Welcome to Guest Review Wednesday where we’re dlighted to have a review from returning Guest Reviewer Eric P.! Please give him your attention..take it away, Eric!

Average middle-schooler Cocona—raised alone by her grandmother without having known her mother or father—is just living her life going to school every day, meeting with her friend, Yayaka, not quite sure what to do for her future. Then a mysterious, energetic girl named Papika drops into her life (upon a flying surfboard of all things) and whisks her away on adventures to an equally mysterious parallel universe called Pure Illusion. Each trip is a visit to different dreamlike worlds—one resembles a psychedelic Alice in Wonderland, another is styled like a dystopian-future desert battle, and yet another as a schoolgirl-horror setting—and Cocona and Papika navigate each one of them to find certain crystal shards under orders from an organization called Flip Flap. All that is known about Pure Illusion is that it reflects the dreams or even psychologies of people in the real world. The shards themselves supposedly grant wishes, but Flip Flap’s intent is to find them all before Asclepius, a rival organization, can use them to restructure the real world, and the girl leading the rival missions happens to be Yayaka.

All this makes Flip Flappers sound like an oddball series—and it is, but in an entertaining, charming way, yet one of the biggest criticisms it received was for its unevenness. The first half is focused on the adventures in Pure Illusion, where each new world is distinctly random and bizarre, and largely interpretative in their imagery and themes. Even if you never read the interviews with the staff, it is still evident they took a lot of inspiration and queues from surreal paintings. Yet this takes more of a backseat in the second half, in which by that time the story itself kicks into gear—Cocona discovers Papika’s connection with her, Cocona’s past comes to haunt and shatter her future as she discovers her life has been a cruel lie, and the climax can be considered a little Evangelion-esque. Upon first viewing it can be jarring for those that were hooked into the storyline by its more intriguing first half in comparison to the more conventional formula of the second. But when watched all at once upon second viewing, everything seen in the first half had been a set up for what was to come in the story’s second half, regardless of whether or not it still leaves as much an impression.

If there is one thing different between the two halves I do personally find at odds, it is the fan service. While the first half had some of it, it was far more minimal and subtle, whereas in the second half there were a small handful of more blatant shots, a couple of which of the girls’ undersides—just because. Not to mention that one of the new warrior girls that comes later in the story dons an especially questionable getup for someone her age.

My only major nitpick aside, as far as Yuri goes, there has been some debate on whether or not Cocona and Papika’s relationship was ever more than subtext. But based on what I read, it is indeed there. The Premium Edition release of this series comes with a hardcover booklet containing interviews with the staff, and the director is quoted saying, “I wanted to include elements like transformations, huge weapons, pretty female characters, as well as Yuri, all in a very cute package.” So based on that, unless Sentai’s translation is off, whatever depiction of Yuri one finds in the story is intentional. In Episode 7 alone, where Cocona finds herself in a world where she meets multiple variants of Papika, it is easy to interpret it as Cocona coming to realize her feelings for Papika are deeper than friendship. It is made indicative that Yayaka also has feelings for Cocona, which naturally complicates her own position in the rival organization. If one were to watch Flip Flappers with the English dub—which is very well done—all scenes of Cocona and Papika expressing their mutual affections to each other can certainly come across as far less subtext.

Having said all this, while the Yuri may be a focus, it is not necessarily the primary one. Flip Flappers as a whole is a mix of various genres, including action, magical girl, mecha, sci-fi, supernatural, as well as yuri. As said before, this series is an odd one, but that oddness is what helps distinguish it, becoming one of those types of series where viewers can get anything out of it. Almost everything seen is metaphorical of whatever the viewers make from it, including Cocona and Papika’s butterfly-styled transformations. Yet at its very core, it is a coming-of-age story with heart of a girl breaking out of her shell and flying off into the unknown where she learns to find and be her true self, while choosing to stay beside the one girl responsible for it all.

If one were interested in giving Flip Flappers a purchase, one should consider Sentai’s glossy Premium box set. While it may be pricier than the regular blu-ray, it does come with that mentioned booklet with both interviews and artwork (there is even a page detailing the work that went into the designs of the characters’ huge/adorable eyes), while also including some very nice artcards. So if one cares about any special features at all when Sentai normally makes their regular releases bare-bones, Premium is the way to go, and Flip Flappers is special enough for it.

Art – 9
Story – 8.
Characters – 7
Service – 4.5
Yuri – 6.5

Overall-8

Erica here: Thank you for this review! And a quick reminder for readers that Flip Flappers is also streaming legally and free (with regional restrictions) on Crunchyroll.

Welcome to Guest Review Wednesday!  Today we have another exciting review and another new Okazu Guest Reviewer, Jason L. As you may remember, I have been reading and reviewing the Torikaebaya manga series by Saitou Chiho. Tomorrow I will be reviewing the final volume and today we have a discussion of the source material, how wonderful is that? 
Before I had the mic to Jason, I want to mention that this book, while available in print, is absurdly expensive generally, so if you want to read it, I recommend you go to your local library and ask for an Interlibrary Loan of it from another library that has it. If you have never done ILL before, no worries, the Reader’s Services desk will help you, just nab the ISBNs, author, year, publisher from this link and they’ll have all the info they need to find you a copy to read. 

So please give your attention to Jason – and buckle in, it’s going to be a bumpy couple of days!

Upon my first viewing of Maria-sama ga Miteru season 4, I was intrigued by the play, Torikaebaya Monogatari, put on between the joint student councils at the school festival. So I did what I always do, and went in search of a copy of it in English. I discovered that it had only been translated once, originally in 1978 as Rosette Willig’s dissertation, and then released with some modifications in 1983 under the title of The Changelings: A Japanese Court Tale by Stanford University Press.  It took several years to find an affordable copy but I finally laid my hands on one in January and it has felt like I brought, if ever so small, a piece of Yumi’s world into my own life, something quite precious to me.

The Changelings tells the story of two half-siblings, the born-as-a-girl Chunagon who chooses to lead his childhood and young adult life as a man and the born-as-a-boy Naishi no Kami who leads her life as a woman. Other than their parents, no one is aware of their biological genders. Both are thought to be extraordinary in beauty and talent. Chunagon becomes an ever more prominent member at the Emperor’s court. Their father however, refuses the Emperor’s entreaties for Naishi no Kami to be introduced at court. He knows that the Emperor will insist on taking her as his wife thereby uncovering her biological sex. As their story unfolds, what has been a melancholy treatise on gender nonconformity to this point, goes somewhat off the rails and into quite upsetting territory. I was not expecting this given the comedic version done on Marimite.

One of Chunagon’s friends/rivals, Saisho, forces his way into both siblings’ lives with disastrous consequences. Chunagon has married Yon no Kimi with whom he shares a bond but no intimacy. Saisho enters their home and rapes Yon no Kimi ultimately resulting in a pregnancy that nearly destroys her marriage to Chunagon. Following this, Saisho rapes Chunagon, having discovered his secret. Chunagon becomes pregnant and Saisho forces Chunagon to hide in his rapist’s country home, to deliver their child in secret. With the beloved Chunagon now missing at court, his sister, Naishi no Kami, leaves in search of him. Upon being reunited, the two siblings decide to switch places so that their biological sex will match their social roles. This is kept hidden from Saisho, who is now ostracized  by society for his relationship with Yon no Kimi and by the new Chunagon (the former Naishi no Kami). Unfortunately the author spends what feels like endless scenes on what can only be described as whining by Saisho, for whom I struggled to have any empathy. And still the sexual violence does not end, but is furthered by other characters now that the leads’ roles have been switched.

So, clearly this is not the comedy that Marimite presents, but they were not alone in this interpretation of the Torikaebaya monogatari. The sexual violence by powerful males that drives the plot forward has often been played as erotic comedy in many productions of this work. There is, in fact, a routine parallel made to many of Shakespeare’s gender swapping comedies, as Willig notes in her commentary. But nothing could be further from the truth. Mistaking The Changelings for comedy says more about the people encountering, performing, and reviewing the work over the years than it says about the story itself or the pain the characters experience.

And yet as a tragedy, there could have been value in telling such harrowing experiences if done with a grander purpose in mind. However, the author chooses to reconcile these tragedies by marrying off all the characters who are now newly in gender conforming roles. This is done as if none of the violence really had any lasting consequences. Even the new Chunagon marries Saisho off to the younger sister of his second wife. Any historical validity to such an ending is insignificant to me as a modern reader wishing that there was some greater moral purpose for the story.

Making my disappointment in this ending worse, the first third of the story was delicate and empathetic in its handling of the characters’ gender identities. Initially, the author seemed sensitive to the emotional toll and the social stakes of the gender switch. Both Chunagon and Naishi no Kami frequently worried about being discovered and wished to either live in seclusion or leave the world completely, reminding me that the high rates of depression and suicide within the LGBTQI+ community is not new to our society, a powerful message from a 900 year old text. Complementing my initial impressions was Willig’s decision to use the characters’ preferred pronouns throughout, with the female-born trans-male Chunagon being referred to with masculine pronouns and the reverse for Naishi no Kami. In the original language, gendered pronouns are not used as they are in English and so it was Willig, in her translation, that honored the characters’ self-identities with her pronoun choices, a brave decision in the 1980s translation community.

So then I am left with complex feelings.  The book is an important tangible connection for me with Maria-sama ga Miteru, and yet, that too treated it as a comedy, which it most certainly is not. The prose itself is mediocre at best, the translation readable but not artistic, sort of like a middling YA novel. But all my initial confusion over whether it was a comedy or a tragedy, and the weak writing, would not have mattered if the story rose to the potential it displayed early on. Unfortunately, without any comeuppance to the three men who commit rape, or some unambiguous moral judgment rendered by the author, I simply cannot recommend this book. I am left uncertain as to its value for others. However, when I see it on my shelf, I still feel as though I have somehow materialized a piece of my favorite anime into existence in the real world. For me, that might be enough.

Ratings:

Writing: 4 (serviceable and mostly clear if uninspiring)
Story: 5 (beautiful poetry exchanged between characters, deeply moving emotional exploration of trans lives in the beginning, but unacceptable resolution and no final moral judgment)
Characters: 8 (We care about the main characters and hurt alongside them)
Service: 2 (there is little to no textual description of the sexual acts themselves, beware that most sexual encounters in the story are overt rapes)

Overall: 5 (if the conclusion had been morally stronger I would have gladly overlooked the poor prose quality)

Erica here: Wow. What a fantastic review, Jason. When I end up saying about 80% of the same things all over again tomorrow, I’ll make sure people know you said it first. ^_^ Thank you so very much for this review!