I’m always going on about lesbian this and lesbian that here at Okazu. This week I shifted perspective to talk about one of my favorite cross-dressing characters in all of manga as part of this month’s Manga Movable Feast.

If you can’t stand to go a day without me, check out my MMF post over at Manga Curmudgeon: Un, Deux, Trois; the Friend’s Waltz in One Piece. With many thanks to David Welsh for hosting both my post and this month’s MMF.

With luck, I’ll have another post up there sometime soonish. That post was why you get nuthin’ tonight. You’ll understand when you read it. ^_^

Here in the US, today is a holiday called Thanksgiving. A few years ago my grandmother asked us to start saying out loud what we were thankful for at the dinner table. It’s not as easy a thing as you think. It’s often hard to do without crying.

But I believe that it is very good for us to stop doing and getting and talking and thinking and just take a moment to be thankful. Most importantly, it’s really important to say it *out loud,* where the other person can hear you.

Of course I want to thank you all, the readers of Okazu. You are all interesting people, who make me laugh and often, think. You give me hours of conversation here on the blog and behind the scenes. I love your comments – even when I need to tell you to “stop now,” and I especially love when you talk amongst yourselves in the comments. Without you, the fans, this would be just another manga and anime blog – you make it great. I would love to name you by name, but there are honestly too many of you to do so. If you have ever commented here – I mean you.

I would particularly like to thank Komatsu-san and A-san, for making a dream trip possible for me this year. It was nothing I expected, nothing I wished for, nothing I could have possibly have thought would happen. But you both made it happen and for that, I am eternally thankful. You are both special people who I am immensely thankful to have met.

I would also like to say thanks to my favorite alien Rica, because without her the world would be a much, much less interesting place!

I would like to thank Twitter. Because of Twitter I have become closer not only to so many of you, but so many amazing thinkers, writers, artists, editors…it’s definitely pulled the anime and manga world closer. So close that last night I was discussing Wilhelm Reich’s orgone box with a manga artist I know in Japan. Now *that’s* a small world. ^_^

I want to thank my staff and friends at Yuricon, particularly Sean, Bruce and Serge for being the best lackeys in the world. You can’t buy that kind of dedication, but I will try, with small, meaningless plastic items from Japan. ^_^

Last, I want to thank my wife for…everything.

Thank you all.

I wish you all a happy day, and if you’d like to add in any thanks in the comments, I’d love to hear them!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

Today’s review is two quick mini-reviews on things that I’ve already reviewed and just want to follow up. Today’s review was the reason I lugged a pile of books back to my hotel from Nakano Sun Arcade without even stopping for sushi, so you’d better appreciate it.

To Aru Kagaku no Railgun Manga – has been licensed by Seven Seas (to be put out here as A Certain Scientific Railgun) and in preparation I thought I’d read whatever is already out in Japanese. As a few commenters mentioned when I reviewed the first volume of this manga, the first four volumes follow the same Level Upper Arc covered by the anime. In Volume 5, the story takes an even darker turn and we spend time following primarily Misaka, as she confronts a problem of her own making…in a sense. I won’t be more specific so as to not give it all away. 5 seconds of research will net you the spoilers, I have no doubt.

Yuri in this series remains exactly the same as it does in the anime, toned down in the second arc mostly because Misaka is off on her own through most of it, with little to not interaction with Kuroko. From my perspective, Kuroko’s feelings are quite real, just a little immature. Maybe a tad maturer after the interim story when she feels that Misaka is nice to everyone but her (also in the anime.)

Ratings:

Yuri – 3
Overall – 8

I like it and am looking forward to the English release.

Saki was, as an anime, unintentionally funny to me. The overblown fighting drama associated with the game of mah jong was just…silly. The relationship between Saki and Nodoka was that they like one another, but with all those shots of Nodoka’s breasts, it *had* to be Yuri, right? No, but try and convince a Yuri Fanboy of that.

The real Yuri, in my opinion, was Yumi and Momo. In Volume 5, Momo even got to embrace Yumi and say “Daisuki” but that’s about it. The rest of Volume 5 was taken up with Saki’s battle against Koromo – which interested me pretty much not at all. Of all the things in Saki I like, the actual details of mah jong are not among them.

Ratings:

Yuri – 2
Overall – 6

No one is licensing the Saki manga, and I don’t blame them. What Hikaru no Go had was BL potential and a female audience and women buy what they want to fantasize over. Guys…just…don’t. License Saki, and you’ll find it’ll just sit on the shelves while “fans” download fanart of Nodoka’s breasts and Saki’s thighs to keep them warm at night.

Both manga worth a look if you’re a fan of the anime, not if you’re not.

Today’s review goes out to all of you out there who like Shitsurakuen and other “excessive violence against submissive women”-type manga. (I want to apologize to all the rest of you today. It’s going to be a second day in a row of skankiness and misery. I just want to get these books off my pile before I move on to anything else. So, sorry in advance.)

Many of you are familiar with the creative team Kizuki Akira and Satou Nanki from their work Ebisu-san to Hotei-san. If you like the aforementioned work, I strongly suggest you avoid the Baba Yaga (バーバ・ヤガー) series with all your might. While I felt that “Shrimp Mayo” could have been a stronger story, I very much feel that Baba Yaga, Volume 1 and Volume 2 could not be worse. This series is, in a word, repulsive.

The story is not terribly important, as it’s primarily a vehicle for the continued emotional, physical and quasi-sexual battering of a girl (well, two really,) by a guy who is deeply deranged…and yet, not stopped by anyone, even when they know it’s him. Individual beatings and attempted rapes are sometimes aborted, but the man himself is left to go free and, shocker, does it again. And again. And again. The best bits are when people watch this guy beat a girl near to unconsciousness and blame her for it. As you can imagine, I had to put the book down, breathe and convince myself not to mail bomb the authors, the publishers and every last one of the readers of this misbegotten series.

Yuri comes in the person of the one good, decent character, a woman who does her best to stand between the punching bag protagonist and every other character in the story. In a story less filled with filth, she would simply be a friend, but in this kind of story, the main character’s feeling for her are out of proportion…so, fake Yuri.

Ratings:

Art – 6
Characters – 2
Story – 1
Yuri – 0
Service – 10

Overall – 1

This series was, in a word, vile.

This was everything I brought back, packed.

And here it is, all unpacked.

If you’re interested in my pictures from the trip, which are untagged/untitled as of yet, here they are.