Archive for the Miscellaneous Category


The Future is Always Obsolete: Ghost In the Shell Manga Franchise

August 28th, 2020

Some months ago, I took a great number of hours and watched all the visual media (except for the recent VR Noh-inspired play, which I desperately want to see…) from the Ghost in the Shell franchise. It was a learning experience and I very sincerely intended to do the same thing with the manga. 

I made my way through  Ghost in the Shell, Ghost in the Shell 1.5 Human Error Processor, Ghost in the Shell 2 Man-Machine Interface, Ghost in the Shell Standalone Complex and Ghost in the Shell Global Neural Network (but not yet Ghost in the Shell The Human Algorithm) and find…that I cannot do the same for the manga. These links lead to Global Bookwalker for the purposes of today’s musings – it can’t really be considered a review of any of these books, it’s more like an overview of all of them.

I was going to do a deep dive, as I said, but almost immediately, it was obviously impossible. Despite the pretension to profundity, there is very little depth to any of the manga, as both plot and protagonist are forced to do spins and turns so we can see the sexy parts, without the qualities of a person – or narrative – that might make those parts sexy.

Shirow’s manga is not truly a narrative…or, if there is narrative, it’s only by accident. Technological innovation to some extent has rendered his notes ridiculous, but even by 1997, “external memory” was not a complicated idea and his notes serve to distract, rather than reinforce. They explain in excruciating detail things not shown, irrelevant to the story, or merely random off-shoots of his thought processes.

 
 

Overall, Shirow’s manga is a technical manual of Shirow’s internal world-building told while flashing us with a constant ass-crotch-tits sequence. It’s like trying to learn the quadratic equation with someone waving a porn magazine in your face. You can’t concentrate on either properly. The audience for all this was, clearly, people who were enamored with Shirow’s world-building and had little to no chance for sex and were therefore satisfied by the constant disruption of “Network” world-building to enable multiple angle panty shots.

 
 

Tezuka sometimes popped little SD characters up of himself to make comments in his manga – it worked for him, not so much for Shirow who, we are frequently told is a great artist, who should not do manga. I posit that he is neither a great artist (although he is a competent draftsman) nor a good story teller, but is instead merely an “idea guy” so enamored of his ideas, that he can’t stop getting in the way of the story to tell you about them.

After the initial volume of Ghost in the Shell manga Kusanagi is, like the lesbian sex scene in that original manga, entirely performative. She never exists, except as our impressions of her existence. These impressions are reinforced by the strictly story-telling aspects of Gits 1.5 Human Error Processor, reinforced by our memories of those specific episodes from the animation. 

 

In GitS 2 Man-Machine Interface we can see that she is almost literally the only woman in the story, by virtue of being almost all the women in the story. In Standalone Complex, she is the sum of our memories of her, drawn by Kinutani Yu as a comic version of the television series. By the the time we reach Global Neural Network, we are seeing the memories of those impressions as their own stories…and, frankly, better for that than some of what passes for narrative in GitS 2.

 

 

The future in Ghost in the Shell is already obsolete. Cyborg body parts exist, and they get decked out with paint and stickers, our rainy neon-lit city streets are dystopian in multiple ways and also horrifically banal. We put on masks to block out a pandemic and facial recognition as we head out to get our fast food takeout and we’re bluetoothed into our podcasts, not wired through ports in our necks. Shirow’s network teeters precariously between being a religious philosophy and a technological phenomenon.  The only thing he got right is the proliferation of dangerously absurd conspiracy theories.

 
 
The takeaway from the Ghost in the Shell manga is that we’re not going to get flying cars or peaceful utopian societies, but maybe we might at least hope for cuter tanks.

 

No Ratings

 

If Kusanagi’s cyborg body weighs so much that she’d sink in water or crush a car by landing on it, how does she wear high heels?





Vampeerz, Volume 3 (ヴァンピアーズ)

August 25th, 2020

 

The third volume of the manga Vampeerz (ヴァンピアーズ)
Is chock-full of fetishes and fears.
Vampires in school, but really,
It’s all what you’d expect from Akili,,
Gravitas Twilight has smeared.

That’s it. That’s the review. ^_^





No YNN Report Today

August 22nd, 2020

It’s been 8 months straight for the weekly Yuri Network News report and today, I’m taking a day off. ^_^ We’re working hard on a new video for Yuri Studio right this very moment…stay tuned! If you’ve enjoyed our Yuri News Reports, anime, manga, film, books and VN reviews, and hope to see more, please consider supporting us on the Okazu Patreon.We’re hoping to get 3 new patrons by the end of the month to stay on track for 2020.

Okazu Patrons get recognition on the front page of Okazu, a nifty hand-crafted digital badge, behind-the-scenes access and sneak peaks on new projects, polls to drive the direction of our work. Patrons can ask questions used in our Yuri panels and which we’ll address in upcoming videos! Sometimes, Patrons get access to contests or little gifts of thanks, because we can. ^_^

Every dollar makes a direct impact on what we can pay writers, and technical staff…as well as keeping us in the center of a thriving Yuri ecosystem. $5/month moves us a big step forward. Thank you to our current Okazu patrons, your support is greatly appreciated.

I’ll see you again next week here on the YNN Report!

 





Weekly Magazine WOMAN, Volume 3 Summer (週刊文春WOMAN 夏号)

August 9th, 2020

In September 2019, when I was in Japan for the 100 Years of Yuri Tour, I had an item on my to-buy list that I honestly expected to have difficulty finding. Shunkanbunshun WOMAN, Volume 3 Natsugou (週刊文春WOMAN 夏号). This mook is a several-times a year special edition that is somewhere between a literary and a lifestyle magazine, addressing topics of interest to women or about women. It’s not a fashion/makeup magazine, although the advertising is, clearly, fashion and makeup.  Summer 2019 included tｗo articles of interest to me and I hoped I’d be able to find it. It was a wildcard on my list, and I honestly expected to have to special order it. I was surprised to find it pretty much in every place I shopped. Luck of the draw, undoubtedly.

In any case, it has taken me almost a year to crack it open to read Yamawaki Asou’s article “Ima Yuri Manga ga Omoshiroi!” – presumably riffing on the popular publication, Kono Manga ga Sugoi!. The article is, itself, pretty interesting. It includes feedback from Comic Yuri Hime editor Umezawa Kanako and columnist Fukusawa Maki, and it includes a number of very gratifying quotes by manga scholar Fujimoto Yukari. I say gratifying, because she and I have discussed the series she talks about many times together, so when she calls Shiroi Heya no Futari by Yamagishi Ryouko a “protoype” Yuri, it feels like a win for me. There’s also a discussion of the changing demographics of the fandom and how the content has shifted to accommodate those changes.

It’s a pretty good overview of Yuri, the changes we’ve seen over the decades, and the reasons for them. There’s a little bit about overseas fandom and a nice wrap up of the kind of “shakaijin” Yuri we’re seeing now. The article also mentions the inclusion of LGBTQ characters and issues in recent years The manga included was also a generally good selection of “best of breed” from the last two decades. With one exception – I will never, ever really understand how Yuru Yuri gets on Yuri lists, when there’s so little Yuri as to be negligible. . I think the list was worth reading, though, and reminded me I really need to read Yamashita Tomoko’s Ikoku Nikki (違国日記, which has been on my eventually to get to list for a couple of years, now.

Following this article is an interview with Shimura Takako, creator of Aoi Hana and Otono ni Nattemo, among other titles. It goes pretty well for an interview with a manga creator, although there were no amazing insights.

Ratings

Overall – A very solid 8

I’m pleased I was able to get this magazine and pleased that the summer of our 100 years of Yuri included this review of the genre for a – hopefully – new audience!

 





Where to Watch Yuri in English Online, Free and Legally – 2020

July 21st, 2020

So you want to know where and how to watch Yuri anime free and legally. That’s not a bad thing, but we’re in 2020, a year that has been outrageously written by crazed Albanian monks. The last time we did this round up, in 2017, there were a number of new services and a lot of companies were getting in on anime. Quite a number of previously free services have gone out of business, others have been simply absorbed by not-free services.  That 2017 post remains one of the most popular I’ve ever done, and it’s long past time it gets an update. ^_^

Before we begin, let’s set some ground rules:

My focus is on US-based or accessible services, because while I am dedicated to bringing you good information, my dedication still does not extend to working with proxies or VPNs in every major market to see if these services work in your hometown. Assume there are regional restrictions in place for some or all of these services. But feel free to use proxies or VPNs on your own. ^_^ If you use a regionally legal, free streaming site in a non-US country, by all means, please let folks know in comments!

Today we’re focusing on services that are legitimate and free. To be very honest, there are far fewer of them than there used to be. I will also touch upon a few that are not free, because they allow for extended trial periods and, if you and your friends pitch in, you can enjoy them for a very reasonable amount. And because without them, you’ll miss a lot of Yuri. I will not suggest illicit services and all comments suggesting them will be removed instantly. This is for legal services only.

 All streaming services have shifting catalogs. Video licensing contracts go in and out of use and every single IP holder is always on the lookout for a better deal and major ones are launching their own god-forsaken channels.  In fact, between 2017 and now, Funimation pulled all of it’s IP from other services and went on their own.  Another good reason to update this list periodically. I am checking to make sure things I mention are actually on the service where I mention them. Some of these channels can be accessed on channel-aggregation services like VRV or Hulu or Amazon Prime. I’m not touching any of those. Netflix also has a lot of anime and is both licensing and making more, so if you have a subscription to that, or any of the above, yes, there’s more stuff you can watch legally.

Region-blocks are still an issue, but less than it used to be. Streaming has had an impact on this stupid relic of the 20th century, but it still does exist, and licensing companies do usually not have much say on the issue. With all that in mind, here we go.

 

Crunchyroll

Crunchyroll is pretty much the industry standard now,  with a good chunk of anime from multiple companies, which is it’s main appeal. Crunchyroll is my go-to, because their catalog is one of the most comprehensive, from Aoi Hana/Sweet Blue Flowers to to Yuru Yuri. (There wasn’t a good ‘Z’ title, but come on A to Y isn’t bad! ^_^) They often have simulcasts for subscribers and they are still honest-to-goodness free on a delay. They are partnering with Japanese anime companies directly to create their own content these days, which just means your money goes back into the greater anime ecosystem, which is exactly where you want it.

There’s no “Yuri” tag in search, nor is it listed as a genre (and I sympathize with that and agree as long as BL is likewise not included.)

Rating: A- It’s not an all-in-one place for everything anymore, especially as Sentai and Funimation have chosen other options, but they still have the largest and most varied catalog.

 

Tubi TV

Tubi has – to my genuine surprise – survived a few years now. They’ve still got a mostly random smattering of anime and a lot of it isn’t new or, sometimes, good. They have Valkyrie Drive, but they also have Vampire Princess Miyu.  They’ve also got a few other notable series, like Bubblegum Crisis and .hack/Sign. (This was a decade pre-Sword Art Online massive media franchise about a MMOPRG that didn’t exist.) Their catalog is worth a look, if you’ve got some time to kill and want to watch older, maybe less well-known stuff from before Yuri was its own genre. ^_^

Rating: B It’s worth looking at, but I probably wouldn’t subscribe. Their catalog still seems random, They have Bubblegum Crisis, and AD Police, but not Bubblegum Crash. No idea why.

There is no Yuri tag in search. Their search isn’t really good, generally.

 

RetroCrushTV

RetroCrushTV is new since the last update and I haven’t watched it at all. But is it is genuinely free, ad-supported anime and RetroCrushTV has Bubblegum Crisis and Bubblegum Crash, as well as Project A-ko, which is nuts and you should watch it.  It has Devil Lady dubbed, which I should point out is a thing you ought to note – some of the series are dubbed, others subbed; they do seem to be labeled appropriately.

RetroCrushTV specializes in older stuff, obviously and it has a “random” button which will give you some random title. I found it charming as heck and I will totally use this!

There’s no “Yuri” tag in search. Their search is meh generally.

Rating: A-  I really like the “love for classic everything” that shows through here. For free, it’s an absolute delight.

 

Viz

Viz doesn’t have much Yuri anime, but you can still watch all of Sailor Moon here, for free. While you are there, you can watch all the big Shonen Jump series and read sample chapters of manga for free, or get new chapters as simulpub – this includes Yuri titles like How Do We .Relationship and Tropical Fish Yearns for Snow.

There’s no “Yuri” tag in search. Their search is meh generally.

Rating: B Obviously, they only carry their own titles, but those are some of the biggest titles in the world and they make it pretty damn easy for you to watch and read for free and even get simulpubbed new manga chapters for free.

 

Funimation 

Funimation has Funimation anime exclusively – overwhelmingly I think that is for the birds. But, then, my antipathy towards Funimation’s attempts at streaming go back a decade and at least their website works, even if I think it gets in its own way all the time. Which is actually a huge improvement over previous years of barely functioning nonsense. I will never forgive them for their mobile app zippering open. Gawd.

Funimation offers a free trial and most series have the first few and most recent episodes streaming free so you can watch a whole series as it comes out with, predictably, ads suggesting you subscribe to Funimation’s service. They’ve got recent favorites like If My Favorite Pop Idol Made It to the Budokan, I Would Die and they’ve got Revolutionary Girl Utena, which surprised the heck out of me.

There’s no “Yuri” tag in search.

Ratings: B+ No complaints, honestly. You don’t even have to register anymore to watch stuff for free. And if Funimation’s titles are your jam, it’s competitively priced.

 

HIDIVE

HIDIVE is Sentai Filmworks’ and Section23’s streaming service. Since Sentai historically licenses a lot of Yuri, you’ll be able to see Bloom Into You and Kase-san and Morning Glories here, along with older titles like Flip Flappers and the amazing fantabulous live-action movie Arch Angels (!!! You should all go watch this immediately!!!). They’ve got a pretty amazing selection of queer-friendly and queer-adjacent stuff. I do like that their trial is 30 days long, not a week. They offer subs and dubs pretty clearly labeled.

I don’t much care for the fact that they don’t make at least some of their episodes free, especially as some of their titles are also available on Crunchyroll (just not the ones we want.) It seems a wasted opportunity. (Update, they have pulled their titles from Crunchyroll, so that’s that.)

There’s no “Yuri” tag in search.

Rating: B I hated their fullscreen mode when I was watching anime on their site. Why should I have to exit fullscreen to increase/decrease the volume?!? I remember bitching about it every time. Their search is sort of organized by topic, but I still cannot find what I want easily.

 

2020 Takeaways:

1) Overall, the sites where you can stream Yuri anime are good, they are simple to use and, if you know what you’re looking for, it’s easy enough to find stuff.

2) The search on these sites are crap.  If you’re looking for “Yuri” welcome to 2000, because none of these sites know what you’re talking about. All these services have bleh search, which focus mostly on searching by title. A few attempt genre or topic, but tags are inadequately and inconsistently applied. For instance Crunchyroll has shojo, shonen and seinen, but not josei. Go figure. Hire a librarian, folks. Your taxonomy is terrible, series aren’t tagged appropriately and there are a lot of catalogers out of work right now. Quick, someone build a decent anime search engine taxonomy and sell it to all the streaming sites.  Or, heck, let viewers suggest tags and just have someone clean up the messiness. User-generated taxonomy would at least give viewers a chance.

3) Fullscreen mode is crap. I want a fullscreen mode with a disappearing toolbar that comes back up with mouse movement that includes volume, etc, and a click-start click-stop. It’s shocking how few of these sites have this.

4) Episodes should be free to watch on your site, especially if they are free to watch elsewhere…Sentai. Go ahead, pound us over the head with “subscribe now” ads and make some money on my eyeballs with other advertising.

5) There is no reasonable excuse for fansubs or scanlations at this point and should you encounter anyone who is arguing that the companies in the industry are damaging the industry, quick, block and report them because that is – at best – nonsensical.

6) There is an industry-wide problem of poor pay for folks doing translation, subtitles and all production work. This needs to stop. Fans, pay for services you use and companies…pay people who do the work.

Last, we’re in such an amazing place regarding streaming anime so my last thought for this update is this…

Look how much free stuff you can try out! Watch a different episode 1 every night, hit that “random” button and watch Twilight of the Cockroaches. Sit down and crank through Haikyuu!, finish that series you meant to get to. Find out why I rant endless about how amazing Devilman Lady is.

What are you waiting for?  Go watch a lot of anime!