Archive for the Guest Review Category


Otome no Teikoku Manga, Volume 6 (オトメの帝国 6) Guest Review by Mariko S.

August 30th, 2017
Welcome to Guest Review Wednesday here on Okazu! After that monster post on mental instability and lesbianism in Yuri, I’m fairly wiped out and lo and behold! Mariko S. write in to tell us all about the next volume of Kishi Torajirou-sensei’s epic of fanservice, Yuri and school girls. Welcome back, Mariko, the podium is yours!
 
Hello all, it’s been a long time since I rapped at ya’. Otome no Teikoku(オトメの帝国 6) has soldiered on in the meantime; it’s now on its twelfth published volume. However, the publisher has indicated that, contingent on the sales of the 12th tankoubon, they may end the series with the 13th. So if you are enjoying this series and want it to continue, please support it by buying the newest volume!

But for now, let’s rewind for review and discussion of Volume 6. The stories in this book represent another subtle evolution of the way that Kishi-sensei is presenting this world. Are there still servicey vignettes with plenty of skin and “sexy” shenanigans? Yes, a couple. What about the ubiquitous flashes of panty and peeks of bra? To paraphrase the Blues Brothers, “How often does that fanservice go by?”  “So often you won’t even notice.”

But something subtle is welling its way up into the storytelling. For the first time, the majority of the chapters are not about “Yuri” per se – that is, the tropes of one girl noticing and admiring another girl, physically or otherwise, and the results of that attention. The characters are developed enough to just interact as friends and people, and some of the best chapters aren’t even about the established couples. Let’s go over some of the highlights.

Halloween Watergun Fight

I know what you’re thinking, but you are wrong. This is not an excuse to show the girls in skimpy costumes or wet see-through shirts. Rather, Midori (the pint-sized manga club member) accosts Mayu (Kaoru’s kouhai plaything) on Halloween dressed as Rambo, hands her a watergun, and strikes the first blow. As the two rampage through the halls, the rest of the manga club try to get in on the action, also in Rambo gear, but get thwarted by student council rule-stickler Onoda. There’s really no service, just some funny jokes and a lot of fun with a unique premise and an unusual character pair-up.

MahiMahi Christmas

The spectacular oil-and-water mixture that is Yuu and MahiMahi continues here to great results. MahiMahi invites Yuu and Mari over to their house for Christmas. Of course, Yuu wants nothing to do with it, but Mari convinces her to give it a shot. On the day of, the old “we can’t bake a cake” cliche gets dragged out. Yuu sits out the baking shenanigans at first, and it’s really funny to watch her get madder and madder the more the others screw up, until finally her frustration boils over and she takes over the kitchen. Yuu proves her talent by producing a beautiful cake, and endures more harassment the rest of the night from MahiMahi, but it’s worth it in the end for the appreciation she receives from Mari.

The Yamada Sisters at New Years

It’s been hinted at before now, but this is the first time we see that the beauty Kaoru and the grumpy otaku Honoka are sisters. Kishi-sensei absolutely nails the subtle character beats here – they share a physical resemblance, especially in their heights, but its the spot-on sibling dynamic that really sells it. Older Kaoru is known for her poise and beauty, and is always being praised by her family. Thinking she’s unable to compete, Honoka retreated behind a wall of scowls and hair to the world of manga. But Kaoru really cares for her sister and sees her potential. Here she forces Honoka to dress up and do a shrine visit with her for New Year’s. Honoka complains the whole way, but is ultimately touched when Kaoru uses her wish to ask for Honoka’s dream of being a manga-ka to come true. And, of course, Kaoru gets in some absolutely pro-league flirting with the miko at the shrine.

The Sickbed

I love that the Ai and Chie pairing has been serious enough long enough to give us lived-in vignettes like this one. Yes, we haven’t seen them kiss or openly declare love for each other, which would be wonderful of course. But their story to this point has been such a fantastic example of “show, don’t tell,” as their relationship evolved and deepened in completely non-tropey ways. Here, Ai is sick, and Chie wants to visit and care for her. But instead of the cliché scene where the nurse makes rice porridge and applies cold compresses and whatnot, Chie is just there for Ai. They snuggle in bed, they read a magazine together, they chat. Of course, there has to be one nod to tradition – Chie gets sick too, in the end.

Chapter 0

Kishi-sensei must have realized in hindsight how poorly the first volume serves his characters, because this volume includes an interesting “prequel” chapter. It shows how all the second-years (Chie, Ayano, Miyoshi, Ai, Michiru, Airi, Honoka, and Onoda) met for the first time on the first day of school, and allows them to interact with their current, developed personalities instead of just as flat fetish objects. It also tries to provide a bit more context and backstory for the ludicrous reason Chie and Ai start off so antagonistically in that volume. In case you don’t remember, it was breasts. Unfortunately, the additional shading provided here? Also involves breasts. Two steps forward, one back sometimes.

What Else is Going On?
 
There’s the usual assortment of odds and sods with Onoda, Nao, Ayano and Miyoshi, Mahi-Mahi, and the Debate Club. We also get a bit of Honoka and Alicia, again with Alicia tirelessly trying to build some self-esteem in Honoka, to little avail.
 

The bulk of the Yuri lifting being done in this volume is by Yuu and Mari. They can be very over-the-top, as in the opening chapter where Yuu “punishes” Mari for a screwup by spanking her in a photo booth. But they can also be very understated, as with the glances and touches they use to convey their emotions in the other chapters. As I’ve said before, Yuu is definitely an immature brat, but Mari is no victim. She knows what Yuu is, for better or for worse, and loves that person. She takes her “punishments” when it’s fun for her to be subjugated, but she knows how to get Yuu to do what she wants as well, as when she makes it clear she wants Yuu to accept MahiMahi’s invite. I really like their dynamic, it’s different and fun.

The debate club is chatting about New Year’s, and how hard it is to reach anyone at midnight. The other three convince Nononon-senpai that whoever gets the first text through to her should get a sexy picture as a prize. It’s a dumb premise that just sets up the opportunity for us to watch Nononon embarrassedly try to figure out what to send. But it is pretty cute how she decides (briefly) to send something a little extra-sexy in case her crush Yumimi is first. Even if the setup itself isn’t believable, the execution of what would follow given the set up is spot-on and quite cute. And, of course, there’s the classic Kishi Torajirou twist where everyone else completely forgot to text as Nononon lies in bed fretting over it.
 

The Shizuka/Mio/Kaoru arc gets just a little push forward this time – Shizuka is reminiscing about her association with sunsets and kissing Kaoru. When Mio interrupts her reverie, she asks how Mio feels about sunsets, and then offers to kiss her (clearly hoping to replace her troublesome memories of Kaoru).

As I have often said, I happen to really like these characters and the weird, funny, and unexpected “slice of life” stuff that happens to them. Kishi-sensei’s art is beautiful, often stunningly so (one drawing of Kaoru in the shrine visit chapter is breathtaking). And there is so much lived-in, thought-out detail in the stories. I wish we got a lot more relationship development, and that the physicality was organic for the relationships and not accidental for the audience (in other words, fewer nip slips, more kisses). But at this point I think the series had pretty well defined what it will and will not be. I can easily overlook the bawdier, less-believable stuff for the goodness in between, despite its limitations. I hope some of you will too!

Ratings: 

Art – 9
Story – 6 
Characters – 8
Yuri – 6
Service – 7

Overall – 7

 
Erica here: Well, wow. What a fantastic review. Thank you so much for catching us back up on your reading!




Otome no Teniwoha Manga, Vol. 2 (乙女のてにをは), Guest Review by Bruce P.

April 26th, 2017

It’s Wednesday, and not to be all commercial-esque on you, you know what that means here on Okazu, yes? It’s Guest Review Wednesday! And today we have our dear friend and wonderful review writer, Bruce P with a review of a collection based on a “retro” Showa-style phone comic.  So without further ado, here is Bruce to change the way we look at things. Just the way we like it. ^_^ Take it away Bruce!

When observing the constant promenade of polite characters who flutter through Otome no Teniwoha (乙女のてにをは) Volume 2, by Luna-2 (ルナーツ), the paintings of Maurice Prendergast instantly come to mind. Prendergast. Honest, they do.

Maurice Prendergast (American impressionist/post-impressionist painter, ca. 1900) was a people person. That’s not a criticism, necessarily; people have their good points, some of them, on occasion. When not driving their pickups. But Prendergast just really, obsessively liked people. He squeezed as many as he could into his pictures, which are all crowds of tiny figures. At the beach, or in the park, or jammed into the Piazza San Marco in Venice, so many figures that ‘Where’s Waldo’ springs to mind, though that’s a bit unkind considering the cost of insuring the things. His figures look and act pretty much the same from one picture to the next: nicely dressed girls and women in fancy hats* caught in a sketchy snapshot enjoying random everyday activities. If men are present they remain fairly peripheral. And the women always, always carry umbrellas, or parasols. Not to go all Rachel Maddow here, but remember that point.

*Until he discovered Cezanne and Matisse, at which point the women stopped wearing fancy hats and nice clothes, or any clothes.

Nantasket Beach (1898)

Luna-2 is just as much a people person as Prendergast was. He similarly crowds an ever-changing cast of girls into his Otome no Teniwoha scenes. Boys are present, but they remain fairly peripheral. The stories are all short, eight-page snapshots of daily life, revolving around random everyday things like haircuts and cats and hairstyle malfunctions and more cats. Everything takes place in and around a single school, to judge by the uniforms, but no two stories have the same characters, and with only eight pages to make an impression the characters remain rather sketchy. Very slice-of-life, gently and politely humorous, and without any emotional connections between the briefly spotlighted characters.

So…what does any of this have to do with Yuri?

Nothing at all. And that’s why it’s here.

Because Otome no Teniwoha, Volume 2 has been highlighted in a recently published mook titled ‘Introduction to the World of Yuri’ (Yuri no Sekai – Nyuumon, 百合の世界入門). It’s highlighted as a Yuri series. It’s so highlighted that it gets a full page spread, with a bigger illustration than Fu-Fu and Asagao to Kase-san, and almost as big as Aoi Hana. This is all very peculiar, because the stories are completely devoid of Yuri. The characters are connected by nothing more than the fact that they go to school together. And though this does require that they stand next to each other now and again, they can usually keep even that under control. So how did this become a faux Yuri classic?

It’s that umbrella. The one on the cover. Two girls sharing an umbrella, how deeply romantic is that. Prendergast possibly would have thought so—his girls-and-umbrellas obsession is otherwise a little hard to explain. The ‘World of Yuri’ editor apparently thought so—or possibly he was confused, after a long night of editing, mistaking the cover for Morinaga Milk’s Girlfriends Volume 2. More likely and quite depressingly he may simply see any interactions between girls as Yuri. Because the tender umbral confines of the cover is as Yuri as it gets. In fact, while the cover illustration is derived from the first story, where Shuntoku-san and Sawaragi-san do end up sharing an umbrella, the illustration below shows Shuntoku-san’s actual emotion about having to do so. The difference in the illustrations is amusing. The one on the cover, of course, is the one that plugs the book, no doubt successfully (well, I bought it). And the one that also gets it included in peculiar Yuri guidebooks.

 

 

Ratings –

Art: 7.  Not because the art is anything approaching stellar, but because the style suits the stories so very well. Pleasant, if slightly robotic, restrained, almost prim.

Story: 6.  Lots of little ones. The ‘Teniwoha’ in the title refers to grammatical particles, the tiny syllables that scuttle underfoot indicating parts of speech, so you know there will be no epic themes here. 

Characters: 7.  Polite. Very polite. Never behind the wheel of some damn pickup.

Yuri: 0. Or almost 0. The closest any story gets is one in which a tall girl is told to partner with other girls for dance practice, making them blush and her sweat.

Service: 4.  For those who like cats.

Overall: 7.  For the thing it’s meant to be, it actually does a fine job. It’s just not in any way a Yuri thing.

Erica here: Well. THANK YOU for reviewing this Bruce. I have been putting off actually having to deal with Yuri no Sekai – Nyuumon, for this exact reason….it seemed very much a “pile of stuff the editor read” rather than, “Here are series you might possibly wish to know about if you are actually interested in Yuri.” And because of this very conflagration of “what editor-san liked” with “what is good” it sits there on the bottom of the pile, making a fine base for the pile of books I want to read. ^_^

I frankly, cannot cope with another “Intro to Yuri” that lacks any understanding of Yuri, nuanced or not.  Part of why I am finally working on what has already become, in my head “that damned Yuri book.” I will say that, based on this review, “Showa retro” is a fairly accurate summation, however.

Thank you again, as always for your terrific perspective and for expanding our artistic vocabulary!





YNN Special Report on Yurimate, by Julia T

April 19th, 2017

Well, color me pleased and surprised. While I was sure that it was a complete fabrication for April Fool’s Day, Yurimate seems to have been real(!) if temporary. Sort of like a Yuri mirage. ^_^

To begin with, it’s probably worth pointing out that there are several Animate locations in Tokyo alone. The three I have personally visited are in Shibuya, (which, very cleverly, moved to the same building the Mandarake has occupied for years, thus making shopping at both a mere elevator ride,) Akihabara, where it is the grande dame of anime/manga goods stores on the main street and in Ikebukuro. This last location has been my home away from home for years. Because of Otome Road‘s location nearby, populated with BL-doujinshi and goods, Ikebukuro Animate tends to cater to the female fans. They typically do carry some Yuri manga on the shelves, and when I was last there, had Yagate Kimi ni Naru front and center when one walked in. The fact that it’s “women-focused” clearly doesn’t preclude it being Yuri-friendly. 

Imagine, then, how my heart soared when I saw that it was the Ikebukuro location of Animate that was being advertised with a “Yurimate” special area.  While it’s not a permanent feature, the Yurimate event is running and it is in Ikebukuro and it goes into May. And here to tell us all about it is YNN Special Correspondent Julia T! Thank you Julia for jumping in and taking the plunge for us! The floor is all yours.

As it turns out, the April 1st announcement from Animate Ikebukuro that they would open a new Yuri-only floor at least partially came true. From April 15th until May 14th, the third floor (or second floor for those not familiar with Japanese floor naming conventions) is hosting a special event: Yurimate

 

While it does not cover the entire third floor by any means, it does occupy a decently sized proportion of it, somewhere between a third and a quarter of the area. The pictures were purposefully taken to avoid including people in them, but even if it was not bustling with customers, there was a steady stream of women of all ages who purposefully visited the section, including some rather obvious couples, which I found quite gratifying. The collection includes manga, scrolls, and cell phone covers, as well as showing large sketches on the walls.

 

 

There are quite a few authors being shown, including pretty much all current works by Takemiya Jin, Takashima Hiromi’s Kase-san collection, Kurata Uso’s Linkage, Ohsawa Yayoi’s 2DK, G Pen, Mezamashidokei, Yukiko’s Room for Two, Kishi Torajirou’s Otomoe no Teikoku, various works by Itou Hachi, as well as the seemingly ever popular Citrus by Saburouta (and Kodama Naoko’s NTR, while it does show up on one of the posters, is not found in this part of the store).

 

Independent of this, you can also find a Yuri Hime shelf one floor down, which already has decent selection, but is of course limited to the entries published inside said collection.

 

Given that the magazines Comic Yuri Hime and Galette are both being sold off the shelves on the ground floor, this currently allows you to stumble across Yuri entries on all of the first three floors, which is still somewhat rare in Tokyo.

Erica here: Thank you Julia! My goal is to see Yurimate be a permanent shelving strategy. And if, as you say, stumbling across Yuri on the main floor – where new releases are given visiblity –  is still being encouraged, as it was last spring, this may just be a thing we will see. I’m also extremely gratified to hear that there were some obvious couples walking the floor. Of all the many things that pleased me in this report, the fact that NTR was not included, has to be counted among them. I wonder if it, like Yuri Danshi is for the editor of Comic Yuri Hime, rather than the rest of us.

If *I* were the boss at Animate, I’d take the Yurimate event over to Akihabara next, then bring it back to Ikebukuro. It would get a different audience at each, and give them an idea of who actually buys Yuri, then place the shelves where ever they do best. But that’s me. Thank you again for the report and the photos!





Yuri Visual Novel: VA-11 HALL-A Guest Review by Louise P.

April 12th, 2017

It’s another Guest Review Wednesday and another welcome Guest Review by our got-VN reviewer, Louise P. (I am so thankful to those of you who review VNs for us here, truly.) Today’s review sounds genuinely exceptional, so get yourself some bar nuts and a drink, and get read to read! Take it away, Louise…

VA-11 HALL-A (pronounced Valhalla) is a cyberpunk bartending game/visual novel focusing on the eponymous bar located in Glitch City, a place that sometimes feels like it is just some big playground for exploitative tech companies. But it is still a place many people have to live in. Our protagonist is Jill, one of the bartenders at the eponymous establishment: VA-11 HALL-A, her job is to mix the right drinks for the right clients and offer a sympathetic ear to people who come in after a long day of publishing, assassinating or, perhaps the most dangerous job, running a corgi toy company.

A good eighty percent of the story of VA-11 HALL-A is told at the bar from Jill’s perspective as through her shift clients arrive, drink, chat and then leave. It does not take long for a cast of regulars to form and for us to get to know them, both their stories and their drink preferences. The main mode of interaction in VA-11 HALL-A is mixing drinks for Jill’s clients. Most of the time you are just supposed give a customer what they ask for or describe but eventually, as you get to know them, the game calls on you to make a judgment on what to serve or even to outright ignore what you are told and pick a drink you think is more to their taste to get the best reaction. Mix the right drinks and Jill generally gets more informative, more intimate dialogue out of her clients and when your clients open up to you more they end up the better for it.

Just listening to a supremely likable cast talk to each other is easily the main draw of VA-11 HALL-A. By the time I had finished the first of the games three chapters I put the rest of my visual novels on hold to finish VA-11 HALL-A as I had fallen in love with the whole cast. It also does a brilliant job of capturing the feeling of living in a dystopian society where stability is uncertain and events way beyond your ability to influence end up interfering with your day to day life. While this starts off with snippets of dialogue hinting at the harshness of a city outside of the bar or Jill’s flat; turn into something else by the end of the first chapter when Jill ends up having to spend one night sleeping in the bar to avoid a dangerous riot and then spends the next day in her flat looking out over the still rioting city watching everything slowly simmer down… and then head straight back to work the day after that.

It should not be surprising to find out that the games developers are from Venezuela where only last year a state of economic emergency was declared, there were close to two hundred prison riots and Colombian border crossings had to be temporarily opened to allow Venezuelans to purchase food and basic household items in Colombia. Communicating the feeling of what a bar such as VA-11 HALL-A means to people, as a means of escape and community, in societies like these was one of the major focuses of the designers.

There are a lot of customers to talk to in VA-11 HALL-A, one of your more hard drinking regulars is Beatrice “Betty” Albert. Betty is an in-house veterinarian for the aforementioned corgi toy company and often turns up with her co-worker and best friend Deal and together they form a fantastic comedy duo. Betty is a lesbian, and while Deal is more than happy to rattle off all of her exes and all the reasons she gives for breaking up with them, she has no romantic arc. In fact the only relationship trouble Betty has is trying to avoid being set up with someone and as the matchmaker knows she is gay she cannot drag Deal into being a beard for her.

While Betty is easily the louder and more rambunctious of the duo she makes with Deal don’t think that she is the constant silly boke to his grim tsukkomi. Deal has plenty of silly moments too for Betty to be cynical about and one of her most deadpan lines in the whole game actually got me to laugh out loud. So while Betty and Deal’s story is light on romance it is heavy in a fantastically platonic chemistry between the two of them. Betty and Deal also become a relieving presence later on as their story lacks the heavy drama that other characters end up dealing with. Seeing these two arrive comes as a great relief more than once.

But it is the main character Jill who stands out in VA-11 HALL-A. Jill makes reference to having past boyfriends and girlfriends throughout the story but Jill has one major crush right when the story begins and that is her boss Dana Zane, the coolest woman in the history of visual novels.

Dana is Jill’s boss at VA-11 HALL-A and we really get the feeling of what a dependable boss she is when it is Dana who looks out for Jill during the riots at the end of chapter one, helping her get back to her flat without incident and staying with her though the day. Not only Jill but Dana also helps Gillian, Jill’s co-worker, stay clear of his dark past and clients such as the assassin Jamie have second hand stories about her past exploits that only get more ridiculous as the game continues. Even more so when it turns out that a good chunk of these ridiculous stories are true. She at the very least is an ex-cop with a cool ex-police detective girlfriend who you can meet if you play your serve the right drinks.

Dana also gets her head stuck in things… a lot, from hard suit helmets to spicy chicken buckets, keeps a metal bat that somehow has nails in it, is an ex-wrestler with the ring-name of ‘Red Comet’ and keeps finding excuses to add the Jill’s pay check like a doting grandmother. Dana is both a rock of stability in a scary and unstable world and an utter goofball who hires a talking, sunglasses wearing, dog as your co-worker. Someone who has the capacity to keep their life so together while at the same time being so ridiculous (as well as ridiculously cool) would be rationed out in another game but VA-11 HALL-A lets you enjoy Dana’s company nearly every in-game day!

So if the last two paragraphs are not obvious enough I also have a massive crush on Dana and it is a fantastically rare treat to have the point of view character’s romantic desire so perfectly align with my own. This will not be the same for everyone but it was a fantastic gentle reveal as it became more and more obvious over the game that Jill is so obviously interested in Dana you feel bad for not working it out the moment you see Jill’s tablet’s lock screen.

But sadly the only person that does not notice Jill’s feelings for Dana is Dana herself, and even though it is cute, Jill’s infatuation with Dana is not really the focus of Jill’s story however much I wish it was. Jill’s story in VA-11 HALL-A is not about Jill ending up in a relationship with someone but instead about Jill getting over a previous relationship with another woman three years ago. It is a break up that still looms over Jill and is the reason she is working at VA-11 HALL-A in the first place.

I don’t want to spoil any more, but this is what elevated it from very good visual novel to exemplary peace of contemporary art. VA-11 HALL-A inverts the usual devices used by visual novels. Usually following the characters day-by-day is used to highlight the increasing drama of the plot, VA-11 HALL-A instead emphasises the difficulty and drama of the day-to-day. While most visual novels have the main character somehow ‘solving’ other characters problems and developing themselves as a stepping stone to them ‘earning’ a relationship. VA-11 HALL-A has Jill listen to her clients problems only occasionally offering advice if anything and her personal improvement as a person is the goal itself. By the end of the story Jill is a person who perhaps will end up with Dana, but it was Jill becoming that person that was the point of VA-11 HALL-A’s story.

VA-11 HALL-A also never makes a big deal out of how much it subverts the usual procedures of its genre. There’s no point when the story just stops to congratulate itself insufferably on the codes and conventions it breaks, no stopping and winking at us so that we know how clever it is being. Instead it has a quiet confidence in the risks it is taking and what it is trying to achieve with them.

Art – 9 Pixel art at its most gorgeous.
Story – 6
Characters – 10 Best visual novel cast in a long time
Service – 1 The framing makes it difficult after all
Yuri – 7
Overall – 9

Erica here: Well, wow. This sounds almost like the old text-based games of my youth that, when they worked, were amazing, (but they almost never worked. ^_^)  If you ever want to do a Twitch channel and play this for me, Louise, feel free! I’d totally watch you play this. ^_^





Yuri Anime: Mikagura School Suite, Guest Review by Mariko S

March 29th, 2017

Out in the wider world, Wednesday may be known as “hump day” but here on Okazu, it is always a good day when it’s Guest Review Wednesday! And today we have a lovely guest review by returning Guest Reviewer an all around extremely nice person, Mariko S. (Seriously,  I honestly think our Guest Reviewers are swell.) It’s so much fun for me to read other people’s experiences and perspectives. Definitely one of my favorite things.

And even better, Mariko is going to talk to us about a series I know nothing at all about, which is awesome. So, take it away, Mariko!

Mikagura School Suite. (Streaming on Funimation.com and Viewster, with subtitles in various languages: English,German, French, Italian and Dutch.)

What a weird little show. On the surface, it seems like a series tailor-made to sell toys and cards to kids: a girl enters an unusual high school where everyone develops super powers related to their club activity and battles in video game-like contests for school ranking. The gem battles, the colorful characters and unique powers all spell kiddie fare… but…

First off, the heroine, Eruna, is an unabashed pervert who lusts after all the girls on campus. Not in an “Oh, she’s so impressive” Class-S way, but like, horny nosebleed let-me-kiss-you stuff. (Forced to start her own club, she creates the “Surround Ichinomiya Eruna With Cute Girls Club”). The main reason she chooses this crazy school is because a girl she thinks is cute goes there. There’s no “What are these confusing feelings?” here: she’s blatant about her desire for girls and matter-of-fact in shutting down the interest of boys.

Second, the show isn’t particularly interested in those battles that in any similar series would be the focus of every episode. Eruna is strong, but not the strongest, and is beaten a few times. When this happens, she more or less doesn’t care and just wants to make friends with her opponents. A lot of the battles take place off camera – she will just show up and say “Oh, I won my last two matches!” or, “Oh, I lost!” and then the show will move on to other stuff. The battles that get shown tend to happen fast.

Eruna is an unusual/interesting heroine aside from her girl-lusting as well. She is that rare anime heroine who has absolutely no lack of self-confidence. She always thinks she can handle whatever happens, and when she loses or someone is nasty to her she fights back with jokes and smiles and energy. She doesn’t mope or cry once. These character traits are a surefire way to raise a show’s esteem for me; much like Marika from Mouretsu Pirates, you can’t help but love Eruna.

The last thing I’d like to mention is the show’s weird and manic sense of humor, based largely around how bullishly oblivious Eruna is, and her purposefully misconstruing things other people say (or just outright steamrolling over them verbally). I actually laughed a lot, surprisingly.

If you can get past the fact that there has probably never, ever been a teenage girl this confident and blatant about her sexual attraction to women, it’s a fun and breezy watch and a welcome change of pace from Yuri tropes.

Ratings:

Art – 5
Story – 6
Characters – 7
Yuri – 8
Service – 5

Overall – 7

Erica here: Well, that does sound…refreshing. Based on a light novel series, it’s pretty obvious that it’s going with the less-common, but still common enough, “predatory lesbian” trope. It’s just that they so rarely get to be fun, too, which really makes it sound interesting. Thanks very much for the review! I’ll keep an eye out for it. ^_^