Archive for the English Anime Category


Rose of Versailles Anime, Part 1, Disk 1 (English)

June 17th, 2013

There is no question in my mind when I call Ryoko Ikeda’s Rose of Versailles a classic. Historical drama is always “timeless”, but centuries after the French Revolution and decades after the debut of the anime, we are still compelled by the story of Lady Oscar Franciois de Jarjeyes and her Queen, Marie Antoinette. Now that Part 1 has been released by Nozomi/RightStuf, there are synopses and reviews all over the place, I reviewed the series once, way back in 2004. The story of the French Revolution is well-known. ^_^ I will confine myself this time to talking about the captivating and charismatic lead of the series – Oscar.

We begin the anime introduced to the peculiar circumstances of Oscar’s upbringing, raised as a boy although her sex is not a secret. With  this simple plot device, Oscar is disassociated from her predecessor, Princess Knight‘s Sapphire. No one is being fooled by Oscar, everyone is content to take her as she appears – young, beautiful, as talented at sword fighting as any man, a natural leader who just happens to be a girl.

So, it struck me very hard that, in the first disk, both her father and Andre’ misunderstand Oscar so badly.

Her father hears Oscar reject the role of Captain of the Royal Guard and takes it as a personal insult. His argument is “Don’t you understand what you’re doing to my reputation?” But of course, she doesn’t care – and why should she? He doesn’t care about her. That much is obvious when he chooses a life and a name for her. Her father is clearly using Oscar as a pawn in his game. This is not to say he isn’t proud of her accomplishments (and, no doubt takes credit for her looks and athleticism, as well). To some extent it’s understandable that he has no idea who she is – what father knows who his 14 year old daughter is?  And so, while he completely misunderstands, even when she tells him she does not want to “babysit a girl”, he can be vaguely forgiven.

But Andre’. He has been by Oscar’s side from the time they were small. Surely he understands that Oscar is not objecting to the position or the life of a soldier, but being relegated to caretaking a *girl*? Apparently not, because as she rides away, he calls out to her, telling her that this is her last chance to regain her womanhood. I gaped at his cluelessness. But then, he’ll be clueless about a lot of things for a while yet to come.

What makes Rose of Versailles work as a story once the characters are established and they get to Versailles,  is that it is laid out with plausibility. So plausible, in fact, it came as a shock to learn how much Ikeda’s characterizations deviate from reality. I have tremendous sympathy for both Marie Antionette  and Madame du Barry and would love to see a story built around them that cast them in the roles of celebrity and CEO respectively, to see how their story might play out in the 21st century.

Speaking of 21st century, let’s look at how distance makes us see Oscar differently than she might have appeared when she debuted in the 1970s. Ikeda writes her without any recognition of the influence of the Church on things such as gender roles, but then it had been more than 300 years since Joan of Arc was killed in France and Europe was fully engaged in the Age of Reason. So the Oscar we see in the anime is a girl raised as a boy and who is both capable and competent enough to wear the privilege she has been given. At no point in time in Disk 1 does she appear to pine away for more feminine accouterments, nor does anyone attempt to shame her for her appearance or position. We, from our distance from the Revolution (and from  the original manga and anime) can look at Oscar’s adaptation of the male role and argue whether we might consider her merely cross dressing or transsexual (and later we can argue a bit about her sexuality, as well, for fun. ^_^)

What I think is plain is that Oscar, with her white uniform, represents a kind of ideal, a “pure” nobility. She believes in her word and in the social compact. The excesses and politics of Versailles repulse and bore her, but she will do everything she has to to do to do her job as well as it can be done. Here in Disk 1, the theme of “Duty” is established and this concept, more than anything else, will drive the rest of the story.

I’m reminded once again that I can only take a little of Rose of Versailles at a time. Like Oscar, I prefer to be out in the field or woods than watching court gossip. ^_^ But you know, once I started watching this story again, I’m also reminded just why it’s a classic. It’s that good.

Ratings:

Art – 8 Strongly 70s. Gotta love those eyes.
Story – 9
Characters 9
Yuri – 0
Service – 6 Even the women of the Court know Oscar’s uniforms are all service, all the time. ^_^

Overall – 8

When much of what we like in anime now is long forgotten, Rose of Versailles, and the drama of the French Revolution, will remain.





Yuri Anime: Sweet Blue Flowers / Aoi Hana Disk 3 (English)

June 6th, 2013

swbDisk 1  is about beginnings and Disk 2 is about endings.  I’d sum up Disk 3 of Sweet Blue Flowers as somewhere between “what does not kill us makes us stronger” and “time heals all wounds.” Disk 3, is, in fact, about growing up and moving on.

Sugimoto’s sister’s wedding has arrived and with it, the house of cards that Yasuko has built must begin to crumble. When she tries to have it all work one last time, Fumi does something that won my wholehearted admiration when I read it the first time – she tells her to get lost. Not like that, of course, Fumi is kind, but firm, telling Sempai to learn to move on gracefully. Which is what Fumi then does.

To move forward, Fumi turns her thoughts backwards, setting in motion the remaining volumes of the manga. Knowing that very shortly the series will come to an end, I wonder if Fumi and Akira can both move on gracefully – and I absolutely hope they will. The end of the anime reminds me that the friendship between them is a good one. I’d hate to see it end.

I do have one complaint. The translation for Fumi’s lines in this last disk lost her “voice” entirely. She sounded exactly like Akira who sounded like Shinobu. In other words, everyone sounded like a 20 year-old guy. Fumi’s language is very pretty – she’s soft-spoken in voice and words. Akira sounding like Shinobu is one thing – she’s kind of mean to him, but Fumi? It could have been worse, but it could have been better.

This anime  is beautifully animated, well-acted by some newcomers to the voice acting world. It was strongly written and has pretty much set a standard for Yuri anime for many that is going to be very, very hard to beat.

I’m once again thankful to Nozomi/Rightstuf for bringing it over and to all of you for supporting them and buying the series. Now we need anime to roll around through the current non-Yuri phase and pick up something of interest to us once again. ^_^

Ratings:

Art – 9
Story – 10
Characters – 10
Yuri – 8
Service – 3

Overall – 10

Whether we want to move forward or not, this disk reminds us, the rest of the world will not stop for us. ^_^





Interview with Sam Pinansky of Anime Sols

May 27th, 2013

One of the absolute best things about working with JManga were the people involved. Robert, Yae-san, and Carl, the letterer who toiled so diligently for us. And it was my genuine pleasure to be able to work with Sam Pinansky of QuarkPro. Now Sam and his team have launched the ambitious new anime streaming and funding site, Anime Sols. I think it’s an interesting idea.

As Bruce McF said in comments here, “There’s nothing to DO at a Kickstarter other than to see how fast the thing is moving, and if it hits its basic goals, what stretch goals they come up with. By contrast, at Anime Sols, there’s a new episode every week for each series ~ one per day, given the series they have.So rather than a rush of pledges at the beginning and a rush of pledges at the end, if Anime Sols works, it could well have a steady flow of pledges as the series is running, and then hopefully a rush at the end when the time limit is hitting and its put up or shut up time.“I thought that a perfect summation of what I saw, and I wanted to get it all from Sam’s view.

Thanks so much to Sam for taking time out of his busy schedule to answer my nosey-parker questions. ^_^

E: Tell us a little about yourself and about QuarkPro. How did you get involved in anime and what are you doing now in the field? 

S: I went to school to study theoretical physics and got into anime when I was in college. While getting my Ph. D I took Japanese on the side and really enjoyed the language, and at the same time I started translating some anime as a hobby by fansubbing. After doing a postdoc in Japan I decided to stay, worked as a freelance translator for Crunchyroll and other companies during the early days of legal streaming, and after getting a job at Tezuka Productions, I continued to do that kind of work and expand my network. About a year ago I switched jobs to work for the Yomiuri TV group company ADEC and now I’m International Media Strategy Group Chief at YTV Enterprise. My current job consists of running a localization group in YTV Enterprise as well as new project development and technical encoding assistance. Quarkpro is my own Japanese LLC I started so I could be an investor in Anime Sols.

E: Anime Sols appears to be a streaming service with a crowdfunding component. . Where did the idea come from? What is the goal of Anime Sols?

S: I had the idea for Anime Sols more than 2 years ago, prior to the crowdfunding boom we’ve seen with Kickstarter. My experience in fansubbing taught me that basically every genre has its core fans and that they as a customer base were being poorly served by the current licensing paradigm… Japan needed to be able to directly sell to western fans but also needed to be able to do so with low risk, and crowdfunding was the perfect answer to that question.

E: So the site is really a crowdfunding site with a streaming component. ^_^

S: The streaming is necessary because most of the titles are fairly unknown [in the West,] so it’s important to have a website that not only collects pledges, but is also a place for people to watch and discover new shows to enjoy. The goal of Anime Sols is to introduce classic anime which are not so well known in the west, and to enable shows which otherwise are not viable to get a traditional license have a chance to be released on official R1 DVD with subtitles. It’s my hope that a core of dedicated fans will form which will help to attract new viewers and fans for these shows and create a healthy market for classic anime titles.

E: What are the differences between Anime Sols and other crowdfunding sites? 

S: One of the main differences is that Anime Sols is not an open platform. The site owner is a partnership of Japanese animation and media companies, and it’s those companies which are also providing the content and raising money through goal pledges. This allows 100% of the funds raised to go to the rights-holders and also avoids a lot of messy licensing legal issues with crowdfunding. There are other differences between Anime Sols and Kickstarter, for example, your pledges are charged when the goal is reached, not when the deadline hits. Please see the FAQ on the website for more details.

E: What have been the major challenges you’ve faced with the idea?

S: The most difficult thing was getting the other partners of the Anime Sols LLP to finalize the contract. But before that, we also faced numerous hurdles in terms of getting enough partners and finding content which we could attempt this business model with. The site development was also faced with an extremely tight budget and required a lot of work personally. Currently we are trying to figure out ways to get the word out and increase the number of site visitors, which is the biggest problem we are facing.

E: Interviews like this help, to some extent, but yeah, it always helps to have more feet on the ground. Do you have expansion plans if this first wave works out? Other titles or more countries in the works?

S: We have a number of further titles lined up that we would like to continue with, and we’re beginning talks with other companies to see if they have any titles they would like to place on Anime Sols as well. Expansion into other territories is something we will be looking into further down the line once the business is more established.

E: After a set is funded, you said that you’ve lined up distribution. Is that going to be worldwide?

E: Pledges can only be made from the US and Canada and will be distributed through Righstuf. however, we will be producing at least 1000 sets for any goal that is reached, so any sets which have not been pledged for we plan to distribute to the usual retailers such as Rightstuf, and they are free to sell to whomever they want, including international consumers who wish to import the R1 release into their own country.

E: Do you have a message for fans?

S: I hope that anyone reading this article takes the time to come to animesols.com and register, and then check out some of the over 60 episodes of classic anime we have streaming now for free, plus new episodes every day!

***

Thanks again, Sam, for your time – and for your vision. I love the idea of fans helping to fund the work that they personally love – it’s so much more meaningful that just sitting back waiting for someone else to invest in it for us. You have my support and the support of a lot of people who would love to see some of those classic titles see the light of day. Here’s wishing Anime Sols the best of luck.





Yuri Anime: Sweet Blue Flowers / Aoi Hana Disk 2 (English)

May 24th, 2013

swb Where Disk 1 of Sweet Blue Flowers was full of nostalgia and longing, Disk 2 is a brutally beautiful look at all the different kinds of pain people can inflict upon one another without ever meaning to – or wanting to – do so.

With the backdrop of the school play (and Sugimoto being simply too cool as Heathcliff,) Fumi finds herself unsure of her sempai’s feelings. As the days pass, she is more and more sure that Sugimoto likes someone else. When she discovers the truth and confronts Sugimoto, she finds an uncomfortable truth waiting for her, as well.

If the entire series was just this one disk, it would still be one of my favorites. The life lessons in it are deep and abiding. It’s a love song to young love and to Kamakura and to the springtime of youth. Above all, it is a love song to young girls who find themselves in love with other girls. You are not alone, you are not wrong, you can love and lose and love again. That’s a hell of a chorus and I am glad this series is out there, singing those important words.

I’ll say this once again, because it cannot be said too many times – despite her own words to the contrary, Fumi is an incredibly strong character. As I watched this series over again, I felt honored to be allowed to share in Fumi’s story.

The world could use more Fumis.

Ratings:

Art – 8 (with some lapses toward the last two episodes)
Story – 10
Characters – 10
Yuri – 8
Service – 8  Sugimoto as Heathcliff is pure service. ^_^

Overall – 9

I’m so on pins and needles about the end of the manga. I know what I want it to be, but what will it be? /worry worry/





Yuri Anime: Sweet Blue Flowers / Aoi Hana Disk 1 (English)

May 6th, 2013

swbWhen Manjoume Fumi returns home to Kamakura to go to high school, she’s pretty much forgotten her childhood best friend, Okudaira Akira. But circumstance has brought the two together again in what, for many Yuri fans, is the most-anticipated anime release of 2013.

Fumi is a Nadesico beauty, tall, with long black hair. She was – and still is – a crybaby, who as child often turned to energetic, assertive Akira, A-chan, for help. Their meeting is accidental, but they fall back into their old pattern without even realizing it. And, in a moment, the two of them are best friends once again, even though they go to different schools.

Fumi is caught up in cross-school event, the Drama Club’s play for the school festival – and even more caught up by the lead actress, Sugimoto Yasuko. Somewhat to her surprise, Fumi finds herself dating Sugimoto-sempai and liking it, despite having recently ended a disappointing affair with her cousin.

Everything in this series is classic Yuri, redolent with the smell of old school hallways and libraries filled with old books, until Fumi confesses to her new-old best friend that she’s in love with and dating another girl. A-chan does her best to support Fumi. When Fumi tells Sugimoto, she realizes instantly that Fumi is exceedingly strong. She’s right, but she doesn’t yet know how strong Fumi is. Aoi Hana may feel like it’s set in the Showa period, but Fumi is a Heisei girl – a contrast we’ll see again and again in this story.

However. It wasn’t Fumi’s achingly adorable personality that brought a tear to my increasingly sentimental eye this time. It was the title of the first episode. As the words Hana Monogatari (花物語り) appeared on the screen, I got something in my eye, or maybe it was my allergies. (;_;) Or, maybe, it was the reminder that I’m not the only person to think of Yoshiya Nobuko as a beloved ancestor to this genre.

Ratings:

Art – 9
Story – 9
Characters – 10
Yuri – 9
Service – 2

Overall – 9

Disk 1 of Sweet Blue Flowers was incredibly beautiful, with the hyper-realistic backgrounds that are so popular in anime right now and the source of so much destination tourism for fans in Japan. Despite it being a “Lucky Penny” discount release, the DVD set comes with a booklet of promotional art, so we get a great extra even with the lower price.

You know how Fumi feels about the halls of Fujigaya? I feel that way about this anime. It’s recent chronologically, but it is a Yuri classic, nonetheless. I am so thankful to Shimura-sensei for writing this manga, and for JC Staff for animating it. And I am very, very thankful to Nozomi/RightStuf for releasing it in English!