Archive for the Series Category


Yuri Anime: Loveless, Volume 2

April 4th, 2007

I know, I know, I reviewed Volume 3 of this ages ago, and it’s practically ancient at this point. But I’m making a concerted effort to get through my too-tall “pile of anime I need to watch” and review everything.

First and foremost, today’s review is once again due to the kindness and generosity of the guys at Media Blasters. They gave me this about 7 months ago and I’m just getting to it…good lord.

Secondly, watching Loveless, Volume 2 today was a good reminder that stories make more sense if you watch them in *order*. ^_^

I originally reviewed the Yuri arc of Loveless at the end of 2005, but even then I hadn’t really watched any of the story previous to when Yamato and Kouya appeared. This time, I sat down and watched the episodes – I even paid attention and everything. ;-) And yes, I feel like I have a stronger grasp on the story now. I also can say that this volume is way stronger than Volume 3, Yamato and Kouya aside.

This volume includes a lot of angsting by the hero Ritsuka, a lot of masochistic enduring by his partner-although-they-won’t-admit-it-yet, Soubi, and some darn solid advice by Ritsuka’s therapist. Who lied about her age, IMHO. ^_^ But for our purposes, this volume also has the appearance of the second Zero pair – high school girls, and lovers, Yamato and Kouya.

When they appear, they instantly have a backstory, which is kind of interesting. We don’t get the backstory in this volume, but it’s very obvious that it is there. Unlike, say, the first Zero pair, who remain two-dimensional to the end. Kouya and Yamato also manifest actual intelligence as compared with the twits in the first Zero pair. So right off the bat, they come off looking like a formidable couple. We learn a bunch more in the next two episodes, but they are in Volume 3, so read that review for related gushing praise.

The one thing I wanted to note about this volume was entirely unrelated to anything Yuri at all. After he and Soubi defeat an earlier pair, Kin and Gin (Gold and Silver, for those that like stuff like that,) Ritsuka receives a “strange memo” that somehow relates to his brother’s death – the event that was the catalyst for everything in the series. I had to laugh, because I recognized what that “strange memo” was immediately as a result of my job. I don’t know what age the audience for Loveless is (I thought the magazine it ran in, Comic Rex was for adults, but I have no idea, really) but I guess the average manga/anime fan isn’t going to recognize a….well, I won’t spoil it. It’s not very exciting anyway. Beats me how it could help Ritsuka. I could look it up, if it were real. ^_^

One last note – I was amazed at the excellence of the voice acting cast. This anime got star treatment. And it shows. I’m almost tempted to take a look at the manga and find out what happens now.

Ratings:

Art – 7
Story – 8
Character – 8
Music – 5
Yuri – 8
Loser FanGirl – 20

Overall – 7

Either I’m in a significantly better mood today than when I reviewed Volume 3, or the quality drops off massively for the next volume. I have no clue which it is.





Live-action: Sukeban Deka Movie 1

April 2nd, 2007

Today’s review (and the letter “H”) is brought to you by the most magnificent munificence of Chet at Media Blasters, one of the greatest guys *ever.* And not just ’cause he gives me wacky movies…he’s just really great. ^_^

You may remember that back in February, I was pleased as punch to review the most recent Sukeban Deka live action movie. For today’s review, I will be backtracking some years in order to review the very first Sukeban Deka movie. About 20 years or so.

There was a TV series based on the manga Sukeban Deka which starred Saito Yuki as tough chick Asamiya Saki who was blackmailed by the police into functioning as an undercover agent for them. (Here is the review of the manga for that whole story.) After the first TV series ended, the name Asamiya Saki became a pseudonym that was given to two other girls in order to enable them to fight for justice, etc, etc.

This movie takes place after the second “Saki,” whose real name is Youko, has retired from the life of a sukeban deka, a delinquent cop. I am feeling mightily overworked this evening, so instead of telling you anything about the plot, I am going to throw you at the pretty darn comprehensive Sukeban Deka encyclopedia website. Here is a detailed synopsis for the first movie. As you can see from the picture at the top of the page, there’s a whole herd of sukeban deka by the time this movie got made. ^_^

There’s a couple of things to enjoy about this movie, other than the random violence and super psycho-with-a-fake-hand bad guy. One – every red shirt character dies in Saki’s arms, which I start finding pretty funny after then third or so death in a 80 minute movie. Second – the reunited sukeban group planning their strategy over dinner was a masterpiece. As Yukino serves up the dinner she has cooked from behind her frilly apron, she calmly discussed taking out guards at the island they are going to invade. It’s freakishly cute. If you turn off the sound, the girls all look like they are planning to get their hair done, but they are actually cheerfully discussing blowing the place up. ^_^ The super powered up yo-yo Saki gets from her handler that would destroy her arm if she used it too much was pretty awesome, as well. ;-)

I wouldn’t be reviewing it on Okazu, though, if there wasn’t at least *some* Yuri interest. At the beginning of the movie, Saki II has retired to a normal life of frilly pink sweaters and studying for the college examination. When she falls headlong into the mystery of evil Headmaster Hattori’s sadistic paramilitary island school, she immediately gathers up her comrades to face the conflict. One of them, Yukino, has left a message with Youko that she’s leaving Japan to go overseas. There’s a definite, immediate, tension there, as Youko contemplates her and Yukino’s choices. When Yukino does join them, the tension does not go away. There is a fraught scene between the two of them after the aforementioned dinner scene. If it had been a straight couple in a western movie, there is no doubt in my mind that a kiss would have been attempted, although it would have been aborted by Okyo’s appearance as, indeed, Yukino’s and Youko’s heavily charged moment was.

So, not Yuri sexxors or anything, but for an old school girl-gang live action movie…yeah.

The disk comes with an actual extra – the “making of” the movie, which was kind of cool. You get to see how insipid the actresses actually are and how silly the stunts and scenes are before they are all cut up and reattached. Defintely worth watching. For the price of the disk, you get plenty of entertainment.

Ratings:

Cinematography – Better than you think at first – 7
Story – 7
Characters – 8
Yuri – 4
Service – hard to judge, let’s call it – 4

Overall – 7

Think Enter the Dragon with a lower budget and schoolgirls and you’re not far off.^_^





Yuri Anime: Ninja Nonsense, Volume 1

April 1st, 2007

First off, today’s review is brought to you by Sergio Aviles, who sent me this as part of my holiday beg-a-thon. (And, once again, should *you* desire to sponsor a review, feel free to pick something from my Amazon Wishlist. It will be greatly appreciated and you will be thanked!)

It’s standard operating wackiness (S.O.W.) in Ninja Nonsense, Volume 1. As I commented in my original review of Ninin ga Shinobuden, the entire plot of this series can be summed up as “wackiness ensues.”

It all begins when high school student Shiranui Kaede is sitting around not studying for her finale exam when female ninja-in-training Shinobu enters her room, and her life. Shinobu is on a quest for schoolgirls’ underwear in order to pass her ninja exam. And that’s about the way the whole series goes. ^_^ Something normal (flower viewing) is complicated by something silly (monsoon) and then something inexplicable happens (crocodile eats Onsokomaru.)

The whole series is a parody of just about everything you can imagine, from the expected ninja tropes to pervy otaku behavior. Shinobu’s master, Onsokomaru, is a yellow sphere with major “Id” control issues, and her partners in training are a pleasant pack of pathetic ninjas who are all called Sasuke, for ease of identification.

Despite the constant threat of severe pervification, there’s really only a little bit of nudity, butt jokes and related potty humor in the series. Onsokomaru and the ninjas are representative of a 15-year old’s worldview. So the humor is crude. Very.

In the Yuri department we have Shinobu, who early on develops a raging crush on Kaede. In her own incompetent way she pursues Kaede – on the one hand, it won’t come to much, on the other, she gets further than most boys do in non-hentai anime, so…take your pick. ^_^ This is typical one-sided “comedy” yuri.

What makes this series worth watching is how darn silly it is. I was re-watching this volume with the above-mentioned Serge and his lovely wife, and we were all giggling like crazy. It’s S.O.W. but it’s *funny* S.O.W. With some Yuri, too.

Ratings:

Art – 7, but irrelevant, as it’s a goofball series
Story – 7 – ditto
Characters – 7
Yuri – 6
Service – 6

Overall – 7

As a ninja story, it fails utterly. As a series to take your brain off-line with, fine and dandy.





Maria-sama ga Miteru Manga, Volume 7

March 29th, 2007

I am usually quite happy to call Maria-sama ga Miteru a “Yuri” series, knowing full well that there is only one character who can really be called lesbian. But there’s just no way to call this particular volume “Yuri” without being an outright liar. LOL

Maria-sama ga Miteru, Volume 7 tells the incredibly straight story of Torii Eriko, Rosa Foetida’s mysterious dates with multiple men. Is it Enjou Kousai, as Yoshino suggests? Or is it love, as Mizuno Youko, Rosa Chinensis insists? Yumi isn’t sure and the thought weighs heavily on her.

Despite it’s unremittingly straight plot (joke, joke) this is an absolutely hysterical volume. Eriko’s flaky personality really works to highlight the slightly off-beat, just barely off-color humor here. And the manga, which typically changes the script here and there from the novels, does a superlative job of inflating the mystery, so that it becomes much more like Eriko is doing something questionable, if not downright immoral or illegal. If you haven’t seen the anime or read my notes on the relevant bits of the seventh novel, this volume, of all of the manga so far, holds up best as a stand-alone story.

I have not really cared for the manga art very much since the beginning and this volume is not changing my opinion for the better. I prefer the character designs from the anime and novels much more than these. I swear Eriko was youthening as the volume went on…. Also absent from this volume was fun incidental art. There was one picture of Eriko with a teddy bear, I seem to recall, and the rest of the blank spaces had the title of the series. I was sort of bummed – those little incidental pieces have been one of my favorite things about the manga. But, as the story is so amusing – and I adored the manga version of Minako’s fiction “The Yellow Rose” (in which, oddly, they didn’t do the name pun thing that Minako used…) – I can overlook that.

Ratings:

Art – 6
Story – 8
Characters – 9
Yuri – not much
Service – ditto

Overall – 8

Did I ever mention that the manga has been moved to The Margaret magazine? It’s back on a just about monthly schedule, so collected manga volumes *ought* to come out on a more regular basis going forward. I hope. I imagine the closer deadlines had some impact on the lack of incidental art, as well.





My HiME Anime, Volume 2

March 26th, 2007

This review has been brought to you by the generosity of Okau Hero Brent A, I believe – there was no name on the shipping label.  In any case, my sincere thanks for his generosity and kindness. This is another of the items off my Amazon Wish List, which I am exceedingly glad to review for you all, as promised. :-) If you would like to sponsor a review, just go ahead and choose something off my wish list – I’ll be sure to acknowledge you with genuine thanks and warm, fuzzy feelings.

So, in Volume 2 of My HiME, we continue filling in the ranks of HiME, get some backstory on a few of the characters and commit the first of what will be a series of heinous crimes against the viewers. The things that were good about this volume were also the things that were bad, so it was an interesting watch from my perspective.

Let’s talk technicals first. The subtitle issue was not resolved for Volume 2, so unless you have state of the art DVD players or computers, you will not be able to see the subtitles. Luckily, since I reviewed Volume 1 I did indeed get both a new DVD drive and new software. Not, you understand, so that I can watch this disk, but because my previous DVD burner began to melt. So, I was able to see the subtitles. And boy oh boy, I understand why they want them to be hard to see! Bandai…appears to be using the teeniest, most pixelated yellow subtitles they can find. I’m not asking for fancy text effects (Ogma knows they’re wasted on me) but I’d like to be able to *see* the subtitles. My laptop screen is 15″. I’m old. They were small and hard to read. And pixelated! That’s all I’m saying.

Once again., let me stress that the animation for My HiME, despite your faulty recollection, is *significantly* worse than that for Mai Otome. Really. If you think I’m lying, you just don’t remember. Because the animation for this volume is *awful*.

Volume 2 deals primarily with two things – the addition of two HiME who function for a *very* short time as foils for one another, and Mai’s personal backstory. The backdrop to all this is rain, so you know it’s dramatic. In fact, the first episode is called “Rain and Tears” in case you miss the point of just how dramatic it is.

But as fast as we gain HiME, we lose at least one in this volume and, in the process, we learn the true risk of being a HiME…that the person (not yourself) that is most important to you will disappear if you’re defeated. On the one hand, we gain a HiME who thinks of her role as a superheroine – and revels in it, much as she revels in her obvious lies about herself and, on the other hand, we lose a HiME who probably wouldn’t have hurt a fly otherwise.

The Monsters of the Day turn up the conflict a notch, Nagi continues to be irritating and wow – is it freakish watching this volume after having been so thoroughly brainwashed by Otome. The level of angst is SOOOOOOO high, that it was hard to take seriously, since I know that all the pain and suffering will…well, I won’t rant about it again. It just seems more like *this* is the fanfic now, where someone took all these happy-go-lucky Garderobe characters, made ’em kids, stuck ’em in a school and upped the angst.

Let me digress a bit and talk about angst. In my Fanfic Writing Workshop, which you can find on “Worldshaking” Fanfic (or at a con near you that is also near me), I discuss the concept of “hand of god” writing. Many people – especially young people, like very angst-heavy stories. There’s a lot of reasons for that that I won’t get into, but I will say this – from the author’s side angst is MUCH MUCH MUCH easier to write. You know the saying, “Dying is Easy, Comedy is Hard”? This comes from the stand-up comic circuit and it is absolutely true for writing, as well. That’s why so much fanfic sounds like this “Person X is forced to react when Person Y is killed doing something or other.” That’s hand of god writing. To me, the very best writing of all is the kind that plays out in small details. So a lot of anime fails in terms of writing, for me, but some are better than others. I was all for My HiME’s hand of god until the end, where the entire series was invalidated. (Dammit, I promised not to rant again… oh well.)

I had completely forgotten that Nao was Mikoto’s age in HiME, that was really weird. LOL In any case, I found it a tad depressing to watch this volume this time, but if I treat it like a fanfic of Otome, it’s not so bad. ^_^

No Yuri, really, even if you squint and turn up the Yuri goggles, unless you’re counting Mikoto and Mai. Which I’m not.

Last up, the DVD extras. They were universally disgusting. Oh, wait, no, the last one wasn’t disgusting, just pathetic. I know that they are just service for the fanboys, but gawd…how do you guys stand it? I was gagging trying to get through them. (Just another good example of how what lesbians think is sexy and what guys think is sexy is nothing like the same thing…)

Ratings:

Art – 5
Character – 6
Story – 6
Yuri – 2
Service – 9
Angst – 8 and going up quickly from here on in.

Overall – 6