Archive for the English Anime Category


Revolutionary Girl Utena Anime Box Set – Volume 1 Disk 3 (English)

June 25th, 2011

Revolutionary Girl Utena: Student Council Saga Limited Edition SetBy the time you reach the third disc of the Revolutionary Girl Utena Student Council box set, you’ve already developed your ideas about what you think is going on. My ideas and yours may not be the same, but they are all valid. The show is consciously constructed to allow all our ideas to be valid. Now we, as viewers, have to allow each other’s ideas to be valid, too.

I’m going to tell you some of the things I think are going on (bearing in mind that while I know what is going to happen, I wont be talking about that – just what is happening on this disc. What I would REALLY like is to hear what you think is going on in the story. What are your thoughts about The End of the World – no spoilers, remember, just based on this first arc! – or about Touga, or the duels, or Anthy, Utena, whatever.

Okay, so here I go.

The disk begins with Saionji doing something very stupid, and being expelled for it. I have this belief that, in some way, all the members of the Student Council, by becoming members of the Student Council, were essentially consenting to being manipulated by the End of the World.

Which is why I personally find it hardest to watch Nanami being screwed with. She did not give this consent. Miki is innocent, but not unbsubtle. Nanami is a child. She is driven by delusion and fear and has no place in the duels. That Touga offers her up to them was, in my opinion an unforgivable crime.

Up to this point, it would be natural to think that Touga is the master manipulator here. He seems, to Utena at least, to be in control. It’s only at the end of the arc that we and he see that he wasn’t in control at all.

The last two episodes were as amazing as I remembered them to be.

In episode 11, Utena find herself stripped of her confidence, her purpose, her very self by Touga, who uses his good looks, his masculinity and his position to turn her into a “normal” girl, who needs a prince to rescue her.

And most important IMHO, is that in response to losing the duel Utena says simply, “Please don’t take Anthy away from me.” She would give herself up…but not Anthy.

In episode 12, Wakaba slaps some sense into her, by making her realize that “normal” is not normal for Utena. Utena challenges Touga to a rematch to regain herself – the self that wants to be a Prince, not be rescued by one. She defeats Touga without help from Dios or an enchanted sword – she defeats him with nothing but her determination and will. To awesome music. To regain Anthy. NOT to regain the Rose Bride, but to get Anthy back.

Most importantly, at that moment, Anthy is *surprised.* That alone is worth watching the final episodes for.

When the episode (and the first arc) ended, I began spontaneously applauding. Again. As I have every time I have watched this series.

It’s gonna be a long, long, few weeks before the next set arrives!

Thanks again Nozomi/RightStuf for making it possible to watch this remastered version.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 10
Character – 9
Yuri – 4
Service – 1

Overall – 9

The music video for “Revolution Rondo” blew my mind more than anything else in Utena ever has. It was filmed in New York City, which was just…entirely unexpected.

Here’s an interesting aside. On Twitter today I mentioned that what I would love to see is a ridiculously high budget live action version of the moment Utena draws the sword from Anthy. Just that scene. At which, a very good friend of mine from way back mentioned that there is a rumor of a pitch in Hollywood for an Utena movie…and that Variety is supposed to be doing an article about it next month. I guess we’ll see if that article ever happens…. Thanks for the heads up, Rob!

Now it is your turn – what are some of your thoughts on this arc?





Hourou Musuko/ Wandering Son Anime (English)

June 22nd, 2011

Many of you have, over the last few years, written in to tell me about Shimura Takako’s series Hourou Musuko, Wandering Son, to ask me when I would review it, to remind me to add it to the News Reports.

As many of you have noticed, I have not reviewed it as of yet. The reason for this is relatively simple – while Hourou Musuko is undoubtedly a masterpiece, it’s not really Yuri.

But, it *is* a masterpiece and a masterpiece dealing with gender transitioning, which is something that manga and anime typically play for laughs at best, rather than handling it with any seriousness or sensitivity. So, I guess it’s time to review this series, already. ^_^

My problem now is – I don’t know what to really say about it, other than it is one of the very finest, most beautiful anime series I have ever watched.

Hourou Musuko is not the first time Shimura has dealt with gender in a story. Her Boku ha Onna no Ko was the first time I ever encountered her work. I was not overwhelmed by any of the stories in that collection – certainly nothing in it impressed me the way Aoi Hana did. But Hourou Musuko is something amazing, even compared to that.

Somewhere after Boku ha Onna no Ko ( the cover of which has a cameo as a poster in the Hourou Musuko anime,) Shimura reached deep into herself and found a real story – a touching story – a painful and beautiful story – about two young people grappling with the fact that they are born into the wrong bodies. Hourou Musuko is emotionally gripping in a way that very, very few anime ever can hope to be. Shu-chan, the mtf heroine and Yoshino, the ftm hero, are people I would gladly spend more time with.

Art, music, voice acting was all sublime. I can say nothing but “wow” about it.

In this short anime, there were two scenes that really stood out to me – the scene where Yoshino gives Shu-chan her name and said that she’d take his, which was so touching I honestly couldn’t speak for an hour afterwards. And the scene during the school festival, when the kids all go into another class’s horror house, just to be able to gain catharsis by screaming.

As for Yuri. Well, the anime begins with the 33rd chapter of the story, as Shu-chan begins middle school, so I believe we skipped one potential Yuri relationship. I will, when the manga touches upon it, mention it. In the anime, however, I’d like to talk about Yoshino and Saori. They don’t really have a relationship, but by the end of the anime, there is some very tentative movement in that direction, IMHO. Of course, as Yoshino is a boy, temporarily in a girl’s body, this would not be a lesbian relationship, even if it were to exist. As Saori had some feelings for Shin-chan, who also feels he has been given the wrong body, it seems to me that any relationship that developed between Saori and Yoshino could legitimately be labeled Queer. Shu-chan has a relationship with a girl that, as Niki points out in the comments, isn’t being perceived as lesbian yet, but is clearly another Queer relationship.

Because this series is a masterpiece, it did terribly in the TV ratings for that slot. This cannot really be a surprise, precisely because everything really is on a standard curve of deviation. That means that the good will be appreciated by less people than the average – and the stunningly excellent will only ever be appreciated by a few. Nonetheless, this anime was stunningly excellent and, as I contemplate reading the manga, for the first time, I find myself frightened by it a bit. It might just be too good. I have always managed my expectations of manga and anime, and don’t want to see my ability to find balance compromised. On the other hand, I don’t want to be disappointed, either. So, I find myself in the position of convincing myself to not expect too much, but also not to let Shimura’s fully blossomed genius ruin anything else for me.

By the time I finish the manga, I fear that all that will be left for me to read and enjoy will be Aoi Hana and GUNJO.

Anyway…if you haven’t watch the anime yet, do. It’s a masterpiece.

And then buy the manga, which is being put out by Fantagraphics. Don’t forget to buy an extra copy for your library – they *need* this book.

Ratings:

Art – 9
Story – 9
Characters – 9
Yuri – 0
Service – 0

Overall – 9

This, more than any series I have ever reviewed here is a LGBTQ masterwork. In the future that I want to  inhabit, it will be considered a classic.





Revolutionary Girl Utena Anime Box, Volume 1 set Dub Review by Eric P

June 10th, 2011

Revolutionary Girl Utena: Student Council Saga Limited Edition SetOnce again a Prince steps in to give me a night off! As you may know,  I don’t listen to anime dub tracks. ( And in the case of Revolutionary Girl Utena, with Mitsuishi Kotono, Kawakami Tomoko and Hisakawa Aya in the Japanese voice cast, there is nothing that can convince me to listen to it, sorry.) Luckily, Okazu Superhero and long-time Friend and Supporter of Yuricon, Eric P has gallantly kneeled before us and offered his services as a dub reviewer! Thank you so much Eric!  The floor is all yours…

Before we get started, and so everyone knows, this is a review of the English dub by itself, and not as it is compared to the original Japanese acting (which I have watched). Alright, now let’s get started:

After getting the whole Utena Central Park Media set through a special mailing order for just $100 back in the day, I didn’t know what to expect diving into this series. I watched the first episode subbed for about seven minutes or so, before I decided to start all over and switch to dub. It was not because I disliked the Japanese voice acting. Everything about Utena within those seven minutes—its opening theme song, its animation, artwork, tone, atmosphere, characters—charmed and enchanted me from the get-go. The problem was I felt reading the subtitles distracted me a little too much from taking in the full experience. So the English version was what I watched first, and at the time it worked for me—the mostly low-key acting fitted the story’s weird, surreal tone.

With RightStuf’s re-release I watch the dub again for nostalgia (and for this review), and by now I can acknowledge its flaws. It is a mixed bag, with few weak links sprinkled throughout that gives it a feeling of flucating. It hardly mattered for me the first time since I was so invested in the story and the magic. But for any viewer with high expectations, it could be those weak links that would turn them off and make even the stronger performances sound less strong. The best (worst?) example would be the English voice for Nanami. When talking plainly, she sounds like a spoiled rich girl probably would, but after a short while she comes across too flat in too many moments.

Thankfully the two lead characters, Utena and Anthy, get well-suited English voices. Rachael Lillis as Utena is sufficiently spot-on, and Anthy’s voice by Sharon Becker has a kind of charm to it for me; I always liked how she said “Miss Utena.” There are still points where it seems like the ADR director and the actors were looking at the imagery, interpreting it as vaguely low-key, and were directed accordingly. Unfortunately that does not always work. In the scene where Anthy calls out to Utena during her duel with Miki, the restrained tone just doesn’t fit well at all. Speaking of Miki, while he is not acted badly, his voice still an example of one of those dub voices sounding far older than he’s supposed to be (although , in my opinion, all the characters look like they are in their early 20’s, even though they’re supposed to be 13-15). Fortunately for some, fan-favorite Jury receives a cool-sounding voice. Saionji, the wife-beating creep, sounds suitably creepy, and the shadow-girls sound as mysterious and strange as they come across in the animation. But, without a doubt, the single strongest performance is Toga as voiced by Crispin Freeman, the future veteran of many stellar roles, among them including Alucard from Hellsing and Kyon from Haruhi Suzumiya.

In the end, the dub feels dated, which some may either find oddly charming or off-putting. But, no matter what, the series itself remains as multi-layered and wonderful as it always has been.

It was actually kind of hard determining the final ratings, so here goes…

Ratings:

Overall –  I dance between 6 and 7 on this, so I’ll give it a 6.5

Erica here: Thanks again Eric! Much obliged.





Revolutionary Girl Utena Anime Box Set – Volume 1 Disk 2 (English)

June 9th, 2011

Revolutionary Girl Utena: Student Council Saga Limited Edition SetOne of the most amazing things about Revolutionary Girl Utena is that the heavy-handed symbolism, which was left without specific meaning quite on purpose, can effectively mean anything you want it to mean. As a result, whether you say the series is about adolescence and maturity, or delusion and reality, or hope and despair, or kangaroos and elephants, you are quite correct.

Disk 2 is about all those things. It’s also about one huge whopper of a lie.

This disk begins with the end of Miki’s arc, in which we learn that Kozue’s perspective on Miki’s childhood trauma is quite different – this will remain the case throughout the series. Kozue’s wounds are never Miki’s. And, for the first time, we are able to see the lie in effect…and just how much somebody else’s problem it is for everyone in the series.

This arc is followed by an episode that, based on a short conversation on Twitter, seems to have made quite an impact on fans. As I put it to my wife, in a series full of weirdness, Nanami episodes are profoundly weird. In episodes that include aggressive elephants, Touga boxing a kangaroo and exploding curry and personality switching, the thing that *I* noticed the most was that Miki and Utena have the closest thing to a “normal” conversation that we’ve seen so far in the series, as they discuss Nanami…and even then it’s not all that normal.

And then we move on to Juri. Beautiful, athletic, smart Juri. Juri the jaguar, in whose presence even the teachers quake. Juri, voiced magnificently by Mitsuishi Kotono and who was for many, the first lesbian Yuri character they ever saw in anime. Her episode still wrang me dry. It hurt to watch her so angry – eternally so, as we never really know what will become of her. Hurt, betrayed, too smart to not know what the real problem is. Too angry to not lash out at Utena who does not yet understand that kind of pain. She will, but not yet.

As I watched this disk I realized that the entire series up to this point is predicated upon a single lie. There will be more lies later, but right now – there is one. Saionji and Miki believe – or hope – that it is true. Juri presumes it is a lie, but then Utena defeats her and she will have to lie to herself to continue to presume it is a lie. Touga…well, Touga will come later.

The lie is simple and has already been repeated so many times that probably you don’t think of it as a lie by the second disk.

The lie is…

…that whomever is engaged to the Rose Bride can command her utterly.

Think for a second. When has Anthy ever done *anything* Utena wants her to? She can’t even get Anthy to stop calling her “Utena-sama.” At this point, Anthy isn’t even hiding herself in the lie, because no one around her can see the lie even exists. They all believe or pretend to believe that it is a truth. Anthy simply does whatever best suits the situation to bring about the outcome desired by the End of the World.

Utena’s one real wish for Anthy won’t be expressed for some time to come and it won’t be realized for even longer – so, then, what *does* being engaged to the Rose Bride mean? To find that out, we must keep watching.

I am reminded that Revolutionary Girl Utena did many anime-viewers a harm by being so absurd, so surreal and so amazing – practically Dada-esque in its complex simplicity – that nothing was able to come close for years to some. Maybe, nothing has really come close yet.

True story – I was watching the Utena movie for the first time with a 15 year old who knew nothing of the story. We had rented it from a Japanese video rental store. It was raw. We watched it transfixed and, when the roses began to overflow the dueling ground she turned to me with huge eyes and asked, “This is what anime is all about, isn’t it?” “Yes,” I said. “This is what it is all about.”

Ratings:

Art – 9
Characters – 10
Story – 10
Music – 10
Yuri – 8
Service – 3
Voice acting – 10

Overall – 10

Revolutionary Girl Utena – *this* is what it’s all about.





K-ON! Anime, Volume 1 Blu-ray (English) Guest Review by Marc M

May 31st, 2011

K-On! Vol. 1 [Blu-ray]You may have noticed recently, I’m soliciting more Guest Reviews. There is one very serious reason why – I love Guest Reviews. ^_^ I’m not being facetious, I really do love having the pleasure of reading your thoughts, and deciding for myself whether I agree with you. As I always say, Okazu readers are really smart, interesting people. I may not agree with you – but I love hearing what you have to say. ^_^

In the case of blockbuster series K-ON!, you may remember that I heard rumors about the Blu-ray…and I don’t watch dubs, so returning Guest Reviewer Marc M. is here to cover these two very important issues. But before I do, I just want to tell you, in case you wondered, common wisdom says that Yui is playing a Cherry Sunburst Epiphone Les Paul Special 100 and, because otaku are easily influenced, TBS actually sells a Hirasawa Yui model.

For those of you who missed it, here is my review of the regular DVD (and subtitles, rather than dub.) 

And now, I will turn it over to Marc!

*** 

Many people have been slamming the Blu-ray version of K-on!, so I’m here today to see if it’s as bad as some make it sound.

The story is about Yui Hirasawa (Aki Toyosaki/Stephanie Sheh) a new high school student who ends up joining the light music club because she thinks it plays easy music. There she meets Ritsu Tainaka (Satomi Satō/Cassandra Lee), Mio Akiyama (Yōko Hikasa/Cristina Valenzuela), and Tsumugi Kotobuki (Minako Kotobuki/Shelby Lindley). They become fast friends, and Yui becomes the guitarist in the band the other girls have put together. The episodes are slice-of-life stories about their daily lives and adventures (such as helping Yui buy a guitar). It’s fun, light storytelling. So if you like that sort of thing, this anime is for you.

But I’m here to specifically look at the Blu-ray and to review the English dubbed version.So let’s get down to it.

The Good:

The visual: I’m a big visual kind of guy. For me, how the picture looks is a big part of whether or not I’m going to enjoy an anime. The quality of the picture on the Blu-ray is superb. It is crisp and clear and shows off the artists’ work. You can see the work that went into designing the landscapes, backgrounds, and buildings. The characters stand out beautifully. I’ve been spoiled by HD, and this anime didn’t disappoint me.

The voice acting: Stephanie Sheh, Cassandra Lee, and Laura Bailey (who play Yui, Ritsu, and Yui’s childhood friend Nodoka Manabe respectively) are well chosen for their characters. Each actress brings their own take on their characters that aren’t exactly like their Japanese counterparts, but still feel like the right fit. You can hear Yui’s ditzyness, Ritsu’s rashness, and Nodoka’s competence. I usually like listening to the original Japanese, but they won me over with their acting.

The Sad (no, that’s not a typo):

The sound: The biggest complaint from the detractors is that the sound quality is poor. Well, it’s not. It’s just not great, and that’s almost worse. Blu-ray technology is supposed to enable companies to add to the quality of their work. There is great potential with Blu-ray technology, and to not use it to that full potential is a waste. With this anime, Bandai wasted that potential. The sound is in plain old 2.0 Dolby stereo. That means you can hear everything: the dialogue is understandable and the background music never overpowers the dialogue (believe me, it’s happened in other DVDs I’ve had). Unfortunately, you’re never immersed in the sound. When you’re immersed in the sound you get more out of the experience of watching an anime. But Bandai decided it wasn’t worth using 5.1 or 7.1 surround. And that’s just sad.

The Voice Acting :Wait, you’re saying to yourself, didn’t he just put voice acting in the good category? You’re right, but there are some problems with the voice acting as well. Cristina Valenzuela and Shelby Lindley (who play Mio and Mugi respectively) both both play their characters as softspoken and shy, which is how they are supposed to be portrayed. However, unlike in the Japanese track where Mugi and Mio are very distinctive, here the two actresses sounded too much alike. At times during the show, if I couldn’t actually see whose mouth was moving when they spoke, I couldn’t always tell which of the two was talking. That was a little distracting.

Only 4 episodes: That’s right, only four. Blu-ray can hold large amounts of data, but they only put 4 of the 12 episodes on this disk. That’s like binding a 500-page book, but only having writing on 200 of the pages and leaving the last 300 pages blank. What was the point? Bandai pays a lot of money for the Blu-ray technology and then does nothing with it that they can’t do with regular DVDs. I don’t get it.

The Ugly:

The extras: Really, I don’t understand some companies. There’s all this space to put stuff on the Blu-ray and they give us one lousy interview with Stephanie Sheh. Don’t get me wrong; I love interviews with the voice actors (Japanese or English), but why only one? Why not all four of the main actresses? It’s not like you couldn’t squeeze them on there. In this day and age, it just feels miserly to not add a few more extras on Blu-ray. It feels like Bandai is trying to milk as much money out of this as possible. And that’s just ugly.

So on to the scores.

The anime: A great big 9. I love this anime. It’s fun, the characters are interesting, and the stories are light and amusing. A terrific anime about friends going through high school.

The Blu-ray: Now things get a little complicated. If you’re big on visual quality, 8.5. If you’re big on sound quality, 7.5 (maybe 7), and if you’re big on all the extra potential, 6.

That averages out roughly to 7 for the Blu-ray as a whole.

But that won’t stop me from buying the Blu-ray of volume 2. Like I said, I’m more of a visual guy.

***

Erica here: Thanks, Marc, for clearing up the issues. It sounds like Bandai doesn’t quite get the point of high-quality disk recording yet. Sort of like burning a scratched LP recording onto a CD. Okay if your requirement is archiving a dying technology….totally uncool for new music.