Archive for the English Anime Category


Yuri Anime: Madlax DVD Volume 4

December 1st, 2005

Every time I watch the fourth DVD of Madlax, I think, “This is probably the best work Bee Train will ever do.”

The story doesn’t yet make sense (and doesn’t ever make *complete* sense, but that’s okay) and the characters aren’t resolved (nor do they ever fully resolve) or even developed, but the sense of hanging tension and anticipation is what I think they are trying to do – the later development and resolution of characters and plot is almost anticlimactic. The questions are the point, not the answers. But, where in Noir the questions never get anything like real answers, in Madlax they do – even if they are a bit fantastic. Which is why I say that this volume is pretty much the pinnacle of Bee Train’s work, as I understand it.

What *does* happen in this volume? Well, the link between Margaret and Madlax is drummed into our head in three refrains: hot drinks; red shoes; pasta.

Madlax stares into the eye of Enfant and find her brain leaking out her ears from the mystical words of the book Firstari. Twice. And twice Vanessa saves her sorry possessed ass.

Vanessa and Madlax get all touchy-feely.

Carlossur Dawn realizes that he’s going to have to choose soon, between the truth and his job.

Vanessa gets to play the prince to Madlax’s lost princess, but is way glad when Madlax takes the role back.

Margaret doesn’t have enough brains left to be affected by her own book, Secondary.

Eleanor is still a really strange maid. ^_^

Rimelda is on the cusp of realizing that her life is meaningless without Madlax in it.

Vanessa and Madlax visit the place where it all began, and Margaret knows it, somehow.

Naharu walks around looking mysterious and cool, but adds nothing appreciably to plot or character.

Did I mention Vanessa and Madlax snuggling?

The music in this particular set of episodes is pretty much the same three songs you keep hearing over and over, but at this point they become symbolic, as well as decorative. In fact, Madlax’s own theme becomes so crucial to the plot, Japanese fans apparently joked that the word “Yamaani” which is the repeated opening word of her song, gave Madlax superhuman powers. ^_^

Sometimes a story takes too long to get to the point. To be honest, I don’t really care if there ever is a point in this anime – it’s a fun ride, full of gunfire and other people’s misery and deeply mystical, occult symbolism that means nothing to me. ^_^

My only complaints? Friday Monday is STILL the worst name EVER for a bad guy…and…Firstari? Oh, come *on*! Primary. The word is P-r-i-m-a-ry.

When they use Thirdari, I just start to cry.

There’s no overt Yuri. Vanessa and Madlax snuggle in a comfy, friendly way, but I’m not opposed to the idea that it went further somewhere along the line. Nonetheless, I hold in my heart Madlax x Rimelda and Vanessa x Eleanor.

Ratings:

Art – 7
Story – 8
Characters – 7
Music – 8
Yuri – 6

Overall – 7.5

A strong action story, with a little light magic thrown in.





Yuri Anime: Stellvia. Volume 5

September 16th, 2005

The reason this review took so long to get to was simply that I had a really hard time finding this volume! Amazon had it on backorder and at Otakon, not a single vendor had a copy by the time I got to go shopping. It was really irksome. (Amusingly, at the Geneon booth, the sales guy tried to sell me Vol.6, but I kept saying I wouldn’t get it until after I had Volume 5. He was like, “But you’ll need it eventually.” ^_^)

Let’s get right to it, shall we? This volume has a lot of good things, but I’m about to start with the bad.

The art. Where do noses go when they aren’t on faces? Is there a graveyard of lost anime noses? The art is *so* inconsistant in this volume. The older characters are fairly treated, but the main characters…ecch. It definitely looks like we had more than one group doing the art – and one of them sucked. Specifically the group handling Shima and Arisa.

There’s a scene in the second episode (which otherwise has better art than the first) on the volume where the girls are teasing Shima about Kouta. Shima and Arisa are all over the room, while the background characters are all stock still for nearly the entire scene, with fixed faces. Obviously, they didn’t bother animating anyone who wasn’t absolutely necessary. And it looks it. Awful, awful, awful.

The other major bad thing is Kouta. He’s heading into major idiot savant mode and from this point on, I really don’t like him. He’s so…removed…about people, and about Shima in particular. So while she’s growing, and trying harder and harder to reach him, he’s just being a nothing. But he’s a main character, so we have to watch him being a nothing all the freakin’ time! It’s downright distressing.

But that’s about it for really, really bad.

On the good side, all the little relationships are starting to mature – there’s a fair amount of time given over to taciturn Akira and runty Jojo. The volume starts them off on a rough foot, but they really get to spend some quality time onscreen. And along the way, they have a couple of short, but quite meaningful and interesting, scenes. With really good dialogue and everything.

There are some moments in this volume that approach excellent – particularly the political fragmenting of the humans involved in the different aspects of this “war.” People who feel its necessary vs people who feel its a plot by the military, vs people who think its a hoax, vs people who think war would be fun. With our current situation here in the US, it reads as quite realistic.

The most well-executed scene is towards the very end, when the war becomes a reality for our young characters. Seeing a battle, in which “our” forces take a thorough and fatal beating, through Shima’s eyes is quite painful, even as it is exceptionally well-executed.

For our Yuri couple, Yayoi and Ayaka, there is only one scene towards the beginning – but it’s a good one. ;-) With a short, fanservicey, flashback to when they originally met, we get a tearful and emotional reunion between them. Otherwise they are never seen together…but later when Arisa teases Yayoi about Pierre (who has a openly-acknowledged crush on her) Yayoi basically says that he has no chance. Everyone laughs and moves on. They know he has no chance – they just think it’s cause he’s a doofus and Yayoi is a lady.

Ratings:
Art – yucky to not too bad
Story – fun, interesting, emo
Characters – real
Music – doo-doo-doo

Overall – just watch it

In general, this volume is good, solid space opera fare. The aliens are bugs, humans are torn over what to do, and the kids…are kids. All in all, a good story that stays good with ocassional moments of excellent and awful.





Yuri Anime: Madlax, Volume 3

September 12th, 2005

Madlax, Volume 3 Sometimes you get a craving and nothing but sociopathic women with guns can fill it.

Volume 3 of Madlax is both wonderful…and frustrating. Wonderful, because all the connections start coming together, leading you forward towards who knows what. It’s also frustrating for the exact same reasons – you keep feeling like everything is going *somewhere* but you’re just not getting quite enough info to piece it all together.

For me, the volume is very satisfying, as it focuses primarily on the character of Vanessa Rene, whose efforts to find out exactly what’s going on bring her into contact with Madlax, and with Enfan, thus knitting together the three great variables in the story: Who is Madlax, and how did she get those mad assassinatin’ skillz; what on earth is Enfan’s relationship to the civil war in Gazth-Sonika; what does Margaret have to do with any of this?

None of these questions is answered, of course – but Vanessa actually articulates the first two – and the third is implicit in the storyline. Bee Train isn’t giving anything away in this anime, we’re going to have to work for our payoff here. When I watched this part the first time around, I was skeptical that we would get *any* payoff, but now I know we will, and I’m content to let the story play itself out.

In writing the above, I just realized that watching Madlax is a bit like watching a play by Chekhov – you have to let the characters repeat their particular bete noir over and over until the threads all ravel and it begins to make sense. You can’t rush it, or guess what will happened/has happened. You just have to wait.

On the yuri side, I love this volume for what it doesn’t say. There’s still the weird vibe between Vanessa and Eleanor, which makes me think that they slept together, but don’t have a “relationship” per se. Eleanor would be hard work – her focus is so single-minded, that to make her notice her existence, Vanessa would have to do something irrevocable and awful. Vanessa ain’t no dummmy – she lets whatever is between them stay as whatever Eleanor makes it.

When she meets Madlax, its obvious that Vanessa is resonating to something within her – there’s an obvious desire to connect with this mysterious girl, and maybe protect (or perhaps treasure) her a little. There’s a very, very slight yuri feel there, but I think that’s because they are strangers and Vanessa doesn’t yet know who/what Madlax is or how to approach her. I don’t have any difficulty in believing that Vanessa would sleep with Madlax, if she thought that would be a good idea for them both. We know, with 20/20 hindsight, what the thing she feels in Madlax is, but as she doesn’t know herself – and never does learn – it leaves an interesting edginess between them.

As for Madlax, she clearly sees the relationship between her and Vanessa as a mirror image of Vanessa’s interpretaton: she’s the prince protecting Vanessa, the princess. We’ve already seen that Madlax isn’t afraid of sex and, once again, I think Madlax could well sleep with Vanessa, if she felt that it was the thing to do.

Will they, do they? I don’t think so. But that edge between them is fascinating and titilating.

And there’s Rimelda. This volume could be entitled “The birth of an obsession” and I think it’s a beautiful thing. ^_^ I’m not usually fond of obsessive relationships, but again, I know what’s coming and this one works for me.

Ratings:
Art – 5. It’s very inconsistent, with that BT tendency to have really bad people on top of really lovely backgrounds
Story – 8
Characters – 8
Music – 8
Yuri – 6, with loads of possibility

Overall – 8.

Madlax is a story that remains intriguing and fun, as long as you don’t need it to “make sense.”





Yuri Anime: Air Master, Volume 1

June 30th, 2005

I managed to get a copy of Volume 1 of Air Master at last. This series has become a “comfort” series for me – I stick it on the TV when there’s nothing else on and I don’t want to have to pay *too* much attention. But, then I end up watching it anyway and not doing whatever it was that I was slacking off doing in the first place.

I won’t beat the plot, character of yuri components of this volume to death – I have repeatedly ranted about how wonderful this anime is in several of my previous posts: From the first recommendation back in August 2003 to Feb. 26, 2004, May 21, 2005, and May 23, 2005. And that doesn’t include all the rants about the manga, either.

So, yeah, I like this anime – a lot.

And I’ve already discussed the problems with the DVD release, some of which have been addressed in the second half of the thrid volume.

What did shock me about this first volume was how utterly, horribly *BAD* the translation was. Again, I felt like I was watching a bootlegged copy. Whole sentences were completely, totally, changed from what the characters were saying, as if the translators kept assuming what they “really” meant was….I imagine that this was a dubtitle issue, but even so, there were entire sentences that were just plain *wrong.*

Oddly, the language in the first volume subtitles is much ruder than in the second, and in that way, fits the story better.

But I’ll admit, if I had bought this volume first, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have bought 2 or 3. So I’m a little glad I bought them first.

Story-wise, Volume 1 is not particularly strong, either – again, by going backwards I can see how much more three-dimensional the characters are only a few episodes later.

I think it really sucks that this release was so bad – there are plenty of folks that might enjoy Air Master, but who, if not already turned off by the ugly art, will just give up in frustration with the unbelievably poor quality of this DVD.

What makes even this volume worth watching is, of course, the characters and the fighting.

And Sakiyama Kaori.

Ratings:
Art – 5
Story – 7
Characters – 8
Yuri – 6
Technical Details – 3

Despite the crappiness of this particular Volume, I recommend the series. If you’re going to buy it from Amazon, look for a used copy or a cheaper copy on the Amazon marketplace. This way you won’t feel quite so ripped. Also – do not be afraid to write the distributor and express your dissatisfaction – if you don’t tell them, they can’t know.





Air Master Anime, Volume 3

May 23rd, 2005

We did a mini-marathon last night and watched all the Air Master we had on DVD. Why? Because it’s a *great* series!

Last entry I pointed out some of the issues I had with the DVD release. Well, good news, kids, by Volume 3 some of the most egregious problems have been fixed. And as the plot (well…let’s call it that for argument’s sake…) just gets better and better, by Vol. 3 this series has kicked into high gear.

Let’s start with the thing that everyone complains about most – the art. Yup, its ugly. That’s not going to change. Move past it.

Next, what passes for a plot. In Vol. 3, in between big air and bloody, brutal fights, we actually learn quite a bit about Maki, and we even get a glimpse into the great Sakiyama Kaori’s past. But really, the fights are the point, and in this volume we get lots of Maki flying – my wife’s favorite part.

Yuri-wise, we get a nice handful of yuri to hold onto. Mina completely gives up on pretense and falls for Maki wholeheartedly, even going so far as to say that she will confess her love – and then does so (while asleep, mind you, but…). Maki, after fighting to the point of collapse, does collapse – in Mina’s arms. Sadly, we don’t get the followup scene from the manga where, as the Black Union grieves over Kinjiro, Mina takes Maki to a love hotel… Man, I would have LOVED that scene to be animated. ^_^

Many of the problems with the first two volumes – the closed captioning subtitles and really lousy translation simply disappears halfway through this volume. The translation, while loose, is *much* more casual and slang-filled, which gives the series the voice it needs. Lucha Master remains Roo-cha and the honorifics are still gone, but everything else improves significantly.

But what makes this volume so great is Sakiyama Kaori. My wife, who has completely disparate tastes in anime from myself, is equally as enamored of Sakiyama Kaori as I am. Because she is the GREATEST CHARACTER EVER. ^_^ Not only is she utterly, totally psychotic, violent and strange, but she is lovable and admirable all at the same time.

Volume 3 sees the beginning of the “Fami-wrestler” arc, in which Sakiyama Kaori and Maki become professional female tag team wrestlers. It’s my favorite arc, without question. The fights are brilliant, and Sakiyama Kaori simply shines as unrepressably insane and funny.

Yes, the art sucks. Yes there’s fan service out the wazoo, but come *on* – the fight scenes are brilliant. You can see exactly what technique everone is using – even if a move is unlikely, improbable or impossible its still cool that you can follow the fighting. Watching these fights makes me want to be a streetfighter. Really. And Sakiyama Kaori is my idol.

One last thing – it’s not the first thing that comes to mind but, the music for this series is top-notch. The opening and closing themes are brilliant, and the BGM is really, really well-done, and surprisingly subtle.

Ratings:
Art – 3, and I’m being generous
Characters – 10
Story – 8
Music – 9
Yuri – 8

Overall – 9

God, I love this anime!  ^_^