To continue the licensing frenzy of Morinaga Milk’s GIRL FRIENDS, Seven Seas has just announced that they will be releasing GIRL FRIENDS in Omnibus form.
The first volume is slated to ship in October 2012.
Archive for the Series Category
K-ON! Anime, Volume 2 (English)
Although I already reviewed Volume 3 of the K-ON! anime, I finally had time to sit down and enjoy the supersonic movement of the year with the girls in K-ON!, Volume 2. From their first school festival, (and getting Sawako-sensei as their faculty advisor,) to a whole new school year and a new member, all in a few short episodes.
I love the gags about Sawako-sensei’s years in the Light Music Club. Something about the idea that she was once a heavy metal rocker cracks me up.
For fans of the series, the important point of this volume is the appearance of Azusa, her experience seeing the Light Music Club the very first time and being totally blown away. And, really, who wouldn’t be? They are ridiculously cute and their music is fun and goofy.
As for Yuri, other than the relationships fans have made up in their head…there is none. And that’s okay by me, honestly. This series works best when it’s about a bunch of friends in a band.
Ratings:
Art- 7
Story – 8
Characters – 8
Yuri – 0
Service – 4
Overall – 8
The K-ON! Movie is debuting on December 3rd in Japan, so I expect we’ll be seeing more of the girls for some time to come. No complaints from me. I’m looking forward to some new songs, too. ^_^
Thanks once more to Okazu Superhero Eric P. for his kindness and generosity in sponsoring this review! To join the list of Okazu Heros and Superheros on the right-hand sidebar here, just purchase something from the Okazu Yuri Wishlist, and you too will enter the Hall of Heroes!
Ribon no Kishi The Musical (リボンの騎士 ザ・ミュージカル)
Since Princess Knight, recently released by Vertical Publishing (Volume 1 and Volume 2) is moving ever closer to the top of my to-read and review pile, I thought it might be nice to finally watch all of Ribon no Kishi The Musical (リボンの騎士 ザ・ミュージカル)
This production is Takarazuka-esque, but in fact was not a Takarazuka production. Instead it starred members of pop idol groups Morning Musume and v-u-den. The three-disk edition I have included multiple versions of the same musical, with different lead actresses and casts. As I am not the audience for which this was intended, and indeed know next to nothing about Morning Musume except that, when I saw them 5 times on TV on New Tear’s Eve, the 14 of them, dressed in kimono and geta, were barely able to jump rope 40 times in unison.
It has been years since I last read Ribon no Kishi (Knight of the Ribbon). I have the three-volume set put out in 1974, based on the redrawn Nakayoshi magazine release of the story. My memory of it is relatively clear and the story in the musical, although rewritten in places and full of random musical numbers, was relatively simple to follow. With the exception of the many month interval between me watching Volume 1 and Volume 2, and so I was quite confused by the jailers little song and dance number at the beginning of Volume 2. I got over that, though.
I chose, with completely randomness, the Takahashi Ai version, but there were at least two other cast versions on these disks. Again, I’m not a MM fan, so seeing specific members was low priority, but even I know Ogawa Makoto, so it was kind of nice to see her on stage. (I believe I know her from her participation on Kunoichi, so nothing to do with her time with MM.) I knew people who cared more than I did would insist I be precise here and they have, yay fandom – the main character that changes cast member is Ferdinand.
Okay, so, Takahashi Ai did a really good job at playing Safire, I thought. Even when the camera or spotlight wasn’t on her, she gave it her all. And I liked her costuming quite a bit. The evil duke wasn’t all that ominous and there were some backup singers and dancers that weren’t helping. In general the singing was…okay. Lots of only partially hit notes, but the group pieces were mostly all very fluid and nice. Not her fault, but the costume on Prince Ferdinand did not work. It was pink and frilly and had the opposite effect of making Ferdinand boyish.
I’m never going to love musical theater, no matter how many Takarazuka tapes (or related all-female musical theater troupes) I watch, but compared with, say, The Scarlet Pimpernel, I thought Ribon no Kishi The Musical was enjoyable. Perfect Sunday afternoon background noise while I worked. I’d look up and there’d be Takahashi Ai, dressed dashingly as Safire and then I’d go back to work smiling.
Ratings – Overall – 7
Not the best all-female musical theater I’ve seen, but definitely not the worst.
Yuri Manga: GUNJO (羣青), continued
It’s been a while since I talked about GUNJO (羣青), hasn’t it? The first volume was brutal and awful and wonderful and the second volume was, as I keep saying, like eating the most delicious razor blades ever.
And now, as the story approaches an end, I want to talk about it once more. Now, while it’s still in that Schroedinger’s Cat phase of not being over, but already ended. (It has to be ended, or nearly so, just because of the publishing schedule of magazines.)
As I read each new chapter, I find myself scanning the faces of the woman who was abused and despised by everyone ever who was supposed to have loved and cared for her and the only person who ever actually did, wondering how this series could end without them both dead, wondering if they will ever be free, wondering if they will ever smile again, wondering if I’m as or more pathetic than they to even think that they might.
Look at the scan above. (I left in all the ghost images from the pages in front and behind this tableau, because this is what the pages look like when I read the chapters in the magazine.)
“Hey!” says the brunette, who Japanese fans call Megane-san because she wore glasses.
“…Mm?” says the blonde, called “Sensei” by Japanese fans because she was a vet, before she became a criminal.
There they are, facing each other down, having survived so much together and yet not together at all. The brunette gets angriest when the blonde shows her any kindness, the blonde gets angriest when the brunette becomes self-deprecating. Neither can let each other go….neither wants to be left alone….neither wants to be with the other. They are suspended in a relationship so intimate that they loathe each other for it, but when they think about it a little, they don’t dislike each other at all.
Where can this series go? I have absolutely no idea. I sit around sometimes and try to predict the end. Will Megane-san give herself up, and let Sensei return to what’s left of her life? Or maybe they will die in a freak accident, solving the entire problem? Or maybe they will be free, after all, the police haven’t caught up to them yet….maybe they can escape…and then I slap myself for being a fool.
You don’t know what the brunette says next. I don’t know what will happen next. Like every chapter of GUNJO, this one keeps us suspended on a knife bridge, spikes on one side, swords on the other. This moment is not a breath of fresh air – it’s the moment before the breath is punched out of us.
GUNJO has been the hardest thing I have ever read in my life. I love it to the point of incoherence. It’s long moved past being about a lesbian, and I don’t even know what it’s about anymore…other than life and death.
However it ends, no matter how much it hurts (and it will, of that I have no doubt,) I’ll still consider this one of the greatest stories I have ever read in any language. Thank you Nakamura-sensei. Thank you for GUNJO.
要約:これまで読んできたあらゆる言語の作品の中で、最も優れた物語のひとつ (要約/翻訳 |小松さん)
Yuri Drama CD: GIRL FRIENDS (ドラマCD GIRL FRIENDS-ガールフレンズ)
Because manga is primarily a visual media, I’m always fascinated by the transition of a manga story to Drama CD. Where something like Maria-sama ga Miteru is primarily communicated in words, a story like GIRL FRIENDS is first and foremost visual. And this manga, as good as it is, would probably make a relatively dull anime, as most of the “action” exists only in interior monologue.
The GIRL FRIENDS Drama CD (ドラマCD GIRL FRIENDS-ガールフレンズ)does a decent job of balancing story framework and character development and, as a result, becomes something slightly different than the manga itself.
The manga starts off, (if you recall from my review of Volume 1,) as a catalog of fashionable girl interests. Hair, nails, clothes, etc., are the primary focus, and Mariko’s interest in Akiko grows from that. Because we’re listening to the conversations on the Drama CD, rather than watching the girls shop, the chapters feel very much like a tutorial. Bearing in mind that the manga ran in Comic High, which is generally targeted to men who want that glimpse behind the gauze curtain of “girls’ life,” this works amazingly well.
Let’s take a step back to the story itself to understand why. Mariko is a quiet, introverted girl. She is studious, has no real friends and generally lives a life of the mind. You know the type – reads during homeroom, lunch and any study periods. She is us. When Akiko breaks past her shell, Mariko finds herself dragged into a world she knows *nothing* about. This is a world in which girls talk about hair, clothes, fashion models, makeup colors and the like, endlessly and with actual interest. Mariko isn’t interested, per se, in the new fall colors for makeup, but her new friends’ interest interests her.
These sections of the Drama CD are the absolute best tutorial on what average girls like that I’ve ever heard. Because there are no visuals, and the spoken words have to provide the actions as well as the words, the dialogue very much sounds as if Mari is receiving training on “How to Be a Girl, 101.” Mariko even considers this, towards the end, as she’s rapidly slipping into “more than friend” feelings for Akiko. She recognizes that she never really had any girl friends before and never really had been socialized, so, she may be overreacting to just having a friend….
As in the anime, it’s the night of the group date that changes everything, irrevocably. After falling apart watching Akko with the guys, Mariko and Akko end up at Akiko’s place. After Akko drinks too much and falls asleep, Mari kisses her, then spends the rest of the week excoriating herself for it. Even after Akko laughs it off, Mari-chan realizes that her feelings aren’t just friendship.
The Drama CD comes to an end, as Mariko admits to herself that this is, quite probably, love. So, this CD covers chapters 1-10 of the manga.
There’s still a fair dollop of silly service in this story. Perhaps in some circles it is common for girls to kiss one another and feel each other up, but I can tell you that that never happened with any group of friends I had growing up. And we were on all sorts of sports teams, camp, school gym, which meant dressing and undressing in front of one another. No groping, peeking, breast size comparison….none of that ever went on anywhere I was. So, I’m still marking all that in the fanservice column as something things boys would like to think girls do.
The CD technicals were quite good. Everyone did a very decent job of voicing their characters. It was all very natural. I found Mari’s interior monologues (which were absolutely necessary to the story) a little cringe-making at times, but that was also necessary to the story. There is one short extra comic insert in the CD case, no cast talk track, though.
Noticably, this was a really long Drama CD. I had to drive quite a distance yesterday and listened to this CD for most of the trip there. Easily an hour, probably more. That was a pleasant surprise, as Drama CDs more commonly tend to be in the 30-45 minute range.
Ratings:
Overall – 8
I wasn’t sure how well this story would translate to Drama CD (I think some series are more suited than others, obviously) but overall found this to be a more than acceptable adaptation of what I considered to be a very good manga about first love.
