I get it, I do.

Lucky Star is a big in-joke for the otaku audience. Look Konata games, she gets moe, she talks about dating sims and anime and ero-games. She’s one of us!

To explain why this does not hit me in the same way it hits you, let me tell you a story. I was sitting at a Druid ritual, when a woman I know came over to me with an expression of love and acceptance and joy and asked me, “Isn’t this wonderful? Don’t you remember the moment when you first felt part of a group that truly accepted you?” I looked at her very seriously and said, “No, because I’ve never looked for acceptance from a group.” This conversation actually went on for some time, her trying to ask me the same question many different ways, and me giving her the same answer – I don’t look for acceptance from other people, so I’ve never needed to feel “part of a group.” As long as I’m happy doing what I’m doing, that’s fine. She walked away after a while, totally puzzled. *Everyone* wants to be part of a group, right?

I have never once in my life referred to non-fandom people (of any kind) as “mundane.” Sports fans don’t refer to non-sports fans as “thinkies,” or anything. Why would I refer to people not in my in-crowd as something silly that they are not? And what should I call you, my non-classical music listening readers? Or my non-archeology loving readers? No, I’m not really much into “us” and “them.”

I am proud to be an otaku, and perfectly happy in my otaku life, with my fujoshi wife. My non-otaku friends are in no way “mundane.” (Understatement of the decade. My non-otaku friends are far stranger than my otaku friends could ever hope to be.)

So I don’t need that thing that Lucky Star provides, that “look there’s a media character that represents us otaku!” If you read Okazu, you’ll know that my blog is largely given over to finding those moments for lesbian readers. The idea that there is a self-referential anime and manga for otaku is great – I just don’t need that particular affirmation of self.

I’m pretty certain that those of you who are deeply engaged with Lucky Star will see this as some kind of slam, but really, I think it’s fine, really! I have no objection to the series. I get what you’re seeing.

In fact, I liked Volume 3, because it explains why 4-koma aren’t all that funny AND why so many fans think Kagami is tsundere – because the creator said so, so even though she really isn’t, and now that it has  been said, you shape your perceptions to see that. Exactly as Konata says. ^_^ What I especially like is that she said that straight to our faces. It’s so rare to see irony in manga.

So, while many of you are resonating to the “she’s one of us!” and all the in-jokes in the anime, the bit that resonates most strongly with me is the ironic (and slightly mean-spirited) meta-commentary by the creator about our otaku habits. I like when he talks about what a waste all our devotion is, and what a pointless thing us spending all that money is. I loved when he had Konata comment that getting the first volume of a manga shows loyalty – even if it’s riddled with errors. That actually made me laugh out loud. (It reminded me of something Dorothy L. Sayers has Lord Peter Wimsey say in Murder Must Advertise – that if you smile as you say incredibly mean things, people will think that you are joking.)

I would also like to blame William Flanagan for being a competent translator, as now he’s sucked the most fun I was having with the series away by replacing the challenging grammar of the previous translator with perfectly sensible English. Thanks, Bill. (-_-);

Yuri? Yes…um there’s two minor characters whose names completely escape me right now and who are always together. Perhaps they are a couple. And the girl who draws doujinshi…I’ve randomly decided that I think she’s gay. Other than that? I still think that Konata x Kagami is entirely in your head, so why shouldn’t I create other Yuri that isn’t there, too?

Ratings:

Art – 5 I can’t really respect the art. At some point you’d think it’d get better.
Story – 7 There isn’t one, really. But it is a 4-koma, so one has low expectations
Characters – 7
Yuri – 1
Service – 10 Not in the salacious way this usually represents. This series was created precisely to appeal to the Fanboy in all of us and is in that way completely an expression of the meaning of otaku.

Overall – 7

I’m still not charmed, but I did laugh out loud several times at in-jokes. I also find the notes really interesting because despite the fact that the series is for the hardcore otaku, the notes were for “mundanes.”

Thanks ever so much to Okazu superhero Dan P. for allowing me this foray into this representative medium of an important part of my life. ^_^

In Volume 1 of Dragon Sister!, we meet the reworked heroes of The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, once again turned into women for our entertainment.

At the end of the first volume, Guan Yu and Zhang Fei have sold themselves to predatory lesbian Dong Zhou in order to secure their “brother” Liu Bei a command in the Royal Army. Dong Zhou ain’t no dummy, she’s going to have Liu Bei killed in order to keep Guan Yu and Zhang Fei for her own.

However, in Volume 2 she is foiled in this by the timely arrival of Lu Bu, a young girl with breathtaking strength. Seeing something even more potentially useful to her, Dong Zhou is willing to trade Guan Yu and Zhang Fei for Lu Bu. We learn a little bit about Dong Zhou’s past – enough to understand that her obsessive drive for power is to combat a painful and difficult rise to the top, and a reflection of her constant battle against the men who did not show her respect because she is a woman.

Dong Zhou is called away to support General He Jin in the Imperial court against the Eunuchs. She tells Liu Bei that if his volunteer army does something spectacular, she’ll give them rank, expecting both them and him to die. Only he does do something spectacular(ly stupid) and she’s impressed despite herself.

Which is exactly how I felt about this manga.

Despite the stupid premise – and the bits about the switching all the women back to being the men they should have been – this manga has actually been a not terribly bad version of the Romance. In fact, if you never were able to make heads or tails out of the original text, this would not be a horrible way to get some of the major plot points. I still don’t get Cao Cao, but that is my failing, not the story’s. ^_^

The art seems to have settled down a bit. There’s still an emphasis on portraiture, rather than action, but there’s more confidence in the lines. Service is mostly confined to shots of Guan Yu’s cleavage, a sentence which makes my head hurt. lol And Yuri is mostly set aside for power, as Dong Zhou cleverly realizes that screwing with a kid’s mind is easier than with adult minds, and tosses Guan Yu and Zhang Fei aside for Lu Bu.

If you can accept the biggest handwave, that the heros are women, and the secondary one that all the heros are women except the ones that aren’t, like Liu Bei, Cao Cao, He Jin and a few others, then the rest of the story really has no extraordinary hurdles for you to leap. It does have a few ordinary hurdles, because the Romance is not the easiest book in the world to read, as it details pretty heavy politics and military strategies.

Overall, a little despite myself, I actually liked this manga. It doesn’t look like a Volume 3 will be forthcoming at any point, which is a shame, because the world really needed another version of the Romance in which Guan Yu has cleavage.

Ratings:

Art – 7
Story – 8
Characters – 7, even if they are still caricatures of themselves
Yuri – 1 Predatory lesbian wasn’t predatory at all.
Service – 4 There’s cleavage shots and some light bathing, and females sleeping next to each other, oh my!

Overall – 7

My genuine thanks to Okazu Superhero Dan P. for his sponsorship of today’s review, his patience, his generosity and his excellent taste in reviewers. ;-)

Sunshine Sketch, Volume 4 is meant to be read as a slice-of-life manga.

The problem with this is, to be compelling to me as a slice-of-life, a story needs to be a slice of life that is new to me and it needs to be a slice of life big enough to include character growth and maturity.

Sunshine Sketch is less a slice-of-life than a slice-of-fiction, and an incredibly narrow, unchanging fictitious world in which little ever changes.

We are meant to believe that a year has passed at the Hidamari Apartments, that Yuno and Miyako have moved up as 2nd-years and new students have entered the apartments as 1st-years. But Yuno and Miyako have not changed at all, and the new students take the place of the bicycle and the cat from the previous volume, as props with which the ensemble can run the same gags as always.

Sae and Hiro still have the same ambiguously gay relationship, and while new student Nazuna sort of implies a minor crush on Sae, we spend far more time pondering her popularity with the guys. Nazuna is also so low-self-esteem as to be painful to watch. Nori might be fun, in a series that wasn’t going to cover the same territory over again.

Entrance Ceremony, School Festival, Finals, Christmas, New Semester, Valentine’s Day…etc, etc. This is not slice-of-life, this is slice-of-slice-of-life, one endless rehash of the same dozen moments of high school, with new characters that change nothing. In some sense, this is high school from the point of view of the teachers, a cycle of events that repeat over and over, with only the names shifting to show that time has passed.

George R. once quoted me as saying that the value of sequels is that we are able to spend more time in the company of characters we love. I’ve now spent four volumes with the characters of Sunshine Sketch and know nothing more about them than I did four volumes ago.

Kate Dacey wrote vehemently about why 4-koma comics do not translate well and this manga makes a great example for her argument. There is nothing here to grab a reader; nothing unique, compelling or relevant. I’m more than happy to watch a few moments of peaceful time slip by, but this series is the manga equivalent of watching paint dry. Read any panel and it will read like any other panel. Character reactions will be overblown in proportion to the minor pun or misinterpretation in lieu of a funny punchline. “WHAT!?!” they will say, instead of “hah,” at one of Miyako’s jokes. Yuno will continue to be slightly awkward and not know what she wants. Hiro will be passive-aggressive about food, Sae will be an artist who writes or a writer who draws.

What makes slice-of-life compelling is watching the character over time, watching the slow, small changes that signal maturity. Aria does this. Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou does this with genius. Sadly, Sunshine Sketch has us watching the slow passage of time, with no changes visible. Time spent, but not particularly well.

Ratings:

Art – 7
Story – 6
Characters – 6
Yuri – 2
Service – 1

Overall – 6

Law of Marginal Manga Return – If the characters in the fourth volume are pretty much the same as they are in the first volume, and you don’t have a plot to catch the reader’s attention, you’ve failed to create a good manga. Plot or character – you’ve gotta have at least one.

My thanks today to Okazu Superhero Amanda M. for allowing me to articulate this new Law, by sponsoring today’s review!