Archive for the Bruce P Category


Yuri Manga: R+ Princess (ロケットプリンセス) Guest Review by Boooo~ce P

October 31st, 2013

rprinYou know what zombie Bruce eats for breakfast? Traaaaaiiiinnns.
We think that’s a hysterical joke, so feel free to laugh like you understand it. Now, while you’re doing what I say, enjoy this special Halloween Guest Review by Booooo~ce.

There are no zombies.

I actually used to believe that. It was a matter of logic and rational thinking. But on a recent rainy morning in Tokyo I was forced to confront the darker truth. Because there, in a Lawson convenience store in Ikebukuro, next to the puffed potato cubes, rising up from the grave, was a brand new bargain-priced 2013 imprint of the manga R+ Princess (ロケットプリンセス) by Anzai Nobuyuki. Originally serialized in 1994, R+ Princess was one of the first Yuri manga I ever read. When I buried it in the backyard so many years ago I figured it was gone for good. Its creepy reappearance has no rational explanation. If you see it, run. If you read it, it will eat your brain.

Anzai Nobuyuki is not an obscure one-shot wonder. He achieved considerable success in the 90’s as the author of the 33-volume manga Flame of Recca, and later with 15 volumes of MÄR. R+ Princess came earlier, before the art lessons. If there ever were any art lessons. But he had an important story to tell–complete with a Rocket Princess and a Caterpillar Queen and so much more–and learning to draw takes, you know, effort.

Kohime, part ditzy high school girl, part ditzy cyborg, suddenly shows up in town. She appears sketchy and oddly proportioned, but in this neighborhood no one notices. She’s equipped with a rocket backpack and has a right cross that can flatten Kango, the toughest lug in the school, whose dysfunctional family Kohime ends up moving in with. This pair is the love interest. They hit each other a lot. And at school they have to deal with Komura-san, the student council vice president and head of the Committee for Discipline. She has an armband, a whip, and a slavish hench-geek, everything needed to make her girlish heart flutter. Komura-san is delighted to hate Kohime on sight. Psychotic fascists require a rival they can lose to and she knows it.

The Yuri arrives in the form of Mikado, who rollerblades onto the scene with her spiky hair and old-school sukeban outfit, beating up punks who get in her way and planting a big kiss on Kohime. And why wouldn’t she? Kohime has lovely big eyes, sometimes drawn the same size, is able to demolish any guy in the school, and has a cool rocket backpack. Mikado repeatedly bursts blood vessels at the thought of their future life together. Her relentless (and unrewarded) pursuit of the rocket girl touches the heart of the school’s creepy principal, Kango’s grandfather, who likes nothing better than to see his students beat the crap out of each other. He sets up a school-sponsored super no-holds-barred battle, rocket propelled Kohime vs. rollerbladed Mikado. If Mikado wins, she gets to take Kohime home. Mikado, let’s just say, is incentivized. If Kohime wins, she only gets to go home; not much of a prize, but at least she can hit Kango again. Komura-san, who is unable to stay out of anything involving interpersonal violence, has her hench-geek provide Mikado with monstrous diesel-powered caterpillar track rollerblade boots, the better to stomp rocket girl. They do look pretty diabolical, as footwear goes.

But really, Mikado doesn’t qualify as an Evil Psychotic Lesbian. Though proudly lesbian, and happily psychotic, she’s not evil, just highly enthusiastic. Komura-san on the other hand is both evil and psychotic, if not lesbian, so together they make a complete package. When Kohime finally triumphs in the Rocket Princess vs. Caterpillar Queen battle, Mikado and Komura-san are just as happy to get back to plotting future outrages, so everyone wins. It’s… heartwarming.

The story and the characters in R+ Princess could potentially be a lot of low-expectation fun, if handled well. They are not handled well. The art really is nasty–don’t be fooled by the cute cover, apparently subcontracted. Much of the art struggles hard to attain an Ed Roth Rat Fink style, guaranteed to appeal to low/sub-teen boys. This is in fact the audience, which explains the abundance of embarrassing firecracker-in-the-butt type humor. It possibly also explains the manga’s unnatural second life. As long as everyone is getting beaten up and there’s a lot of funny snot coming out of people’s noses, 13 year-olds will love it, literary merits notwithstanding.

Ratings:

Art: A lot of drawing, but no noticeable art.

Story: 4. It had wacky potential until hijacked by the kids who made noises in the back of the class in 8th grade.

Characters: 7. They’d make for a fascinating lunch group, disputing and squeaking in their gurneys.

Yuri: 7. Mikado is actually pretty cool, less of a caricature than you might expect from someone named the Caterpillar Queen. Well, not much less, but still.

Service: 4. Not as much as you might expect. Which doesn’t mean that the non-servicy parts are any less embarrassing to look at, they’re just embarrassing in a different way.

Odor: Substantial. Quite natural after 20 years in the ground, but the first incarnation was no better.

Overall: 4. The cover is cute.

To be fair, R+ Princess was never meant to be read by anyone older than 15, much less treated to an extended analysis. But being fair is no fun at all.

Erica here: Look what I found! You can read at least some two dozen pages of this manga on the official Shounen Sunday Web Manga Museum where, clearly, they think this series is a zombie series, as well. ^_^





YuriTetsu ~ Shiritsu Yurigasaki Joshikou Tetsudobu Manga (ゆりてつ~私立百合ヶ咲女子高鉄道部) – Guest Review by Bruce P

June 19th, 2013

“Once upon a time there were three little sisters,” the Dormouse began in a great hurry; “and their names were Elsie, Lacie, and Tillie; and they lived at the bottom of a well—”‘

This Alice in Wonderland line effectively describes the manga YuriTetsu ~ Shiritsu Yurigasaki Joshikou Tetsudobu (ゆりてつ~私立百合ヶ咲女子高鉄道部) Volume 1, by Matsuyama Seiji. The story involves three little girls (though not sisters) who live at the bottom of a well. They are the Yuritetsu—the Yurigasaki Girl’s High School Railway Club. They recruit a fourth little girl to their club, and go on train trips. But the whole time they never leave their well. Which is to say they travel all around Japan without ever interacting with or even seeing another person, except for one old guy in one panel on one page. Not another living soul in 191 more pages. There are occasionally dim outlines of other people, but these are drawn as indistinct phantoms. Their isolation is truly bizarre. It’s almost as bizarre, though not quite so head-banging, as seeing high school girls drawn as four-year-olds. And these are just two of the many short circuits in Yuritetsu.

The author isn’t inept, he just knows his audience. This isn’t a manga for folks looking to read a good story; that crowd will be somewhere off in the approximately real world reading Aoi Hana, or maybe Asagao to Kase-san. This is a manga for fanboys who like girls, without knowing too much about them, and who like trains, and who pretty much live in wells of their own. Logical consistency can be a major annoyance when all you really want is to see drawings of four-year-old high school girls in swimsuits. And trains. For some, of course, even the trains get in the way.

The story goes like this—Elsie, Lacie, and Tillie, three typical character types (tsundere; food-obsessed wack; quiet computer geek) are the members of the Yuritetsu. They meet Peanut, a new student at Yurigasaki High, and convince her to join the club. Peanut, the girl whose odd pose in the cover illustration suggests she’s just finished reading the manga, is the usual character type that stars in these kinds of quartets, the clueless klutz. Idiocy, so endearing. The girls take trains. They eat ekiben. They go to the beach. They never attend school. The end.

It’s not much of a story, but the story isn’t the point. Yuritetsu is really a travelogue of railway lines in Japan with little girls as your guides and as your companions (isolated as they are from the rest of the world, you don’t even have to share them with anyone). You ride to Hokkaido and stand in the snow; you explore the newly reconstructed Tokyo Station; in a chapter titled “Tetsu-on!” you ride the train to Toyosato and visit the high school where K-ON! was set. And so on. And at the end there are the swimsuit scenes. Ewww. It’s a bubbling stew of fanboy fetishes. It’s probably selling nicely.

So is there Yuri, as vaguely implied by the title?

Oh come on, these high school girls are four freaking years old. But for wellish fanboys the Yuri couldn’t be more obvious. Elsie, Lacie, and Tillie fall hard for Peanut, and who can blame them, she’s such a stammering, wide-eyed dope. So before you know it, they are fighting to stand next to her. They stand next to her a lot. They can’t get enough. And it’s not just two of them at a time – sometimes three, and occasionally all four girls will brazenly defy the conventions of 21st century morality and stand together in, as the French would say, though they would say it atmospherically in French, a group. Who knew it was that kind of manga?

Ratings:

Art—5. Well, the train illustrations are pretty good.
Story—2. Not so much.
Characters – 2. Elsie, Lacie, and Tillie are actually named Mamiko, Maron, and Hakutsuru; Peanut is Hatsune. For the record.
Yuri—2. All girls, so it has to be there, right?
Service—10. The reason it exists.

Overall—3. Of all the short circuits in logic contained in this volume, the oddest may be that this manga could actually be used as a little reference guidebook when visiting different railways, as it includes handy maps and information. The disconnect is that in reality, this would mean opening it up in public, and… ewww.

Scary fact #1 about this manga: there are two more volumes.

Scary fact #2 about this manga: the author has another series involving trains and girls titled Tetsuko na Sanshimai that is creepier than Yuritetsu.

Erica says: Happy Guest Review Wednesday, thanks Bruce and hahahahahah!





Yuri Manga: Lesbian III – Kyuketsu Reijo (レズビアン3 吸血令嬢) Guest Review by Bruce P

November 1st, 2012

I said “reviews will resume” but I did not tell you that they would resume with a veritable masterpiece. Today, Guest Reviewer Bruce P offers up what I sincerely believe to be the most masterly review I have ever read, just in time for Halloween!

Lesbian III: Bloodsucking Women, (レズビアン3 吸血令嬢) is the latest volume of Senno Knife’s manga centered on lesbians, but not really. As was stated in a review of Volume I there have typically been no lesbians in these lesbian stories. And there are none in Lesbian III. There are only female vampires living in a world unaccountably devoid of men, so their targets are necessarily also female. And although they do seem to enjoy the lovemaking that takes place before getting down to business, those naked preliminaries appear to be of somewhat secondary interest to the women involved (if not to the intended audience). Unlike stories in previous volumes, Lesbian III is pure melodrama with a lack of actual love between any of the characters.

While the previous volumes consisted of short stories, Lesbian III is one long epic. This provides the author with less room for creating different artistic atmospheres, one of Senno-san’s strengths, but provides a chance to see if he can expand a simple idea into a sustainable narrative. Does he succeed? Heavens no. But it’s a pretty ride.

Asari-san, a beautiful woman, is in the vaguely 1930’s-style Capital City looking for employment, but has had no success. It’s dark. She’s despondent. And then an expensive limousine pulls up, from which a mysterious, beautiful woman emerges, offering Asari-san a ‘job’. In the live-action movie this is the point at which the audience yells “Don’t get in the car.” She gets in the car. She’s blindfolded. New to the workforce, she figures this must be what they call commuting. Arriving at a very gothic Japanese mansion she is led to a padlocked tower and informed that the beautiful woman’s daughter is languishing within, suffering from a mysterious medical condition. With a bit of a shove and a ‘good luck,’ Asari-san is locked inside. It’s only now that she gets a sense that something dreadfully peculiar is going on. And you wonder why employers were not terribly keen on hiring her.

The girl in the tower, Saya-san, is very beautiful. Actually, every character in the manga is either a beautiful woman or a beautiful girl, except for a few grumpy looking nuns who don’t get much page time anyway. Saya-san is charmingly straightforward about the situation – she’s a vampire, Asari-san’s a buttered scone, and it’s way past tea time. It seems that Saya-san has been bitten by one of those beautiful Eastern European piano teachers of whom you must be so careful. Asari-san is horrified by this declaration of hellish intent and thinks: oh such pretty eyes. So they undress and fiddle around a little before Saya-san gives her eternal life and all the issues that go with it. Recoiling at the enormity of her fateful actions, Asari-san thinks: pretty lips, too.

Existing now in a timeless, twilight world, undead and never-aging, Asari-san has no need for a pension plan and is much more employable. She is given a job teaching at Saya-san’s pseudo-Catholic school where she and Saya-san begin systematically seducing other girls to the ranks of the undead. Incidentally the type of vampire in this story, while preferring the night, has no real problem with daylight. Or with crosses, or presumably with the garlic in the refectory’s lobster bisque. This is most fortunate for a vampire teaching day classes at a Catholic school. Asari-san and Saya-san soon enough have their hands full. Teachers and students, each one prettier than the last, form a line to the couple’s door, eager to shed their clothes and join the army of the damned. It’s great fun. It’s a long line.

So everyone’s becoming a vampire. But like a plague that begins spreading and killing millions in a crowded city, eventually somebody’s going to notice, what with all the blood everywhere. The nuns turn for help to the dormitory guardian, a literally 10 foot tall armored woman who leads an elite troop of jack-booted hall monitors. Meanwhile Eliza, the piano teacher who started it all, reappears. She surprises ex-pupil Saya-san with an urn of ashes, the remains of that famous literary vampire Carmilla, who in this version had been burned at the stake by hooded executioners from the Vatican. Eliza intends to revive Carmilla in the crypt beneath the school.

Inserting Carmilla at this point is a little like when they put Dracula into an Abbott and Costello movie. You have to feel a little sorry for the old bloodsucker. The story of Carmilla, like Dracula, is of course relatively old, in a literary sense, with roots going all the way back to the Sakura Taisen Dramatic Card Game Series, and, um, possibly even earlier.

While it sounds very much as though the story has long since merrily degenerated into bad farce, you don’t notice this so much as you are reading. In fact if your reading consists of just looking at all the naked vampires you won’t see any problem at all.

Anyway at this point a great deal of swashbuckling hurly-burly takes place, naked vampires vs. sword-wielding storm troopers with pretty eyes. Carmilla is being revived with vampire blood, Asari-san has escaped the school dungeon but is about to be impaled with the dorm guardian’s two-handed longsword…

And then she wakes up. It was all a dream. Or was it? As she rides off in the moonlight with Saya-san and Eliza and an urn of Carmilla ash in Eliza’s expensive 30’s-style roadster she takes a nibble at Saya-san’s wrist. While you can argue that this ‘it was only a dream’ type ending is a lousy way to end a story, the greater disappointment, for the majority of folks who have made it all the way to the end, will be that as they disappear into the night they still have their clothes on.

Ratings:

Art – 8.  Precise, Paul Delvaux inspired mannequin-like characters and sharply drawn gothic backgrounds.

Story – Are you kidding?

Characters – 7.  They may chew on each other, but they’re very nice about it. Good vampires and bad pseudo-Catholics.

Yuri – 9.  100% women, but despite all the lovemaking, there’s little love in all that vampirism.

Service – 10.  It would be 9.9 because of the fully clothed ending, but when closing the book, the back cover probably gives it that extra tenth.

Overall – 6.  A fine example of the fact that just because something is bad – and this one is bad – there’s no reason that you can’t say what the hell and enjoy it.

Erica here: Bruce, you’re killing me. Please write all my reviews so I can just read them….!

 





Yuri Manga:Teito Takoyaki Musume – Taisho Yakyuu Musume Extra Story Manga, Guest Review by Bruce P (帝都たこ焼き娘。―大正野球娘。番外編 )

March 22nd, 2012

My favorite day of the week has arrived – Guest Post Day! Once again we welcome back Okazu Superhero and Friend of Yuricon, Bruce P! It’s always a treat when he writes a review, so let’s curl up somewhere comfy and have a read, shall we?

The year is 1925, and the Oukakai have shown that they can compete with the boys head-to-head at the game of baseball. Their self-confidence has grown through their own efforts in the dust and sweat of the playing field. But now the games are over, and Suzukawa Koume is back to her normal school activities: attending classes; studying English; causing other girl’s hearts to bang like marimbas. All the while inexplicably losing the self-confidence she’s just acquired, as though never having lifted her spikes to break up a double play.

Teito Takoyaki Musume is a manga sequel to Taisho Yakyu Musume. In one sense this is a pleasure, as the members of the Oukakai baseball club are a set of characters worth spending time with. On the other hand, the original Taisho Yakyu Musume is a wonderfully self-contained story, for which a sequel could easily seem a cranked-out franchise extender. In Teito Takoyaki Musume you can hear the gears.

Koume is back to the books, but finds that she is pathetically behind everyone in schoolwork. Kawashima-san is obsessed with Koume, and with keeping her on the path of academic progress. But she is confronted at every turn by Tomoe, whose interest is in keeping Koume happy, progress be damned. These three make the triangle that impels the story. Interestingly, Akiko is relegated to a relatively minor role. Frustrated by Tomoe’s cool competence, Kawashima-san is desperate for any advantage, so she contacts her stylish, look-alike Kansai cousin Momiji for assistance. Bad idea. Momiji’s a handful, and unexpectedly appears in the Chancellor’s office to make cutting remarks about, of all pertinent things, Tokyo cuisine, and the poor comportment of Tokyo schoolgirls, whom she has observed acting most unbecomingly – she had encountered Koume and Tomoe sharing dango (you know… ‘Say aaaan’) on a rendezvous in Shinjuku. Well, the crisis is now truly at hand. Tempers rise. Anna-sensei takes control by proposing that the Tokyo and Osaka schools settle their culinary differences by engaging in a ‘food stall battle’ to determine who’s cuisine reigns, um, tastier.

The remainder of the story involves the Oukakai attempting to develop a recipe that will be a winner, or at least something that doesn’t cause them to gag, which takes a surprising number of pages. They learn about food stalls, and street food – how to eat soba noodles, an uncouth activity, which Anna-sensei demonstrates with immodest pleasure. They eventually hit on a recipe for Tokyo takoyaki, predating the actual development of this Kansai specialty by about ten years. On the big day Koume is paralyzed by yet another attack of self-doubt – and with Prozac so darn far in the future, too. But at last with support from her friends she succeeds in making wonderfully aromatic takoyaki that delight the festival crowd. Though not before Kyouko has had to dash off to find some necessary ingredients… if only she can make it back in time… she does. It’s all very dramatic. But victory still hangs in the balance until Tomoe and Shizuka surprise everyone by doing a Takarazuka thing, arriving in a large box, gotten up as a pair of living dolls (male and female) to attract the customers.

Lyndon Johnson won election to the senate in 1948 by flying around Texas in a helicopter yelling down at the gathering crowds. Nothing beats spectacle to draw the saps, and after the living doll show the game is over. Momiji has no choice but to concede defeat. But only to offer the Okaitai a further challenge – on the baseball field.

There is more Yuri in this volume than in either the anime or the quirky, original Shimpei Itoh manga (the very Shimpei Itoh manga – U-boats and rocket launchers and aluminum bats). Koume is surrounded by adoring fans, enough that at one point even she has to ask why so many of the girls like her so much (akogare). An excellent question. Her quivering lack of confidence in all things is unbecoming and very annoying. Tomoe on the other hand is poised, cold and intelligent. But she melts with happiness when alone with Koume, on a date or when they share a futon. Happy couple #2 – Yuki and Tama-chan – also share a futon during the same overnight. Yuki has orchestrated the entire evening, from the partner selection (which sounds less innocent than it is) to the insufficient supply of futons. Tama-chan doesn’t mind. Throughout, Anna-Sensei and Kawashima-san are drawn to each other; it’s an intellect thing, but if they were a lot closer in age it’s not hard to guess that Anna-sensei’s kiss would have been a little less maternal. And then there’s Momiji’s cross-dressing pal Sakura, looking good in shirtsleeves, suspenders, and knickerbockers, who takes a special interest in Koume at first sight.

In Teito Takoyaki Musume the Yuri is gentle but fun. The story, though, seems artificial and the drama forced. But the real let down is that, rather than striving to accomplish something wildly unprecedented, which no one believes they can do, or even thinks they should attempt, the girls are… cooking. And fretting about it.

Ratings:

Art: 5 Adequate, but only. There are some odd proportions on occasion.
Story: 5 Artificial. Hey everyone, let’s put on a play!!
Characters: 8 A great ensemble.
Yuri: 6 Cheerful and sweet.
Service: 0

Overall: 6

I have to admit I like series set in the Taisho era – Sakura Taisen also comes to mind (at least to my mind). It’s not nostalgia, I don’t remember crystal sets and scarlet fever, but the mix of old and new is intriguing.

Thank you again, Bruce. I have only one question, Service – 0? Really? ^_^





Tetsudou Shoujo Manga (鉄道少女漫画 ), Guest Review by Bruce P

June 1st, 2011

 It’s been a pretty busy week here, so thankfully, we have not one, but two Guest Reviews lined up. Today we welcome back Guest Reviewer, Okazu Superhero, Friend of Yuri, one of my chief lackeys and all-around terrific guy, Bruce P for a much-anticipated review of a manga I enjoyed the hell out of. ^_^ Take it away, Bruce!

Trains and girls. Outside of the manga world there would seem to be little natural affinity between the two. But as a walk through Comiket will show, surprising and unlikely combinations like this are the stuff of stacks and stacks of doujinshi: U.S. Green Beret uniforms and girls, for example, or British Royal Navy uniforms and girls, or (moving to another aisle) electrical power generating equipment and girls, World War II tanks and girls, and so on. What a cool world it is, when you can have your favorite fetish posed enjoying your other favorite fetish, reality notwithstanding. It’s all somewhat reminiscent of a machine shop calendar. A large number of such hobby-combination series are now appearing as manga or being made into anime; manga that combine trains and girls are among them. Most are not very wonderful, but Tetsudo Shoujo Manga (鉄道少女漫画 ) by Nakamura Asumiko is an exception. It is excellent – and it includes Yuri, as any excellent manga should.

The manga consists of five independent stories and an epilogue, all marginally connected by railroad settings. Three of the stories have run in Rakuen le Paradis. One of them is Yuri. They are Josei in style, and generally involve the exploration of troubled relationships. While a relentless series of troubled relationships might sound like the makings of a long afternoon, Nakamura-sensei brilliantly balances the tone with humor, which derives mostly from her artwork. Her comic timing is spot-on.

The non-Yuri chapters are an interesting mix, taking place at different railway stations, on trains, or in one case at a secret model railway club. Just a single example: A woman is riding a train on the Odakyu Railway line to Hakone as she runs away from her husband. He’s a schlub, and she’s sick of acting as both mother and housemaid to the guy. She has the understanding and assistance of his younger brother. Unknown to them, however, the husband is not far behind, just one car back. He catches a young pickpocket with her hand on his wallet and compels her to assist in his plan for revenge: writing the character ‘meat’ on his wife’s forehead. And you wonder why she is running.

After confronting the fleeing woman and younger brother, the husband gives up and runs off the train. But the pickpocket shames him for being such a jerk, and tells him to get back in there and fight, and by the way don’t be such a jerk. The train is gone, but thanks to the pickpocket’s detailed knowledge of the timetable (a natural result of her livelihood), she gets him onto an express that allows them to catch up. They are helped by the fact that she lifted the younger brother’s wallet, and he and the wife are now stuck, unable to leave the station. They all meet up, husband promises to reform, and the couple shares a tearful reconciliation. Younger brother can now turn his attention to the cute young pickpocket – and since he is an Odakyu station agent out of uniform, they will have a lot to talk about.

The Yuri story (“Rittai Kousa no Eki”) starts with Mizuho on a station platform annoyed by a violent argument a woman is having on her phone. Mizuho descends to a lower platform only to be targeted by the woman’s falling phone and bag, knocked from her flailing hands by a passing train. Mizuho, a pitcher on her school baseball team, nonchalantly throws the bag all the way back up, instantly attracting the deep interest of the woman (who is never named). Mizuho has no chance to return the phone before catching her train, and on opening it she is intrigued by the background photo of the woman being kissed by another woman. When they meet on the platform the next day she hands back the phone and is embarrassed to admit seeing the photo. Not a problem, the woman says, they are breaking up anyway, hence the screaming. Mizuho realizes she can talk to the woman, even if only in oblique terms, about her own issue – a teammate is in love with Mizuho, but Mizuho does not love her back. The best thing would be to turn her down, the woman advises, eyes practically glittering. As the woman helps Mizuho, she in turn helps the woman, finding a ring that had dropped from the bag, the loss of which was causing a lot of yelling between the ex-lovers. At the point of the woman’s deepest funk over the breakup, Mizuho proposes in a somewhat blatant metaphor that the woman might want to take a different track toward a new destination – pointing to the line she herself rides. Cautiously jumping on the metaphor, the woman, contemplating how much younger Mizuho is, asks if it would really be OK (Can I use my Suica pass card on that line?) to which Mizuho answers firmly yes (Of course! It’s a JR line!). Love by semaphore.

A short part 2 finds the woman attending a game where Mizuho is pitching, which makes Mizuho so nervous she gets shellacked. Dreadfully embarrassed, she breaks that night’s date for extended practice, but finds the woman still waiting when she gets done. It is a relationship that is taking off nicely. The woman can be very sweet when she is not violently angry; one has to hope for the best here.

The epilogue chapter pulls all the threads together – and lets them go again. A man rides from Shinjuku to Enoshima, then Chigasaki, Atsugi, and Iriuda, all locations from previous chapters. Along the way he observes with bored half-interest the characters from the previous chapters in fleeting, unconnected vignettes, popping in and out of his sight like fireflies on a summer evening. He sees Mizuho rushing in concern to meet her lover on the station platform, where she asks the woman about some minor injury. And then he moves on. A quiet ending to an enjoyable manga.

Ratings:

Art: 8 Josei style with some cheerfully distorted proportions. Sparkling with humor. The art pulls the stories from merely interesting to exceptional.

Characters: 7 The characters are not all likeable. The men in particular tend to be either morose or cranky. A set of character types that sit around a model railroad in one chapter are precise, if unkind, portrayals of creepiness. By way of balance the pickpocket is such a great character; she deserves more stories.

Stories: 7 Ranging from almost strictly dramatic to humorous. Not overwhelming, but all showing some interesting angles.

Yuri: Rittai Kousa no Eki: 8 Other chapters: 0

Service: No. Not even for the one panty shot.

Yuri/Train Fan: I liked it.

Overall: 8

Tetsudou Shoujo Manga is a wonderful example of a ‘hobby’ manga that manages to keep the hobby part under firm control. Nakamura-sensei obviously loves trains, is happy drawing Yuri, and that combination works very nicely for me.

Erica here: Bruce – she keeps it under control, except in the model-building chapter, don’t you think? That story was a wank, but it was, ultimately, harmless. I also would give this series an 8, even if I am not a train enthusiast . Thanks, as always for the review. It’s such a pleasure to read your perspective. ^_^