Archive for the Series Category


Yuri Manga: Zettai Shoujo Seiiki Amnesium, Volume 1

September 14th, 2010

Most folks, after spending years honing their craft, improve at whatever they set out to do. Some with marginal skills may never be great, but can at least reach “competent.” For instance, I was never going to be a concert clarinetist, but when I was practicing 4 hours a day, I got better.

Some people, though, become less good, for any number of reasons. There may be less of a drive to excel; time crunches, over-extension, professional commitments, life all take their toll on some people. And a few just run out of something to say. You can see this in bands, particularly. They start out life all young and angry and edgy, but by the third album extolling the virtues of fatherhood and married life you’re ready to vomit at the blandness of their work. ^_^

And some people…well, some people just get worse.

All of which is to say that the “creative” team known as Kaishaku has absolutely surpassed themselves in crappily executed crap with the creation of Zettai Shoujo Seiiki Amnesium (絶対少女聖域アムネシアン).

I won’t bother summarizing the plot because, frankly, there is no point. The plot serves as the thinnest possible frame around a series of service-y violence, much of it sexual, against the ever-popular punching bags of Himeko and Chikane.

Amnesium is a blivet of a manga, filled to the brim with fetishes, rape, mostly-nude, but you know, not *totally* nude nudity, sexual harassment, more rape, more fetishes and more sexual harassment.

Kaishaku’s writing has regressed to the point that I either have to imagine them chained to desks, staring helplessly at an editor holding a whip, mumbling, “rape Himeko, okay, rape Chikane, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay” or sitting around in the asylum slavering. Because, frankly, this iteration is just…sad. Himeko had a sister Chikane, but she died and now a person who looks and sounds *just* like Chikane-oneesama, with the name Chikane, has arrived, but isn’t Chikane-oneesama, has unsisterly intentions, but may have been the one to kill her sister. /mumble/okay, okay, okay, okay/mumble/

The art is no better than it ever has been, so any action scene is hard to parse, but since they are all the same – attempted rape, Himeko’s and/or Chikane’s clothes are shredded (crotches are miraculously never visible, of course) fighting occurs, Chikane wins when Himeko commands her to – it doesn’t really matter anyway. Whee.

Ratings:

Service: 10

Overall: 2, but only so there’s somewhere down to go for Volume 2

Today’s book was sponsored by LFB-in-training and Okazu superhero Dan P.! You are so getting these Dan. You need them. You *want* them. ^_^





YNN Breaking News: Maria Watches Us/Maria-sama ga Miteru News

September 9th, 2010

Today’s post is an early bit of linkblogging, a pre-Saturday mini YNN report, if you will.
 

Yesterday we had some breaking news from Right/Stuf Nozomi. From their press release:

RightStuf/Nozomi Entertainment Streams Maria Watches Over Us  Season 1 at http://www.YouTube.com/NozomiEnt

They also present Q&A with creator Oyuki Konno at http://www.mariasama.rightstuf.com

Also, from the world of Maria-sama ga Miteru, here’s a whip with which to flagellate ourselves: Those folks who are seeing the Maria-sama ga Miteru Movie in Japan will receive a pile of commemorative items, including a clearfile and a “Secret Episode” book! I’ve already checked the flight costs and man, if it weren’t highway robbery, I’d so be there to see the movie. Thanks to Komatsu-san for the tip on this.

Appropo to nothing, here is a incendiary post by David Welsh, in which he calls out those folks culpable in the lack of critical respect given to Moto Hagio and other female writers (including the crime committed by A Drunken Dream and Other Stories‘ own publisher of saying “this isn’t like other shoujo manga – it’s not crappy.”) I contributed a confrontational comment and am waiting to be called sexist for it. 
 





Hayate x Blade Manga, Volume 12

September 7th, 2010

Today’s review is going to be shorter than it really should be, but I find words fail me.

It’s like, you remember that day when we all were fighting to get the star of some rogue graduate and there was, like, fighting everywhere and all the upperclassmen were like, “Swoosh!” and “Zam!” and everyone was running around and taking on  the Student *freaking* Council (!) and sometimes they even won and then there were those people who always hang around with that Kurogane kids and they were like fighting like, “Damn!” and they were running and running and the Chairwoman of the school was riding around on a big freaking white horse in armor and was all “THOSE WHO FIGHT WITH ALL THEIR HEART SHINE BRIGHTEST” and there was that avalanche which wiped out nearly everyone and that ninja girl was swinging from tree to tree and Mudo and Kurogane were trying to kill each other and it was all BAM!! and Pow!!! and in the end it was ***** who won the whole thing!

Yeah, it was totally like that.

Ratings:

Hayate x Blade, Volume 12 (はやて×ブレード), which is now available only for JP Kindle, is the most perfect storm of slapstick comedy, intellectual comedy, action and “WTF was THAT?” I’ve pretty much ever seen.





Shoujo Manga MagazineYuri Watch: Maria-sama ga Miteru

September 5th, 2010

Calling The Margaret (ザ マーガレット)”shoujo” is not correct, I know. I’m just too lazy to come up with another title for this series of “I’m reading magazines for teen and tween girls that have Yuri stories.” Technically, The Margaret is actually josei, as it’s marketed to older teen girls, but since Sean and I are the only ones who care, I won’t belabor the point.(Wait,. yes I will – here’s a fool-proof method to know if a magazine is shoujo or not – does it come with awesome giveaways of bags and jewelry and stationary and stuff? If  you said, “Yes!” – it’s shoujo. If the answer is, “uh, no, all there is is an insert of a mini comic,” it’s josei. Got it? good.)

The real point of today’s review is not to talk about The Margaret, but the newly re-started serialization of the Maria-sama Ga Miteru manga which had ceased publication after Volume 8. The original serialization ended with the graduation of Youko, Sei and Eriko.

The story picks up in what will become Volume 9, in the new term. Yumi, Yoshino and Shimako are all second-years. Sachiko, Rei and Shimako are now the Rosas…and there’s something up with Shimako. She’s been “strange” recently, they all notice. And they have to assume that it is at least in part because of the first-year she’s been hanging around with, Nijou Noriko.

The first thing, Sachiko and Rei decide, is that Shimako needs to cough up her one last secret, because it’s bothering her. And so they concoct an annoying plan to “out” Shimako as the daughter of a Buddhist Priest.

The plan they create is still ham-handed after all this time. But I’m reminded of something as I read it. A “year” later in story time, Shimako will be sitting with Yumi and Yoshino, cheerfully telling her friends the very, very last piece of her incredibly complicated family situation. She’ll be smiling and laughing – and enjoying the carpish gaping of the other two as she spills the beans. So heavy-handed, yes, and obnoxious, yes, but now looking back, I think Rei and Sachiko may have been *right.*

The manga shifts from Noriko’s point of view right to Yumi’s and we get to relive the whole irritating thing over again, this time knowing full well that Yumi, at least, thought they were sandblasting a cracker.

Also in The Margaret magazine is “Bushido Sixteen,” a girls’ kendo sports drama, which has all the requisite sweat and tears and guts and rivalries and good stuff. And there’s way less non-con than there was the last time I picked up an issue. So, while not as Yuri-fied as Nobara no Mori no Otome-tachi – which has gotten very Yuri indeed, there in Nakayoshi – The Margaret has some lovely platonic romance and rivalry between girls. All good.

Overall – 9

I think that’s it for girls’s manga and Yuri. For now. Here’s hoping that there’s more on the horizon. For one thing, the girl’s magazines have the best furoku!





Maria-sama ga Miteru Drama CD: Parasol wo Sashite

September 3rd, 2010

The good news is that, phew, that’s behind us now. No more Rainy Blue ever again…until the manga catches up. D’oh!

Well, for the moment, we can wallow in the comfort of the 14th Drama CD of the Maria-sama ga Miteru series, Parasol wo Sashite, in which Yumi gets back both her favorite umbrella and her beloved onee-sama.

This Drama CD is a 2-disk set, each disk has about 45-60 minutes of material.

The first disk has the half of the book in which Yumi meets Katou Kei and her older relative, the entirely adorable Yumiko. The second has the appearance of Youko and the revelation of what Sachiko has been going through for the past few months.

Two scenes in this story were critical to my understanding of the characters. When Touko snaps at Yumi outside the cafeteria, it occurred to me that, at that point, Touko has no idea that Yumi does not know what’s up with Sachiko. So, to see Yumi having fun with classmates is upsetting. Of course, yes, Touko’s a absolute jerk about it, which adds to the drama of the scene. But in the second half of the book, Touko knows that Yumi doesn’t know, which is probably one of the very first bricks in the wall she builds between Yumi and herself.

The second scene that really blew me away, was the scene with Kei’s older relative, Yumiko. Kei imagines her to be a taciturn old lady and Touko later points out that she was clearly used to frowning alot. But something about Yumi’s unexpected kindness opens up Yumiko in a way that I think she could never have expected. Yumiko tells Yumi something so important that I missed it the first 30 times I read/watched/read/listened to this scene. She says, simply, that if Yumi loves her onee-sama, she should tell her. Verbalizing this changes Yumi’s whole perspective…and Yumiko’s own life.

Of course it was nice to encounter Sei and Youko again, and “meet” Kei.

And the whole bit at the end that had gotten cut out of the anime, about Youko being too competent to forget an umbrella, then not having one, proving that she was totally discombobulated and Sachiko’s mother obsessing over convenience store food were told in full, to my immense pleasure.

The second disk also includes a bonus track, in which the actresses point out that it had been almost a year since they recorded Rainy Blue and how they were all kinda tense about that not being resolved.(Most of them have now read the novels, something I find fascinating.) But the thing that makes the bonus track priceless is right in the very beginning, when they are all talking about how emotional this CD is and Itou Miki says that saying “I love you Yumi,” was really emotional for her. When Itou-san says the words, “I love you, Yumi,” Ueda Kana immediately replies, “I love you too, Onee-sama!” And I, and the entire cast of Maria-sama ga Miteru screamed of “Ow! That hurt!” as our hearts exploded from the cuteness. (^_^) Toyoguchi Megumi says something like, “Aw, c’mon, I don’t want to see that!”

So, although it took a really long time to get…Parasol wo Sashite was totally worth it.

Ratings:

Overall – 9.5

Now that I think about it, this novel had *three* adorable adult characters – Sachiko’s mom Sayako, Kei’s relative Yumiko and “Miffy-chan,” the middle-school teacher who returned Yumi’s umbrella.