Archive for the Live Action Category


Live Action: Sailor Moon for a new century!

June 30th, 2004

Part 1

A friend of mine coined the phrase “gateway anime” – you know, the kind of anime that, for whatever reason, brings many new fans (read: “obsessive otaku”) into the fold. Ranma, DBZ, Bugglegum Crisis, whatever’s on Cartoon Network right now…, etc, are all examples of gateway anime.

And no matter how your tastes evolve, you never forget your first, the series that made you a fan.

Sailor Moon was my first.

Now a new generation is being introduced to the Senshi through what is being affectionately referred to as Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, aka PGSM.

The show was originally targeted at very young girls, but if you watch the commercials, you can see the age creep happening – where all the first commercials were for little kiddy underwear and candy, now we’re seeing ads for real grown-up make up and other health/beauty aids for adult women. And the storylines have matured, as well – forcing the writers to introduce a cuter, young character just to keep the kiddy appeal. (And probably to appease the creator, who loves her Luna.) The original run was meant to be 26 episodes or so, but after a few episodes, the series was boosted to 52 episodes. And boy are *we* glad!

The question all of you have to be asking (assuming that you’re not already watching this obssessively – and if you’re not, why not??) is, “Is there Yuri?”

You betcha there’s Yuri! Enough for any fan.

I’ll spend the next few entries lovingly discussing the yuri subtext of nearly every Senshi introduced so far. But in the meantime, I have to go watch Episode 37…again. ^_^

Oh, and please feel free to join our prayer circle at the Yuricon Mailing List. Here’s the mantra: “Please gods, let them get to the Outers.” ^_^





Live Action: Petticoat Planet

June 10th, 2004

And now for something completely different….

While in Dallas for A-kon, I was subjected to, erm, enjoyed watching, a remarkably bad movie that I wanted to share with you all, because misery shared is misery halved. :-)

Petticoat Planet is not an anime or manga, but it definitely has yuri content and it’s so utterly tacky that it’s quite charming.

The basic premise is that, on a frontier (and by frontier I mean that everything is sort of wild-west-ish) planet, all the men have died, leaving the women alone. The Mayor and the Sheriff have a steamy, yet lame, relationship, but poor straight girl Lilly longs for a man. Ta-da! Steve Rogers crash lands on the plant and finds that all the women are fighting over him. Steve turns out to be a space garbageman, which is perfect for this movie. In the end, he and Lilly leave together and the Mayor and Sheriff return to their bizarre approximation of sex.

This movie is cheesy in every possible way, including but not limited to, dialogue, costume, sets, dance (snort) choreography and plot. Theres is no doubt that Sheriff Sara runs this town with an iron fist, and possibly thighs, but the lesbian “sex” is laughably awful and goes nowhere. The people I was with called it “rubbing sex” and left it at that. It’s just as obvious that the men (who all died in a “mineshaft” accident,) were gay and that the “Mineshaft” in question was a gay club.

This movie is perfect late-night MST material and the Sheriff and Mayor are brilliant. Mayor Delia’s line about “Gimme a bottle a’redeye and a crazy straw!” made the movie for me.

So, while this is NOT yuri anime or manga, it is yuri, erm…softcore dreck, and if you have my low tastes, you’ll enjoy it. :-)





Live Action: Yurisai

May 12th, 2004

Lily_Festival_(film)From alert reader Erin S. a new movie of interest to yuri and shoujoai fans has appeared on the scene.

Yurisai, or Lily Festival, has already played at a few gay and lesbian Film Festivals (including the London one I was at last month, can you believe I missed it?) and the upcoming New York New Fest.

Yurisai sounds very unique – as a whole, it’s about older women whose sexuality is reawakened when a senior playboy enters their apartment complex. But part of the story includes a lesbian relationship between two of the women. Aside from the fact that seniors’ sexuality tend to be ignored completely by TV and film, it’s even less common to see a senior lesbian couple portrayed as sexual. If two older lesbians are shown on film, in my experience, they are reminiscing about politics and social change…not kissing or touching.

If this movie is playing at a GLBT film fest near you, try to get to it。In the meantime here’s the trailer. Enjoy!





Kekkou Kamen Anime, Manga and Live-Action

April 8th, 2004

My face is masked, but I bare my body for justice!

Kekkou Kamen, misspelled as Kekko Kamen for the anime release, is one more utterly bizarre story brought to you from the warped mind of Go Nagai, the creative genius behind Cutey Honey, Devilman, Mazinger G, Devilman Lady and more. But of all these, Kekkou Kamen wins on several levels – it’s the least plausible (and that’s saying something, if you’ve ever seen or read any of the others!), has the most naked women and is just the most utterly, indescribably *strange* anime and manga I’ve ever encountered. I absolutely love it.

The story takes place at Toenail of Satan’s Sparta Academy, an incredibly strict private high school, where physical and emotional torture are use to motivate the student body to excel. “Toenail of Satan” is the Principal’s actual name, btw. We follow the travails of hapless student Takahashi Mayumi, whose inferior grades and hot body make her a prime target of all the “punshiment specialist”s hijinks. To protect Mayumi, and the other students, a mysterious naked woman has appeared on the scene – she bares her body for justice, she says, but keeps her face covered because she’s embarrassed.

Kekkou Kamen-oneesama, as Mayumi calls her, always comes in the nick of time and uses her Spread Legs Attack to defeat the foe. The foe usually being some drooling pervert of a teacher who is just on the edge of sexually abusing Mayumi or one of the other female stdents. (The boy students appear to be only beaten, not sexually abused.)

And yet, (she says, knowing that after the prevous paragraphs everyone’s lips are curling in disgust,) despite all this, Kekkou Kamen is really incredibly funny. Mostly because it’s so amazingly awful and offensive that to take offense is impossible.

The anime is actually laugh-out-loud hysterical right from the beginning, when the first punishment specialist is “Gestaopoko” a S&M Nazi-themed dom with a whip and questionable fashion sense. Kekkou Kamen defeats her by remembering something she heard – that S&M Queens *really* want to be whipped themselves…. There is tons and tons of Yuri implication and overt Yuriness in the anime, which makes it worth buying. There’s also a terrific moment when the characters blast the fourth wall to hell by telling us that there’ll be more anime if this volume sells well. ^_^ It didn’t and there wasn’t.

The manga is a little more horrible and abusive, but so eyebrow-raisingly weird, that again, its hard to be offended. In the manga, we finally learn who Kekkou Kamen really is…and there is no way you’d ever be able to get it from the anime, so don’t bother…she doesn’t even show up as a character in the anime. Basically, by the end of the manga, every girl in the school is naked and masked and all are claiming to be Kekkou Kamen, but eventually, when she does show up, she does manage to save the day *and* Mayumi, once again. Yuri-wise there’s mostly akogare-type adoration and hero worship on Mayumi’s part, but I don’t really get any strong Yuri sense from that. There’s one totally butchy teacher, with a cross-dressing (and passing) younger sister, but again, the lesbo vibes are low-level at best. A shame too…I think this manga *needs* at least one openly lesbian character. If Go Nagai ever re-does the KK manga for the new century, I hope he adds one. ^_^

That takes us to the original Live-Action movies, of which there are three. These live-action movies were all unremittingly low-budget and poorly acted, with awkward scripts and BAD staging. So, of course, I adore them. The first movie is pretty close the the basic plot of the manga and the guy who plays Toenail of Satan is magnificently bad in the role. He’s perfect. The woman who plays Kekkou Kamen was some JAV star and pin-up, so her playing naked was fine. Her acting is …adequate, but really, who cares? The end of the movie is hysterically bad, and there is some Yuri subtext.

The second movie is the strongest in Yuri…there’s even a little actual girl/girl (not too much, don’t get your hopes up) thing going on, but with lots of subtext and one cool, butchy teacher. The same acting/script/low-budget thing applies to all three movies, so don’t think that they got better as time got on, either. ^_^

The third movie is actually kind of sad and funny, with lots of Go Nagai in-jokes, as Toenail of Satan’s family shows up to visit. Most of them are spoofs of other Go Nagai characters. And Kekkou Kamen falls in love, sadly with a guy, but whatever. There’s a funny scene at an amusement park, as KK tries to eat ice cream through her mask, and the ending, during and after the credits is absolutely insanely funny, as the girls of the school persuade a beaten and defeated Toenail of Satan to come back to the school and start playing soccer with him. As they run down the train platform, T of S’s last act is to plummet off the platform, then reappear, abashed, then he and the girls all share a good laugh. The End. No, really.

And, now, at last, there is a new KK Live-Action movie release to the theaters, which premiered this past week in Tokyo! The trailer makes it look hopelessly artless and fun, even if it has no obvious Yuri.

Ah…the trailer reminded me – I have to mention the *song.* The song that you hear in the trailer, and as the theme to the anime (sung by Kekkou Kamen’s voice actress Shinohara Emi, aka the voice of Sailor Jupiter/Kino Makoto in Sailor Moon, and Rosa Chinensis/Youko in Maria-sama ga Miteru) is amazingly funny. And in the manga, *Kekkou Kamen* herself sings the song as she fights, which makes it just that much better. I’m so very glad that they kept it for this movie, because it’s wonderful and camp and just about defines this whole series in a nutshell.

So, there you have it – Yuri in the anime, a little in two of the movies and not really any in the manga. Enjoy, but probably not. ^_^





Live Action: Tipping the Velvet

February 20th, 2004

Today’s review is a bit “off-topic” since it’s about a live-action DVD, and a western one to boot, rather than something animated or drawn. But, in all honesty, this was SO good, I thought you ought to know about it.

Tipping the Velvet,  is a truly excellent three-part costume drama based (with reasonable accuracy) on the novel by the same name. TtV was written by Sarah Waters, who also wrote Fingersmithing which was an incredibly surreal and wonderfully weird book…I’d love to see THAT made into a made-for-TV drama!

TtV is a costume play set in Victorian England, dealing with the ups and downs, fame, fortune, loves and lovers of Nan Astley, a fisherman’s daughter who grows up to be a famous stage actress and infamous lesbian. If you want to know more about the story, go visit the BBC website – it’s much more thorough than I could be here. I just want to note a few basic things, like:

1) Rachel Stirling is so amazingly hot as Nan, she’s breathtaking. She’s Diana Rigg’s daughter, and it shows – she has her mother’s sensuality, and her cheekbones but…that voice! She does a superb job and deserves some kind of award for looking that good in a tux.

2) The lesbian sex is very nice. ‘Nuff said.

3) The ending is slightly different from the book, but the outcome the same. To cut to the chase – the girl gets the girl and lives happily ever after.

4) Did I mention the copiuos sex scenes?

Anyway – this is a DVD at least worth a rent, if not a buy. Great story, fantastic acting, hot women…magnificent clothes and a yuri lover’s fantasy ending. This gets 10s all the way around. Put it on your “To Watch” list immediately and thank me later.