Archive for the Louise P Category


LGBTQ Game: Ladykiller in a Bind, Guest Review by Louis P

March 1st, 2017

It’s Guest Review Wednesday and it is my very sincere pleasure to welcome back Guest Reviewer and Okazu Superhero Louis P for a very exciting review!

You should remember the name Christine Love. She’s an indie game dev who has made a pretty big splash with her games,  Don’t take it personally, babe, it just ain’t your story (which has been reviewed here on Okazu), Digital: A Love Story and Analogue: A Hate Story, at Love Conquers All Games. Today we’re going to get a look at her newest game! You have the floor, Louis!

A game about a suave and cool lady who gets pulled into over the top intrigue on a high class cruise, and it is written by Christine Love! This ticks all of the boxes in this list I just wrote! What is its name?

‘My Twin Brother Made Me Crossdress as Him and Now I Have to Deal with a Geeky Stalker and a Domme Beauty Who Want Me in a Bind!’

Or Ladykiller in a Bind for short.

Our ‘Ladykiller’ in this case is The Beast… or the Hero or really whatever you want. Everyone is referred to by nicknames that you can pick or make up yourself. But to keep things simple here we will use the names on the game’s website.

The Beast, as we shall call her, is a fantastic protagonist, cool, sexy, but still dorky and genre blind enough for it to be understandable when she is caught off guard by things the player will see coming long before she does. It is also hard to get a full grasp of her right away as we really are dumped into events running but, luckily she shares narration duties with her brother who is her equal in backtalk. You learn a lot about both of them from how they jostle to get their views in.

The Beast has volunteered to take the place of her twin brother, known as The Prince, at his graduation celebration. In return, The Prince will take The Beast’s place at summer school and pass her failed classes for her. Because of the cruel actions of their farther, The Prince goes to a different school, one that holds its graduation celebration over a week on a giant cruise ship. Not only that, but, a mysterious third party announces a simple and way too easily accepted social game where the students trade votes between each other. The student with the most votes at the end of the cruse gets five million dollars. However as everyone only has one vote it very quickly becomes a contest amongst the most popular movers and shakers in the school. Who just so happen to be The Prince’s classmates.

Said classmates are what you get when you blend equal parts ‘Dallas’ with ‘Gintama’. Over-wealthy, sharp-tongued socialites who are also an endearing, goofy and fun to learn about.  The Beast talks to them and slowly gains and understanding of what is going on, as The Prince did not care to tell her much, The Beast must be careful to not arouse suspicion that she is, in fact, not her brother. If The Beast breaks character too many times, the game just ends, perhaps too abruptly, and you must load a save. The trouble is that The Prince has a public persona of being selfish and blunt so almost always if you want to do nearly anything benevolent or exciting it will draw suspicion.

Cue the first of the games two ‘heroines’; The Beauty (get it?). The Beauty is the only person amongst the students who knows The Beast’s true identity. At night The Beast can visit The Beauty who will offer to use her standing to explain away all of The Beast’s suspicious actions. In return The Beast will help The Beauty act out her fantasies of tying up and dominating a handsome woman like The Beast. The Beast herself, after pretending to be someone else and lying to people for an entire day, finds incredible catharsis in allowing The Beauty to take complete control for the time they are together.

While the narration does to a fantastic job of showing The Beast’s headspace in these scenes, very useful if you are a neophyte to this kind of play, I was even more impressed with what we learn about The Beauty in these scenes. There are moments such as when she stops and consults her phone to make sure she has tied a knot correctly or when she makes sure The Beast takes an anti-inflammatory after their session that show the care and planning she has taken to enact her fantasy bleeding through for us to notice. This might be all very new to The Beast but this is a rare and important time for The Beauty too.

The Stalker (just a nickname!), however, has a completely different dynamic with The Beast. While The Beauty knows what she likes and has a list, mood music and a timer, The Stalker is really only sure that she likes The Beast. The Beast then ends up being a partner who can guide her though exploring what she likes – making sure she never feels overwhelmed, until she wants to feel overwhelmed. But it is not just incredibly adorable sex, there is also incredibly adorable dossing around and talking about frivolous things like The Stalker’s bad taste in music or her absolutely huge family. The Stalker and The Beast have some of the best chemistry I have seen in two leads for a long time.

But, if you want to see all of The Stalker’s events you had better be good at pretending to be The Prince during the day as you will need to keep your suspicion low the whole week and this can force you to make some tough choices. Conversely, sticking to The Beauty’s events means you can rack up the amount of suspicion you would need to save over the week in a day and everything will be fine tomorrow provided you crawl back to the Beauty.

This is what makes Ladykiller in a Bind more interesting than your usual erotic visual novel.  The main game element of visual novels, that is making dialogue and event choices, becomes tied to the romantic and erotic encounters with the two main heroines.

Don’t go thinking this is a binary choice, either. Choose your events right and there is even a third route involving The Beauty, The Beast and The Stalker all together in easily the best multi partner route I have ever read. This genuinely caught me off guard, as events change way ahead of time to account for these actions. Never, in my experience, has a game changed the ending to a scene so that one character can compliment another on that cool love bite she gave another. It is great to have a main character in a visual novel whose endless flirty charm is a strength that adds positivity to the story, rather than something used for a cheap bad ending.

Normally after I have read all the endings to a visual novel I shelve it, but with Ladykiller in a Bind I find myself eager to go back and read scene variations the moment I have finished with this review something that has not happened in a long time.

Ratings:

Art – 9 (Everyone gets a different outfit every day)
Story – 7
Characters – 10
Yuri – 10
Service – 10

Overall – 9

I highly recommend also checking out Christine Love giving a talk about narrative design techniques she and her team learned during the process of developing Ladykiller in a Bind.

Erica here: Thank you Louis! When I saw the announcement of Ladykiller, I have to admit, I was really glad to see an adult game for mature adults, as opposed to most of the adult games which seem to favor a immature and inexperienced audience.

Ladykiller is also available on Steam, as well as from Humblebundle.

So thank you for this review. If I enjoyed games at all, I would definitely give this one a try!





Yuri Visual Novel: Starlight Vega Guest Post by Louis P

June 1st, 2016

headerIt’s Guest Review Wednesday and we all know what that means, right? Right! It means Erica needs a break. ^_^ 

I would like to thank Razz,  the maker of Starlight Vega for the review copy of the game. I did play a little bit of this game, but decided that it would be best for everyone if I turned this review over to someone who loved Visual Novels and would be able to give it more attention than I. Therefore, let’s welcome Guest Reviewer Louis and let him tell us what’s what. I’ll add my thoughts at the end. The floor is your, Louis…

Starlight Vega is the story of Aria Reid who has moved with her mother into her grandfather’s old house. Aria, along with her childhood friend Melody (an authority on the occult), find a stone that has the demon Lyria held within it. Lyria and Aria become linked though the stone, forcing them to stay close by or else suffer physical pain. So Aria, Melody and Lyria must decode the magic holding the two together while at the same time uncovering the truth about the demon realm Vega and Aria’s own link to it.

Starlight Vega made a good first impression when I first looked it up. A Yuri visual novel with four routes and the main heroine was a tall, cool looking lady with horns. I was all set to love this novel. Sadly from the incredibly abrupt beginning, a sprite that had a character constantly doing a raptor impression and the shockingly blunt scene transitions I rapidly started to reassess what I should expect from this experience.

Starlight Vega does not use the visual part of visual novels well. I don’t mean that the art is bad (although the sprite art and CG art are both by different artists) but how we are made to view the art is bad. Scenes transition between each other so abruptly it is like we are watching a badly edited You Tube video of a visual novel. The same thing goes for sprites no matter the context for a sprite change it is almost always instantaneous. One of the most powerful things you can do in a visual novel is establish a symbolic link between what happens to the sprites and what is happening in a scene and this novel wastes that. This goes for shifting between scenes too. Shifting between your character going to bed and your character getting ready in the morning should not be a sudden abrupt cut without a good reason.

What is a shame is it’s not as if there is a technical reason for this.  Starlight Vega does have moments when spites do something other than blink in and out of view and sometimes they even move across the screen. But these points are far too rare and it adds to making the whole reading experience a kind of thin slog.

Now you might be thinking that this is all okay if the story itself is good all the extra dressing should not matter that much. Sadly that was not my experience, if Starlight Vega had been a novel or a comic I would have been far more forgiving of its flaws, such as Lyria’s tendency to act aggressive in a way that is way over the creepy line and using her memory altering magic so liberally she would make the MiB blush. This is supposed to be a character that we fall in love with along with Aria but even I, the easiest target for a Lyria type of character, was getting sick of her aggressive shallowness that I could not buy Aria’s eventual attraction to her.

While this is not as bad in the other routes so many of the interactions do nothing but set up how much all the heroines dislike each other. It made all the scenes where we should have been getting to know the characters feel awkward and uncomfortable. So, while I did not dislike any one character on their own I dreaded them being together because then all they would do is bicker while the main character did nothing.

All this makes the times when the game actually gives us something good a bit sad, because, we briefly see what the whole game could have been like. All four main routes give us a solid view of each character, the fourth and final route effectively tying everything together and giving us a very happy ending. The eventually revealed antagonist is both a decent sponge for all the negativity in the story and they are not around long enough to be tiresome. What I was surprised to enjoy were the epilogues, they give us a good look at life after all the conflict and how the central couple of each route eventually lives their lives together in a way that, again, would have been more satisfying if the game had actually earned these endings with a good beginning, but this time the sincerity of the scenes won me over… either that or I was just too tired to be irritated by the time I finished a route.

Taking what I liked into account, Starlight Vega is totally average. It is not horribly bad but it is not good enough ether to rise above its competition today. A real pity because under all the poor decisions and missed opportunities there is real effort to be found. Starlight Vega should really be a Yuri bodice ripper novel that you can enjoy on the train anytime. Not something I need to run on a laptop.

Art – 5
Story – 4
Characters – 3
Yuri – 7
Service – 7

Overall – 5

Erica here: I played some of the demo for Starlight Vega, then tried it again when it was officially released. I thought the official release much improved from the demo, so that was good. Disclaimering once more that I am not the intended audience for this medium, my biggest problem was the dialogue. Just once, I’d like to see a character say, “Sit your ass down and tell me the whole story from the beginning.” In every other thing, I agree with your assessment. I lost interest way too early to even get to a route. Essentially Aria wastes our time, by being so vexed for so long without progress.

Louis, you say “One of the most powerful things you can do in a visual novel is establish a symbolic link between what happens to the sprites and what is happening in a scene.” I’m going to be honest…I just haven’t seen that. It all looks blink-no blink to me. 

I’d like to see more good Yuri VNs, of course, but what I need first and foremost from them is a good story with good dialogue. This just wasn’t bad, it just didn’t hold on to my attention.

Thanks Louis for taking a look at this for us!





Yuri Doujinshi: Touhou Project (東方Project) Guest Post by Mara

October 16th, 2013

TPimagIt is once again Guest Review Wednesday here on Okazu and this time, we have yet another special treat! Guest Reviewer Mara wrote me to suggest that he provide an overview of a series that has had way more longevity and breadth than I could have ever imagined – Touhou. I’ll editorialize after the post, so take it away, Mara! /applause/

Touhou Project (東方Project) is a shooting game that stands out by being more about dodging bullets than shooting them. Set in a fictional part of Japan called Gensokyo; the Touhou games mostly follow Reimu, a shrine maiden, who is dragged into solving supernatural incidents. Produced by Team Shangai Alice, run for the most part by a single person who trades under the moniker Zun, Touhou has enjoyed unusually high successes.

With success comes a large fandom and in my small opinion Touhou fandom is the most productive fandom in the world. I say this with absolute certainty that I am wrong. There are so many fan communities that are larger, older and have far more cultural clout than Touhou.

Still I believe it would task you to find another fandom responsible for not only fan produced comics and fiction but video games, music remixes, fake manzai competitions, anime and more. The level of fan involvement in Touhou is staggering for such a niche series.

This leads me to two important points. Firstly, that one does not need to be a big fan of shooting games to enjoy the Touhou fandom, you can enjoy all the jokes and story of Touhou though fan-produced work. Secondly, Touhou while not taking place in a fantasy all-female world, does take place in a fantasy world where, if you want to be an important character in the games you had better be a snarky cool woman.

So when you combine the two reagents of a highly creative and productive fan base and a huge cast of varied women Yuri is not far behind. Thus it is not surprising that there is a sizable segment of the Touhou fan base who ‘ship two (or more) characters together and go so far as to produce doujinshi. Doujinshi that is readable and enjoyable even to those who have never played a Touhou game.

That is where this article comes in. To a person with no starting point, Touhou can seem an inscrutable mess, full of in-jokes and an indecipherable collective understanding of the characters within it. So to help those who may want to get into Touhou without playing the games I have created the following list of doujinshi circles that someone new to Touhou might like to try.

This list contains circles that produce comics and also fulfill two other criteria:

1: Have produced at least two Yuri (according to the Okazu definition) Touhou doujinshi at the time or writing that I have physical evidence of.
2: Have a working web presence I can provide a hyperlink to so that you can search out and buy their work legally.

The name of the circle should be hyperlinked to the circles homepage, or what passes for one. Followed by what parings the circle prioritizes, if any. Also those names are also hyperlinked to a wiki page about that character so that those of you just starting can get a feel for them.

Because we are dealing with doujinshi here do not click any of the links to a circle’s web page if you are younger than the age your country requires to view adult content. There was no way for me to check each circles output to a level that would be without doubt, also that would exclude some good comics so please be responsible and age yourself the appropriate amount before visiting those links.

Atmosphere
Keine X Mokou
First off we have a comedic circle. Atmosphere pairs the Keine and Mokou characters in a kind of domestic teasing relationship. Where one tries to be romantic and everything just spirals out of control with over-reactions abound. Very good circle as far as art and writing goes but they need to experiment with their panels more as there are shapes other than rectangles.

Canary and Swallow
Everyone X Mystia
Marisa X Yukari
Mostly cute stories paring someone up with Mystia. They even produced a two part story that pairs Mystia and Alice. Sadly in my collection except for one book that pairs Marisa and Yukari none of these stories have much substance despite being technically apt as comics.

Chihagura
Kaguya X Mokou
Now this is more like it. If there is one problem with fan created content is the desire to keep the same tone throughout the whole work. Chihagura bucks this trend were a single book can have a few jokes but also a very romantic or sad element that runs through them too. They also never permanently stable the label of ‘Uke’ or ‘Seme’ on any of the characters they use that makes for far more possibilities and ensures each book is different.

Honey Sakura
Reimu X Cirno
This circle’s main achievement is a long running series named Cirno and Reimu’s 1-2-3. One of those love stories where everyone is blushing and working out their feelings rather than acting on them or living with them. Still very well executed and genuinely pleasant work. Not my cup of tea but I would be at a miss to not include it.

Ichinose
Marisa  X Alice + lots more
Artwork so cute it might give you toothache but a genuine sincerity and a good long running series that pairs Marisa and Alice together very well. Gets a bit to angst filled for its own good and should have more payoff after the climax considering how sugar sweet the art is.

Personal Color
(Should be Colour)
Various
One of my favourites on this list and highly recommended. Personal … Color (ugh) has the three technical aspects of comic creation down. Their work has no real deficit in writing, artwork or composition. They also manage good adaptations of the more serious back stories without losing themselves in angst completely. They only downside is that overt romantic tones must take a back seat in a few of their longer stories and must thus rely on references that would only be noticeable to fans of that paring to begin with. But some of their shorter releases are more direct romance stories.

Pigeon Blood
Meiling X Sakuya
A circle almost entirely dedicated to this paring and very good at it. Not their only output but I have only bought their books that ship Meiling and Sakuya. Because of this we do get a fantastic sequence of standalone stories that show these two characters in many different situations and most crucially many different points of their relationship.

Pure
Everyone in the Scarlet Devil Mansion
Two of the artists in this circle also work in Frontier Aja who made the Koumajou Densetsu games. Touhou fan games with Castlevania’s mechanics. Their output is thus rather small but worth mentioning because what comics they have released are one: very funny, two: contain truly beautiful artwork and three: knowing about the early work of Minakata Sunao will allow you to look really ahead of the curve once Riddle Story of Devil comes out soon.

Shako
Yuuka X Alice
Now if there is one circle that provides the stories I wish for more of it is Shako. While they actually produce a lot my collection of their work is dominated by the books that pair the characters Yuuka and Alice. These three books do not merely pair these characters but show them start then build and continue an actual relationship. It also uses the characters and their back stories in a way that someone unfamiliar with Touhou cannon can understand. Easily my most highly recommended circle on this list.

Vivit Gray
Mokou X Keine

Again a favourite circle of mine that focuses on a favourite paring of mine. Both the art and the stories manage that difficult balance of being cute without going too far and becoming ‘cutesy’. Even better for you beginners they have released an omnibus addition of most of their Mouku X Keine stories. It includes their multi part ‘how they got together’ story and a few other short comics.

That is the end of my list. If you know of a circle that you feel should be mentioned I am sure everyone would like to hear about it in the comments. I hope this list can provide you with some entertaining manga at the very least.

***

Erica here: Terrific overview, Mara, thank you very much. In my opening statement I said that this series has more longevity than I would have imagined. Well, that’s not some kind of crazy accident. While the doujinshi fanbase grew, the anime/manga store chain Tora no Ana took notice and invested in the series. For a while Touhou dominated an entire floor of their Akihabara store, in fact.

Touhou is now an established sight in doujinshi sections and goods stores and I don’t see it going anywhere for a while. ^_^

 





A Certain Scientific Railgun S Anime (English) Guest Review by Mara

August 7th, 2013

ACSRSWoo-hoo! It’s Guest Review Wednesday! Please welcome back serial Guest Reviewer Mara!

A Certain Scientific Railgun S (streaming for free, legally with applicable region limitations from Funimation) is a direct sequel to the anime A Certain Scientific Railgun… which doesn’t have ‘S’ at the end. Picking right up where its predecessor left off, it adapts the manga of the same name. If you are one of the lucky ones who only watched the anime of either Railgun or its mother series A Certain Magical Index, you should give this new season a go right now as it will be more of the same – i.e. an incredibly entertaining esper action story.

However if you are as voracious a consumer of the ‘A Certain Blank’ franchise as myself, you may be hesitant. Understandably so as this new series of Railgun is forced by existing cannon to now tackle the story arc that pushed Railgun into the so called ‘dark side’ of Railgun’s setting: Academy City. A story that focused on illegal cloning and perhaps the most gruesome form of level grinding in fiction. Known as the “Sisters” story arc – in the original novels it was responsible for introducing a lot of important characters; such as Kuroko, the Misaka clones and Accelerator. When it came time for the Sisters arc to appear in the Railgun manga the story focused almost entirely on Mikoto’s point of view leaving fan favourite characters out of the spotlight for an extended period of time; pretty much assuming you had already seen the Index version of the story in some way.

Not so for the anime adaptation. The anime gives you a complete story to enjoy and while Mikoto and the Sisters arc cast take centre stage we are not allowed to forget the rest of the cast, including characters that were introduced in the first Railgun anime:

By that I mean that Haruue is still around as is Banri, both characters from the first season. It is a treat to see that the anime staff did not just ignore them and assume that no-one would care if these characters appeared or not. In a show that had less effort put into it Haruue would have been put off stage now she has been reunited with Banri, instead we see their story continue alongside everyone else’s.

But it is Kuroko Shirai who receives a good portion of episode seven all to herself with her own sub-story that includes Saten, Uiharu and Haruue too. It keeps Mikoto’s story from becoming the dense all-encompassing mass it was in the manga buy piding up other events that would otherwise be entirely sequential. It also gives us an important glimpse of Kuroko’s view of Mikoto during this period, how concerned she is and the frustration that comes with trying to help someone who does not wish to be helped.

New to the Railgun story are quite a few scenes from Touma’s point of view as a digest version of the events he experienced in Index to add context for those who may have not seen or not remember the Index anime (way back in 2009). The manga assumes that we have seen Touma’s point of view before and thus gives us little to explain his appearance or motivation.  The anime however does show us how Touma finds out about Mikoto’s situation, including his interaction with Kuroko which involves a fun bit of perv to perv verbal combat that I really enjoy.

So if you have read the manga like myself and are wondering if you should bother with the first half of Railgun S, rest assured. The first season improved and expanded upon the story and the second season does the same with its source material far better than expected.

Score so far (Episodes 1-16):

Art – 7
Character – 10 (The A Certain Blank series is a fantastic example of Erica’s thesis that every character should have a unique ‘voice’. You would not mistake one character for another based on their lines… apart from the clones.)
Story – 6
Yuri – 5
Service – 9
Overall – 9

E here: Well, you’ve convinced me to watch it! I was dithering, since the manga had been so gloomy, but okay, I’ll give it  a try. ^_^ Thanks so much for the review and the prompt to reenter Academy City once again. ^_^





Jormungand Perfect Order Anime Guest Review by Mara

January 16th, 2013

JORPOFirst Guest Review Wednesday of the Year! I have basically said everything I have to say about Jormungand but, as Jormungand: Perfect Order is streaming legally and free on Funimation (as Episodes 13-24 of the series. Registration is required,) I felt it was worthy of a decent review. And so here is Mara with a very decent review. Please welcome him once again to Okazu! Take it away, Mara…

I remember picking up the Jormungand manga right off the shelf of a comic shop with completely zero expectations, as I usually do and being firmly impressed. Here was a half decent action manga with two protagonists that have hilarious chemistry. So it was fantastic to find out it was getting an anime.

The anime of Jormungand was aired in two half season segments and with a thirteen week break between them. This gives the production team a sliver of extra time to make sure that we do not see too much quality slippage over the whole run. A sensible idea for an action heavy show such as Jormungand where if the motion is not there on the screen to an adequate quality the show will suffer. It is a good thing too as Jormungand: Perfect Order starts right at the R/Hex arc where we have a big set piece climax.

The problem is while Jormungand’s action scenes work very well in the manga, they have not been transplanted so well into the anime in places. In a way they were moved into the anime too well with no attempt to change them to suit the animated medium. This means a lot of static shots of the characters firing with bottomless magazines while exposition goes on. Very noticeable in the street fight between Koko’s group and Hex’s group, it sadly sucks a good deal of the tension out from the action.

Despite that minor gripe, I still loved the action in Perfect Order. The stand out point for me would be the tunnel chase sequence in Tojo’s story arc; an exciting and energetic chase scene that improved upon the manga and used everyone in Koko’s group.

So, sadly, you may be thinking that as we had Valmet personal arc in the first season of Jormungand there is not much Yuri to talk about in Perfect Order. Well, it is true that Valmet fades a bit into the background now she has had her revenge. Valmet becomes Koko’s yes-woman for the most part. We do have a small scene in episode twenty where Koko messes around with Valmet to show off to Minami; but nothing is made of it afterward.

In fact, the major Yuri moment is more of a what we might call ‘Yuri goggles’ variety, but not of a relationship. No, I would suggest that we should turn our lily-tinted lenses to the group of four women who end up creating and wielding the power that changes the world: Jormungand. That while Koko gets the world, the girl (Valmet) and the adorable boy (Jonah), Dr Minami, Koko’s co-conspirator, gets her own elite science harem.

Firstly she easily secures the then unemployed Karen Low and easily pulls her into her own unique working environment. Then when Elena Baburin gets kidnapped from her kidnappers by Koko’s team she seems really distraught, who would not be? But then when we get a very jarring bathing scene later on we see that Elena is totally okay we working on Jormungand… now that she has met Minami! Later Rabbitfoot is also kidnapped out of a different kind of captivity to work on Jormungand, Koko makes it clear that she does not really like Rabbitfoot due to her previous conduct. Someone however finds Rabbitfoot’s single-mindedness cute… Dr Minami!

Frankly for me, it did not take much effort to see the whole of Perfect Order as having a sub-plot of Minami ensuring her retirement in a toy factory in South Africa, with three differently beautiful women who are all geniuses in their fields and her own personal open air bath. Not to mention she also gets her own cool high-backed chair among the four people who will ensure peace in the world for the foreseeable future. Minami makes out of this show like a bloody bandit.

Even if you don’t agree with me on that, it is still pretty sweet that the four people who will put an end to war, something that has often been used as an excuse to suppress women, are four women who are super geniuses in their respective fields. At the very least it gives me a feminist power fantasy high.

Speaking of the end of Jormungand I do feel like I have to mention the run up to the ending. In the last few episodes Koko finally reveals her plan to everyone and to Jonah. Sadly Koko, who to this point seemed so in control and genre savvy, seems to do a complete one hundred and eighty and simply delivers a speech about the sacrifices Jormungand will require, like she was a villain in a less interesting manga. It does not help that all of Koko’s ideas hinge on a very pessimistic and conservative viwew of people and of changing the world for the better. It is a real shift in tone for Koko to go from: ‘This is right because I’m awesome’ to: ‘This is right because it is the most cynical possibility’. A trope that I am getting sick and tired of being used as a crutch.

Now this was not an out and out character assassination, but this did not fit the standard of Koko’s actions up to that point and there was little attempt to show Koko’s turmoil as we immediately focus on Jonah and his thoughts for most of the rest of the series.

The writer clearly tries to distract us from this with a bit of fanservce that actually seems aimed at me for once. Koko cuts her hair to above shoulder length and starts wearing a black suit, plus the official reveal of the aforementioned lesbian cabal that will rule the world. Yay and all, but that does not distract me when the even greater fanservce of Kasper giving the best villain speech I have heard this year to Koko; thus highlighting that Koko, a character I fell in love with because she does awesome and cool things, has not done a cool thing in the last episode of a show about her.

The end, though, is very sensible. A reconciliation is achieved and the anime ends on a point where we know where everything is going and does not continue beyond that; sensibly preventing us from being disappointed.

Jormungand was a fantastic manga about a woman who though her own will and ability changes the world. Not for someone else but for her own aesthetic ideals. The Perfect Order anime was a fantastic adaptation of the last half of the manga. Such a good adaptation I will hold it up as an example of all the good and bad you can do by being perfectly faithful to the source material.

Ratings:

Art – 5, every third character looks flat like they are in a different show

Characters – 10, best part of the whole thing

Story – 7, Good but points off for dithering

Yuri – 5, Valmet is awesome but needs a spine, everything else is just in my head.

Service – 10, Let’s see, suits, abs, eye patches, adorable guys and butch ladies. Can’t give this any other score when I am the one scoring it.

Overall – 8

Two points off for dropping the ball with character models and for forgetting at the end that Koko needs to be the coolest person in the room. Other than that as close to perfect in this genre as I have seen in a while.

Erica here: Mara you hit the nail on the crumpet, IMHO. I also saw Minami’s ‘true’ plan. Laudable, I thought. ^_^ Thanks for the review and for being the one that got me into Jormungand in the first place!