Archive for the Guest Review Category


Mizuchi 白蛇心傳 Visual Novel from Aikasa Collective, Guest Review by Louise P

June 17th, 2020

It’s my favorite day of the week today, Guest Review Wednesday! And today we have our Senior VN reviewer Louise P to tell you about a lovely new VN by the folks at Aikasa Collective. So, welcome back and  take it away Louise!

If you watched anime in the early 00s you probably were sick of sitcom shows set in some remote home, often Japanese style, filled with a bunch of young people who will not communicate properly, that we were supposed to find cute. Something that was very hard to do when characters were constantly in conflict due to either ignorance or malice. 

It’s wonderful then that we have Mizuchi, which follows Linh after she is rescued from being executed by Ai, a mysterious snake woman that Linh sees as a goddess. Linh ends up living with Ai and the two are later joined by Jinhai, a traveling former monk who has a lot of history with Ai.

Mizuchi‘s setup might sound familiar to you but that is where the similarities end. For starters while Linh may be the main character Ai and Jinhai are not jealously competing to seduce her. Instead we are given time for everyone to get to know each other in the usual manner for a visual novel, by talking about the food they are going to eat and the little quirks in the languages they speak.

But this is a yuri visual novel, we’re here for romance. Mizuchi does well by clearing the low bar of ensuring that the characters fall in love as they learn about and help each other. We fall in love with Ai along with Linh as she walks us through ‘baby’s beginners book of feminism’. Jinhai has plenty of opportunities to be dashing and kind so that by the time the game contrived a reason for Linh to fall out of a tree into Jinhai’s arms I was ecstatic rather than bored. 

It was really nice that so much of Linh’s time with Ai and Jinhai is learning skills and knowledge from them that were denied to her by her family or by wider society. Linh doesn’t just fall in love with Ai and Jinhai but also improves herself by learning from them and being mentored. Linh’s grows from someone who just goes along with what people set for her into a person committed to deciding their own fate. 

The story doesn’t ignore Ai and Jinhai’s relationship either. They are charmingly written like they are a pair of on again off again ex-girlfriends. It is delightfully clear in the way that the two both snipe at each other but also have nothing but good things to say about each other when they are alone. Ai will openly admit to how noble and kind Jinhai is but then at the same time she will wave a freshly butchered pig’s head in front of the very vegetarian ex-monk.

Mizuchi capitalizes on this charm with some of the best sprite animation since Heart of the Woods. I’m not a fan of sprites taking center stage, however the sprites in Mizuchi are endlessly endearing. Characters settle behind tables, slide smoothly in and out of frame and all three main characters have expressions that match them well. Particularly with Ai and Jinhai who have exppresions that play to their strengths to get the reader to fall for them in the same moments Linh does.

Sadly this wonderful found family situation is often hijacked by the wider framing. Whenever we are reminded of the village Linh has escaped from, the story develops a mean streak that does not gel with the scenes of day to day life.

At the beginning of the story, Linh is saved from execution in her hometown by Ai. This was brought about by a wrongful and sexist accusation of adultery. However Linh regularly desires to return to her family who we had last seen giving her over to a bloodthirsty mob. How she expects this to work out on her return is not something the reader ever learns it just becomes irrelevant way too late in the story. So at several points in the story we have Linh, our main character, pining to return to a town that we the reader have only come to hate. It is a real mood whiplash.

This is further compounded when Ai, the person who overtly points out the cruelty in patriarchy, constantly has her power demonised both in the story and by Jinhai. Whenever Ai gains or exercises power within the story she is criticized so much more than any of the men who willfully harm others for their own gain.

Jinhai openly says that if Ai were to rise to her true potential Jinhai would seal her. When this inevitably happens in the climax of a few routes Jinah jumps to seal Ai away even though the only reason Ai is transforming is to deal with a far more malevolent threat. A threat that is overtly male coded compared to whatever threat Ai poses. 

For a story about three women living together, where the main character is saved from being executed by a society that has deemed her worthless, having the final conflict being: “Oh no our powerful friend is now too powerful.” seems like entirely the wrong tone to take. 

Which is a shame because as I said earlier for most of the game these are charming characters who play off each other well and respect each other. Perhaps the best part of the game as a whole was that all three never stopped being friends in any of the routes. No matter who Linh ends up with the other never becomes jealous just to throw some additional conflict into the situation. Mizuchi does know that it is possible to be happy for others.

The story of Mizuchi is, at its core, one of three women supporting and nurturing each other, that eventually blossoms into a love that helps all of them become better people. A good relaxing summer romance read.

Ratings:

Art – 9
Story – 7
Characters – 8
Yuri – 6
Service – Well there are sex scenes and bathing scenes 10?

Overall – 7

Erica here: Thank you so much for the review. This sounds like it really hits all the marks on narrative, and style. Thanks for walking us through it. ^_^ Thanks very much to Aikasa Collective for the review copy!





Yuri Manga: Ichido Dake Demo, Koukaishiteimasu., Volume 1(一度だけでも、後悔してます。) Guest Review by Mariko S.

March 4th, 2020

Welcome to Guest Review Wednesday here on Okazu! Today we welcome back reviewer Mariko S. as she takes a look at  a book that was mentioned in last week’s YNN report, Ichido Dake Demo, Koukaishiteimasu., Volume 1 (一度だけでも、後悔してます。). Please give her your attention and your warmest welcome once again!

24-year-old Kozuka Chiyo is a typical manga protagonist. She loves anime and games, and used to work at a game company until a few months ago, when she lost her job due to vaguely hinted at circumstances. She’s spent the time since holed up in her apartment burning through her savings on living expenses and obviously necessary figurine and video game purchases, but, alas, not on rent. One day her landlady, a petite girl of 19, comes to collect and, finding Kozuka unable to settle up, suddenly bluntly proposes that if they have sex, she’ll work out a way to get her caught up. Despite not being sexually interested in girls, with no better alternative Kozuka apparently agrees and, after a few beers, wakes up naked next to the landlady the next morning with regrets, but at least a path forward.

The landlady’s plan – she’ll move in with Kozuka, and Kozuka will pay off her debt in blocks of 10,000 yen, each one to be checked off when Kozuka is deemed to have rendered “good service.” The landlady is clear that she wants this to be/include sex, but Kozuka is eager to find alternatives. The problem being, as you might expect, that Kozuka has no life skills to offer – she can’t cook, clean, or do laundry – while the landlady is extremely put together and competent. Kozuka finds her own life improving more by the landlady helping her, instead of anything she’s able to do in return benefiting the landlady, at least at first.

“Ichido dakedemo…” isn’t quite as dire as its skeevy and salacious (skeevalacious?) setup portends. The initial sex trade happens off page and, though the service quotient is high, it’s not especially gross. Once/if you can look past that “no woman would ever do this” setup, the subsequent “services in lieu of rent” are more of a slow burn toward relationship development/general intimacy and friendship, including things like playing games together, talking about their pasts, going on a shopping date, and a “redeem any time” hug offer. Hara, the landlady (we don’t learn her first name and only learn her last name late in the book) is very clear about wanting more, and her internal monologue suggests she’s in love with Kozuka and has been for awhile, for reasons we can only guess at (other than her stating that she likes older women).

The surprising turn comes when Hara is shown to have been struggling with same-sex attraction and the way people have treated her for it for a long time. When she and Kozuka are out on the shopping date, they run into one of the landlady’s old high school acquaintances and her boyfriend. The acquaintance outs the landlady to her boyfriend, and even though neither reacts badly, they are pretty callous with how they talk about her. Kozuka comes to Hara’s rescue, and they have a sort of coded talk about how it’s been for her and Kozuka’s attitude about gay relationships. We see that what Kozuka really can offer Hara is a chance to connect with someone else, more than just physically, who actually cares about her and needs her.

The biggest problem with this manga so far, really, is that since it’s obviously intended to be a romance, Kozuka is undoubtedly going to come around to falling in love with the landlady, even though she’s been nothing but clear about not having any same-sex desire. That said, the landlady does bring a lot to the table for her, at the very least as a roommate and companion, so if they do end up together they should be relatively happy.

I don’t think any of this excuses the problematic sexual coercion/power abuse setup. I do think the author tried to offset that by making the landlady so much younger and smaller, so that it feels more like Kozuka consents to the terms for her own gain rather than because she feels threatened or forced. It’s not going to be a title for everyone, but I was pleasantly surprised at it… not being as bad as it could have been? No, more being way better than I would have expected? How’s that for an endorsement. ><;

 

Ratings:

Art – 7   There’s a certain sloppiness to it that is kind of refreshing, and the proportions and poses are generally good, but it rarely has much reason to push the details and creativity beyond “nice enough.”

Story – 6   The hook is ludicrous, and many of the vignettes pretty standard adult slice-of-life variants, but there’s some good potential for the future if they delve into the hinted-at discrimination that cost Kozuka her job, or more explicitly into Hara’s struggles with being gay.

Characters – 7  Maybe a little high, but I’m just glad that they’re cute without being (too) moe and have adult bodies. Oh, bar, why must you be so low?

Yuri – 5  Since only half of the characters fit the description thus far.

Service – 7  There’s the usual assortment of “walking in on each other naked,” “conversation about bras,” and “occasional cleavage shots.” Also, I guess, the premise is literally about “service.” Service thing that bugs me little: somehow Kozuka, an otaku couch potato who lives off of cup ramen and doesn’t exercise, has an incredible body under her dumpy clothes. Don’t get me wrong, the artist excels at drawing Kozuka’s curves, but you just don’t get that body without a lot more effort than she puts in. ^^;

 

Overall – 6

Erica here: Thank you Mariko for another great review of a manga that I would never know anything about otherwise. That’s the best part of guest reviews!





Yuri Comic: ROADQUEEN: Eternal Roadtrip to Love, Guest Review by Meru C

December 11th, 2019

It is my very great pleasure today to welcome back guest reviewer Meru C, with a look at a book that I think a lot of you will really like! Guest reviews like this are made possible by our Okazu Patrons! Thank you for your support of Yuri reviews, news and interviews!

Mira Ong Chua’s Roadqueens first debuted as a one-shot comic in 2016. Two years later in late 2018, it became a full-fledged story and was released in a physical edition thanks to a successful Kickstarter that won the hearts of thousands of eager fans. Unfortunately, at the time, I was unable to back Mira’s campaign, and was left desperately wanting to indulge in what seemed like a really stellar story. Thankfully, Seven Seas Entertainment picked up the rights for graphic novel, re-releasing ROADQUEEN: Eternal Roadtrip to Love on October 8, 2019 in a definitive, quite lovely Complete edition. 

I’m reviewing this re-released edition, which includes a full-color, glossy version of the originally one shot “ROADQUEEN: Girlfriend of the World” and the saucy short story “Passion Marathon” which fills in what happened between the climax of the story and the epilogue.

Roadqueens follows Leo, the hottest heartbreaker at Princess Andromeda Academy with hordes of adoring fangirls focused on one single goal: beating Leo in a road race to their school so they can ask her out on a date. Little do they know, Leo only loves her motorcycle, Bethany, and doesn’t want to ruin her Cool Girl/Lone Wolf persona. She also absolutely doesn’t care about the hearts of her fans at all. In comes mysterious cool girl Vega, who steals Bethany away and challenges Leo to step up her game and prove that she can be a half-way decent lesbian-slash-girlfriend at least once in her life in order to win Bethany back. Fail, and Bethany will be gone forever.

So I’ll admit up front, the plot is pretty straightforward, leaning on tried and true tropes of Yuri: we’ve got a very butch Bifauxnen, fake dating, a Ferris wheel date, and biker babes to name a few. One of my favorite tropes -”childhood friends”-appears as a crucial plot element, though I’ll admit that this kind of caught me off guard because it felt like it was dropped into the story without any prior foreshadowing.

Mira’s art also makes the plot shine: their retro style harkens back to 1990s manga, and is clearly a love letter to dozens of series that Yuri fans worldwide hold near and dear to their hearts. Naturally, this extends to our two main characters, Leo and Vega, who had really nice designs that I quite liked, and that definitely made me dozens of sapphic couples with similar dynamics. I particularly liked Mira’s use of light and shadow throughout the volume: both were quite well done, lending a lot of atmosphere when the plot slowed down for a transitions or pivotal moments.

Speaking of our main characters, Leo is very… unlikable. I genuinely don’t think I started to like her until a good way into the first third of the story, and even then, I still found myself preferring Vega over Leo. I left the story ultimately liking Leo, but did feel a bit of whiplash: she starts off incredibly callous and quite rude, and at times, is quite frankly just mean. If I’m honest, Vega isn’t much better at the beginning either: she barges in to Leo’s life, quite cruelly -and without explanation- takes her bike and is quite brusque, though I think that by the end of the story, Vega’s actions are much easier to justify than Leo’s are. 

Truthfully, I think that anyone well versed in Yuri will see the climax as pretty obvious: Leo and Vega will fall for each other, and Bethany the Motorcycle will become their motorcycle. Roadqueen isn’t doing a lot of new things, but honestly, it’s like having cake: enjoyable and satisfying. While not the revolutionary work that I saw a lot of fans praising it as, it’s by no means a bad work: in fact, I’ll probably reread Roadqueen this week.

With snappy writing and hilarious, laugh-out-loud comedy beats and a plot that feels like treading familiar ground, it’s easy enough to overlook the fact that you know how Roadqueen will end and just enjoy the wild ride. I can’t wait to see what Mira Ong Chua creates next!

Ratings: 

Art – 8 especially for the color pages, which look really good and make you wish the entire comic was in color
Story – 7
Characters – 6 
Service – 6
Yuri – 10 This is a series all about girls loving girls and girls love girls who also love motorcycles and is very clearly queer and sapphic
Motorcycles – 10

Overall – 8

I think that Roadqueens offers something for everyone, though veterans of the Yuri genre -notably, fans of Revolutionary Girl Utena, Sailor Moon or even Kill la Kill– might find this fast paced road race leaving them wanting. Still, give it a read and see what you think: this one-volume story might surprise you. 

You can find more of Mira Ong Chua’s content on her website miraongchua.com.

Erica here: Thank you so much Meru! I know that there’s a lot to like in this book for fans of classic Yuri manga and anime series. Hopefully we’ll see new original work from Mira Ong Chua in the future.





British Museum Manga Exhibition Report, Guest Review by Eleanor W.

September 29th, 2019

This summer saw the largest manga exhibition at a museum outside Japan, as the British Museum for their Manga マンガ exhibit, to critical acclaim. A little belatedly, because I was away, we have a review of that exhibit by YNN correspondent Eleanor W. I was seriously sorry that I couldn’t manage a trip to London this summer to see this, so I’m settling in to walk through the exhibit with a friend. ^_^ The floor is yours, Eleanor…take it away!

When I heard about the British Museum’s manga exhibition running this summer, I decided that a trip to our capital was necessary. Since London is 4 ½ hours from me on the train, I made a weekend of it, took my best friend (also a manga fan) and we had a great time. As long time manga fans, we were both curious as to what the exhibition would hold for us, as opposed to people who know nothing about manga or comics. 

The museum’s own website invites you to “Enter a graphic world where art and storytelling collide in the largest exhibition of manga ever to take place outside of Japan.” 

It’s always nice to see Miyuki

The exhibition began with a quick introduction to manga, including some sample draft pages, some examples of artist’s tools donated by Takehiko Inoue and some videos from editors at the major publishers Kodansha, Shueisha and Shogakukan, wishing the exhibition success.

Once in the main hall of the exhibition there was a lot to see. There was clearly a lot of time and effort taken to cover every aspect of manga and its history and diversity. From focuses on a few specific artists, to a model bookshop where you could take Japanese and English volumes off the shelf to read, as well as information on seminal series like Dragon Ball and One Piece and even a small explanation of doujinshi and Comiket. 

There was of course a lot of space devoted to telling the history of manga and how it evolved over the 20th century into what it is today. From ukiyo-e woodblock cuts to early newspaper strips, it was definitely a good beginner friendly introduction to where manga came from beyond Osamu Tezuka. 

An example of early Japanese cartoons published in a newspaper, in the style of Western newspaper strips. 

 

 


I particularly liked this board game

I was happy that there was mention of the Year 24 Group and how they developed shoujo manga and BL, with a particular focus on Moto Hagio. 

Leading on from the Year 24 Group, there was another section on Boys Love, though disappointingly Yuri didn’t get a mention. I almost forgive them though, as they included Fumi Yoshinaga and What Did You Eat Yesterday as an example of a different more modern type of BL along with a few pages of My Brother’s Husband, which if you haven’t read already, you absolutely need to. 

 

The curators definitely tried to pick diverse examples of series to show, evidenced by Chihayafuru being right around the corner from a display on Junji Ito and his horror works, a large print of JoJo on one of the walls and a Colossal Titan head model looming in the opposite corner.

Another part I particularly enjoyed was the section about sound effects. Fumiyo Kono (Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms and In This Corner of the World) has produced a manga guide to the common Japanese sound effects often seen in manga, and uses an adorable rabbit character to explain how they are used and often form part of the art.

Overall, this exhibition was a good balance between not intimidating newcomers to the world of manga, but still providing enough for veteran fans to enjoy. I’m glad I made the trip. 

For further reading, take a look at the British Museum’s blog on the exhbit:

https://blog.britishmuseum.org/manga-a-brief-history-in-12-works/

https://blog.britishmuseum.org/an-introduction-to-manga/

and ANN’s report of Viz Editor Urian Brown’s walkthrough video of the exhibit.

Erica here: Thank you Eleanor! I appreciate your overview and I’m very glad that you were able to see the exhibit.

 





Kakegurui Season 2 Anime (English) Guest Review by Mariko S.

July 3rd, 2019

It’s Guest Review Wednesday here on Okazu and today I a very pleased to once again welcome back Mariko S with another terrific review. I hope you’ll all setting for a treat and let Mariko wisk us away to a world of unhealthy obsession. Take it away Mariko!

You may recall that I previously gave a qualified enthusiastic review of this little “high stakes high school gambling addict” sports anime’s first season. Well, it seems its bombastic debut was popular enough to bankroll a second season, so what do Yumeko and the gang have in store for us this year?

To recap, in an elite private school where the children of Japan’s upper crust seemingly don’t study at all, but do spend all day gambling the GDP of small countries on increasingly elaborate contests, wildcard transfer student Jabami Yumeko arrived to shake up the status quo. She took down (and subsequently befriended) an escalating series of insurmountable opponents from the all-powerful Student Council in search of the pure essence of gambling and the chance to compete against the Yin to her Yang, President Momobami Kirari. Having miraculously won the right to stay in her gambling paradise, the season closed with a tease showing a hospitalized woman who looked like Yumeko folding paper cranes…

Kakegurui, Season 2 opens in media res on Yumeko gambling for some painful stakes with old frenemy Midari and a new goth loli girl. The next episode rewinds to tell us why: for some reason, Kirari has decided to step down from her position at the head of the school and offer it up to a school-wide election to be determined by – what else? Gambling. Since the position of Hyakkaou Gakuen student council president is apparently something akin to both Don of a mafia family and maybe head of a shadow government, the election has drawn the interest of a motley crew of teens from the other branches of the Momobami group, determined to take power for themselves. Every student in school is granted 1 chip, and whoever has the most chips at the end of the election period is the new president. May the games begin.

Let’s just get this out of the way – this season was a massive disappointment to me. We can start with its fatal case of “sequelitis.” Basically, the creators decided to repeat everything from the first season, but MORE. The absurd gambling games are even more far-fetched and less-related to anything resembling actual gambling. The grotesque faces that accented the escalating stakes last season, that were so unique and added such strong emotional visualization, are now omnipresent and ratcheted up to 10. Instead of the contests being a battle of wits and wills between Yumeko and a clearly defined opponent, the games this time are gimmicky and involve bloated groups of 3 or more gamblers. In fact, Yumeko regresses completely as a character this time out – you can barely call her the protagonist, as she functions almost entirely as a pure gambling id to catalyze the people around her. We learn nothing new about her, she does nothing to deepen her personality, and in fact in some of the episodes she is literally sidelined as the other characters work out their issues. She does and says things that directly counteract her previously demonstrated core values, and even the things she directly said moments ago. The first season supported Yumeko as both a force of nature and a complex person, and one who would show her gradually escalating excitement at the art and science of each gambling moment in lunatic ways. This time, she’s basically a service delivery device where the slightest hint of any opportunity to gamble making her come is her entire character.

Speaking of the visuals, they take a step back across the board. Gone is the surreal artistic masterpiece opening that Yamamoto Sayo put together for the first season, replaced by a workmanlike sequence that just displays the characters as cards, with lots of shots of Yumeko’s bouncing chest. The ending is basically the animators deciding to “yes, and” Yumeko’s rain walk from last season, as this time she turns into some kind of naked busty blue fairy surrounded by rainbows doing the same walk, just more cheaply animated. I lost count of the number of times someone’s chest was groped or faceplanted into. I already mentioned the overuse of the funhouse faces, but, at the same time, overall things felt more static and less inventive. The Momobami clan gives us a ton of unnecessary new characters, each with a distinctive visual design but little run-time to allow them anything but the shortest backstory and motivation. In fact, you could basically say this season was about healing the defeated opponents from last season more than anything else, as one-by-one the contest they take part in allows Yumeko to play Manic Pixie Dream Gambler and show them the heart, the courage, or the brain they always had inside them. And finally, the season ends on a complete “Huh?” Setting aside the resolution to the final gamble, I don’t think it’s a spoiler to tell you that the election isn’t even decided. Things just… end.

Can I say anything positive about this season? I guess one of the things that was interesting was how clear the show tried to make it that Kirari and Yumeko are two sides of the same coin. Kirari is a crazy sadist who sees the school as her personal aquarium and the students as the fish to be used, observed, experimented on, or discarded at whim. Yumeko also kind of sees people as a commodity, in her case, gambling fodder. She is kinder, yes, and almost accidentally more helpful, but is more of a masochist who likes the helpless feeling of chance. Her philosophy seems to boil down to, “if we have a good gamble, whatever happens was meant to be, so everyone should enjoy the outcome,” even if it’s utter devastation. Similarly, Kirari, though powerful, isn’t power-hungry – she just wants to be entertained as well. In her case that doesn’t always mean gambling, as long as she gets to watch someone squirm under her microscope.

On the Yuri front, this season is a step up, at least in quantity. Student Council secretary Sayaka, who is infatuated with Kirari, is given her own episode replete with lily imagery and, I suppose, as happy an ending as could be possible for someone in love with a misanthropic sadist. Midari is around for several episodes, displaying her usual over-the-top lust for stimulation by an alpha dog like Yumeko or Kirari. And one of the new characters, Batsubami Rei, though a kind of butler to the rest of the -bami tribe, is given a tall, handsome, princely aesthetic that charms the many girls around the school that she interacts with. However, the resolution to her story is, in my opinion, problematic. (Can’t say more without spoilers.)

Bottom line, if you liked the first season mainly for the kooky gambling antics, you’ll find more of that here to enjoy. If you were hoping to learn more about Yumeko’s past and see a character drama of ratcheting intensity, or even a magnetic attraction between two the-same-yet-opposite supernovas, you’ll be disappointed. Here’s hoping that if they gamble on season 3, Kakegurui can roll a 7 next time.

Ratings:

Art – 5 A dramatic decrease in quality from last season.
Story – 4 The election framing device was decent enough, but there was not much beyond it except at a superficial individual level.
Characters – 4 The gutting of Yumeko, the glut of little-more-than-sketches new characters, and the near omnipresence of the animal-hoodied loli and her minions as the “election monitors” send this one plummeting.
Yuri – 5 As described above.
Service – 10 Still a 10, but a different sort of 10 this time around. I didn’t care for it.

Overall – 4

Technical Note: Netflix continues to struggle with translations, but one of its mistakes is pretty funny on a meta level. Irrelevant-self-insert-male-narrator Suzui Ryouta’s name is sometimes miswritten as “Suzuki,” which is perfect for his interchangeable blandness.

Erica here: “as happy an ending as could be possible for someone in love with a misanthropic sadist.” is such a great line, I wanted to cut and paste it just to enjoy it all over again. I watched all of Season 1 and wished I had liked it more than I did. I’m sorry for you this wasn’t as solid but am regardless very happy you stopped by to let us know! Since I watched that first season, Netflix suggests this to me constantly – and you know how their ads autostart.. Watching a popular baking show?  Try Kakegurui.

Oh, you like My Little Pony? HAVE YOU LOOKED AT KAKEGURUI? 

Hey, we see you watched these murder mystery shows…. MAYBE SOME KAKEGURUI NOW?

Look, you watched Into the Spiderverse…

 

It’s actually pretty funny, unless I have guests over. ^_^;