Archive for the LGBTQ Category


Honnou to Senshokutai, Instinct and a Chromosome

June 5th, 2011

KC Dessert is a very interesting manga imprint. A broad definition would be that it tells josei stories for older teen or college age women.This means that the stories often detail relationships, with the slight feel of “things young women have to deal with.” In the past, I reviewed KOOLS, a collection that included a story about a young woman learning to be comfortable with herself as a lesbian, a story about rape and one about relationship abuse. They were overall all well told, and well executed. KOOLS, the story about the lesbian was a particularly well-done story. Think of KC Dessert as for girls too old to read 17 magazine (meaning 17 and up) and too young to read Cosmo. That’s the closest I can come to what audience this imprint reaches.

In Hyaku-Oku Nengo no Kimi no Koe Mo, there are two such stories. Both stories feel exactly like soap operas to me. The first follows a girl as she makes her way through conflicting relationships with men, but the second, “Honnou to Senshokutai,” (translated in the book as Instinct and a Chromosome) tells the story of Nanako, who confesses her love to a schoolmate in high school only to be told that she’s disgusting and should just die already. Nanako does not die, but does take herself off to the big city, where she attends a woman’s trade college. Almost from the first second, she starts to fall for one of the lecturers, Yuri.

With just a little awkwardness at the start, they two become a couple and begin making a life together but, as happy as Nanako is, she knows that Yuri is bisexual, and cannot relax. She is positive that Yuri will walk away from her one day. After a few weeks during which Yuri is continually busy, so  they have not seen one another, Nanako tracks her lover down…only to be told that Yuri is breaking up with her to marry a man from her father’s company. She’s an only child, she explains, as she hand Nanako the key to her apartment. “Do you *want* to get married?” Nanako asks. Yuri says that she does.

Nanako grieves, of course and, when a nice-looking guy tries to pick her up she falls apart. She tells him she’s a lesbian, to which he replies, “Yay! I like women too!” It’s all so unpredictable and goofy that she pretty much tells him the whole deal. He takes her for some food and a ride and she decides that she’ll try to have sex with him. Unfortunately for him, Nanako is wholly skeeved by the process. The guy is really quite nice and understanding about it, but eventually she has to stop him, because she just can’t do it. She leaves him, sleeping, and walks home, miserable at her loss, and realizing that she really loves Yuri.

When Nanako arrives  home, she finds a tearful Yuri curled up in front of the apartment. “I lied!” Yuri says, “I don’t want to get married. I love you!” And so they reunite, joyfully, with more promises of ever after.

Like KOOLS, “Honnou to Senshokutai” was a relatively straightforward, unadorned look at love between women, This was not a Yuri story, it is about a woman who is a lesbian and a woman who is bisexual who are in love with each other. And they live…okay, let’s just go there and say we’ll presume they live happily-ever-after. ^_^

In one sense it is a much-more realistic look at what Story A would look like. In another, it’s a great story to ‘splain a little bit about being lesbian to the clueless. Ultimately, it’s a nice soap opera where the girl gets the girl.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 6
Characters – 7
Lesbian – 10
Service – .5

Overall – 7

Many, many thanks to today’s sponsor, Okazu Superhero Katherine H for allowing me the chance to read this worthy story!





Novel: Wasurenagusa (わすれなぐさ) Guest Review by Hafl

May 25th, 2011

It’s Guest Review Wednesday, thank heavens. Today, returning Guest Reviewer Hafl is going to talk about another of Yoshiya Nobuko’s novels. As you may remember, I consider Yoshiya to be the Grandmother of Yuri and certainly one of the driving forces in the creation of Japanese popular literature for girls, what we think of as the shoujo genre. Any chance to talk about her work – which is relatively unknown in the west – is a good thing. Take it away, Hafl!

On the first glance, Yoshiya Nobuko’s Wasurenagusa (わすれなぐさ) is a tale of three schoolgirls, who become friends and learn to deal with their family situations. On second glance, it is entirely possible to read it as a story of a love triangle, and it does not even require that much effort on part of the reader.

The three main characters are Makiko, who is the ordinary girl, Kazue, who is the quiet and responsible girl, and Youko, who is the spoiled rich girl. Each of them also has family issues they must resolve before the book ends. Youko does not see the value of having a full family. Kazue is the eldest child in a fatherless household and is overly self-sacrificing. Makiko has a terminally ill mother and an authoritarian father, who wants her to completely sacrifice herself for family’s sake and wants her brother to become a scientist like him, despite the boy’s apparent distaste.

In the beginning, Makiko borrows school notes from Kazue, an act which is witnessed by Youko, who immediately starts suffering from jealousy and decides to get Makiko as her special friend. To that end, she employs such various methods as forcing Makiko to crossdress, gift swapping, summer camps, tailor-made dresses and distracting her with many different amusements. However, in the end, her spell over Makiko is broken and Makiko becomes friends with Kazue, who also helps Makiko’s father see that he cannot rule his children with an iron hand.

These are only the bare bones of the plot, which can be read in several different ways. It can be read as a simple tale of three girls becoming friends. It can be read as a veiled attack against Western decadence (It must be significant that Youko, always associated with Western clothing, wears kimono in the last scene of the book). And finally, it can be also read as a story of girl used to always getting her way, who decided to claim one girl for herself – that is the way I chose to read the book, since for me, it is the most fun way.

Wasurenagusa was written in the thirties, some ten years after Hana Monogatari and Yaneura no Nishojo and it shows. The prose style is much easier to read and there are mentions of things that would be simply unacceptable before, like Kazue ‘s father being a soldier who died in China. Even though the book is mostly told from the point of view of the main characters, there is an interruption from Makiko’s brother’s point of view and it shows that if one were to read the book “properly,” the main theme is not the relationship between the girls, but in relationships in family…and that the book’s more or less explicitly told stance on those relationships is that children must be allowed to find their own way in the world without their parents’ interference.

I tried to not spoil much of the plot, since Wasurenagusa is definitely worth reading. Personally, I would rate it to be about as difficult to read as the Maria-sama ga Miteru novels, so it is not as hard as Yaneura no Nishojo or Hana Monogatari. Or, perhaps, I have just became used to Yoshiya’s style, so I can read it more easily.

Story – 7, It is simple and without many surprise, but nicely told.
Characters – 7, Nothing special, but likable.
Yuri – Between 0 and 6, depending on how you decide to read the book.

Overall – 7, Not a must read, but still recommended.

However, this Wasurenagusa is not the only story titled Wasurenagusa that Yoshiya wrote. There is also an early story of the same name in Hana Monogatari, with the only difference being that the novel’s title is all in hiragana, while the story’s title uses kanji. Let’s take a short look at it:

Toyoko, a new girl at school, feels deeps admiration for an upperclassman, Mizushima-san, but she is unable to confess her feelings. In the end, she just leaves some forget-me-not flowers (wasurenagusa in Japanese) on Mizushima-san’s desk on her graduation day. While nobody dies of a flu epidemic out of nowhere or develops romantic tuberculosis, everybody is still sad. It is a pretty typical story in Hana Monogatari, where two girls separate without even having a proper chance to interact with each other.

Story – 6
Characters – 5
Yuri – About 3

Overall – 6

Thank you Hafl for your perspective – and for your prompt to remind me to read more of Yoshiya’s work.





Yuri Manga: GUNJO, Volume 2

April 11th, 2011

There will be massive spoilers in this review. I cannot discuss how powerful the story is or the reactions I had without them. If you object, skip to the ratings.

Today, we speak of desperation.

In my interview with Nakamura-sensei, she called GUNJO (羣青 ) a story about the “profound loneliness of a lonely person.”

In Volume 1 (上), we learned why the brunette would be driven to desperate acts, as a way to escape a life of despair and pain. She had nothing to lose. And we can understand that, we can forgive that. Abused women fighting back makes sense to us.

In Volume 2 (中), we are forced to deal with the other half of that act…executed by a woman who had everything to lose.

The beginning of Volume 2 starts with the chapter that made it impossible for me to continue to write chapter-by-chapter reviews of this story. This is when I began thinking of reading GUNJO in terms of “eating the most delicious razor blades you’ve ever had.” Each chapter hurts so magnificently, it has become my equivalent of cutting. I read a chapter to see how low into despair I can sink, how intensely I can feel their loneliness, how miserable they can make me feel. I read this every month to see if I can still summon hope.

In Volume 2, we do the most absolutely emotionally draining thing possible, we stop watching the main couple, with their dysfunctional relationship and dangerous dynamic, and take a step aside to really understand everything the blonde has thrown away. I don’t believe I’ve ever shed so many tears over a book as I did in these chapters. Watching the blonde’s ex re-create her life, find out how close they were to making it permanent (or, as permanent as possible for two gay women in Japan in the present), watching as the loss of her lover forces the ex to come out to her parents, and express how she *would* have spent the rest of her life with that woman. And then, when it all seems like she’s put it behind her and is ready to move on, we watch her give up completely…and kill herself. The blonde, who has everything to lose, has lost everything.

Then, when we think that we can put that behind us and we can move on, the ring her lover had bought her….the ring with which she was intending to propose…is given to the blonde, along with the story of her lover’s death. Now she has to deal with new loss on top of old.

But the book doesn’t end there. Profound loneliness has no cure. It wants no cure. The brunette, a woman who has run until she has been cornered by life, has new ammunition to make the one person who cares about her hurt. So she does. She batters the blonde with emotional torment until the blonde throws away the very last relics she has of her former life, 550 yen….and the wedding ring.

Ratings:

Art – 10
Story – 10
Characters – 10
Lesbian – 10
Sevice – 1

Overall – 10

There is no respite here. There is no moment when we can breathe a sigh of relief.

All we can do is feel the desperation and the loneliness of despair. And wait. For Volume 3.





Yuri Manga: Octave, Volume 6

March 15th, 2011

Before I get on a pedestal and start declaiming the wonderfulness of Octave, Volume 6, (オクターヴ), I hope you’ll indulge me. I promise not to name names or rip anyone specific up, but I really need to get this off my chest.

I write reviews here for several reasons. To share good titles with you, to give you all links to places to buy these good titles, to motivate you to learn a little Japanese, for entertainment and, obviously, because it pleases me to do so – that’s the entertainment I get from it.

So, when I saw a forum post recently written by a long-time reader of Okazu that linked to a review here with the comment, “Ooh, I can’t wait to read the scans!” it made me sad. Because that person feels its okay to take the hard work of the artists, writers, their assistants, editors, and printers and basically not care that all that is not worth anything more to them than what they can get for free.

I know this does not apply to all of you, or even to most of you. I’ve said it many times and I’ll say it again – I think I have the *greatest readers in the world.* But for those who do think that way, let me assure you that that is not why I write Okazu. I do not do it for those of you who would rather construct rationalizations about why you just can not support people who do this for a living. I do it for the many of you who do buy the manga, the magazines, the DVDs, the novels, etc. To all of you who support the industry, I do it for you. Thank you.

So, when I write today about how great Octave is, what I *hope* is that you’ll finally be motivated to buy it, to sacrifice some of your time and learn a little Japanese, to show support in the only way that has any meaning in our world – with your money. That’s why I write Okazu and I very much hope that’s why you read Okazu – to be motivated.

Let me sum up by saying this to those long time readers – had you started learning Japanese when you started reading this blog, you’d be able to read Octave in the original by now.

Now, on to our regularly scheduled review:

Octave is the story I have always wanted to read. Octave has the ending I’ve always wanted to read. Octave is…just right. (Read that as you might Goldilocks talking about the middle bed.)

It’s about two adult women who fall in love with one another and have to navigate a very complicated path in between coworkers, friends, family and, trickiest of all, their own expectations.

Yukino in this final volume is still Yukino. She has not radically altered. No magic power has granted her the ability to handle things without getting hurt. She’s had to figure out what to do on her own, even sometimes ignoring perfectly sound advice by people who love her, in order to become the woman she wants to be.

Setsuko in the final volume is not quite the Setsuko we first met. She’s more serious now, she has something to lose. But it has given her a depth she lacked and a perspective that now keeps one eye on the future.

They are both flawed, sometimes annoying because they are realistic, but I’d gladly have them over for lunch anytime.

Yukino and Setsuko go shopping for food. They buy home goods together. They walk down the street holding hands. They say things like “I’m so happy, I could die,” and “Don’t say that, not even as a joke.” They live, they love.

This story does not end happily ever after in a fairytale way. It ends with a realistic, rather stressful situation ahead, that they’ll face together.

This is, absolutely, the evolution of Yuri I have been waiting for and have been working for – a story about two adult women in love with one another, living their lives. The only thing that could make it better would be more chapters about those lives.

Ratings:

Art – 7
Story – 10
Characters – 10
Yuri/Lesbian – 10
Service – 2

Overall – 10

I still hope that one day DMP decides to bite the bullet and license a real Yuri series. This is the one I’d suggest for them.





Lesbian Novel: Super Otome Taisen

February 3rd, 2011

Mori Natsuko-sensei a master of the craft of writing. The fact that her writing is pornographic does not diminish this fact one bit.

Super Otome Taisen (スーパー乙女大戦) is a collection of short stories that were published over a period of several years to create an epic whole.

It is Christmas Eve at St. Anna’s private Catholic school. In the Teresa dorm, a minature Angel named Lilith tells seven girls that they have been chosen by God to save the Earth.

The “senshi” are third-years Mikiko – honor student, former president of the Student Council;  Makoto – out lesbian, and “Casanova” of the school; second-years Karen – a half-Japanese supermodel; Sasa – the school bad girl; Fuyuko – otaku and president of the SF/Fantasy club and; first-years Goth-Loli Yumeno and…Mana. I’ll get to Mana in a bit.

The “senshi” gig isn’t quite what one might expect – they are told that their sexual energy will power the giant robot guardian Super Gaia as she fights off equally giant monsters that attack the planet. This requires them to either masturbate or have sex with one another to free Super Gaia from the tentacle-y clutches of the monsters.

During the course of their adventures, the senshi undergo some awakenings. Mikiko discovers a sadistic streak, while Sasa learns that she’s a masochist. Yumeno – who yearns for Karen –  also learns she has a mean streak, School Casanova Makoto is summarily rejected or ignored by almost every one of the others, Karen and Fuyuko discover a mutual love of tentacle play and fall in love and Mana develops a kind of telepathy with Lucretia, the giant sea anemone tentacle monster they keep in the dorm and Lucretia’s baby tentacle monster, Koro-chan.

Right from the beginning, there’s a few things that are not right about the situation and it’s otaku Fuyuko who notices them first. For one thing, the monster design is inconsistent (and she can identify which anime and live-action designers they remind her of.) She also comments on the set design. And, as she points out, the Angel that is their contact has the name Lilith, which doesn’t sound like someone that the Christian God would chose to save the Earth. Fuyuko comments that Lilith’s wings are more like an insect’s than an angel’s and calmly mentions that for all they know, the God they are serving is Beezelbub, Lord of Flies.

Karen, discovers something’s up when she overhears Lilith talking to “God” who has a very high-pitched voice and whom Lilith refers to as “Director.” To keep Karen quiet, Lilith imprisons her with Lucretia. Karen doesn’t really mind that much and Lucretia is very gentle with Karen – even going so far as to feed her. Nonetheless, I had a really hard time being comfortable knowing Karen was involved in “tentacle play” for three days straight.

It’s Mana who saves the day. Mana is a really weird character. She’s totally asexual and never involves herself at all with any of the other senshi. When she discovers Lucretia’s baby, she puts Koro in a bowl and raises it. From there, she develops empathy that evolves into telepathy. When Mana realizes that Koro-chan misses her mommy, she gets the locked door open by asking Lucretia politely to open it. Ultimately, this frees Karen (who, mind you, asks to go back after a bath and a meal.)

The climax (herhn herhn) of the book comes when Yumeno, disgusted at what Karen has become, blames Lilith and concocts a plan to punish her. She engages the help of Mana (to whom she had always been kind) and Koro-chan. The little tentacle monster is just the right size to detain and “play with” Lilith. The senshi gather and force Lilith to tell them what’s up. It turns out that the role of “God” has been played by an alien AV director who wanted to create a reality show for the human fetishists in the universe. And it was a big success, she admits. I really felt that Mori-sensei dropped the ball here – she needed to have had Mikiko demand royalties for them all. Oh well, can’t have everything. Oh and Earth? Never really in danger…

The senshi are returned back to their lives which, amazingly, they slip right back into. They gather together one last time to say goodbye to the graduating third-years. You get one guess as to how that turns out.

In the final scene, Mikiko and Makoto are walking the campus and they see a beautiful woman, with perfect proportions and a very western face. They go running up to her…it can’t be…Super Gaia? I won’t spoil the ending. You’ll just have to read the book to find out. ^_^

In the same way that Sempai to Watashi takes the idea of BDSM and kind of beats it to death and then still runs with it until it stops being sexy, sort of normalizes and then becomes both more profound and more silly than ever before, Super Otome Taisen does the same with tentacle rape.

While Mikiko is the leader of the team, it’s Fuyuko who is protagonist for most of the book. Her open otaku-ness allows Mori-sensei to really trot out some serious sci-fi/fantasy obscura. Now I too know about “Stalingrad Fuyu Keshiki.” You can tell that Fuyuko is the protagonist, too, because she is the only one who gets the girl in the end. Makoto remains a court fool and Sasa is the group whipping girl, but Fuyuko and Karen find true love. Mana gets a new baby tentacle monster to raise. And they all live happily ever after….

…

Ratings:

Overall – 8