Archive for the Matt Marcus Category


Project A-ko 2, 3, and 4 Blu-Rays

February 19th, 2025

A Blu-ray cover, a girl with a lot of red hair, in a yello tank top over white -t-shirt runs full speed, while a little girl in pink dress with a flower in her blond hair hangs on. A cool beauty with long blue hair and a glowering man with purple hair in the background.by Matt Marcus, Staff Writer

In the wake of the success of the original Project A-ko film, A.P.P.P. released three sequels, all of which now have Blu-Ray releases from Discotek. All three—running for around 50 minutes compared to the original’s 80—felt a little too scant to review individually, so I’ve opted to combine my thoughts here (much like their previous DVD release from Central Park Media, subtitled Love & Robots).

Project A-ko 2: Plot of Daitokuji Financial Group

Three weeks have passed since the end of the first movie. The defeated alien ship remains perilously perched upon the military command tower at the center of Graviton City, but now it’s been converted to a glitzy shopping mall and recreation center. Of course, this is cover for Captain Napolipolita and her henchwoman D to raise funds for repairs, after which they intend to fulfill their original mission of returning the lost alien Princess C-ko to her home planet.

But this time, the villain is the military industrial complex, in the form of B-ko’s weapon’s dealer mogul father Hikari Daitokuji (or, as I like to call him, Phoney Stark). He sees the alien ship as a goldmine of advanced technology he’d like to steal and exploit for his own ambitions, and so the Plot of the Subtitle are his machinations trying to hoodwink the defense force into doing the dirty work for him. (Notably, he’s been stealing mecha designs from B-ko.)

Meanwhile, our main trio are simply looking forward to a summer break of fun. They end up obstructing both the aliens and B-ko’s father’s schemes, mostly by blowing everything up. Graviton City is left a smoldering ruin again, but life goes on.

All of the elements of the first film are here. The A-ko/B-ko/C-ko triumvirate continue their schtick. There’s a decent amount of mecha and exploding shit. Surprisingly, the non-mecha fanservice is relatively tame; I found the fully-animated scene of A-ko changing into a bathing suit without exposing herself particularly funny, as if it were an intentional troll to those seeking more cheap thrills. Honestly, the funniest bit was how the Alpha Cygnans painted C-ko’s face on the front of their ship, goofy open-mouth grin and all.

The extras are notably sparser than those for the first film (no extra documentaries or feature commentaries this go ‘round). The only unique bonus are screenshots from the PC-88 casino game collection tied to the film, which included several scenes lifted from the film but drawn in that classic 8-bit style.

Overall – 6

Project A-ko 2: Plot of Daitokuji Financial Group Blu-ray available on Amazon and Crunchyroll

 

A red-haired girl in a red dress and a blue-haired girl in hakama and gi glower at each other over their shoulders. Behind and above a gaping blonde with a flower in her hair and a boy in black.Project A-ko 3: Cinderella Rhapsody

This film is based around Spring Break, and every girl in Graviton High School is thinking about romance. A-ko becomes obsessed with a dress she can’t afford, and starts working at a fast food restaurant to save up. B-ko is still using her posse to stalk her, and of course the two are still fighting before school every day. C-ko is starting to feel neglected by A-ko, 

All of this is thrown out of whack when C-ko runs into the street and is nearly run over by a hunky-yet-gormless guy named Kei. A-ko falls for him immediately, followed by B-ko, while the whole time, Kei has caught feelings for C-ko. So much for the Yuri.

Hijinks ensue, which culminates with a destructive showdown in the fancy hotel atop the yet-again-renovated alien ship, which is now a theme park. As the chaos expands, the commander of the defense force decides to neglect his duties this time (off screen, no less), so a group of under-cover protective public works employees mobilize, which turns into a cavalcade of mecha and sentai winks. They even included a cameo by BaBe, the idol duo who sing the film’s theme song “Get A Chance!” (The English Version plays over the credits, the lyrics of which are basically inscrutable.)

In the end, everyone’s heart gets broken. Kei confesses his love to C-ko, who harshly rejects him, while A-ko and B-ko see their fantasies shatter along with the floor of the hotel. Everything resets back to the status quo again. Hooray.

This one definitely feels like a step up from the previous film, but having the central conflict shift to center on Kei was honestly a bit deflating even if, as the trivia notes say, this would have been expected by the audience at the time. I know that the joke is that his cool surface image is actually the result of being too shy to talk, but it’s not quiet a strong enough joke to hang an entire plot on. I also wish more came out of the extensive mobilization scene; having Graviton City secretly be a hotbed of superheroes and super robots could have been used more for the comedy besides “look, an off-model reference!”

As with the previous release, the bonuses are relatively slim, though the trivia section is always a fun treat. I did notice one omission, though, which led me down a bit of a rabbit hole. In the film, we see a brief segment of a porn flick, where a girl with short blue hair (and no clothes) is about to, uh, impose herself on a red-haired girl. The scene is interrupted by the mobilization call (somehow within the movie!) by a girl with orange pigtails. Turns out, these three are the animated versions of an idol group Lemon Angels, a multimedia project that was an offshoot of the Cream Lemon hentai series, much like what Project A-ko began as. Seems like an odd thing to leave out from the otherwise exhaustive trivia notes, especially since they are even explicitly credited.

Overall – 7

Project A-ko 3: Cinderella Rhapsody is available on Blu-ray from Crunchyroll and Amazon.

 

Red haired girl in a school uniform, blue-haired girl in black dress and cowering little blonde girl with a flower in hair are backed by a mecha that looks like the redhead, a pair embracing in wedding clothes of a guy with brown hair and a teal-haired girl.

Project A-ko 4: Final

The aptly-titled fourth film of the mainline series is about two impending threats: a new alien invasion, foretold by ancient inscriptions found in Iraq, alongside the teacher Miss Ayumi’s engagement to…Kei??!?!

Out of all of the sequels, this one has the strongest set-up for farce. Phoney Stark is back as the facilitator of the omiai between Miss Ayumi and Kei. Since he is basically in charge of the military, he orders them to protect the bride and groom from terrorist threats (read: B-ko, who is back on a rampage to steal Kei for herself). This provides cover for the defense force to mobilize against a massive alien fleet that is approaching earth (circumventing the cowardice of the commander who bailed in the previous film).

A-ko is, for her part, is also trying to wreck the wedding, again leaving C-ko feeling abandoned; in fact, her crybaby friend begins to fear that A-ko and B-ko’s love of fighting is going to turn into feisty romance, leaving her alone. When it turns out the fleet is helmed by C-ko’s long-lost mother, C-ko decides willingly to leave. (We are led to believe that Ayumi is tied to the aliens, but that turns out to be a fakeout.) A-ko and B-ko fail to take her back, only for C-ko to unceremoniously show up at A-ko’s door the next day, having changed her mind on leaving. C-ko asks A-ko not to fight B-ko anymore, to which A-ko happily agrees.

To be honest, this one might be my favorite of the bunch. Seeing A-ko and B-kos fights become so regular that even their friends see it as just another ordinary morning got a good chuckle out of me. C-ko getting Yuri-goggles was a fun twist that I wish the movie leaned more into. Still, the plot AGAIN is centered around Kei, who is even less charismatic here than in the previous film.

The extras here match what we saw in the previous releases. Would you know that there are a lot of Lupin cameos??

Overall – 7

Project A-ko 4: Final Blu-ray is available on Amazon and Crunchyroll.

 

All in all, none of these films reach the heights that the first film did, and in some cases detract from it (*cough* Kei *cough*). That said, if you wanted to see more bubble-era OVA hijinks chock full of parody, none of these are an awful time.

 

Matt Marcus is a cohost of various projects on the Pitch Drop Podcast Network, as well as the writer for the blog Oh My God, They Were Bandmates analyzing How Do We Relationship in greater depth.





The Night Of Baba Yaga

January 26th, 2025

Bright red book cover, with white letter than read The Night of Baba Yaga, Akira Otani. On the lower portion, a blood-stained girl with yellow whites of her eyes and red irises, stares at us as if looking over a wall.by Matt Marcus, Staff Writer

CW: Rape (both attempted and implied), incest, violence, gore, misogyny, transphobia

The Night of the Baba Yaga came on my radar by way of a skeet from the Read Japanese Literature podcast as a part of Pride Month. A queer author’s English debut about an ass-kicking bodyguard and her charge, a yakuza princess? Sounds like a bloody good time! I just had one major concern: in the seedy male-dominated world of organized crime, how much will sexual menace play a role in the story for our protagonists?

Turns out the answer is a lot!

It begins right away too. Our POV character Yoriko Shindo is kidnapped off the street by a gang of goons working for a local high-level boss Genzo Naiki and is immediately forced to strip to “prove” that she’s a woman. (Genzo made sure to add a crack about trans women here for good measure.) Already the vibes are rancid, and it does not get any better from there. Put more succinctly, in the 116 pages of this book, the phrase “raped to death” was used three times.

This all kicks off because Genzo is in need of a bodyguard for his 18-year-old daughter, however he is too psychotically protective of her “virtue” to trust any of his men to do the job. Luckily for him, Shindo just happened to pick a fight with some of his men that night. After being subdued, she is pressed into service on the threat of…well, you know. Bad stuff.

Shindo is, of course, a social castoff with a strange background. She’s half-foreign, was raised by her grandparents, which included bizarre (and, to be honest, abusive) training that made her a formidable fighter. She isn’t just capable of throwing fisticuffs—she relishes the thrill of it. She’s quippy and feisty. We are supposed to think that she’s cool, but she’s a little too cool.

Our yakuza princess in question, Shoko, has had her life completely controlled by her father. Her mother ran off with one of Genzo’s subordinates some ten years prior, and while the boss continues to hunt for his absent spouse, he has groomed Shoko to be something of a direct replacement. (Do we find out that this is more literal than we’d like? Yes, yes we do.) 

Now, what could have salvaged this story is the rapport between Shindo and Shoko. This is a classic pairing: a rough-and-tumble low-class scrapper and an uptight, sheltered girl who cannot escape her circumstances. Of course they are going to clash at first, but eventually emotional walls will come down, trust will be built, and eventually love will bloom.

That isn’t what we get here. The story barely spares any words on building their relationship. Shoko hates Shindo’s guts on sight, and they share maybe two scenes together before a turning point, where Shoko saves Shindo from being gang raped by a group of Genzo’s men. After that, Shoko can no longer hold her steely façade in front of Shindo, but at no point I would say that they emotionally bonded at all.

There is one specter lurking in the background of the story: an associate of Genzo’s who is described as a complete pervert for torture, particularly of the sexual kind. The first of two twists in this book is that this man is Shoko’s fiancé. None of this makes sense considering how protective and possessive Genzo is of his daughter, but fuck it, we need a Big Bad, so why not this guy? Shindo, out of some sense of duty, decides that she can’t let Shoko be married off to this pervert, so they end up running off together, much like Genzo’s wife and henchman had done years prior. (Oh, and in the process Shindo gets to repay the favor by saving Shoko from being raped by her father too. Symmetry!)

The last section of the book is where most of the queer themes show up, as the two begin living life together under false personas. Their bond turns into something of an “honor-bound” queer platonic relationship with a little bit of Gender thrown in. To be honest, it wasn’t well seeded prior to the end of the book, and the series of vignettes we do get are pretty scant. It is the only element of the book that isn’t heavy-handed.

The second twist to the story is one that I will not spoil, but my reaction to it was less “oh, that’s neat!” and more “oh, ok.” The ending tries to wrap the story with a dramatic showdown, but it feels under-baked.

The one lone bright spot for me were the fight scenes, particularly the first one. They were all properly visceral and well-choreographed. With the title and Shindo’s love of dogs, I was expecting a certain amount of John Wick influence, but I was pleasantly surprised it comes through strongest when Shindo is breaking bones.

Sam Bett is credited with the translation, and I think overall he did a good job of it. There is one line of dialogue that I found particularly groan-worthy (hint: it includes the phrase “thunder thighs”), but I assume that the source material carries most of the blame for it.

All in all, this is very much a novella that really badly wanted to be an exploitation film. If you are looking for a grimy crime family story with a dash of queerness, then you should let this Baba Yaga haunt you for an evening or two.

Rating:

Overall – 6 For the number of severed sex organs presented to us for our trouble

As a shoutout, I read this book through The Japan Foundation via the Libby iOS app. There isn’t any yuri manga available in the catalogue at this time of writing, but there are queer-themed books and such that may be of interest. Best part is that it’s free for those in the US and Canada, so long as you have a library card.

Matt Marcus is a cohost of various projects on the Pitch Drop Podcast Network, as well as the writer for the blog Oh My God, They Were Bandmates analyzing How Do We Relationship in greater depth.





Momentary Lily Okazu Staff Review

January 15th, 2025

Colorful image of tables in a restaurant, with six girls colorfully dressed, eating and drinking, and smiling with banality.It appears that Okazu Staff huddle together when they encounter a trashfire in media, so once again, we are here to debrief and detox.

Today we are gathered together to memorialize our sanity, lost via Momentary Lily, streaming on Crunchyroll.

 

 

 

Christian LeBlanc

My first impression of the new GoHands joint was that it felt like being grabbed by the shoulders and shaken violently by someone vomiting glitter everywhere. And this is coming from someone who generally enjoys GoHands’ output, in defiance of people who point out the flaws in their animation.
 
Admittedly, I’m not particularly literate in cinema, and so online discussions will often illustrate to me why a scene in a movie works as well as it does. Likewise, people online can point out how GoHands is using an ambitious camera angle or perspective in the wrong place, but I may not always notice something’s off, and simply enjoy seeing the camerawork go absolutely ham for someone walking up a flight of stairs. And why not? Anime is generally exaggerated anyway, right?
 
Well, let me explain in terms of music. Momentary Lily is like a slow ballad where someone starts shredding on their axe like crazy halfway through the first verse. Yes, it’s an impressively face-melting, blisteringly-fast guitar solo, but what is it doing after a line and a half of lyrics? Some people will be open-minded enough to simply enjoy the guitar solo, and won’t be bothered by how out of place it is. Conversely, some listeners won’t understand why the gentle singing was interrupted by a piece of music from a seemingly different tune, and will be taken out of the song because it’s so jarring and distracting.
 
My colleagues will expand on how all the different elements of this show make it less than the sum of its parts, but let me pass the baton with this: one character’s death lacks gravitas because we haven’t gotten to know them well enough over two episodes, while another girl’s breasts defy gravitas even as she’s sobbing over her impending doom. Please learn to read the room, Erika Koudaji’s breasts.
 

Eleanor Walker

I watched this while nursing a tremendous hangover and I’m genuinely not sure if it improved the experience or not. The main thing going through my mind was “she breasted boobily” every time a certain character was on the screen. I still don’t know why these collection of walking stereotypes, sorry, characters are doing what they’re doing, what the “Wild Hunt” is and where they’re getting the ingredients for the random cooking segments. It’s like one staffer wanted to make a cute girls doing cute things cooking show and another wanted to make a monster fighting explosion show and the studio just shrugged and said “eh, whatever, we can only afford to animate one pair of breasts so work together”. The voices are particularly grating, I’m not generally one who notices particularly bad voice acting, especially in Japanese (I didn’t notice Hideaki Anno in The Wind Rises, for example, which was widely complained about online) but dearie me the voices in this one make me want to gouge my eardrums out with a melon baller.

 

Erica Friedman

This project is infamously animated by GoHands, a group that takes their work as animators VERY seriously, as everything in this anime moves, constantly. Even things that do not actually ever move.

In a post-apocalyptic world in which humans have been hunted by “The Wild Hunt” – over-animated kaijuu – a girl with a mysterious ability to call up a magical, science fiction-y, mega weapon finds a small group of other teenage girls with similar abilities.  Whether you consider these girls to be special forces, or refugees or just plain child soldiers, don’t worry about the details…their misery and trauma will be mined for laughs and pathos and boob jiggles. And cooking lessons, so even at the end of the world, we can make a nice meal of rice and canned mackerel. We got to get our priorities straight.

As for the service – to quote the great Pamela Poovey, “Inappropes.”

Grab a Dramamine and watch Momentary Lily, with a cast of girls with verbal tics that stand in for a personality.

 

Frank Hecker

Fans of the anime Shirobako may recall a scene in which two animators are discussing a new technique for making reflections off eyeglasses look more realistic, followed by a shot of one person’s glasses illustrating that very technique. Watching Momentary Lily is like watching that scene on infinite repeat, but without the self-reflexive humor. After viewing the first couple of minutes of episode 1 in the conventional way, I turned the sound and subtitles off so I could appreciate Momentary Lily for what it really is, a SIGGRAPH demo with fighting girls. (I originally wrote “magical girls,” but they don’t have transformation sequences—more’s the pity.)

Watching the show this way helps make sense of some of the shot and plot choices. Why does one of the girls show off her moisturizing regimen in the first scene? So that we can see how well GoHands can model shiny skin (presumably using Phong shading or some more recent technique). Why do the girls take a break from fighting monsters to have a meal? So that the animators can take a break from animating kaijū and relax themselves, modeling various foods, plastic packages, tin cans, utensils, and so on. (They even show a cousin of the famous Utah teapot.) And most notably: why does the girls’ hair fly around so much? It’s simultaneously a plea to the production committee and a boast to the viewer: “If we had a bigger budget, we could animate every hair.”

I guess there’s a story here somewhere and presumably some attempts at characterization, but really the girls are to GoHands what the Madonna and child and other Biblical scenes were to Renaissance painters, a conventional set of stock images used to demonstrate mastery of their craft. (My using the word “craft” and not “art” is deliberate; there is little art here.) Watching Momentary Lily like I did highlights those demonstrations: the omnipresent lens flare that shifts position depending on which way the light is coming from, the focus pulling and bokeh, the way the clouds constantly moving across the sky are reflected in the windows of the buildings in the background. For me, the emotional climax of episode 2 was not the foreground scene of a girl in extremis, but rather the background shot of a tree with all its leaves rippling in the wind.

I especially loved the shots of buildings shown in dramatic perspective, whether during the day or at night, viewed clearly or enshrouded in fog. Which brings me to my recommendation to GoHands: forget plot, character, and dialogue. Ditch the monsters, include more scenes with buildings and benches, erase the girls from every shot, and create what the world has been waiting for: a true masterpiece of “yuri of absence.”

 

Luce

Well that sure was an eye workout. Ow.

Setting aside the camera for now, this is distinctly mediocre. Sci-fi and post-apocalypse isn’t my thing, but this wouldn’t sell me. The five characters we see initially are unmemorable, apart from ‘onee-chan’ with the big bouncing boobs that are totally unnecessary and look like they’re about to float her off to space. (One character says ‘too much jiggle’. Don’t call it out and flaunt it at the same time.) Renge, the ‘main’ character, is screechy, then apologising for the weirdest things, like ‘imposing’ on the group with a awkwardly cut cooking ‘segment’, as they refer to it. Wow, she’s amnesiac, has a cool weapon and can one shot the big robots. Great, sure sounds like a plot thread right there. Too bad I’m not interested.

Sadly, even if I was interested, watching this feels like an attack on the optic nerve. Aside from over-animated hair and one set of boobs, the animation is middling, but not awful. But it’s like someone heard ‘dynamic camera angles’ and decided this meant ‘camera must move every two seconds’. It’s at odd angles, or moving, but in really jarring ways that almost follow characters but not quite. There’s more lens flares than Star Trek. And what is with the split screens?!

If you have a tendency to migraines, or any visually triggered illnesses, avoid this. I promise it’s not worth it. I’m off to have a lie down.

 

Matt Marcus

When my friend and cohost Sibyl sent me the trailer for Momentary Lily, my first thought was “someone must really like RWBY.” As the announcement began circulating in my online spaces, I had only seen dismissive, but not illuminating, comments about the studio that made it. It wasn’t on my radar, but between my friend’s excitement and the reactions from the folks in the Discord after episode 1 dropped, I figured I would give it a shot.

Y’all, I was not prepared.

I could go on about the visually chaotic and cacophonous opening, but that’s just where it begins. From opening to ending, watching Momentary Lily is like reading one of those giant posts of text with three emojis after every sentence, but also the font is Wingdings.

The script feels like it was written by ChatGPT trained using the dialogue of every lady-led shonen show, but dumber. There’s the gamer girl who chugs energy drinks and calls them her “buffs” in every sentence she speaks. There’s the chipper leader with a verbal tic. There’s the serious dark-haired girl with glasses with a verbal tic. There’s the “big sister” archetype with absurd breast physics. There’s the gyaru girl. And, of course, we have the overpowered amnesiac lead who is so obscenely shy that half her dialogue is in pantomime. The characterization is so thin I’m surprised that their models are not literally transparent.

But we’re not here for deep ruminations on the human soul, are we? No, we’re here to see some overly-stylized teenagers do some high-flying ass-kicking! So that part must be good right? I got bad news for you: the action is messy, hard to follow, and extremely headache inducing. The characters don’t match the garish, hyper-saturated 3D backgrounds in both visual style and, worse, in framerate. Even in shots where the background isn’t moving as if the camera is being controlled by a drunk crane operator, the point of view zooms in and out and bounces around like a nap-skipping toddler on caffeine. It’s as if GoHands was afraid that if they didn’t jangle every key in front of our face for the entire scene, we’d lose interest mid-sword swing.

But beyond all that, the biggest sin is the pacing. Characters only have space to do schtick between the barest of exposition. Tone shifts rapidly from “badass” action to cutesy cooking segments where Amnesia Girl shows her new pals how to make otaku struggle meals. (Each episode is named for the dish said girl makes, so I guess this was The Thing GoHands decided the show should be About.) Scenes are smashed together with no sense of time passing. A character is killed in episode 2, and the previews of the next episode suggest that the show is going to tell us why we should’ve cared about this girl in the first place. It’s jarring and exhausting and boring at the same time.

And don’t get me started on the worldbuilding. Almost every human on earth has been vaporized yet social media still functions! Can’t wait for the plot to hinge on the crew posting their 7-Eleven survivalist stews on the ‘Gram. GOD this sucks.

The thing that strikes me the most about the show is that there is clearly effort and skill on display, and yet it is applied in the most artless way I have ever seen. It’s fascinating in that way: a show ostensibly about cooking that lacks taste. For all the “flavor” tossed in, this is very thin gruel.

Ratings:

Story – eh
Characters – verbal tics and trauma
Animation – LOL
Service – too much jiggle
Yuri – no thank you

Overall – canned fish





Qualia the Purple: The Complete Manga Collection

December 22nd, 2024

Manga cover for Qualia The Purple. The Complete Manga Collection. On a cover of purple stripes, a girl with long brown hair and big purple eyes looks up at us, her shadow spreading behind her.by Matt Marcus, Staff Writer

Qualia the Purple: The Complete Manga Collection is a story about a high school girl named Yukari, who sees all people as robots.

Ok, that’s not entirely true. This is a story about Manabu (aka Gaku-chan), a normal high school girl who is in love with Yukari but doesn’t quite realize it.

…Alright, you got me. This is a story not really about either of those things. This is a story about quantum mechanics and theoretical physics that happens to center on Manabu’s metaphysical attempts to save Yukari from an early death at the hands of an evil science institute.

Based on the light novel of the same name, this single-volume collection is just as confused as the intro of this review. It begins with a strong concept: Yukari appears to be a chuunibyou, but in reality she has the ability to deconstruct and rebuild matter however she seems fit. Manabu is a normal girl with something of a princely streak. You think you’re in for some sci-fi-tinged high school Yuri yearning, but somehow it develops into a plot about a serial killer.

And then, roughly a third into its length, it decides to pivot into a multiverse story that damsels Yukari, the girl who is practically Dr. Manhattan, in order to put the story in Manabu’s hands (Manabu even addresses this bait-and-switch directly to the reader). By design, she is an empty vessel with a singular goal. 

The story already made a leap into the unpleasant with the serial killer subplot, but the back two-thirds ends up making Manabu out to be a monster as she tries everything, no matter how unpleasant, to achieve her goal. Most unfortunate of these decisions involves Alice, a child prodigy who arrives at the high school to recruit Yukari to the aforementioned evil science institute. A major pivot point involves an alternate universe Manabu falling in love with her, despite her being younger by a fair number of years. Our point-of-view Manabu ends up developing a relationship with Alice as a means to further her goal of saving Yukari. The whole thing feels like an unforced error, since there is nothing about Alice’s character that is gained by making her a few years younger than the rest of the main cast.

One could say that it’s subversive how Manabu and Yukari’s relationship sits neatly in the old paradigm of undefined schoolgirl Yuri crush, while Manabu’s (hella problematic) relationship with Alice is unambiguously explicit in its romantic and sexual nature. That must have felt novel in 2009 when this story was first released, but today it has notably less impact. Also, I’m sure I could write an entire paper on how an “impure” (putting aside the age gap) queer relationship is instrumentalized in the service of a “pure” Yuri love, but frankly I’m too exhausted by the belabored explanations of the Copenhagen Interpretation and wave function collapses to bother.

The biggest flaw of this manga is that the book itself is a poor choice for visual adaptation. The vast majority of the story is told in narration by Manabu, and there are few if any moments that let the visuals speak for themselves. That said, there is one extremely funny moment that takes advantage of the medium.

Given its age, I can forgive a few of its sins. (The fact that a flip phone played a major role in the plot did get a chuckle out of me.) That said, it pales in comparison to a short story collection made from a very similar mold: Last and First Idol. Where the edgy elements in Qualia just made me wince, the visceral gore and violence of LAFI played punctuated Gengen Kunano’s biting satire, be it for idols, gacha, or whatever. Qualia plays it very straight which lessens its appeal to me.

I’d say that if you are in the pocket for some sci-fi Yuri and don’t mind a misstep or two, Qualia the Purple could be worth your time. But I would suggest the light novel over this manga collection.

Ratings:

Art – 6 Not a whole lot to write home about visually; doesn’t take advantage of the medium enough
Story – 6 More disjointed than compelling
Characters – 5 What’s on the page is pretty stock
Service – 1 Higher if you like detailed explanations of Schrodinger’s Cat
Yuri – 5 / LGBTQ – 5 Some old-school yearning, but also has a queer relationship as a plot element

Overall – 6 Would have more impact if this release time-traveled back to 2009

Thank you to Seven Seas, who provided me with a review copy.

Matt Marcus is a cohost of various projects on the Pitch Drop Podcast Network, as well as the writer for the blog Oh My God, They Were Bandmates analyzing How Do We Relationship in greater depth.





Assorted Entanglements, Volume 6

November 20th, 2024

A woman in a business suit with short dark hair, holding a beer, hugs her younger sister in a white blouse and dark blue skirt her black hair in pigtails.

by Matt Marcus, Staff Writer

Last we left our ragtag crew of sapphics, dates were “enjoyed”, feelings were revealed, emotional wounds were bonded over. We were left just short of a handful of plot payoffs: will Kujou give in to Sugimoto’s trial date idea? Will Heke-sensei be able to game hard enough to earn the right to date her boss? Will Shizuku and Saori just hook up already?

In Assorted Entanglements Volume 6, three of our four pairings arrive at significant inflection points. One couple is embarking on a new adventure as a couple, one is pretending to do the same, and the third…well that one is about to get complicated.

For Saori and Shizuku, the twin-tailed “normie” decides to sneak out of the house at night for doughnuts and deadpans her way into Shizuku’s apartment (this time choosing to be let in through the door instead of smashing the window. Character growth!!). She continues to find herself drawn to the delinquent, and has begun to see through some of Shizuku’s self-loathing. While escorting Saori back to her house, Shizuku recognizes a woman from her past. This is setting up a Shizuku character arc, and I’m surprisingly here for it. Never would’ve thought I’d say that about Shizuku of all characters, but here we are.

As for our mangaka/editor duo, Heke-sensei finally achieves her level goal in the online FPS game, putting her on “even footing” with her gaming oshi. This means she can finally ask Shinohara out! However, she nearly chickens out after spending the day together on a date. Heke-san clutches out the “win” and the two finally come together as a couple. I’m satisfied that this didn’t get dragged out for another who-knows-how-many volume. Now, the real question left is will Heke-sensei be more capable of hitting deadlines now that her editor is her girlfriend?

And for our third major turning point, Kujou and Sugimoto go on the long-threatened trial date. Naturally, it’s at the most sapphic of date destinations: the aquarium! Sugimoto continuously props up Kujou in the face of her gym teacher’s unrelenting defeatism and emotional self-sabotage, which is, honestly, kind of sweet. Sugimoto isn’t actively putting the moves on her teacher (in fact, she doesn’t seem to recognize her long-growing feelings), but by the end of the date, Kujou has the realization that the two of them have gotten too close for their own good. I was starting to worry that Kujou would remain oblivious for a good while longer.

…Also Iori and Minami are there. There’s a silly miscommunication that gets blown out of proportion, complete with the obligatory punch (on panel this time!), but it ends with a sweet moment together. At this point for me, these two are mostly here as supporting cast for the Saori x Shizuku storyline.

Again, I have to say I’m impressed with the improvement of the storytelling from the early volumes. It’s a direct result of the shift to longer chapters allowing the characters more space to interact and to make something resembling plot progress. Hell, it’s making me invested in Shizuku’s backstory, and how the past’s resurfacing will affect her relationship with Saori in the present. A deep character drama this ain’t, but it has become much more than the series of gag strips it began as.

Ratings:

Art – 7 Continues to be solid
Story – 8 We’re actually starting to cook here, with each of the three “active” plot arcs developing
Characters – 8 There is the right amount of angst injected with the humor, allowing for good chemistry
Service – 4 For a real payoff for our Best Couple
Yuri – 8 / LGBTQ – 8 Aquarium date!

Overall – 8 Would invite this volume to go on a shopping date to Yodob*shi 

Volume 7 of this ensemble story of sapphic misfits is coming our way in February.

Matt Marcus is a cohost of various projects on the Pitch Drop Podcast Network, as well as the writer for the blog Oh My God, They Were Bandmates analyzing How Do We Relationship in greater depth.