Wow.

Blah blah blah, I’m not a DC gal, Batman is boring, blah blah. We’ve been through that before. But. This season has convinced me otherwise.

I thought Kate Kane was a fine Batwoman in Season 1. I was glad she had her story told and the points were made. And I was super glad to get past the Alice arc, with its so many handwaves. It was good stuff. Season 2 capitalized on the strengths of the cast and weaknesses of the story. It was better stuff.  In my review  of Season 2 I said, “What had been an ensemble flapping around Kate, waiting for her to listen to any of them, has now coalesced into a solid team looking for Kate (whatevs) and fighting new and different baddies, something I can get behind, finally.” Which is pretty much what happens. And now we reach Season 3 of Batwoman and I have not stopped thinking about it since I began to watch. It was one of the best live-action shows I’ve watched in a long while. Mostly because the cast is killing it.

Javicia Leslie’s Ryan Wilder is likable, smart, strong and vulnerable. The story uses those vulnerabilities without hesitation, but the story is not about torturing Ryan. Nope, instead Season 3 is 1000000% about Mary Hamilton and Beth Kane. Not as a couple, but as a pair of mismatched, deeply broken and needy people. 

Nicole Kang’s Mary Hamilton is…amazing. She’s broken, and breaking, and healing, and permanently effed up and likable and redeemable. Even when she is at her lowest, you have to love her. Early on the season, she and Lucas have a little energy. I would not object, except I believe you should not fall for your coworkers. (More on that later.) 

Beth, nee Alice. Holy Shit. Rachel Skarsen is doing a lifetime’s worth of acting with this role. She takes up a lot of space on the screen and again, love her and hate her, you always love her. Mary and Beth trying to patch a family together between the two of them had me tied up in knots.

Where Kate and Sophie made my skin crawl, Ryan and Sophie as the main love affair of the series works just fine. See above about coworkers for a caveat. But it, too, is a side story. The main plot uses relics of the Bat-universe, but with new plotting and characters. Did we need a new Joker? Maybe? But what we got with a new Poison Ivy was an outstanding arc, that will have repercussions into next season. It gave us a brief moment with Renee Montoya and Pamela Isley, but it left us with Poison Mary…and Alice as a sidekick. That was a hell of a ride.

Lucas’ battle with his long-dead father added unpredictability to his story, and Ryan’s own journey into her own family’s past drives the larger arcs in a way that succeeds.

These character arcs -and others – are overlapped so that they have consequences. It’s not “character development of the week,” and kudos to the writers for that.

Season 3 is about family. For Batwoman and her team, that means a lot of everything: Good, bad, extremely bad, and pathologically apocalyptic. It means love and hate and despair and hope. And, for the first time in my watching experience, it means a majority non-white, majority female cast, full of queerness, which I absolutely love. 

This was a fantastic season. you should watch it.

Ratings:

Cinematography – 8
Characters – 10
Story – 9
Queer – 10
Service – 7 Kissing, sex implied

Overall – 9

This team convinced me to love Batwoman.

Jigoku Hanazono (地獄の花園) is absolute trash, hilarious and unforgivable, and probably puzzling to anyone who isn’t deeply interested in girl-gang lore. It’s a movie tailored almost perfectly to my tastes. It will be released on DVD and Blu-ray in Japan in a few weeks, available through this transparent affiliate link.

Tanaka Naoko is a totally typical Office Lady in a large corporation that employs a large female workforce. The workforce has split into factions very like the “Ladies” gangs. Naoko, and her typical, non-faction colleagues, end up dodging the inter-departmental battles that break out between the various factions. Until one fateful day all three factions at her corporation encounter Hirose Ran, who transfers in and takes them all over. For a time, peace reigns.  But when other corporations hear of Ran’s power, they begin to encroach upon their territory, and Naoko is kidnapped to lure Ran into a battle.

And then the movie gets weird.

If you take a look at the official cast page, you’ll note the thing I like best about this movie…and the thing I liked least.

The thing that immediately become obvious, is the heavily embroidered gang outerwear, reminiscent of tokkou-fuku of Japanese motorcycle and scooter gangs, only in bright colors worn over office uniforms. The factions mimic gangs in patois and behavior as well, which is always sort of ridiculous in media, but especially so as it’s played for laughs here.

You’ll also note that one of the corporations has a gang in black and that all the women in that gang are played by men. This is something I have encountered in a few other gang or gang-esque movies, like the live-action Cutey Honey movie…the most powerful women are played by men and are thus meant to be grotesquely ugly and horrible.  I do not approve. First of all, women are completely capable of being grotesque and ridiculous on our own, thanks  In this case, it is again a woman who is the most powerful, so that’s cool. And the men are seasoned actors with years of yakuza dude roles under their belts, so that worked as well. Overall, it was no more than another eye-roll in a movie basically built out of eyerolls. All of the actors chewed up their roles with gusto, which helped the movie hustle along to it’s utterly ridiculous end.

A palpable friendship builds up between Naoko and Ran and it becomes the lynchpin of the climax, so I really cannot tell you what happens. You’ll *have* to experience it for yourselves. I will tell you that any and all Yuri is punted off the roof in the final, bewildering scene that is so gobsmackingly ridiculous that it is almost funny, but still really annoying. Naoko agrees, is all I’m saying.

There is an English-subtitled trailer from FujiTV, which I hope means this will make the rounds of western Asian film festivals next year. I’d love to do a watch party with you all.

Ratings:

Cinematography – 9 Perfect and awful
Story – 9
Characters – 9
Service – 0 Not really, but tropey gang fights is a kind of service
Yuri – So close, but no

Overall – 8

Really hoping for an EN release, but the JP Blu-ray is in my cart, baby.

Thai BL is having a boom moment and it’s worth noting that Thai Yuri is starting to develop in that same market. One of the most recent BL/GL series in Thailand is called 7 Project. You can find all of it on YouTube, and if you turn on Closed Captions, an English caption option is available. Today I’m looking at Episode 3 of this 4-episode series, “Remember.”

“Remember” stars Samantha Melanie Coates as Proud and Pannin Charnmanoon as Jaidee. Proud learns her boyfriend Tac has cheated on her. While she’s recovering from this shock, she becomes friends with Jaidee. a girl in one of her classes. As Tac flails at being honest, Jaidee and Proud become closer. When Tac forces a confrontation, Proud learns things that can destroy their friendship.

Before I get into the plot too much, I want to hearken back to the Afterschool Specials of my youth. These were always “very special episodes” and dealt with stuff that Boomer parents just would not actually talk about (despite the fact that they had been the sex and drugs generation /eyreoll/.) The defining characteristics of these specials were bare-bones writing, acting and staging in order to express teen drama, starring popular teen actors of the time. Watching “Remember,” I felt very much as if I was watching something equivalent to those Specials. The narrative beats were set up from pretty far away. I actually expected a final complication that never did appear, but the others all sort of slam down all at once towards the end and then it wraps up in a relatively satisfactory manner.

The Afterschool Specials are relevant here once more as the reason we all really watched them were the actors (and when when the substitutes couldn’t teach the class and showed them, instead.) The reason to watch “Remember” is, likewise, the actresses. They do fine work with this Ikea furniture plot design. Coates is a very sympathetic Proud, and Jaidee is very likeable, even as things begin to fall apart. Tui Tui Puttachat Pongsuchat’s portrayal of Proud’s mom was outstanding. Best character, best lines, best acting.

Ultimately the end of the segment is ambiguous, but leaves room for hope and that’s a damn sight better than no hope. One can end the story imagining that Proud and Jaidee might well have a chance to become something together.

Ratings:

Cinematography – 7
Characters – 8
Story – 7
Service – 2
Yuri – 8

Overall – 7

I’m pretty happy to welcome Thai Yuri on to our screens. Check out the WabiSabi channel for more of their videos and let them know you enjoyed 7 Project!.

Today’s review is thanks to gentleman and scholar Thomas Baudinette, who is my new pipeline on Thai Yuri! ^_^