I’m back from vacation, and lightly toasted marshmallow in color. I learned that if you have to order a drink by color, it’s not so good. I dubbed my purple drink the “Robitussin Colada.” But all the other colors were good. Orange was my favorite – they made a mean Tequila Sunset.

I want to be perfectly clear about today’s review. I am reviewing the Claymore anime because while appreciate everyone suggesting I watch it, I’m kind of tired explaining to people why I didn’t think it was all that, much less a bag of chips.

I was told by *many* people how awesome and win Claymore was before I watched it, but since I never really listen to anyone, I had no great expectations for it. I was not disappointed. I can only conjecture that the reason that so many people thought it was brilliant is that I am 20 year older than all of you and I was around for the great Fantasy wave of the 70s and 80s. There was nothing at all unique about Claymore that I could see. The territory it covered has been done many many times over. And more gay-ly too – see Mercedes Lackey’s books. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t awful. It just wasn’t “teh awesome.” If you weren’t around when every single author in the world was churning out long series of Sword-and-Sorcery, D&D-ish, Lord of the Rings-esque quest style books, then you will probably think it’s pretty cool.

Claymore is a sword-and-demon quest story. The great warriors are all female, all half-demon themselves, called by the uncommonly expository and helpfully prejudiced and hateful villagers “Claymores.” Which described their swords well enough. There are 47 Claymores at any one time, and their own organization also helpfully exploits and neglects them, so we have two quests for vengeance. Our protagonist, Clare, has a tragic backstory in which her family is slaughtered, her village rejects her and she becomes the protege of the coolest, most powerful Claymore extent, Teresa.

There’s pretty much no question that the Teresa/Clare arc is the best bit of the story. Teresa is undoubtedly cool. Clare grows less annoying as the arc goes on. It has to end tragically, of course. Duh. ^_^

So now we are supposed to understand why Clare picks up Raki, a kid with the same tragic backstory as her own. Unfortunately for us, Raki is also a huge whiner. Pretty much any scene without Raki was good.

The main theme of the anime is Clare’s quest to grow stronger to avenge Teresa. It’s a decent enough plot, completely with lots of power-ups, team-building and traveling – all the usual elements of a good D&D story. The voice actresses are good to excellent, with four of my top five getting significant roles, so that made me happy. The end of the anime, while in no way the end of the story, was pretty much as expected, so it worked for me. The music was very good in places, as well.

Because after the first few episodes, Serge and I realized that what other people saw as “awesome” we were seeing as “okay,” we started watching crappy anime first, in order to increase Claymore’s awesomeness. We watched Hitohira which we both thought was painfully awful so it worked well. And we tried Touka Gettan but that was SO bad it was funny and it became distracting, so it failed as a opening act. Each week we were so glad to be done with Hitohira, it did indeed help any scene without Raki to become better. Unfortunately, whenever he was on the screen, the level of good dropped significantly. I can’t think of a more sniveling whiner in any anime I’ve ever watched.

There was no Yuri in Claymore. Teresa and Clare did indeed have a deep love for one another. I do not doubt that. Their relationship was the high point of the series for me, as well anyone else. But were they “in love”? Did they want to be lovers? Unequivocally no. Sisters, guardian-ward, even mother-daughter. Yes.

This is a series full of deep battlefield emotions. Blood sisters, sword sisters. If the characters had been John Wayne as Teresa and some young strapping lad as Clare, you wouldn’t pair them up. It’s a battlefield buddy sort of story. People who happen to be women facing life and death situations together, relying upon one another to watch each other’s backs. And I see a lot of deep bonding there. But not that thing that *I* see as Yuri – two women who are drawn together by love and wanting to be lovers. Jeanne, for instance. She owed her life to Clare and wanted to repay that. She certainly followed Clare, like a retainer follows a beloved lord, full of admiration, worship and yes, a kind of love. I didn’t see it as a desire for Clare or a desire to be with Clare in the sense of being girlfriends with Clare.

If you press me, I’d say that Helen and Deneve had the best, only, chance of becoming lovers of all the Claymores we saw. And only by the very end.

Ratings:

Art – 6
Story – 7 without Raki, 5 with
Characters – 8 except Raki who was a 4
Yuri – 1
Service – 5 +1 for the insistence on Yuri where it hath none

Overall – 6 +1 when watched after something that sucked massively

It’s a war story with swords instead of guns and Youma instead of Nazis. Not bad, but certainly not ground-breaking. Or Yuri.

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!

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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. :-)