Archive for the Series Category


Cutey Honey a GoGo Manga, Perfect Volume (Japanese)

November 14th, 2007

I hereby nominate Go Nagai as a candidate for having his head put into one of those head tubs from Futurama. I don’t think we can afford to lose this kind of genius.

In April of this year I found and fell in love with Cutey Honey a Gogo. My biggest complaint was the volume ended abruptly, right in the middle of the story. And no Volume 2 ever appeared. It was criminal, when you consider how awesome CHaGG was. Then, one innocent day, Amazon Japan emailed me with one of its automated suggestions and lo and behold! It was for Cutey Honey a Gogo, Perfect Edition. Oh, how I rejoiced.

It is perfect (and totally not coincidental) timing for this volume’s release, as a new Cutey Honey Live-Action TV series is running even as we speak. Review will be forthcoming…of course.

Historically, Cutey Honey is rather important to us, the Yuri audience, and especially those of use who are female. Honey was the first, ever, magical heroine who succeeded all on her own, without a man in her life. It’s true that the Hayami family existed in the anime (Seiji, his kid brother and repulsive grandfather,) but they were there to primarily serve as victims, hindrances, perverts and other forms of comedic relief. Honey didn’t need them – in fact, she probably would have done a lot better if they had gotten out of her way. The fact that there has been some light to moderate lesbianism in pretty much every version (excepting Seed, which really isn’t about Honey at all) just keeps it on the list of series we should keep an eye on.

Cutey Honey a GoGo originally came out about the same time as the Live Action movie and Re Cutie Honey. And like those two, it was pretty great. Honey in these versions was much more like the original Honey; smart, fun-loving and mischievous. She’s also self-reliant and strong, with a clear emotional bond with Aki Natsuko.

In the original manga Na-chan was Honey’s classmate, another student at St. Chapel Jogakuen. In all three of the 2004 versions, Na-chan was a police detective. MAJOR powerup for Na-chan. I approve. She’s awesome as the tough-as-nails cop. Much better than as Honey’s beloved, but ineffectual, school friend.

So this perfect volume includes CHaGG Volume 1 and the never-before printed Volume 2. (For which artist Itoh Shimpei apologizes in the back, but I have no doubt that it is not his fault.)

Volume 2 picks up the story after Honey has been staying with Na-chan for some time. Na-chan is not falling for Honey, or anything, but as Seiji picks on her about it, Na-chan just says, “all the flowers are blooming.” When she had lived alone, she had tried to take care of all sorts of plants, but no matter what she did, they just died. As soon as Honey arrived, the flowers all blossomed. I (and Seiji) think that’s an apt metaphor for Chief Aki Natsuko’s life as well. ^_^

The plot picks up with more Panther Claw baddies doing the usual bad stuff and Honey doing the usual to stop them, with Na-chan bringing up the rear carrying the heavy artillery.

But they learn that bizarre things are occurring at – can you guess? – St. Chapel Jogakuen! So Na-chan signs up as a teacher and Honey as a student and they head off to this mysterious and strict private girl’s school.

They are met by the obviously sadistic Miharu-sensei, who was not a Panther Claw operative as I suspected, but another nod backwards to Honey’s history and the odious Histler. And here’s where the story gets wacky. ^_^

Honey’s roommate, Ayumu, is a nice kid. But Miharu-sensei, when she can’t catch Honey during her nightly transgressions, and frustrated with her inability to punish Na-chan who drives her nuts, targets Ayumu. Honey appears to be stalked by a dark, large and very gloomy upperclassman, who ultimately (I’m skipping a lot here) turns out to be in love with Ayumu. She blames Honey for Ayumu’s troubles, and attacks her, but when the Panther Claw attacks the school and lots of random, unnecessary and unpleasant deaths occur, she backs off and let’s Honey stop Spider Claw. The horrible deaths are yet again a nod back to the original work in which *everyone* died. Horribly.

At the end of this volume, Sister Jill-sama names four new top Claws – Black, Gold, Cobalt, and Scarlet and if you watched Re CH or the live action movie, you’ll be familiar with the names. At the end of the book, Na-chan vows to protect Honey (not the first time she has done this, and we all know where that leads) and Honey vows to fight to the bitter end to stop Sister Jill.

Bar none, this is my *favorite* version of Honey. I can only hope and pray and the manga gods are smiling favorably upon this lone fan and wait to see if we ever get more. It worked once, I’m not going to stop now. ^_^

Ratings:

Art – 7
Story – 8
Characters – 9
Yuri – 5
Service – 7

Overall – 8

How much do you think it would cost me to pay Nagai and Itoh to continue this series for me? ^_^





My Zhime (Mai Otome) Anime, Volume 2 (English)

November 11th, 2007

My Otome, Volume 2 is as close to a pile of service with a plot attached as is just about possible. In fact, if you only care about the story, you could easily skip the first three episodes of the volume and lose nothing at all.

Once again, my thanks to Ted for his generosity and sponsorship of this review!

The volume starts off with a slightly different spin on the typical “bullying the newcomer” plot complication. Someone has stolen Arika’s uniform and sold it to that bastion of fan perversion, Backstage. After lots of chasing and stuff, Irina comes up with a clever, plausible and all-together incorrect explanation for the missing uniform. This is followed by a “mysterious” sponsor who offers to pay Arika school expenses, as long as she keeps her grades up and writes regularly. I honestly can’t imagine anyone watching this series have the slightest doubt at all who the sponsor is. It’s one of the least mysterious mysteries ever.

Next up, a clever (this is me rolling my eyes) reason for a tentacle monster to appear in the pool, thus giving the writers a chance to use tentacles, bathing suits, bouncing breasts and Yuri in one fetish- and stupidity-filled episode. I’m torn between imagining that the writers hate themselves or their audience more. Can’t quite decide.

In the last episode the plot makes a cameo appearance. We learn that there’s a big church organ in the basement of the castle, that Arika and Mashiro and Nina all seem to know different bits of the same song (was that ever explained? I can’t recall if it was….) and in a surprise move, Arika and Mashiro against all rules, including those of common sense, become bonded as Master and Otome. The ancient Harmonium sounds, surprising everyone on the planet and foretelling some serious shit that is about to happen.

The extra has, wait for it, *more* slimy service. Juliet/Nao gets the girls to wear ridiculous lingerie and crawl all over one another and films it for a quick buck online, one assumes. I like that she has no morals and isn’t burdened by any personal sense of right and wrong. I could even take the random – here, wear this underwear. But the filming. Makes me want to take that knife and hot tar out of the closet and start doing a little service of my own.

Yuri in this volume is primarily Erstin’s feelings for Mopey Nina. I wish that that had been given some depth, but basically it will remain a gag plot complication. However, I still feel that Nina’s reaction to Erstin’s bizarre assumption that Nina was feeling her up in the pool was the single best thing she did in the entire series. Coulda killed her right after that and it would have been fine with me.

Art – 7
Characters – 6
Story – 6
Music – 7
Yuri – 2
Service – 7

Overall – 6

This is probably the low point for the series for me. It felt like they were wasting my time, when they could have been telling a story.





Aqua Manga, Volume 1 (English)

November 8th, 2007

Before I launch into today’s review, I have another news item of interest that I want to add to yesterday’s news.

English manga guru and editor of Manga: The Complete Guide, Jason Thompson, has named Yuri Monogatari 5 one of the hottest translated mangaof the autumn. Thanks Jason! We think so too.

Okay, so on to today’s review!

Aqua was the predecessor to Aria and is pretty much exactly the same, only a little less refined. This volume is the first of the “new” Aria volumes by Tokyopop. I can’t say I was hugely impressed. I admit to having some actual expectations of quality for this volume, so when I got it, I was disappointed. See – there’s that thing about expectations, again. Not having them makes everything so much easier.

The story of Aqua Volume 1, is delightful, whimsical and fluffy – exactly what one expects from another sojourn on the planet Aqua and the in city of Neo-Venezia, specifically. Volume 1 follows the ironically named Mizunashi Akari as she travels to Aqua to take up a position as a gondolier-in-training at Aria Company, and her adventures once she gets there. For a previous look at the story, here is my review of Aqua in Japanese.

Yuri is confined to Aika’s raging case of akogare. As this is the beginning of the story, her case is a bit more persistent and crushy than it will later become. If you were to read this first, you could easily be half-convinced that Aika’s pretty far gone. It’s a cute, classic “schoolgirl crush”-type crush. ^_^

For the story and characters – I agree with most other reviewers, Aqua is great. But technically…

Aside from the not very attractive new logo for Aqua, the cover of this volume is also burdened by the cover art used for the second release in Japan – a picture I really just don’t like. The first cover was ever so much more attractive. I know it’s just me being old and grumpy – but the picture makes me feel like my eyes won’t focus right.

The reproduction of the color pages in black and white is simply *bad*. Very, very bad. And the reproduction quality for the entire volume fades in and out without rhyme or reason. Maybe it was a printer error, maybe it was something else, but it irked me. Alot. I’ve had similar problems putting together the Yuri Monogatari series, but I’m working with multiple artists and systems, and varying levels of understanding about DPI and format. Tokyopop wasn’t. So what was the deal?

My only other complaint is just me being a total asshole. ^_^ (Hey, why should today be any different?) The preview at the back of the book, which is titled Aqua, Volume 2, is inexplicably actually a preview for Aria, Volume 1. I guess the editor hadn’t read the manga and wasn’t familiar with the actual story. But I was kind of surprised that that wasn’t caught.

Now, the thing that Tokyopop was trumpeting about the new acquisition and the eventual release of their own editions of Aria 1-3, was the new and improved translation. I had no problem with the original ADV translation, but that’s probably because I wasn’t paying attention. I read those first volumes in English once – a million years ago it feels like – and haven’t looked at them again.

I will give TP total props for leaving in all the honorifics. That was great. It was so great that I never even noticed that they were there, because I was just reading the story, not squicking at “Miss Alicia” and the like. So total thumbs up for that, TP. In asshole mode once more, I didn’t much like the font they chose for the words – and you know, I’m not sure I ever really felt that strongly about a font before. There was just something about this one. My last completely absurd LFG complaint is that, while I understand completely that they had to change some things to differentiate from the ADV translation, changing “embarrassing lines are prohibited” to whatever it was that they used just to make sure it was different, felt forced and awkward. AND they were changing the meaning of the words, which is unforgivable. Use “embarrassing lines are forbidden!” or something, if you must. But again, that’s me doing that LFG thing where if it’s not exactly the way we want it, we fans lay on the ground and kick and scream until we get a lollipop. ^_^

Objectively, if one had no expectations, Tokyopop did a fine job, with the exception of the rendering of the color pages. Those were just…bad. As an adaptation from the Japanese, linguistically is volume is good, but technically not so much.

Ratings:

Art – 6
Characters – 7
Story – 7
Yuri – 2
Service – 1

Translation – 8
Reproduction – 4

Overall – 6

For my part, I’m probably going to give this volume to the library and stick with the original Japanese volumes when I want to spend some time with Akari and the crew.





Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS Manga, Volume 1

November 5th, 2007

Perhaps it was a bit of a shock to some to watch the first episode of Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS only to learn that their favorite lolicon fodder were now adults. Ten years had magically passed in the real-world year or so between the second season and the third. During those ten years, Nanoha had grown up not only to become the incredibly powerful mage we all knew she would be but also, along with Hayate and Fate, had moved rather quickly up the ranks of the Time Space Administration Bureau.

What happened in those ten years? A lot, obviously, duh. A few key items were mentioned during the StrikerS anime. Things like, Hayate and her knights’ punishment for the crimes they committed during the Book of Darkness episode, or Fate and Naoha both having serious self-preservation issues when they completely release their limiters and, of course, the infamous moment when Nanoha was severely injured. Also Fate suddenly developing an adoptive brother she takes care of and adopting a daughter of her own came as a bit of a surprise, I have to say. Most 19-year olds are still working out car payments. But there were Erio and Caro, and so we accepted them. Now that I think about it – we were told quite a lot about those ten years.

But let’s face it, there’s a lot more that must have happened. What Fate wore for her sixtenth birthday party, for instance? Fanboys want to know! And they want to see Nanoha and Hayate and the Knights in maid uniforms serving her cake!

Sorry, sorry, I have trouble taking the fandom of Nanoha seriously. But that’s okay – they take themselves WAY seriously enough that they don’t need me.

Some of the events that lead up to StrikerS are detailed in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS The Comics, Volume 1. This volume includes the transitional A’s to StrikerS chapters. Nanoha, Fate and Hayate have moved up the TSAB chain of command and are looking to develop a new team. This first volume is an early look at the new characters that will inhabit the StrikerS universe: Subaru, Teana, Erio and Caro.

Because the manga focuses on the new characters, with mostly expository discussion between the older ones, Fate gets a few moments here and there fussing over Nanoha, but not much more. Much like the anime – if you took out the big pluffy bed – there’s plenty of plausible deniability. OTOH, you can also easily look at them and see a well-established couple. The lack of PDAs is pretty normal for couples no longer attached at the hip. And the affection between them is obvious.

Erio and Caro are both so nice and cute and earnest that they bore me a bit. Everyone in the Nanoha world seems to come with a tragic backstory, and theirs were, yes, tragic. It’s believable that Fate would be moved to take care of them both. They are introduced a little in this volume. But most of our time is spent with Subaru and Teana.

We establish early on that they are suited to work with each other and that Subaru drives Teana crazy but she can’t get her out of her mind, which sets up Teana as the ever-popular passive-agressive tsundere. Whee. Teana’s redeeming factor is her genuine desire to excel, her competence, and her ability to think creatively. She has some serious leadership potential, as well. Subaru is the kind of character that in any other series would excel on guts alone, but we know that she’ll be practicing until she drops, too.

The level of fanservice for both Subaru and Teana is high, assumably because at 19, Fate, Hayate and Nanoha are too old for the average fanboy. It also gives us the opportunity to see them set up in a variety of completely non-lesbian Yuri situations; since Teana’s obssessive and they touch, that’s enough for most fans to consider it a done deal. I have no opinion either way. If it’s important to you to see them as a couple, go for it. I weigh in on the “not really” side. In fact, if you pressed me hard, I’d tell you that, at the end of StrikerS all of the characters look married to their careers more than anything else.

The story, as I mentioned, has lots of exposition, setting up the development of Section Six and following the future forwards initial training. The next volume will begin StrikerS proper.

I hadn’t ever been moved to follow the Nanoha series’ manga. Now that I’m getting more adult women in uniform, it somehow became far more interesting to me. Amazing, isn’t it? (I also learned that my brain goes absolutely white-noise at three or more panels of military terminology. Like, you can *hear* the flatline, “beeeeeeeeeeep.”) I do enjoy the 4-panels that go along with the manga, that put a lighter spin on, particularly, Nanoha. We spend a little more time that I’d like with Rein. There’s only so much “awww” I have in me every day and my wife takes up most of that in the morning before I go to work. ^_^

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 7 (there really wasn’t one, yet, but the exposition was fine.)
Characters – 9 (I would like to have more Signum and Shamal, please….)
Yuri – 1
Service – 4

Overall – 7

If you are a Nanoha completist, obsessive and/or fanatic, you absolutely need this manga. If you liked StrikerS alot, you would do well to take a look at this. I enjoyed it. But then, the greatest strength of Nanoha has always been the characters, and this gives them some extra depth and breadth. So there you go.





Yuri Anime: My HiME, Volume 7 (English)

November 2nd, 2007

Nothing like finally wrapping up a review of a series I first reviewed 2 years ago. Such a sense of accomplishment, I tell ya. Thanks to Ted for not only making this review possible, but for the nifty gift box, as well! (Daniel, Ted’s ahead of you now – quick buy me more stuff to catch up! LOL) Here’s a link to the nifty box version, if you, dear reader, decide that you want one too. The picture is linked to the DVD-only version. And btw, Bandai – I think the nifty box for the last DVD makes a lot more sense than for the first.

I watched this DVD on the plane. I figured that after sitting through an episode of Baccano my rowmates would be thrilled to have something so tame. lol It kind of had all the bells and whistles people who are not anime fans expect from anime – gratuitous service, bloodless violence, colorful battle scenes and lots and lots of tears.

Yes, this volume covers the final, dramatic battles between the HiME, the Obsidian Prince revealing another absurd plot to create a new world, and all the other stuff we were supposed to care about. But since we really only cared about Natsuki and Shizuru, I’ll jump to that.

I’m not a ShizNat fan, but I really think Natsuki stepped up here. It was the right thing to do and the right way to do it. I’m never going to be happy at Shizuru’s behavior, as logical as it wasn’t. Crazy people are crazy, so her “Since I think you’re rejecting me, I’ll just have to kill you” scans pretty much as what one would expect. But, bleah. I did like the Kiyohime reference with the bell. That was a nice touch. One of the few in this volume. Also, I note that the translaton made Natsuki come down on the Yuri side of the equation, which was different than how I heard it originally – more on the, thanks, I’m happy you felt that way, but I can’t love you that way. I’m fine with this version of it.

In episodes 24 and 25, most of the characters undergo some serious self-reflection. That part was very good. And much of the rest was just typical fighting anime blah blah blah. I was extremely disappointed that, when Reito tells Mai that she won’t be able to call her Child anymore, she didn’t say that she could because the most important person to her now was herself. That *had* been where all the stuff that came before was leading, it was what Takumi said to her and Tate, and it seemed like a REALLY big ball to drop.

I found the “HiME sentai” team unforgivable for three reasons:

1) They were pointless. At least in Otome, they did a thing. In this, they basically rush off to land and watch Mai cry.

2) The loss of an incredible opportunity for Shizuru to restablish her sanity and apologize deeply to everyone for the horror she put them through. Instead the cute face and false apology made me want to scream.

3) Natsuki called them a sentai team. Right.

The MOST pointless thing was the final scene between Mai and Mikoto, where Mai is emotionally brutalized for no good fucking reason whatsoever. I was so livid at that, that I had a hard time not putting my fist through the computer screen.

And the final thing that was simply unforgivable throughout were the eyebrows. WTH was going on with their eyebrows? They were horrible.

The epilogue begins off okay, but quickly devolves to the reset that so bugged me and most of my friends. So much character development had occurred in 24 and 25, that to sort of ignore all that and move right back to the same people behaving the same reeked of pathological denial.

The final moments of the series were sweet, as Mai, Mikoto and Natsuki – all smiling – run off to do something fun for a change and a girl from the middle school walks by with a clueless look. We’ll get to see a lot more of that clueless look in Otome since the girl is Arika. And the epilogue was as disturbing in places as it was cute in others. I thought Haruka and Yukino’s moment was great, and I was particularly fond of Akira slicing the apple at Takumi’s bedside. Miyu and Nao as nuns was just cosplay to set up a gag.

The extras were re-visits with the three stars of the series, Natsuki, Mai and Mikoto, with bump-up in the Yuri for Natsuki, and nice self-recognition for Mai and Mikoto. All about love. No other extras, except for the nifty box.

Ratings:

Art – 7, except for those eyebrows
Story – 7, with points off for all those balls on the floor so 5
Characters – 7, with points off for the step back at reset, 6
Yuri – 6
Service – 6 (My seatmate on the left looked up just as naked Natsuki appeared on screen. She laughed. The guy on my right was as turned far in his seat away from me as physically possible. lol)

Overall – 7, but honestly, it was rife with lost opportunity

I think, if I had to pick one thing I really liked about this final volume, it would be the fights between Childs. They were shiny and colorful.

Oh, and by the way – Daniel, I’m only joking!