Just wanted to touch base with you all. Mayan ruins are cool, the beach under a mostly full moon looks like a Neptunian landscape.

I’ll be back home in a few days. Thanks everyone for the interesting and challenging questions for this round of “Utter Nonense”! It’s going to take me some time to actually think about these questions.

But right now, there’s a beach that desperately needs walking upon and I still have to drink a purple drink today to complete the rainbow. Since none of us can think of a purple drink, we’re going to ask the bartender to make something up. It should be good – he’s been brilliant all week. :-)

Anime episodes watched – 0
Manga read – 0

Trashy lesbian novels read – 7, 2 to go (Of course, I will review them, duh….)

See you when I get back!

I keep getting questions about the availablity of on-site registration at Yuricon’s Yurisai. Yes, we will definitely have registration at the door!

Registration will be located in the lower lobby of the Gateway Hilton (right across the street from Penn Station Newark) and will open at 9AM. At door registration is $30 until 4:00PM. (People who come after 4PM will still be able to get in, for a lower price, since the day will be half over.)

The event begins officially at 10AM and will end around 10PM, depending on how long the Cosplay Parade and awards take.

Cosplay/ Simoun Cosplay and Poster Art Contests can be entered at the door. No pre-registration necessary!

If you have any other questions, feel free to email me with any other questions!

To the very end, Murder Princess remained a solid, classic old-fashioned action and drama anime.

(FYI:The picture to the left is the cover of 3rd Japanese DVD and is linked to that, but the title above is linked to the 1st Japanese DVD.)

It had a revenge motive, a magical catalyst, a possessed prince and an evil witch. There were castles and ogres and knights in armor complete with Black Knight to be the evil witch’s minion. There were good henchmen, bad henchmen, and hench-androids who were bad, but became good. There was an evil scientist, a doomsday weapon and a troupe of traveling players.

The doomsday weapon was stopped at the last second, as it always is, but not before the usual loss of dear friends.

And the evil witch was defeated in a time-honored method with the most utterly classic death scene possible. Watching it, I could name half a dozen baddies who had died in the same way – but instead of annoying me, it just worked. (Also, evil witch Cecelia got extra evil points for responding to Farith’s request for “why” she had destroyed young Farith’s village with, “No reason. It was there.” I gave that a round of applause.)

And then there was Farith and Alita. After they switched bodies, they exchanged an important vow, became close friends, and were set up in a variety of poses to ensure that people who cannot discriminate wanted to, could insist that they were a couple right off the bat based on screencaps.

Alita is the noble and beautiful princess, Farith the strong, lone wolf bounty hunter and if this had been a straight couple they would have definitely, positively kissed at the end. But they weren’t, so they didn’t.

All the elements were there and they were all put together in a way that worked.

Sure, we’d like to see more overt Yuri in our Yuri, but since the anime ends without Farith and Alita able to switch back to their own bodies, we can project a lengthy future in which they get time to get used to each other – and themselves – in this form. I predict a happily ever after, because, after all, that’s the classic ending.

Ratings:

Art – 8 (not “art” but crisp and clean and good for what it is)
Story – 8 (all around classic)
Characters – 8
Music – 7
Yuri – 4
Service – 4

Overall – 8

If this gets licensed, and I think it will, I hope they release it as two 3-episode disks. 6 1-episode disks, the way it was released in Japan, will be a hard sell over here.

Today is a milestone. Five years ago today I wrote the first Okazu post. In it, I explained why I chose “Okazu” as the title of my blog:

“Welcome to Okazu. “Okazu” is Japanese for appetizers – and is slang for lesbian sex because, you know it’s not *real* sex.”

So, 5 years of Okazu, reviews that have acted as appetizers, whetting your appetite for the real manga or anime. And five years of lesbian sex. ;-)

Today also marks my 800th post. This was absolutely NOT on purpose. It was completely accidental. I expected to hit 800 this weekend, but just never got around to posting. I cannot even express to you what it feels like to have posted 800 times about…stuff. lol

Today is also, purely by coincidence, 7 years since I began “AniLesboCon” half-jokingly, which two years later on roughly the same day became the entity known as Yuricon. The name AniLesboCon comes from Dreiser’s “Scenes from an Elevator” Utena fanfic and I liked the name so much I asked her if I could use it. When we changed the name of our organization to Yuricon, I kept the original as the name of our publishing company – ALC Publishing.

And, in one of those coincidences that has colored our relationship from the very beginning, 13 years ago today, Rica Takashima began her open-air performance art project, Aozora Art. How funny is *that*?

The other milestone I want to mention actually happened yesterday – the wife and I celebrated 24 years together.

So, today is really a whole bunch of milestones. I’m pretty pleased about all of them. :-) Happy birthday Okazu and Yuricon!

***

Before I go, just a few more numbers!

1 – the number of days before the close of the Yuricon 2007 AMV Contest. Get those entries in NOW!

45 – the number of days until Yuricon’s 2007 “Yurisai” event! Pre-registration is open until September 7th! Join us for the only 100% Yuri day of the year. :-)

Back in February of last year, guest reviewer Sean Gaffney had brought to our attention a series called Broken Angels. I read Volume 1, but did not follow the series closely. A few weeks ago, I ran into an unguarded copy of Broken Angels, Volume 3, picked it up and began to read. Bear in mind as you read today’s review, I have not read any other volumes but 1 and 3. But, based on those two volumes, I definitely can’t call this a Yuri series. In fact, it’s almost anti-Yuri in the sense that with every single chapter I’ve read a female character *seems* to be in love with or to desire another woman (who usually is a crossdresser) but is, in every case, really in love with a guy with whom she is incapable of communicating. In a sense, her apparent desire for the girl is a beard for her real desire. All much too confusing for me, honestly. The fact that all the women who apparently want our crossdressing heroine Sunao are broken, while being true to the title, puts me off no end.

In this particular volume, Sunao is jumped by crazy beeatch Saya who, after Sunao lives up to her name and doesn’t resist when Saya attempts to molest her, (Sunao in Japanese translates to something like meekly obedient) comes to realize that she doesn’t want Sunao, she wants the guy who treats her like a goddess, and whom she treats very badly.

The second story arc I found uneccesarily confusing and random, as Sunao, joined by her guardian and the crazy Student Council President, travels to some town for NO REASON to help fix the next Broken Angel, a girl who, in a brilliantly unique storyline, appears to be in love with a crossdressing girl but is really in love with a guy.

After two volumes (because of course I have not read Volume 2) I know exactly these things about Sunao: she wears boy’s clothing “for her own reasons” and she has a supernatural control over water. Oh, and she has the personality of a dishrag. None of the above have been explained in the two volumes I have read. Perhaps in a future volume they might be – OTOH, as the other crossdressing female character is said to wear boy’s clothes “for her own reasons” (and no, I’m not exaggerating – the sentence was exactly the same both times, which actually made me laugh out loud) I’m not too hopeful that any details will ever be filled in.

So, in this case the crossdressing, like any Yuri, is played entirely for titillation/service. The girls wear boy’s clothing “for their own reasons” none of which are ever explained and their gender identity is never really established, or even considered. It’s basically just “chicks in suits look cool.” Which is absolutely fine, but not enough to make me keep reading the series. The broken angels’ stories are far too much like a broken record for my taste.

Ratings:

Art – 6 It’s pretty, but the panels layout is a train wreck (to quote someone’s comment on Chi-Ran’s book here.)
Characters – 6 There are three character types who just keep appearing over and over with different names
Story – 6 Same as above
Yuri – 5, all service
Service – 5

Overall – 6 (Which, to clarify for my wife, means “I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t like it”)

I think I’m just too old for this series. The angst of “I like this person, but ‘fill in some absurd reason’ so I can’t be with/tell him” is just too exhausting for me.