men. So, giraffe.

Of course music plays an important role. The duels are soundtracked by image songs for the character whose arc it is, sung by the voice actress. These are themed to fit both character and the tension that rules the duel. I’ve got the opening theme stuck firmly in my head, but what I ended up liking best was the repetition of the end theme, by the pairs whose story was highlighted in that particular episode. Again, I like Maya and Claudine’s iteration best, but they were all good. And damned earmwormy. I fear I’ll be singing this stuff for days unless I do something to stop it. 

Did I enjoy Revue Starlight? Yeah, I think I did. It was shiniy and singy and fighty and asked for very little commitment from me as a viewer. I mean, I never cared about the main plot tension between the leads, which is not all that surprising, I often find my self preferring supporting characters. But it was definitely worth a watch.

Ratings:

Service – Knees, not thighs. Is that an improvement, when it’s so clearly meant to be a stand-in?

Couple Ranking:

1. Maya and Claudine 
2. Banana and Junna
3. Futaba with someone who appreciates her, not Kaoruko
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282726. Mahiru and Karen
282727. Karen and Hikari