Archive for the Miscellaneous Category


Sailor Moon Sparkling Water – Outer Senshi Edition, Part 2

May 28th, 2023

It wasn’t that many months ago that we encountered news of Ocean Bomb brand’s series of Sailor Moon sparkling waters. I have pursued with otaku single-mindedness getting all of these and drinking them. It’s been a bit of a challenge as nowhere seemed to have all of them. I found my first two at the Mitsuwa in Edgewater, NJ, then have used a variety of online shopping services for the remainders.

Back in November I did a full roundup of the Sailor Moon Sparkling Water Review – Inner Senshi Edition. Of them, Sailor Moon won fairly. And I learned an important lesson – what food you pair these with makes a difference. ^_^

In January, I found the Sailors Neptune and Uranus flavors. The Sailor Moon Sparkling Water – Outer Senshi Edition, Part 1 was a hit. Both Sailors Uranus and Neptune gave Sailor Moon a run for their money.

Now we have the final two flavors, Sailor Pluto and Saturn. Were the worth the wait? Keep reading our final chapter of

Chibi-Usa holds a gun on Usagi from Sailor Moon 'R'. The captaion reads 'Drink the Soda.'
Thanks to Christian for the image. ^_^ It makes me laugh every time.

 

These cans were purchased from Umamicart, which seems to primarily be a Taiwanese and Korean vendor, with a little Japanese. We got some amazing items from them, but they shipped everything unwrapped or protected in a huge box, so Saturn is a bit dented. Okay, are we ready?

 

Sailor Pluto – Watermelon Flavor

I approached this one with caution. I love watermelon and don’t mind artificial watermelon flavor ( from years of surviving on watermelon Jolly Rancher in high school.) But…clearly this is unlikely to be yummy with random food. ^_^ So I took my first sip with a clear palate.  It smelled very watermelony, sugary and not floral at all. Overall, it tasted like watermelon juice that has been carbonated.

After a while the flavor became a bit bitter, so I cleared my palate with almonds, so as to not affect the flavor. That allowed me to enjoy the rest of the can.

Gonna say, Pluto was a huge surprise and a great success!

8/10 Very refreshing, until it isn’t. Maybe share a can with a friend

 

Then it came time to have the final flavor and I had wildly unrealistic expectations. I love grapefruit soda (except Fresca, that shit’s nasty.) I like grapefruit in just about anything from a G&T to a salad, so Hotaru had a huge handicap. Was this going to be good? Or would it ruin grapefruit flavor forever for me?

 

Sailor Saturn – Grapefruit Flavor

Bing! Bing! We have a winner! Sailor Saturn wins with flying colors.

Okay, if you hate grapefruit, this will not be the sparkling water for you. But without a heavy floral perfume of the Inners flavors, the fruit is able to stand on it’s own. This is a crisp, pleasant, fruity sparkling water that I could drink without hesitation or pairing it carefully (like Uranus’ Pineapple flavor).

The Outers were clear winners here. No too sweet, not too floral, they felt less ornamental and more like an actual drink.

And now we have our final tally:

Sailor Chibi-Moon – 0/10
Sailor Venus – 4/10
Sailor Mars – 5/10
Sailor Mercury – 5/10
Sailor Jupiter – 6/10
Sailor Moon – 7/10
Sailor Pluto – 8/10
Sailor Neptune – 8/10
Sailor Uranus – 9/10
And our winner is…! Sailor Saturn 10/10

 

Epilogue

I ordered these last two cans and some other items, including Assam Oolong Milk Tea, which is now my favorite drink in the world. I liked it so much, I decided to go to an actual physical store to see if I could find (I couldn’t.)  I haven’t been well enough to do a physical store, so this was a huge outing. My wife and I walked into the store…and saw this:

Maddening, right? ^_^ Well, at least I’ll be able to get an undented Saturn and maybe a whole set as a prize for something. ^_^

Thank you all for joining me on this journey and let me know your favorite Sailor Moon sparkling water flavor!





Changes

May 10th, 2023

After 13 years, I’ve been let go from my job.if you enjoy the stream of Yuri news and reviews you get here, I’m asking you to help support the work by becoming a patron on Patreon or Ko-Fi Your support is greatly appreciated! I’m taking a day or two to settle myself and reviews will commence. ^_^





It’s All An Adventure

April 1st, 2023

I know I told you that reviews would be a bit skimpy on the ground for a bit. Well, here is what happened – I planned a vacation for the first time in 4 years! Yay!

Only…after staying away from people for the pandemic, keeping up on our vaccines, and always masking, my wife and I had to go into NYC two weeks before we left from Germany. We came home with Covid.

It was very mild. A few days of symptoms at most. I spent time lining up reviews for you all to have something to share while I was in Germany, But since then I have a fever which gets very bad, spikes, breaks, then starts again, over and over. We landed in Frankfurt, and the first morning, I collapsed in the shower. I was in bed for 3 days and we bought tickets to come home. Now I have Long Covid and for some reason, am having a technical glitch with Okazu on top of everything. ^_^;

I look forward to having enough energy to once again do some reviews soon. Please send good thoughts and I’ll do my best to recover as quickly as possible. With Long Covid, that may be weeks…or months. Stay safe everyone. Wear a mask. Don’t get this stupid disease even once.





Yuri Bungei Shousetsu Contest Selection 3 (百合文芸小説 コンテスト セレクション)

March 21st, 2023

Once again, today’s review requires a bit of context. In 2019, Pixiv and Comic Yuri Hime ran a Literary Yuri Short Story contest. I finally managed to read and review the first collection in 2021, Yuri Bungei Shousetsu Contest Selection 2019 (百合文芸小説 コンテスト セレクション). I found the first collection to be a delightful mix of stories.  Of course I ran out and got the second volume, the 2020 collection which I did my very best to read, but I have to tell you….I hated it. I hated that second volume so much from the first story to the last. So many of the stories were traumatizing and awful, others were just not readable by my standards. It was such an unpleasant reading experience that I waffled over getting Volume 3. But I did get it. And then I spent more than a year avoiding reading it. ^_^;

Yuri Bungei Shousetsu Contest Selection 3 (百合文芸小説 コンテスト セレクション) was quite wonderful. Quirky, energetic, weird, with great writing and once again, things I haven’t seen before. The sponsors this time have expanded, with Comic Yuri Hime, Pixiv, Hayakawa Publishing’s SF Magazine and GAGAGA (Shogakukan’s light novel imprint.) It is still available from the Animate Online Shop, which you can purchase from using a buying or shipping service, like Buyee/Tenso.) Or you can read all the stories on Pixiv.

Right off the bat, this collection captured my attention with a story so off-kilter and so beautifully written that I was hooked. “Denshibashira Yori” (電信柱より) by Sakazaki Kaoru is a completely unironic and indescribably beautiful story about a woman who cuts down telegraph poles for a job, who falls for a telegraph pole.

The collection has been a great mix of sci-fi, historical, real life and that specific kind of quirky/ magical realism that seems to gain my attention. A fantasy set in Iron Age Japan, a story about a woman who meets someone she’d only ever made up in her imagination. “Stainless Sanagi” (ステンレスのサナ) by Kazuga is a poignant story about vampire  and a robot maid in a post-apocalyptic landscape. Entries also include a speculative story about a girl who grows and mutates physically  because of love for her classmate, and a nice little story about a tradeswoman who meets a fashionable hair stylist. I particularly liked that this collection had  two stories about tradeswomen. It’s not something we see that often. We also had several salon-based stories, which makes sense as beauty salon are an established “women’s world.”

The final stories were a sobering discussion of war and memory and another robot story that had a pleasant ending. Overall, this was the best collection of the first three. I think I only stopped reading one story. This collection was not only full of good reads, it was inspiring! I have an idea for a short story now. ^_^

Ratings:

Overall – 8

The 4th Yuri Bungei Competition ended in 2022, and again, you can read some of the winners for free on Pixiv, It will take me another year to get to those stories. But I have read several so far in Comic Yuri Hime magazine and the prevailing wind seemed to be historical fiction, a nice change of pace for me, so I will probably pick this collection up, as well. A 5th contest just wrapped up applications, so we should see a 5th collection in the works soon: Notable applications have been linked to on the Pixiv page for the contest.





Radcliffe Hall, by Miyuki Jane Pinckard

February 13th, 2023

Today we’re doing something a little different, because I just read something so in line with our interests here at Okazu, that I wanted to immediately tell you all about.  Today, we’re talking about Radcliffe Hall from Uncanny Magazine, Issue 48, by Miyuki Jane Pinckard. The title is linked to the full text of this story. I recommend it highly.

Tomoe Kikuchi is a young Japanese woman from the Hakone region of Japan who is running away from a tragedy. Having been schooled in London, she has moved with her family to Boston in the United States and is to begin attending a small women’s college in the American Northeast. As she is driven up to the foreboding building in which she is to live, Radcliffe Hall, it all starts to go dark…and dangerous.

This is a long short story, or perhaps novelette, so I really don’t want to spoil any piece of it, but I must hint. If you wish to read it completely unspoiled – go read it right now. ^_^

Set in the early part of the 20th century as it is, Radcliffe Hall has many influences one might expect from a paranormal suspense novel set in a small women’s college in the American Northeast. Imagine me winking broadly here. There is a Lovecraftian under (and over) tones, and a ‘S’ sensibility that befits the Japanese protagonist. The story is clearly meant to call those two things up.  Aside from these, there is also a strong sense of psychological horror, rooted separately in two period influences – spiritualism and racism. Of these, the greatest horror is white supremacy. The story is too short to let this build up as slowly as it ought to, but it’s there from the beginning and is as much a cause for the overwhelming sense of danger as the paranormal happenings.

This story is also sapphic as heck and in that portion of the story lay redemption and safety. It functions like a beacon of light in an otherwise gloomy setting.

If you are a fan of Otherside Picnic, you may find the explicable terrors a little bit banal, but I think you’ll enjoy the story overall. It hits right in that sweet spot of lesbian loss and love and crazy shit happening that both OP and, the web series Carmilla both capture, with a historical flavor.

Ratings:

Overall – 9

This was a great read. 

Check out Uncanny Magazine for other fantastic stories and consider subscribing and help support great writing!

How about that title, too? Radclyffe Hall was a noted lesbian novelist, writer of the in/famous Well of Loneliness.