Archive for the Miscellaneous Category


Hourai Girls Manga (蓬莱ガールズ)

February 20th, 2014

Sometimes you just need a manga with some bite and no mushy romance will really scratch the itch for adventure. Enough school girls suddenly realizing that they are madly and passionately in love with the back of the person in front of them’s head, or their sempai in debate club. (Do Japanese schools have debate clubs? I have no idea, honestly.) What you need is a grand rope-swinging girl pal/buddy movie, with zombies and pirates and other stuff.

Hourai Girls  (蓬莱ガールズ) is just the manga for you.

Set in a fantasy land that is vaguely 17th century Chinese, with heavy overlays of sorcery, Rinka is a princess and rich girl in name only. Her father, an abusive wizard/warlord, keeps her locked in the house with only her childhood friend YanYan to look after her. YanYan, who is a zombie, called a “soma, has all the best qualities of a rag doll, in that easily detached limbs are also easily re-attacked. As a soma YanYan fits right in with the rest of the household staff, who also appear to be stitched up zombies.

Rinka makes a few attempts at escaping, only to be recaught, and beaten into oblivion by her father, who then rends YanYan into pieces so we can hate him more, then he goes off and chortles over his creepy soma armies. It’s obvious to all of us that he will be the ultimate boss. But in the meantime, Rinka and YanYan have to get out first. And they do.

They decide to head to “Hourai” a probably fictitious land in a children’s book. Rinka learns about money and shopping and YanYan stops her from being arrested about a million times. Because of YanYan’s visible stitches, she is immediately tagged as a soma. The villagers have no good feelings for soma, but when the headman offers to pay them to stop a truly horrific creature who is slaughtering villagers, Rinka and YanYan take the job. They kill the multi-armed, regenerating creature and are paid in money…and a tragic backstory. The creature was the headman’s wife who killed herself after their child was kidnapped and whom he brought back to life, but not humanity, with sorcery. Boo-hoo. Rinka gets a glimpse of the harsh life outside her father’s house, but is not fazed. Off they go…they charter a boat!

The boat captain is a decent guy. He’ll take them as far as he can and he teaches Rinka to water ski. When soma mermen attack the ship, YanYan and Rinka are not surprised to find that Rinka’s father is behind it. They tell him to get lost and head west. Dropped off in the harbor, YanYan is immediately captured for being a soma, by a self-selected police force. Apparently this town has a recent run-in with soma that destroyed both town and citizens. The townspeople also have cute, fluffy dog tails.

The head of the secret police squad thinks Rinka and YanYan are so damn cool and the fact that they are going to Hourai is cool and everything is so coooool!, that he lets them go and off they head to find their Shangri-La. To Be Continued.

YanYan and Rinka are close, but there is no Yuri, or even a hint of such.. This is shinyuu manga, BFFs, best buds, gal pals. There’s no lovey-dovey, but it was still fun.

I found this book in a Book-Off in Tokyo and picked up on a lark. It was a fun…if occasionally creepy…read. But the fact that it was very high pirate fantasy adventure meant no nightmares, even with all those body parts strewn around. I wasn’t going to bother with the next volume, but it looks like it is the end of the series, so maybe I will, after all. You never know when I’ll get that urge to read about besties killing monsters and having adventures together again.

Update: I sure did get around to Volume 2 and…it has a happy ending!

Ratings:

Art – How does one rate zombies and multi-limbed human eating monsters? 7
Story – 8
Character – 7
Yuri – 0
Service – 1

Overall – 8 Itch scratched





Himawari-san Manga, Volume 4 (ひまわりさん)

February 11th, 2014

When you pick up a copy of Himawari-san, you can just…relax. There’ll be no high drama here. There’s no plot complications because there’s no plot. A volume of Himawari-san is time spent with an enjoyable book for no other reason than that it’s enjoyable. For comparison, check out the reviews of Volume 1, Volume 2 and Volume 3.

In Volume 4 of Himawari-san, we delve just slightly more into the current Himawari-san’s past, her relationship with her brother and with the previous Himawari-san. Unexpectedly, the previous owner of Himawari Shoubo, was a extroverted young lady who was singlehandedly responsible for bringing the current Himawari-san out of her shell. Even as I write that, I wonder why I supposed the previous owner would be as introverted as the current one…perhaps because when one thinks of “small book store owner” one immediately thinks of bookworms who care about books more than people.

Nonetheless, both Himawari-san’s brother and she were captivated by the previous owner, much as Matsuri is captivated by the current owner, as we are reminded several times. Matsuri’s friends are now comfortable with Matsuri’s crush and, as Christmas approaches at the end of the book, we find that both Matsui and Himawari-san are growing accustomed to it, as well.

Ratings:

Art – 9
Story – 7
Characters – 8
Yuri – 4
Service – 1

Overall  – 8

This is a series imbued with the sweet smell of old books, the sepia tones of nostalgia and bittersweet feelings of crushes long gone.  A heartwarming read for a cold winter’s day.





Shinryakumono De Manga (シンリャクモノデ)

February 9th, 2014

I discovered Takemoto Izumi first with his pin-up super spy series, Transistor Ni Venus. (For which I even wrote a fanfic, I was so charmed.) I then spent some time puzzling over his series Sakura no Kiwa, completely befuddled as to why I didn’t hate it. ^_^: Takemoto-sensei has been churning out ever so many series for a number of different publishers, but something about this series totally hit my funny bone. And so, here we are at Volume 1 of Shinryakumono De  (シンリャクモノデ).

The title can be translated as “Invaders” or “Aggressors,” but as is completely typical of Takemoto-sensei’s work, his idea of “aggression” is sillier, more random and fluffier than most people’s.

The story takes place on an Earth-like planet, we shall say, and every chapter begins with a reminder that we have been invaded throughout time. Each chapter follows an “invasion” that varies widely. In one case, a lizard detective and his human assistants track down ghosts in a haunted house, or a high school student watches as the sky rips open and giant seed appears on the school grounds. The seed opens to allow a sheep to wander out, and is replaced with another  seed that contains a giant hairy monster, which, when told to go away, does. A third seed appears and an alien girl comes out, not to invade, per se, but to apologize and lay a kiss on the heroine of the story.

This alien appears again later, in a story in which a high school girl, who is much admired by her female schoolmates, finds her bedroom invaded by cat-sized animal-eared girls. The alien appears once more to apologize for the inconvenience, retrieve the “invaders” and bestow a kiss.

Another “invader” is a species of ivy…a chapter with which I really sympathized. We have ivy on the house. It really does invade. A tentacle monster “invades” a beach party, but its only act of aggression is to repeatedly move the girls’ luggage to the beach across the bay. In the final story a girl awakens to her memories and powers of being a god, sorta, kinda.

Ratings:

Art – If you like his goofy art style, 9, if not, less
Story – Variable, I’d say it averages at 8. Perfect bedtime reading for me
Characters – Sadly, there’s not much chance to really get to know them, since the volume is all shorts
Yuri – Mild, the alien girl and the girls crushing on Yuki. Let’s say 3
Service – Some light “pretty girls are pretty” service, but his is not a truly service-y art style

Overall – 8

The entire thing is enjoyably wtf.





The Totally Un-Yuri Manga I’m Reading Right Now: Drops of God (神の雫)

January 31st, 2014

DSCN0456When, a Few Years Ago (TM), Vertical Publishing announced that it was going to be publishing an English-language version of Kibayashi Yuko. Kibayashi Shin and Okamoto Shu’s industry-changing wine manga, Kami no Shizuku, I thought, “Nice, now I don’t have to read it in Japanese.” I wasn’t just being lazy. although yes, I was being a little lazy, but trying to learn about wine through manga sounded fun, but trying to figure out the French lingo through Japanese didn’t.

I only started drinking at all in my later 30s. I remember the day I began drinking wine vividly. It quickly became apparent that the two most popular wines – Merlot and Chardonnay – were not for me. Both had a flatness to the taste that put me off. For years I stuck with Cabernet Sauvignon; reasonably priced, fruity, it’s a good gateway wine. By the time I started reading Vertical’s Drops of God, I was mostly drinking Pinot Grigio. A year or two later, and a new boutique wine store opens up within walking distance of my house, so I’m trying a lot more kinds of wine from more locations…and suddenly,  Drops of God makes perfect sense to me.

The other day, I swear to you this is true, I described a wine as “a luxurious, high-end apartment, with a pressboard door.”  ^_^; A friend described the Washington State Sauvignon Blanc I brought as “very French, almost Sancere” and I knew what he meant! We discussed the terroir, how the Columbia Valley is very mineral-y. It’s all very creepy. Thanks, Vertical. (-_-)

After Volume 5 of the English version, I switched to the Japanese. And there we were, having a discussion about old vines (V.V.) that I learned about because Shizuku needed to learn about it. It’s insidious, this wine stuff. When I tried a 2008 Haute-Medoc, I actually heard the angels sing. Heaven help me, I’m decanting. /sob/

Anyway, I know I’ve been slow on the reviews. I’m working my way through some non-fiction and comics that require actually thinking and/or are not Yuri. But I promise there’s good stuff on the way. Tonight I’m curling up with the first Volume of the new 20th anniversary edition of Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon (美少女戦士セーラームーン 完全版 1) and a bottle of The Chemist (Red Blend) by Smokescreen. Happy Weekend.





2014 Okazu Guide to Buying Anime and Manga from Japan

January 5th, 2014

glsign-aniA number of folks are asking about buying from Japan, or buying Yuri in Japan. I’ve written about this a number of times but sites close down and stores go out of business, so I’m going to do an updated guide. This is not meant to be comprehensive – any attempt at comprehensive in a rapidly changing world is doomed to fail. ^_^

I want to clearly note that this is not a definitive Guide to Shopping for Yuri. It is a guide to shopping for Japanese items; manga, anime, etc. There re no all-Yuri on one place stores in Japan, The lack of all-something-everywhere is true for any genre. There is no store in Japan that sells every BL comic, or Seinen comic ever published, either. Manga stores in Japan give store space to the new and the best sellers, just like American bookstores. (The new Yuricon store is getting closer to being just that all-Yuri-in-one-place store online! We have all the English-language Yuri anime and Yuri manga and a lot of the Japanese Yuri manga , digital manga, literature, Drama CDs, and even light novels…and we’re adding new items every day. Check out the Yuricon Store and see for yourself!)

I’ll be using Manga as the default example, so unless otherwise noted, the item in question is a book. And in Japanese. ^_^ It might be a Drama CD or an artbook or a Japanese DVD set, but it’s all the same for our purposes.

Also, this is not a guide to buying Yuri anime or manga you can get from western companies. RightStuf, Funimation, Sentai Filmworks and Seven Seas, are all available on the Yuricon Store. I trust you to be able to look those up for yourselves on the site search, or use links provided here on Okazu. You should also be able to place manga orders with your local comic book stores or chain stores, and there are any number of  respectable online websites like Anime Castle and Robert’s Anime Corner that stock all sorts of toys, anime and manga.

Before I get to the meat of this post, let me remind you of two things:

1) This is an Okazu Guide. It comes imbued with common sense and a dose of harsh reality. ^_^ Manga, Anime, Figurines and Games are Luxury Items. You do not need them. You want them. The presumption of all market forces is if you want a thing, you have to be able to afford it.

2) You can get things you want but one way or another you will pay for them. When I buy Japanese manga, one of us, the manga or I, has to travel 6500 miles to get it. Either way, it costs money. ^_^

That having been said, here we go!

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Part 0. Know What You Are Buying

Before you start shopping, I strongly recommend you learn at least a few things:

1. The actual Title of the Manga in Japanese.

It’s all well and fine to say you like “Chatting at the Amber Teahouse” but there is no manga with that name. There is only an illicit scan. No bookstore, no website can help you find that. The title of Fujieda-sensei’s manga about two women and a tea shop is 飴色紅茶館歓談. That is what you will need to have with you when you search.

2. The Author’s name in Japanese. Wikipedia, AnimeNewsNetwork and other encyclopedias are a huge help to identify this sort of thing. Put an author’s name in a search engine and you will find that Fujieda Miyabi is written 藤枝雅. For Part 2, Shopping in Japan below, you might want to print out the title, publisher and author’s names for yourself. For Part 1, Shopping Online, cut and paste will do.

3. When you plan on shopping in person, it also very much helps to know what demographic audience the book is for. This is indicated by the Publisher and Imprint. We’ll get more deeply into that in Part 2.

 

Part 1. Shopping Online

2015 Update:  We’ve made amazing progress on the new Yuricon Store. Check out the listings there first.

Untitled-1

We have links to major retailers (Amazon, Amazon JP and RightStuf), descriptions, links to reviews, and you can search in English or Japanese, for author, title, or publishing company. And series have been tagged by subject, so you can look at title that are about adult life or magical girl with ease.

For instance, you can search for Aoi Hana or 青い花, both of which will bring up all the English and Japanese listings – anime, digital manga, and Japanese manga. If you search Sweet Blue Flowers, you’ll only pull up the English-language anime and the English-language digital manga.

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Amazon Japan is my default for purchasing Japanese items. I choose them because 1) their selection is very good (often better than shopping in stores in Japan); 2) I am an affiliate, so every time you buy through a Yuricon Shop or Okazu link, I get a few yen to support my own habit and;  3) It is very easy to use.

Let’s say you click through an Okazu link for Aoi Hana, Volume 8. Here’s what you see:

AJP1

 

Everything is in Japanese, except one thing. Notice the red arrow on the right? It points to a sentence that reads “Would you like to see this page in English? Click here.”  If you click the link, the page looks like this:

AJP2

Things like this book is “In Stock” and the “Add to Shopping Cart” button turn into English. The title, the author, the publishing company do not. They don’t, because the title of the book is still 「青い花」 and the author’s name is still 志村貴子.

What that English link does do is make checking out much faster. ^_^ If you’ve ever used Amazon, you probably don’t even need to bother turning the page to English, the checkout is the same, all the buttons shapes and sizes are the same. But if you want to lessen the friction, just click that English button and it’s all words you know.

Shipping: Amazon only ships by air. You can choose that you want the items grouped or separate, but no other shipping options exist. My advice is to order about 20 items at a time, grouped into one order. That brings the shipping cost-per-item down to $4, which is totally palatable. Exchange rates will make a difference too. Shipping that might cost $100 when the exchange rate is good could be a lot more when it’s poor. If you choose “group them together” and something hasn’t been released yet, sometimes Amazon JP send it separately when it gets in stock and sometimes they hold the whole order and I have not been able to figure out what the triggers are. It’s often haphazard.

There is no Yuri category on Amazon JP. Yuri books are listed under the BL category. Book>. Comic/Light Novels/BL> Comic:  本 > コミック・ラノベ・BL > コミック You need to know your title, or your author’s name in Japanese.

Amazon JP often will not ship figurines, but to be honest, I do better in cost these days buying figurines on Amazon.com. Last year, I would have paid $45 or so for a Saber figurine in Japan, then would have had to get it home on my own. I found the same figurine for $36 with free Prime shipping on Amazon.com.

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YesAsia is a popular choice for buying Asian goods. I have not used them in probably a decade, so I have no idea how good their service is. They do offer shipping discounts for orders over a certain amount.  If you want Japanese manga, but do not know any Japanese at all, they seem like a decent choice.

yesa

 

The site is in English, the dollar amounts are in USD and it looks like they still offer various shipping options, like standard mail and express. Their stock is not bad, you can search for authors and titles in romaji (English characters used for Japanese words, like “ameiro kouchkan kandan”).  The cost of the books is higher than on Amazon JP because YesAsia includes the cost of shipping to them in the cost of the item. Some books, especially newer books, might more expensive as a result. Thanks to Greg for the testimonial on them and  Laura for letting us know that YesAsia ships worldwide.

There is no Yuri category on YesAsia. You need to know your title and/or author’s name transliterated name in English.

Rinkya is a buying and bidding service. They’ve been around more than a decade. I have never used them (for entirely personal reasons that are irrelevant here.) If you are bidding on an item on Yahoo JP auctions and want a buyer to bid for you, arrange the shipping and payment (since most Japanese auctions won’t ship internationally) they can do that. Sometimes they sell stock that people never claimed from their warehouse. They do offer slow boat options for shipping. Yahoo JP auctions are like the Mandarake of online shopping. People get rid of collections, old toys, rare items. It might not be cheap, but back in the day when I shopped the auctions, I got some amazing stuff.

BK1 used to be a popular book selling alternative, but they have become honto. AudioErotica has graciously jumped in to tell us that they still do ship internationally and yes, they have slower/cheaper shipping methods available.

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Part 2. Shopping in Japan

In November 2012, I wrote a guide to Shopping for Yuri in Japan. By October 2013, some of the store-specific information was already obsolete.

But this is where the info I mentioned in Part 0 really comes in handy. I have said this with every single buying guide I’ve written:

To effectively shop for manga in Japan, you need to know three things. Books are not generally shelved by genre, but by imprint. So first you need to know what age/gender demographic you’re looking at, then publisher/imprint, then author. And once you have found one publisher’s Yuri manga, don’t think you’ve found it all. The sign above might say “Yuri”, but there could be more under a different publisher’s imprint elsewhere.

Know if the book you’re looking for is for girls (少女), boys (少年),for women (女性), for men (男子) – these  are not necessarily listed as sections in the bookstore, you just need to know who the title you’re looking for is targeted to. Then look for the publisher, (Hobunsha 芳文社, Ichijinsha 一迅社, Futabasha 双葉社) then look for the imprint (YH Comics, Tsubomi Comics, Mangatime KR Comics) then look for the author. If you are new to this, and don’t read Japanese, take a printout of the cover you’re looking for. And take a look at the spine of the books you do have and memorize the characters. The publisher is listed at the bottom of the spine, the imprint along the top. Get to know your books!

The main areas of Tokyo for manga shopping are:

Akihabara for guy-focused stuff (which includes Yuri)

Ikebukuro for girl-focused stuff (which includes BL, but you can find some Yuri)

Nakano Sun Mall for older stuff, like classic Yuri.

Shibuya for another Animate and Mandarake.

Stores change their location, stock, layout and focus all the time, so check out other resources for what is open and what isn’t. Every large city in Japan has its own geeky area. Check current travel guides or look for Animate store locations as a orienteering hint.

There are, as of October 2013 no Yuri-only stores anywhere in the world. You’re going to have to shop the old fashioned way.

**New as of October 2014** – Toranoana in Akihabara has a multipublisher Yuri section. So does Comic Zin in Akihabara, although it’s fairly small. This is a major, massive change. Never before has there been a section that was really “Yuri”. It was amazing to see different publishers side by side.

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Part 3. Shopping at Conventions and Bookstores

If you live near or within travel distance of a large city, you probably have two possible old-fashioned fan choices to shop in, that you’re not using.

Anime Conventions used to be the ONLY place a fan could go to get toys, anime and manga. Because it is so much easier to shop online, a lot of fans forget that cons are still a good place to go to find stuff. But they are. ^_^ What cons aren’t any more is…rare. So the old wheeze that if you shop on Sunday as people are packing up, they’ll give you a good deal doesn’t apply much. What the dealer doesn’t sell this weekend goes with them to the next con and the next, and the next. If you have a local con and you haven’t been in a while, drop by…you never know what you’ll find. But…fashion and media still go hand in hand. If you’re looking for old school items, don’t be surprised when all the vendors are carrying the new, the hot, the hip. They want to sell stuff. Carrying that girl-type Ranma 1/2 figure around for a decade until you decide you’re ready to buy it isn’t really cost efficient, when they can sell 1500 Attack on Titan things instead. ^_^

Japanese bookstores. Kinokuniya and Sanseido are two large Japanese bookstore chains that have US locations. They will order books and magazines for you, but you still need to know the publisher and title. (Bring along a print copy of, say,  コミック百合姫、一迅社, to let them know you want Comic Yuri Hime put out by Ichijinsha.) If you’re in a location near or within travel distance of either store, it’s worth a visit, so you can see how the manga are arranged by demographic/publisher/imprint/title. (English manga is arranged alphabetically by title, and who can blame them?)

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Conclusion

Shopping for Yuri is still challenging, but do not despair! The hunt is part of the fun.  Take this opportunity to learn a bit of Japanese, and you’ll find that you’ll be able to understand more of what you’re buying, as well.  ^_^