Two quick things before we wade into today’s review:

One, I want to thank everyone who has bought items off the Yuri Wishlist this year with special thanks to Ted, Dan and Eric. I’m usually a little uncomfortable accepting gifts and everyone’s generosity leaves me a bit breathless. But I believe that accepting gifts graciously is the responsibility of the receiver so, from the bottom of my heart, thank you. Thank you all, and especially those three gentlemen. Because of you, Okazu keeps rolling along and I can have clothes and food, too. :-)

All orders between now and 12/23 will go out on the 24th. After that, I’m suspending shipping for a few weeks while I am out of the country. This also goes for all third-party orders for alc_pub items through Amazon. Items purchased through Amazon directly other third party vendors are not affected by this, unless they are on backorder and then there’s a whole other set of issues.

That’s it for my announcements. Today’s review is entirely because of something Dan said today in an email – that Okazu allows him to “groom his inner LFB.” ^-^It’s such a great line, I wanted to do something especially servicey for him today. And looking over my pile of things to review, Key Princess Story: Eternal Alice Rondo, Volume 1 certainly seems to fit the bill.

When I originally read this manga as it ran monthly in Dengeki Daioh I was struck by the sensation that Kaishaku was flailing pretty desperately during this series, in both art and story. Month after month, I slogged through the chapters and basically never figured out what the heck was going on (aside from the obvious.) It came as no surprise to me to find that the story makes no more sense in English than it did in Japanese. Eternal Alice Rondo is simply a shitty story. ^_^

The story is basically the same as that of the anime – there are two famous “Alice” books that everyone knows and a third that was never written. The third lives in the hearts of girls who fight each other for fill-in-the-blank-reason. Aruto, a “nice guy” who loves the Alice books and wants to write his own Alice stories, bumbles into the magic world where these girls fight, and finds he has the ability to read and copy the stories in each girls’ heart. He does this to collect the whole of the third, unwritten book.

Of course that’s not what the story is about. The story is really about the unhealthy obsession Aruto’s sister has for him, her attempts to “get closer to him” while he fights off interest in or from every single female in this female-heavy series. Each girl pretty much represents a fetish, something Kaishaku does with regularity. Aruto’s actual love interest, Arisu, is a dead ringer for his idea of what “Alice” looks like. She seems pretty normal, so you just know there’s going to be a catch. (And there is, but it doesn’t happen in this volume.)

The Yuri fetish is represented in Volume 1 by Kisa, Aruto’s sister Kirara’s bestest friend. Kisa is a monomaniac, as all lesbians are, and incapable of expressing her feelings, as all lesbians are. So she seems pretty realistic. Except for the whole magical girl fighting giant key thing. I have yet to see a lesbian do that. :-) Because Kirara is also a monomaniac, she never notices Kisa’s feelings and because they are both girls Kisa gets away with a lot, without giving anything away. But the relationship is destined to go nowhere. I predict a single farewell kiss as Kisa dies in a future volume. Because we likes our Yuri characters hopeless, crazy and/or dead, yes we do. ;-)

I’m not really torn about Eternal Alice Rondo – I always thought the story sucked. Sucked when I read it the first time, it sucked as an anime and isn’t any better in English. ^_^

Ratings:

Art – Aruto’s hair was criminal – 4 at its best
Story – …seriously? – 4 at best
Characters – Other than Kirara – 5 Kirara – 2
Yuri – 3
Service – your pick, but the incestophiles win – 9

Overall – 4

I finally had a chance to open up the bag of manga I bought at Yurisai to sit down and read it, and lo and behold, I find I had bought Najica Blitz Tactics from Bill at Anime Castle. Why? I have no idea. And so today I sat down to read what is clearly a plotless piece of junk.

You know how some people have good gaydar? I actually do, but that’s not the point here. The point is that I also, inexplicably, have exceptionally good Yuridar. I can pick a book quite randomly off the shelf at Book-Off and find that, magically, there is some Yuri in it. And not just Yuri in which two women are near each other a lot and they seem to like one another, no I mean – Yuri as in a raging lesbian who sleeps her way through the book. Yet another magic lesbian power for Erica. Woot.

Let’s face it – no one in their right mind cares about Najica. It’s so junk that it makes other junk look good. (On the other hand, last night I watched the end of ICE, which was so bad that it made Najica look good, so everything’s relative.)

The plot is thin and silly – Najica and her non-human sidekick Lila are agents for CRI, a top-secret perfume company.

…

Should I continue?

Okay, then. Together they wear short skirts and fight against corporate espionage, random baddies doing who knows what and occasionally save a small European kingdom along the way.

In one of the chapters, Najica is sent to assasinate a competitor who is flooding the market with cheap off-brand copies of a high-end perfume her company makes. (Noooooo! the wife says) She tracks him to a casino, where’s she’s hit on by some young jerk. The competitor disappears, but Najica finds him trussed up, because he had the young jerk’s parents killed back in the day. Najica sympathizes, but won’t get paid if she doesn’t do the work, so she’s the one who shoots him. As it turns out (I know you’re waiting for it) the jerk is actually a woman. As Najica and Lila drive away, young, female, but no less jerky than before, jerk runs after Najica trying to get her name, her number, her body…bwa-wa-waaaah.

In other news, Najica and Lila have that typical fanboy-Yuri relationship which implies that they might have some feelings for one another if, say, Lila was human. But she isn’t, so any emotions you see are entirely you projecting. Najica is clearly fond of Lila. Any other emotions you see are entirely you projecting.

Ratings:

Art – 6
Story – 2
Characters – 4
Yuri – 3
Service – 8

Overall – 4

It’s crap. It’s not even so bad it’s good. But it’s still better than ICE.

I have been holding off reviewing Venus Versus Virus. For many reasons. Before I get into them, let me thank the good folks at Seven Seas for a review copy…and let me apologize in advance for what are going to be some harsh comments….

Venus Versus Virus has no Yuri. None. Not a single honest emotional connection between any of the characters, much less love or desire between the two female protagonists.

There are people who say it is Yuri – they are wrong. There is splash page art, in which the two leads are draped over one another. And there is a moment, in which two of Sumire’s friends misinterpret something she says to *assume* a lesbian interpretation where none was intended (and how droll and “Three’s Company” is that?) And, during a crisis, Sumire, scared out of her freaking wits, throws herself into Lucia’s arms.

None of these equal Yuri.

If you come across a mention of the Yuri in VVV, you are reading something written by a person who cannot discrimate between women who love/desire one another (we call those “lesbians”) and women who are posed upon one another for money.

Let’s revisit what “Yuri” is – the representation in anime, manga or doujinshi of a woman in love with, or who desires, another woman. It’s *possible* that Lucia and Sumire could, potentially, someday in the future, fall in love with one another. Possible, not probable. Highly unlikely, in fact, since Sumire is straight and spends much of the series longing after a male upperclassman. But the point is – two women who are sempai/kouhai does not make a series Yuri. Two women in the same frame, sharing a experience, does not make it Yuri. By that standard, I and every female friend I have ever had, regardless of our personal and sexual preferences, are somehow a couple.

Aside from this, the manga itself is simply very…okay. At best. Of the many Dengeki Comics to have brought to the US, this is one of the least good I’ve read.

The story, such as it is, deals with demons that infest humans and take them over (the “Virus” of the unfortunate title.) Lucia runs a clothes shop by day, but her true occupation is to exterminate these Viruses, thus making her the Venus of the title. Lucia wears Goth-Loli getup, packs a gun and wrears an eye-patch which *ought* to be enough to pique my interest, but she doesn’t. I think it’s because she has the eyepatch over the wrong eye for her to appeal to me. (No, I don’t know *why* it matters – but, yes, it matters! ^_^;)

Sumire is the typical schoolgirl until she ends up in the wrong place at the wrong time, between Lucia’s gun and a Virus. When she’s shot, she somehow takes on the anti-Virus properties of Lucia’s weapon, and in doing so, becomes a magnet for the Viruses and a weapon against them. And if she had the least little inkling of personality…we might even care.

This series has some potential for some good fights, but eschews it for extended mutation scenes with extra oozing and gloating/drooling.

I want to say that I think Seven Seas did as good a job as they could with this mess – the translation/adaptation is decent enough, but it is not their finest work. The art is dark, a little rough and hard to follow, and the paper they chose makes it all blur together. There are even a few typos, which are inevitable from time to time.

In general, of all the Seven Seas books I’ve read, this is simply the least good in every possible way. As I said in my review of the VVV anime: “This is a classic case of the “Newtype Effect” in which two otherwise straight women are deployed draped over one another to play the Yuri-service card, when there is no Yuri and neither character is remotely lesbian. Not that this will stop fans from insisting.”

Ratings:

Art – 5
Story – 5
Characters – 4
Yuri – 1 (if you don’t care that there really isn’t any, but you can make it work in your head)
Service – 6

Overall – 5