Archive for the Series Category


Yuri Network News – July 3, 2010

July 3rd, 2010

Yuri Anime

The top news this week just came in last night, with the Nozomi/RightStuf panel at AnimeExpo. RightStuf is going to be releasing the digitally remastered Shoujo Kakumei Utena (Revolutionary Girl Utena) in 2011. According to prelim press releases on Twitter from their panel, the release will be in three box sets. No news whether a remastered movie (with a soundtrack that isn’t squashed) is in the works, so don’t ask. Or, don’t ask me, anyway. Feel free to drive RightStuf crazy with your questions. In the meantime, if you know a young Yuri fan, an anime fan who has never had the pleasure of enjoying the surrealistic exercise that is Utena, or just want to fuck with someone’s brains, this will make a great opportunity to get ’em, but good.

Nozomi/RightStuf also announced the licensed for Sora no Woto, which seems to draw interest from Yuri quarters, regardless of whether it actually has any. :-)

Not to be outdone in “moe with very little, if any Yuri, but fans like to see it there, anyway” Bandai Entertainment also announced that it has licensed the K-On! anime. (Also from Twitter, but here’s the ANN report.

Funimation weighed in with a few licenses of their own. Intersecting our interests here are the resurrection of Haibane Renmei and Serial Experiments Lain and a new license of To Aru Kagaku No Railgun.

And, although this is really no more than rumor and there is nothing, no proof at all, except wishful thinking and an ambiguously worded ad in Nyantype, there are persistent rumors of a Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha Force anime. I usually don’t report rumors, but I’m kinda hoping this one is true. ^_^

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Yuri Manga

My sincere apologies, I complete forgot to mention this last week – Candy Boy is now out as a manga from MF Comics. So if you loved your time with these two sisters that love each other more than anything, please consider supporting the creators and purchasing the manga.

I am once more going to mention that Rakuen Le Paradis, Volume 3 is out now. Why am I mentioning it again? Because I only recently learned that among the many artists contributing that I like, Hayashiya Shizuru-sensei is among them. Exhibit A:

That puts this magazine in strong contention for my favorite manga magazine I read right now, as it has three of my top artists in it.

I typically read about 5 manga magazines regularly, with supplemental others as the mood or opportunity strikes. In fact, just for fun, here’s what I’m reading right now: Ultra Jump, Ikki, Yuri Hime, Yuri Hime S, Ribon, Rakuen Le Paradis, with Comic Blade and Dengeki Daioh as my whimsy takes me, Comic Ryuu and CompAce when I can find them.

I reviewed (and enjoyed) Volume 1, and now Volume 2 of Morita-san no Mukuchi is coming out. I bet Morita still doesn’t talk much.
:-)

While I’m pimping 4- koma manga with a little Yuri, Hinagiku Junshin Jogakuen, Volume 3 is also on the way.

Also soon to be hitting the shelves are Yuri Hime comics Shinigami Alice and Sakura Buntsu and Yuri Hime S Comic, HONEY CRUSH, Volume 2.

And if I’m reading this right, a number of the artists from Yuri Hime have gotten together some of their original Yuri doujinshi for a new Yuri Hime doujinshi, Yuri Hime Collection, Volume 1. Which is freaking genius on the part of Ichijinsha if that’s true and I didn’t just totally misunderstand the press release, which is also possible.

YNN correspondent Katherine H. wants to let you know that the second volume of CANAAN manga is up for pre-order, “bad art and all.”

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Drama CD News

The news has been sounded – Hayate x Blade Volume 13, which will be out in October, will be available in a deluxe format, with a Drama CD. I am so there.

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That’s a wrap 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.

Thanks to all of you – you make this a great Yuri Network!





Maria Watches Over Us Anime , Season 4 Disk 2 (English)

July 2nd, 2010

You know you think a story is good when you know perfectly well that everything will work out, and you *still* get tense watching it all crumble.

On Disk 2 of Maria Watches Over Us, Season 4, we’re in a carefully suspended moment before several things start to crumble.

And with some deft writing by Konno Oyuki-sensei, not only are we allowed to enjoy that precariously suspended moment, we’re given an opportunity to laugh until our stomachs hurt – even knowing that soon our stomachs will hurt for an entirely different reason.

I am, of course, talking about the Kendo shiai, and the introduction of Arima Nana. After the Souer Audition tea party, Yoshino has to fess up to her rash promise made to Eriko. And now the chips are down and she doesn’t have a soeur to introduce to her! So, Yoshino does what anyone might in that situation- she lies bravely and tries to make a run for it. :-)

But after the laughter, we’re set up for tears. The series turns – rather reluctantly, it feels like – to the issue of Touko and Yumi. Because there is *so* much between them and because so much of it cannot be expressed by either of them, those of you who hate Touko will see only what is on the surface and will continue to hate her. There’s nothing I can say to make you look beyond that. So – hate away, my friends, because it’s going to get worse before it gets better.

Here’s to clenching our fists and watching over them, until the logjam breaks. And break it will. But for now…we have to watch it all crumble before it can be built up again.

Art – 7
Characters – 10
Story – 10
Yuri – 2
Loser Marimite Fan – slightly more than a million, and climbing
Overall – 9

More Sei, Youko and Eriko. More, more!





Hayate x Blade Manga, Volume 6 (English)

June 28th, 2010

In most gag manga, the moments of seriousness are brief and are quickly broken up before they can build to anything threatening the general hilarity.

In dramatic manga, the moments of comedy are brief, breaking up the tension with a soft smile from time to time.

In most action manga, the emotions are brief, building up in a fireworks climax during a battle, driven by the need to win.

In most romantic manga, the action is brief, confined to bursts of energy in order to move the characters from one situation into another.

In Hayate x Blade, Volume 6, none of these are brief. We are sated on action, comedy, emotion and drama and by the end of the volume…we want more. Or, well, I want more!

First, there’s the climax of the A-Team’s nefarious plot to blackmail Hayate into leaving the school, culminating in a 80 vs 8 randori. Maid costumes, ladles, cheesy lines and Michi suddenly being awesome! And finally, the entire A-team slayed where they stand by the appearance of their belove Akira. In a maid costume.

Then, we start to get some insight into the relationship between Ayana and Yukari and even as we are told what we are told…we’re given some hints that nothing in this relationship is what it seems.

And finally, in the middle of a school festival that is full insanity, the Hoshitori bell rings and a very, very serious fight begins.

Speaking as a reader, this is one of my favorite volumes in any language. Artistically, Hayashiya-sensei’s art has really coalesced by now and you can practically feel the impact as sword hits sword.  As a copy editor, this volume was *brutal*. The editor and adapter had a lot of work to do – this is a volume full of really obscure references. But damn, what a volume!

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 9
Characters – 9
Yuri – 4 (Ayana x Yukari and Maki x Yukari for the win here)
Service – 4
Overall – 9

I can’t tell you at this point whether we’ll see a Volume 7, but I know that I, at least, hope and pray that we will. If there was ever a fight that we deserve to see the end of, it’s this one.





Maria Watches Over Us Anime, Season 4, Disk 1 (English)

June 25th, 2010

In Maria-sama ga Miteru, Season 4, it’s time for the Lillian school festival and once again, the Student Council, known as the Yamayurikai, is putting on a performance. This year, because of the unusual resemblance Fukuazawa Yumi has to her younger brother Yuuki, the play that is chosen is the Torikaebaya Monogatari, a play that deals the with two siblings who switch gender roles in the Heian court.

But Yumi is only half worried about the play, because it comes to her attention that Touko has had some trouble with the Drama Club. In typical Yumi fashion, she resolves the issues by being irresistibly sincere. And to top it all off, Yumi and Sachiko finally learn the truth of Kanako’s issues with her father. The story is both much, much more horrible and much, much less horrible than we could have imagined.

Yumi and Sachiko don’t celebrate their one-year anniversary, for perfectly good reasons, but I still think Sachiko ought to do *something* nice for Yumi.

And Sei and Youko make an appearance that reminded us of just how wonderful they are. I’m glad to have been able to read the novels to enjoy all of their future appearances. I also admit to having been fascinated with the way Youko’s blouse was drawn. There was a lot more attention to detail in the way that buttoned shirt lay against her than probably was warranted. :-)

At the end of the disk, Yumi, having been commanded by Sachiko to find a soeur and Yoshino, pressured by a rash promise made to Eriko, set out to hold an “audition” for the open positions. This is, possibly, the novel most chock-a-block filled with zOMG amazing plot points, that the anime couldn’t hope to do more than scrape the surface, but damn that surface is awfully busy. :-)

The one striking this about this 4th season to me was that there was no way you could start with the first disk of this season, and start to watch. Quite often with anime series that continue for a few seasons, the first episode summarizes what has gone before, at least enough for a relative newbie to sit down and watch it. Not so for this. If you had no idea who these people were or why they were doing the things they were doing, it would be a slightly befuddling story. And, of course, the real in-jokes would be lost. There would be no way to appreciate just *how* much Sachiko had changed when she proposes the double gender switch for the play if you did not know what kind of person she had been. As a staunch obsessive fan, it kind of felt good. This anime is not for the off-the-street, “who is this? what’s going on?” person. It’s for *us.* :-)

The DVD includes the “Maria-sama ni ha Naisho” and liner notes as extras. The physical extra for those pre-orderers among us is a fetching writing pad.

Art – 8 for Youko’s button-down shirt
Characters – 10
Story – 10
Yuri – 1
Loser Marimite Fan – slightly less than a million

Overall – 9

In this life that I have created that focuses so much around anime and manga, this series, Maria-sama ga Miteru, along with Sailor Moon, has profoundly affected my life. I really just want to say thank you to Nozomi/RightStuf for allowing me the pleasure of seeing this series in English.





Maria-sama ga Miteru Special CD, Volume 4

June 20th, 2010

The Maria-sama ga Miteru Special CD, Volume 4 begins with what was a most obvious and silly gag as Nabatome Hitomi introduces herself as Torii Eriko’s VA, followed by Itou Shizuka as Rei, Ikezawa Haruna as Yoshino and then Nabatome-san starts to introduce herself again as the voice actress for Arima Nana to complete the Yellow Rose family roster, but starts to laugh and completely blows the gag. ^_^

This was followed by….sweets! The crackling of plastic and the various “yum” noises will be familiar to anyone who has listened to any of the previous CDs. Also the random conversation about nothing much.

This is followed by the drama Frame of Mind, which really struck home just how *much* Tsutako and Shouko there is in and around the series. Because, we’re *still* not done with them. I keep saying we’ve got all the pieces, but we’re nowhere near the end. ^_^

Frame of Mind covers the mystery of a handful of film cartridges that Yumi received from a 1st-year that say “Takeshima Tsutako” in katakana on them and that Tsutako herself says are not hers. Yumi, Great Detective Yoshino and Tsutako investigate the mystery and find out the criminal was….! We learn that the 3rd-years of the Photography Club are not above hazing the new kid on the block, which will lead into another trick they play in a later story, on the new club president-elect. Man, that Photo Club is tough. ^_^ This story has the added attraction of Yumi’s realization that the Photography Club is not just made up of Tsutako and Shouko.

This drama is followed up by “Souer no Kizuna” where the entire Kibara Family is eerily in synch and they all laugh alot.

Ratings:

Overall – 9

Once more, a hour of fun and another drama to add to the ole mp3 player. When I get the whole series on there, no doubt it will break and I’ll have to start from scratch….. And can you believe that I am *still* not done with the pile of stuff I brought home from Japan three months ago? There’s still a pile of Light Novels and at least two CDs left. Phew.