Archive for the English Manga Category


Yuri Manga: Broken Angels, Volume 1

February 2nd, 2006

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.





Yuri Manga: Steady Beat, Volume 1

January 11th, 2006

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. ^_^





Yuri Manga: Negima! Volume 8

January 6th, 2006

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. :-)

 





Ouran High School Host Club, Manga Volume 3 (Guest Review by Sean G.)

November 25th, 2005

Today’s review is once again written by Guest Reviewer and Yuri fan extraordinaire, Sean Gaffney.

***

I’ve been enjoying a manga from Viz, Ouran High School Host Club. The basic premise is that a high school girl is mistaken for a man by the school’s Host Club, a group of bishounen parodies that walk the earth. They induct her into the club, and then resolve to keep her secret after it’s revealed (she wasn’t really hiding it, she just dresses in men’s clothing). The club itself seems designed to part high school girls from their money by pandering to their fantasies.

The manga is filled with yaoi parodies. The two twins are Fred and George from Harry Potter in Japanese clothing, and Hunny and Takashi are a cross between Momiji and Hatori from Fruits Basket and the couple from CLAMP’s Suki. Everyone at some point plays gay for the girls, who all go “SQUEEEEEEEEEE!” just like American yaoi fangirls do. :)

In any case, in Volume 3, Haruhi (our heroine) is accosted by 3 members of the nearby Saint Roberia Women’s Institute White Lily Club (also known as the Zuka Club). They’re the female counterparts to our heroes, and Zuka is short for Takarazuka. The club is known for their dramatic productions. Naturally, the Host Club immediately thinks one thing about these girls: “L-L-Lesbians!?” (Something which, for once, isn’t denied by the girls, at least not in this volume).

They insist they will get Haruhi to join their club instead, and the Host Club are worried, as they’ve wondered before, what with Haruhi wearing male clothing and enjoying the attention of the women who go to the Club, if she’s a lesbian.

This is only one chapter of the volume, but the chapter ends declaring that the Lily Club is a ‘new rival!’, so I presume we’ll see them again. The manga is quite funny, being a broad parody of yaoi and bishounen cliches, with this chapter also parodying yuri. The back says it’s for Hana-Kimi fans, but it reminded me more of Greenwood.

–SG
Viz’s footnote: Lily = YURI!

***

Erica here again: I noted some interesting things about this manga when I read it. Notably, the girls of the Zuka Club appear in regular school girl uniforms, but they are imagined by Haruhi and the guys in full-blown Takarazuka outfits. ^_^

And it’s kind of amusing that fans of Hana-Kimi, in which a girl dresses like a boy to gain access to an exclusive boy’s school in order to be with the guy she likes, are assumed to want to read a story about another girl who dresses like a boy and goes to a boy’s school. Now…what kind of person might like that kind of story, in which the major feature is a girl in a suit? I wonder…. Maybe I ought to have someone do a story like that for Yuri Monogatari. ^_^

Again, my thanks to Sean for his guest review!





Mahou Sensei Negima, Manga Volumes 6 and 7, Guest Review by Sean G. (English)

October 18th, 2005

Once again, we bring you a guest review of Negima! Magister Negi Magi by the redoubtable Sean Gaffney! Yaaaaaay! (Say this last bit in a Kermit the Frog from the Muppet Show voice.) Sean’s review is quite timely, because as you know, I loathe Akamatsu’s work and didn’t feel like writing anything today. :-)

Let me take this opportunity to thank Sean, also, for having been one of the most AMAZING staffers we had at Onna!. He was a whirlwind, handling not only the panels, worksops and demos, but also stepping in to handle many of the Programming events, which freed me to do important things like tell people where to find paper and pens and interview for 80 minutes with people who quoted me for less than 20 words. LOL Sean, you have my eternal thanks. No foolin’.

Without further ado, here is Sean’s review of Negima, Volumes 6 and Volume 7:

The manga and anime Rurouni Kenshin is known for its Kyoto arc, which is generally considered to be lightyears ahead of the other arcs. Likewise, Negima really steps up with its own Kyoto arc, dropping most of the comedy for a Volume to focus on action and drama, as Negi and the others are under attack from their rivals.

The action is fairly well drawn, with little of the confusion that mars series like Trigun. We get a few more girls finding out Negi is a wizard, though Mana and Ku Fei don’t seem very surprised. Negi’s secret is still one of the worst kept ever.

Then there’s the Yuri. Aside from the ‘grasping at straws’ couples (“Look! Kaede is holding Yue in her arms after rescuing her! It must be love!”), there’s still just Konoka and Setsuna. Luckily, that’s more than enough.

Setsuna in this volume reveals her other big secret – she’s half demon, and has big wings. Setsuna is convinced this will make everyone loathe and fear her. But these aren’t bat-like wings, they’re big, fluffy bird wings – everyone notes they look cool. So Setsuna races off to save Konoka, who notes that they make Setsuna look like an angel. OK, self-worth crisis over, mostly.

(In the Negima anime, they kiss. But the Negima anime is awful in so many other ways that I can’t recommend it even to the staunchest yuri fan unless they just get one episode, watch the kiss, then delete it.)

In Volume 7, there’s less of a focus on the two. However, we see Konoka being told that with training, she could be a very powerful mage. She chooses to begin the training, and wants Setsuna as her partner.

This is the best part of the volume. Konoka relates to Negi that Setsuna says that girls shouldn’t kiss, but she wants Setsuna to be her partner, so is there another way to make a pact? It’s very clear from Setsuna’s denials that what she meant was that when the two of them kiss, it shouldn’t be just for a simple magical pact, but for something deeper. Her expressions are very cute.

One last thing to note on the yuri front is Kazumi, the sly newspaper girl, who is clearly amused at Setsuna’s blushing denials, and notes that ‘It’s just a kiss. Girls our age experiement with that stuff all the time’. Which again is a nice bone to throw to those seeking more yuri in the series than Konoka and Setsuna. OK, it’s a tiny fragment of a bone.

Negima continues to be far more interesting than it should be, considering the artist and all the shounen fanservice. And indeed the 10-year-old hero. Despite all that, it’s still a page-turner, and more and more characters are gaining depth as they get focused on.

Oh yes, and in the Translation Notes, Del Rey will tell you what a paipan is.

Erica here: Once again – thank Sean! (Insert wild applause, again in Muppet Show style)