Archive for the Series Category


My Zhime (My Otome) Anime, Volume 4 (English)

July 10th, 2008

Welcome to Volume 4 of My Otome, the straightest volume of this otherwise quite gay series. (Don’t worry, it gets gay again later.)

Before I forget (which I am often wont to do,) thanks go out to Eric P. for his kindness in sponsoring today’s review!

So, in Volume 4, we spend most of the volume following Arika, who is suffering from a nasty (and I mean that both ways) case of lovesick. In other scenes, the Federation begins to crack and several of the countries start to gear up for war. The worst possible thing occurs and two Meisters are ordered to fight.

Also in this volume we finally see that Tomoe has been the viper in the nest all along, as she sets Arika up to be attacked and throws Miya under the bus for it. We also get the first, brief, glimpse of her evil gayness, but it’s only a hint at the moment.

Speaking of gay, Shizuru leaves and we don’t get a tearful scene between her and Natsuki, just a quiet moment of regret which speaks volumes about the trust and intimacy between the two of them, but is just not gay enough to make us happy.

And, just as Mashiro is unveiling her new castle on graduation day at Garderobe, the entire story is turned on its head and war breaks out. Windbloom is invaded.

As usual, we’re really not paying attention to that plot stuff. We’re watching things like Nina’s obsession with hot sauce, Erstin’s snuggle deficiency, and Akane and Kazu’s deep abiding love for one another that practically brings their countries to the brink of conflict – off scene, because no one cares about their countries anyway. However, their story, with its fabulous Graduate-style climax continues in the most amusing extra to date, in which the two lovebirds are interruptus pre-coitus, to preserve both Kazu’s country and Akane’s Meister-dom. I couldn’t stop laughing when I noticed that the motel sign read:

Villa Motel

In Room Coffee
Cable-HQQ-Phone

*Someone’s* been driving the roads of America. ^_^

Ratings:

Art – 7
Characters – 7
Story – 8
Yuri – 1
Service – 4

Overall – 7

If, for some reason, you *are* following the plot, this is an excellent volume.





Yuri Anime: Kaleido Star, Volume 3 (English)

July 7th, 2008

Yuri fans hit paydirt with Volume 3 of Kaleido Star, in which Layla suddenly comes to the conclusion that Sora is her important partner. (Finally!) And we get to spend moments here and there noticing that Anna is acutally quite hunky and cool and that Mia is besotted, although more of that will come later. lol

We start the volume with a little time wallowing in Anna’s backstory, then we spend not nearly enough time as Layla and Sora bond over their “Amazingly Hot New Production” (the amusing title of the episode) – in which they star as pirates fighting in a storm, while the ship/swing bursts into flame below them. Seriously, if you do not want to see *that* you are clearly beyond help.

To cap off the volume, we get a painful episode where we learn that Carlos is in love with Sara, even though he treats her like crap (ah, beautiful Japanese-style heterosexual love.)

Nothing against the straights, but, I’m sticking with Sora and Layla fighting with swords on a swinging, burning pirate ship. Are you with me? Yar!

Rating:

Art – 8
Story – 8
Characters – 8
Yuri – 2
Service (oh yes, less Fool for a change, too) – 3

Overall – 8

This volume is one of those moments where you remember why you’re watching this stuff in the first place. ^_^ And it’s all due to the kindness and generosity of Ted the Awesome that I was once again able to wallow in the Yuri goodness that is Layla and Sora. Ted, you are indeed Awesome. ^_^





Yuri News This Week – July 5, 2008

July 5th, 2008

This news report is 100% complete as of the time I typed it, but there are still plenty of Industry panels to come at Anime Expo, so expect more updates later on.

Yuri Anime

A second Ichigo Mashimaro OVA has been announced, so members of the “Cult of Miu” rejoice! (And look – I made us a badge. lol It’s crappy. I don’t care and I don’t see you making one, so shush, you.)

Funimation announced that they have picked up distribution rights for many Geneon and ADV anime properties including Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, Murder Princess, and Kyoshiro to Towa no Sora, which was licensed (and already suspended) by ADV as Shattered Angels. Kyoshiro first volume was technically released and Volume 2 suspended, but I haven’t actually seen Volume 1 anywhere, so basically, we’re waiting for it from the beginning.

Nozomi/Right Stuf announced Gakuen Alice at their Expo Panel last night.

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Yuri Manga

Big news this week is that Kodansha is launching a Kodansha US office to release manga on their own. While everyone else is musing over how this will effect their Del Rey and other licenses, I have a completely different take on it. I think that Kodansha is about to run into the the uncomfortable truth that is the reality of the manga market here in the US. From various dealings in the industry, I think that a lot of the Japanese companies are under the impression that they can *sell* a lot more manga than they actually can. Here’s why.

In Japan, manga and anime are easily accessible by a large portion of the population on a weekly/monthly basis. Along with free TV release and weekly cheap manga mags, they are bombarded by a never-ending stream of advertising for product. When the tankoubon, the collections, come out, there is little advertising in them, because the stream of distribution *ends* at the tankoubon. In America, the distribution begins and ends at the tankoubon. There are very few anime that are easily accessible on free TV. Most of them are Shounen Jump titles, and not coincidentally, SJ is one of the few magazines that comes out regularly here. So those titles do really well in sales. But most of the other titles are printed, stuck on a shelf and have exactly zero advertising, promotion (other than licensing announcements) or recognition. Without an anime to beat the title into people’s heads, the actual number of people who will ever care about a non-anime title is going to remain low. And without weekly or monthly chapter of a manga to keep interest high, all you have is tankoboun on the shelves.

Here’s what I imagine happens. J Company thinks – we sell 30K tankoubon here of x title. If we assume a 2% audience in the US, we can assume 6000 books will sell. Which seems fair. Only…the amount they will actually sell might be 1500 – 2000. Because the American audience doesn’t have the constant stream of promotion and availability, so Joe Blow finds it easier – and cheaper – to grab a scan, or read a book in the bookstore. And another 25% of the potential audience has no clue about the title’s existence or availability at all.

I think that when Kodansha realizes that without a lot more advertising and a TV anime, their books really won’t do well no matter how popular they are, they will be surprised – and sad. In the meantime, let’s bombard them with letters asking for a translated version of Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou. We’ll only get two volumes before they pull it for lack of sales, but hey – that’s two volumes we didn’t have, right?

Which leads me to the next thing I wanted to mention – Seven Seas has put several of their Yuri series on hold, First Love Sisters among them. The stated reason is that sales were well below expectations and they didn’t break even. I could have told them that if they had asked. The Yuri audience is small, cheap and sales of 2000 are exceptional, not average or low. Personally, I can see Hayate x Blade failing in the exact same way because the ONLY promotion that title will get is me talking about it. Neither Seven Seas nor Tor is going to spend a cent telling people it exists, and it has no anime. Which is a damn shame, because it’s an awesome series which *could* be popular. But if your marketing plan is to print too many copies, send them anonymously to chain bookstores to disappear them among crowded, unlabeled shelves of manga…expect it to fail. You want people to buy it? You have to invest in promotion. Contests, ads, bookstore displays, more ads, ads in things other than your own books, like gaming magazines, and Giant Robot (an awesome Asian pop culture mag) and on websites. Did I mention promoting the effing hell out of it? Because otherwise, it’ll sell 1000 copies and once again you’ll wonder why. Jason, Adam – I mean you.

And as for you, Yuri audience. Buy the books, buy the anime. These companies spend $$$$ on *you*. Stop being a bunch of cheap bastards – and *still* complaining that there is no Yuri out there. Buy Yuri. From Infinity, from Seven Seas, from Tokyopop, from Yen Press, from Media Blasters, from ADV, from ALC Publishing. Stop complaining that there is none. There are many series at this point and you aren’t buying them. For god’s sake – stop whining and put your money where your whinging is. Please. Thank you.

(And if you *do* buy the anime and manga – thank you. Very, very much. Not just for myself, but for the artists and writers, directors, voice actors and publishers. Thank you.)

I found this news item to be kind of interesting in a “huh?” way – Aurora, the US imprint for Oozora Publishing, will be putting out a manga version of Hitohira. Since Aurora’s stuff is usually Ladies Comics and more adult stories, Hitohira seems an odd series for them. Guess we’ll see, huh?

And DMP has announced the license for the Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS manga. I reviewed the first volume a while back. It was fun. Not particularly Yuri, but fun.

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Other Yuri News

I’ve been very good about not talking about this, since I was told about it. lol

Nozomi/RightStuf is going to be launching the full Maria-sama ga Miteru website soon and when they do, it will include a submission form to *ask Konno Oyuki-sensei questions*! How cool is that? You’ll have a chance to ask her good questions like “Will we see Yumi as Rosa Chinensis?” and fandumb questions like “Will Sachiko and Yumi ever kiss?” and thank her for providing us with hours of entertainment. I am so going to be putting questions up for her.

bystrouka tells us that both Blue Drop and Mnemosyne will be shown at the Paris Japan Expo this weekend. This is tantalizing, because we haven’t heard any licensing for these titles, but what is being shown is supposedly already licensed. Interesting, huh? bystrouka promises to report back!

And Polish anime/manga portal Tanuki now sports a Polish-language interview with Erica Friedman, thanks to Grisznak! Some of the questions were the usual, but some were pretty funny, so in case you are not a Polish reader, here is a link to the English-language version.

***

That’s it so far for the weekend, but expect more as more industry panel feeds come in. Media Blasters has said they they are holding their big announcements for Otakon, so I’ll see if I can get a preview of those to see of there’s anything relevant to our interests. :-)





Yuri Manga: Gunjou, Chapter 7

June 27th, 2008

While everyone else in the mangaverse is talking about the July issue of Morning 2 magazine because of the wonderful new manga series by American artist Felipe Smith, *I* want to talk to you about Morning 2 because of the story that’s the main contender for best Yuri Manga of 2008, Gunjou.

This manga is so awesomely dysfunctional that it makes me want to dance around in joy every time I get a new chapter. :-D Chapter 7 was complete and total win. Here’s the quick background: A brunette, who is a straight, married woman – whom I refer to as BN – asks her close friend, a blonde lesbian (BL,) who is in love with her to murder her husband. BL does the murder, and BL and BN are now on the run from the police together. Before you read today’s review, go read my review of Chapter 6, so you can catch up on where we are.

BN is in her room, thinking miserably about how BL wishes she had killed her, rather than her husband. She is clearly missing BL, although she can’t admit that. There is a knock at the door. BN answers it to find BL telling her how lonely she is, and drawing her in for a kiss. They fall to the floor. BN apologizes, saying that she’s got her period, so BL says fine, we’ll do it in the bathroom.

They have raw, totally unsexy, yet completely sexy, sex. It’s nasty, emotionally and physically. It was awesome.

But never once does the emotional brutality these two inflict on one another let up. There is a fabulous scene where, after they had have sex, the blonde pulls out a towel and snaps it, then reaches out to put it around BN’s neck. She, not at all surprisingly, reacts like she’s about to be strangled. But, in one of those random moments of tenderness, BL just makes a big fluffy bow out of the towel. It was so incongruous and out of place, yet strangely fitting and sweet.

In the course of conversation, BN asks what BL looked like when she was killing her husband – what was the look on her face.

They go to bed and sleep a little, but BL gets up and pulls a razor out of BN’s handbag. BN wakes up and they decide to take a bath. BL comments on BN’s bruises. As BN replies, we see the bath from outside the curtain, and hear the scream.

In the final pages, we see the blood running down BN’s arm from the hand that stops the razor blade from cutting her throat. “You’re crying” she says. “Now you know,” BL says, “what I look like when I kill a person.”

Total wow. There is nothing like this manga – how I wish I could make you all read it. It is beyond wonderful. I mean, sure, its awful, but in a good way – “awe full” if you take my meaning.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 8
Characters – 9
Yuri – 8
Service – 3

Overall – 10

So, let other have their “Saint Oniisan” and “Peepo Choo” – I’m the number one fan of Gunjou, and proud of it! This is the perfect Evil Psycho Lesbian story. Best evar, IMHO.





Yuri Manga: Kannazuki no Miko, Volume 1 (English)

June 25th, 2008

Just for fun, you might want to compare my review of the Japanese edition of Kannazuki no Miko from three years ago to this one. I bet at least some things have changed.

Today’s review is brought to you by Ted the Awesome and the word amai. :-)

Amai is an interesting word. It means “sweet” and is used, as one would expect, about pastries and other sweet things. In the same way that we describe someone as “sweet,” in Japanese a “sweet girl” will be amai just like a pastry might be. But amai has other meanings in Japanese as well. Where we would say “you’re too soft on her” or “you spoil him,” the word amai might be used. And there’s amai as in “naive,” which you find used in fight scenes in which the hero is confident about his/her giant robot piloting skills and the bad guy screams “Amai!” as they launch an underhanded, treacherous attack which inevitably fails to win.

So amai is more than just “sweet” as we understand it in English. It implies a kind of naivete which, in a mild case is simply indulging (another person) too much, and in its extremity is a sort of dangerous cluelessness.

This is all to preface this next sentence: In the first volume of Kannazuki no Miko, Himeko is amai.

She is sweet in the conventional sense, and kind and good – but she’s also dangerously naive and dotes on the people around her, giving into their whims without question, to the detriment of their well-being – and her own. As a result, she is forced into the role of victim by both the people she trusts.

Why, one has to ask, if both Souma and Chikane love Himeko so much, do they allow her to be bullied, outcast and victimized instead of stepping up and claiming their friendship publicly? Setting aside for the moment the fact that Kaishaku’s writing skills are total ass, lol, let’s look at this objectively.

If either Chikane or Souma *had* stepped forward and said – get your hands off her, she’s my important friend, okay, maybe the talking behind her back and bullying might not have disappeared, it would have at least been notched down. If BOTH of them had said “Get your hands off my Betty!” the rest of the school would have backed off, and watched the drama play out with immense satisfaction and titillation. But neither does. Although both Souma and Chikane profess to love Himeko, they let her dangle, unprotected, on the edge of a precipice every day – only showing their “true” emotions when they are alone with her.

It seems particularly nasty behavior in the light of their professed desire to “protect” Himeko…when they are the reason she needs protecting in the first place, right?

Basically, both Souma and Chikane are fail. ^_^;

Souma’s fail is slightly more forgivable, because he’s the basic stuttering non-verbal manga boy. Chikane’s fail is quite literally epic, because she *knows* the whole story and isn’t giving Himeko a single piece of information. Ultimately she brutalizes her physically and emotionally, because in her warped view, it’s to “protect” Himeko from knowledge of the situation.

Himeko’s fail is that she is completely, totally amai. She allows the whims of others to take control of her life, she indulges them by not having an opinion of her own, she naively forgives even the basest behavior, and she never once takes an interest in the truth of what is going on. Not really.

The truth is that the the myth cycle the Orochi and the Priestesses are playing out, is quite thin. The story, really, revolves around the love triangle and Himeko’s victimization by herself and the people who profess to love her.

Tokyopop’s team did as good a job with the material as they could. It’s not a good story, nor is it well-drawn, but they made it make as much sense as possible. I applaud them for that. It’s not as easy as they made it look. The original was actually quite nonsensical. ^_^

Whether you like Kannazuki no Miko will depend on a lot of factors, but if you are the kind of person who goes by the equation zOMG Yuri!=Good!, you’ll probably like it lots.  ^_^

Ratings:

Art – 6
Story – 6
Characters – 6
Yuri – 8
Service – 8

Overall – 7

Of course, we’re all interested in finding out the fate of the second volume, which is slated for release in about a week or so. I expect that as it’s one of the licensed titles, it’ll see the light of day eventually, if not actually next week. Sadly, some members of the team who made soup out of this stone are no longer with the company, which is a genuine loss.