Archive for the Guest Review Category


Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka Anime Guest Review by Mariko S. (English)

April 3rd, 2019

Welcome to Guest Review Wednesday here on Okazu. Always one of my favorite days, as you know.  Today I am so very pleased to welcome back Guest Reviewer Mariko S. with a terrific perspective on an anime I wouldn’t touch with a 10 meter disinfected pole. ^_^ So let’s get right to it, please give Mariko a warm welcome back and praise in the comments!

Years ago on the Onion AVClub site, Nathan Rabin wrote a column called “My Year of Flops,” where he revisited and reviewed movies that failed at the box office for one reason or another. At the end of each review he categorized the movie he’d just talked about as one of three things: Failure, Fiasco, or Secret Success. I’m sure that the “Secret Successes” brought some pleasure to unearth, and the “Failures” were easy enough to talk about. But you always got the impression that the “Fiascos” were the ones he really relished the chance to dissect. It’s easy but boring to trash a truly terrible work of entertainment; it’s much more fun to try to figure out what happened with a hot mess of good and bad ideas mashed together in ways that don’t really work, but are nevertheless fascinating.

Today I want to tell you a little bit about the utter fiasco that is Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka.

The latest in the post-Madoka trend of “gritty,” “grim” magical girl series, MGSOA begins with an interesting setup: the war is already over. A few years ago, an invading army from an evil parallel universe called the Disas attempted to destroy the earth with magical power, against which humanity had no defense. However, a friendly spirit realm reached out to aid us, and provided the mechanism to allow the creation of magical girls – teenage girls with a special affinity for magic who could be imbued with it to battle the Disas. In the end, they defeated the enemy leader and won the war, but at terrible cost to both humanity and the ranks of the girls drafted into the fight – of the 11 who began the battle, only the lauded Final 5 returned. But of course, in reality, beating the bad guy doesn’t create world peace – so now the girls and the world are adjusting to the new normal of dealing with magical problems in addition to more mundane types of crime and war.

The biggest thing I have to give this show credit for is, I never knew what was going to happen next. With its frankly astounding mashup of tropes, fetishes, and screeching plot turns, even up to the last episode I could have equally seen it ending with the brutal murder of half the characters we know, or with a healing miracle and a love confession. It definitely wasn’t generally a comfortable feeling, but it is a rare one with how formulaic anime can be. The show also devotes a surprising amount of screen time to interesting exploration of ideas like dealing with PTSD, the warping effects of bullying, the ways that being caught in the crossfire of a magical girl battle would actually affect people, and the crushing burden of being The Only One Who Can Save Us at such a vulnerable age. I also really liked the juxtaposition of the stereotypical cutesy MOTD baddies and cuddly animal sidekicks (each replete with its own unique sentence-ending affect) and the more realistic imagining of strategizing against them and the consequences of the fights.

Oh, but the bad is there. And it’s so, so bad. I guess they thought that the violence and genre twist weren’t enough to entice potential viewers, so they decided to throw in the kitchen sink of anime fetishes, too. Are all of the magical girls improbably busty, even though they’re technically supposed to have been in middle school when they started fighting? Yep! Does the magical combat division of the JSDF run a maid cafe as their cover for some reason? Of course! Can we somehow shoehorn in trips to the pool and the beach for the flimsiest reasons? You betcha! Add to that the occasional torture and domestic violence, and there was often a whiplash inducing effect as the show swung from slice-of-life cheesecake to affecting emotional drama to exploitative violence from scene to scene. Thankfully, the show never pushed things into outright nihilism, as many of the vogue grimdark series are so guilty of. The biggest problem I had with the show was its overreliance on the villains basically being omniscient – no matter what the heroes planned or did, the villains basically deadpanned that this is exactly what they expected and it played right into their hands. It got old to have so little nuance and no back and forth – the villains basically just always won until it was time for them not to.

As for Yuri, it’s present but not a major focus. Many of the female characters show attraction to Asuka, but in particular her best friend and fellow magical girl (War Nurse) Kurumi is deeply infatuated with her. Kurumi’s in many ways unhealthy attachment to Asuka as the one who saved her from her life as a doormat for bullies is played throughout the show for both pathos and laughs. Toward the end of the series, we find out that the former leader of the magical girl team made a lot of sex jokes about the other members, if you want to count that. Also, the General of the good spirit world, taking the form of (of course) a beautiful, busty woman, is apparently *really* fond of her magical girls and tries to cajole them into lewd things when they reunite. And in a very brief scene we find out that the illegal magical girl, Abigail, who so lovingly spoke of the series’ masked antagonist as her “Queen,” has a physical relationship with said queen.

On the technical side, in general this is not a particularly well-animated show. Characters are rarely on model and the animation tends to be stiff and focused on moving as few parts as possible (ideally just mouths). They clearly were trying to save as much money as possible for the action scenes, which in general were pretty well done. The opening and ending songs were nice, and the eyecatch military staccato felt appropriate, but otherwise the soundtrack was fairly forgettable/unobtrusive (depending on your perspective).

So, back to that fiasco thing – sometimes the show takes its characters seriously, and explores their emotions in ways beyond what most shows would. Other times it turns them into an eroge caricature. Sometimes it gets meditative about war and violence and the consequences of thrusting tremendous fighting power onto someone so immature, then banks into a boob joke. It’s fitting, then, that the show ends on a question mark instead of an exclamation point. I can’t really recommend it, but I also can’t really dissuade you either. It’s compelling in its own way – if you can abide the fetishes and find the smart things it wants to talk about interesting, give it a shot. If you take a pass, I also think that’s a perfectly reasonable choice. Truly, YMMV.

Ratings:

Art – 5 I liked the character designs but the animation itself was sub-par.
Story – 7 A nice twist on the familiar with some trenchant takes on interesting topics that gets bogged down by the fetish elements.
Characters – 6 Asuka and Kurumi are given some nice layers, but most everyone else is a little underwritten. +1 for Sacchu, the heroes’ mascot, who is pretty awesome.
Yuri – 3
Service – 7

Overall – 5

Erica here: Well, thank you very much , Mariko for another fab review! Sometimes, I think my Guest Reviewers ought to get hazard pay as you all take on the stuff I don’t want to. ^_^





Princess Principal Anime (English) Guest Review by Eric P

February 13th, 2019

Welcome to Guest Review Wednesday! Today we welcome back Guest Reviewer Eric P with a spy story. So let us please give him our attention. Take it away, Eric!

Early 20th-Century Albion (England in this universe) saw the discovery of an anti-gravity substance called Cavorite, making possible the invention of airships and other weapons, enabling Albion power over the rest of the world. This scientific revolution also gave birth to the London Revolution, where the oppressed rose against the elite. As a result the great London Wall was constructed through Albion, separating the Kingdom from the Commonwealth. In this divided world the Commonwealth tasks a special group of teenage female spies with Operation Changeling, to replace the 4th-in-line princess with one of their own due to their similar appearances and infiltrate the Kingdom. The Princess finds them out, but instead of blowing their cover she instead offers herself as a fellow agent to help in their missions, in exchange for their help in her claiming the throne so she can undertake her own mission in reunifying the country.

Princess Principal is a solid spy action series with creative steampunk elements, and the action scenes are fun enough to watch one does not care how over the top they can get (in the interview booklet of the Premium Edition, the staff admit that if anyone drove the cars of this era like these spies do, they would break apart rather fast). At a glance it may seem like another anime with moe-designed girls as femme fatale heroines, but in this story there really is logic applied to the importance of their age as well as their gender in the missions they get assigned, and they continually prove themselves capable in their unique ways.

There is the big sister of the group, Dorothy, a 20-year-old going undercover as a high-schooler (I swear this must be a self-aware inside joke), and the one who resorts to her assets when the situation calls for it. Chise is the token Japanese samurai whose fish-out-of-water culture clashes make for some humorous moments, but is by no means dumb. Beato, the youngest member and an amateur, proves useful with her artificial voice-mimic box, created from traumatic experiments done by her father. There is Ange, a consistent liar-by-nature who harbors the most deceptive, calculating mind of the group despite her placid demeanor. Then there is the Princess herself, Charlotte, who dons a mask of class and pride but like Ange also hides a calculating mind. It was Ange who was hired to replace Charlotte, but unbeknownst to anyone else the two share a history, and now they hatch a mutual scheme against their own sides to pursue an alternate route to the same goal.

In an ANN interview with director Masaki Tachibana, he was asked if the bond between Ange and Charlotte was meant to be seen as more than friendship, to which he responded, “For that, I say we leave that up to your imagination.” Ask this reviewer, and if you were to watch this series with strict hetero-lens, it is still not easy to pretend that Ange and Charlotte are just mere friends.

After a forced separation due to the revolution, their committed, even single-minded devotion to each other made their reunion happen after ten years. Ange shows her true face to Charlotte, and the very first thing she speaks of is for them to run away from the world and live out their lives together in an isolated house. But Charlotte puts that idea to the side and instead declares her own in restructuring the world so that no wall would ever come between them again. Since then and all through the series the two engage in affectionate talks that differ from the rest of the group (in the interview booklet, one of the staff expressed belief they were straight-up flirting). And in the very last scene of the last episode, Chise says, “I can never picture Ange in a romantic relationship”, to which an annoyed Ange replies with “I’ll have you know…” before she gets cut off. One might say that could imply anything, but watching Ange and Charlotte’s last scenes in the final episode really illustrates their true relationship, especially with the way it was put to the test toward the story’s end.

For those who are dub fans or are at least open to them, Sentai delivers a strong English audio track. There might be listeners who are keener on accents than I am, but speaking for myself the British accents felt true to the story’s time and place while also bringing distinctive charm to the characters. Chise’s Japanese accent in particular felt right without being overdone. The worst one can really say about the dub is the girls sound a bit more mature than their actual ages, which is often typical. Yet for those who feel the girls are a little too near-moe in design for one’s tastes, their older-sounding English voices do kind of help counterbalance that.

While the main story the series tells comes thematically full-circle in the end, the overall story remains inconclusive—the London wall still remains and the enemies our heroines faced against remain in play without getting quite the expansion one would expect, not to mention several other subplots they could have explored. But then, it was announced Princess Principal would continue via a six-part film series due out this very year. We might well get stories filling in the gaps the episodes did not cover, and perhaps a further exploration of Ange and Charlotte if we are lucky.

Ratings:

Art – 9 (they were going for Production I.G.-level quality, and it shows)
Story –8.5 (Told chronologically out of order, and requires suspension of disbelief in many areas—especially with how the spy network actually functions—but still makes up for everything with entertainment value)
Characters – 8.5 (The dynamics are strong and charming and each character gets their moments to shine—although the one episode that may rub viewers the wrong way is where Dorothy tries to find redemption in her past-abusive father)
Service – 3 (Aside from Dorothy’s seductive measures and Ange’s spy outfit that admittedly shows quite some leg, service is rather light. This is one of the rare female-centered action series where the heroines are overdressed rather than underdressed—a rather refreshing change in pace)
Yuri – 3 (the director will not confirm either way, but is openly not against the interpretation that seemed obvious to many viewers)

Overall– 8.5

Both the Japanese and English versions are available to view on HIDIVE and Amazon Prime Video. And, for the compulsive collectors with holes in their pockets (like me, admittedly) the Premium Edition box set comes with a pretty fabric poster, a storyboard book of the first episode, artbook, and near-ridiculously extensive interview book with the crew and cast. Assuming that Sentai will later license the film series, one could even remove the physical goodies and make room for six future blu-ray discs.





LGBTQ Visual Novel: Heaven Will be Mine, Guest Review by Louise P

January 16th, 2019

It’s our first Guest Review Wednesday of 2019! Please welcome back Guest Reviewer Louise P for a look at a new Yuri Visual Novel for us. Take it away, Louise!

Heaven Will be Mine is a visual novel that starts right at what would be the climax for any other super robot story. The three factions have all their players, two super prototypes are finally operational and everyone is headed to the moon for the big final confrontation. There the future of humanity in space will be decided; or rather the future of humans who already live in space will be decided. Do they ‘return’ to Earth, live in space or cease to be human at all? These conflicts will be solved both with giant robots (called Ship Selves) and sexting in equal measure.

Heaven Will be Mine ditches a great deal of unnecessary visual novel tropes. There are no ‘heroine’ characters instead we have three protagonists, all equally important. There’s Pluto: the idealistic leader of Cradles Graces who finally has a ship self that matches her own overwhelming power. Luna-Terra: the jaded veteran of Memorial Foundation who has now broken so many hearts in space that it is finally catching up with her and finally Saturn, a pilot who totally gets this is a game about relationships and space robot battles and jumps into merging fighting and flirting so naturally it’s a surprise to hear that it is her first time in the pilot seat.

The story follows all three in their journey from the outer solar system to the showdown at the moon from the perspectives of Pluto, Luna-Terra or Saturn. While we begin right in the thick of things and there’s a lot of back story hanging over the characters and we are given enough credit to piece it together ourselves, as we see events from the perspectives of each leading character and their supporting cast. Emails often fill us in on the back-story, while the pilots live-chatting with their comrades provide some of the biggest laughs in the story.

But center stage is taken up by the confrontations between Luna-Terra, Saturn and Pluto. I do mean confrontations, because each character is an ace pilot for one of the three factions warring for the future of space; they’re supposed to be enemies. Like many other giant robot stories, this is fantastic ground for romantic tension and unlike many other giant robot stories, Heaven Will be Mine is doing this deliberately and it all pays off in the end.

What Heaven Will be Mine manages to create is a genuine sense of chemistry with the three main characters. Luna-Terra and Saturn slowly open up and learn to be vulnerable with each other. Pluto and Saturn learn about each other beyond their status as psychic celebrities and see each other as people. Luna-Terra and Pluto start with a tonne of baggage from the beginning but gradually work and fight through it. It’s a real delight to read as each scene is a blend of two of these unique voices that give a face to some very real queer experiences.

But while we may see these characters move from fighting with each other to falling for each other, that is not what we as the reader get to influence. Instead we decide what faction gains an advantage from the protagonist’s confrontations. What this really means is that we don’t decide who falls in love with whom but who makes the best case for what society that love has to live within.

Because, what everyone is fighting for in Heaven Will be Mine is whether or not they return to an Earth that sees them as something alien. Every character already knows what is at stake, but eventually it becomes clear that aside from the cool robots and space colonies, space is a place where it is easier to be a queer person. It is a place unencumbered by the history and preconceptions on what it is to be human, which allowed the people in space to have the bodies they have, the relationships they have and, most importantly, the power to shape their own destiny and make political decisions.

In space a queer trans woman can be accepted not just as a the woman she is, but as a leader of an entire movement. This looks alien to the majority on Earth, and so terrifying that Pluto and everyone like her are thought to be worth purging, either through exile or extermination. No one will care if the alien dies.

We look for lesbian characters with society and agency here and Heaven Will be Mine not only has those but makes the formation of a LGBTQ friendly society and what shape that will take, the climax of the story. Even though there doesn’t exist a route where everyone gets everything they want, everyone does agree to work to make it the best it can be.

 As Pluto says: “We don’t need a true ending. Whatever it is, we’ll make it the true ending.”

 

Ratings:

Art – 10
Story – 9
Characters – 10
Yuri – 10
Service – 3 (but also kinda 10)

Overall – 10

 

I am not saying that Heaven Will be Mine is perfect, it is exactly what I needed to read at exactly the point I needed to read it. Thinking about this story and its characters makes me a happier person and that’s why the score is so high. It is available on itch.io, Steam and iTunes.

Erica here: Wow, this sounds appealing, if this kind of thing ever appealed to me. ^_^ Thanks for the review! 





Yuri Manga: Kiss & White Lily for My Dearest Girl, Volume 7 (English), Guest Review by Christian LeBlanc

November 28th, 2018

Hello and welcome to Guest Review Wednesday on Okazu! Yay! Today we welcome Christian LeBlanc of 3Dcomics.weebly.com to our loving embrace. Or, was that deadly clutches…I can never remember. ^_^ In any case please give Christian your full attention…as we head out together on today’s review.

By Volume 7 of Kiss & White Lily for My Dearest Girl by Canno, (translation by Leighann Harvey, letters by Alexis Eckerman) we’ve firmly settled into the template for a K&WL book: several chapters will showcase the new characters shown on the cover, and the remainder will focus on a ‘legacy couple’ (more than likely Ayaka Shiramine and Yurine Kurosawa, as is the case in this volume).

Our newest cast members are piano-playing junior-high student Haine Aoi (who has recently joined the gardening club so she can get closer to Yurine), and her supportive aunt Aika Yukimura, a senior at Seiran. (scratchy noise of a record skipping) Yes, I did say aunt, so let’s address this elephant in the room right away before it knocks over something valuable.

Canno portrays many different types of relationships in her work. Countless micro-stories fill the “Kiss Theater” bonus pages at the end of each chapter. Her story in Éclair: A Girls’ Love Anthology That Resonates in Your Heart follows a 28-year-old rogue and the 16-year-old girl who pursues her, and she’s even explored monster girls in a MONSTAR doujinshi (along with circle mates Nega and Kawauchi).

Non-romantic friendships are also valid story fodder, as we’ve seen in Volume 4 with Kaoru, Kohagi and Momiji. Here, then, Canno continues exploring different relationships between women by focusing on an aunt and niece, close in age, who were brought up as siblings. Canno even makes it explicit in one scene that they will never be paired romantically, when one character momentarily considers the possibility and is put off by it. I think Canno felt this was necessary given the expectations of romance set up by the cover (and genre) (and by contemporary stories such as Citrus, coughcough), but it still feels a little strange that they consider it at all. The alternative, I guess, is to not show this scene, and leave the reader with a seed of doubt: “but . . . are we supposed to think of them as a couple?” Better to just nip that question in the bud.

This all being said, Haine and her aunt Aika end up being a delightful pair to read about.  Their affection for each other is sincere and touching, rendered even more so by Leighann Harvey’s thoughtful and expressive translation. They both suffer anxiety over the idea that siblings are supposed to drift apart to some degree in adulthood, but Aika receives advice from a returning character on this. There’s also some tension between the two early on concerning piano skills (something they once bonded over nearly drives them apart!) and Haine needing her space and independence (I know she’s just at that age, but oh boy does she act like a brat!), so in all, we still get our ‘romantic conflict’ for our cover stars to work through.

As for our returning players, we see some major growth in effortless-genius Yurine and her relationship with hard-working honors-student Ayaka. We’ve already seen hints throughout the series that Yurine’s advantages over her classmates have caused her some alienation. This comes to a head when Haine triggers a depressive episode in Yurine by telling her she has an empty life for failing to find a passion for anything. Ayaka gamely tries to help her recover, still grateful for Yurine’s help back in Volume 5 when Ayaka was at her lowest.

Contrasted with this, however, is Ayaka’s negative reaction when Yurine later suggests throwing the exams to let Ayaka take back first place. Ayaka has always been comically tsundere before, but there’s nothing funny about her reaction this time – her words are cold and mean, with no underlying hint of “but I really like you!” at all. It feels especially shocking given how much Ayaka was earnestly trying to help Yurine in this book, and speaks volumes about her unresolved hang-ups concerning perfection.

This is also the first volume to end on a cliff-hanger, incidentally: as their relationship evolves, Yurine feels something different after one of her many kisses she’s forced on Ayaka, and it freaks her out – the next volume is about her sorting through what these new feelings mean, so stay tuned! Volume 8 is currently scheduled to be published by Yen Press on March 19, 2019.

Art – 7 Significant improvements: hair is given a lot more definition and shading, and there are more efforts to visually distinguish Yurine from Ayaka (their height difference feels more pronounced, for example). However, I have to knock two points off the English edition for being printed with significantly thicker blacks than the Japanese version, which destroys a great deal of subtlety in the tones and shading; scenes set in the dark particularly suffer from this. Additionally, Yen Press routinely trims off a fair bit of bleed art, and it was frustrating to see Ayaka’s and Yurine’s test results get cut off as well.
Story – 9 Again, Leighann Harvey has done a wonderful job translating this.
Characters – 9
Yuri – 5
Service – 3 My wife may or may not have uttered “Holy Bazongas!” when she happened to glance over my shoulder at the bath scene, and if you have a thing for Santa dresses, Canno’s got you covered with the introduction to the closing chapter.

Overall – 9

I really enjoyed this volume. There are many returning characters, giving the book a welcome ensemble feel for the first time, reinforced by four bonus chapters at the end. The two main stories connect quite seamlessly, and the Christmas backdrop leads to some very pretty scenery (the cover, with its snow-flecked poinsettia, pinecone and holly border sitting above a starry-looking field of snowflakes, is my favorite of the series for this reason). It’s also refreshing to see Yurine struggling for once – she’s come a long way from her one-dimensionally super-human portrayal in Volume 1.

Erica here: Thank you so much for your insight, Christian. If I wasn’t already reading this series, your enthusiasm and affection for it would surely convince me to pick it up! Thank you again for a wonderful review. ^_^





DNA Doesn’t Tell Us Manga, Volume 1 Guest Review by Day

October 3rd, 2018

It’s Guest Review Wednesday again and we sure have a Guest Review for you today! Welcome back Day who know hos their own category, where you can find all their reviews. The stage is yours Day…take it away!

What if, all over the world, animals suddenly began turning into teenaged girls? Well, in DNA Doesn’t Tell Us, Volume 1 (published in English by Seven Seas) what happens is that special schools would be formed for these young ladies to attend, complete with exploding uniforms (sometimes the girls revert to their animal forms, you see, and mere clothing rarely survives). Youko, our lead, happens to be one of these young ladies; once upon a time, she was a bighorn sheep, but after living for two years with a farmer, she’s now a student at Animalium in rural Japan. Animalium’s purpose is to teach former animals how to live in the human world as humans. Youko herself is displeased with being separated from her father figure, but she adapts fairly well to the situation and makes some friends.

What follows is fairly standard stuff for what is probably best classed with monster-girls-go-to-school tales, itself a fairly large subset of the burgeoning monster girl genre. Youko and her friends have a career day, there’s an athletic day, we spend an inordinate time peering into a high school locker room, Youko teaches her friends how to bathe like humans do… there’s a sexy lady in a skirt suit who runs the place, and who is, of course, there for those of us who don’t dig schoolgirl panties. But through it all, we get a pleasant surprise – Youko is far and away the most competent girl in the room, her time living on the farm as a human having already done a lot to ready her for the wider world. Given how common heroines are depicted as being “cutely” stupid and clumsy, it’s such a relief to run across a case where that isn’t so, and its genuinely enough to elevate this manga from tolerable to decent for me. Well – that, and that we get a good-natured story that, despite the fanservice, doesn’t descend into mean-spiritedness in its treatment of its characters.

I’ve made a bit of the visual fanservice thus far, so I feel its worth noting that while there is a decent bit of nudity, it declines from the quarter-way mark or so. There is a former Jersey cow later in the volume whose breasts are genuinely overwhelming, but, mercifully, she’s an adult, and she only shows up for a few pages.

As for Yuri… on the back cover, there’s a panel re-printed showing one girl biting another girl, with the caption “#girlxgirl”. I am sure that many readers fervently believe that the scene this is drawn from is a love confession scene which involves supporting characters Shin and Usami. I am equally sure that many readers of Okazu would feel much more skeptical toward it. A bit more grist can be drawn from Youko’s friendship with another sheep, her room-mate,and former Australian Merino, Fuwako. They actually seem genuinely fond of one another, which helps; its clear that Fuwako relies on Youko, and Youko enjoys spending time with Fuwako. She also regularly helps Fuwako get dressed, and we all know how sexy it is to have to clothe your romantic partner every day, right? Right??? Ahem; I’m being a bit mean, but although there’s more grist there, I myself still don’t see it, and its pretty obvious that the folks involved in this manga’s production want people to think its so without actually having to move it to the realm of text.

All in all, this is a decent if not particularly novel manga about girls in a special school with a solid heroine anchoring the whole thing, and I found it entertaining enough for a rainy afternoon. I am even considering picking up the second volume! If you dig monster/animal girl manga, but prefer to leave out the harem aspect many of those carry, this will likely float your boat. I wish the art was a bit less moe, but its polished and, sure, it’s cute (other than the poor Jersey cow woman), even if there’s no way any of the girls remotely resemble a teenager.

Art – 6
Story – 6
Characters – 6
Yuri – 2
Service – 5

Overall – 6

Thanks again, Day!