Archive for the Maria-sama ga Miteru Category


Light Novel: Maria-sama ga Miteru ~ Farewell Bouquet (マリア様がみてる フェアウェル ブーケ)

August 24th, 2012

The number one question in every fan’s mind as we read each successive Maria-sama ga Miteru novel is…is this the last one? This can’t go on forever, can it? Well, no, it can’t go on forever, as much as we might wish it could. But as for the first question, I have no answer. As with the last several of the books in the series, the ending is written so that if we never got another one, this would be a fine place to end the series. However…however… Maria-sama ga Miteru ~ Farewell Bouquet (マリア様がみてる フェアウェル ブーケ) ends at the end of July of Yumi’s third year at Lillian Jogakuen High School. I just cannot believe that Konno-sensei will just end it here. She could, definitely. But there’s the Sports Festival, and the Culture Festival and Christmas, and New Year’s…and Valentine’s Day (and the half-day date contest)…and the chance/need for the 2nd-years to find soeur and the elections…and then there’s graduation.  I cannot imagine that we won’t be given the opportunity to end our time with Yumi and her friends with great wopping tears at graduation. I will not believe it.

But.

We might, and I can’t promise we won’t. Japanese fans are asking the same question, mind you, and we won’t know until we see more chapters appear in Cobalt Shueisha. (Btw, according to the Cobalt website, the upcoming November issue, will include a Marimite section on the enclosed Drama CD.)

In the meantime, Konno-sensei is being mean and teasing us unmercifully, with novel titles like Hello Goodbye and Farewell Bouquet. I mean, really.

So the book begins with a teacher meeting up with a student on the school grounds and being taken to the Rose Mansion for some herb tea and a long chat. The teacher, Katori Maki-sensei, has been around for quite a few of the novels, and we’ve come to like her quite a bit.

The stories that fill the spaces between Maki-sensei’s time at the Rose Mansion are a pile of some really odd stories. In one, a student wants a teacher to be her onee-sama, and finds that she’s her big sister for real. In another a female art teacher is abruptly asked to make cookies by a male teacher who finds himself presented with cookies that look like, well, breasts.  My favorite story includes a radically intelligent way to teach history to bored teen girls – imagine the clans and houses as a bunch of boy bands! Seriously, I thought that was genius.

But the real story, although it takes up the least space, is the story of why Maki-sensei is taking a leave of absence from school. And, ultimately, it’s Yumi that arranges for an impromptu, beautiful and topical herb bouquet from the Yamayurikai to Maki-sensei. This ribbon story includes cameos from all our principles.

I want to make sure I mention this: Maki-sensei has a whole scene in which she absolutely assures herself (and us) that she will not be quitting teaching, that she will be returning. I’m very glad that she was made to make that point. I’m really tired of anime/manga/games/novels clinging to the outdated and tired quitting work after getting married or pregnant thing. This is as 20th century in Japan as much as it is in the US.)

And last, the final chapter is a lovely interlude with Sachiko and Yumi enjoying tea together and a gentle admonishment that this moment in time is to be enjoyed for itself.

Another delightful book. If it is the last – and it could be – it was wonderful. Time to have a cup of herb tea and think about the best moments we’ve shared with the lovely ladies of Lillian. ^_^

Ratings:

Overall – 9





It’s A Woman’s World: Bodacious Space Pirates, Maria-sama ga Miteru and The Bechdel-Wallace Test

July 10th, 2012

Bodacious Space Pirates came to an end and I thought it delightful in every possible way. As I (over)thought how I’d approach a final season review, I started to think about the qualities that made the series stand out for me – and what, specifically, that meant in terms of storytelling. And, ultimately, I started thinking about how the series portrayed women.

Courtney Duckworth on Broad Recognition has a really excellent review of Pixar’s Brave, in which she discusses something that any woman in the corporate world knows…to be a successful woman, you have to be a man. I remember a conversation I had with a young executive who was being groomed for a CEO position in the company I worked for at the time. He was having a little crisis because, in order to be the man they wanted him to be, he had to give up his family life. It was expected, respected and demanded that he not be there to see his kids play in their first ball game, not attend recitals, because his company needed him. I watched him as he talked his way through this, as he justified letting his family drop off in importance and the company become the thing he would care about. In the end, he became a very successful CEO, and I remember this conversation as the saddest one I have ever had with another human being. For women, who are presumed to be primary caregivers, the stress of letting go of family in order to be successful as a CEO is almost insurmountable. Let someone else raise your kids? (Doesn’t matter if it’s your husband…it’s NOT YOU.) You’re heartless. Focused and driven? You’re a bitch. Want to take time off to see your kid’s recital? You’re not dedicated. There is no way to win, because you are not a man with a wife who will watch the kids in the background.

Merida, like Ermina (Paros no Ken), Safire (Princess Knight) and Lady Oscar (Rose of Versailles), excels at men’s skills, in a world that pretty much has one path to excellence – being as brave and competent as a man.

Let’s stop here and take a look at the Bechdel_Wallace Test for a second. As a reminder, the test goes like this.

1. [The media in question] has to have at least two [named] women in it.
2. Who talk to each other
3. About something besides a man

In a recent email exchange with Alison Bechdel, she and I discussed the idea of “would Mo watch it?” as an unwritten, extra factor to measure if a media property follows the letter, but not the spirit of the Test (that is, it fits the criteria strictly, but it’s still not the kind of thing that Mo is looking for in entertainment). ^_^

So what does this have to do with Bodacious Space Pirates and Maria-sama ga Miteru? Everything.

Let’s start with Maria-sama ga Miteru. In the rarified and protected world of Lillian Girls’ School there are no “men’s jobs.” The leaders of the student body are women, the Principal and many of the teachers are women. The presumption with which the entire series is presented to us is that Youko or Sachiko or any of the other members of the Student Council  will move into positions with decision-making power when they graduate – if not effortlessly, then they will certainly be capable of standing up for themselves, because they have been trained to be leaders. No one ever comments that they are as good as men, or that they run the student body with masculine focus. Lillian is a woman’s world and within it, women do jobs women can do, if they are give the opportunity to do them. (This is something that research bears out – given equal opportunity to excel, women will excel equally.)

In Bodacious Space Pirates, Marika is going to school in a woman’s world, but she isn’t thinking about it that way, any more than Yumi was. It’s just…school. Then something changes and Marika is indeed sent into a world that is traditionally inhabited by men – piracy. And here, at last, we get to the point. It’s true that Marika faces some trials based on the fact that she’s y’know, a high school girl, but her gender alone is less of a problem than one might have expected in a series like this. Being a woman doing “man’s work” is pretty much never an issue, except in one or two totally valid scenes. (Two young women trawling the back alleys of a pirate hangout is a completely reasonable use of that kind of tension.)

Both these series star female characters in a relatively female-heavy cast, and so they both fly through the letter of the Bechdel-Wallace Test easily. But…there’s more to them. In neither series is there a focus on turning a sexualized male gaze on the characters. It really doesn’t matter how “strong” a female character is – when we are forced to stare continually at their crotch or chest, there’s a different story being told – “Yes, she could kick your ass, but it’s okay, you could still have sex on her, so you’re still superior to her..”

Let’s think, for a second about the inevitable “beach episode” in Bodacious Space Pirates. In any other series, if I ask you, “What was the beach episode about?” the only real answer you’d have is “It was about reducing the female characters to a series of sexualized visual images.” Now think about the beach episode of BSP. What was it about? The plot was the trial run for the dinghy race, but it was *about* Ai-chan. In any other series, would there have been an entire episode about a relatively unimportant character like Ai-chan? Would there have been a follow-up episode about her? Would she have been developed as more than a name at all?  There was no attempt to turn Marika or any of the characters into a pair of jiggling boobs.  Yes, we absolutely saw the female characters in bathing suits…but we also saw Kane in a bathing suit. He was not ripped, but he was fit. We saw his ass as many times as we saw the girls’. I don’t care about *either* the girls or Kane in a bathing suit, but the service was pleasantly even-handed and blessedly low-key. It would have been hideously easy (and hideous) to simply stare up the Yacht Club members’ skirts all the time, as anime as a genre slides into a low place in which a majority of viewers seem content to huddle – but that does not happen here.

Both these series have female-heavy casts, but not female-exclusive casts. These are not reverse harems, not reverse shounen series. There are brothers, fathers, uncles, male teachers, colleagues and crew in these worlds, just as there are in the real world. A woman’s world in these series does not mean “the exclusion of all men,” as it might in a male gaze fantasy like Strawberry Panic!  These women have society, which is, in my reading of it, the meaning of the third and final criteria of the Bechdel-Wallace Test.

Maria-sama ga Miteru and Bodacious Space Pirates are about strong women as *I* understand the concept. Women who are perfectly capable living in a world populated by men and women; women who can take command of both men and women and be respected as leaders – and who are not judged by a set of standards that are skewed so they can only ever fail. Women who can find their own solutions to issues, not to have to excel at men’s thinking or men’s skills to be considered a success.

In these series, women are shown as being as brave and competent…as a woman.

Would Mo watch these? I think she might.





Yuri Network News – March 17, 2012

March 17th, 2012

What a good day to talk about Yuri. It would surely have given St. Patrick apoplexy, along with the carousing and misbehavior now commonly attached to his name day. ^_^

Other News

This week had a lot of important news, some of which I wanted to share, and a few rants I really need to get off my chest.

First, the CBLDF announced that the criminal charges were dropped in the “Brandon X” case. The case was ultimately settled on non-criminal charges. CBLDF director Charles Brownstein talks at length about this case and the fact that, ultimately, it did not go to trial and therefore did not create a legal precedent. He makes a lot of excellent points and I hope you’ll read this fantastic interview Tom Spurgeon did with him on Comics Reporter. (And I am so excited to be able to link to Tom’s site. He’s been kind enough to link to me many times over, so back atcha Tom!) The CBLDF is still paying off more than half the legal fees so any help you can give them, even donations as little as $5, are greatly appreciated.

Also of great importance has been the saga of content sellers vs content publishers in regards to Digital Manga Publishing. Although I have very little motivation to read their stuff (and have some issues with their Digital Manga Guild, as I consider it to be a race to the bottom for quality work for fair cost,) I like the folks there personally. Recently, both Apple and Amazon have delisted DMP’s BL titles. Apple demanded DMP pull Yaoi from its Apple app and Amazon told DMP that they couldn’t sell through Kindle. As you can imagine, I was livid at this. I wrote the Apple and Amazon CEOs. Clearly I was not the only one, as 24 hours later, Amazon rescinded. Apple has not.

Those of you who follow me on Twitter have seen my rage at Apple and their randomly enforced, bizarrely Victorian business practices that seem to somehow always be against LGBTQ-themed content. I started my computer days on an Apple, but now you could not pay me to buy any of their products. I am so strongly opposed to their obscure and cloaked content policies, their anti-LGBTQ focus and even more opposed to the willful blindness of Apple users who keep insisting I must be mistaken. I am not mistaken – Apple was, once, a very progressive company. Now they are just another large company who does not hire full-timers, they farm everything out to contractors, who are clearly given too much room to be repressive, and they treat foreign workers like animals. Come ON folks. Apple is “The Man.” Their culture and their policies are totalitarian. I get it – they were cool when you were in school. They aren’t cool anymore. You should say something about that to them.

While I’m ranting, I would like to repeat myself once more about the Yuri market. Now that Poor Poor Lips is doing well at JManga, there is some cognitive dissonance about it being released in print. This is abstracted from a comment I made on Facebook about the matter:

Fans assume there are tens of thousands of people out there reading Yuri. Sales in the west run at about 1% of audience. It’s just a really freaking small niche. There are not enough fans to support a load of Yuri titles…that is why there are not a load of Yuri titles in print in English. Best Yuri titles do somewhere between 2500-3000 in sales, which is still short of the 4000 copies or so to make enough money to keep going. Even top selling mainstream titles like Naruto barely reach 15,000 copies sold here in the US and that’s barely enough to make Japanese sales lists.

To all Yuri fans who somehow think that there are a legion of fans being under-served here….there aren’t. There are a few of you. And of that few, only a fewer few actually buy Yuri. That is why there is so little Yuri here. There are not enough people to make it profitable. Yet. Give it more years, more promotion and more support from the fanbase.

Think about this. How many copies of Poor Poor Lips do you *really* think would sell? Now, multiply that by three volumes. Be honest – how likely do you think selling 12,000 print copies of a cute, but not particularly world-shaking series, is there? 

There is no relationship between sales on JManga and success of a print volume. Print needs WAY more sales to cover costs and make it worth printing, shipping and distributing. That is *exactly* why JManga is a great idea – it’s a place to get out all the niche titles we want to see that really don’t have a decent chance at making a profit in print.

I don’t meant to be harsh, but…stop. Please stop living in a fantasy where there are a million Yuri fans and 10% of them want to buy books. This is not true. WHEN it is, there will be more Yuri than you can handle. Right now, there are a few hundred people who will buy anything and a few hundred more who will buy when it’s cheap enough and convenient enough and simple enough. And the rest simply do not count at all, since they have no intention of buying anything, from anyone, ever.

Okay…rants over now. ^_^

***

Snatches of Yuri

A collection from Hana to Yume comics called Kanoujo no Namida ga Yuki Datoshitara (彼女の涙が雪だとしたら) includes at least one short in which there is Yuri.

Idol Pretender ( アイドルプリテンダー ) seems to think it has BL and Yuri, at least based on the obi copy. While there’s definitely some Yuri-like behavior, the jury appears to still be out. It’s a Champion Red title, so even if there is Yuri, don’t expect it to make you happy.

I honestly have no idea if this is good or not, but if you like Transgender Yuri, take a look at Hero no Himitsu (ヒーローの秘密), Feel free to write up a review for us!

And Smile Style (スマイル・スタイル) has been all over the Yuri lists in Japan. It’s moe school life Yuri. Just the way so many like it.

***

Random Stuff

There will be a Yuri Danshi Drama CD…with character songs, in June. As much as I adore Drama CDs, I’m giving this one a pass. ^_^;

Bruce made me promise to tell you that Wandering Son, Volume 3 is available for Pre-order on Amazon.

To end this report on a really, really positive note, April will be bringing a new Maria-sama ga Miteru Light Novel, Maria-sama ga Miteru ~ Farewell Bouquet (マリア様がみてる フェアウェル ブーケ) –  in which we will be seeing, for the first time, Yumi as Rosa Chinensis! Yay! Okay, now the series can end if it has to. ^_^

***

That wraps it up for this week.

Become a Yuri Network Correspondent by sending me any Yuri-related news you find. Emails go to anilesbocon01 at hotmail dot com. Not to the comments here, please, or they might be forgotten or missed. There’s a reason for this madness. This way I know you are a real human, not Anonymous (which I do not encourage – stand by your words with your name!) and I can send you a YNN correspondent’s badge.





Live Action: Maria-sama ga Miteru Movie (劇場版 マリア様がみてる 通常版)

September 15th, 2011

Many, many thanks to the efforts and sacrifice of Bruce for making it possible for me to buy this movie in Tokyo. As several people have noted, this was not easy to find on shelves, as it had pretty much sold out in pre-orders. The good news for overseas fans is that Amazon JP still has both the DVD and the DVD/Blu-Ray combo in stock. Being the bad otaku I am, I only bought the DVD, so missed out on some of the extras in the Blu-Ray combo set.

Maria-sama ga Miteru is a story about average high school girl Yumi, as she’s suddenly, unexpectedly drawn into the doings of the Yamayurikai, the Student Council of the school. This is no small matter as the Yamayurikai are known for being beautiful, smart and somewhat remote from the rest of the students. They even have a separate building on the campus in which they hold their meetings.

A chance meeting, an opportunistic photograph and a set of silly circumstances around the school play contrive to change Yumi’s life forever.

As I commented on my original viewing of this movie in Osaka, the actresses were each picked for a specific quality, so it was very easy to see “Youko” or “Sei” in them. Sachiko and Yumi are almost instantly lovable, IMHO. I liked that Sachiko starts to touch Yumi without realizing that she’s doing it.

Set in an old, wooden building, with creaky floors and small rooms, there’s a festive air of not-too-much-but-just-enough verisimilitude about the recreation of Lillian Jogakuen. Early on, there is an unexpected time lapse of Musashino City, so we are forced to imagine that this school is real, not just some fantasy space, like Astrea Hill.

The DVD includes the “Making Of” special, the trailer for the movie and the pre-movie in-theater “do not take pictures, eat loudly, make phone calls or give your soeur a rosary” warning animations, which were so amusing when I saw this in the theater. There are no subtitles for this movie, and as much as I hope that someone will license this, I would not bank on it.

The Maria-sama ga Miteru live action movie is a delightful rendering of this story which has captured so many hearts. It has certainly captured mine. Now I pray daily for the live action Kibara Kakumei sequel, as nothing would make me so happy as the chance to see Yoshino rage in live action. ^_^

Overall – 9 (+1 because squee! It’s a live action Maria-sama ga Miteru!)

If you consider yourself a Maria-sama ga Miteru fan, this is money well spent.





Light Novel: Oshaka-sama mo Miteru ~ School Festivals (お釈迦様もみてる スクール フェスティバルズ)

April 18th, 2011

Calling Oshaka-sama mo Miteru: School Festivals (お釈迦様もみてる スクール フェスティバルズ) a “Light Novel” is really starting to stretch the point. There are two illustrations and of them, neither really had any need to be there.

Nonetheless.

School Festivals covers the Hanadera and Lillian school festivals from Yuuki’s (and therefore Yumi’s) first-year of high school. We learn during Yumi’s second year that, during her first year, the Rosas had attended Hanadera to judge the “Miss Hanadera” contest.  Konno-sensei did not inflict the actual Miss Hanadera contest on us, for which I am extremely grateful. However, it served to set up the single hilarious (if obvious,) gag of the book. And, one of the two pictures was of Sei, Youko and Eriko. ^_^

Yuuki does not interact with the Rosas much, beyond greeting them and saying goodbye, as he is working security of sorts and, as all of you who have ever worked at a event know, you’re too busy to enjoy the event when you’re working it. There are some scenes here and there which cement in our head that Kashiwagi definitely does have strong feelings of affection for Yuuki. Whether he is in fact gay for Yuuki remains ambiguous, no doubt on purpose. Nonetheless, Yuuki is seen having a mental conversation with himself about whether Kashiwagi is gay, or whether or not he needs to keep Kashiwagi away from Yumi. (On the presumption that he likes Yuuki lots but if Yuuki were a girl, he’d like like her.) Yuuki isn’t sure.

After the festival is over it is Kashiwagi’s turn to head over to Lillian to assist with their school festival. This section of the book was very interesting as it revisits the very first novel. 45 novels later and, Konno-sensei comments, the snake has caught its own tail.

From Yumi’s first-year perspective, Kashiwagi was cool, competent and arrogant. How she perceived him colored our perceptions of him for more than a decade. Now we see the whole scene from Kashiwagi’s perspective.

Leaving Hanadera after the Miss Hanadera contest, Kashiwagi is amusing himself by imagining Yuuki in girl’s clothes. A maid costume, miko costume and…suddenly, as he finds himself in front of Lillian, he imagines Yuuki in the Lillian uniform. He laughs to himself and we laugh, because we can see this gag coming a mile away. Of course…he finds himself greeted at the Lillian gates by a girl who looks exactly like Yuuki in the Lillian uniform! He’s *so* discombobulated by this that he refers to her as “Yukichi-ko” in his head for much of the rest of the book.

From his side, Kashiwagi feels very out of sorts in the girl’s school. The rules are just different enough, the religion is different, the whole feel is different from his boy’s-only world that every time he steps into Lillian, he is made to feel uncomfortable. And, he is very on edge about Sachiko. When she won’t come to the Rose Mansion the first day he arrives, he feels awkward. He doesn’t want to see her, but he does want to get it over with. And when she does see him the first time, she introduces herself as a stranger, which completely throws him for a loop. He’s been visiting for days for practice and she hasn’t said a word to him not regarding the play. He finds Lillian…exhausting. He’s taken to coming back to Hanadera after practice, rather than going home, just to relax in his own space for a bit.

Then, the big scene. He finally catches up to Sachiko who says that she plans on telling her parents – and especially their grandfather – that she’s breaking the engagement. He points out that grandfather will demand to know why. She says she will tell him what Kashiwagi told her – that he’s gay and cannot love her. Kashiwagi freaks out at this. He asks her to let him, at least, figure out how to break it to everyone and she says, no, she’s decided. She starts to walk away and he grabs her, asking her to consider his feelings in this…and Sei and Yumi come running up. The scene plays out as we remember, with Kashiwagi slipping on gingkos (which he, like Sachiko, dislikes) and becoming the “Gingko Prince.”

Leaving that evening from the gates of Lillian, Kashiwagi is miserable. He goes back to Hanadera, to the Student Council room, just to regain himself. As he enters the building, he can see a light at the end of the tunnel – literally. Yuuki is in the Council Room waiting for him, to make him tea and help him clean the Prince’s costume. Kashiwagi is undone. He is so grateful, he just practically falls apart. He asks Yuuki for a favor, and the two of them end up dancing the waltz together in the Council Room, alone at Hanadera.

The day of Lillian’s Festival comes and the Hanadera first-years have been given tickets to it in thanks for all their efforts to help the Rosas. So they all go and, by popular demand, walk a round a bit before the play. Yuuki is trying to not run into Yumi, but he has no idea where she’ll be. She’s not in her class’s room, but he is surprised to see her on the winning panel at the photography exhibition. They all go to the play and he is absolutely mortified to suddenly learn that Yumi is in the play with Kashiwagi. He’s annoyed that neither of them told him, but of course, why should they? And what is he worried about anyway? Full of unidentifiable feelings of….something, he watches the Lillian play.

This book was, like the other Hanadera books, not *quite* as fun as the Lillian stories, but again, the weakness was that there was too little Yuuki interacting with Koboayashi, Takada and Arisu (who, I know some of you will want to know, wore a lovely pink dress with a flower-patterned collar to Lillian.) I had some trepidation about being alone in Kashiwagi’s head, but it was interesting, even if we still really don’t know who or what he really is.

Ratings:

Overall – 8

The beginning was a little slow, but the payoffs were worth it.