Archive for the English Anime Category


Kekkou Kamen Anime, Manga and Live-Action

April 8th, 2004

My face is masked, but I bare my body for justice!

Kekkou Kamen, misspelled as Kekko Kamen for the anime release, is one more utterly bizarre story brought to you from the warped mind of Go Nagai, the creative genius behind Cutey Honey, Devilman, Mazinger G, Devilman Lady and more. But of all these, Kekkou Kamen wins on several levels – it’s the least plausible (and that’s saying something, if you’ve ever seen or read any of the others!), has the most naked women and is just the most utterly, indescribably *strange* anime and manga I’ve ever encountered. I absolutely love it.

The story takes place at Toenail of Satan’s Sparta Academy, an incredibly strict private high school, where physical and emotional torture are use to motivate the student body to excel. “Toenail of Satan” is the Principal’s actual name, btw. We follow the travails of hapless student Takahashi Mayumi, whose inferior grades and hot body make her a prime target of all the “punshiment specialist”s hijinks. To protect Mayumi, and the other students, a mysterious naked woman has appeared on the scene – she bares her body for justice, she says, but keeps her face covered because she’s embarrassed.

Kekkou Kamen-oneesama, as Mayumi calls her, always comes in the nick of time and uses her Spread Legs Attack to defeat the foe. The foe usually being some drooling pervert of a teacher who is just on the edge of sexually abusing Mayumi or one of the other female stdents. (The boy students appear to be only beaten, not sexually abused.)

And yet, (she says, knowing that after the prevous paragraphs everyone’s lips are curling in disgust,) despite all this, Kekkou Kamen is really incredibly funny. Mostly because it’s so amazingly awful and offensive that to take offense is impossible.

The anime is actually laugh-out-loud hysterical right from the beginning, when the first punishment specialist is “Gestaopoko” a S&M Nazi-themed dom with a whip and questionable fashion sense. Kekkou Kamen defeats her by remembering something she heard – that S&M Queens *really* want to be whipped themselves…. There is tons and tons of Yuri implication and overt Yuriness in the anime, which makes it worth buying. There’s also a terrific moment when the characters blast the fourth wall to hell by telling us that there’ll be more anime if this volume sells well. ^_^ It didn’t and there wasn’t.

The manga is a little more horrible and abusive, but so eyebrow-raisingly weird, that again, its hard to be offended. In the manga, we finally learn who Kekkou Kamen really is…and there is no way you’d ever be able to get it from the anime, so don’t bother…she doesn’t even show up as a character in the anime. Basically, by the end of the manga, every girl in the school is naked and masked and all are claiming to be Kekkou Kamen, but eventually, when she does show up, she does manage to save the day *and* Mayumi, once again. Yuri-wise there’s mostly akogare-type adoration and hero worship on Mayumi’s part, but I don’t really get any strong Yuri sense from that. There’s one totally butchy teacher, with a cross-dressing (and passing) younger sister, but again, the lesbo vibes are low-level at best. A shame too…I think this manga *needs* at least one openly lesbian character. If Go Nagai ever re-does the KK manga for the new century, I hope he adds one. ^_^

That takes us to the original Live-Action movies, of which there are three. These live-action movies were all unremittingly low-budget and poorly acted, with awkward scripts and BAD staging. So, of course, I adore them. The first movie is pretty close the the basic plot of the manga and the guy who plays Toenail of Satan is magnificently bad in the role. He’s perfect. The woman who plays Kekkou Kamen was some JAV star and pin-up, so her playing naked was fine. Her acting is …adequate, but really, who cares? The end of the movie is hysterically bad, and there is some Yuri subtext.

The second movie is the strongest in Yuri…there’s even a little actual girl/girl (not too much, don’t get your hopes up) thing going on, but with lots of subtext and one cool, butchy teacher. The same acting/script/low-budget thing applies to all three movies, so don’t think that they got better as time got on, either. ^_^

The third movie is actually kind of sad and funny, with lots of Go Nagai in-jokes, as Toenail of Satan’s family shows up to visit. Most of them are spoofs of other Go Nagai characters. And Kekkou Kamen falls in love, sadly with a guy, but whatever. There’s a funny scene at an amusement park, as KK tries to eat ice cream through her mask, and the ending, during and after the credits is absolutely insanely funny, as the girls of the school persuade a beaten and defeated Toenail of Satan to come back to the school and start playing soccer with him. As they run down the train platform, T of S’s last act is to plummet off the platform, then reappear, abashed, then he and the girls all share a good laugh. The End. No, really.

And, now, at last, there is a new KK Live-Action movie release to the theaters, which premiered this past week in Tokyo! The trailer makes it look hopelessly artless and fun, even if it has no obvious Yuri.

Ah…the trailer reminded me – I have to mention the *song.* The song that you hear in the trailer, and as the theme to the anime (sung by Kekkou Kamen’s voice actress Shinohara Emi, aka the voice of Sailor Jupiter/Kino Makoto in Sailor Moon, and Rosa Chinensis/Youko in Maria-sama ga Miteru) is amazingly funny. And in the manga, *Kekkou Kamen* herself sings the song as she fights, which makes it just that much better. I’m so very glad that they kept it for this movie, because it’s wonderful and camp and just about defines this whole series in a nutshell.

So, there you have it – Yuri in the anime, a little in two of the movies and not really any in the manga. Enjoy, but probably not. ^_^





Yuri Anime: Stainless Night, Parade Parade

March 19th, 2004

purpleGirls With Something Extra

Today we’re gonna talk about a coupla Newhalf anime. This may not be considered by some people to be *real* Yuri, and I understand why…but bear with me and let me see if I can convince you of my position. ;-)

To start with, futanari is the Japanese term for what we tend to call “dick girls” or “she-males,” i.e., characters with breasts that look, act and sound like girls, but happen to have male genitalia. (As opposed to transgender people, which is a completely different thing.) These stories are targeted to a male audience, and almost always involve the futanari girl getting it on with a “real” girl. This is because the original target audience for these stories were adult men who cross-dressed and thus the futanari embodies what they wanted to be seen as – completely feminine, with that little something extra. Since these guys are almost always straight, none of them want to see the girl having sex with a guy (ewwww), so that’s why there are mostly Yuri futanari stories out there.

Nowadays, I think the genre has split a little – there are characters which are fairly obviously meant to be girls with penises, and characters that are guys who have breasts. (I’ll talk about these later….) If you’re not diehard anti-cock, there are a few fairly decent Yuri hentai out there. Let’s look at two:

Parade Parade

This two-episode OVA is not high art, if you know what I mean. (Nor is it High Art, if you know what I mean! ^_^ Sorry…little lesbian movie joke there….) It tells the sex-filled story of Kaori, a rising pop idol who’s female manager is madly, and quite passionately, in love with her. But Kaori has a secret…duh. The end of the first episode brings the arrival of Kaori’s manager’s old lover, (a typical anime-style S&M ojou-sama and her slave,) who challenge Kaori and her manager to a sex duel. Hilarity ensues.

Whether or not you think that Kaori is a girl or not, the other characters are *definitely* female, so this is almost completely Yuri, even discounting Kaori, which I don’t. I think she’s a girl. With a dick. So, IMHO…this is 100% Yuri and really, its kinda cute and silly and sweet. As Yuri hentai goes, it’s harmless fun and not disgusting or dismissive, as so many are.

Stainless Night

This is a sort of scifi Yuri thing. Android Linnea (Linear) is awakened from a long stasis to find herself revived by a team of female scientists. She and one of the scientists fall in love, have sex, and are attacked by Linnea’s evil nemesis robot (the usual cheesy S&M-style evil kind). In the end, Linnea determines to learn more about herself, but she’ll come back, she promises!

I can’t even really consider Linnea a futanari, because she’s not human at all and she only develops the extra body part in the throes of ecstasy….it’s all very tastefully done.

Most importantly, the story isn’t awful, the sex is quite nice and all in all, one of the best Yuri anime I own. If the thingy between Linnea’s legs bugs you, then probably you shouldn’t watch Yuri hentai much, since this is pretty tame by hentai standards.

Just in case you care about this kind of thing – both of these stories have no guys, no tentacles, minimal bodily fluids by comparison, and no seriously violent rape. They both focus on “nice” as the main relationship factor and actually have love somewhere in there. Sort of in the “awwwww” category for hentai. ^_^

Both these are legitimately licensed anime, owned and distro’ed by Media Blasters, so do make sure you purchase these, as opposed to engaging in illegal downloads. Or, rent if you prefer – several of the online DVD rental companies have hentai anime available.

One last note about futnari. Earlier on, I mentioned that there *were* stories with guys who have breasts, as opposed to the above, here’s two quickie examples:

Chimera – The manga for this has a “Yuri” scene between the main character and a woman (who is obviously a lesbian, as she has about three female servants draped over her, naked.) Chimera, however, despite “her” ability to pass and function as a woman is really a guy…a guy who looks really nice in women’s underwear. The anime is a hoot, too, but sans the Yuri. The story is suposed to be about Chimera’s deadly assassination skills and her quest for revenge, but it’s mostly about her dressing in women’s underwear. I loved it for its utter cheesiness.

Purple – This is a completely obscure manga I discovered in Japan, but didn’t buy, then obsessed over for months, until I found here at a used manga store. It’s about a boy who falls in love with a girl who transfers into his class. She’s *very* forward with him, and basically seduces him on the roof, only….she’s a guy. And very openly so. She has breasts, but she’s got a penis too. He freaks out, but can’t get her out of his head. In the meantime, a lesbian in the school falls for her, and *they* start dating. The heroine tries to sleep with the lesbian, but *she* freaks about the penis, too. Poor heroine…no one loves her penis. In a wonderful scene, the hero just…gives in. He really does. It was so sweet – he just decides that he loves her and wants her too much to let something like this get in the way. So he sleeps with her, which is good, because up to that point he’d become a raving asshole, who kept just-about-raping a girl who liked him in order to prove he was a “real” man – did I mention he’s horribly conflicted because he sleeps with his mother? Ultimately, the heroine goes off to have a sex change, and ends up living with both the hero, and the lesbian in a strange, but happy love triangle. I really liked this story, and for the life of me, I have no idea why. ^_^ If you like a challenge, grab up a copy of Purple and let me know what you think!





Yuri Anime/Yuri Manga: Hen

March 16th, 2004

A Strange Series About Strange Love

I’m not really sure I agree that Hen, aka Strange Love is really hentai…but as it’s usually lumped in with the “adult” anime, I guess I should. What it *is* is a very funny, and sometimes touching romantic comedy starring two mismatched girls, from a distinctly seinen perspective.

Hen is the story of extremely well-endowed high school student Yoshida Chizuru. Despite the fact that she’s under age, Chizuru has a part-time job modeling, on account of her exceptional looks. The first part of the anime and the manga is incredibly dumb, as Chizuru seduces/outsmarts a pervy substitute teacher. The fun begins when a cute, very childish girl moves in next door to Chizuru’s boyfriend’s, rock star Hiro Yuki’s, apartment.

At first, Chizuru dislikes little Azumi; snubs her, makes fun of her, etc…but after a few days, she realizes that she’s begun to obsess about Azumi. (This leads to some highly amusing scenes in the anime, as Chizuru tries fantasizing about other schoolmates, to see if she is, perhaps, gay after all.) In a life-changing realization, Chizuru decides that she *is* in love with Azumi, and will marry her, despite the obstacles.

The anime ends at this point, but the manga goes on and on and on…. There’s a ton of really silly stuff that happens, some more bizarre than others, and everything, except Chizuru’s emotions, are played for laughs. There are a couple of touching scenes as well.

Is this a series worth watching? I think so. The OVA is only two episodes, but there are some really funny moments that make it worth owning.

The manga is *definitely* worth having. But, beware – there are two Hen manga, one that is Yuri, one that is BL…and they coincide at some point in both stories, so it’s a little confusing. It’s probably easiest to remember it this way – the Yuri Hen is the one with white spines, the BL has the colored spines. The Yuri Hen is 8 volumes, the BL Hen is 13 volumes…if you’re a completist, you’ll want those too, to get *all* of Chizuru and Azumi’s story.

By the way – the series, despite everything, *does* have a happy ending, as Chizuru and Azumi fly off together “to America,” which we all know is manga code for “to have a happy lesbian relationship.” ^_^

The art is really…odd, and the characters have awful ears, there is much fanservice, breast and panty shots, but if you look past the surface, this is really a very sweet series.





Tokio Private Police Anime

March 15th, 2004

I spent some time this weekend watching about half of the *very* old hentai series Cream Lemon (which is one of the possible origins for the use of the word “lemon” to represent explicit sexual content in a story, btw). I can’t say I was disappointed, because my expectations for Yuri hentai are very low. Some of it almost approached being decent, but not without tradeoffs. I watched these raw, because who cares what they are saying? ;-)

Let me indulge in a short rant about hentai…it sucks. Like live-action porn, it focuses on the least sexiest aspects of sex for extended periods of time. What is it about sex that makes it so impossible to show without making it ridiculous and dull? Perhaps, because it is, at its core, ridiculous and dull? I don’t know…all I know is, that a truly *good* Yuri hentai has yet to be made. There are certainly decent enough scenes here and there and every once in a blue moon, an anime that doesn’t utterly bite…but these are few and far between.

Okay, I’m done ranting. I guess I’ll talk a little about some of the Yuri hentai I’ve watched over time and let you know about some of the gold nuggets I’ve managed to find. And when I’m done watching all of the Cream Lemon series, I’ll even devote a whole entry to the good bits. ^_^

Let’s start today off with the best of the bunch –

Tokio Private Police – 1998

This isn’t just the best Yuri hentai I’ve seen…it’s the best hentai all the way around, period. Right off the bat, it’s a very well-executed parody of Patlabor, an excellent series in its own right. It manages to keep the essential humanity that makes Patlabor so notable, as well as having a sense of humor and an actual plot, go figure.

TPP does have one non-consensual sex scene right in the beginning, but is otherwise filled with more consensual sex than most hentai – and pretty much everyone appears to be enjoying themselves…something that’s all too rare in hentai.

The Yuri scene is relegated to the typical position of okazu, that is…an appetizer, not the main event, but it’s really an exceptionally well done scene. Not only are the women definitely, positively adults, but they sex seems realistic and their bodies, do, as well. No hermaphroditic transformations, no tentacles, no bondage…just really decent sex between two women who look like women. I’ve come to believe that the former are just easier to animate than the latter, hence their proliferation. But on the whole, I’d rather see people going at it and having a hell of a lot of fun than stupid, unrealistic plot complications.

When the “main event” does happen, its no different – we get to see two human adults having good sex. IMHO, this is a refreshing and long overdue concept in hentai.

So, whether you’re in it just for the Yuri, or straight sex appeals, I definitely have to give Tokio Private Police a thumbs up. This *has* been released officially, so get TPP on DVD. It’s definitely worth the money, especially if you’re a Patlabor fan! ^_^





Yuri Manga: Air Master

February 26th, 2004

Okay, I’m a little tired of talking about shoujo Yuri titles, so I thought I’d cover a few shounen Yuri series of note.

Air Master

I’ve talked about this one before, I know, but it bears repeating. The basic plot is…well, there isn’t really a plot. It’s about an ex-gymnastics champion turned street fighter. Her gymnastics skill manifest as a distinctly unique fighting style which involves seriously BIG air. Hence the name, “Air Master.”

Aikawa Maki is a great heroine. Competent and cool in her millieu, sort of dorky and insecure outside it, she’s surprisingly human and likable. Her friends are quirky and funny, and her enemies even quirkier and, in many cases, funnier. Of these, the best, by far and away is Sakiyama Kaori, who may possibly be the funniest, most imaginative and most likeable psychotic to ever grace a manga or anime.

The Yuri comes in right at the start, as Maki’s new friend Mina develops a raging crush on Maki, which quickly develops into a raging lust for her. In the anime, this is seriously minimalized, but in the manga, there’s some terrific scenes as we get to see what Mina’s actually thinking (hoping/wishing/fantasizing ) about in regards to Maki.

There’s a few downsides to this series – for one thing, the manga art is *seriously,* distractingly ugly.  There’s some intense fighting violence (which I quite like) and some serious sexual violence, as well (which I don’t.) Episode 24 of the anime is one of the single most violent 20 minutes I’ve ever seen animated that didn’t involve guns or mutating things. The little old lady who sat next to me on the plane while I watched it on my computer, almost had a heart attack, poor thing. And there is unneeded and egregious, yet expected service.

On the good side, you have great characters – I mean REALLY great. With the exception of one or two characters, even Maki’s opponents are engaging and fun. In the tradition of shounen fighting anime, most defeated opponents become allies, so it’s nice to have them stick and around and keep coming back. Rematches with defeated opponents are actually better than the original fights, as Maki’s skills keep improving over the series.

Ratings

(Manga) Art – 2
(Anime) Art – 6
Characters – 9
Story – 7
Yuri – 8

Overall – 8