I was so not going to publish an entry today, and then Sean Gaffney, god among men, sent me this! So here you go – a new review by our beloved semi-regular guest reviewer Sean.

Negima! 9, at first glance, appears to be a rather uneventful volume. We get introductions to four girls (well, three and a half), a couple of others are developed a bit, there’s lots of wacky comedy of errors, gratuitous nudity, and people getting punched for being perverts. All very typical.

Of course, this is probably one of the most important volumes, for several reasons.

First of all, this volume sets up the School Festival. As of March 2006, Negima is about to finish Volume 14 in Japan, and we’re still only in Day 2 of 3 of this Festival. It’s a HUGE arc, and this volume starts it up.

Secondly, we meet Chao Lingshen, even if we don’t find out much about her (she’s the one-half). She’s brilliant and mysterious, and also wanted by most of the school for various crimes. I suspect her plot will end up being one of the ‘end games’ in the entire manga. Plus, she’s Chinese and wears her hair in odangos, but has a small bust and an IQ in the 200s, which makes a nice change from the Shampoo stereotype. :)

In terms of yuri, we continue to have some amusing bits with our favorite canonical half-couple, Konoka and Setsuna. Setsuna is blushing and stammering, Konoka is oblivious. Setsuna sees Konoka in underwear, she gets very embarrassed. We’re
sort of in a comedy holding pattern here.

Of interest, though, is another ‘non-canon’ couple. We meet the class’s resident ghost, Sayo, a cute yet klutzy girl who was murdered in the 1940s but who still haunts the classroom. After being ‘outed’ by the class, she finds that she can actually be seen by reporter girl Kazumi, possibly as they sit next to each other. The interaction between the two is cute, and naturally since Kazumi’s the one who can see her, Sayo rarely leaves her side after this. Many fans like these two as a yuri couple, despite the obvious problems (such as one partner being non-corporeal), but it’s pure fan speculation.

This is a good if not great volume of Negima, but it does set up the Festival, and there are some very good stories coming up in that. Recommended.

Thanks Sean! The way you describe this almost makes me want to read it – which is quite a feat, let me tell you! :-)

Today’s review is once again by Sean Gaffney, because I am utterly exhausted and seem to be coming down with a cold. Sean is my hero.

Just got a new manga from Tokyopop, Broken Angels, by Setsuri Tsuzuki. The basic premise is that a girl at the local high school has incredible power to control water, and uses it when solving the problem of those around her, or defending herself against threats. She’s intriguing, and insists on dressing in the male uniform, but has all the sexuality of a throw rug.

However, then there’s the Class President. She has the best grades in class, is gorgeous… and is completely insane. After dedicating herself to the heroine after the first chapter, she proceeds to try to lure her to bathhouses, and dresses in the school nurse’s French Maid outfit (?!) to feed her lunch. I will admit she’s not 100% lesbian; when a guy accidentally gropes her breast, she responds by groping his crotch. She also declares herself a fan of group sex. She is a huge freakey freak, and I haven’t immediately loved someone as much as I do her in quite a while.

There’s a little more yuri in the book later, as an underclassman gets a crush on the heroine and demands they exchange class pins.

This isn’t the focus of the book, of course. The focus is our heroine, her amazing powers, her mysterious past, and hiding this from the rest of the world. The yuri is used as a comedy spice. That being said, it achieves an excellent balance by doing so, and I found the first volume read very fast. There are apparently five volumes of this series (Kowarehajimeta Tenshi Tachi in Japan), so I definitely look forward to more.

Recommended. And yes, there’s nudity, so throw in a highish service rating as well. :)

–SG

Once again, thank you Sean! This sounds like a lot of fun and I’ll be sure to look for it.

As I mentioned on the Yuricon Mailing List, I’d been meaning to mention Steady Beat for a while, but just kept forgetting. In fact, I’d stare at my “to review” list and say, “Gee, wasn’t there something I wanted to add to this?” But thanks to Erin, and her review on her LJ, I am not only motivated, but have remembered long enough to mention it, at last. Thank you, Erin!

First off, this is the first “American manga” I’ve purchased (if you don’t count publishing Yuri Monogatari that is.) I bought my copy at Onna!, and didn’t get to read it for several months afterwards. The art is, IMHO, typical of American-style manga art, with more rounded everything, less clean lines, and an uneven grasp of panel structure. But it’s not unpleasant to look at.

The plot, such as it is, involves Leah, a slightly underachieving (compared with her perfect older sister, anyway) high school student finding a love letter addressed to her sister Sarai. The letter is signed “Love, Jessica” and it’s not a confession letter so much as a “let’s meet again in the usual place” letter. The first volume is built around Leah attempting to figure out what the deal with her sister is, while not getting in trouble with her over-protective and over-critical mother. Somewhere in the middle of this Leah ends up meeting a guy, which is assumably our eventual love interest. The volume ends with a dramatic confession by Sarai to us, out of Leah’s hearing that the answer to Leah’s question is “yes.” Said darkly and with great big sad eyes.

The book is not bad, really. It’s supposed to be a bit “wacky hijinks” and goofy, and there were definite funny moments. The complication of the perfect sister with the unforgivable flaw is a bit melodramatic, and I think it might be worth emailing the author Rivkah and asking her to make sure the girl gets the girl, as a preventative measure. :-) It’s hard to say whether plot and characters are developed – or even developable – as the first volume is short and no new volumes have been released as yet.

All that having been said, it’s a nice story, and I’m all for manga fans expanding their horizons and supporting non-Japanese artists…especially as this sort of thing is clearly the wave of the next decade.

Ratings:

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

Overall – 6

If you’re looking for manga in English with Yuri themes, you could definitely do worse than this. ^_^

Once again, I am pleased to present a guest review by Sean Gaffney, in order to save myself any but the most minimal effort today. It’s been a loooong week. :-)

This is a fairly sedate, but good, volume of Negima!. We get a mix of plot, sex comedy (mostly nudity…) and fighting. In fact, the one drawback is that the fight takes up the entire second half of the book. Good if you like seeing fights drawn out, I guess.

Every volume we seem to examine one or two new girls in the class of 31. This time it’s Chizuru Naba, who’s similar to Mutsumi from Love Hina but less airheaded. She’s very motherly (and yes, has the biggest breasts in the class – 94 cm), and takes to Kotarou (the dog boy who makes a return here and is pretty much a semi-regular after this arc) like a duck to water.

For fans of Mai-HiME CG art, she, like Shizuru, likes to practice the art of sticking leeks up people’s butts to cure what ails them. And, like Shizuru, she gets a bit carried away doing this.

The other student we meet is Chizuru and Ayaka’s roomie, Natsumi Murakami. She’s rather plain and has freckles, and thus feels inadequate most of the time, especially since she’s rooming with two big-busted beauties. She mostly exists as a straight woman in this volume… hopefully she’ll get more to do later.

Meanwhile, Negi is training with Evangeline in a special time-controlled environment… which Asuna and a bunch of others promptly break into. But that’s OK, as it leads into Negi finally telling Asuna about his tragic past. It is indeed rather sad, epecially the guilt he’s carrying around from it. We also see the entourage starting to try to learn magic, though they’re all bad at it with the exception of the experienced Setsuna.

After this we get the meat of the plot, as the demon from Negi’s past (gosh, he shows up right after Negi revealed it) shows up, kidnaps the girls, and challenges Negi to a duel. Kotarou joins in, and the duel is, as I said, about 65 pages long. Negi loses and everyone dies. Wait, no. Negi wins. Sorry, got confused.

There’s no yuri (OK, a villain zaps Setsuna by disguising herself as a naked Konoka, but frankly, Setsuna doesn’t have much time to get aroused before she’s knocked out). Nevertheless, I’d say it’s a solid volume. Still more interesting than Love Hina.

Thank you Sean for another review! While there is no “new” Yuri, it does look like the resident cute Yuri couple have some staying power. We can all hope for one decent fanfic and a few cute pictures repeatedly endlessly on the Yuri picture boards. :-)