Archive for the English Manga Category


Yuri Manga: First Love Sisters, Volume 1 (English)

January 30th, 2008

Thanks and gratitude go out to Eric P. who sponsored today’s review!

My first encounter with the character and story that would eventually become First Love Sisters, was about 4 years ago, when Yuri Shimai magazine put out the first Koi Shimai Drama CD. At the time, a “Yuri Drama CD” was a pretty rare get and for that alone, I was happy to have it. The story of that first Drama CD – which predates the manga – was, as I put it, “melodramatic and predictable.” But don’t get me wrong – it’s not at all bad. As I mentioned in my review (and history of the series, which had a slightly cubist origin) of the Japanese edition, Hatsukoi Shimai Volume 1, the story is a tad tame, but was still better than a lot of junk out there. :-)

First Love Sisters Volume 1 is pretty much Marimite with the romance made slightly more explicit and characters who are not nearly as 3-dimensional. But you know – it’s still a sweet enough story for what it is. The winner of the series in every version is Chika, for coming right out and saying that she loves Haruna, forcing Haruna’s whole worldview to change. As Yumi clones go, Chika’s a pretty good one. ^_^

Which brings us to the Seven Seas edition of First Love Sisters. As always, they do a fabulous job on translation and adaptation. Little things please me, like Akiko’s usage of “onee-sama” at school and “onee-chan” at home, and the fact that the school’s nickname, Tsunojyo, isn’t lost. (Because, let’s face it, Tsunokamizaka Jyoshikou is a mouthful. ^_^)

Color pages are reproduced in color – always a nice touch. The color is a little anemic and there’s some moire patterns in the background, but it still looks nice. Comparatively to the original Japanese edition, the background tones reproduce a little roughly – in particular, Akiho’s hair looks a little weird. But if you aren’t comparing with Hatsukoi Shimai, then you won’t have to worry. It looks plenty good.

The story is still another “schoolgirls in love” story, but there’s no doubt about the intensity or sincerity of the emotion. And going forward into the next volume, we’ll see that chaste embraces are not the end-all-be-all of this relationship, which is a tremendous relief. (The future volumes of this manga make my fanfic for the series obsolete, but I don’t care at all. ^_^)

The final pages of the book include some 4-panel comics, that were originally under the dustcover, a preview of volume 2 (Touko-sensei!) and a nice little preview of the English-language edition of Voiceful, another Yuri Hime collection.

Ratings:

Art – 7
Story – 7
Characters – 7
Yuri – 8
Series – 0

Overall – 7

As the first of Seven Seas’ adaptations of a Yuri Hime collection for their Strawberry imprint, and with their continued quality in translation and reproduction, I definitely recommend First Love Sisters for folks looking for decent Yuri.





Yuri Manga: Strawberry Panic, Volume 1 (English)

January 21st, 2008

Strawberry Panic, Volume 1 was a fascinating example of translation and adaptation of a Japanese manga into English. Before I get into the details of why I say that, I’ll give you (and the folks at Seven Seas, for whom I have to thank for the review copy,) the sound bite – this was a very entertaining book. :-)

For an overview of the plot, please see my review of the Japanese edition of Volume 1 from June, 2006. This review will cover the adaptation and translation only.

There are a very few small differences in the Japanese and English versions physically – the English cover lacks the tagline “Girls School in Full Bloom” nor does it list the names of the main characters. And the art, both on the cover and the inside appears to have been scanned in from the original. (You would *think* that, when a company licenses a series the Japanese company would send original digital files to works from, but in my experience they don’t. That’s partially why the borders on English translations are often cut off, or have white space when the original pages don’t.) In this case, they opted for small additional white space edges across the whole book. It really doesn’t change anything – I just happened to notice it. And even though the English edition does not have a dust jacket, the original Japanese edition has the world’s most boring under-jacket cover ever, so we lose absolutely nothing by it.

The Seven Seas edition includes the color page, something I think really sets their volumes a step above Tokyopop’s. It’s not like this color page is especially *exciting* or anything, lol, it just looks nice.

Here’s the interesting bit, though. :-) The original Strawberry Panic manga was run in Dengeki’s G’s Magazine, a bishoujo gaming magazine. This is a pretty hardcore “otaku” audience. These are not people with social lives, or indeed skills. As a result, they tend to have little to no sense of humor about their passions. They take anime/manga/games and their obsessions with them *very* seriously. This latter quality is reflected in western fandom as well. And, as I’ve pointed out several times here, *no one* likes to think that the story they love is worthless trash or obviously a joke, when they themselves take it so seriously. (This applies to everyone about *something*. Whether it be sports maniacs, car crazies, people who obsess about the lives of celebrities or royals, whatever.)

So, when Strawberry Panic was first released, despite the obvious parody elements, people took the story at face value. That it involved sexual harrassment, evil psycho lesbians, total memory loss amnesia, former lover dying from an unnamed disease, openly stolen scenes, characters and symbols from more than a dozen other series, etc, etc, was irrelevant. This, I have been repeatedly told, is an awesome story.

*I* can see that it’s a parody. Many *other* people can see that it is a parody. Some people don’t care because they are not familiar with the series being parodied or, they just don’t care. But the majority of SP fans, both here and in Japan, take it quite seriously. They do not see that it is a parody and don’t like it when people, especially me, point out that it is.

Bear with me here – I do have a point. The point is this – Seven Seas knows SP was a parody and they *adapted* it like it was one. Sorry it took me so long to get there, but you have to appreciate the underlying issue. By adapting it the way they did, Seven Seas runs the risk of alienating the majority of their readership. HOWEVER, thanks to cognitive dissonance and the human ability to ignore all facts that don’t fit in with our preconceived notions, most of the people who might possibly be alienated will simply ignore the clues in the text and continue to take the story at face value. So phew for them.

Here’s what Seven Seas did. The first few chapters of Strawberry Panic utilize both italics and bold letters to subtly offer a few “wink, wink, nudge, nudge” moments in the text. It’s only in the first few chapters, then they back off. If it had continued it would have become annoying, but by laying the foundation in the beginning, anyone who *can* see it, is let in on the joke. It’s true that some of the worlds they emphasize are also emphasized in the Japanese text – but not all of them. I’m not sure why they did it, but I think it worked. ^_^

I have only two complaints about the translation itself – can someone explain to me why Hikari says “golly” instead of something more like “oh, no”? It does give her a bit of a provincial aspect, but I never really got that from the original. Maybe I just missed her accent?

Also, I am deeply disappointed in Yaya’s criminally smart “Amane wannbees” (with “wannabees” being the actual word she chose) changed to “Amane nuts.” This is small, but they missed two things by changing it. One, in the context of the story, they’ve missed that Yaya’s understanding of human nature is pretty sharp. But more importantly, they’re missing that it was meant to parody Tsutako’s equally sharp understanding of her fellow students by labeling them “Yoshino wannabees” in Maria-sama ga Miteru: Kibara Kakumei. Seven Seas gets one point off for that and another because the word “wannabees” is so fun, why would anyone ever chose a different one? lol

With those two teeny exceptions, Strawberry Panic is otherwise a very decent translation and adaptation.

Seven Seas regains one of the lost points above for doing something which was technically incorrect, but for which I thank them with all my might. In the original Japanese Nagisa, our preposterous heroine, refers to herself in third person. It was meant to accentuate her childlike naiveté and girlishness. It also made it nigh on impossible to like her. For whatever reason it was decided that she *not* do that in the English edition. And while it changes her personality, it does so for the better. Yes, it’s “wrong.” Thank the gods (woops, I mean Maria-sama,) it was done. Amen.

Ratings:

Art – 7 (too moe for my taste, but not *bad*)
Story – 7
Characters – 7 (Chikaru is rapidly becoming my hero. She really doesn’t care what happens, as long as it’s a good show with lots of fireworks.)
Yuri – 9
FanBoy – 7 FanGirl – a completely different 7

Overall – 8 (7, plus one point for the amusing adaption)

Regardless if you admit to (or even notice) the satirical emphases, Strawberry Panic is an amusing, brainless read full of groping and service among privileged female students. Clearly, something to be taken *very* seriously. ^_^

 





Loveless Manga, Volumes 3 & 4 (English)

January 18th, 2008

Heartfelt thanks go out today to Zyl and Kabitzin for their sponsorship of today’s review!

I’m only reviewing the Yuri arc in this series since, for Yuri fans, Kouya and Yamato are the main attraction – although there are plenty of other intriguing relationships in the story.

We pick up Volume 3 as our young protagonist Ritsuka grapples with his relationship with Soubi and with what it means to be a Sacrifice, as well as with the residual mystery of what exactly happened to his brother. It seems apparent that Ritsuka is torn between really wanting to know the answer to all these things, and really not.

Soubi is attacked by a pair of Zeros, Fighter and Sacrifice who have been engineered to feel no pain, but manages to defeat them by using the time-honored method of age defeating youth by using brains instead of brawn. He takes in the defeated and abandoned Zeros, primarily, I think, to provide the recommended daily dose of bratty catboy and to provide much-needed exposition for Ritsuka later. Because, let’s face it, by making Soubi so reticent, the author had kind of tied the plot into a Gordian knot that *someone* had to cut. ^_^

At the very end of the volume, we encounter two high school girls who act as if they barely know one another, but then are later seen to be very close. Kouya and Yamato have arrived. Yay!

In Volume 4, Ritsuka gets his clue handed to him on a plate, while we learn about the creation of the second Zero pair. As Ritsuka comes to grips with his pairing with Soubi, Kouya and Yamato fight to stay together. This time, it’s Ritsuka’s insight that allows him and Soubi to win the battle.

In a lynchpin moment, Kouya and Yamato resolve to die to remain together – they do so by rejecting their former lives and their bondage to being “Zeros.” They leave the field of battle, dead as Sacrifice and Fighter, but reborn as two girls with the even stronger bond of love between them. A really terrific end to what might easily have been a tragic story.

The end of the volume includes a nice (and nicely placed) side story about Ritsuka, as seen through the eyes of current school friend Yuiko and an old school friend, Osamu. The comments at the end of the book by editor Lillian Diaz-Pryzbyl did an exceptional job of tying it all up neatly. In fact, her insights probably contributed strongly to my ability to engage with the story.

I was surprised that I enjoyed the manga as much as I did. I wasn’t a huge fan of the anime, but there’s more layers here. I’m not able to put my finger on it exactly, maybe something about there being so many *different* ways of relating to other people illuminated by the manga characters. It might have just been because of the volumes I chose to read, or it may well be because the creator is a better writer than I inititially credited. Or I’m in a different mood, or something else. Who knows. Whatever it is, I saw more depth, more complexity, in the many relationships in this story, and less oppressiveness about the primary couple, than when I watched the anime. Maybe it was just because of that little story at the end of Volume 4, and the idea that Ritsuka is just a kid sometimes made me feel a bit better about everyone in the book. Plus, you just know that Kouya and Yamato are out there somewhere riding the train, holding hands and just being together. ^_^

Ratings:

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

Overall – 7

I think I’d characterize the main emotion of the Loveless manga as Ero-emo. All the angsting is so erotically charged, even though Ritsuka can only pick up on some of the current himself (as Lillian cogently points out.) Since Kouya and Yamato are a little older, *they* understand. And Soubi is practically the epitome of ero-emo. ^_^





The Last Uniform, Volume 2 (English)

January 7th, 2008

The spirit is willing, but the flesh is jet-lagged. Today’s review, which was sponsored by Daniel P., is going to be short.

The Last Uniform Volume 2, is a continuation of the love polygons that were set up in Volume 1. With pretty much no change from the first volume, Ai and Fuuko and Beniko and Tsumugi all court one another semi-secretly; their emotions are visible, but their intentions remain hidden. In an ironic twist, because of the various conflicts and complications, they become closer as friends, as roommates and as people – but not as lovers. Until the end.

It is, of all things, a boy that prompts the final conflict and the first “outing.” A guy, Arita, finds Fuuko’s student ID and brings it to her. They become friendly. Fuuko isn’t really looking at this from any deep perspective. He’s nice, she enjoys his company. Ai, on the other had, begins to boil over with a nice case of jealousy. When Arita asks a slightly overwhelmed Fuuko out, she says yes. Ai-chan appears – she’s overheard the whole thing. She confronts Fuuko about going out with Arita, and confesses that *she* is in love with Fuuko. Then she runs away. End of book. What will become of them? Will their love affair topple the whole precarious domino setup-up of love relationships at the school? We can only wait and see.

In other stories, Tsumugi is still the subject of akogare from Anzu’s direction and Asagi remains a pervert who pretty much ignores the girl at her elbow, while macking on an uninterested Beniko.

Once again, the translation is solid – the text is pretty basic, though, so Seven Seas don’t really get to show their mad skills here. For some reason, the tones in this volume reproduced strangely, so all the blacks and dark tones look spotty. Not the worst thing, but it made everything a bit hard to see. Since Hakamada Mera’s art is neither detailed nor deep there’s no real loss, except for the feeling that your glasses need to be cleaned.

Ratings:

Art – 5
Story – 5
Characters – 7
Yuri – 7
Service – 3 (nude modeling, bathing and, of course, school uniforms)

Overall – 6

I’ll never really like The Last Uniform. But I don’t hate it, either. I just wish the characters were appealing to me in any way at all. And there’s only so much “overheating because the girl I like is close to me” that I can take before it gets wearing. Tsumugi exhausts me.





Top Ten Yuri Manga of 2007

December 23rd, 2007

Arrrghhhhh! How on earth am I supposed to pick a Top Ten? There was so much with dribbles of Yuri and so little that was *good*. I could do a Top 4 easy, 3 anyway. lol Again, to ease my indecision crisis of conscience, I’m splitting the list into English and Japanese…and cheating by having a bunch of Honorable Mentions. It’s not like this is a science or I get extra points for precision or anything. lol

English Language Manga

Honorable Mentions: Because they made the Top Ten lists last year and because I’ve beat them to death here at Okazu, I would like to give Honorable Mentions to both Read or Dream and Strawberry Marshmallow. I can’t get enough of them, but I’m sick to death of singing their praises. :-)

5) Kedamono Damono

This series is a go nowhere dead-end shoujo romance story where the Yuri is meant to provide comedy and ballast for the straight romance. But as far as the volumes I read went, the *only* part of the romance that was even marginally functional was the Yuri part, so, despite my personal disinterest in the story, we’ll give it fifth place.

4) Yuri Monogatari 5

This year’s anthology from ALC is almost *exactly* the book I want to publish. With 6 stories by Japanese artists and 8 by artists from the rest of the world, this is an awesome book. Happy sad, realistic, fantastic, there’s something for everyone. I don’t personally love every story, but every story taught me something. As the only example of josei Yuri by women for women out there, I’d be remiss if I ignored it out of humility. If I hadn’t published it myself, it would have still made this list – and probably at a much higher rank.

3) The Last Uniform

How I wish I liked this series. But I don’t. I don’t care for the endless gavotte these girls dance around one another and I have never liked the art. But Seven Seas does an exceptional job of reproduction and it’s the only really Yuri manga they mangaged to get on to the shelves in 2007, so I could point to it and say, “this is Yuri.” For the sheer Yuriness of it, The Last Uniform comes in third.

2) Kashimashi Girl Meets Girl

I was so very, very sure when I first read this series, that Hazumu was going to end up the series as a boy. I’m very pleased to have been wrong about that – and about every other thing in regards to this series that I predicted. lol The story had some serious handwaves to overcome, but is fairly solid as a love story and a Yuri one at that. And extra points to Seven Seas for what continues to be the best adaptation of a manga into English that I’ve seen.

1) Iono-sama Fanatics

I can’t tell you how excited I was that this apparently obscure Yuri manga was translated. It’s whimsical, fun, action-filled and well…Yuri. Fujieda Miyabi’s art is moe to the max, and yet it really grew on me. He writes sweet, somewhat goofy stories that don’t adhere to most of the tropes of Yuri. No schoolgirls here, just a Queen and her handmaidens, ridiculous adventures and Yuri love. While Infinity definitely can improve in their adaptation of the book, the story and characters carry this series far above and beyond the rest of this year’s lot. The winner, without question for this year’s best Yuri manga in English – Iono-sama Fanatics.

Japanese Language Manga

Honorable Mentions: These go to Kools which I have yet to read, but am adding to this list solely on the basis of Erin’s glowing recommendation. :-) And Gunsmith Cats Burst for bringing back Evil Psycho Lesbian Goldie and notching up Misty’s campaign to stay near Rally in a way that will surely start a new round of fanfic somewhere. lol

5) Sakura no Kiwa

No one paid the least bit attention as I reviewed this ridiculous series by the same artist that created Transistor ni Venus. lol It has a passive-agressive lesbian couple – in all sorts of denial – and slacker family members, and way too many cats. In a sane universe I would have loathed and despised it, only, I didn’t. In fact, I’m really hoping against hope for a 4th volume I know will probably never come. No one’s gonna scanlate this. No one cares. No one but me, that is. Fifth, dammit.

4) Kawaii Anata

Like many of the Yuri Hime collections, these stories work better as an anthology than they did as separate stories in the magazine. Hiyori Otsu also eschews the typical tropes for older, sometimes randomly cracked characters, but even the typical characters seem to have some depth. The art is pleasing, the stories don’t make one want to bang one’s head against the wall, so it comes in at an easy fourth.

3) Hatsukoi Shimai

This series, with two volumes out now in Japanese with a third around the corner,and one out any day in English, is so stereotypically “Yuri” that it hurts. Like The Last Uniform it is about love among students at an all-girl’s school. Unlike The Last Uniform, the girls actually get together, with admissions of love and kissing (necking, even) and all the stuff that so frequently is missing from schoolgirl Yuri. And it has Touko-sensei, whose inappropriate and unethical relationsip with Akiho is my most favorite couple in the series. :-) When they get together, this series goes up a rank. Third place for this Yuri Hime serial where the girl actually *gets* the girl.

2) Hayate x Blade

In reality, there is only one lesbian character in this series. But there are dozens of couples. Hitsugi and Shizuku, Kiji and Michi, Akira and Sae, Momoka and Isuzu…the list goes on and on. But above all of them, Jun, with her openly proclaimed love and desire for women and Hayate with her openly proclaimed love and desire for Ayana, make this baka school/action/comedy win for Yuri fans everywhere. With Hayashiya Shizuru at the helm, you can be sure to get laughs and Yuri love aplenty.

Envelope please…this year’s winner for best Yuri Manga in the Japanese language is….

1) Aoi Hana

Technically, this book was published right at the end of 2006, but I bought, read and reviewed it in the beginning of 2007. Sweet Blue Flowers is yet another schoolgirl Yuri story. With a simple, quiet feel, an understated realism and touching, interesting characters, this story, like Hatsukoi Shimai is practically a poster child for the genre. I was honestly hoping to have Volume 3 by now to review, but I’ll be sure to pick it up asap in Tokyo. Fumi and Yasuko’s relationship has few fireworks, but the drama is solid. For taking the same old story and doing something *good* with it, Shimura Takako’s Aoi Hana takes top prize.

We have one winner from the boy’s side – Iono-sama Fanatics and one from the girls’ side – Aoi Hana. How balanced we are here at Okazu!

Tomorrow – the final countdown for the year! Bring popcorn!