Yesterday, our  friend and Yuricon staffer Komatsu-san asked me to write a short note to his Japanese readers, which he would translate for us and post on his blog. Here is the note as it appeared on ULTIMO SPALPEEN. We thank him once again for his translation efforts.

On behalf of everyone from Yuricon & ALC Publishing, I offer this short note:

The Manga/Anime Industry and Fans in America would like to express their wishes for the health and safety of everyone in Japan.

It was a big relief to be able to see so many people checking in online to let us know that they are safe. The hardest thing for all of us here is to watch what is happening there, without being able to do anything. There are a number of fund-raising efforts by fans and many of us have contributed to international relief and rescue organizations.

We send our prayers to friends and colleagues – our hearts are with you in this time of crisis.

President of ALC Publishing & Yuricon
Erica Friedman

***

アメリカのマンガ・アニメ業界と、アニメ・マンガファンから、日本にいる全ての方々の健康と安全に対する心からの願いを伝えます。

ネットを通してたくさんの方々が、彼らの無事を伝えてくれていることを確認出来たのは、大きな救いとなりました。アメリカにいる我々全てにとって一番辛いのは、日本で起きている状況をただ見ているだけで、何も出来ないことです。アニメ・マンガファンや、私達業界の多くの人間によっても、国際的な災害救援・救助団体を支援するための募金活動の努力が始まっています。

日本の友人と仲間達に、私達の祈りを捧げます。この危機の時においても、私達の心は、常にあなた方と共にあります。

ALC Publishing/Yuricon 代表
エリカ・フリードマン

I’m taking the day off today to do other things entirely.

For your reading entertainment, please visit OtakuUSA magazine for an interview with Himekawa Akira and Qais Sedki, the creators of The Gold Ring, an Arabic-language manga that was entriely delighful on every level. I hope you will all be able to read it one day in English.

The interview was in part conducted by our friend Komatsu Mikakzu-san, and I’d like you to show your support for his first journalistic endeavor for the magazine.

Enjoy your Saturday and I’ll catch up with you again next week!

Dare ni mo Ienai (誰にも言えない) is a manga that follows the lives and love affairs of three women.

Midori had a traumatic experience when she was young and has not been able to move past it. It does not appear to be an actual trauma per se, but more a situation in which she found herself with a man she could not have – and no other man has really stacked up since. Midori doesn’t make it all that easy, to be honest. She’s a recluse, not outgoing, or friendly…and she doesn’t get along all that well with her sister, Minae.

Minae is, if anything, even *more* tactiturn and ill-tempered than Midori. She’s seeing this total goofball of a guy and is completely in denial about her feelings for him. It’s not until he falls from the 19th story of a building (down to the 18th story) that she realizes that she’d really miss the big lug if he were gone.

The final story follows two women, Meh-chan and Tsugumi, who live together, are lovers, but somehow don’t seem to be doing a good job of communicating. The fact that they work together actually makes it harder, rather than easier, for them to communicate properly. When Meh-chan falls apart at the idea of losing Tsugumi, for one brief moment, their hearts are in synch. But that turns out to be only a brief moment, as Tsugumi does leave to marry a man as her parents want. Meh-chan is able to find a generous thought for her ex, as she gazes on the “Just Married” announcement she’s received.

Shigizawa Kaya’s art was, at first, a little hard for me to parse. Midori and Minae are not twins, but looked so much like one another it took me a moment to realize that they were not the same person, as I had assumed at first glance. Tsugumi was also the same type. The three also shared the same expressions of dissatisfaction and grumpiness which contributed to the problem.

The final story “Ending” – which is the Yuri story – is that old-school, “I love you, but we can’t be together,” story, which really isn’t wearing all that well. To my eyes, at this point, there’s just something pathetic about someone who can walk away from a viable, passionate relationship for some kind of abstract duty. Yes, I know it still happens, but it makes me sad that we’re still stuck in this same space. 20 years from now, I really don’t want to be reading this same story anymore. Right now, I can’t stop myself from thinking that Meh-chan is better off without Tsugumi.

The stories in this collection are not awful, but given the unlikability of the main characters, it was hard to really get involved in them. The best of the three was Minae’s story, and the only character I could really sympathize with was her boyfriend, who seemed like a genuinely fun guy. That’s kind of deathly for a book about three women.

Ratings:

Art – 6
Story – 6
Characters – 5
Yuri – 9 in “Ending”
Service – 4

Overall – 6

In Volume 1 of Torino Shino’s Ohana Holoholo (オハナホロホロ), we have been introduced to Maya, her former lover Michiru, Michiru’s son Yuuta and the former lover of Yuuta’s late father, Niko. Maya, Michiru and Yuuta live together, and Niko lives in the same building, forming a loving alternative family.

At the end of Volume 1, one of Maya’s classmates from high school days, “Hidesuke” is introduced. Hidesuke was a top-notch soccer player, but after an injury that killed his career, he went into sports marketing. He starts to spend time with Maya and admits that he was in love with her in school. Which brings us to Volume 2.

Michiru cannot *stand* Hidesuke – she would be thrilled if she could hate him, but he is incredibly generous, polite, plays with Yuuta and takes them all out for dinner. He’s friendly, open, kind. And he makes Michiru jealous and angry.

Realizing that she cannot offer Maya the kind of stable, socially acceptable relationship that  Hidesuke can give her, Michiru decides that the one thing she *can* do for her is to stop being baggage. Michiru puts in extra hours at work and takes a class in order to take a test to become a supervisor. This leads to a small crisis with Yuuta, but don’t worry – he’s fine. And as a result, we meant Mochizuke-sensei, Yuuta’s teacher at daycare. He’s also a really nice guy.

Meanwhile, Hidesuke propositions Maya – he’s very up front about her current situation. He understands that Yuuta is her son, as much as Michiru’s, and he’s not asking her to leave them all at once. If anything, he’s glad to give them a place in his family as well. Maya responds by dressing up for their next date in the frumpiest, most tied up, frigid-looking outfit she can scrape together.  But when he laughs at the response, and says that he gets that she isn’t free to just leave Michiru and Yuuta, Maya defrosts and agrees to a real date with him.

This alternative family of a woman and her son, her former female lover and the former lover of her son’s late father now has a new member. The end of the book brings a gentle wind of change to this family. If storms await, they are still in the future. Right now, the sun is warm and the breeze is cool, the flowers bloom and butterflies alight. Right now, all is well.

Ratings:

Art – 7
Story – 9
Characters – 9
Yuri – Nothing in the story proper, but it is part of the history and Michiru’s jealousy is a part of the story – let’s call it a 4
Service – A resounding 0

Overall – 8

Okay, before I start this review, I think it’s important to have a disclaimer. This is a review of the OVA for Black Rock Shooter ( ブラック★ロックシューター ) as a standalone. I know very little about the history or the proposed game – if you play it and would like to write up a review for Okazu, I’d love to host it! Send me an email. If you’ve never reviewed here before, include a paragraph or so of who you and are and a synopsis of the game. If you’ve  guested here, then no need, I’m glad to have you back. ^_^

Black Rock Shooter starts with a girl entering high school that finds herself taken with another new student. Mato introduces herself to Yomi and they quickly become good friends, then best friends.

Interspersed between scenes of their growing friendship are scenes of battle between what are apparently Mato’s and Yomi’s alter egos in the game world. The battle is somewhat non-linear, but it’s not really relevant to the narrative.

In our world, Mato and Yomi are as close as friends can be, until they move into their second year of high school. No longer in the same class, Yomi watches helplessly as Mato appears to be moving away from her. Cluelessly, Mato invites her new “Lunch friend” to join Yomi and herself during their together time. (“Lunch friend” is a designation I use to describe the kind of person you hang with in class, at lunch, at work, at club but don’t really make any attempt to see outside that space.)

Yomi grieves for the private world she shared with Mato and then one day… she disappears. Mato has no idea what has happened to her. We see Mato’s avatar in the game world being rejected by Yomi’s avatar, and their fight renews.

When Mato makes the trip to a private place she had shared with Yomi, she finds the charm she had given the other girl. The charm begins to glow, and one of the two fighters appear. She says that her name is Black Rock Shooter, and she and Mato merge. Meanwhile, in the game world, Black Rock Shooter defeats Yomi’s avatar and manages to free her. (I later learned that Yomi had been absorbed by Dead Master, but that name is never used in the OVA.)

The end of the OVA is ambiguous, as you might expect. Yomi is gone, Mato is absorbed into Black Rock Shooter, ostensibly to look for Yomi.

Yuu, the third character in the triangle, is simply left behind, but it’s pretty obvious that she’ll be part of the story again – there is a third game character that we see during the long, lingering shots of perspective splashed throughout. The cover art also shows two other characters that are not obvious in the OVA.

Extras included are trailers, including the stop-motion version made in Hollywood and a making of the stop motion trailer. Another special shows the making of the cover art – a process I find absolutely fascinating. The set includes a DVD and a Blu-Ray disk. This review is based only on the DVD, I haven’t yet watched it on Blu-Ray.

There are several physical extras, a booklet about the anime and a much thicker book which somewhat oddly contains the entire storyboard for the anime. And lastly there was a box of nendroids of Black Rock Shooter and Dead Master.

Yuri? Well…not really. Mato and Yomi are best friends. In so many ways, relationships with our closest friends mimic romantic relationships. Feeling a best friend has betrayed you by having another friend isn’t exactly uncommon. It’s not surprising that some people see this as Yuri, but to me, it’s friendship, not love.

The biggest problem I had with the OVA was that it was filled with a sense of “meaning” that it didn’t actually have. My overall impression is that it’s a pilot without a TV series. (So far. I vaguely remember news of a BRS TV series already. If I hallucinated that, I still expect it to be made any day.)

The animation was very game-y in the fight sequences, with the vertiginous movement and textured CGI backgrounds of so many video games. Surprisingly, the 2-D animation was kind of meh. I expected 2-D to match the quality of the CGI, but I guess you gotta save your money somehow.

So, did it hold up as a standalone? Yes, in terms of having a beginning and a middle and enough of an end that I was able to follow the thing. There were a few things I felt I had to go look up, which was kind of inevitable, considering its origin as a “thing.” As a OVA, I felt that Black Rock Shooter was pretty good.

Ratings:

Art – 6
Story – 6
Characters – 6
Yuri – 1
Service – 3 Mostly for the game costumes and the overall setup

Overall – 6

It wasn’t world-shaking but it definitely was not awful. It held together pretty well. I’d like to see a conclusion to the story released one day.

It is my very great pleasure to thank Okazu Superhero Laurel K for her sponsorship of today’s review from the Amazon JP Yuri Wishlist!