March 8, 2014. The first day of 2014, and the first day in approximately 3+ months that it’s nice enough to go outside. YNN is off today while I expose myself to the glowing ball in the sky. Go out, get some fresh air and enjoy your day.  We’ll be back tomorrow with a review. ^_^

In the late 1990s, (when I was writing a lot of fanfic) it seemed sort of obvious to me that the Senshi, archetypal as they were, would make good crossovers with legends of King Arthur.

I wrote a fanfic called Kuroko, Senshi of the Kitchen. Sailor Mars became burning Sir Cai’s later self, the bitchy seneschal Sir Kay and Sailor Saturn became Sir Gareth, Gawain’s youngest brother. Chibi-Usa plays Lynette in that tale. This was followed by Sailor Jupiter and the Green Knight, which was loosely based on the rather famous epic poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

I really enjoyed mashing the Senshi with these timeless Arthurian stories (versions taken from a favorite book from my youth, The Boy’s King Arthur, which when you think about it explains a lot about me.)

In the Senshi’s Challenge, I rewrote Gawain and Gareth’s brothers, Agravain and Gaheris as Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune, while Sailor Pluto took up the role of Merlin. And it all still made perfect sense to me. ^_^

In 2006, I was contacted by a women writing her thesis on the way Arthurian legends are reinterpreted and she did a chapter that discusses Sailor Jupiter and the Green Knight. As we corresponded (me, from the rather mythic town of Padstow, England) we discussed the remaining stories. She asked me who Mercury and Venus were and I had no hesitation when I said that Mercury was Bedwyr and Venus Lancelot…and I’d get to those stories eventually.

Years passed and I never did write them.

Last year, I realized that Mercury was not Bedwyr, but his later incarnation Parsifal…and I knew instantly how the story would go. I finally had a chance to write Senshi of the Grail.

The idea for Venus’s story came to me in Padstow in 2006 as I talked about how she’d be a perfect Lancelot…after all, wasn’t she strong because her heart was pure? The very idea of spoofing her “heart crystal” episode from Sailor Moon S, the play Camelot and T.H. White’s The Once and Future King in one sentence was too juicy. Added to that, I have a very deep loathing for White’s handling of the Lancelot and Elaine story. So, I fixed it. ^_^

I present to you the very last of the Courtly Tales of Crystal Tokyo – The Morning Star Burns Brightly

I hope you enjoy it.

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

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.