Archive for the English Anime Category


My HiME Anime, Volume 3

May 4th, 2007

Thanks awfully to Ted for his sponsorship of today’s review! As always, it is greatly appreciated!

So there I was, all ready to wallow in what I felt was a well-deserved bout of Schadenfreude, so I popped Mai HiME, Volume 3 into the player. Well, pfft on me, because this volume was primarily fluff with an emphasis on comedy. Oh, sure, there was a little bit of plot and character development…and the kernel of what will later become a bigger crisis of conscience for Mikoto. But mostly it’s just stupid. ^_^;

The first episode is a a suspect “everyone is at the beach” episode. Mai is lifeguarding as one of her many jobs, when every single other character in the series just happens to drop by. This episode is notable for Shizuru’s harem who compete to put lotion on “Shizuru-oneesama.” Natsuki becomes the butt (pun intended) of yet another joke for basically no reason except that no one slaps writers when they add stuff like that in. We really need to retrain them a bit.

This was followed by an Iron Chef parody with more than its fair share of “girl trips and knocks cake over” gags. In fact, I think the episode used up every anime ever’s share of that particular joke. For ever. The only genuinely funny thing about the episode were the cakes at the end. They were just…funny. The “funny” Orphen eating the cakes…not so much. The punchline is that it is Mai’s birthday. The surprise party waiting for her at the end of the day keeps the episode from having to end wallowly and maudlin.

The last two episodes revolve around several things: there appears to be a vampire attacking girls on campus, (or perhaps a pervert – in any case, the girls are found stripped, with holes in their neck) and Miyu’s relationship with Alyssa (is it bad of my to like her better as a bird?) Haruka mobilizes the student council to try to catch the vampire and the HiMe mobilize themselves to fight the Orphen it clearly is. Natuski helpfully gives us incomplete information about the “1st District” which is also involved, and the “1st District” folks helpfully ramble on about a new Golden Age that will, of course, require a massive downsizing effort in the number of people on the planet. This never makes any sense to me anyway, but when Miyu tells us that the Searss Foundation already runs the planet, my thought was, “well what the hell do they want then – they’ve already got the world.” I’m sure the Golden Age will be ever so much better/different than what we have now. @_@

The volume climaxes with a big throwdown between Miyu, whose name is really a silly acronym that rivals HiME for “huh?” points and Mikoto, Natsuki and Mai. This is what, episode 12? And there’s 26 in the series. So…you can guess that it’s a draw.

Notable in this last episode is Yukino’s discussion of “like” with a fairly clueless Mikoto. Yukino realizes that her “like” of Haruka is in fact the kind *we* like, while Mikoto will now begin to obsess about her own understanding of “like” for the rest of the series.

Oh, and we get another HiME. She might have been more of a surprise, except that she was getting an awful lot of screentime all of a sudden.

The DVD extras were marginally interesting. They are basically, as Serge describes most ero-games, “Powerpoint” presentations. And the voiceovers frequently have nothing to do with the underwear or bathing suit shots on the screen. But Youko-sensei’s verbalization of our opinions of Midori (she’s cracked, but kind of fun) and Yukino’s discussion of what Haruka means to her were very decent.

Ratings:

Art – 5
Character – 7
Story – 6
Yuri – 3
Service – 6

Overall – 7

I know it’s not fair, but the more I watch of Mai HiME, the more I really like Mai Otome. Yukariko is so much better as a teacher than a nun.





Doki Doki School Hours Anime, Volume 1

April 30th, 2007

First things first – today’s review was brought to you by the generosity of Audrey! Much gratitude to her not only for the DVD, but for any inconvenience it caused her getting it to me. Thank you thank you. :-)

Doki Doki School Hours, Volume 1 (Sensei no Ojikan) introduces us to the members of Class 2-A of Okitsu High School, a generic Japanese High School. As we meet the main players, we are also introduced to their teacher Suzuki Mika, a 27-year old who is baby-faced, about 4’10” and, most importantly, pretty childish. Mika-sensei is joined by the following students with their respective obsessions and quirks:

Iinchou – the class representative seems pretty normal, until you hit her obsession with boy-band member “Koro-chan.”

Tominaga – rich, smart girl with a sharp tongue. She seems pretty normal to me…

Kobayashi – not so smart girl, obsessed with money, brand goods and losing weight (a bit of the Tomo from Azumanga Daioh about her in character design and function.)

Kitagawa – tall, smart, pretty lesbian (how ’bout that…) with a self-proclaimed preference for petite, childish women. She likes girls in general, but Mika-sensei is exactly her type. The translation later says that she “likes little girls” but that’s sort of wrong sounding, since she likes “little” in the sense of small or short, not young.

Nakamura, called “Oyaji” – he’s a nice normal guy, who just happens to look, sound and act just like an old guy.

Kudo – as queer for boys as Kitagawa is for girls, Kudo’s also smart and attractive. Sadly he’s in love with…

Suetake – the good-natured, but boneheaded athlete. He’s clueless about mostly everything, especially Kudo’s feelings.

Seki – attractive, intelligent, completely, utterly self-absorbed, with a tendency to cross-dress.

Watabe – hardcore otaku, draws doujinshi. Constantly.

The plot basically runs through the school calendar year, covering all the things that typically happen in a Japanese school, with gags focused around the personalities of the characters.

Which brings me to the one episode that just makes me grit my teeth – the physical examination episode. Despite the fact that it had some genuinely funny moments, and Kitagawa gets to show that she *actually* likes girls in general and is not just gay for Mika-sensei, I just can’t stand the 15+ minutes of Kobayashi whining about how fat she is and the whole breast size thing. I can’t stop wondering why no one ever a) watches the guys obsess over their body images and 2) why no one ever suggests that guys’ penises be measured. Because surely that’s as relevant to their health as breast size is to the girls’. And, btw, 50kg…not fat. At 5’2″ (which is average height for Japanese teen girls, actually a little short these days), not even pudgy. That’s just barely flesh on the bones, so, please, dear Japanese schoolgirls and everyone who writes/draws them everywhere, shut UP already about the weight thing. Gawd.

The personality quirk gags are just that; Mika-sensei is short, she looks and acts like a child, Iinchou is obsessed with Koro-chan, Watabe obsesses about his doujinshi, Kudo obssesses about Suetake, etc, etc, nothing ever changes and it’s all in good fun. This is broad comedy, so the farce factor works. You couldn’t do something serious with these characters and keep them intact, but this kind of light, “around the year with class 2-A” is just fine.

The DVD subtitles are clearly dubtitles – there are a number of times where words or concepts were changed, usually for no real reason that I can see. Watabe’s doujinshi/manga gags are the ones that take the biggest hit. The word “doujinshi” is replaced by “manga” and “Comiket” is replaced by something generic like “event”. When he absent-mindedly draws a page of doujinshi on the back of an exam sheet, Mika-sensei’s warning to not put on the screentone is changed to “Don’t take the carbon out” which I found to be a hysterical choice of change simply because how many young people today would have the VAGUEST clue what that meant? Sure, I remember carbon paper. Obviously the translators and editors do too. What’s the chance that some 15-25 year old anime enthusiast will? Slim? None? They’re more likely to know “screentone” than “carbon paper.” Which takes me back to my “who are you translating for, anyway?” question.

Dear anime distro companies – THINK harder about your audience. Aside from the stuff that’s on TV, WHO do you think watches a direct-to-DVD release of a little known comedy anime? *Not* folks off the streets in Blockbuster. Please translate for us, not for Ma and Pa Kettle, please?

Let’s get back to Watabe for a second. In a scene where they are discussing girl’s swimsuits, Oyaji and Watabe back the school suits as being fine. Watabe goes on to say that bikinis and high-cuts don’t have that “moe” factor. Moe remains untranslated. The rest of the class stares at him like he has six heads – Suetake even goes so far to say, “is that Japanese?” which I thought was very funny. Living as I do in otaku-world it’s nice to be reminded that “normal” people in Japan do not use that word or, probably, many (most!) of the words we’re familiar with. :-)

Honorifics – Mika-sensei and Miyamoto-sensei get their titles, and SYNYAP’s “Koro-chan” gets his, and pretty much everyone else has none. As most of them refer to each other casually by family name, it’s no harm, no foul.

Packaging – well, you get a cover picture on the DVD, it isn’t plain white. :-)

Ratings –

Art – 5, but has its own charm
Story – 6
Characters – 6
Yuri – 6
Service – 3

Overall – 7

Gee, the lesbian character is smarter, more attractive and cooler than everyone else around her. How (not at all) unusual! ^_^





Yuri Anime: Kannazuki no Miko, Volume 3

April 24th, 2007

All the things I liked about Kannazuki no Miko, Volume 3 are things that no one else cares about…and ditto the things that I don’t like. ^_^

But before I start on any of these, let me begin by thanking Daniel for his sponsorship of today’s review! Yay, Daniel! Thank you kindly. ^_^

There is basically nothing I can say about Kannazuki no Miko that will change anyone’s opinion – and no matter how many people tell me that it’s a great series, it will never really change my opinion, so I guess I’ll just comment randomly. ^_^

Volume 3 covers everything that happens after Chikane embraces the evil of Orochi, Souma determines that he will fight to his death to protect Himeko and Himeko decides that whatever happens, she has to know the truth about Chikane, and why she has made the choices that she has.

The scene that is supposed to give us insight into the Orochi’s obsessions is very weak. The glimpse into their issues in the Drama CD was significantly better. I still believe that a more detailed look at these would have been interesting. “Betrayed by…” we are told, each Orochi with a supposed cause for them turning to the dark side. And yet, all of the things that made sense (like war) happen all the time. If that was enough, there’d be way more than 8 Orochi wandering around. And how, I wonder, was Miyako “betrayed by God”??

In contrast, Chikane’s obsession is explored in great detail. And I did like the way she, under cover of arrogant competence, destroys the other Orochi. That was cool – too bad nothing stays dead long in anime. Evil Chikane has poise that good Chikane completely lacks.

I will never be convinced of the logic of Chikane’s plot to make Himeko kill her. It really doesn’t make any sense, but what do I know – I’m only a writer, editor and publisher.  I remain unrepentant.

There is no doubt that the end is a decidedly Yuri ending. What I’m not convinced of is that the girl gets the girl. We see the two of them reincarnated (as Chikane predicted) in our world, far from the magic land of Mahoraba, but if what we’ve seen is a repeating cycle, there’s no reason to think that it won’t just happen again.

The thing I liked the absolute best has to be the idea that the classical gods of Japan are actually giant robots. There’s something so karmic and cosmic and…satisfying…about that. At any rate, it *would* explain the ubiquity, wouldn’t it? ^_^

Oh, and here’s a final bit of curmudgeonliness:

Himeko and Chikane’s final confessions of love are pretty sweet. Good thing Chikane was dying from a stomach wound and had so much time for them to talk and resolve their issues, huh?

It was also a good thing that Souma’s eternal curse turned out to be a latex suit that his deceased brother was able to cut him out of with a single cut. That was kind of a relief.

This DVD is a pretty nice package, with spiffy cover a mini-pencil board of hawt yuri secks by the manga artist and a inside cover of same. 4 episodes and the “extras” of non-credit OP/EP and Geneon advertising. (It is not unreasonable to think of a company’s advertising as NOT being an extra.)

Ratings:

Art – 8
Characters – 7
Story – 7
Yuri – 9
Service – 7 (apparently the most sexy thing about underage cat girl nurses is their butt sticking up. I had no idea.)

Overall – 7

It’s really not bad. I enjoyed the whole series – more this time than the first time, probably. Chikane and Himeko are a cute couple, when they finally get there. But I will go to the grave saying that it simply makes no sense. ^_^





Doki Doki School Hours Anime, Volume 2

April 21st, 2007

Today’s review was, once again, brought to you by Ted. Thanks Ted!

(I am starting with Volume 2 because while someone kindly purchased Volume 1 for me from my Wish List, it has not yet arrived. I will be sure to review it when it does come, promise!)

So, Doki Doki School Hours, Volume 2, aka Sensei no Ojikan, is the story of a class in high school taught by Mika-sensei, who looks to be about 10, although she is actually 27. The characters in the class are a charming bunch of running gags, and the series is mostly one set piece after another where those gags can play off one another.

This volume starts after summer vacation, as we compare skin tones and talk about “what we did on our summer vacation.” One of the guys, who looks, dresses and talks like an old guy, so they call him “Oyaji” is assumed to have gotten a part time job in construction. Everyone is so convinced of this “fact” that no one even asks him what he did. So, he decides not to tell them that he was in Hawaii on vacation.

That’s about the tenor of the jokes here – mild, cute, but not laugh-out-loud hysterical. A Ziggy sort of anime.

For all that it is pretty mild, Doki Doki is also surprisingly gay. One of the boys, Kudo, has an open crush on another, Suetake – which everyone but Suetake knows about. Probably the best bit of this volume is when Kudo is chosen to play Snow White and Suetake the Prince in their class production of Snow White for the school festival. As the two boys practice their lines, the windows are crowded with girls oohing and ahhing at this BL team. A furiously blushing Kobayashi comments to a furiously blushing Mika-sensei that they should probably let them stay in their school uniforms, as the audience seems to like it better that way. lol

Another guy in class, Seki, is a cross-dresser. He’s not gay, he just thinks he looks even more beautiful than usual in women’s clothing. He *is* a narcissist.

And for the Yuri team, there’s Kitagawa Rio, the tall, attractive, smart blonde who has a loli complex focusing solely on Mika-sensei, and who is a sadist. Her greatest joy is teasing Mika-sensei in any number of ways. I don’t doubt that she would take advantage of Mika-sensei, if she could.

Notably, there’s some name-brand voice actors in this cast, including a load of “6 degrees of yuri” players. As a result, the voice acting is a lot better than what you’d expect for an anime of this caliber. It definitely helps the gags work.

Ratings:

Art – 5, but not meant to be “good”
Story – 6
Characters – 6
Yuri – 4
Service – 3

Overall – 6

I can’t really call this a “Yuri” anime, because it’s not. It is a comedy anime with some Yuri for laughs. Another fun detox after a hard day type anime. Don’t expect to snort soda out your nose, but it’s good fun.





Yuri Anime: Best Student Council, Volume 1

April 18th, 2007

The first of *many* thanks to Ted for sponsoring today’s review! Give him a round of applause, will you? /round of applause/ Thank you kindly, sir.

As a counter to a day of heavy-duty thinking and talking about work-related issues, Best Student Council, aka Gokujou Seitokai, Volume 1 is a perfect way to unwind.

Volume 1 follows the adventures of Rando Rino, a slightly less average than most girl, as she leaves behind her life after her mother dies, and moves – with the assistance of a mysterious penfriend – to the exclusive Miyagami Gakuen. With no money and no where to live, Rino is at a loss, until she runs for the position of class representative and, in a bizarre upset, wins. Now she has room and board for free.

Because of a successful attack on an arsonist by the puppet Rino wears on her arm, Pucchan, Rino is further inducted into the Gokujou Seitokai, the supreme student council, which runs the school.

And *then* wackiness ensues. This includes giant nuclear cannons, a curry battle, a mysterious puppet disemembering and most of all, payapaya.

The supreme leader of the Supreme Council, the supremely admired Jinguji Kanade, seems to have taken a very keen interest in the newcomer. So keen, in fact, that when she’s spotted leaving Rino’s room one morning, rumors fly about the two of them doing “payapaya.” This meaningless word is given a very ripe meaning by sheer force of repetition. ^_^ The relationship isn’t Yuri, sadly, but the rumors sure are.  Assualt Squad member Rein even describes “payapaya” as “Yuri,” which the guys at ADV inelegantly translated as “girl on girl.” Thanks ADV, for rendering the genre I live and love into a porn term.

After Rino gets settled, she is assigned to patrol with Assualt Squad member Izumi Kaori who, despite initial over-reactions to and continued rivalry with Rino, turns out to be a competent, intelligent and honorable character. As we learn a little bit about Kaori’s difficult past, we also get the first of many clues to Kanade’s true abilities, as well. And, we also get a honest reflection by Kaori about her feelings of admiration (and possibly more) for Kanade-sama.

Lastly, based on nothing but their weird interaction and the fact that I have an overactive imagination, I still maintain that Vice President and Assault Squad leader Nanaho and Vice President and Covert Squad leader Kuon have a thing going on. ^_^

Good things about the DVD: 5 episodes, Pucchan stickers as an extra.

Bad things – “girl on girl” – feh, Pucchan stickers as an extra.

Weird thing – Ayumu gets the honorific “Ayu-chan.” All other honorifics are cut. Huh?

Ratings:

Art – 6 Silly, but not meant to be more
Story – 6 Goofy, yet charming
Characters – 7 – ditto
Yuri – 4 – You mean “girl on girl” don’t you? Grrr.
Service – 2 The cover seems to be the worst offender

Overall – 7

Entertaining, not taxing, with surprising moments of hysterical. Plus, Seina. She’s a great character, especially as no one even remembers her. ^_^