Archive for the English Manga Category


Yuri Manga: Aria, Volumes 1,2 and 3 (English)

February 8th, 2005

Today is a first for Okazu. Never before have I reviewed a manga from the translated English version that I haven’t read in the original Japanese at least once. What is this world coming to?

I’d been meaning to get around to Aria for a long time. I’d run into the title a few times on some of the Japanese yuri weblogs I scan, and a few people, notably Mr. Sean Gaffney, had pointed me in its general direction. But until very recently, I simply hadn’t gotten around to it. By the time I did, the first three volumes were translated by ADV Manga (here are links to Volumes 1, 2 and 3 on Amazon), so I just picked it up in English. I know it’s completely snobby-pretentious of me, but I feel like I’m cheating. ^_^

In any case, Aria is, like Yokohama Shopping Log, an “ahhh” story. The little slice-of-life scenes are pretty much all about enjoying the moment. The overall setup of the story works well to help foster this feeling.

The main character of Aria is a gondolier (undine) in training in the town of Neo Venezia. Akari is a sweet girl who appears to enjoy all seasons, and nearly anything life throws at her. She is accompanied for most of her adventures by another trainee, Aika, who in any other series would probably be her rival. Akari’s mentor is an older undine, Alicia, who Aika is crushing on pretty heavily.

In Volume 3, we are introduced to another undine-in-training, a prodigy neophyte named Alice, and she takes up the rival position…for about three seconds, until Akari’s “my pace” personality sucks the will to resist out of her. LOL

In general, the yuri is very low-key, as befits the entire series, with Aika’s schoolgirl crush on Alicia flaring every now and again into a severe case of akogare/desire. And, if we turn the yuri goggles waaaay up, (but keep those rose-colored lenses in place) you can easily see something between Alice and Akari developing. Maybe. One day. ^_^

What really makes Aria work, though, is the sense of whimsy that fills the pages. As Akari takes us on a tour of the canals of Neo Venezia, we see wonderful things and have lovely experiences – moments of magic pop up again and again as we travel along with her. From a fox’s wedding (which was bizarrely appropriate around my house right now, as “we” have acquired a sudden kitsune obsession) to a lone sakura tree illuminated with electricity in a field, every chapter is filled with some moment of life that was totally worth having been there for.

The art is easy on the eyes, the characters are all likeable…which is really creepy. Even the cats don’t bother me. The *only* problem with the book that I can think of is that all the main female characters’ names start with “A” which was moderately confusing, since I started the series with Vol. 3 and it took me sometime to sort everyone out. (Akari, Alice, Aika, Alicia, Akira….I mean really…) To make things a tad more awkward, the character designs are all similar, so Alicia and Akari look kind of alike while Aika is a sort of younger Akira. It all hurt my head, for about ten minutes until they all fell in place.

But I’m really, really stretching. For normal people who are reading these volumes in order, this won’t be a problem. ^_^

The usual rants about translating honorifics…they don’t. “-sama” becomes “Miss” and all the others disappear, which makes me sad. Most of the sound effects are added in near the original Japanese, and some of the asides as well. If it was too hard to cover over, ADV took the easy way out and just put the English close by. Cheaters. Actually, this doesn’t bother me at all, I’m just thinking of the 64,247,897 hours I spent redoing complex backgrounds on Rica ‘tte Kanji!? and I get jealous. ^_^

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 8
Characters – 8
Yuri – 4
Overall – 8

Nice art, lovely relaxing story, cute chracters, great historical atmosphere and a little light yuri, Aria gets the gold star for English manga this week.

In fact, I liked it so much, I’ll add it to the Yuricon Shop Manga page this week!

And, if you’ve read Aria and want to chat about it (which I would LOVE to do!) don’t forget to join us on the Yuricon Mailing List!





Yuri Manga: Chirality (English)

September 2nd, 2004

chiralityWhat do you say about an artist who likes his women well-endowed, mostly or partially naked, and shiny, as if they have been simonized? I guess you say, “Oh, look it’s Urushihara Satoshi.” (And many thanks to alert reader Tatjana who noticed that I mistyped his name!)

Urushihara has a long history of drawing women with women, from random artbook pieces to full-blown manga stories. Chirality stands out as one of the strongest of his many Yuri-friendly works. Translated by CPM Manga, by 2010 this series wass out of print, but you can still find it, sometimes. It’s worth looking for! As you know, I strongly recommend you actually buy your Yuri and support it in the only way that is meaningful.

The story is shounen sci-fi stuff – in the future humans are being atttacked by GMs, a kind of virus machine produced by an uber-machine whose original job was to protect humanity. To fight (and hopefully reform/uncorrupt) Gaia, several beings were created with that contained all of the DNA of every living creature in the world. These beings were called Adam and Eve.

Of course, nothing is ever easy – Adam became corrupted by Gaia and Eve became bonded to a young human girl, Shiori, in her “immature” form. As “Carol Guardian,” Eve vows to protect Shiori at all costs. Time passes and Carol and Shiori meet once again.

Carol is able to transform into a male form at first to protect Shiori, but when a mishap occurs and Carol accidentally injurs Shiori, she finds herself unable to transform. Meanwhile, Shiori begins to remember their original meeting, and realizes that she is in love with Carol, in any form. In fact, more in her female form.

Yes, they do get together, in a very real sex-filled way. And Shiori and Carol not only protect each other and everyone they love, but they save the world while they’re at it. Plot-wise, the story is a little sketchy, the science is very bad (and mostly organized around the women wearing clothes that make them look naked) but as a fun sci-fi Yuri story, where the story is really a frame for the Yuri, Chirality is pretty good.

CPM published Chirality originally as a series of pamphlet comic books, but you can find it as a set of four graphic novels – unless you obsess about the cover art, the GNs are a better deal and a little easier to find. Despite its age, this particular GN holds up pretty well – the translation is fine, the cost is reasonable.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 7
Characters – 9
Service – 8
Yuri – 10

Overall – 8

For hardcore Carol and Shiori fans, Urushihara did do a follow-up story about Rachel Shiori Guardian, Carol and Shiori’s daughter, and her sempai/lover Kaede, in a book called Ragnarock City (link totally Not Safe For Work). It’s mostly torso shots of naked girls – not much by way of story.

Once more, from alert reader Tatjana, Ragnarock City is available in a German language version, for all you Yuri fans who can read German. ^_^





Yuri Manga: WORKS

April 23rd, 2004

100% Yuri Manga for Yuri Fans

Now that you know what it takes to publish a doujinshi, I want to introduce you to ALC Publishing’snewest translated Yuri manga, WORKS, by Eriko Tadeno. Tadeno-san was one of the Guests of Honor at Yuricon 2003, and has already told us that she is planning on being there for Yuricon 2005 in Tokyo, so we’re very glad to be able to introduce her book to Yuri manga fans around the world!

Ever since I first saw it, I felt that WORKS exemplified the kind of Yuri manga I wanted people to be able to read in English. Yes, it can easily be seen as Yuri hentai, or lesbian erotica, or what have you, but to my mind, it’s simply top-notch Yuri manga.

WORKS is an anthology of four stories and three short gag comics that were published in Phryne, Anise and MIST magazines over a period of several years. All of these magazines are now defunct, and the Japanese-language version of WORKS is sold out – so right now the only place you can find these stories are in ALC’s translated version.

As I mentioned in an earlier entry, I define “pure” Yuri as manga with a lesbian storylne, written by a lesbian, for an audience of women. By this definition, WORKS is “pure” Yuri. As Tadeno-san says in her “Freetalk” (written especially for the English-language edition) when she began drawing these types of stories, there wasn’t even any kind of name for what she was doing, and she was one of very few women doing it. And, along wth Rica Takashima and Yamaji Ebine, I think that Tadeno-san is *still* one of the few women out there drawing “pure” Yuri manga.

The stories in WORKS range from the usual sempai-kohai romance, to coming out, to my personal favorite – a two-part office romance, which I particularly like because one of the characters is middle-aged. Look, Ma, lesbians DO live to be older than 25!  (And, in fact, Tadeno-san has drawn many stories with older couples, middle-aged characters, and the usual, younger ages…one more thing I like about her work. It’s *not* all schoolgirls, all the time.)

The art is clean, the stories are fun, the sex is nice – the positives in WORKS are very positive. There are few negatives, however. One of the big problems with anthologies is the feeling that the story stops as soon as it gets started, so the characters can have sex. Well, depending on who you are, that might be seen as a positive. :-) In this case, I began to like some of the characters and would have liked to see more – particularly Takako-san from the “My Sister’s Wedding” and Yuka-san from “I Love You The Way You Are” and “My Sweet One”.

The only other real negative, IMHO, is that the gag comics are really not very funny. But that happens. The guest comic, on the other hand, *is* very funny, but you have to have really read the last two stories closely to get the jokes. No skimming through to the sexy bits. ^_^

My obvious bias aside, I genuinely think that this, along with Yamaji Ebine and Rica Takashima’s works, can be seen as genuinely lesbian Yuri – a rare and precious thing that should be spread through Yuri fandom. ;-)





Ray Manga (English)

March 2nd, 2004

RAY – Yoshitomi Akihito (the creator of Blue Drop)

Think Black Jack as a girl.

A young woman is almost killed in a violent attack on the street. She wakes up in an operating room, just before a mysterious man with a scar on his face (and strangely muti-colored hair, nudge, nudge) perfoms an emergency transplant and saves her life. (Cue mysterious music…)

Ten years pass and Ray is now a rogue surgeon herself, performing impossible transplants in illegal, unethical and wildly unrealistic situations. Her involvement is mostly with street kids, and her skills seems to be focused on the cute women caught up in the gang life. Obviously, I approve.

This story is silly with a captial ‘S’. But there’s insto-bonding with all the non-terminally wounded cute girls, and at least two kisses, lots of guns and girls and kidney transplantations on the fly. And no, I’m not kidding.

The art’s pretty decent, the story is not, and the characters are strictly two-dimensional strong/silent/deep types. Don’t hope for any intense emotional relationships here, but maybe there’ll be some sex. ^_^

Ratings:

Art- 8
Story – 4 (or 8, depending what you like)
Characters – 8
Yuri – 5

Overall – 7





Yuri Anime/Manga: Revolutionary Girl Utena

January 30th, 2004


Things I’m Not Going to Write About
Part 4

Shoujo Kaukumei Utena (Revolutionary Girl Utena

Created by Ikuhara Kunihiko and Be-Papas, this surreal series is really four slightly different stories, each of which explores a different facet of the characters.

– The manga is the most straightforwardly “magical girl” entity. The only yuri in it is Anthy and Utena’s ambiguous, but intense relationship.

– For the TV series, this was upped a notch, with the addition of sexuality as a whole as a separate subplot. The TV series explores yuri, yaoi, intergenerational, incestuous and yes, even straight, sexuality, casting few judgements about any of it. In addition, Juri is added to the yuri mix, giving yuri fans yet another uber-cool competent character to admire.

– The movie manga is a step sideways, drawing back to the initial Anthy/Utena relatonship, but nodding to proto-yuri novelist Yoshiya Nobuko, and evoking a more intimate feel, since the story is really about the two girls – and their personal quest.

– The Utena movie is a step in the opposite direction, opening the world up to a kind of meta-surreality. Again, it’s all about Anthy and Utena, but for once, the subtext is made overt in the infamous, but really very cool, lesbian street luge scene.

Artistically, Utena takes a little getting used to, with its constant nods backwards to early Yuri pioneers Yoshiya Nobuko and Ikeda Riyoko.

(The Marimite anime is doing the same thing to Utena, with eyecatch visuals and music that are strongly reminiscent of the Utena eyecatches, not to mention the striking detail of the birdcage-shaped greenhouse.)

The television series also spins all the conventions of “magical girl” anime out of proportion, forcing the viewer to create their own meanings for the symbols that inhabit Ohtori.. But for all that, it definitely holds the current #2 place as poster-child Yurii.

The movie is a whole ‘nother thing altogether. Hyper-real, with both art and story completely out of proportion to any other genre or style, it reads as, either a bizarre acid trip, or to us literature majors, a simple allegory. (Here’s the literal sentence people seem to completely fail to understand: “Utena is the vehicle by which Anthy escapes Ohtori.” Got it *now*?)

Amazingly, there are people who have seen the movie and *still* don’t think that Anthy and Utena are a couple! LOL Don’t you wonder what they saw?

Ratings:

Yuri – 9
Art – 8
Story – 8
Music – 9
Characters – 10
Overall – 9